How can I understand unless someone guides me?

 

Wednesday, June 14, 2023

Psalms 108; 109:20-30

1 Samuel 13:1-18

Acts 8:26-40

How can I understand unless someone guides me?

It seems to be an unofficial rule in Australian schools that every senior English class must, at some point, read a novel predicting a dystopian future. Most get assigned 1984 or Animal Farm; some get the (arguably more appropriate) Brave New World. Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano doesn’t seem to get much of a mention, even though it manages to be a bit more cheerful than its famous fellows in spite of the heavy subject matter.

It describes a world of automation, in which everyone, by necessity, must be referred to a specialist: it is the dystopian future where engineers run society. In today’s world, where the line between “free thinker” and “Google scholar” has vanished into the mists of scornful laughter, a dystopian future of specialists running the world actually has a good chance of causing goosebumps.

But reading the Bible is different to dedicating a weekend to figuring out for yourself how your fridge works. This is because the Bible speaks about God and humanity: two areas where an engineer’s manual will not do.

The Ethiopian official was reading the most blatant prophecy about Christ’s crucifixion at the very time when Christ was crucified. And yet even he needed help understanding these things. There is maturity in humility, a maturity which begets more maturity, because humility opens the way for learning. And his help did not come from Philip alone; Philip was led by the Holy Spirit. People working together with God managed to work out what God was saying to them through the pages of Scripture.

This is why we are members of a church, and this is why churches manage to work in spite of all that would suggest they should not. Because it is people working together with God in order to learn more about Jesus, and is there anything more deserving of our time?