I have a confession to make. I am not a fan of apologetics. So often, it seems like the practice of apologetics becomes a kind of mental gymnastics to smash square theories into round holes. Apologetics is like the nicer, better looking brother of the conspiracy theory. The “everything must fit” mentality that often drives some people’s use of apologetics seems to, more often than not, lead to some far fetched, damaging theories. I submit as exhibits A and B, the Gap Theory and the Day/Age Theory. Both of these theories are attempts to bash a square Bible into the round hole of science. Why can’t we just stop, take a breath, and realize that not everything has to fit perfectly? That’s not how the world works, and that’s not how the Bible was written (more on this later).
Back to my confession. So much of what I’ve been doing here with these blogs about homosexuality is starting to feel like apologetics to me, and it’s really turning me off. I’ve been so tempted to end this series by channeling Inigo Montoya and saying, “You keep using that verse. It doesn’t mean what you think it means.” Period. End of discussion. But that wouldn’t be fair, would it?
So here I am, trying my best to muster the energy to tackle Paul, or, better yet, the common misinterpretation of Paul’s comments on human sexuality – and doing so in a fair way instead of going the way of Mr. Montoya. With that, I’ll make my first pithy statement:
1. When Paul talks about homosexuality and when we talk about homosexuality, we’re not talking about the same thing.
Paul’s understanding of homosexuality is very different from ours. To Paul, it’s all about the act. That’s all he sees and all he knows. He doesn’t talk about homosexual desire or homosexual orientation. In fact, sexual orientation or sexual identity in general – hetero or homo – are not concepts in Paul’s mind.
He sees the raw data that is the act of homosexual sex, and to make matters worse, in the culture in which he writes, homosexual sex acts are mostly performed in connection with ritual pagan worship. Paul sees heterosexual men participating in pagan temple worship, and this participation often included homosexual sex with one of the many male temple prostitutes. The concept of men and women having a homosexual orientation and living in monogamous, homosexual relationships is something unheard of for Paul.
2. When we translate any of Paul’s so-called references to homosexuality using the word “homosexual,” we’re mistranslating.
I’m not sure how to approach this point. I could lay out all the details about the various Greek words Paul uses, and I could go through a detailed lexical analysis of each word. However, I’m not sure I could do that and keep your attention. It’s all a bit technical and nuanced – as language tends to be. So I’ll spare you and just say this:
As I mentioned above, Paul, when he uses words that have been translated over the last hundred years or so as “homosexual,” he’s not thinking about the same thing as we are when we use those words. There’s a lot of evidence that he has pedophiles and child molesters in mind, not adult homosexual men and women. As with all discussions of sexuality in scripture, the only condemnation we see is condemnation of deviant forms of sexuality, and this is no different. When grown men sexually abuse and manipulate young men, it’s wrong. When heterosexual men have sex with male prostitutes, it’s wrong.
But what would Paul say if he came across a homosexual couple who are involved in a loving, committed relationship? Who knows! He didn’t have that category, so he didn’t comment on it. And the words he used didn’t take this category of human sexuality into account.
So to translate the Greek words Paul uses in Romans and 1 Corinthians as “homosexual” or some form of that word is, at best, missing the mark, and, at worse, a gross mistranslation.
3. When we focus on homosexuality, especially in Romans 1, we miss the point entirely.
Sometimes we forget, when we’re reading Romans 1, to continue on to Romans 2:
You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?
Oopsie! Sorry Paul, I didn’t know you were trying to teach us about a kind of self-righteousness that causes us to be intolerant, impatient, and judgmental. I liked it better when you were just talking about icky homosexuals (sorry, Inigo is coming out again).
In all seriousness, there is a reason Paul sets up what he sets up in Romans 1, and that is what follows in Romans 2. We have no room to pronounce judgment on others based on what they do or how they live. I believe Paul might also say it this way: “When you point the finger, there are three fingers pointing right back at you.” Or maybe you prefer Jesus’ approach in Matthew 7:4: “How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?”
(Down Inigo! Down boy!)
So even if we come to the conclusion that Paul’s understanding of homosexuality is the same as what we call homosexuality today and that it should be condemned, we still have no room for intolerance, impatience, and judgment – Paul’s words, not mine.
