Looking to the Biblical Narrative, Rather than Individual Subject-Specific Verses

Subject-Matching Verses to Our Problems—A Misguided Approach to the Bible

Look through a large selection of Christian books and study materials and you will notice a trend. A great many Christian writings employ a similar approach in how they apply the Bible to their subject matters. The approach so commonly used to apply biblical truth is something I’ve come to call subject-matching. Subject-matching seeks to match up Bible verses to readers’ presenting problems as one-to-one equivalent solutions.

The subject-matching approach says, “Our readers feel lost and alone. Let’s help them feel not lost and alone.” Then it subject-matches the Bible to the issue. It does this by finding a verse or two, typically in the Psalms, where the Psalmist also felt lost and alone. The reader is asked to consider the verse, reflect on what they read, and then answer a couple of questions. 

This method is used regardless of the subject matter. For example, is the reader a person with a drinking problem? Give him a couple of verses about drunkenness. Is this a person with an anger problem? Give him a few verses about anger. And likewise for lust, greed, fear, discouragement, and recovery from addiction or trauma. The approach aims to provide one-to-one subject equivalent solutions to manifesting problems.

Among various deeper and more complex problems, this approach to applying the Bible to life is too simple and treats the troubled person like a machine or a computer that has given a readout of its system errors, requiring a response of repairing or replacing a malfunctioning circuit. One man’s system error readout shows aggression toward others; protocol is to find a subject-matched Bible verse that can be used to tweak his anger circuit.

People, of course, are not like machines, and do not meaningfully change by external force or pressure, or by adopting a principle or rule. People do not heal by reading some inspiring quotation, nor do they meet the expectations of their Creator by following moral instruction. 

As Tim Keller explains, 

Moralistic behavior change bends a person into a different pattern through fear of consequences rather than melting a person into a new shape. But this does not work. If you try to bend a piece of metal without the softening effect of heat, it is likely to snap back into its former position….But the gospel of God’s grace doesn’t try to bend a heart into a new pattern; it melts it and re-forms it into a new shape. … Putting pressure on their will may temporarily alter their behavior, but their heart’s basic self-centeredness and insecurity remain.

 Tim Keller, Center Church, Page 67

While Keller’s point is aimed more directly at moral behavior modification, the typical subject-matching approach also applies in the realm of recovery and healing. The Bible is treated as an indexed guide to life. You may well have seen the topical lists that have been written to provide biblical references to correspond to problems such as loneliness, depression, anger, and anxiety. Curiously, such lists are not limited to materials written to the layperson, but to ministers as well. Two Bibles on my shelf right now —Zondervan’s NIV Pastor’s Bible, and Hendrickson’s NASB Minster’s Bible—also contain such indexed, problem-matching lists of Bible references. 

For example…(excerpt from Hendrickson’s Ministry’s Bible)

God’s Promises When…

You Need Comfort

You Have Been Cheated

You Have Been Quarreling

You Struggle with Laziness

You Struggle with Lust

You Are Starting a New Job

It is well worth our time and effort to ask if this is the best use of the Scripture. Is this how God intended for us to approach His inspired Word? Is this how we are to recover and heal from something as dark and life-altering as divorce? One reason we have to ask is that the Bible is completely and totally silent on this issue. It doesn’t talk about divorce recovery. It barely talks at all about emotional wounds. So what are we to do?

Biblical Divorce Recovery

Deep Truth for Deep Wounds is a ministry centered on biblical divorce recovery. In other words, its subject is divorce recovery, and its intention is to be biblical about this recovery business, hence the term, “biblical divorce recovery.” But what does that mean that recovery should be biblical? It may seem like an odd question, but my aim is to differentiate between containing Bible content, and having content that is thoroughly biblical. In other words, just because a book contains Bible verses, that doesn’t guarantee its content is biblical. By “biblical” I mean corresponding accurately to the purpose of the Bible (why was it given to us?) and its method (how are we to apply its truths and promises to our lives?). The goal here is to look at recovery biblically, not merely to use Bible content to aid our recovery efforts. 

The reason for making this distinction is because when we ask what the Bible says about a given topic, it’s essential that we first understand what kind of a book the Bible is. Is the Bible a book of answers, rules and wisdom? Is the Bible a book of inspiration and encouragement to get us through? The reality is simultaneously more complex and more simple than any of those. It’s more complex because it requires (to some degree) a grasp of the entire Bible; it’s more simple because the Bible gets at the bigger problem behind all the problems we face in life. 

Recovery Isn’t a Different Kind of Humanness

Being divorced doesn’t put you into a different category of persons in relationship to the Bible. Neither does recovering from something for that matter. Recovery is not an entirely different thing altogether that we use the Bible for, because, again, the Bible’s aim is to get at the bigger problem behind your particular problem, or mine. We have to go to the Book for the reason the Book was given to us, and incorporate its truth in our lives in the way it suggests. Just as a doctor may prescribe medication for an illness, the doctor also prescribes its administration. Knowing and having the medication is only half of the treatment; we must also know how to take it. Administering the correct medication in the wrong way can be lethal, medicinally and spiritually. The rest of this chapter will summarize the purpose and method of the Bible which will be worked out in more detail in the following chapters. 

