August 2009

by Dr. Harry Wendt
08/06/09

"The Fortune Cookie Bible"

Recently a Crossways International (CI) staff member found the following article posted on the web by author and pastor, John W. Frye:

“Why doesn’t some Bible publishing company come out with ‘The Fortune Cookie Bible’? Many Christians treat the Bible like they do a fortune cookie after a nice Chinese food dinner. Pithy, little positive sayings that perk up your life and create a little fun curiosity; that’s what fortune cookies do. And that’s all that many Christians want from their Bibles.

“Life is about me, most American Christians conclude, and so the Bible should be about me, too. God is nice, but nice (and disposable) in a fortune cookie kind of way. Maybe His Word will tell me something I really want to hear, and if it doesn’t, I’ll close it up until I want another fortune told. “I’ll read my ‘verse for the day’ or my little morsel of pious Bible-sweets and then I’ll be on my way to the important business of the day… my business.

“The truth that the Bible expresses the most revolutionary, ‘turn your whole world upside down’ story never occurs to them. For as long as they can remember, the Bible has been chopped up into nice, tasty, bite-size pieces, and to grasp its call to a total upheaval of life as we know it is foreign to them. Not only foreign, but frightening. ‘Please keep the Bible bite-size and disposable.’ They’ve been trained to eat fast-food, so to eat their way through the tough-to-cut meat of the Bible sounds too hard. At the most, you can just give the Cliff Notes Version. The message of the New American Cliff Notes Version is: ‘God is love; I am a sinner; Jesus died for my sins on the cross, so if I accept him, I’ll go to heaven when I die.’ But until I die, I get to live the American Dream like everyone else. What a deal!

“The New American Fortune Cookie Version Holy Bible! I think it would sell. Don’t you?”

My response: Rest assured, CI will never publish or distribute a Fortune Cookie Bible! Rather, it will continue to do what it has been doing for 30 years: Equip people to understand the Bible’s big story and the themes that surface within it so that they might believe in, follow, and demonstrate Jesus, the radical forgiving Servant Messiah, in all they think, say, and do. CI’s ministry and materials focus on doing just that!
- Harry Wendt

P.S. - A response from “Ken” to The Fortune Cookie Bible article found online:
“When God ‘opened my eyes’ almost 30 years ago, I had an insatiable hunger for His Word. I read through the Old Testament several times, and through the New Testament many, many times. But it was only about five years ago when I attended a Crossways International training session that I discovered the wonder of the divine meta-narrative of the Bible. It had a profound effect on me. I taught The Divine Drama at our church and it had a great impact on those who attended. What you speak of is unfortunately so true; the vast majority of our church population is biblically illiterate. An in-depth 16 session course like The Divine Drama can be tremendously helpful to overcome this embarrassing tragedy.”

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