Religious heretics

Yesterday I posted this thought on Facebook:

Taking the Bible at face value & obeying it will almost always make you a heretic to religious people.

I wanted to unpack a little bit what I was thinking when I wrote it.

First, we're a very religious society. While I totally oppose the concept that we in the United States have every been, are now, or should be in the future a "Christian" nation, there is little debate that we're one of the most religious societies on earth.

Second, religion has its ups and downs. We all have religious practices, to one degree or another, and those practices can have deep meaning and impact on our lives. They can also become places of pride, contention, and downright violence in proving who is right.

Third, religion has tended throughout history to be user and usee when it comes to political clout, power and influence. Religion, once it becomes the accepted practice, does not want to lose its influence, so it seeks to maintain the status quo and hold on to a position of power.

When the early church has no clout, no social capital, it lived on the margins of society and had its most incredible growth and impact EVER. The rise of the church in the first 300 years is nothing short of amazing. But in the 4th century, as the church became the institution of the social norm, it moved away from the margins and into the center. It became sluggish and dull, fat on the feeling of stability and power.

And so has it been for nearly 1700 years since.

Those who rise up and challenge the established religion, often by a humble return and obedience to the core passages of the Scriptures, are labelled as heretics because they challenge the position of power that the religious structures and leaders have long held.

I believe God opposes these positions of power, and challenges us instead to live on the margins, influencing society through acts of service to the quartet of the vulnerable, speaking prophetically to the thrones of power that seek only to maintain their place of favor, even at the cost of those most vulnerable. To love God and neighbor with such reckless abandon that it cannot be dismissed nor bought nor bribed.

That's the kind of heretic I want to be.

Bible quoting cheerleaders

One of the recent flaps in US religious circles has been the recent ruling that cheerleaders at Lakeview-Fort Oglethorp High School can no longer use Bible verses on the banners that the football team breaks through before games. There has been much discussion about whether or not uniform-wearing cheerleaders represent the school (in which case the verses constitute school support for religion) or only themselves (in which case it's a matter of freedom of religious expression.

Choosing between the two might prove a conundrum.

Unless more spiritually mature heads prevail. I have 2 questions, and neither of them is about the constitutionality of the case:

1. Why would believers consider it profitable to write verses on banners that will be broken through? I would think the symbolism alone would be enough to put us off, not to mention the silly misapplication of Bible verses. [As a former athlete, I am amazed at the misuse--including my own once or twice--of verses like quoting "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" before a bench press.]

2. How would verses on banners advance the kingdom of heaven?

We continue to promote a civil American religion that does not resemble worship of the God revealed in Jesus.

Boiling young goats...

A couple of weeks ago I was on a plane. I was flying Southwest, something I haven't done as much since moving to Dallas. It's great to only be 15 minutes from DFW. But I was A1, first on the plane, and firmly ensconced in the exit row aisle seat.

The flight was fairly full, and about 3/4 of the way through boarding, a man sat in the middle seat next to me. He wasn't a big guy, so I didn't think too much of it. But he had a big Bible. One of those big King James versions, well worn leather. Lot's of study notes in the margin.

I'm about 95% sure he was from an independent Baptist, KJV-only, premillenial, extremely conservative tradition. I myself spent some time in that tradition. About 6 months. For a girl. Then I got run off for my views on Christian rock music. But that's another story, one I have told here...

As we started to take off, I commented to him, nodding at the Bible, "good reading?" "The best," he said, and then made several platitudes about the inspiration of every word, and how God speaks to us in all of it.

It's not that I disagree with that statement. I don't. I very much agree that God speaks to us through the Bible. But the platitudenal way he said it struck me as odd. Not odd as in an unusual thing that I wasn't familiar with, but odd as in the "my system requires me to jump through all the hoops necessary to make the Bible fit my belief system" odd. There is a form of inerrancy that mandates a manipulation of texts to fit a man-made system of belief about the Bible. I've written about it before. I think it's bibliolatry.

So instead of just letting it go at this point, I threw out one of my favorite statements--"tough to find some good stuff in Leviticus where God speaks to us today..." and before I could go on he had already jumped in with the (dare I say very-looking-down-on-the-poor-soul-next-to-him) attitudenal "if you know what you're looking for, God can speak to you through every word in Leviticus."

Hmm. Another good opp to let the conversation subside. But I just couldn't.

"So why do you think that it commands us to 'not boil a young goat in its mother's milk'? And, since every Bible teach I know of says that when a command appears multiple times, what should we make of the fact that this command is so important as to warrant not one but two appearances?"

"Interesting" was his only reply. Little did I know the worms that were festering. But honestly I started working on something else, and he started thumbing through the very large concordance at the back of his larger Bible, looking up various passages. I kinda stopped paying attention.

