Why not?

All across the landscape of Christianity there are those who caution against taking Scripture too seriously.  Though for different reasons, perhaps, this warning has become normal in a world in which we take other things much more seriously -- from the opinions of others to our own desires and choices.  It has become epidemic.  Oddly enough, I read a little while ago that Bible sales for 2024 o4 2025 (can't recall which) were nearly double what they were for 5-10 years ago.  It would seem that by the shopping habits of many there is a strong desire to meet a voice that does not change and a message that is eternally the same, a Gospel rooted in the facts of Jesus' death and resurrection, and in the consequences of such a profound and saving love.  Against this, it also seems that there are those who are telling people to wait a second and slow down.  

Both Rome and liberal Protestantism seems to this common apprehension against taking Scripture too seriously.  The Council of Trent pitted Scripture against tradition -- even painting tradition as more reliable than Scripture and carrying more authority than the written Word of God.  It follows then that the faithful were then being directed to know and trust tradition more than Scripture and to enhance the church's voice over Scripture.  Liberal Protestantism would agree except in place of Scripture they would posit feelings, desire, and reason in place of tradition and over the Word of God.  In essence, they join Rome in saying that we need to trust ourselves over Scripture -- the self of Rome being the teaching magisterium and papacy but the self of liberal Protestantism being the individual alone.  We all seem to be searching for a pope or for many popes to tell the Scriptures what we will believe and what we will not -- no matter what that Word of God says.

In contrast to our modern age with its primacy of pope/teaching magisterium and the individual, the early church fathers lived in Scripture in a way we simply do not today.  They read Scripture as a living voice, not even a book and certainly not a compilation of stories or resource book from which to draw proof texts.  Everything pointed to Christ in a way that seems childish and naive today.  Indeed, we prefer to listen to their voices on doctrine more than to learn from them how they lived within the Scriptures overall.  This is alien and foreign to us today.  They do not rush to explain the mystery or bring it down to size but enable that mystery of God to be fully encountered through every page.  They see the Word of God not as a tool for them to use to pursue the loftier things but as the living voice of God and a door into His divine presence.  They live in God's Word in order to know Him who is that Word made flesh.

Catechesis is then not simply imparting information but incorporation of the individual into the life of God's Word.  It aims less for comprehension or understanding than appreciation, wrapping the person in Scripture -- the words, stories, events, and truth that is the portal to the eternal.  For them, living the baptismal life is not about living by rules to be followed but living out the new life born of the baptismal womb -- wanting the what God wants, filled with the desire for Him above all, and walking in the path enlightened by the Lord through His Word.  It is not static but lively.  The upward call of God is not about reordering this world to look like heaven but to live within the household of God where the heavenly ladder brings low what is from above and living out the new life that has another goal and hears another voice than instinct or the worldly values all around us.

Why not listen to this voice?  Why not take it seriously?  No one is saying that the Church is not needed to give guidance to the faithful or that every word was meant to be taken literally but very word is surely to be taken seriously, most seriously in a world which is serious about all the wrong things.  I will admit that sometimes this seems dangerous -- at least to the earthly orders and structures in which the Church lives and the social orders and authorities of the world outside the Kingdom of God.  It is.  It is surely dangerous.  Indeed, the most dangerous thing in the world is a Christian and a church listening to the voice of God, taking it seriously and following its voice over all the other competing voices around us.  

The early church fathers experienced this directly when the sexual ethic and shape of marriage and attention to the sacred character of life forced them to live in distinction to what was all around them.  It was and remains dangerous to do so -- to hold up the Biblical pattern of male and female, the shape of marriage between male and female, the importance of children, the refusal to accept the culture of death so easily promoted by our views of reproduction and abortion, and to remain steadfast in them.  But these are not the only arenas in which our lives in distinction to the world stand out and stand forth.  In the trust we place in technology, the way we seem to view AI as part of human evolution, and the primacy we place upon leisure and entertainment we are also standing out and standing forth -- at least if we listen to the voice of God's Word.  To suggest that this is real freedom in place of the self-indulgence of the world around us is to hear and apply God's Word to the most basic issues of life.  Why would we not take this seriously, listen to it over tradition, and heed it over even the most primal of our feelings and desires?