Am I safe this morning to assume that even if you haven’t read it, or subscribe to it… you know what I’m talking about when I mention the New York Times? Of course, it is a well know newspaper and it’s been around for years. How many you have heard it referred to as “the gray lady.” It picked up that nickname due to its volume and depth of coverage. But, something new has been added. A year ago, the editors decided to devote pages two & three of each issue not to important and timely articles, but to summaries of articles appearing elsewhere in the paper. Sort of like a table of contents.
They did this to address two complaints customers were voicing. Some readers said they didn’t have enough time to read the fuller articles. Other readers said because there was so much in each issue, they often overlooked articles they really cared about. There is evidence however, says at least one observer, the change is a snapshot of a larger trend in our world, which may or may not be for the good.
Nicholas Carr is a professional writer who writes for a publication entitled “The Atlantic.” Carr watches and writes about technology, business and culture. As a writer, he spends a lot of time online and has done so for more than a decade. Anyone who has spent anytime on the internet knows how valuable it is for doing almost any kind of research. Days of searching and lengthy visits to a library now can be done online from home in a matter of minutes.
Carr suggests the Times new feature is a result of how the Internet is rewiring not only our reading habits, but also the circuits in our brain that have to do with cognition, or in other words, our ability to acquire knowledge. The “net” has become “the conduit for most of the information that flows through his eyes and ears and into his mind.” The problem, as Carr sees it, is that all this comes at a price: The Internet not only supplies stuff to think about but also shapes the very process of thought!
Carr notes recent studies show that as people view material online, they usually skim rather than read deeply. They hop from one source to another and rarely return to any they’ve already visited. The authors of a study form the University College London concluded internet users are not reading online in the traditional sense and “there are signs that new forms of ‘reading’ are emerging as users ‘power browse.’” They added, “It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.”
Carr puts forth further evidence quoting Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University. She worries that the kind of reading the Internet promotes aims at “efficiency” and “immediacy” and may be withering away our capacity for the kind of deep reading called for by books. When we read online, Wolf says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information” who don’t engage our ability to make “the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply.” The pictures in our minds…
Carr notices that loss when he does reading not on the Net. He used to read pages of material comfortably; he now finds that his concentration drifts after a couple of pages. He gets fidgety and easily loses the thread of the material. He writes, “I feel as if I am always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.” He quotes others in his article giving similar reports.
Deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we get from the author’s words, but for the intellectual sensations those words ignite within our own minds. In the quiet space opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by an other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, fosters our own ideas. Deep reading, Maryanne Wolf argues, is indistinguishable from deep thinking.
Here’s the bottom line to what we’ve been talking about so far…. It is very possible the NY Times has taken to summarizing articles because they are afraid people just don’t want to read so much anymore. In addition, it’s possible the Internet is at least in part, responsible for the decline in deep reading.
MOVE
So, now let’s do some deep reading of john 3:
Chances are not all the verses we read this morning are on the tip of your tongue, but most regular church attendees can rattle off the gist of John 3: 16… which is often called “the gospel in a nutshell.” Now surely there’s truth in that statement, but it may also leave us with the assumption that if we can recite John 3: 16, we pretty much have the complete Christian message and the rest of the Bible is just commentary.
But the reading is not just verse 16. For the full context, we must start at verse 1 of Chapter 3. However, our assigned reading for this morning is verses 14-15. He we see Jesus makes reference to an incident from the Old Testament involving a “serpent in the wilderness.”
The truth is many folks who know just John 3: 16 aren’t going to have the foggiest idea what Jesus is talking about in 14 and 15, or why the story of a wilderness serpent should serve as an introduction to verse 16. Verse 16 of course, is a verse most if not all of us have heard and understand. For God so loved the world…. But what does that have to do with a wilderness snake? Some may even think this is another appearance of the snake that tempted Adam and Eve… but they would be wrong. THIS snake, the one Jesus refers to is a savior, not a tempter.
