COFFEE AT A STEAKHOUSE
One night, a man walks into the best steakhouse in the world. He’s escorted to a table and sits down quickly. He’s heard incredible things about this place and knew he had to come check it out for himself.
Moments later, the waiter arrives with a warm grin and a glass of water. “We’re happy to have you with us tonight, sir. Can I get you started with something to drink?”
“Yes, that would be great! I’ll just have a coffee,” replies the man.
The waiter’s eyebrow lifts in confusion, but he corrects himself quickly. “A coffee?” he asks just to be sure.
“That’s right. And I think I already know what I’d like for the meal.”
“Oh, excellent,” The waiter gets out his pen and pad. “What will you be having?”
“I’ll take a side of green beans.” the man says.
“A side of green beans?” The waiter glances around the room to see if anyone else heard his odd request. “Will that be all, sir?”
“I think so. Oh! And how could I forget: a piece of chocolate cake.”
“…A piece of chocolate cake…” the waiter has abandoned any attempt to hide his confusion. He stops writing, chews his lip, hesitates, and then confirms the order. “You want…a coffee, a side of green beans, and a piece of chocolate cake…that’s all…?”
The man frowns, “Yes.” He starts sensing the waiter’s confusion and disbelief, “I’m sorry is there a problem?”
“Well sir,” the waiter starts, “You’ve just ordered a coffee, a side of green beans, and a piece of chocolate cake.”
“Right.”
“And we can provide all of that for you…”
“Ok, well then what’s the problem?” barks the man.
“It’s just…” the waiter chooses his words carefully, “…it’s just… you came to the best steakhouse in the world, and you have not ordered steak.”
How often do we use things for purposes other than what they’re intended to do?
Specifically, I think a lot about how we use texts like the Bible to do things that, while it may be able to do, are not the purpose of its existence. We come to the Bible and ask for lots of things. We want a theological dictionary that helps us in our debates and conversations about how God does and doesn’t work, and what is and isn’t true. We want a moral code that helps inform and justify our political and social views. We want an easily accessible collection of one-liners and pick-me-ups that we can throw at ourselves and people around us to cheer us up when we’re upset. And the sneaky thing is, the Bible can do all of that. You can order a coffee, a side of green beans, or a piece of chocolate cake.
But that’s just not what this book was built to give you.
The Bible is a collection of ancient scrolls (ranging from narratives to poetry to letters) that was built over multiple millennia by a whole host of authors writing in three different languages all over the socio-economic spectrum, all building a cohesive story about the Being at the center of the universe and Its relationship with people. It is, at its core, ancient meditation literature, built for a lifetime of reading, reflection, evaluation, re-reading, and re-understanding. Over and over and over. It’s built to shape us as people caught up in the story, to inform how we view reality, how we view God at the center of reality, directly and indirectly shaping how we interact with reality. Its ideal reader is to, as Psalm 1 says, “meditate on it day and night.”
In other words, this is less of a book to go to, get an answer, and close. It’s not primarily built for us to visit when we need quick comfort, though it can do that. It is made for us to read, re-read, and re-re-read, and in between those readings chew on what we’ve read, allowing it to soak into our minds, into our bodies, and change us as we marinate on its various material. The Bible is a formation tool that is designed to, as we read it over a lifetime, shape us into people of love who are invited into its story of relationship between this Being and humanity. Anything less than a lifetime of soul transformation is cheapening what the Bible is capable of doing to our minds, spirits, and bodies.
For more information on a subject like this, I cannot recommend the work of BibleProject enough. Their work, ranging from short animated videos to podcasts to graduate level classroom content has helped me navigate my own questions and assumptions about the Bible and its writers, and helped me interact and engage it in a whole new (but pretty ancient) way. Check them out here.
So please, don’t settle for the coffee, the green beans, and the chocolate cake. Order them if you want, but if you’re at the best steakhouse in the world… order the steak.