Bible Zombies (And How To Come Back To Life If You Are One)
My friend sat frowning in our Sunday morning classroom, her brow furrowed in thought. Meanwhile, our discussion group continued to walk through our weekly Bible passage, turning it every which way and wrestling to understand it. I listened to my friend’s questions as she struggled to make sense of what the Bible was telling her. Then I sensed a shift in her demeanor and began to hope for a breakthrough.
God, I prayed silently, would You bring my Bible Zombie friend back to life?
I mean this as no insult or slight to my Sunday morning friend. She never wanted to be a Bible Zombie. No one does. It wasn’t her fault she hadn’t found life in the Scriptures yet. She’d learned lots of facts and rules, and had taken more than one guilt-trip down the road towards obedience. But white-knuckling her way through faith didn’t bring her the abundant life God promised (John 10:10). So, her walk with God had slowed to an awkward shuffle with pieces of her hardening heart threatening to fall off along the way. And she knew it.
On this particular morning, our group camped out in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 5, zeroing in on what it means to be “poor in spirit.” After all, if being counted among the “poor” gets us the kingdom of heaven, then we all wanted in. We defined “poor” as lacking essential resources, and noted that the word also describes beggars, people incapable of taking care of themselves and dependent on others for handouts. In the same way, we concluded, we have no spiritual resources of our own. Getting the kingdom of God, then, means humbling ourselves like beggars and recognizing our dependence on our gracious God.
My Bible Zombie friend didn’t like the idea of identifying as a beggar at first. She’d learned to always take pride in herself, her appearance, her social status, and her uprightness as a Christian. God takes care of those who take care of themselves, right? (um…no…that’s not in the Bible) She had to admit, though, that none of her pride brought her the joy of God’s kingdom. Confronted with Jesus’ teaching, she tried on the “poor in spirit” description for herself perhaps for the first time, and I saw her eyes light up with revelation.
“You mean, I don’t have to have it all together and get things right for God to accept me?” she said, tears beginning to well up. “I don’t have to work so hard all the time?” I grinned and nodded, and it was like watching her breathe for the first time.
COMING ALIVE
Nothing lights me up more than seeing people come alive to God’s Word. My Sunday morning group gives me permission to lead them in this. It’s a privilege far greater than I deserve. We’re a weird mish-mash of women — single, married, divorced, widowed, “Sunday morning widows”, new believers, seasoned church-goers, young, old, mothers, and grandmothers. The polyester white cloths on our tables show stains of coffee, donuts, fruit, and a few tears. We like to pick a book of the Bible and read it passage by passage over weeks and months, examining it from all angles until we see God’s truth challenging us to live and love in new ways. And if I’ve seen it happen once, I’ve seen it happen a million times.
When God’s Word becomes real to us, we become really alive in Him.
It’s the context that matters, you see. Our God is bigger than time itself, holding it in the span of His fingers, intervening at any point He chooses. He picks specific times, places, and people to breathe His Word into our world, holy moments captured for all generations with ink on paper. When we do all we can to re-enter that original holy moment and hear His Word with the ears of His original hearers, we no longer deal with mere academics or abstract theology. The heartbeat of Scripture begins to beat in us, animating us in new ways and showing us how living and active God’s Word really is (Hebrews 4:12).
“When God’s Word becomes real to us, we become really alive in Him.”
But some of us are Bible Zombies, unconnected to the life giving Word of God. Such people have no real life energizing them inside or flowing to others around them. They’re alive in the sense that they believe in Jesus and are saved, but their hearts aren’t connected to His cleansing, shaping, and sustaining power, so their walk with God drags lifelessly along. Their faith doesn’t don’t grow much, if at all, from the time they first believed. And they look a lot like they did when they were spiritually dead without Him.
Zombies.
Good news — Zombie-ness doesn’t need to be a permanent condition. God has the power to raise the dead (see Jesus raising Lazarus in John 11). So, I don’t despair at seeing Bible Zombies walking around in my world. Resurrection lies only a syllable away for all of us.
I’m sure deadness to God’s Word comes in more flavors, but I see two Bible Zombie types most often.
ZOMBIE TYPE ONE
Zombie Type One hasn’t connected with God’s Word because she’s never read it for herself, let alone learned how to interpret what God says into her own experience. We’ve got a booming population of Zombie Ones these days with a generation whole growing up apart from the Bible. As cultural Christianity fades out of our society, it’s no longer a given that folks know even the most fundamental Scripture stories and passages.
There’s no shame in this. Most of us start our faith journeys as Zombie Ones in some fashion, with the rare exception of the child raised in church and falling in love with Scripture at a young age. But even life-long church attenders may never open the Bible for themselves, depending completely on others to teach them. If we never come to God’s Word personally, we’ll miss out on all the personal conversations God wants to have with us through His Word. We’ll just listen in on what He says to others. It’s a poor substitute that leaves us spiritually undernourished.
When a Zombie One gets her first taste of real biblical truth — and I mean something she grasps and understands in a way that connects to the real world she lives in — it’s a moment that feels like new birth. It has the sacredness and excitement of a newborn baby taking air in her lungs for the first time. Suddenly, her eyes open to see things she’s never seen before, and wonder spreads across her face in a big smile, often accompanied by tears.
It can be just as messy as a new birth, too. She’ll sometimes flail wildly, looking something stable to hold her while she adjusts to her revelations. She’s also starving for more. Sometimes, I’ve had to help a former Zombie One pace herself when she begins to live and breathe God’s Word. She’s tempted to gorge on as much as she can without giving herself enough time to process and internalize her first gulps. The predictable vomiting ensues as she spews undigested and misapplied truth all over everyone. So, she needs to give herself time and permission to process what she learns bit by bit.
