The Bible Tells Me So...

Have begun reading a fantastic book.  Peter Enns' The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable To Read It.  Someday perhaps in the not too distant future I will be starting a book group to discuss these ideas.  Here's some quotes and thoughts on the first chapter.

Many Christians have been taught that the Bible is truth downloaded from heaven, God's rulebook, a heavenly instruction manual--follow the directions and out pops a true believer; deviate from the script and God will come crashing down on you with full force.

If anyone challenges this view, the faithful are taught to "defend the Bible" against these anti-God attacks.  Problem solved.

That is, until you actually read the Bible....When you read the Bible on its own terms, you discover that it doesn't behave itself like a holy rulebook should. (p. 3-4)

Deep within me is a longing to figure out what to DO with the Bible.  I've been a pastor for over 20 years.  A Christian for over 35.  And the problems I have with the Bible seem to be growing rather than going away.  It has become harder and harder to just ignore the places where the Bible contradicts itself, presents God as an angry tirant, or is just plain unbelievable.  The "rulebook" or "instruction manual" view of the Bible is so dominant that even though I have been to a Bible college and seminary, and know better, that view and all that goes with it dies a difficult death.

Part of the problem is the "what then" question.  If we get honest about the difficulties in the Bible, do we just end up discarding it as irrelevant to our lives (to my life, to my children's lives)?  Enns describes 3 options.  Door number one is "The Bible is without error."  Door number two is "The Bible is irrelevant."  He proposes door number three: "Let's face what we see in the Bible, accept the challenge, and start thinking differently about it." (19)  This means asking ancient questions of the Bible rather than modern or post-modern ones.  It means trusting that God has something to teach us through THIS Bible, the one we actually have, with all the stuff we don't know what to do with.

The Bible we have, Enns argues, doesn't work very well as a how-to manual or answer book.  But it does work well as a model for our own spiritual journey.  An inspired  model, in fact. (24)

Random violence and a "God who never fails"

Earlier this week a couple of married youth pastors were driving with their infant son.  As they passed under a bridge that was undergoing some renovations, a large section of concrete fell on their car, crushing them and instantly killing all three of them.  (http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/couple-killed-baby-freak-accident-were-youth-pastors-n341411)

One moment they were having an ordinary moment, with ordinary conversation, listening to the radio, and the next they were dead.  The members of their families and the members of their church now have the difficult task of trying to make sense of this random accident and the horrific results and grief it brings.

But it also causes grief to people who don't know them.  It seems so unjust, so unfair.  It makes God seem really distant.  After all, God could have prevented that from happening, right?  Had the family left just 2 seconds earlier or 2 seconds later they would most likely be alive today.

This morning I went to a prayer breakfast with other community pastors and we heard a speaker encouraging us to pray more, expecting action from the "God who never fails".  A line in the popular worship song "Oceans" says "You've never failed, and You won't start now."

But what exactly does it mean to say "God never fails" when a family of people who love and serve God get crushed in their car?  This incident is making it very difficult to pray.  If God knew that was going to happen, and God did not do anything to prevent it, then it seems like a failure.  If God will not at least do the minimum and cause a 2 second delay for this family in order to save their lives, should I really expect that if I pray God will do something to make my life easier or better (or my friend's lives easier or better)?

Obviously the story of the youth pastors' family is not unique.  History is full of innocent, even faithful and joyful, people victimized by random violence.  Terrorist acts, driving accidents, school shootings, all the way up to acts of war - the brutal truth is God's "modus operandi" is to NOT intervene to save people, whether they are following God or not.  There are occasional exceptions, and we hear the stories of miraculous deliverance, but this is not the normal way of the world.

These events remind me that if my faith in God is predicated upon a belief that God will miraculously intervene for those who serve God, that faith will be destroyed sooner or later.  It is only a matter of time until a senseless tragedy hits close enough to home to drive home the terrible truth that God most often does nothing to prevent these tragedies.  But if my faith in God is predicated upon a belief that God somehow enters into the suffering of this world, then perhaps I can hold onto that faith.  Through the incarnation, God became flesh and endured all the normal hardships of life, as well as extraordinary suffering through torture and execution on a cross.

I want a God who will keep me safe, but for whatever reason that is not the God who is.  And the sooner I realize that, the sooner I will grow up into a more reasonable and mature faith.

