The Map is not the Territory
Do you recognise this map?
Google Maps let me down last week. I was driving to a funeral in Darfield, dutifully following his route directions, when I ran into some ‘Road Closed’ signs. Google clearly didn’t know about this major road work and tried to direct me on through into an army of orange cones, dug up road, and oncoming trucks. Giving him new location instructions proved futile as he stubbornly kept directing me to act like a kamikaze pilot. In the end, muttering angrily to myself, I had to go old-school and figure out a new route myself. The subsequent long detour to get to my destination had me pushing over the speed limit and eventually slipping into the service a few minutes late. A minor inconvenience in the end. Unlike the time a group of friends and I followed a mapped track in the Richmond Ranges that petered out after about a kilometre and left us hauling our bikes up through steep untracked bush and hidden wasp nests for several hours. One of the crew described the experience as “scraping out our kidneys with a blunt spoon!”
Most of us expect the maps we use to have accurate data, safely guiding us to where we need to go. I think many Christians, hope and perhaps expect the bible to do the same; to provide clear routes for us through life’s challenging landscapes. Maybe we recall verses and songs like, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and light unto my path.” (Psalm 119:105) Our expectations, however, aren’t always met. Many of us find that the map of the bible, helpful though it may be, often doesn’t match the specific territory of our lives. Many of us attempting to follow the plain sense of the map, have also finished up stuck, lost and stung! The information and directions the scriptures gave us, didn’t provide us with the data points we needed to navigate the terrain we found themselves in. We had to reinterpret and reroute using other sources. It’s possible we’ve read the map wrongly at times, and closer scrutiny, or the help of some bible cartologists, or a local farmer on the roadside, would have helped guide us through. It’s also possible the map on its own simply was never meant to provide all the data necessary for navigation in all the domains of life.
In the coming weeks, as we navigate our way through the relational, gender and sexuality terrain of our lives and contemporary world, lets ask ourselves, “How might we read and reread the map, and what other sources might we need to consult to make wise, lifegiving decisions?” Selah.