WHAT’S THE TOTALITY?

BY PR. ISAAC CHANG

I love movies. Imagine if you have not watched “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, and you begin with “The Two Towers,” what can you get out of this second part of the trilogy? You probably will end up being confused. You might begin to ask many questions about the stories before this part because you want to know the plot of the whole story. Let us change from watching movies to reading our Bible. Is this view on understanding the stories in the Bible new? Do we often understand a snippet of the whole Bible story well when we read our Bible? How can we just read one part of the large story plot and deduce a theological principle? And how can we use our modern or Western context to interpret what the Bible is telling us? Please do not be ignorant that the world in the Bible is mostly Eastern World. How can we deal with this predicament?

Sometimes, we may seek Google and YouTube for more information and explanation. Are those contents presented there reliable? How do we process these so-called ready-packaged content or food? We may accidentally term them as processed food. Do we do justice for our spiritual growth with this approach by “downloading” it to us as cognitive juices? And if we chose to eat what we like to eat, we may end up eating the same thing and sharing the same thing all the time. This kind of spiritual diet can be imbalanced, and we will miss out on the big picture in the Bible. Isn’t this inevitable? What do we do?

If we want to get to the bottom of the whole story, we will need to read the Bible, again and again, meditate on it, pray to God for clarification, and seek other supplementary information. Like historians, they will find out the whole World War story from reports, newspapers, interviews from the survivors, documentary, and other sources. I can’t imagine there is any other balanced and holistic way to do this. Bible reading is the only first step to do it. Other sources shall come later. This reading will establish a firm foundation in us to be able to build another set of understanding, to discern things that may be heretical, to differentiate the ‘spirit’ within the sources. At the end of this, we will have the entirety of the whole story that I call it the totality of Scriptures.

If I did not build up my totality of Scriptures over the years of reading the Bible, I would not be able to discern the biased message of grace-based principles that I heard ten years ago. Many are still there listening to such messages in this prosperity gospel believing church. If I don’t read my Bible regularly, I don’t think I could follow my recent theological pursuits well. If I don’t read it consistently, I couldn’t even wrestle with any biblical concept thoroughly.

One of the best ways of learning and interpreting God’s Word is reading the Bible regularly so that we have the totality of Scripture. I am convinced that we will be able to see the will of God clearer. And I am confident we could hear God’s voice coming out from the totality of Scripture louder. If we are faithful in reading God’s Word, God’s voice will never be a ‘still small’ voice. The totality will speak with the fullness of God’s voice.

“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” (JOHN 10:27)