Is It "Biblical"?

(This post continues the conversation about the Bible and how it is used - see my two previous posts: 3/11/19 - Even the Devil Quoted Scripture; 3/18/19 - More Thoughts About How We Use the Bible.)

So both sides in The UMC controversy over LGBTQ+ issues quote scripture to support their position. How do we know which position is the "Biblical" position? For that matter, how do we know what is "biblical"?

When we talk about something as being "biblical," our thinking is based on the following logic.

• Premise A: the Bible is from God. It is God-breathed, inspired (2 Timothy 3:16). 
• Premise B: because the Bible is from God, it is totally trustworthy and reliable. 
• Premise C: the Bible says such-and-such. 
• Conclusion: this such-and-such position is God's position and, therefore, the "right" position.  

This kind of thinking seems clear; the logic, sound. And it keeps things simple: what the Bible says settles any issue because the Bible is from God and reflects God's position on the issue.

The logic, however, is flawed. Premise A is only partially true. The Bible is indeed God-breathed or inspired. So, it has a divine nature. It is how God has revealed the Divine Self to us so we can know God and God's ways. However, the Bible is not just divine. God's self-revelation and self-communication came through human beings ... which means the Bible also has a human dimension to it. (The divine-human nature of the Bible was presented in last week's blog: More Thoughts About How We Use the Bible, 3/18/19.)

Premise B is also only partially true. The Bible is indeed trustworthy and reliable. 2 Timothy 3:15-17 and 2 Peter 1:19-20 speak of how the scriptures (the Hebrew scriptures) instruct and guide us. Through the Bible, we catch glimpses of God's nature, God's character, and God's ways. The Bible helps us know God and guides us in how to live in relationship with God. It helps us to know the ways of God and, thereby, how to live as God's people. But the Bible also presents the partial, incomplete, culture-bound thinking and understanding of its human authors and editors (as I said in last week's post). It reflects the effort of various authors and editors to understand and explain the mystery of God in their different historical times and situations. So, in reality, the Bible contains a variety of theological views and understandings, some of which contradict one another!

Because Premises A and B are only partially true, the conclusion is false. Just because something is in the Bible does not mean it reflects God's position or the "right" position. More often than not, when we argue a position is the "biblical" position, what we are really doing is using the Bible to validate and support my position. We are saying, "My position is the right one. See, the Bible says so."

Which brings us back to the original questions: how do we know which position is the "Biblical" position? For that matter, how do we know what is "biblical"?

Perhaps we are asking the wrong question.

A better question: which position/thinking reflects the nature and character of God? the ways of God? the teachings and ministry of Jesus? Which position is the most Christ-like position?

More about that in next week's post.

More Thoughts about How We Use the Bible

Last week's blog (Even the Devil Quoted Scripture, 3/11/19) spoke of how we Christians often quote the Bible to validate our position on some issue (such as the LGBTQ+ issue of the 2019 General Conference). This common practice can actually be a misuse of the Bible! Those of us who like to quote scripture to prove we are right generally ignore the nature of scripture.

Those of us who quote scripture to validate our position/belief generally emphasize the divine nature of scripture. It is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16). Every word was inspired by God. Our faith in God is expressed in our faith in the reliability of the Bible. For us, the Bible is the final word from God regarding any issue. For us, the Bible is inerrant and infallible. We read it literally (it means what it says and says what it means) and take it seriously.  We treat every book of the Bible, every passage in the Bible with equal value. Anything less than this absolute faith in the Bible leads to substituting human wisdom for God's wisdom which only leads to destruction.

This way of reading the Bible overlooks the full nature of the Bible. It is both divine and human. God's word to us, God's self-revelation came through human beings. "Men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God" (2 Peter 1:21, NRSV). The Spirit did not override the humanity of those who spoke from God, i.e., dictate verbatim every word. The Spirit spoke into and through their humanity. Thus, God's word comes to us in and through human culture, languages, historical situations, world views, literature, and thinking. To get to God's word in scripture requires us to distinguish what is divine (God's truth that is eternal and unchanging) and what is human (the human aspects of those who spoke for God). That is, we have to interpret the Bible. Interpreting the Bible (and we all interpret it) involves this kind of discernment. A piece of peppermint candy illustrates the thought (my favorite, oft-used illustration of this truth). The divine truth that we desire is the candy. In order to get to it, we have to unwrap it from the plastic wrapper that is used to deliver it. The failure to do this kind of discerning work results in us chewing on the wrapper rather than tasting the sweetness of God's eternal truth. We treat a cultural, time-bound thought as though it were an eternal, timeless truth.