So, Zombie Ones, resurrection is as close as the nearest Bible. We need to open it up. Read it. Chew on it for ourselves. Even better, let’s find a group and study together so we can ask questions and see how others connect to the living and active word of God. Biblical illiteracy is easy to fix if we’re willing to give it a go and take advantage of the resources out there. It doesn’t really matter where we begin as long as we start. But remember that we need time to process each revelation, and wholesale growth rarely happens overnight. A single verse of Scripture fully soaked in and worked out is far better than chapters and volumes all swimming around on top of each other without any real impact on real life.
Still don’t know where to start? Drop me a line and we’ll find a spot together.
ZOMBIE TYPE TWO
Then there’s the one who’s studied the Scriptures for years and crammed a million facts about God’s Word into her head without living it out in her hands and feet. You can tell a Zombie Type Two by her mantra, “Mmmmmm…brains!” She parses out her Hebrew and Greek verbs searching solid, demonstrable, incontrovertible facts. She’s a conundrum to those who observe her, quoting chapters and verses and then violating the heart of the matter in the same breath, often by judging someone else or remaining oblivious to her own troublesome ways. My Sunday morning friend was a Zombie Two with lots of head knowledge but no heart change, and she had no idea how to connect what she knew about God to the way she thought about herself and her world.
There’s no shame in being a Zombie Two, either. We can only do as well as we’ve been taught, and our current culture values information more than just about anything else. This cultural value creeps into our churches, I’m afraid, and many of us have been trained to seek more knowledge about God without learning to truly know God Himself. And flat, two-dimensional head knowledge about God and His Word leads to a legalistic and white-knuckle obedience that will suffocate a person soon enough.
When God’s Word comes alive in a Zombie Two, her life suddenly opens like a pop-up book. Everything she knows about Him *clicks* and she stares in wonder how she missed it in the first place. What was once paper thin, gray, and academic becomes animated, brilliant, and very practical. Piece by piece, the faith puzzle she once tried to put together on predictable level ground takes shape in a gorgeous free-standing sculpture with lines and curves she’s never imagined. Sometimes it’s amazing how quickly all those piece fly together once her paradigm shifts from her head into her real live world. It can be overwhelming.
Zombie Twos sometimes need help forgiving themselves for being zombies in the first place. They might self-flagellate for a while, thinking back over past misapplications of the truths they’ve always had in their heads but never understood how they worked in real life. It’s here that the words of Maya Angelou are so helpful: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
“But God alone does the resurrecting, bringing the dead back to life. He does it at the moment we first believe in Him, for sure, but I’ve seen Him do it over and over again in my own life and in others as He brings us back from Zombie Land wandering around either in our biblical ignorance or our over-developed intellects.”
I recommend that Zombie Twos plug into a good and honest faith community as fast as possible. And the more diverse the group, the better. The last thing any of us need is a bunch of people just like to us to affirm what we think we already know. Zombie Twos come to life when assumptions and head knowledge get challenged by the messiness of the real world we live in. If we can take our head knowledge “out of the box” and give it some air, it will come to life and then breathe life back into us. Pulling that box apart means asking questions — lots of questions, hard questions, messy questions that might not have clear cut answers. But that’s real life for ya’, and that’s what a relationship with God who is the Word looks like. The process of waking up a Zombie Two might take time and some trustworthy friends, but it’s a gorgeous resurrection when it happens.
THE RESURRECTION BUSINESS
I guess I view myself in the resurrection business, then. I live for the joy of connecting hearts and minds to the life-giving power of God’s Word. I geek out over every new revelation that God gives me, shaking me out of my own Zombie-ness. I geek out just as hard when I help others find revelations of their own and watch the light of life flicker in their eyes. Not that I have the power in myself to convert anyone from their Zombie state. The most skilled Bible teacher/scholar/nerd among us can’t bring life to anyone. God alone is the Source of Life and His living, active Word is the only antidote for a zombie’s condition. I can offer it freely, make it as palatable as possible, give the medicine dose with a spoonful of sugar if it helps. But God alone does the resurrecting, bringing the dead back to life. He does it at the moment we first believe in Him, for sure, but I’ve seen Him do it over and over again in my own life and in others as He brings us back from Zombie Land wandering around either in our biblical ignorance or our over-developed intellects.
God is real. His Word is real. It matters in real life.
And zombies don’t have a real life.
My dearest dream, then, is for all of us to become fully alive to God, to what He says and does and demonstrates in and through our lives. I can’t wait to live in a world with no Bible Zombies, the one the prophet Jeremiah said would come some day:
No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the LORD. "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." (Jeremiah 31:34 NIV)
Won’t that be cool? It’s coming for us someday, when Jesus who is the Word made flesh (John 1:14) returns with His Life on full display for all to see. My friend and mentor Dr. Jackie Roese reminds me that when that day comes, or if we get to heaven before then, we won’t need our Bibles anymore. We’ll see the Word face-to-face and fully live with Him forever. As much as I love the Bible and have dedicated my life to it, in the end it’s only a means for getting my heart closer to Jesus.
Until Jesus comes for us, then, you and I need to stay connected to Him through prayer and the Scriptures. No zombie shuffling our way in this world in the meantime. Deal?
Because living as a zombie isn’t really living at all.