The way I see it, this is pretty simple. What we thought we knew about the Bible and homosexuality just isn’t based on proper exegesis. We’ve approached the Bible backwards for too long. We’ve allowed our current cultural understanding and our own negative feelings toward same-sex relationships to inform our reading of the Bible. We’re projecting our own prejudice on the witness of scripture. We decided that we don’t like something, so of course the Bible agrees with us. It’s something that has happened many times throughout history, and no one is immune to the tendency to read personal prejudice into the text.
(My apologies for taking so long to finish this discussion. To be completely frank, I grew weary of it – not because the issue isn’t important to me, but because, for lack of a better phrase, I moved beyond it. People are gay. That’s a fact. We can’t ignore it anymore or pretend scripture has our back on this issue. We have to move beyond the debates and start doing something about the fact that there are millions of gay and lesbian Christians, and God loves them as much as he loves us. Let’s lay down our swords and start opening our arms. The fight is over.)
Lately I’ve been struggling with the idea of Apologetics.
(Hi, by the way. I know I’ve been gone a long time. It’s a very long story, and I may get into it someday, but for now, let’s just move on. Cool?)
You know what I mean when I use the term “Apologetics.” It’s that defending of the Christian faith – that ability to provide an air-tight defense of what Christians believe. Apologetics done “well” usually sound or read like the closing statements of an expensive lawyer. They involve compelling language and hard facts. At times, the detail to which the apologist goes is astounding, parsing phrases and words in order to caulk the edges of his or her defense.
I gotta admit: I’m not a fan.
One of the biggest reasons I struggle with the Apologetics approach is that the Apology is almost never wrong (I almost wrote “never wrong,” but I should probably leave some room here). With enough clever wording and tricky maneuvering, a good apologist can prove almost any point.
To be fair, I’m mostly referring to Christian Apologetics. I think this is where we can observe the dangers of the Apology most readily. Just consider how much ink has been spilled to prove, without a doubt (and to pick a hot topic right now), the existence of a hell – i.e. a literal place of eternal conscious torment. Many good Christians have written millions of words on this very topic, citing Bible verse after Bible verse, building their air-tight case that proves, without a doubt, that hell exists.
Yet so much more ink has been spilled in defense of the exact opposite position – that there is no hell, or that God will save everyone, or that evil people cease to exist when they die, and on and on. And with each of these Apologies, the apologist provides Bible verse after Bible verse, creating his or her own air-tight defense of whatever point of view he or she is defending.
So who wins? The person with the best Apology? Because both are pretty good. Who gets to judge which is best? Me? You? The community of believers?
And that’s my problem with Apologetics. Anyone can defend just about anything and find enough evidence to do so. There’s got to be a better way.
Yes, I’ve had quite the year, and that’s a big part of the reason I haven’t finished my blog series on the Bible and homosexuality.
But there’s another reason. I’m starting to feel like an apologist. I’m starting to feel like an evidence peddler.
“Step right up, folks! I’ve got a bunch of cool verses that prove my point. And check out what I can do here with a little Greek word study. Pretty nifty, eh?”
And honestly, I’m at the point in the process where becoming an apologist is necessary. The kinds of things Paul has to say about homosexuality in his letters and the words he uses are just not normal for us. In short, us and Paul, we’re on different pages on the issue. But that takes some time to explain.
Don’t get me wrong. I want to explain it, and I will very soon. Part of the reason I want to talk about Paul’s understanding of homosexuality is because I genuinely believe, based on theological reflection, that God loves homosexuals, and that a homosexual Christian is not an oxymoron.
So even though I have to get over my current disgust of Apologetics to do it, I will. I just might need a couple more days.
The next step in our journey through passages of the Bible that some use to condemn homosexuality is the book of Leviticus. In two places in this book, there are apparent references to homosexual practice. In both instances, the same wording is used, so I’ll handle both of these verses together. They are Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. In both passages, male on male sexual intercourse is called an “abomination,” and the exhortation is made that men who practice this type of act are to be put to death.
There are so many issues with these two short passages that I’m not sure where to begin. Of the many compelling arguments against the use of this passage to condemn homosexual orientation and gay relationships, there are three that I’ll note here.
The first is fairly obvious. This is the Levitical law. There are over 600 such laws in the Torah, and most Christians pay attention to only a tiny percentage of them. Most Christian’s I know eat shrimp, lobster, and pork, wear clothing with mixed threads, have sexual intercourse during menstruation, etc. The Levitical law is relatively ignored by Christians with the exception of a few passages like the two above. It would seem, from the point of a casual observer, that some in the Christian community have determined beforehand that homosexuality is sinful, and instead of being faithful to the witness of scripture, they find passages that fit their agenda and ignore the neighboring passages as if they didn’t exist. If this isn’t a twisting of scripture, I’m not sure what is.