The Message and Method of the Bible 

The Bible, in its broadest sense, reveals the identity and work of God that redeems and reverses loss. The Bible expresses and expounds the plan of God to reconcile a lost people to Himself, unifying them under His redeeming Kingship, and restoring the relationship people were intended to have with all of creation. The same plan that unifies a people in Christ also redeems and heals the brokenness of relationship failure and trauma, because all relationship problems are symptoms of a larger problem…alienation from God. 

The Bible—this is absolutely essential—is not merely a topical guide in which we find practical help for our specific problems. Instead we find in Scripture a story that reveals the one solution to all of our problems. The path to recovery from divorce is the path of reconciliation with God and Creation. According to the Apostle Paul, the Gospel is not merely the announcement of good news that tells us we can be saved from our sins. It is that, but is also vastly more. The Gospel, in its fuller sense, is the way in which God is reconciling all of Creation to Himself and, as Sam says in The Return of the King, the plan in which everything sad is “going to come untrue.” 

Consider the following paragraph from Paul’s letter to the church in Colassae. This may be the New Testament’s clearest big-picture explanation of the Gospel’s purpose: 

Because of this (the Colossian church’s faith and love) also we, from the day we heard about it, did not cease praying for you, and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual insight, so that you may live in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good deed and increasing in the knowledge of God, enabled with all power, according to his glorious might, for all steadfastness and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you for a share of the inheritance of the saints in light, who has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have the redemption, the forgiveness of sins, who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation, because all things in the heavens and on the earth were created by him, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers, all things were created through him and for him, and he himself is before all things, and in him all things are held together, and he himself is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he himself may become first in everything, because he was well pleased for all the fullness to dwell in him, and through him to reconcile all things to himself, by making peace through the blood of his cross, through him, whether things on earth or things in heaven. (Col. 1:9-20, LEB)

As far as we can tell, since the early Greek manuscripts contained no punctuation, this paragraph is one long sentence, which the Lexham English Bible preserves in its translation. Hence its quotation in full. The thought flows from beginning to end and is not divided into full stop sentences, so at this point I would encourage you to read through it again. 

Colossians 1:9-20, and much of the Epistle, explains the beginning-to-end point of the entire biblical narrative, which is the Gospel. As many have pointed out, the Gospel is not the “ABC’s” of Christianity, but the “A-to-Z” of Christianity. It is the revelation of our deepest problem, and the invitation to find ourselves smack in the middle of the solution. The Gospel is not simply “how to get saved,” and then the rest of the Bible is practical guidance. We don’t find pragmatic solutions and help for living a better life in “the rest” of the Bible apart from the Gospel because all of the Bible is telling the same story, either in explaining the events and reality of the story (most of the Old Testament, the Gospels and Acts), or teasing out the implications of believing it (most of the New Testament Epistles).  

Saying the Bible is entirely about the Gospel is not to ignore more practical teachings, such as the collection of Old Testament books known as Wisdom Literature—Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. Proverbs especially, but also the others to a lesser extent, clearly contain practical moral and ethical instruction. As much as this is true, it must be seen that while these books teach practical wisdom, their author (Solomon) placed all the wisdom teachings under a guiding principle: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge/wisdom (Prov. 1:7, 9:10). “The fear of the Lord,” is mentioned 14 times in Proverbs, and elsewhere is used a handful of times in the Psalms and prophetic literature, and only twice in the New Testament (Acts 9:31, 2 Cor. 5:11). It is noteworthy that this phrase is used more often in wisdom literature than in any other context.

While the Bible contains teachings on money, relationships, and work, it places all of them as secondary to “the fear of the Lord.” That is, before a person can truly benefit from anything the Bible has to say, a person must first have a correct relationship to God. Admittedly the phrase, “the fear of the Lord,” is not simple. It would be too easy to automatically explain the phrase away as meaning “reverence,” although that is certainly appropriate at times. It is also difficult to understand what other biblical authors, such Isaiah, meant when he used the phrase. Regarding the coming Messianic King, Isaiah says, “He will delight in the fear of the Lord,” (Isa. 11:3), and regarding God, he says, “The fear of the Lord is his treasure” (Isa. 33:6). These are admittedly difficult statements. 

We begin to make sense of this by looking at the economy of words in the biblical language. The Hebrew language in which the Old Testament was written contains a vocabulary of around 8,000 words, compared to the 170,000 or so words we have in English. That means many words are used in a wide variety of ways, and context must determine how they are being used. The word yārēʾ(fear)seems to be used in five ways: “1) the emotion of fear, 2) the intellectual anticipation of evil without emphasis upon the emotional reaction, 3) reverence or awe, 4) righteous behaviour or piety, and 5) formal religious worship.” 

