![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
Recently I read a book by Bart D Ehrman called "Misquoting Jesus." Ehrman, a textual critic of scripture, researched the textual changes that have occurred in 2000 years of writing, transcribing and translating what we know of as the New Testament. After reading his book, it would be easy to say "well, how can I believe anything that is written in scripture? It was either transcribed wrong, translated wrong, or changed to make it sound 'right'." He is well researched. Many of the found manuscripts show differences in text, with parts either added or deleted or words mis-spelled changing the meaning of the passage.
Then I learned that Ehrman himself became an agnostic after doing this research. This might be easy to do, but I decided that what we get from reading scripture is a matter of faith. If we read scripture for facts, we are missing the most important part -- our relationship with God. If we read scripture in prayer, remain open to what God is telling us and balance that with what we know is real, we can be pretty confident that we will learn God's Word for us.
Just as we are alive and our prayer is alive, the scripture or any spiritual reading also becomes alive. The deeper I delve into my Benedictine Spirituality, the more in tune I become with praying the scripture instead of just reading it. One of the vows of the Benedictines is "conversatio morum" or a calling to the habit of conversion. To me that means always challenging myself to learn, question and grow. It means spending time in prayer reading holy writings and scripture, pulling out what speaks to me, meditating on it, praying about it, chewing it over for awhile, maybe a day or a week and taking it in as part of me. Of course this doesn't happen everytime I read, but there are times when a phrase will stop and make me look again.
This is called "lectio". It is (w)holy reading in prayer. It spills over into all aspects of my life. I cogitate over a phrase, pray about it, talk about it, write about it and maybe even create art. Sometimes it's not anything I have read but what I have heard or experienced that moves me to this kind of prayer. I wish I could say I do this everyday like it says in Benedict's Rule. I can say that when I do, my relationship with God deepens to new levels of understanding.
In God's peace,
P
Then I learned that Ehrman himself became an agnostic after doing this research. This might be easy to do, but I decided that what we get from reading scripture is a matter of faith. If we read scripture for facts, we are missing the most important part -- our relationship with God. If we read scripture in prayer, remain open to what God is telling us and balance that with what we know is real, we can be pretty confident that we will learn God's Word for us.
Just as we are alive and our prayer is alive, the scripture or any spiritual reading also becomes alive. The deeper I delve into my Benedictine Spirituality, the more in tune I become with praying the scripture instead of just reading it. One of the vows of the Benedictines is "conversatio morum" or a calling to the habit of conversion. To me that means always challenging myself to learn, question and grow. It means spending time in prayer reading holy writings and scripture, pulling out what speaks to me, meditating on it, praying about it, chewing it over for awhile, maybe a day or a week and taking it in as part of me. Of course this doesn't happen everytime I read, but there are times when a phrase will stop and make me look again.
This is called "lectio". It is (w)holy reading in prayer. It spills over into all aspects of my life. I cogitate over a phrase, pray about it, talk about it, write about it and maybe even create art. Sometimes it's not anything I have read but what I have heard or experienced that moves me to this kind of prayer. I wish I could say I do this everyday like it says in Benedict's Rule. I can say that when I do, my relationship with God deepens to new levels of understanding.
In God's peace,
P