Questions about Noah

Recently a friend sent me some questions about Noah and the Ark.  Is this a historical story?  What difference does it make?

My answers to her questions are found below.

1.      Is there any scientific evidence to support Noah’s ark that you know of? I’ve been hearing things about scientific evidence but when I research it’s all speculation and nothing concrete.

No.  There are fringe conservative Christian groups that purport to have evidence of a worldwide flood, but to my knowledge these groups' "science" is not supported by the consensus of those using the scientific method and putting forth peer-reviewed literature. (an important part of the puzzle, as those who actually have knowledge in that area of research would either support or deny the claims. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_geology for more information) 

2.      In the story of Noah does God send the animals to Noah or does Noah go and get the animals?

This is easy enough to figure out with a quick reading of Genesis 6
19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive.
and Genesis 7
8 Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, 9 male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah.
So as the story is told, the animals came TO Noah.

3.      Are we supposed to believe that the Noah story in the Bible is the literal actual account of the great flood?

Haha! This is the $28,000 question, isn't it?  The answer is: it depends who you ask.
Most conservative, evangelical Christians would say YES.  Everything in the Bible is historical fact and God told people to write it down exactly as it came to us.  
Most liberal Christians (and as it appears Jewish people as well) find spiritual truth in the early stories of Genesis (chapters 1-11) but do not consider them historically accurate. 
 
Conservatives would say it has always been the case to believe in the literal garden of Eden, talking snake, tower of Babel, Noah and the Ark.  But a careful study of history shows major theologians throughout the centuries have looked to these stories for spiritual truth instead of historical fact.  

I encourage you to read Genesis 1-11 and try to approach these stories as if you've never read them before.  What do you notice about them?  How do they come across to you?  Do they seem historical?  What type of literature do they remind you of?

Let me tip my hand a bit.  These stories make much more sense when seen in their cultural setting of the Ancient Near East.  Every religion/culture has a creation myth (a story with spiritual meanings).  If you read other creation stories a few amazing things stand out about the ones (yes there are two) in Genesis.  They are distinct from the others in that creation was planned by a loving God (not the result of some cosmic battle between opposing gods) and this loving God is in relationship with the creatures created.  

I know you're asking about Noah, but it helps to start with the creation stories.  When I see that at some point in history some Jewish person somewhere wrote down a different story of the creation, that was significantly different than the stories of those in the surrounding culture, we should pay attention to the differences.  (How was God involved in the process of creating this story?  That is something we will never be able to answer with complete certainty.)

As for Noah, there are also other "flood stories" that speak of a time of flooding in the Ancient Near East, roughly the same time as the Noah story.  (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth) With just a very QUICK look at this article you can see that SOMETHING happened in which there was some major localized flooding, and there are a few theories about what might have caused it.  The fact that so many stories exist about a great flood do, in my mind, point to some event that happened in the ancient past that had been handed down generation to generation in the oral histories of each culture.  

What is unique about the Noah story?  Again, a loving God who is in relationship to humans creates a plan to rid the world of wickedness and start over.  Although this has so many moral problems to the modern mind (really, God kills MILLIONS of people!!!) the fact that God had a plan in the midst of the flood demonstrates the monotheistic idea of ONE God that was in control of EVERYTHING and who was in personal relationship with humans.  These are unique ideas in the world of the Ancient Near East.

Do I believe there was a literal man named Noah who spent over 100 years building a huge boat and thousands of animals came from all across the planet to get on the boat, and then God brought so much rain from the heavens and from under the earth as well that every mountaintop was covered over the whole planet and God deliberately killed every human except for a few members of Noah's family?  Umm.  No.  

4.      If there’s no scientific evidence of a great flood then the story of Noah seems rather complicated to explain to a non-believer and have it make any sense

It is only complicated if we take the viewpoint that everything in the Bible is historically accurate.  If one simply reads the stories in Genesis 1-11 and allows them to be a different sort of literature, and allows the hypothesis that they are not historically true but conveyed deep and meaningful ideas about the nature of the one and only God to ancient people (and modern people too!), we would not have to spend time arguing about the scientific or historic truth of the Noah story. 

5.      If we use carbon dating as a means to tell the age of fossils or other things from history like the Gospels then why do Christians throw out carbon dating when science uses it to prove  the earth is more than 3,000 years old?