Added to the problems of “picking and choosing” which Levitical laws are worth keeping and which don’t matter anymore is this: Leviticus 18 and 20 both exhort the reader to put men caught having homosexual sex to death. If we are going to be sticklers about the law, shouldn’t we follow through with the whole thing? Shouldn’t we be consistent in our selective reading and at least obey the whole verse? Or could it be that want homosexuality to be wrong, so we only focus on the few words in scripture that support our agenda? Few people would advocate for the execution of homosexuals even though the verses they hold in such high esteem command them to do so.
Yet another problem arises with our understanding of the word “abomination.” For most of us, when we read “abomination,” we think it’s a superlative. We think God is saying that a particular practice is “really, really, really bad.” So we adopt the mentality that there are bad things to do; i.e. sinful things, and then there are these “abominations.” Nothing could be worse than an abomination, right?
We’ve been conditioned to think this way. Our culture seems to be a culture that is crazy about superlatives. We overuse words like “amazing,” “fantastic,” “awesome,” “incredible,” “huge,” etc. People often say they are 100,000 (or some other large number) percent into something or sure of something. Just watch 45 seconds of Maury Povich, and you’ll see what I mean. “I’m 25 million percent sure he is the father!”
One of my favorite professors at Fuller, Dr. Joel Green, would often chastise his students for using the phrase “very unique” in their papers. He would say something like, “Nothing can be ‘very unique.’ It’s either unique or it’s not. There is no extra measure of uniqueness.”
We love our superlatives. And I think this is what hooks with passages like these. We consider the word “abomination” to be a superlative. We think God is saying something like, “I hate homosexuality 100,000 percent!” But that’s not the case here. The word is actually connected to ritual practices. It is most often used in connection with the sacrificial practices of Israel. So, an abomination is something that makes an Israelite ritualistically unclean, but it is not necessarily something that is fundamentally evil. For instance, it is not fundamentally wrong to eat shrimp, but it is considered an abomination in the context of Israel’s ritualistic practices.
To reiterate, an abomination makes a person ritualistically unclean. But we don’t live in a culture of rituals any longer. We don’t, like the Egyptians, consider it an “abomination” to eat with certain groups of people (Gen 43:32). We also regularly partake in a great number of things that would be considered abominations in the minds of the Israelites under Levitical law. Does this mean these particular practices are immoral or sinful? No! We are no longer under the law, and we no longer live in a society concerned with sacrificial ritual. Passages like Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 simply no longer apply to us.
If we object to homosexuality and people who have same sex attraction, we cannot do so on the grounds of Levitical law. If so, I would venture to say that we should be consistent and uphold the entirety of the law. To focus on the sections that confirm our own discomfort with a particular way of life is not only unfair, but it cheapens scripture. The Bible becomes secondary to our own desires, and it no longer informs faith: it becomes a cheap tool to confirm our own bigotry. This cannot stand any more.
Next, we move into the New Testament and hear what Paul has to say.
I write the word, “sodomy,” and you all think of one thing. It’s no secret that the word “sodomy” has become the “sanctified” term to refer to male homosexual sex. And I think, for the most part, we all know why these two things are connected. Somewhere, and some time in our lives (probably Sunday school), we heard about the story in Genesis 19 of the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. We were told that God had to destroy these cities because the men who lived there were homosexual (maybe not explicitly, but definitely implicitly). Our learned teachers cite the desire expressed by the men of the city to “know” the angelic visitors whom Lot, the hero of the story, has befriended. Because of this, it’s clear that God hates gay sex so much so that he destroys two cities to make his point.
Pretty clear, right? Well, no. There’s much more that we weren’t told.
W
e read in the text that God has some serious issues with these two cities. In Genesis 18:20, we’re told that a great outcry has reached God from these cities, and that God decides to investigate. What, exactly, is Sodom’s and Gomorrah’s “grave sin?” God sends some angels in the form of men to visit the city to “test the waters” if you will. Lot, Abraham’s nephew, invites the visiting angels into his home and entertains them. Later, the men of the city demand that Lot give up the visitors so that these men can brutalize and rape them. And the rest is history.
