As you may know I have been gold mining recently and
learning how it’s done. The idea you grab a pan and search for gold is true,
but doing it that way takes a bunch of time, unless you find a load and get
ounces in a shovel full. The first thing you learn in mining is you need to
move a bunch of “material” or dirt, more specifically gravel. What a pan does
is give you the ability to take a shovel full of dirt and clean off the mud,
then let the gold settle to the bottom of the pan while you sift out the rest.
A good pan’er takes about 3 to 5 minutes to pan off a shovel.
As you can see this takes time and honestly the results are
more often disappointing. Miners developed a sluice box which allows water to
flow through it and clean the dirt. While the dirt goes through the box, it
passes through “riffles” which slow down the water and create eddies. As the
dirt passes through the riffles the heavier material settles to the bottom and
stays in the box while the lighter dirt comes out the back end. From here you
can pan what is left in the box and get the “pay-dirt”!
Often we “sluice” scripture to find the one verse that means
everything. To me you can “sluice” it down to two verses. The first is Genesis
1:1 which says:
In the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth.
That falls into the riffles because without God having the
ability to create everything from nothing, we have a fairytale. The second
verse is John 3:16 which explains salvation:
For God so loved the world, that he
gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish,
but have everlasting life.
From here we have “sluiced” the Bible down to God being all
powerful and how Jesus’ death on the cross gives us eternal salvation. Your job
is done, all you need to know is here!! Or is it?
The problem with trying to find the one or two verses that
fits your present paradigm is you miss the overall message. You miss the intricacies
of each story in the Bible and how it teaches us the nature of God. You miss
how through misery Job still loves God! You miss each story of the least likely
being used to show God’s glory. You miss the love of Jesus even dying on a
cross. You miss getting to know God intimately through His Word.
The other thing you notice is context is lost for both
believers and non-believers. Scripture is used to show inconsistencies without
understanding the context or it can be used the make your point that in context
would be contradicted. So sluicing is great for sifting the worthless material
from the gold, but it’s NOT what we should do with the Bible. From start to
finish it builds our understanding of the salvation we have in Jesus. READ IT!!