Good question.  I'm afraid there is no good answer to that.  It really is pretty lame.  Seems like one either needs to reject the whole thing, saying "all the science behind carbon dating is suspect" (which in fact some fringe creationist groups do), or you need to accept the science as at least reasonably valid and not ignore the findings that are inconvenient.

As for me I am convinced that the starting place for understanding the scriptures must be actually reading them and then trying to form convictions about the nature of what we read.  Too many Christians start the other way around.  They have a conviction about the scriptures (They are "inerrant" - no errors at all, at least in the "original version" which no one has ever read!) and so everything they read must fit that preconceived idea about the scriptures.  Unfortunately, when you actually read the scriptures you run into a lot of problems with the "inerrant" position.

I believe the scriptures contain a record of people's developing ideas about the identity of the One-True-God, over the course of many millenia.  Some ideas found in the oldest scriptures and coming from the most ancient cultures get updated over the centuries and the understanding of the nature of God changes over time.  The book "The Human Faces of God" by Thomas Stark sealed the deal for me in answering my own questions about the nature of scripture and making sense of the glaring inconsistencies found throughout.

I think any attempt at proving or convincing skeptics that the Noah story is historical fact is doomed from the outset, and is a waste of valuable energy.

I think your Jewish friend has some interesting ideas and it would be fun to discuss things with her.  I can see how Jews think Christians have taken the Jewish scriptures hostage and don't understand them correctly, but I've never actually discussed that topic with a real live Jewish person!
Enough for now...

I am left handed

I am left handed.  I always have been.  Someday when I was 3 or perhaps 4 years old, a box of crayons was put in front of me and I was invited to draw a picture.  I reached out and grabbed a crayon with my left hand. 

Most people in this first experience reached out with their right hand.  But not me.  I am left handed.

When I went to school I noticed a few things.  First, if I wanted to use my left hand to cut paper, I had to find one of only one or two pairs of scissors with the title “lefty” on them to do so.  I learned to cut with my right hand.  It was easier to just accommodate.  But I was still left handed.

I was shown how the proper way of writing consisted of writing from the left to the right, and included an angle to my letters that came quite naturally to right handed writers, but not to me.  I learned how to make my letters stand up straight instead of lean to the left, and I got used to not being able to see what I had just written.  I made it work.  Because I was left handed.

Later I had to deal with the fact that most desks in high school and college were built to make it comfortable for a right handed person to write on.  Sometimes there were a couple of lefty desks in a corner of the room.  But more often I had to just twist my body to the right.

As I grew into an adult I learned that left handers actually have some pretty cool things that unite us.  A lot of leader type people are left handed.  We can say “we are in our right mind” and be correct.  I learned that being left handed made me different than the majority of people, sometimes made life a bit complicated, but didn’t really hinder me from following my dreams or living my life how I wanted to.

But what if?

What if I grew up going to church every week, and found a few obscure passages in which the Biblical authors called left-handedness an abomination?  What if I discovered that the Apostle Paul, a brilliant legal and theological mind, occasionally slipped a condemnation of left-handedness into his writings?  What if I heard sermons denouncing left-handedness as sin?

What if, because of these writings, laws developed over the centuries that left-handed people needed to either become right-handed, or simply not write at all?  What if I was told that if I just prayed enough I could be healed of my left-handedness?  What if I was subjected to people laying hands on me and praying for me to be healed of my left-handedness? 

What if I lived in a world where only right-handed people were given the right to get married?  What if only right-handed people could enjoy certain tax benefits?  What if, because I was left-handed, I was denied the right to adopt children?

I might fake it.  I might really try to learn to write with my right hand.  And I might successfully develop the skill of writing with my right hand, to the point where I could pass as right handed.  But in moments by myself, I would still pick up the pen with my left hand, and enjoy how much more natural it felt.  I would know I was still left handed.

And at some point I would say, “I don’t think Paul was right about me.  I love God.  I want to serve him.  I believe Jesus is the Messiah for me and the whole world.  And I am left-handed.”  At some point I would question the powers that be, in the religious and political world, who were telling me I was broken because I was not like the majority, the right-handed people.  At some point I would begin banding together with other left-handed people and protesting the injustices I faced as a left-handed person. 

I would look for and develop friendships with people who were able to see beyond my left-handedness and could see that I was a person.  A person who was left-handed.  I would learn to stand up for my rights and to try to educate, as lovingly as I could, those who would judge me because of my left-handedness.  I might even march in a parade where left-handed people wore a white glove on our left hands and held pencils high over our head with our left hand.