Simple, right? Well, not really. There are much deeper layers to this little story that need to be uncovered before we can begin to understand the exact nature of Sodom’s and Gomorrah’s sin, and many of these details can be uncovered when we consider how the Jewish mind understood Sodom and Gomorrah. To do that, we need to check out some other mentions of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Hebrew Bible and extra-biblical literature.
First, consider Ezekiel 16:49: “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” What? No mention of homosexuality? That’s a little strange, considering how we understand “sodomy.” It seems the real problems have to do with excess wealth and an ungenerous attitude toward the poor.
Consider, also, Josephus’ explanation of Sodom and Gomorrah. To Josephus, the people of Sodom and Gomorrah “pride themselves on their power and wealth, they brutalize outside people, and are ungodly.”* Hmm… Again, nothing about homosexuality. The focus seems to be on the cities’ excess wealth and treatment of outsiders and visitors.
Philo had a similar concept of Sodom and Gomorrah. He painted the city as rich and materialistic to the point that the inhabitants became greedy and violent.*
In Targum Psuedo-Jonathan, a story is told of a young girl named Peletit who took bread to a poor starving man. When the people of Sodom and Gomorrah realized what she had done, they seized her, covered her with honey, and hung her on the wall of the city to be devoured by bees. Some consider the cries of Peletit while she hung on the wall to be the very cries that rose to God inciting God to act against Sodom and Gomorrah*
These accounts of Sodom and Gomorrah are important to note. First, there is very little to no evidence outside of the Hebrew Bible or Hebrew literature of the existence of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. So what we know about Sodom and Gomorrah, we have to find from the Hebrew Bible and extra-biblical literature from the Hebrew tradition. We have to learn what these writers thought of Sodom and Gomorrah before we can understand the nature of their sin. Second, Sodom and Gomorrah are used regularly throughout both the Hebrew Bible and the NT as an example of an adulterous city that turned from God. Often, the comparison is made between something that Israel has done with the ways of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Israel doesn’t come out looking very pretty. Finally, we cannot properly understand the importance of hospitality and inclusion of visitors/aliens to the ancient Hebrew mind. It’s not part of our culture, so it’s very hard for us to think such a thing would be so grievous. But this is no reason to discredit an interpretation of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah that focuses on the cities’ inhospitality and treatment of visitors. If we do decide to discredit such and interpretation, we are illegitimately imposing our own cultural understandings on a text instead of letting the text’s own culture and setting dictate translation. This is nothing short of twisting scripture to fit our own cultural mind. It shouldn’t be done.
And this is exactly where we’ve gone wrong in the past. The sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is not homosexual orientation. The sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is their complete lack of pity for the poor, the sick, the visitor, or those whom society deems unworthy. Beyond this, their sin was not just a sin of omission (not caring for the poor); their sin went much further. They tortured the poor and persecuted anyone who tried to be hospitable. Lot shows hospitality to visitors, and the men of the city are enraged! Their desire to rape these men is not because of sexual orientation or lust. Their desire is to show their dominance over these visitors and to shame Lot. Rape is often understood not as an act of sexuality but as an act of power and domination. Yes, it is connected to sex in some way, but rape is primarily a way to express power and dominance. Consider what brutal armies would do to their conquered foe – they would rape and kill them. It was a way to humiliate their enemies and show their superiority. It wasn’t because they were horny.
Think about what these messengers from God came to do: They wanted to spend the night in the city square, and they fought Lot when he showed the hospitality. God wanted to see what would happen to the messengers. Just exactly how bad would they be treated? If they entered the city as visitors and made their status clear by spending the night in the square, what would happen to them? This was God’s test – would the people of Sodom and Gomorrah show love and compassion and care for the visitors, or would they brutalize them and treat them as if they were worthless?
So what is the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah? They were rich, content, and selfish. They abused the poor and mistreated the alien. They refused to include those who were outside of their cultural circle. To express their dominance over visitors, they raped and killed them.
So, then, what is sodomy? In my opinion, sodomy is not male homosexual sex, but the refusal to include others and show love to the less fortunate among us. How ironic that many of us practice this kind of sodomy on a regular basis. Some of us even pride ourselves on how exclusive and uncaring we can be toward those we deem “sinful.” It’s sad, really.
My main point here is this: Genesis 19 and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is not God’s vengeance on homosexuality. It’s God’s vengeance on people who refuse to show love and compassion. God is not punishing men who love other men or women who love other women. God is punishing those who love no one but themselves.
