Walter Brueggemann the Eastern Orthodox

On the way to Cornerstone we listened to a lecture and question and answer time by Walter Brueggemann, one of my favorite Old Testament theologians. These lectures can be downloaded for free from Christianaudio.com, a great site which also gives away a free audio book each month (July is the Practice of the Presence of God). He has many great ideas, although he takes almost all of his ideas too far in my opinion. I disagree with much of what he says, but he helps me think about the Old Testament in new and very helpful ways. Anyway, in this lecture he talked about how we are each scripted into a certain script by our surroundings: family, friends, culture, etc. The Christian life is all about being re-scripted into a different script. The problem is that we always have a tendency to go back to our old script, and so we always have to be re-scripting ourselves. Nothing unusual in this statement besides different wording. I didn't think about this lecture much once we got to Cornerstone, until something brought it to mind a few days later. We camped next to an Eastern Orthodox group, who had set up a tent with several icons. Several times a day they would hold services in the tent with various readings of the Bible, creeds, and other theological formulations. I didn't think much of this either, until it dawned on me the connection between the two: the Eastern Orthodox services were a way to re-script themselves. They would spend time each day reminding themselves of theology and the reality of God through these procedures. Essentially it is not all that different of a goal from the evangelical daily bible reading and prayer: the point is to re-script ourselves into the proper script. Now, I am not advocating that we become Eastern Orthodox: while I admire their goal, I am not as happy with their means. But it is also good to remember that daily Bible reading is nowhere commanded in the Bible: it is no doubt a good idea, but the option was not even available to most Christians through church history. But however we do it, we must be often re-scripting ourselves out of the script of the culture that surrounds us and into the script of the Gospel.

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