I would find it difficult to go to church.  I would grow tired of hearing religious people say, “I love left-handed people but I hate their left-handed writing.”  I would grow weary of people lumping left-handed people like me in with murderers, child molesters, and drug abusers. 

But then someday, just maybe, I would find some religious people who had the courage to accept me without forcing me to change into a right-handed person or stop writing with my left hand.  These folks would have the courage to see that many other parts of the Apostle Paul’s writings had been discarded years ago as only binding on his time and culture.  These folks would have the courage to see that over the centuries the church had once supported as the only true Biblical idea things like monarchical government, the belief in a flat earth, human slavery, and the subjugation of women – and had abandoned those ideas in favor of newer ideas promoting a wider sense of truth and justice.  These right-handed folks would have the courage to actually befriend, value, and accept as equal left-handed people like me.  These right-handed folks would free me from my nagging sense of shame over who I knew I was: a left handed person.  These right-handed folks would allow me to find my place in God’s Kingdom, serving alongside them as I was gifted, and developing my gifts and talents for use in loving God and loving others.  When the government changed its laws to allow me to adopt children and to actually marry the person I loved, these folks would celebrate with me.  When I found these people I would be so happy. 

Because I am left handed. I always have been.  And I always will be.  

Sometimes the Old Testament is just plain horrific

I like the "You Version" Bible app and it's reading plans which help me stay in touch with the scriptures on a regular basis.  The reading a few days ago was from Exodus 32.  

This is the infamous story of Aaron providing a golden calf for the people to worship while Moses has seemingly disappeared on Mount Sinai.  When Moses comes down with the stone tablets inscribed by the hand of God, he sees the people involved in wild idol worship practices and tosses the stone tablets to the ground, unceremoniously shattering them.  After consulting with Aaron, and getting a really lame answer from him about what has happened, we read this...

25 Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies. 26 So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.” And all the Levites rallied to him.

27 Then he said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’” 28 The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. 29 Then Moses said, “You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day.”

OK.  So Yahweh is so upset with the unfaithfulness of his people that he orders some of them to go through the camp and plunge a knife into the gut of as many people as possible.  This would prove their devotion to Yahweh above all other gods.   In fact, it is their zealous obedience to this bloody command that sets them apart in a special way for service to Yahweh.  

I've read stuff like this in the Old Testament for a few decades.  When I was younger I just pushed through, ignoring the moral problems with the story.  I used to just focus on the fact that the people sinned, and God is perfectly just in killing people if they sin.  In fact such a story could be used to justify God killing His own Son many years later - as a cosmic whipping boy for people like you and me.  It used to work to look at these type of stories that way.

But increasingly, such stories trouble me deeply.  The image of a God who instructs people to take up knives to hack people down sounds like ISIS.  It sounds like Islamic extremism at its worst.  It sounds absolutely nothing like Jesus.  

I choose to read the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus.  I choose to reject views of God that are incompatible with Jesus.  And that means I reject the notion that Yahweh actually ordered these murders, even though "the Bible says it".  The author may have thought Yahweh commanded it.  Moses may have thought Yahweh commanded it.  But sending men to kill their own brothers and kinsmen in the name of justice is impossibly unjust.  

Reading the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus means taking the approach that Jesus shows us who God really is and how God really acts in this world.  We should truly say "Yahweh is like Jesus", not "Jesus is like Yahweh."  And that's an important distinction.  

Where is God's Kingdom?

I have been reading "A New Kind of Christian" by Brian McLaren.  McLaren is deemed a heretic by many evangelicals for many reasons, but I am finding his writings helpful in putting a framework around much of what I've found difficult to believe in Evangelical Christianity over the past few years.

In the chapter "C.S. Lewis in the Pulpit, or What is Heaven About Anyway?", the fictional character Neo (who describes and lives out the "New Kind of Christian") describes three possible understandings of "the Kingdom of God".  This is important, he argues, because Conservative Christians tend to overemphasize salvation as saving one's soul from damnation.  It is personal.  Liberal Christians tend to overemphasize the historic dimension - saving our planet from destruction and making it a fit place for all to live.  He says the Biblical view of salvation incorporates both.