Recognizing the human dimension of the Bible leads us beyond giving every book and every passage the same degree of authority to speak for God (and, thus, confusing the wrapper with the candy). Many texts clearly reflect the nature and ways of God. They teach us of God's merciful and gracious character (Exodus 34:6-7; 1 John 4:8). They reveal that God relates to us out of grace and forgiveness. They help us know the ways of God and the ways of the Kingdom. (A bit of self-promotion: see my book A God-Shaped World: Exploring the Teachings of Jesus about the Kingdom of God and the Implications for the Church Today - Westbow, 2017. Available through Amazon.com.) Some texts reflect our fear-based human condition and how we treat one another when we live out of that nature. Other texts, by contrast, reflect more of the culture and historical period than they do the nature and ways of God. They help us know how the people of that time thought and what they did, but they do not reflect a developed understanding of the nature and ways of God (for example, the command to kill citizens of a defeated nation as a sacrifice to God, Joshua 8:1-2, 24-29). If we treat this cultural, time-bound thinking as God's eternal truth, we chew on the wrapper and miss God's eternal truth. We allow the cultural thinking of a previous era to shape our thinking and relating today instead of allowing the truth of God's nature and ways to shape our lives.

Those of us who place our faith in the total reliability of the Bible are uncomfortable with this recognition of the human dimension of the Bible. And yet we commonly practice the principle of distinguishing the cultural from the eternal, the human from the divine. We do not require women to wear a head covering in worship or when praying (1 Corinthians 11:6-7). We understand that requirement was a tradition in that time and culture. We do not have to follow it today. We enjoy bacon, pork ribs, and ham although eating the flesh of pigs was forbidden in Leviticus 11:7. We enjoy catfish but Leviticus 11:10, 12 prohibits it. Leviticus 19:27 instructs men regarding their haircut. Leviticus 19:28 prohibits tattoos. We don't follow either command. We don't kill a couple who commit adultery (Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22:22). We have moved beyond an eye for an eye retaliation (Leviticus 24:19-20) - well, not completely. I could go on but I am quoting the Bible to validate my point!

What I am saying is those of us who insist on the total reliability of every word in the Bible do not practice what we say we believe. We pick and choose. We use human wisdom to discern what is cultural from what is eternal truth, to discern what of the Bible is human and what is divine.

One other example of how we pick and choose. Leviticus 19:18 calls us to love our neighbor as ourselves. Jesus tied this obscure verse from Leviticus with the Shema, the call to love God with all of our being, Deuteronomy 6:4-5. He said all the law was captured by these two commands to love: love God, love neighbor. That same chapter of Leviticus - chapter 19 - calls us to embrace the alien as a citizen and love the alien as ourselves (19:33-34). We quote one text and ignore the other. And in the UM LGBTQ+ controversy, those of us who insist on Biblical authority quoted from Leviticus to condemn homosexuality as incompatible with Biblical teaching. We quote one text and ignore the other.

All of this picking and choosing which texts to quote to validate our position (and people on both sides of every issue do it) raises the question: does the text we quote reflect the nature of God, the character of God, the ways of God, the life and teachings of Jesus? 

More on that thought in another blog. 

Even The Devil Quoted Scripture

A key factor in the decision that was made at the called General Conference in February was the way scripture was used. People on both sides of the issue quoted scripture to support their position. Thus, the deeper issue was how scripture is viewed and used (some speak of this as scriptural authority).

It seems to me that we clergy (among others) have failed to teach our people the nature of scripture, the purpose of scripture, and, thus, how to use scripture. The result of this failure is we read the Bible through our Western, Enlightenment-shaped, scientifically trained eyes. We read the Bible as though it were a Western book. We look for facts to believe and rules/laws to follow. In other words, we look for certainty. Believing the right facts and following the laws allow us to be "right."

The unconscious result of this way of reading the Bible is we find texts that confirm what we already believe. The Bible becomes a tool we use to support our positions and way of thinking. We quote chapter and verse that validate what we believe. We overlook the fact that even the devil quoted scripture to validate his position (see the temptation experience of Jesus in Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13). Just because we can quote scripture to support our belief does not mean that our belief is in line with the nature and ways of God.

When we read the Bible this way, we generally miss what the biblical writers were attempting to communicate. We read our view into the Bible rather than allowing the Bible to say what the author intended to say. Our focus on facts and beliefs causes us to miss the spiritual truth in the passage. (An example is the creationist argument based on Genesis 1. By arguing that God created the world in seven literal days - a scientific issue - we miss what the text says about God and God's work in the midst of chaos. BTW - Genesis 1 says God created the world in six days, not seven!)