Next, we’ll talk about Leviticus.
A few weeks ago, I blogged about my hunger and thirst to see justice in relation to the way Christians treat people who identify themselves as homosexual. That blog was just the start. With the next few blogs I write, I want to address some of the traditional objections to my “radical” statement that homosexuality is not wrong and that homosexuals people should be welcomed into the community of God.
I realize my position is not popular, and that, for a couple hundred years, Christians have assumed that the Bible speaks strongly against the homosexual lifestyle. And this assumption has been sold well by the Church. Find anyone you know and ask him or her what the Bible says about homosexuality. The almost unanimous answer you will get is that the Bible is against it. Most people can’t tell you where it’s written in the Bible, but they know it’s in there somewhere. This is probably one of the Church’s best marketed talking points: The Bible says homosexuality is wrong.
But when you take a minute to consider where this idea comes from, you learn that there are about 6 verses in the Bible that mention something close to what we would consider homosexuality. In the spirit of full disclosure, let me say this: I believe the Bible really has very little to say about what we understand as homosexuality in today’s culture, and that the more recent interpretation of scripture that labels homosexuality as a sin does not stand up to proper biblical exegesis. Bottom line – we got it wrong. We misinterpreted scripture, and many people have had to suffer as a result of our irresponsible interpretive practices.
I’d like to take a few blogs to talk about each one, and with the next blog in particular, I’ll address the first: Genesis 19 and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. My goal with this is to show you that the Bible really doesn’t have very clear teaching against homosexuality. If anything, I want you to walk away from this with an understanding of how complex this issue really is, and that simply saying “The Bible says homosexuality is wrong,” is just not quite fair.
Let’s get going!
A few months ago, I listened to a sermon series on the Beatitudes from Mars Hill Bible Church. One particular sermon by Rob Bell really struck a chord with me. In this talk on Matthew 5:6, Bell was attempting to repaint the idea of hungering and thirsting for righteousness in a way that is more congruent with Jesus’ world view.
Let me back up a little by giving you a quick (and probably lacking) overview of Bell’s approach to the Beatitudes. In short, the Beatitudes aren’t instructions on how to receive the blessing of God as much as they are proclamations of who God sees as blessed. For instance, when Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” he is not saying, “In order for God to bless you, you have to find some way to become poor in spirit.” Jesus’ point is that God is with the least of these. God is with those who are not spiritually rich. God is not with those who “deserve it,” whatever that may mean. So Jesus is attempting to help his listeners understand this deep truth: God blesses the people whom you don’t expect to be blessed.
Again, Bell is emphasizing that these sayings by Jesus should NOT be used as formulas to earn God’s blessing. To do this, we fall into the trap of a works based theology.
With Matthew 5:6 in particular, Bell explains how he understand Jesus’ words: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” For Bell, Jesus is talking to those who have a deep and unquenchable longing to see justice in a broken world. So often, these are people who experience oppressions, injustice, and, well, wrongness. Because of this, they hunger and thirst for rightness, or righteousness to prevail over injustice.
We all have a little of this in our lives. We see oppression, hunger, poverty, and pain in the world, and we want it to be made right. Sometimes we misdirect this desire to situations that don’t deserve such attention.
I have been most guilty of this recently with the whole NBC debacle and their dealings with Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno. I saw what happened to Conan O’Brien as an injustice, and my hunger and thirst for righteousness was temporarily misdirected to that cause. But in reality, Conan is a multi-millionaire. He’ll be fine. He doesn’t need my help. My hunger and thirst was wrongly directed for a time.
But many times, our hunger and thirst to see justice is properly directed. We begin to side with people who experience real and damaging trauma, most often inflicted by those in power, and we ache for them. Sometimes we find ourselves in need of justice, and our hunger and thirst for righteousness drives us to cry out to God for his grace and blessing. In this, we find the words of Jesus comforting. God is with those who hunger and thirst to see God’s justice in a real way.
Now, all of us have different areas where we direct our “hungering and thirsting.” A friend of mine at work has a heart for racial reconciliation, and her desire for justice is most directed there. Another friend sees the poverty and oppression in Latin America and puts his energy and resources to work to see justice there.
We all have our areas where we hunger and thirst.
