Adding and Taking Away

I have listened to many children read over the years. There are two types of readers: the faithful and the careless. The former struggles word by word to get it right. They might find reading difficult or easy: it's not the technical ability with words that matters but cleaving to what the writer meant.

The careless reader, often more able, is hungry to finish: hopping and skipping their way to the end of the sentence, the paragraph or the chapter; they want to know; they want to find out. The words are just stepping stones, and they can miss a few out on the way, can't they? After all, they are hungry for the story. They can also slip a few words in if the sentence doesn't sound quite right or if the writer got it 'wrong': writers are often getting it wrong. The reader's eye barges its way through the sentence, ahead of the mouth or the understanding, but there are hidden corners, blind alleys and invisible dips. The undulation of the text is inconvenient; we want a straight Roman road with a sprint to the finish. But the writer is writing their story with their words. Though the story maybe more than the words, it is no less than those words.

How dare the writer make us stop and think and slow us down . . . so, we edit. Isn't this the cut and paste generation? Aren't we allowed to challenge everything that challenges our self-interest? We frequently expect certain sequences of words to occur together and we are seriously put out when our expectations aren't met. Isn't the customer supposed to be right? Therefore we skip our way gayly over the passage, not paying complete attention to the words, but smearing the text with a vaneer of our own story, our own expected meaning. The writer doesn't mean that! He means this! We miss out the little words; we insert a few of our own. The story isn't in the words after all; the story is bigger than the words; the story is in our head; we make it up.

And this is what God's children do to His Word.

One evening, whilst listening to a tutee, it hit me: I was having to correct the tutee frequently; their speech slurred close to an interesting bit; as they sped up, more words were missed and extra ones slotted in. So much was being missed as the speaker hauled their way over the words: gems of meaning were overlooked for the sake of gobbling-up and eating the events. It had to be consumed; it had to be used-up. The fluency and rhythm disappeared as they stuttered in their haste and came to several premature and confused halts. Every few lines, they recomposed theirselves and continued much in the same vein as before: stumbling until their interest waned.

So often we slide over the words as if they're an unimportant conduit, a means to an end, and our balloon sails high above them while we look to the horizon. And nothing must come between us and our destination, must it? But is not God as good as His Word? Was not the Word in the beginning? And isn't His name the Word of God? Satan has railed for centuries against the person of Jesus Christ and maligned the Spirit of Holiness but his defeat means he now attacks the basic premise of how God communicates to Man at all: the meanings of words. Language itself is being attacked and subverted daily, confused and hyperbolised so that it is rendered meaningless in the glut of competing advertising rhetoric, whether personal, corporate or 'spiritual'. A tired Man-World seeks to infuse some semblence of life to his life through various devices of artifice. Where there are many words, sin is not absent. Never in the history of humanity have there been so many words spoken, published or reported. And never has Man been so far from God. The last thing he needs is more words.

When we come to the holy text of His Word we frequently bring the same attitude: manipulation to get a desired result that conforms with our present status. We measure scripture and too infrequently is scripture allowed to measure us. We take the lofty position of examination without the Word of God examining us, rending soul from spirit in spiritual sacrifice. It is God's word that is a hammer or a sword or bread from heaven or rain on a mown field. The Word of God acts upon us and cannot be heard in the human spirit unless the words uttered are Spirit and Life itself, that is, the Spirit of Truth rushing through the vocal chords of God Himself so that the divine Logos of God can be heard by Man. He is the One who speaks; we are the ones who hear and obey. It has always been thus. Let us not be so egotistical to think we are the ones who confront God, rather, it is God who confronts us. And this should be our attitude to His Word. Very often we want answers to irrelevant questions and the Lord would say, "It is not for you to know . . . but you will BE . . .". God's words are Life and Spirit and will speak to your spirit. Your soul may express it but your spirit will apprehend it. Therefore, bind your soul up when you come to God's Word, bind up your love for things material and immaterial and your love for position before the world; it is just you, God and the invisible cloud of witnesses.

The warning at the end of Revelation to not add or take away from God's Word applies to His whole Word, not just the book of Revelation, and it applies to God's testimony in our lives and if the Word does not become flesh in our lives then it is not God's Word that has been working but our words . . . and there are plenty of them.

God's Spirit never empties God's Word of meaning unless it is to dismantle our misapprehensions, but even then the Spirit of Truth is the very one who undercuts our falsity with a truth that can be expressed with words but most importantly with a truth that can be lived and gives life, and if it cannot be lived then it is not truth - just a mere technicality. All scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching . . .. There is nothing in God's word that is 'obsolete' under some dispensation that God's Spirit cannot utilise for your edification in being living truth yourself.

What is it that the churches and teachers of God's Word avoid? What books, what topics, what sections are simply left out of church sermons? What is it that they emphasise and major on? Answer those questions for you and your own church and you will be a step nearer to ascertaining the extent to which 'adding and taking' has happened in your life and in the life of your church. It maybe that they cannot take you somewhere where they themselves have never been, but the Lord can take you there Himself, if you are willing.

One thing the present church does major on is money and tithing: I have heard more sermons on Malachi 3 than anything else by a very long way. One thing she does avoid is the Cross of Christ. I honestly can't remember the last time I heard a sermon on this subject, apart from the late Art Katz' "And they crucified Him". I am recognising less and less of what is called 'church' as the true church. Their 'adding and taking away' has now accumulated over centuries for certain denominations and decades for individuals. At some point God's accounting year will come to an end and all balances will have to be settled upon the debtor.

Pray therefore for God to show you where you have taken from and added to His Word, disavow yourself of all rhetoric or any leaven that makes you appear 'spiritual', pull you investments out of your word and put them into His, allow Him to judge you in this lifetime - not the next.