The fact that this word is used for both emotional fear and reverence (or “awe”) suggests those two concepts are more closely identified in the Hebrew mind than in ours. This sort of awe or reverence, used in the context of wisdom literature, refers to a right relationship with God because only a true conversion can produce it. Only a brush with absolute holiness can shock and melt the heart to desire to also be holy. That is what wisdom is, and that is why application of biblical wisdom teachings apart from the Gospel places a burdensome cart before a spiritually dead horse. It is illogical, unrealistic, oppressive, legalistic, and spirit-killing, to demand and expect a result rather than the solution that produces it. 

The purpose and message of the Bible, as stated earlier, and as best expressed in Colossians 1:9-20, is to reveal the identity and work of God that redeems and reverses loss. The world is in a state it was not intended to be by design, and the Bible’s purpose and message explains the reason why the world is in its current state, why humanity is fallen and separated from God, and what God has done in the world to reverse and restore what was lost. 

As a divorced person who may be hurt, bitter, withdrawn, vulnerable to temptation, and unable to trust others, you will not find a path to recovery by subject-matching Bible verses to your situation. You will not find peace by reading and emulating the Psalmist’s example as if the Psalmist wrote about your situation specifically. That is not how recovery works. Why? Because what we call “recovery,” the Bible calls“afflicted, but not crushed,” “perplexed, but not despairing,” and “struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Cor. 4:8-9). What we call peace, the Bible calls not “losing heart,” because,

“though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.” (2 Cor. 4:16-18, NASB)

The purpose of the Bible is reveal to us what God has done to make this possible. What God has done to make this possible is what we call the Gospel, which is a celebratory proclamation of victory that God has overcome the world, beating death at its own game, and putting in motion irrevocable actions that restore our relationship to Him and to the rest of creation. While the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 essentially defines the Gospel as the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, when John the Baptist and Jesus preached the Gospel, their message was, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (see Matt. 3:2, 4:17, 4:23, 10:7, 24:14; Luke 16:16). 

Much more will be said about these things in the following chapters, but the Kingdom of Heaven (alternately the Kingdom of God) refers to the rule of God over His people. Jesus’ Kingdom is “not of this world,” and “not from here” (John 18:36), and in another text by the Apostle John he envisions the Kingdom this way: 

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” 

And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.  (Rev. 21:1-7, ESV)

The Kingdom of God, as far as our ministry is concerned, is another way of describing the concept of “home.” Home is the place wherever the presence of God is manifested in full. The Kingdom, as we experience it in this current life, is a spiritual reality. The Kingdom reigns in our hearts and is not visibly overt. The Kingdom grows (Matt. 13:18-23), the Kingdom permeates (Matt. 13:33), the Kingdom is of supreme value (Matt. 13:44-46), the Kingdom is embodied by forgiveness (Matt. 18:23-35), the Kingdom is full of those who are humbled as a child (Matt. 18:4), the Kingdom is a place where those within are not accepted on the basis of their work, but rather the master’s generosity (Matt. 20:1-16), and Kingdom can be closed off to people due to the hypocrisy and legalism (Matt. 13:1-2).

The path to recovery is the path to the Kingdom of heaven because the path to recovery leads us “home,” the place of God’s presence. “Home” was foreshadowed by the Old Testament Promised Land, is partially fulfilled by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the believer, and will be realized in full in the future New Jerusalem where Christ will live among His people, exercising a perfect rule of justice and peace. The earth will not be our true home (as a physical place) until Christ physically reigns among us, replacing the sun as our Light, His presence as our Life, and sin and death destroyed forever. Deep down we know we were made for this place. Until that time, “[our] life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3). Until the Kingdom is our physical reality, the Kingdom is our spiritual reality, and so we walk by faith and not by sight.

Recovery from divorce is Home. And this is why being in recovery is not a different kind of humanness; in fact, being in recovery IS being human. This is why the approach to recovery is the same for every person regardless of their specific problem, because alienation from God and the earth’s curse that resulted from it, is our main problem that causes all the ones we deal with on a daily basis. Recovering from something as life-altering as divorce means so much more than asking what the Bible says about it and following the directions like a recipe, but happens when we believe the Bible’s message, “giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what God had promised, He is able also to perform” (Rom. 4:20b-21). Recovery happens when we take our place in the overarching, eternity-to-eternity narrative of the Bible, and take refuge in the Kingdom of Heaven. And the way that we take refuge in the Kingdom is by faith. We become citizens of the Kingdom by simply taking our places with Christ as fellow children of God at His table of fellowship. 

Conclusion and Summary

Processing the grief, pain and trauma of marriage failure requires a solid framework for understanding the world; one conclusive enough to account for what happened and why, and also theologically accurate enough that the help it offers corresponds with God’s revealed Word. The best possible framework for understanding the world and these issues is the biblical framework, or Christian worldview, revealed in the overarching narrative of the Bible. If you adopt this narrative framework and see your place in it, that is, that you understands correctly your relationship to God and the world according to God’s design and plan of redemption in response to the fallen world, then the pain, grief and trauma in your life has a solid and realistic enough explanation such that you can 1) Begin to heal and move forward, 2) Learn how to be content and happy unmarried, 3) Avoid the same or similar relationship mistakes in the future, 4) Become healthy and productive members of the church.