For me, there are a few areas, but none so great as my desire to see my gay brothers and sisters in Christ accepted into the community of God where they belong. Yes, I know. Not a popular thing to say in some Christian circles. Gladly, I’m not alone, even though it may feel this way sometimes.
In short, I feel the Church has done a serious disservice to a large number of gay Christians who find their identity in Christ and have come to terms with their sexuality. The Church has wrongly interpreted a few vague passages in the Bible in order to condemn what they do not understand, and quite honestly, I can no long stand idly by.
This injustice has to stop, and the wheels are finally in motion. Many devout Christian men and women are beginning to see that, for the last 150 years or so, the Church has gotten it wrong. The Bible does not, in fact, condemn homosexual orientation, and, in reality, the writers of the Bible know nothing of homosexual orientation.
What I would like to do over the next few blogs is to tackle a couple of the more recent “anti-homosexual” misinterpretations of scripture in hopes that I can show where we as a Christian community have erred. I’d like to start with one of the most commonly misunderstood biblical narratives, the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Hopefully you will hear my heart through all of this. I have a deep hunger and thirst to see God’s justice in this world. I have an unquenchable desire to see wrongs righted. And above all, I approach this topic out of love – love for God, the Bible, and my gay brothers and sisters in Christ.
Also, please remember that this is me writing – Jon. Your son, brother, uncle, and friend. I am not being deceived by Satan. I am not trying to justify sin. I am not trying to send the Bible down some slippery slope. I have enormous respect for scripture, so much so that I refuse to allow it to be read at face value. I also have a deep love for God, and I want more than anything else to see God’s will done on earth. And for me, God’s will is that we no longer oppress people because of their sexuality.
I pray that you would come along with me on this little journey. I also understand that you will disagree with me, and that’s fine. But please, hear me out.
A few weeks ago, Fuller professor Juan Martinez stated that all theology is contextual. His statement was in response to a question that referenced the importance of liberation theology in the Latin American culture. Liberation theology, in part, is a contextualized theology that strikes a deep chord with Christians around the world who experience deep social and political injustice. For them a theology of liberation speaks to a God who desires to bring them out of poverty and oppression and bring real and lasting freedom. I hesitate to write too much about the powerful school of thought because this short (well, probably really long) blog will not do it justice.
Dr. Martinez’s point was to critique the common idea that liberation theology is contextualized while “Western” or “Classic” theology is not. Just because a specific brand of theology connects well to people in a certain context does not mean it should be considered “less than” in any way. The reality is that all theology is contextualized, whether that theology finds its roots in Latin America, Africa, Germany, or the US. The context always influences the theological discussion in profound ways.
And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Paul was a master at contextualizing the gospel. In Acts 17, we see two sermons or “techniques” of Paul as he preaches the gospel. The first is found in the beginning of Acts 17:
“After Paul and Silas had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. 2And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three sabbath days argued with them from the scriptures, 3explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, ‘This is the Messiah, Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you.’”
Paul is in a Jewish context (a synagogue), and his approach is simple – he reasons with the Jews from scripture (OT) to prove that Jesus was indeed the long awaited Messiah. For a Jewish audience, this message is powerful, convincing, and even polarizing. It is the message they need to hear, and it lands so well for Paul because it is highly contextualized.
Consider Paul’s sermon just a few verses later. Paul and Silas move from a Jewish context to the city of Athens where they soon find themselves in the Areopagus (Mars Hill) surrounded by a mixed audience of Jews and Greeks. Here is his sermon:
“Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, ‘Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, “To an unknown god.” What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For “In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said, “For we too are his offspring.” Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.’”
Here Paul doesn’t reference scripture or mention anything about a “Messiah.” Both would be meaningless to the Greeks in the audience. He doesn’t argue or try to “prove” anything. He takes it back to the beginning and shows his audience that there is one God who created all that they experience. He mentions Jesus at the end of his speech, but not as the long awaited “Messiah” but as the one appointed by God to bring about judgment and, ultimately, restoration.
So Paul is a master of communicating contextually. He knows what message will be most effective with his immediate audience, and he presents in that way. He knows that a Greek audience could not care less about the scriptures and this idea of a “Messiah.” He also knows that his Jewish audience doesn’t need to be told that one God created the world. They already know that.
So with that in mind, here’s an interesting thought: Why do we take Paul’s letters in the New Testament to be so universal and in some way above their context? If Paul has proved himself to be a master of contextualizing a message, why do we think he wrote his letters in a very broad and timeless manner? How many of Paul’s words do we take at face value with out a second thought to how his audience would be hearing those words? And do we really think Paul wrote his letters with the knowledge that people thousands of years later would be reading them without the privilege of hearing the voices of his audience?
