God’s Will Is In The Bible

Today’s reading: Acts 17:16-34

I heard a pastor today talking about righteousness.  His definition of the word was simple: doing God’s will.

“If we know God’s will on something, but then do something different, we are worshiping an idol, a false God,” he said.

But how do we  know God’s will?

Well that’s often difficult, the pastor said, but it is written up for us in The Bible.

After hearing this sermon, I came home to the television.  Ha!

I remembered a weird habit from my days as a college journalism major, and I decided to do some informal “content analysis” of the shows I watched tonight. (Yes, I guess I will always be a media nerd!)

To start my little project, I hypothesized that I would hear not one bit of Bible scripture discussed during three hours of randomly selected prime-time shows (in this case, CBS’s Sunday night programming). Then I turned on the ole’ tube and just watched very carefully — with pen and paper handy, ready to document any scripture I heard.

Sure enough, my hypothesis was right. I heard not one quotation from The Bible.

I did hear 5 non-Biblical references to God and prayer, and the main character on The Good Wife clearly spent the entire hour grappling with unspoken spiritual issues. Also, 60 Minutes ran a very inspirational story about how baseball pitcher R.A. Dickey relied upon his faith — and some good psychological counseling — to build himself into a Most Valuable Player.

But none of this God talk was backed  by scripture.

The social scientist in me needs to see much more evidence before jumping to any final conclusions, of course, but I believe this may be a case of art imitating life. I just don’t hear a lot of scripture being quoted these days by people who aren’t pastors — even by my churchy friends, who tend to do a lot of talking about God.  I think we all tend to rely too much on preachers to tell us what The Bible says.

But when we do this, — when we talk about God without reference to scripture —  we’re just going by our gut. And, well, our guts are not always reliable guides.

Lest I get accused of being a bit too righteous here, let me tell the story of my own awkward night  in 1986, when I was a bright high school senior, very well versed in what Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, and David Henry Thoreau all said about God. I tried to complete an English class homework assignment about a textbook’s quotation from The Bible, and I panicked: I realized I could not even explain the difference between the Old Testament and the New!

I called a friend who was well known for being at church every single Sunday. She couldn’t explain the difference either!

It was a shock to realize that I had spent many hours listening to sermons, sitting through Sunday school classes and even talking about God to my friends and family. But I was almost entirely ignorant of The Bible.

Ever since that realization, I’ve been careful what I say about “God’s will.” I’m happy to report that I now know it’s not enough to just go by my gut when making tough calls (or any calls, actually) about life.

Even though Paul was talking to a bunch of polytheistic Greeks in today’s reading, his words also apply to me, if I’m not properly considering  scripture:

“For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.”

This is yet another reason why I am happy to devote a great deal of time each day (sometimes 4 hours!) to careful consideration of the scripture that I study before writing these posts. I recommend the practice for everyone!

Thanks be to God for The Bible. May I always remember to apply its lessons in order that I may know how to do His will.