Be Wary of Reductionism

As a trained scientist I tend towards reductionism -- break things down, bit by bit, and see how to relate and work. Find the critical elements. Reduce the whole into parts that can be individually understood, with (unjustified?) confidence that we can comprehend the whole by adding up our knowledge of the components and how they relate to one another.

The Bible and God's story do not submit to this kind of analysis well.

Eric Evers challenges my thinking in a recent post. He calls reductionism "modernism" and expertly connects this to the way we operate in the Church today:

"Modernism breaks things to find out what they are. And so it misses the whole; it fails to see the interaction, the interdependence of the parts. It does not see interlocking webs of systems, but reduces things to atomistic bits and linear chains. And in so doing, it leaves the path of wisdom.
Think of how we do this in churches. We focus on the individual apart from family and community. We analyze conflicts in terms of scapegoats and "problem people" rather than discern the deep, underlying issues. We set up clear, simple 1-2-3-home linear discipleship processes, instead of seeing faith development as complex, multi-vectored, and multi-layered. We abstract people's "spiritual lives" from the rest of their lives, rather than seeing the "spiritual life" as the sum total of all of one's being and doing. We break the white light into its component parts, but don't know how to reassemble it."

Evers also describes the alternative:

"Biblical faith sees reality as whole fabric, though twisted and torn by sin. Scripture witnesses to a complex, interdependent cosmos and a God who is intimately, freely, and self-givingly involved in it. The Bible gives truth in narratives because reality cannot be broken down into component parts. "

So as Bible teachers let us be wary of reductionism. We can coach people on how to "rightly divide Scripture" in order to understand how we should live lives worthy of the Gospel. But our teaching needs to emphasize the whole of the Gospel, not only little bits.