My point is that we should think a little harder when we read the words of Paul. Knowing that he is a master at adapting his message to fit the people to whom he preaches or writes, we should take pause before swallowing his theology whole. I know, I know. You’re probably uncomfortable with that statement. I guess I am a little too. But I think it’s important that we see Paul’s theology as being deeply and critically important to his audience, and in the same thought, we need to remind ourselves that we are not his audience.
I’ve been having the thought lately that we as Christians have done a pretty good job at making something that was once profound, radical, and deep into something that is cheap and shallow. That “something” to which I refer is really a bunch of somethings: it’s the Bible, both Jewish and Christian tradition, and even God. Am I overstating this? probably, but let me try to work out my point here.
Take, for example, the Creation account of Genesis 1 and 2. Most scholars, both Christian and otherwise, see the Creation poems in the beginning of Genesis as the beautiful expression of a pre-scientific people as they try to explain what they see in the world as it relates to what they know of God. They perfectly and poetically describe the human condition – our tendency toward what is wrong or evil – and they show a benevolent and personal God. This is all compelling and radical stuff! If you take a glance at some other Ancient Near Eastern creation accounts (which pre-date the Genesis account), you’ll find much of the same material as the Genesis account, with a few important exceptions: chief of which is the existence of a good and personal God. The Creations narratives in Genesis 1 and 2 are understood as mythology* – as stories that express deep and real truth.
But many Christians see the Creation narratives in Genesis 1 and 2 as a type of ancient police report. They see a real Adam and Eve, a talking snake, and a literal six day creation. What was meant to be a profound expression of who God is becomes a cheap and shallow historical account of creation (just the facts, ma’am). The beauty is gone, and all that is left are the so-called “facts” to argue. Some people even devote their lives to forcing the poems of a pre-scientific people into objective history. How sad! And, in my opinion, how cheap and shallow!
I know, that sounds harsh. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to say these people are cheap and shallow. What I’m trying to do is stick up for the Bible and for what it was created to be and defend it when people try to make it something it’s not – especially when that something is so small. I’m saying the view these people support is a cheap and shallow view. They see the Bible as a report of historical fact.
Think about that. When a police officer writes a report of an incident, no one cares how poetic he or she is. No one is in awe at how completely he or she grasps the human condition. No one is stunned by this person’s knowledge of and connection to the people involved in the incident. All they need to see are the raw facts.
But this is not the purpose of Genesis 1 and 2. What we need to see when we read these words is the power of God through people who interacted regularly with this God. We need to see how well these people understood the human condition and how serious they portrayed humanity’s need for God. They did not set out to record the raw facts of the Creation of the world. They wanted to show a God who cares and who created out of love, and they wanted to show a human race that leans toward the wrong thing.
With that in mind, Genesis 1 and 2 take on a beauty and reality that is unmatched by historical fact. The stories of Genesis 1 and 2 become, as Rob Bell puts it, our own stories. We have the tendency to lean toward evil. We need a good and gracious God. How cheap and shallow to turn these stories into mere historical facts on a page.
*I understand Christians’ animosity toward the notion of myth, especially as it relates to the Bible. But I think myth is something we need to get comfortable with again. Myth is not bad. Myth does not equal false or lie. Myth, in this sense, is a fictional story that explains a very real truth. I will write more on myth later.
For as long as I can remember, people in religious circles have attempted to identify who the modern-day pharisees are. We read the NT, and there is a lot of negative attention given to this group of religious leaders, so much so that they have become more a caricature than anything else. They are like the villains in an 80s movie – completely evil with no depth to their personalities or character. We think of them as constantly wringing their hands, ready to cry out “blasphemy” at a moments notice, and ready to spill the blood of any radicals.
Because of this, we seem to want to project their characteristics on some group of people in the Christian world today. When we come across some strict group of Christians or some other group that uses heavy liturgy, we’re ready with the name tag “Pharisee!”
I also loved participating in Pharisee bashing whenever I had the chance, and would not pass up an opportunity to label someone (and therefore write them off) as being “Pharisaical.” Lately, I’ve been more hesitant about that. This is mostly due to the fact that often when I was so eager to label someone a Pharisee, I was most focused on a characteristic of my own in that other person, and it was this characteristic that I saw as being Pharisaical, if that makes sense. Another way to say it is that I would never consider myself a Pharisee; only others, even if the very “sins” I wanted to label in another person were second nature to me.
