Every so often I am reminded of the man I was becoming, the man I could have been, the man that still lurks within me; the Confidence Man. There are many Confidence Men but this Confidence Man holds the Word of God. This Confidence Man is humble and of good cheer for who could be more secure and optimistic than as faithful servant to the Word of God. They claim no credit, indeed they claim soli deo gloria, glory to God alone.

This God has already been fully revealed in the Bible. This is the lynchpin for his confidence. The embrace of scripture as a closed loop of revelation ensures his confidence and insulates him from criticism. Growing up I remember these Confidence Men deploying simple expressions of authority with little awareness of possible complications or contradictions in the Bible. If they found it in the Bible they could wield it from the pulpit. Later in life I came across Confidence Men with much more nuanced approaches. They could parse which expressions of the Old Testament were preserved by endorsement through later expressions in the New Testament. They could acknowledge that some statements were more contextual while others had an eternal quality. Whether naïve or nuanced they were all playing along the same spectrum closing the loop with some aspect of the Bible as the final authority.

Ironically enough my departure from such confidence came from continuing to take the Bible very seriously. I always recognized the internal critique of the Bible in which prophets proclaimed that even ‘right’ words and worship could be disgusting to God but this could still serve the closed loop of the Confidence Man. Later though I was struck by Jesus’ own words of response to his critics when he said, “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” (John 5:39-40)

I also began to consider the principal notion of holiness and how it related to Gospel. Holiness is something of the ‘life force’ of God. All the rituals and all the laws of ancient Israel culminate in the Holy Holies of the Temple. At the center of the Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant. And at the center of that? Nothing. There was literally to be nothing at the center so that God could speak (Ex 25:17-22). We create an idol whenever we lodge an object at that most critical place. This imagery was replicated in the empty tomb (John’s Gospel explicitly frames the empty tomb as the Holy of Holies) as well as Ascension and Pentecost where the community was entrusted with learning to hold that space open for the living God to act and speak. We cannot grasp and hold the final form of God (Peter was moved by a vision in this regard in the book of Acts).

There remain traditions, laws, stories, songs, poems (both in the Bible and beyond) that help us orient ourselves to a God of love and life. But to believe that the loop is closed by citing scripture is to not only violate scripture itself but to leave one vulnerable to idolatry. Who can be more confident than someone who believes they can handle that which is the highest authority?

I should add that I suspect none of this would have happened in my life if I had not also learned early on how the Gospel consistently calls us to walk alongside and pay attention to those who suffer unjustly and unnecessarily in this world (for again the Bible teaches that there will find the Messiah).

My own confidence is often shaken but I would say that my faith is fairly strong. I trust that the word of God is still active and living. But I have no confidence that I have unique or special access to God’s word. I pray and hope it will be revealed as I worship and pray and study and walk with others.

I suspect there are levels of confidence that can become almost impenetrable and I fear what it might take to break through. So I suspect the Confidence Man will find a suitable response to this within his logic. I offer this more to those who may feel unconfident or insecure in the face of the Confidence Man. I offer this also to say that one does not need to scrap the Bible or even the faith (though that is fine if that is what is needed). Indeed I would encourage us to see in the Bible and our faith tradition the idolatries typically present in the Confidence Man.