But as we touched down in San Antonio, he turns my way and says, "I think I've got your answers for you." Honestly, I was dumbstruck. Had I asked any questions? But answers he had, two to be exact. And quite frankly, I can't remember exactly what they were. Right now I wished I had paid better attention. All I remember is that they were some vague things that evangelicals generally believe, like one had something to do with the importance of family relationships, that he was now using these verses as pretexts for.

Now again, before you get your stakes out for heretic-burning, let me restate that I love the Bible. I believe it is God's story shared with us. Leviticus has many things that are deep and abiding truths that still speak to us today. But quite frankly, someone's man-made system of biblical interpretation that cannot allow that many commands in that part of the book were meant only for a group of nomad/shepherds, who for generations had lived as slaves in another culture, but who now were moving into new areas both urban and rural, has no choice but to develop a bunch of off-the-wall explanations to make verses still be relevant in some way today. So don't boil a young goat in its mother's milk has to do with honoring family relations.

As I told Sandra this story, she asked a great question: what do you think that guy is telling his friends about this encounter? Hmm, that made me think. Hard. Was I any better at moving him toward a deeper faith and understanding of God and the Bible than he was me? Does he tell his friends about this poor liberal almost-Christian he met on a plane, who didn't believe in "inerrant inspiration of the Bible"?

I hope...well, I'm not sure what I hope. I hope that the God who motivates us both to be passionate about understanding and obeying him reveals himself to us both.

Modern Church Translation

This is pretty funny. And then again not so much. Here's an excerpt:

James 4:17
17 Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it.-New Living Translation

17 Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it. Unless, of course, you instead give money to some type of organization that will do it for you. In this way you will be absolved from all responsibility to do anything and can sleep at night with a clean conscience.- Modern Church Translation

Listen to your kidneys...

I was reminded this morning that not everyone believes that the heart is the seat of your emotions and will. We English speakers do, and I know that the Greeks in the time of Jesus did too, so it's a long tradition to see the blood-pumping muscle as also the emotion and will-pumper.

But as I was reading Psalm 16, I came to verse 7, which in a direct translation of the Hebrew would say something like this:

"I bless YHWH who gives me counsel; in the night also my kidneys instruct me."

My kidneys instruct me every night, although usually they use the bladder as interpreter. But you gotta listen to your kidneys when they talk.

Go ahead and check me out on this. You'll find it's true. Then I dare you to say to your significant other, "I love you with both my kidneys" and see what the romantic effect is.

It's biblical.

Uh, what???

I have had several KJV only friends in life, but this guy takes the cake. What kind of pee-er are you?

The hermeneutics quiz

I dare you to take this quiz. There is no question in my mind that somewhere in here lies much of the differences between followers of Jesus in today's world. The article identies conservatives, moderates and progressives, based on your score of 20 questions. I would love to hear your score and why you think the way you do. You can also go on CT's Out of Ur blog and discuss it here...

Accomodation and Naturalism

FYI, this is a continuation of a discussion started at http://stimulation81.blogspot.com/2007/09/does-science-disprove-my-view-of-bible.html. You might want to catch up there if something here doesn't make sense...

The 7-foot ninja is not a fan of poor thinking of inconsistent reasoning. And he's certainly not going to let me or anyone else get away with our own constructs. Here's a quote from is post:

What about the idea of accommodation, which Gordon invokes and you do as well? The idea that God withheld the whole truth from the ancient Israelites and just adopted the common cultural outlook to somehow express his word through is by no means a new thought. As a formal theory it goes back at least to J.S. Semler well over 200 years ago. The idea that we today have reached the maturity and intellectual capacity to really grasp what God has to say smacks of the chronological snobbery that C.S. Lewis so disdained. This is not postmodern, but thoroughly "modern".

I make no claims that we have "reached the maturity and intellectual capacity" to speak accurately for God. I would go so far as to say that 1,000 years from now those alive then will be questioning our understanding of both Science and Theology on various aspects. They will have progressed in the accumulation and sharing of knowledge in ways we can't imagine, just like we have in the previous 1,000 years. But any smarter? I doubt it. And certainly not any more mature, especially in the things that matter, like practicing the things that the Bible calls "wisdom" or avoiding the things of "fools."

I do however think that there is some merit to the idea of progressive revelation. God did not reveal the whole picture to those who lived before Jesus. And while I fully believe that Jesus' sacrifice was complete for our redemption, I don't think we know everything today that there is to know about that either.

Yes, God accomodates his communication to people for the situation that they are in. He speaks in their language, within their cultural limits, in ways they can understand. Does this mean he accomodates his message? No, not necessarily. And it certainly doesn't mean he waters down his message. Does it mean that we sometimes hear our own voices--whether our own wishes or our cultural norms or whatever--and attribute God's voice to them? Absolutely not. We do this both inside and outside the church, speaking for God or in the name of God in such definite terms on issues that we may have simply made up or we may be crazy or whatever. Do pomos often go overboard and throw out the baby with the bathwater on this accomodation idea? Sure they do.

Then he says, quoting someone who wrote on another blog I referenced:

Gordon says, "If the purpose of the Hebrew creation story was not to provide Israel (or us) with accurate scientific knowledge about the cosmos, why then do so many Christians reject any version of natural history that fails to conform to the Hebrew account?" In response I ask you, "If 'natural history' and 'science' by contemporary definitions automatically exclude God and his intervention in the world, why then do so many Christians accept the presuppositions of such theories and the slanted results that they produce?"

I do not think that "natural history" and/or "science" do automatically exclude God. Every human being has levels of constructs by which they view the world. As you have often pointed out, we rarely examine these constructs, or what Lesslie Newbigin called "plausibility structures" in his great book "The Gospel in a Pluralist Society." I on the other hand, in the proper contexts, love to deconstruct my own and others constructs. I'm wrong (probably a lot) in my assessents. I do it way too much for most of my Christian friends, including my own wife. But I think I do it BECAUSE I'm often proven wrong on things, not because I think I'm right on things. Perhaps I'm getting off point here, but I have come to see at least one aspect of maturity as being a healthy self-criticism. When I was 22, there were 4,208 things I knew to be true about theology, science, philosophy, etc. They were black and white. Now there are only 4 or 5 that I'm willing to stake my life on being true. I think that I have matured, but I certainly don't think that means I can speak for God with his authority on hundreds of topics and viewpoints.

So back to the matter at hand--just because (some, most, even all) materialistic scientists say that the theory of evolution denies the existence of God does not mean that evolutionary theory isn't a plausible scientific theory, anymore than just because Tim LaHaye says that the Bible clearly teaches a pre-trib rapture, premillenial eschatology means that if he's wrong (I think he is) Jesus isn't coming back at all (which I believe him to be).

Unscientific or non-scientific? Reply to BWolf30 #2

Here's another quote from the 7-foot ninja:

Next, there is a big difference between "'inaccurate' scientific facts" and non-scientific statements based on a phenomenal point of view. The Bible never does claim to be a scientific manual, but to acknowledge this and then claim error by contemporary "scientific" standards, albeit purposeful error, doesn't follow. Non-scientific doesn't mean unscientific.

I almost didn't make a post to reply to this, because I wasn't sure it was that vital to the discussion. But then I changed my mind. I'm going to assume that by "phenomenal point of view" you mean that because of the point of view of an ancient Hebrew--i.e. without microscope, telescope, advanced mathematics, geological understanding of plate tectonics, etc.--they make non-scientific statements that to us, if viewed as scientific commentary, would be inaccurate, but they are really just points of view based on the available information to that ancient Hebrew. In other words, when I wake up and say "Look at the beautiful sunrise" instead of "Look at the viewing of the sun as the earth rotates on its axis" you don't judge my first statement as a scientific inaccuracy. If that's what you mean, I think I agree with you.

But if that is what they are, non-scientific statements, then why do so many Evangelical Christians today take them to mean scientific things?

Scientific facts should be used carefully in situations of philosophic and theological discussion. Today's "understanding" of the human genome could become tomorrow's earth-centric solar system.

My main point is that the whole creation-science movement (of which I was long a part, at least in my belief) tries very hard to make the Bible say scientific things when it isn't. And even more egregious is that they make belief in these scientific biblical statements mandatory for being a True Christian.

Postmodernity and the Emerging Church

BWolf30--otherwise known as the 7-foot ninja and the golfer-who-wishes-he-could-beat-me posted a response to my http://stimulation81.blogspot.com/2007/09/does-science-disprove-my-view-of-bible.html entry. I thought I would create a new discussion on his thoughts.

7-foot ninja is extremely brilliant, probably too much so for his own good. And that's my first response to his post--this blog is much more (for me) about pop issues among Jesus followers and their impact on the world than it is about intellectual arguments for or against postmodernity. Personally, as much as I hate to admit it, I am probably not a great thinker or philosopher at the top level, the level that BWolf likes to read. As I've admitted before, I have only dabbled in the academic readings of postmodernity (sometimes referred to below as "pomo"), and BWolf is far more down that road than I am. So, even though he hates it when I don't argue with him, there are times where I just need to defer to his wider reading at the academic/philosophic level.

But having said that, he asks some great questions, which I want to take a few posts to discuss. I'll try to break them up enough that each post isn't massively long-winded, a trait that both BWolf and I have a propensity for. Let me start with his quote:

you start out ambiguously by saying "Did the writers of the Bible follow the stories and worldviews and cultural values of their time?" This needs some serious clarification before further discussion - does this mean that the Bible is inevitably written in the current language and with reference to contemporary cultural understandings, which in and of itself is not a profound or threatening position? or does it mean the much stronger (and currently trendy) claim that all expressions of meaning are internal to their specific cultural situation and can't be adequately expressed or transmitted to other times or places, which is a subtle cultural relativism? or that the Bible is basically unoriginal and arose simultaneously with contemporary religions through borrowing, modifying, etc., which is basically a postmodernized historicism?

Yes, I believe that the Bible was written "in the current language and with reference to contemporary cultural understandings" of the writer. I don't think that inspiration requires the overcoming of cultural inaccuracies in the biblical writers. Christian scholars of most stripes have long recognized the importance of understanding culture to understand the Bible, something BWolf says later. I would not dispute that. His second question asks if I mean that (in light of my leaning to postmodern thought) do I think that the meanings and expressions of the biblical writers cannot be "adequately expressed or transmitted" in today's language and culture. No way! I do still believe that the message of the Bible is primarily the message that God intended to convey in that time and place, and there isn't this freedom of reinterpreting everything that many in the pomo and emergent church (EC) crowds can be guilty of.

The truth is that each of us has the propensity to make the Bible mean what we think it means, whether we are modern, postmodern, premodern, unmodern, antimodern, hypermodern, whatever. So modern Evangelicals (whatever that animal is--I'm obviously generalizing) take their interpretation of the Bible and evaluate all other interpretations and philosophies and theologies next to their own. EC believers do the same. We all fall into the same trap of comparing everything to our own beliefs and rejecting anything that is different, sometimes without consideration.

There is some value to this. No one wants to fall down the slippery slope of saying that all viewpoints are valid. But we are usually most blind (by definition) to our own blind spots. There should be a healthy self-critique of our own theology and practice. Have some EC/pomo christians taken this too far? Absolutely. Have some Evangelicals not considered their own positions adequately enough in light of EC/pomo criticism? Absolutely.

As to BWolf's final question in the quote above--if the Bible borrowed certain stories from the culture at large, is that a problem? In the days described in the early Bible books, most things weren't written down, they were told. The creation and flood stories were told for centuries before someone wrote them down. Does that mean they were uninspired or plagiarized when the biblical writer wrote them the first time? I don't think so. God inspired the writers to write down the oral histories that he wanted to use to convey his message to them, and eventually to us. I believe wholeheartedly that that message is still the same message for us as it was 4,000+ years ago, which makes me out of step with pomo thinking. I also believe that many believers today have missed parts of that message because they canonize the interpretation of their favorite pop Christian leaders and turn it into a rote, homogenized, pasteurized theology that lacks some of the life God intended.

More to come.

Does Science Disprove my View of the Bible?

We've talked in the past about how Evangelicals today tend to approach the Bible. Steve Martin, who commented on my last post and blogs over at http://evanevodialogue.blogspot.com/, had a guest blogger recently who has an excellent post on how Modernity has infected the Evangelical reading of scripture...

Did the writers of the Bible follow the stories and worldviews and cultural values of their time? Did they write "inaccurate" scientific facts like those based on ancient cosmology, where the universe is basically a globe, the earth is flat, the stars are attached to the globe's dome, and above that dome is an ocean of water? Of course they did.

Gordon, the guest blogger, puts this idea out on a hypothetical conversation after Moses comes down off Mount Sinai...

“Hey guys, check this out. God just told me about creation and guess what? You’re never gonna believe this, but the earth is actually round! No kidding! And there is no solid firmament holding back an ocean of water above us either—can you believe those silly Egyptians? No wonder God kicked their butt! And the earth is actually whirling though space at incredible speeds with the other planets, and there are two more planets that we didn’t even know about! As soon as we get to the PromisedLand, we’re starting a university!”

This would have been nonsense to the Hebrews, just like the Copernican/Galilean view was nonsense to the Church's leaders in their day. It's the proverbial problem of trying to describe water to a fish. Worldviews are usually so entrenched that that must be changed gradually over time. And God had much more important things he was teaching this group of Hebrews under Moses than scientifically accurate cosmology.

The Bible reveals God's love to us. It is the story of his work of redemption. It is not an instruction manual on science, history, or even theology, per se. It is a revelation. It displays a loving God who works passionately to pursue and redeem a bunch of obstinate people that reject him over and over. The Writings ought to be treated with the highest respect because of what they reveal about God and about life. But just because the scientific facts of today don't correlate to the (misunderstood or mysterious) scientific facts of yesterday does NOT mean that the Bible is untrustworthy when it comes to revealing God's nature and redemptive power.