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.   

What about those creation stories?

While a junior at the Christian liberal arts university I attended in the late 80's, a guest speaker came to campus for a series of meetings.  He was a well-known pastor from a large church in the area.  Among other things he came to argue for the inerrancy of the Bible, meaning it is wholly reliable in everything it speaks of, including (and especially) it's creation account.

I listened to his presentations with dissatisfaction, but decided not to ask a question of him publicly.  Instead, I waited until after his presentation for a chance to talk with him.  I asked him, "What do you do with the two different creation stories in Genesis?"

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Well, there are two different stories about the Creation.  One in Genesis 1, and a different account in Genesis 2-3.  And unfortunately, the order of things created doesn't match up in both of these stories."

The guest pastor seemed surprised to hear this, and asked me to show him what I was referring to.

"Look here in the first chapter, starting at verse 20 it describes how on the 5th day God created all the birds of the air, then on the 6th day he creates all the land animals, and THEN he creates humankind (both male and female) as the final pinnacle of his creation.

"In the separate account in Genesis 2-3, God creates Adam, then creates all the animals to try to find a companion for him, then creates Eve."

I looked at him with a questioning look and asked him simply, "So when was Adam created?  Was it before all the animals or after all the animals?"  

I don't remember exactly how the guest pastor responded, but I remember the basic sense of his answer was that I was misunderstanding the text and I didn't have enough faith.  Misunderstanding the text?  I don't think so.  It is really quite plain in older translations (I noticed that the new NIV has created a fix by saying in Genesis 2 "now the Lord HAD created the animals" - a tense of the verb that is missing in older translations and appears to be a way to massage away this discrepancy.)

If indeed the entire Christian faith is based upon the absolute, perfect inerrancy of the scriptures, meaning there is absolutely no contradictions or discrepancies or things that are not literally true - then it appears that one needs to read no further than the 2nd chapter of the Bible.  If such a foundation is indeed the basic building block of the Christian faith, then Christianity should be rejected on the first day of a yearly Bible reading plan.

I've had multiple conversations with Christians about this over the years since then, and have heard all sorts of convoluted explanations why the clear discrepancy of the order of creation events is not really a discrepancy.  It is really painful to listen to.  Just read the text and chart out the events in order.

I try to tell people that it is not a "higher" view of scripture to call it inerrant, because it requires a person to judge the contents of the scriptures before actually reading them.  I encourage them that it is actually much more honoring to God and to the human authors of scripture to actually read the words that are there and form our beliefs about those words based upon what we read.  Let us create our statements about what the Bible is and how it works in the life of the Christian AFTER (not before) we actually read it through.

The good news is the inerrancy of the scriptures is NOT the foundation of the Christian faith.  The work, example, death, resurrection, and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth is the only proper foundation for the Christian faith.  "On Christ, the Solid Rock, I stand. All other ground is sinking sand."

The house of cards of Biblical inerrancy

I run into people all the time within evangelicalism who basically subscribe to this belief about the Bible:

"God inspired humans to write down exactly what God wanted them to write.  Therefore everything in the Bible, from Genesis to the Revelation, is God-breathed.  Since God is perfect, what he does is perfect, so the Bible is without error in everything it speaks of."

Although not a technical definition, this is the basic idea that is meant by the term "Biblical inerrancy".  This foundational belief leads to the next one:

"Good Christians believe everything the Bible says and never doubt it, regardless of what modern scholarship and science discovers. If there is a discrepancy between something in modern scholarship or science and the words of the Bible, good Christians will always hold to the Bible teaching and reject or doubt the modern discoveries."

Good, faithful people are taught that there are no discrepancies or contradictions in the scripture.  Or, if there are things that seem like contradictions, there is a way to "harmonize" the divergent facts and still hold to the doctrine of inerrancy.

Although this seems like a very "high" view of scripture, and very worshipful and faithful, there is an underlying problem that such a view of scripture sets up.  With such a view of the Bible, IF an error is found, the entire Bible is cast under suspicion.  "If there is an error there...how can I be sure that there aren't errors in other places as well?  And if God didn't write the Bible perfectly, then how can I trust that I can follow it's teachings to find eternal life? How can I tell where it is true and where it is in error?"

Thus, under the idea of Biblical inerrancy, a single discrepancy or contradiction or error found in the Biblical texts can actual derail a person's entire faith in Jesus, and make their version of Christianity fall to pieces like a house of cards.

Likewise, people on the outside of Christianity looking in feel that they could NEVER become a Christian, because they would have to accept the Bible as inerrant, a position which is intellectually impossible for them to accept.

As a pastor, I want to help my people to a more secure foundation for their faith.  As a father, I want to lead my wife and children to a more secure foundation for their faith.  I do not want them to feel that they either have to believe in modern scholarship and science OR the Bible.  I want to help people develop ideas about the Bible that actually work in our modern age for people inside and outside the Christian faith.

But it is a risky thing to even speak of what the next posts will discuss - glaring problems with the doctrine of inerrancy, starting with the 2nd chapter of the Bible.

Why this blog?

Here's a newsflash.  My name is not Chris.  My last name is not Christianity.

I am an American Christian man.  I have worked as a pastor for over 20 years, picking up a bachelor degree at a Christian liberal arts university and a Master in Theology at a seminary along the way.

But I am not the person I was when I started down this path toward career Christian leadership.  Although once comfortable with the term "evangelical" to describe myself, I find myself aligning less and less with the beliefs and practices of evangelical Christianity.

I am a firm believer in Jesus Christ as the Messiah, the Son of God.  I affirm the Apostle's Creed. But I cannot accept much of what is required of "evangelical Christians" to believe and do.

My hope in writing this blog is to give me a place to safely and honestly share my theological wonderings and wanderings.  I hope it may become a place where others who are walking a similar spiritual path as myself may find encouragement and the courage to follow our convictions.

If you're reading this, welcome.  And may God's grace be with you.