pat loughery

This quote comes from Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading, which I’m currently GREATLY enjoying. When it comes out in paperback I’ll certainly order copies for our book table, and quite possibly take a book study group through it.

Spiritual theology, using Scripture as text, does not present us with a moral code and tell us, ‘Live up to this”; nor does it set out a system of doctrine and say, “Think like this and you will live well.” The biblical way is to tell a story and in the telling invite: “Live into this – this is what it looks like to be human in this God-made and God-ruled world; this is what is involved in becoming and maturing as a human being.” We do violence to the biblical revelation when we “use” it for what we can get out of it or what we think will provide color and spice to our otherwise bland lives. That always results in a kind of “decorator spirituality” – God as enhancement. Christians are not interested in that; we are after something far bigger. When we submit our lives to what we read in Scripture, we find that we are not being led to see God in our stories but our stories in God’s. God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves.