What do we make of the bible... here's a conversation starter...
I must say I'm always intrigued by the "hard" stuff in the bible.
I want to challenge it, jump on it, wrestle with it, see what it's made of. But, althought I love the interaction with others as we engage this "Sacred Story", I often have some trepidation about doing this in public - primarilly because some might not feel comfortable with seeing bible-reading as a full-contact sport.
Having said that, if after you read this and you feel enthralled, angered, disturbed, or protective of your bible to some degree... I encourage you to join in on this conversation with me. For me, the Divine is revealed also in and amongs the give and take of ideas, thoughts, and challenges. So, on that note... we go forward!
This is based on the sermon I gave Sunday 17 August, 2008, which was itself sparked from my reading of the Sunday Gospel reading – Matthew 15 verses 21-28, where Jesus is outside his normal haunts, away from the geographic boundaries of the Hebrew people. They were in land that now is part of Lebanon.
It is here that a woman comes to him – a Canaanite woman, a woman descended from the people that the Israelites kicked out through force. Remember this was the land that God led the Israelites to from slavery in Egypt – the land of Canaan. And guess who lived there prior to the Israelites arriving? You got it - the Canaanites!
So, anyway, she comes to him asking him to heal her daughter. He first ignores her. She persists… his disciples ask him to send her away. He says, “ I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But still she comes, kneeling in front of him, and pretty much begs this foreign healer, who happens to be a descendant of the people that kicked out her descendants from their homeland, to heal her daughter. He responds with, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” WOW! Harsh! She then says, “Yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the Master’s table.” And he responds by saying; “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done as you wish.” And her daughter was healed!
Well, how ‘bout them apples?
At Seminary we were treated like adults regarding the faith, the bible, and theology. We saw the good, the bad and the ugly in the middle of all this. It was sometimes like watching sausage being made. They asked questions of us, questions that we might not have considered before. We looked at the bible, theology, God, Jesus, etc, in new ways. Why? Because they believed they owed it to us, and we owe it to our people, to wrestle with the angel as Jacob did on that dark night. Don’t forget, at the end of that wrestling match, Jacob was blessed!
We asked the questions; Why is this here? Why does it say that there? What does it say about God? This is very much like the Hebrew tradition – asking a lot of questions about God, the scriptures, etc.
I had a seminary professor that told us: “The bible does not reveal its secrets to disinterested passers-by!”
He was also the same guy that said something like, if you haven’t had a crisis of faith before you got here, you’ll have one before you leave. Well, I’d had my crisis of faith, my dark night of the soul, years before I arrived there, so I wasn’t too worried about that.
WARNING – WARNING – Be advised… We are going to jump into the deep end now… We are going to wrestle with the angel. But all in all, this is a good thing! Remember, there is a blessing in this struggle!
A few years ago, I was having dinner with a couple, and in the midst of our dinner conversation they mentioned that Islam was a religion of hate and war, and it was based on the Koran. My first, most emotional, response was to say that I couldn’t accept that Islam was a religion of hate. I could not accept that Muslims are people taught to hate through the words of the Koran. Even though there are troubling things in the Koran, I can’t believe that just because words of belligerence might be there, that the religion itself is based on those select sentences of war and killing.
I responded by saying that there are stories in our scriptures, in the Old Testament, in which God tells the people of Israel, the warriors, to kill everyone they encounter in a particular town, even the children and the animals. It’s there! But they responded by saying, yes but that’s the Old Testament, that is not the message of Jesus Christ!
I said – True… but it’s still there! You can’t turn away from that. It’s still in our sacred scriptures!
Now could someone look at our scriptures and say that the Jewish tradition, that the Christian tradition, are traditions based on that portion of the bible? Just on that? Sure, it’s possible people might see just those things like this and say so. Yet, today, taken as a whole, in its healthiest form, this stuff is not the central part of our sacred story!
I told this couple, you can’t point the finger at those portions of the Koran and ignore the stuff in our bible that sound like they’re coming from the God of War and Death… calling the people to a “holy blood-bath”.
In the bible there is some weird stuff! Stuff we don’t get… images of God that are hard to understand, teachings that are strange sounding, injunctions against things that make no sense to us now… things we ignore today in 21st century America.
Today’s Gospel is one of those things! Jesus sounds insulting… rude… harsh… shocking at best and racist at worst. The first thing we try and do is explain or justify what he said to the woman. “Well, what he meant was…” or “what he was trying to say was…”
Why do we do this? Why do we feel the need to explain or justify his words… or any other troubling part of the bible?
Because this is not the Jesus we’ve been raised to believe in! Remember your Sunday school days? Jesus loves the little children! Remember that? Jesus is certainly not rude, harsh, or racist!
The joke is that God made us in His image, and we’ve been returning the favor ever since! And if we’re honest, we have to say we do the same thing with the bible!
Here are a few seminary words:
Exegesis is where you take out of the text that which is there.
Eisegesis is where you read into the text what which may or may not be there, for example your culture, your agenda, etc.
At seminary we were cautioned against eisegesis. Let the text say what it says!
Understand who you are, understand what you bring to the text; your ulterior motives, your desires of what you want the text to say, etc. do your best to dig into yourself, so that when you preach the text… let it speak for itself as much as possible!
My first year at seminary I had a conversation with a fourth year student who said, “they teach you about exegesis, and to avoid eisegesis, but the truth is Chad, we all read into the text. You have to do it to some degree.”
It’s unavoidable. Just be aware what you do, when you do it, and what you’re trying to say.
We all see the bible through some degree of:
personal bias
cultural bias
ethnic bias
theological bias
We develop a certain understanding of God, and we tend to have an interest in seeing that image of God moved forward.
Here are some examples of things in the bible that point towards a certain image of God or theology we just don’t “buy”:
In Leviticus we are warned against the sins of eating shellfish or wearing clothes made from mixed materials. But how many of us eat shellfish, or wear blended fabrics with no worries of committing sins? Well, it’s partly because our notion of “sin” has changed – for us now, sins are primarily moral issues, whereas in the bible eras, primarily the Jewish scriptures, sins were not only related to morals but also with ritual cleanliness.
“But that’s the Old Testament!”
Okay, let’s look at the New Testament: Matthew 9:9 has Jesus saying that unless a person divorces their spouse based only on fornication, and re-marries, they commit adultery. Do we buy that as a church? Do we buy that as a culture?
There are parishioners all across this country that are divorced and remarried!
There are pastors all across this country that are divorced and remarried!
There are even Bishops that are divorced and remarried!
Are all these divorces based on “fornication” only? I bet not.
One hundred and fifty years ago in this country, there were many people that defended slavery through the biblical witness.
Today we would never defend slavery. It’s an abomination to us! Same bible… different message? What’s changed? The bible? Us?
See my point. The lens through which we see the bible… and even interpret the bible… has changed!
How different would it be if we see the bible as a record of a relationship between a people and their God? …As seen through their culture, their time their era.
Our sacred scriptures didn’t drop out of the sky, all wrapped up and bound, with Jesus’ words in red! But it records a sacred story nonetheless.
It is sacred in the sense that it is a story of a people relating to their God, struggling with their God, trying to make sense of their God.
The Lutheran perspective of this is to not see the whole bible with the same eye. Lutheran theology speaks of a Canon within a Canon… For Lutheran theology, the most central part of the bible is the Message of the Good News of Jesus Christ… New Life!
Lutheranism is Christ centered, not bible-centered. It doesn’t worship the bible… it worships God (as revealed through the bible-from the Lutheran “lens”)!
We don’t ignore the rest… But we certainly are not afraid to grapple with the texts… to struggle with them.
“The bible does not reveal its secrets to disinterested passers-by.”
The journey to God requires bravery – to step into the bible, to wrestle with what’s there… like Jacob wrestling with the Angel… and that requires bravery!
Is God in the bible? Yes! A Living God!
But this God is seen in a snap-shop of history… as seen through the eyes of a People who lived and died in eras long ago over.
They recorded their journey with this Living God! That in itself is sacred!
If you recorded your journey with God from the beginning to the end – would that not be sacred too?
I had my Dark Night of the Soul long ago, as I mentioned at the beginning. I was given my faith from my parents, from the church, from the Sunday School teachers. Then I had to make it mine. I had to go into the cave and struggle with it, to wrestle with it.
I came to a place where I believed there was no God! I passed through that long journey of darkness in the cave… into a place of living light!
Now for me… I have no doubt God is Real and Living!
Before this Dark Night of the Soul… I had a lot more answers about God, and they came out more quickly.
Now, I can tell you I believe more deeply… but my “image” of God has changed, and I don’t have as many answers as I did before.
I believe there is a Creator, creating, creative God, that enlightens, that illumines, that challenges, that cajoles, that dispels darkness, that leads us into darkness sometimes, that ultimately leads us into light…
But to find this God… we have to take this journey seriously enough to engage both this God and the darkness!
I’ve told you part of the record of my journey with this God. You have your journey, your story. Take it seriously enough to enter the cave of darkness, to enter the struggle with the divine when need be.
You may not get the answers you expect! But answers will come! From a Living God!
11 comments:
What do we make of the Bible?
First comment – What is the Bible?
In Adult Discussion we have been looking at Lost Christianities – what did Christians believe before the books of the Bible were agreed to be orthodox. One group of Christians – the Marcionites – insisted that true Christianity had nothing to do with Judaism, and that the Law of the Jews had no relation to Jesus or to his God. They believed that there were two different Gods – the Jewish God who created the world made Israel his people and gave them his Law; and the God of Jesus who came into the world to deliver people from the vindictive creator and Law-giving God of the Jews. For the Marcionites, the Bible included none of the Old Testament, but did contain ten of Paul’s letters, in addition to a gospel comparable to our Gospel of Luke.
Speaking of eisegesis, I guess that I am, at least partly, a Marcionite. There are entire books of the Old Testament that I consider to be downright repulsive in their views. For example, since God is on our side we can do no wrong, so murder, adultery, polygamy, slavery are not only accepted but glorify God when performed by righteous Israelites!
It seems to me that many of the rules and regulations laid down in Leviticus, Deuteronomy, etc are nothing more than the codification of a set of social customs of a vengeful, barbarous people masquerading as “The Word of God” in order to obtain some legitimacy. I’m not sure of the source, but somewhere I read that there were three levels of laws in the Old Testament – the actual laws of God e.g. the Ten Commandments, the laws of Moses, and finally the codification of civil law by the bureaucracy following Moses.
But Old Testament aside, there are definitely portions of the Gospels in which Jesus acts inconsistently with his image. Maybe even Jesus had his bad days! And there are parts of Paul’s Epistles which seem to draw a lot more on Paul’s personality than with what Jesus actually said and did.
Second Comment - Dark Night of the Soul.
I’m not ready to jump of the deep end and wrestle with the angel quite yet, but I would like to discuss Bart Ehrman’s book “God’s Problem- How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question – Why We Suffer” in which Ehrman describes his personal Crisis of Faith which resulted in him rejecting Christianity and becoming agnostic. I’ve read this book, and it raises a number of deeply disturbing questions. Has anyone else read it, and would anyone else be interested in discussing it? (Hint. Hint. Chad)
About the O.T. view... remember they were a people of a different time and different place.
Think of it this way - what would people one thousand years from now think of us? We might think of ourselves as progressive and developed, etc. But the thing is we have our own cultural biases. Just go travel overseas... visit a different country, and you'll feel just a little out of place. That's the "different culture" thing going. Well imagine not only traversing distance, but time as well.
Is God in the O/T. different than God in the N.T.? Yes and no. Yes in the sense that God is perceived differently, and no in the sense that "God" is the same.
And here's the other thing... we may say - Their God is different than ours! but the truth is ANY image we have of God is, at the end of the day... still an image. The thing is to get as healthy an image of God as we can. But that takes maturity and awareness.
The more aware and mature we are, the healthier our "image" of God is. But... remember there is NO SUCH THING as an unbiased view of God.
And... I'd love to read the book and be part of something on that.
Suffering can either lead us TO some for of cosmic consciousness, or AWAY from it.
Look at the writer of Man's Search For Meaning... Victor Frankel, who survived the holocaust.
THAT was suffering... I wonder how we would come through that?
I read most of the original post by Chad.
Here's the Bible: the disinterested observer will do everything that you claim to do to "discover" whatever's in there. In other words, most preachers/pastors/church-goers fall into this category.
Almost NOBODY wants to compare scripture with scripture and why is that? "It's too hard; it takes too long; Truth isn't what I thought it was; etc." Almost NOBODY wants to let the Bible interpret itself, to try to figure out what all the parables mean...and the WHOLE BIBLE is one big PARABLE and not as straightforward as it appears on the surface.
Let me give an easy example: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. If we go to the ends of the heavens and the earth, we'll never plumb the depths nor reach the heights of what God created in just six, literal, 24-hour days. He promised us that we would die if we ate the fruit; we did eat the fruit and we do die (and continue to die)...the first covenant/old testament, the one that needed a better promise (you remember the one in the garden, the promise of Jesus: the new covenant/testament?) Didn't hear that taught in seminary, you say? Probably learning about exegesis/eisegesis was more important that letting the Bible speak for itself, interpret itself.
We're just not humble.
I'm not sure what you mean here...
Is the bible not literal? Well, in some cases, absolutely not. We have to remember, even though there is some history in it, and there is some drama in it, and there is some wild stuff in it... it is in essence a record of a relationship between a people and their God... it is a statement of faith.
Someone who was there last week when they heard me speak, said they agreed with what I'd said, but said that from this point of view- even the Book of Mormon could be considered sacred.
I agreed, but said that it wasn't "my" book of faith. For the Mormon people, great, let it be sacred to them. I'm not trying to knock it, but it just doesn't fly for me in that way. Is it more or less sacred for them if I don't "buy" it? I don't think it matters to them what I think of their sacred book... it's still sacred to them.
Hope I didn't confuse things here.
"Literal?"
The Bible:
Holy men of old, inspired by the Holy Spirit, wrote it...in words: literal words; words, that each have literal meanings.
Superficially, the words fit together to form sentences, paragraphs, chapters, stories, etc.
The word of God (the whole Bible):
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction for instruction in righteousness: (2Ti 3:16)
That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works. (2Ti 3:17)
Now, who is "the man of God?"
Remember that Jesus spoke in parables? Remember that Jesus is the Word?
Well, Jesus told us: "Mat 13:11 He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given."
So, the "man of God" is one who understands the parables. \\
The WHOLE Bible is a parable and that's why we compare scripture with scripture...not outside sources.
God’s will for all of us is expressed in His whole word: the Bible.
For instance, in the garden, He said that we may freely eat of all of the trees but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil we shall not eat of it lest we die. In this, He sets forth a principle: God knows what’s best for us, tells us in His word, and holds us accountable for our actions. Furthermore, to elucidate more fully, the implication of “In the beginning…” leads us to the conclusion that before “the beginning,” God had already addressed everything, that He is ever-present, and, among other things (which we learn later), had already accomplished everything necessary to save His chosen people. We learn how He is going to accomplish His objective (salvation) also in the garden (in this expanding but limited time bubble) in His remarks to the serpent: “…enmity…seed…bruise thy head…his heel.”
The word of God is more than the law of God; and that “more” is the Holy Spirit. In a sense, there is God (the Law), His word (the Son), and the “active ingredient” (the Holy Spirit)…all Three-in-One God.
