You asked on the cramped thread about my impressions on the potential root of why this word/phrase has had so much impact on people throughout history.

I’m afraid I don’t have much to offer on that front. It had never occurred to me until a day or three ago that there was much particularly significant about this particular accounting in John’s gospel. I might suggest that my sense that by adding chapter and verse indicators into Scripture we have done ourselves and others a deep harm informs that point of view.

We have turned the Bible into a series of quips. A quiver of arrows to be specifically fired at specific arguments and discussions. I think it often causes us to miss the point, and I think it often causes us to be too flip and too dismissive of those whom we see as having some kind of unBiblical or extraBiblical point of view. Someone expresses an idea and *wham* we smack it down with a specific verse. This is very effective in one sense, but I can’t help but be concerned if it doesn’t deeply distort our overall theology by putting us in a place to look for a verse or enough verses to support a point of view we apparently already have (for whatever potentially very valid reason). If my point of view is built on an overall reading of Scripture instead particular verses, it is very difficult to defend my ideas against that *wham* approach, simply because of time, effort and longevity concerns.

So, within this context of looking at the Bible in very small bits and pieces, we find this quotation of Jesus’ final words on the cross. Never mind that the other three gospels say something completely different, we have this vague sense that it all pieces together somehow and we focus on this one verse and try to extract some profound meaning from it and it alone.

On the one hand, this approach generates positive results, and so it must be capable of accessing at least some aspect of the truth, but on the other hand, I think it risks an opportunity to access more aspects of the truth by being left in a bigger context.

Maybe that’s not an answer.

~jhimm
—
nothing lasts.
nothing is finished.
nothing is perfect.