‘I Don’t Need to Hear God Today’

Early morning has become my favorite scenario. My cozy chair in the family room. Sleepy dogs on the couch. Coffee in a mug and more waiting in the pot. Bible open. Expecting to hear from the Lord and ready to reply. What could be more homely and humble? How could I be doing anything wrong in that time? Yet pride, the deadliest of the deadly sins, can snake its way even into Bible reading.

Here are three phrases I say while meditating on Scripture that reveal my distorting pride.

1. ‘I already know that.’

This is the pride of complacency. It tempts me to think I’ve exhausted a passage of Scripture. I already got out the marrow, so why gnaw on these bones?

It’s embarrassing to read the hubris in the sentence I just typed. The greatest theologians and spiritual masters throughout the centuries know there’s always more in a passage for the Holy Spirit to reveal. About AD 600, Gregory noted how “Scripture grows with the reader.” A child can meet Jesus in the Gospels. Yet the wisest theologians can excavate treasure in these inspired accounts for the rest of their lives. If a passage seems tired or stale to me, the problem is not that I, in my brilliance, have already mined every gem. Rather, I need to press deeper in surrender, prayer, and availability to Jesus through the sacred text. He always has more to say.

Recently my thoughts were racing in the middle of the night. I needed a passage I knew so well I could say it even amidst “monkey mind.” As I began reciting Psalm 23, I wondered, “How is this overused scripture really going to help me now?”

The Spirit likes a challenge. Not thirty seconds later, I was struck by the phrase “for his name’s sake” as if I’d never seen it before (Psalm 23:3). The Father leads me in paths of righteousness for his own purposes — for his glory, for his reputation. So I can rest now, in all assurance of what God has undertaken to do in my life, because he wants to say, “Just look at what I made of this guy!” The word is ever new.

2. ‘This is for them.’

I succumb to the pride of projection when a thrill comes through me that the word has really nailed someone else. When Paul gives a list of sinful behaviors, I can use it to aloofly condemn what others do that I (seemingly) do not.

For example, if I’m reading the first chapter of Romans, I can get caught up in outrage against those people whose “foolish hearts were darkened” as they “exchanged the truth about God for a lie” (Romans 1:21, 25). They succumbed to “dishonorable passions” and committed “shameless acts” of sexual immorality (Romans 1:26–27). I can spitefully ponder how the media and entertainment industry normalize such behavior. I can scorn the education system that denigrates life-giving morality. I can crow about all the ways this scripture exposes their rebellion.

“There’s always more in a passage for the Holy Spirit to reveal.”

Of course, mature Christians do know how to see and grieve the sins of others. But when I take Romans 1 as only for others, I fail to consider the other symptoms of failing to acknowledge God and give him thanks. Paul lists envy, strife, deceit, gossip, heartlessness, and insolence as sins that also express our evil (Romans 1:29–31). No passage is ever just for those outside the faith or outside my theological tribe.

Jesus exposed this pride of projection during his most famous sermon with this penetrating question: “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3). The pride of thinking I’m a better kind of person will poison my Bible reading. I’ll miss connecting to the depth of a passage and get sidelined from an intimate meeting with Jesus. Every time I read, study, pray, or ponder Scripture, I’ve got to take the right posture. I can’t let the Pharisee in me say, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men” (Luke 18:11). I’ve got to start with the position of the tax collector: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13).

3. ‘This doesn’t really mean that.’

The pride of my theological system can cause me to distort what a passage clearly says. In my overconfidence, I may miss what the Lord wants to say to me that day as I read and pray. I’ve learned how to look straight at a verse and declare, with no small degree of scholarly pride, “It doesn’t really mean that.” Sometimes, indeed, our study will adjust or deepen our interpretation of a seemingly straightforward passage. But other times, “It doesn’t really mean that” is another way of saying that the passage doesn’t readily fit into my well-defended, closed system.

Of course, systems of theology are necessary. As a pastor, I willingly went under oath to a particular confession of faith. But a systematic theology is not Scripture. No confession, no catechism, no individual or denominational theological expression can account for everything in Scripture. I might not have admitted that years ago. It was too threatening to my certainties. But the word breaks through my limiting principles. No, I haven’t given up systematic theology. But when reading God’s word, I try to allow a passage to create tension with my neat system. I don’t try to soften the edges of a verse just to make it fit.

For instance, I’ve heard people say that John 3:16 doesn’t really mean God so loved the world. It means God so loved the elect. However, I can’t find any use of the Greek word for world that doesn’t mean either the whole natural order of the cosmos or the world of humanity that is hostile to God. There’s nowhere that world means just the chosen. So the borders of my Presbyterian system get knocked back by a plain reading of Scripture. That’s unsettling. Yet I find much intimacy with God and humility in me arising when I pray honestly with these tensions.

Turning it the other way, suppose my theological system is more Arminian, in which God foreknows but does not predestine those bound for heaven or hell. I insist on free human choice. But then I read 1 Peter 2:8: “They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.” I’ve got to start scrubbing out God’s decree implied within the word destined and awkwardly make it about a person’s will.

Suppressing the real tensions that arise in our reading of God’s holy word flattens our prayers, dampens our joy in worship, and fosters our sense of superiority over other believers.

Pride is so insidious a sin that it sneaks even into our personal Bible study. I’m embarrassed to be so arrogant. But dragging that pride into the light dissipates its power and opens us to more life-changing encounters with the triune God through his word.