He says part of the reason for the misconceptions (view one and two above) is we have an incomplete view of "the Kingdom".

Most Christians, he says conceive of the Kingdom in one of two ways.  Either the church (indicated as a circle drawn on a paper) is synonymous with the Kingdom (indicated by a 2nd circle drawn mostly over the top of the first circle, or they draw the church as one circle on one side of the paper and "the Kingdom" as a completely different circle - indicating it is a future reality that we don't live in at all right now.

McLaren (through Neo) argues for a third understanding of the Kingdom.  He draws a circle for the church (the people who love Jesus and live for him in community with others).  Then he draws a much larger oval that intersects with about half of the "church" circle.  He argues that much of what the church does is NOT actually working for and part of the Kingdom of God.  That is not hard to accept, historically.  But what is more interesting is that he says the work of the Kingdom of God is much larger than just the Christian church, and includes God's concern for the environment, God's work with people of other religions, God's identification with the poor and oppressed, God's dispensing of artistic gifts that express beauty, glory, and truth.

He then says the church exists to be a catalyst for the Kingdom of God - which brings about good for the world.

Here's something really interesting that Jesus said in Luke 17:20-21:

20Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, 21nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.”

The footnote to that verse says "or, 'is within you'"

If the Kingdom is something future (as in "living in Heaven with God and all other Christians after you die") this is a very strange statement.  Jesus says, the Kingdom of God is in your midst.  You are living in it right now.  Or, alternatively, the Kingdom of God is within you.  Either way it is something happening now, here.  It is something that is active and that we can either be a part of or not.  

I was thinking the other day about how the ancient cosmology found in the scriptures is really very limiting about God.  The picture of an earth-centered universe, with a flat earth, held in place by pillars to some sort of foundation, with the netherworld below, and God up above the sky watching down on what happens on planet earth, makes the Kingdom seem to be "up there".  It makes God seem to be "up there" and away from us.  The more accurate and scientific view of the universe shows that earth is a very insignificant small planet in a small galaxy which is one among billions of galaxies.  This can lead to a sense that God is even farther away.  We've been to space - God does not seem to be out there - he must be very far away indeed.  Gos is something like a person outside the "universe" of a snow globe.  This person can watch and even shake up the snow globe but not really enter into it.

What Jesus seems to be saying is "The Kingdom of God is right here."  The work of God - perhaps even God Himself - is right here, right now.  Not just because Jesus was present at that time and place, but in all places at all times.  We don't need to get "up there" to reach God.  He is in some very real way present and active in the smallest molecule and the largest galaxy.  He and His Kingdom are right here, right now, in every time and every place. 

With this understanding of the Kingdom, my role in Creation is to join God in his Kingdom work, doing what he wants done (see the last post).   This will include personal aspects (spending time alone with him to worship and try to hear from him) and public aspects (working for and actively doing things that bring justice and mercy and love to this world.)  It is much bigger than simply entering a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ that ensures my eternal salvation from damnation in Hell.  It is much bigger indeed.

  

 

What's really important to God?

The Bible is a big book.  Full of all sorts of material.  Some of it is easy to understand and apply in our world.  Some of it is downright boring and confusing.  It's easy for Christians (individual and in groups) to get sidetracked on issues that are mentioned here or there, but aren't central to what God really thinks is important.

Here are a few of the places, where the scriptures wave a red flag and say "THIS IS IMPORTANT!!"

Micah 6:8 - He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
    And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
    and to walk humbly with your God.

That's pretty simple.  Wouldn't the world be a vastly different place if more people simply acted justly, loved mercy, and walked with humility with God?   How good to pray each day that my life will be marked by those three simple descriptions.

Matthew 22:34-40

³⁴ Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. ³⁵ One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: ³⁶ “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
³⁷ Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ ³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ⁴⁰ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

If in doubt about what the Bible means - go back to this teaching.  "Love God. Love others like you love yourself."  All those long pages of the Old Testament, with all that confusing and often boring stuff, hangs from those basic commands.  

Matthew 7:12
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

Once again - if you're confused about what God wants you to do...just treat the other person like you would want to be treated.   

I believe the more I spend time trying to live out these simple, basic, commands, the more the ways of God's Kingdom will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  When I forget these basic commands because I'm too busy trying to prove my interpretation of scripture is the right one (and yours is wrong) I may spread My Kingdom, but the ways of God's Kingdom will diminish.