For evangelical Christians, the Bible is authoritative. We use tradition and the church to wisely guide our appropriation of the Scriptures, but the authority of the written word of God is supreme. The doctrine of sola scriptura [1] is based upon biblical principles and precedent. For this reason, evangelicals rightly pay close attention to the Bible.
One of the more common ways in which Christians approach the Bible is to “apply it to their lives.” It’s difficult to visit an evangelical church these days where one wouldn’t hear such a phrase in some form or fashion. Take, for example, a recent Google experiment I completed [2]. A search for the terms “apply it to your life” revealed that 30 of the first 100 search results were related in some way to Christianity and the Bible.
What we evangelicals generally mean when we say that we want to “apply the Bible to our lives” is that we should take the principles found in Scripture, and put them into practice. Simple and orthodox enough, right?
Well, maybe not. The words we use to describe the practice of a Christian life convey much more than we intend to say. When we “apply the Bible to our lives,” we explicitly make our lives — as they are now — the standard. Our lives become like a house that needs a fresh coat of paint applied to its aging walls. Wherever there’s a dull, damaged, or decaying spot, we apply the paint that is the Scriptures.
Such an analogy might make for a good church newsletter story, but it’s a dangerously false way for a Christian to live. What my Google search experiment also found was that 34 of the 100 results used the “apply it to your life” expression in the context of a new age, psychotherapy, or self-help scheme (the top result [3] was for Oprah’s favorite new book, The Secret). Unlike the new age view, the Bible tells us that our lives are not merely in need of a few touch-ups — they need a complete overhaul. We don’t need to apply the Scriptures to the peeling exterior, we need them flowing through our veins. As Jesus once warned:
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. [Matthew 23:27-28]
Christians should not apply the Bible to our lives so much as we should apply our lives to the Bible. We are not the center of the universe, but followers of that Word whom to us was revealed. We should stop using the Bible as the touch-up paint of our lives, and paint ourselves to the truth of the Scriptures.