I think what might be better is for us to consider how we make the mistakes that some Pharisees made in the NT.* A big mistake we often make is assuming that God is done working and speaking. So often, we assume that Revelation is the end of God’s word – God does not speak anything more. Now, I know most people would not go so far as to actually say this, but I believe most people live this way. Nothing new can be said beyond what the Bible addresses. This is seen in the way so many people hold the Bible above all else – including the Holy Spirit inspired community of believers. It’s as if we think God does not want to continually be revealed in our presence. God was revealed in the Bible, and that is enough.
This is one of the more grievous mistakes the Pharisees made. They could not see that God was doing a new thing. They held tight to their tradition and practices and would not recognize God’s active hand in the world. In fact, they felt so strongly that God could not be working through Jesus and the disciples that they had them killed. Their inability to see God’s continued revelation beyond their own scriptures and traditions led to very serious consequences for those who promoted the new move of God.
How do we make this mistake? Are we ever approached with an idea that challenges us and makes us uncomfortable, and we choose to “put it to death” because it is against our tradition? Do we revere the Bible more than the living word of God and the active Holy Spirit? Have we become so good at “living” and “perfecting” our religious motions that we can’t see God’s revelation anymore? I hope not.
So who are the modern-day Pharisees? They are you and me; or, rather, their stories could be ours if we don’t guard ourselves from making their mistakes.
*I say “some Pharisees” because there are several Pharisees in the NT narratives that were quite noble in their response to Jesus and the early Christian movement. For example, consider Nicodemus and Gamaliel.
Filed under: bible
I write about the Bible a lot on this blog. I’ve challenged the idea of the Bible as a moral authority, and I’ve talked a little about the complications about the idea of “Inspiration.” I hope through all of this, you understand that I value the Bible very much. I believe it to be an incredible God-given resource for all Christians, scholars and laypeople alike. I’m not making any formal doctrinal statement with what I wrote. I’m just trying to express to you that I value scripture very much. I’ve dedicated a big chunk of my life to trying to better understand it.
Some interesting things are happening right now in the “Bible translation” world (for lack of a better term). First, Zondervan is pulling the TNIV (Today’s New International Version) because of apparent “mistakes” in translation. In other words, people complained and they backpedaled (can you tell how I feel about it?). You can read more about this decision here.
At the same time, something very exciting is taking place. A new translation is in the works right now called the Common English Bible, and those involved hope to give us with a translation that provides, “Clarity of language, as in ‘plain speaking,’ a reliable, genuine, and credible power to transform live, an emotional expectation to find the love of God, and a rational expectation to find the knowledge of God.” Read more about the translation here.
Here’s where I think this is especially fascinating: We are living in a world where information is at the tips of our fingers, quite literally. We have access to more data than ever before. We can see in real time what is happening all over the globe. Because of this, we can get a little glimpse into the process of creating a new version of the Bible. In other words, we can see the faces and read the bios of the people who are actually translating scripture. And because of that, we’re confronted with realization that the translations we already have didn’t just magically appear. People translated them.
For instance, take a look at both the board of editors (one of whom is Fuller prof Joel B. Green) and the translators of the Common English Bible. All of them are scholars and experts in Hebrew and Greek. They come from so many different faith traditions and bring to the translations process so many unique points of view.
Think about this – These men and women are inspired to do what they are doing, or at least they better be. They are doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves – translate ancient languages into something readable for today. Talking about God’s inspiration in terms of David and Paul and Luke and Isaiah is somewhat pointless if we don’t talk about God’s inspiration in terms of these editors and translators. Think about that. That’s pretty huge! And it really complicates the idea of Inspiration and Biblical authority in big ways.
“Plain sense” gets a little tricky. “Surface readings” become dependent on translators. “Simple faith” means ignoring a lot of serious and valid questions. Are we OK with that? Can we reject the principles of reason, interpretation, hermeneutics and scholarship, but then so heavily rely on the scholars and academics who must translate the Bible for us?
Think about the process. Whatever version you read, remember that it went through a serious translation gauntlet with many men and women just to get in your hands. Let that sink in. It’s a beautiful thing, especially when you think about God’s inspiration through the whole process.