We, created in His image, knew that we were not God; yet other (serpent-)spoken words set the stage (for Eve to eat the fruit).
We must always be "on guard" in our study of the word, for He is in the on-going process of revealing His parables as we compare scripture with scripture. When we rely on our own understanding, when we use what others teach, we fall into the category of those who will not understand.
It is literal.. yes. It is written in words. What other way is there to write? In that sense the Book of Mormon is literal too. And they claim it is "inspired" as well.
Our bible is holy in the sense that we as a Christian body have claimed from the begining that it is inspired.
You quote from 2 Timothy:
"All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction for instruction in righteousness."
WHat bible did Timothy have? He certainly had the Hebrew bible. In the last two thousand years it hasn't changed much. But in the time of Timothy, the (what we now call) New Testament wasn't written yet. All the letters of Paul may or may not have been written, the Gospels, as we have them in the bible may not have ben written yet. And if they were, they might not have been common knowledge to all the communities around Asia Minor, or perhaps in Rome. The Romans had the Gospel of Matthew - but did they have Luke, or John as well when Timothy wrote his letter? Remember also, the Christian "canon" of scripture wasn't as we have it now, wasn't agreed upon for another few hundred years.
When Timothy says what he says above... are we to assume it is only the bible he had access to=- the Jewish bible? This is a more likely historical approach. Then what do we make of the Christian texts?
Listen, is the bible inspired? I'd say yes. Does it reveal God, a living God? Yes. From within the story, from within the accounts of the people as they relate to their God.
And yet there are contradictions. There are parts of the bible that contradict other parts. Just look at the creation stories in Gen chap 1 and Gen chap 2. In one story God creates humans at the end, and in the other, God creates humans in the begining. So which one is "literally" right? The answer is... the point of the story is not to tell a literal story, but to tell a story of faith. And faith has to do with the Spirit, with the journey one takes through life... a journey of the Spirit!
The bible speaks of life and the Spirit. Not in the sense of -if you do this, God will do this other thing- as much as... listen for the "story"... because inevitably, somewhere along the line of your life, you'll recognize the same Spirit you see and hear in the Bible... in your own life!
Again, if you wrote your story, the sacred story of your life, from begining to end... wouldn't that be sacred as well?
Last year in Adult Studies we looked at the various books that were not accepted as part of the Canon of the New Testament. This year we plan to look at:
Beginnings of the Canon
Formation of The Canon
Interpretation of Scripture
Orthodox Corruption of Scripture
Early Christian Creeds
with the hope that by gaining a better perspective on how and why the Bible evolved, we will be better equipped to address the question "What do we make of the Bible" (or at least the New Testament)
Unfortunately, some of you who contribute to this blog are Musically Gifted and have schedule conflicts that preclude your participation in the Tin Ear Adult Discussion sesssions. You are welcome to borrow the DVDs that we will be watching. Or we can re-examine the issues during a Second Tuesday session.
I know the solution.....the Tin Ears can have their sessions in the sanctuary while the Musically Gifted practice. When we hear something that we want to comment on, we'll simply stop singing or answer in song!
Sounds good to me Karen.
Do you want to make the announcement of the move Sunday or should I? :-)
The Gospels provide us with Good News – God’s promise of love, redemption, and salvation.
However, it seems when some Christians read the Bible they focus so much on the passages dealing with death, hate, destruction and damnation that the Good News is lost to them – hearing they do not hear and seeing they do not understand.
Similarly, the ELCA Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality provides us with Good News – that God has created all humans as sexual – and therefore relational – beings, and that sex is one of God’s gifts to us, similar to the gifts of love, redemption, and salvation.
However, I have been told that some synod’s discussions have focused so much on the issue of same-gender relationships that the Good News of the Draft Social Statement has been overlooked.
I hope we all keep a perspective on the Good News at the ASLC Second Tuesday Discussion on September 9th at Kirsten’s house.
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