The Bible: Witness to Itself?

The way we tend to go about things Christian -- at least from the Prostestant denominations -- is from the perspective or foundation that the Bible is the witness to itself. That the Bible points to itself. Where do we get blessing and healing? The Bible. Where do we find knowledge, wisdom, and truth? The Bible. How do we know God? The Bible.

Perhaps this perspective is askew, perhaps we are missing something. Perhaps what we fail to discern is that the Bible is pointing to Someone. We acknowledge this in a perfunctory manner, "Yeah yeah yeah, we know, Jesus Christ." But where do we go for life? Not Him (though we profess such), but to that which points to Him, the Bible. It's like going to a map to experience the city. There is a saying in self-help circles -- the map is not the territory. How unintentionally true it is for us Christians. We have a tendency to look to and stay in the map rather that engage, inhabit, and take in the territory. Christ is the territory, Christ is the promised land. We are in Christ, in Him we live and move and have our being. We live in Him. But are we living in the Bible? Is the map where we live and move and have our being?