First thing in the morning

The famous Swiss theologian Karl Barth lived in a simpler age. When he said that a serious Christian should start the day with a Bible in one hand and a good newspaper in the other, could he possibly have known how complicated things were going to get?

Barth’s point was to encourage us to be alert to what God is doing in the world, but constantly to refine that perspective in the light of God’s written truth. For years, I’ve appreciated Barth’s advice—so long as we’re also reminded of the priority the Bible holds over the newspaper.

The newspaper is a symbol of what we call general revelation. The Bible, on the other hand, is a symbol of what we know as special revelation. And the authority of special always trumps the authority of general.

In Barth’s day (he lived from 1886 to 1968), the symbolism was simpler. You had a black leather-bound book, of fairly substantial size. And you had a morning paper. Twenty years ago, in this space, I pushed the point of the symbolism (maybe too far!) when I asked you to reflect on which of the two you picked up first every morning. In other words, which revelatory system was more important in your daily scheme of things? My question might not have been fair or legitimate—but at least my point was obvious.

All of us need to be infused frequently—maybe even constantly—with the life-giving discernment of God’s special revelation in the Bible.

But today, half a century after Barth’s death, such symbolism has become both muddled and confused. For starters, whether it’s my morning Bible reading or my daily fix of The Wall Street Journal, I reach for neither a book nor a newspaper. Both are faithfully transmitted to me over the same small iPhone, which helpfully enlarges the typeface and brightens the screen for my aging eyes.

All that though is, as I say, just for starters. If the newspaper was, a few decades ago, a symbol for general revelation, the expanse of that revelation has now been multiplied so vastly that my befuddled brain spins in response. And the tools now available on these little devices to drill into the truths of Scripture are similarly remarkable. On that same little smartphone I can enjoy half a dozen translations of the Bible, interactive atlases, concordances, cross references, audio readings, video commentaries, etc.

With all that data scattered across the landscape, where do we start? How do we budget our hours and days? In a sense, wasn’t it easier when we had nothing more than a Bible and a newspaper?

If the temptation at this point is to aim for some kind of 50-50 arrangement, we probably are overrating ourselves. We Christians find it far too easy to suppose we’re pre-equipped to think Christianly about everything going on around us. We think we know the main drift of biblical morality and biblical thinking, and are ready to pick up the paper and know—almost intuitively—what a biblical perspective is on all those issues. We shouldn’t kid ourselves.

The “mind of Christ” doesn’t get formed in an instant. It comes through lifelong disciplines. That’s why all of us need to be infused frequently—maybe even constantly—with the life-giving discernment of God’s special revelation in the Bible. Better to try to keep up your physical well-being without eating every day than to keep up your powers of godly discernment without daily recourse to God’s very words and instruction for His children.

Granted, the order in which we take our different kinds of nourishment may be a matter of personal preference. But nutritionists still recommend a healthy breakfast! And the personal experience from God’s saints through all the ages—including David the psalmist (Psalm 143:8)—suggests an early start with God’s Word is key. Three suggestions why that may be so:

1) It’s a daily symbolic statement of what is most important.

2) In practical terms, what you do first tends to get done; what you put off competes with other obligations and is often bumped from the schedule.

3) What you do first tends to define the rest of the day.

We WORLD people tend to be news junkies. That’s how, for years, I started my day. Some of you, heaven forbid, may even start with WORLD!Don’t. Start instead with what defines everything else. Everything else then—including WORLD—will make a lot more sense.

Email jbelz@wng.org