Travelers

When I finally trusted Christ, after nearly 40 years as a professing Christian, one of the first books I read was J.I. Packer’s Knowing God. In the (1973) preface,* he describes two very different types of interest people have in Christianity:

“[picture] persons sitting on the high front balcony of a Spanish house watching travelers go by on the road below. The 'balconeers' can overhear the travelers' talk and chat with them; they may comment critically on the way that the travelers walk; or they may discuss questions about the road, how it can exist at all or lead anywhere, what might be seen from different points along it, and so forth; but they are onlookers, and their problems are theoretical only. The travelers by contrast face problems which, though they have their theoretical angle, are essentially practical - problems of the 'which-way-to-go' and 'how-to-make-it' type, problems which call not merely for comprehension but for decision and action too.

"Balconeers and travelers may think over the same area, yet their problems differ. Thus (for instance) in relation to evil, the balconeer's problem is to find a theoretical explanation of how evil can consist with God's sovereignty and goodness, but the traveler's problem is how to master evil and bring good out of it. Or again, in relation to sin, the balconeer asks whether racial sinfulness and personal perversity are really credible, while the traveler, knowing sin from within, asks what hope there is of deliverance. . ." [emphasis added].

Nearly 17 years ago those words showed me the difference between the person I had been and the one God had called me to become. I realized that the moment I had trusted Christ was the moment I had clambered down from the balcony and onto the road.

Knowing God, Packer said, “is a book for travelers, and it is with travelers' questions that it deals.” But if that is the case (and it is), then the Bible is even more so. If you are not approaching it as a traveler, then you are using it for the wrong reasons, and you are almost certainly missing the point.

Spectators find the Bible interesting or useful, or both. For the intellectual, it’s a treasure trove of information and grounds for speculation. For the philosopher, it’s a gold mine. Those who love being right use it to perfect their doctrinal stances and correct those less informed than themselves. Those who love hidden knowledge—seeing what others are too blind to see and knowing what they are too foolish to know—find no end to the fun of dredging the Bible to support conspiracy theories, locate hidden patterns or numerical meanings and other off-topic points of interest. Moralists use it to point out the failings of others and to justify their own. The political-mind uses it to demonize some candidates and policies and to justify their own. Pragmatists find a thousand uses. (I speak from experience.)

For travelers, however, the Bible is something else entirely. It is their hope for their future. It is the voice of God calling them to “a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Heb. 11:16). It is what feeds them and quenches their thirst along the way. It is what they talk about amongst themselves and what they encourage each other with. It is what keeps them on the path and what urges them “as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul" (1 Pet. 2:11).

*Packer’s description is a paraphrase of an illustration from John MacKay’s Preface to Christian Theology.