This way of reading the Bible is the only way we know how to read scripture until we are trained to read through a different set of lenses. And that is what clergy and the Church have failed to do.

The Bible is an Eastern book, not a Western book. It is an ancient book. Parts of it date back to 1700 years before the birth of Jesus. The books of the New Testament were written during the first century C.E., over 1900 years ago and long before scientific-shaped thinking became the norm! The Bible is a compilation of many books, not a single work. Those books contain the thinking of many different authors and editors as well as different understandings of God and the ways of God.

The purpose of the Bible is to help us know God - the nature of God and the ways of God. It helps us know ourselves - our human condition and how God relates to us in our humanness. It teaches us how to relate to God and how to relate to one another. When we discover these kinds of spiritual truths in the Bible, we are changed. What we believe and how we think is changed, shaped by the spiritual truths found in scripture. We do not use the Bible to defend what we already believe. We allow the truths of scripture to shape our hearts and minds.

We discover these spiritual realities when we read the Bible as an Eastern book rather than as a Western book, when we read it as both human and divine (men and women guided by the Holy Spirit), when we learn to unwrap the spiritual truth from the ancient, Near Eastern human wrapper in which it is presented, when we allow the character of God (Exodus 34:6-7, 1 John 4:8) and the life, ministry, and teachings of Jesus to guide our interpretations, when we give up the need to be right because we want to be loving like Jesus.

We know we are using the Bible correctly when it changes us - our hearts and minds, when we are growing spiritually, when we are becoming more like Jesus.

I would quote chapter and verse to support my thinking but I remember that even the devil quoted scripture to support his position.

You Have to Choose One or the Other

Last week's General Conference of The UMC affirmed and strengthened the language in The Book of Discipline identifying "homosexuality to be incompatible with Biblical teaching." The decision raises the question, in my mind, of the role of the Church.

Is the Church the moral policeman of the world or are we those who bear witness to the good news of God's love?

In my mind, the Church cannot be both.

The role of moral policeman focuses on defining right and wrong, righteousness and sin. It identifies what is acceptable in the eyes of God (or the members of the Church!) and what is unacceptable. In other words, judging is inherent to the role of the moral policeman - a practice Jesus specifically forbid! "Do not judge. ... Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye" (Matthew 7:1, 3-5, also Luke 6:37, 41-42).

Historically, religious groups of all strips have fallen into the trap of focusing on behavior. Defining what is acceptable and what is not is one of the primary ways the group defines itself: we are not that! It is also a way the group is able to feel OK about who they are: we are better than that! In other words, playing the moral policeman inevitably produces a sense of superiority, a.k.a., spiritual arrogance.

Jesus went beyond the focus on behavior to address the source of the behavior: the condition of the heart. Mark 7:1-23 draws a clear distinction between the focus on behavior and the heart. The incident ends with Jesus' teaching: "For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these things come from within" (Mark 7:21-23). Also see Luke 6:45, out of the good/evil treasure of the heart; Luke 16:15, but God knows your hearts; Luke 11:39, you clean the outside of the cup, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.

Focusing on behavior blinds us to the condition of the heart, the interior realm. It blinds us to our attitudes and spirit that do not reflect the spirit of Jesus. Being "right" in condemning a particular sin blinds us to our judgmental, critical spirit - Jesus' proverbial "log in your own eye." Being right becomes a way of being wrong. (See Luke 7:36-50 and Luke 18:9-14 for examples.)

When our focus shifts from right and wrong behavior to our hearts, we are faced with the sobering reality: we all stand in the need of God's grace and forgiveness. Recognizing what is in our hearts disqualifies us from serving as a moral policeman. But!!! Recognizing what is in our hearts qualifies us to bear witness to the good news of God's love and forgiveness!!

The world does not need any more moral policemen. We humans play that role naturally. It is the way we create our identity: we are not that; we are better than that. Judging others is a part of being human. There is nothing spiritual about it.

What the world does need is people who know, live out of, and joyfully proclaim God's love and forgiveness. The world needs to know a love that has the power to cleanse and transform the heart!

Condemning another's behavior (which is also condemning the person) never brings anyone to God. Condemnation and judgment repel. Love attracts. Love elicits a response of love (see again Luke 7:47).

The Church has to choose one or the other: judging and condemning sin or loving - moral policeman or witness to God's love and forgiveness.

As I read scripture, we who are the followers of Jesus are called to bear witness to God's love and forgiveness.