If we only read John 3: 16 and think we have the whole story, then it is like reading in the skip and browse fashion on the Internet. We may get the basics, the “nugget” of the story but we’ll miss the deep understanding that comes only from deeper reading and from living with the Scriptures.
So here’s what we’re going to do. We are going to imagine there is a “link” in verse 14 that jumps us back to Numbers 21: 4-9. Actually, in the margins of many Bibles, there are references to link various scriptures to one another. You could consider those your link…
We’re going to jump to the Numbers story for just a moment, but unlike many Internet users, we’re going to come back to the text we started with and, thanks to Numbers, we’ll have a better understanding of Jesus message in John 3:16.
MOVE
The Numbers story finds the people of Israel in the wilderness between Egypt and Canaan, after the exodus. Their route requires them to bypass the land of Edom. The detour makes the Israelites cranky and once again, they complain to Moses: “Our slavery in Egypt was better than this. We’re going to die out here in the wilderness.” And then, in a rant that doesn’t even make sense, they add, “We’ve got no food and water, and what food we have is miserable!” They complained not only against Moses, but also against God.
Now if we are really into deep reading, we should go back further into Numbers to see that this is not their first occasion for grumbling. It’s not their second or even their third. It is at least the fourth occasion, and in each preceding time, God addressed their complaints in some way. But here they are at it again. Moreover, this time, according to the Numbers 21 account, God sends poisonous serpents among them, who bit them, and many of the people died.
This brought the rest quickly back to Moses with the admission they had sinned against him and against God. They pleaded with Moses to intervene with God on their behalf. When Moses did so, God told him to fashion a serpent out of bronze and place it on a pole. Then God instructed that anyone bitten by a live serpent should look at the bronze one on the pole. When they did so, they would recover and live.
MOVE
Now let’s return to John and look at the big picture. We see Jesus’ mentions the serpent in the wilderness in a conversation with a Pharisee named Nicodemus. This man had come to Jesus seeking to understand his message and mission. Remember they were both Jews, brought up in the Hebrew Scriptures. Jesus was able to refer to the serpent story confident Nicodemus would know it and be able to see it as a comparison to Jesus’ mission.
So, when Jesus says to Nicodemus, “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life,” Nicodemus suddenly understands that Jesus mission to be a savior.
Probably at this point, Nicodemus doesn’t envision Jesus dying on a cross and being “lifted up” in that sense. But he’s at least beginning to realize what Jesus means. Jesus is telling him that just as looking at the bronze serpent on a pole enabled those ancients who were dying due to their sin to live, so looking at Jesus with belief will enable those dying in sin today to live eternally.
Now, all this deeper reading of the Bible should also help us grasp what Jesus says after the John 3:16 statement. He says, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Remember in the Numbers story, the live serpents were agents of judgment.
Yet here is where Jesus tells Nicodemus how his role differs from the serpent’s in the wilderness. He didn’t come to be like the biting serpents of judgment and death. He was not sent to condemn the world, but to save it.
Only the bronze serpent was a representation of the role Jesus came to fill. Yes, those who refuse to believe are condemned already, but condemnation is not why Jesus came. He came to save all those who are dying spiritually in sin.
Thus, it’s not enough to read John 3:16 in isolation and be mere “decoders of information.” We get far more out of it if we do what Jesus invited Nicodemus to do, to make “rich mental connections” between the Old Testament and the gospel Jesus was bringing.
Deep reading the Bible helps us not only see John 3:16 as Nicodemus now saw it, but it also helps us to realize that the theme of God saving those dying in sin is not limited to the story from Numbers and this verse in John. Listen, for example to what Psalm 107 says:
“Some were sick through their sinful ways, and because of their iniquities endured affliction; they loathed any kind of food, and they drew near to the gates of death. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress; he sent out his Word and healed them, and delivered them from destruction” (vv. 17-20).
In Numbers, some of the bitten people could have refused to look at the bronze serpent and died. It’s hard to imagine why anyone would, but it was possible. Likewise, we sin-bitten people can refuse to look at the Savior God provided and thus miss eternal life.
But why do that? Look and live!
