Chapter 6 of The Blue Parakeet begins the section on listening.  McKnight contrasts two approaches to the Bible:  seeing the Bible as an authority and seeing the Bible as fostering a relationship.  “God is a person, the Bible is paper,” he notes.  To view the Bible primarily as an authority leads to submission, but understanding it as a vehicle to create a relationship does not.

I wondered if there are people who do not accept his dichotomy, who see the Bible in authoritative and relational terms.

He also emphasizes the conversational nature of the Bible itself, with different authors in the Bible in conversation with one another.  But ultimately God is the Bible’s author or artist, and the Bible is His communication with us.  McKnight also touches on the conversation believers have had through the ages about the Bible’s conversation.  This is tradition.  Tradition is a partner who sits at the table with us as we enter into the conversation ourselves.

In chapter 7, he links loving and listening.  “Our relationship to the God of the Bible is to listen to God so that we can love him more deeply and love others more completely.”  He identifies three parts to genuine listening:  attention, absorption and action.  We have not truly listened if we have only paid attention without also absorbing what we have heard and acting on it.

In chapter 8, he notes a principle from Augustine, that the whole purpose of the Bible is to make us more loving, a theme from the last chapter.  The Bible’s mission is to make us people who love God and love others.

He uses a classical text on the nature of scripture to explain where all this goes:

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that all God’s people may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.  (2 Timothy 3:14-17 TNIV)

He notes not only the scripture in Timothy’s life but also the ones who taught him the faith, “those from whom you have learned it.”  McKnight links them to having wise mentors in our lives and in a broader sense with the wisdom of the ages embodied in the great tradition.

He emphasizes the “so that” in the last phrase.  Everything leads here.  All that we learn in the Bible is to equip us for good works.  Good works are “concrete responses to needs we see in our neighbors.”  At the end I was wondering about these good works.  All Christians agree we should do good works, but they often disagree fiercely on the shape of those good works in the larger society.  What is needed is discernment, and I see that is the topic of the next section.

He uses an illustration of a water slide.  The slide is the gospel.  One side of the slide is the Bible, and the other side is tradition (wise mentors).  The water on the slide is the Holy Spirit, carrying us down to the deep waters of the world in the pool below.

(Image by Brandt Luke Zorn)