The Misuse of Scripture (Southern Baptists seem to lead the way)



When our president issued his executive order giving deportation relief to millions of undocumented people in our country, as part of his explanation he quoted Scripture: “You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:9; also 22:21). This angered a number of conservative Christians who apparently felt they had a monopoly on the Bible.

Mark Coppenger, professor of Christian apologetics at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote a piece for the Religion News Service claiming that the President misused Scripture by running “roughshod over context.”

The irony of this is that the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution in 2011 quoting this very Scripture as a basis for compassionate action. The resolution declared: “The Scriptures call us, in imitation of God Himself, to show compassion and justice for the sojourner and alien among us.” Following that declaration the Scripture the President quoted was listed along with several others.

Did Coppenger change his mind or did he never support the SBC resolution to begin with? My purpose here is not to critique Coppenger’s hypocritical hermeneutic. Mainline Biblical interpreters can easily tear his shoddy reasoning apart (see Mark Silk’s excellent critique at the same website).

The question I want to ask is: Could there be some bias at work behind the argument that the President misused Scripture? Could it be a general animosity toward our President? Could it be a commitment to a political ideology or party? Or could there be some other bias or interest at work? I can’t make that judgment, but clearly some sort of bias is behind Coppenger’s argument.

Coppenger proves the point that I frequently make about our use and misuse of the Bible. Our biases (and we all have them) influence how we appropriate Scripture for good or ill.

So why not apply Scripture with a bias toward love? This is what Jesus seemed to do in his use of Scripture. And the most enlightened biblical texts suggest as much:

 “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13). “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love” (Gal. 5:6). 

 “Therefore, be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us . . .”  (Eph. 5:1-2).

 “Above all, clothe yourself with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (Col. 3:14). 

 “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God: everyone who loves is from God . . . Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. . . . God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them” (1 John 4:7-8, 16).

 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matt. 22:36-40).

If Dr. Coppenger and all the other conservative Christians who are crying “foul” at the President’s use of Scripture would allow the above Scriptures to shape their hearts, then we wouldn’t have to have this conversation.

My principle is simple: Only love provides the context for appropriating Scripture rightly.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Getting to the Heart of the Matter (A sermon from Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23)

It is clear, I think, that this Gospel text is a denouncement by Jesus of the way many Jewish religious leaders in his day used their religious faith in harmful, life-diminishing ways. That much is obvious. However, this is a text, in my judgment, that has been too often misread and misapplied. Some Christians use this text to draw, in my opinion, an inappropriate distinction between scripture and tradition. They generally lock on to verse 8 where Jesus is purported as saying, “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” They argue that human tradition is bad, while the commandment of God, which they tend to identify as scripture as a whole is good.  So they make this rigid distinction between tradition and scripture The problem with that explanation is that the mention of “human tradition” in verse 8 is not a reference to all tradition. It’s a reference to the particular way these Jewish leaders were interpreting and applying that tradition. Scripture it
Read more

Going Deeper (A sermon from Luke 5:1-11)

The story I read earlier from Luke 5, which is today’s sermon text, is Luke’s account of the call of Peter to be a disciple of Jesus. It’s different than the other two versions in the Gospels. In Mark’s account, which is followed by Matthew, Peter and his brother, Andrew, are by the seaside, apparently attending to their nets, when Jesus calls them to follow him. They immediately leave their nets and follow Jesus. That’s one version of the call of Simon Peter given by Mark and Matthew. In John’s account, Jesus calls Andrew first, who was not at the seaside fishing or attending nets at all, but with John the Baptist at the time. In John’s version Andrew is a follower of John the Baptist. He heeds the call, then goes out and finds his brother, Peter, and brings him to Jesus. Now, the reason I call attention to this is to remind you that we are not reading historical reports. There are echoes of memories in these stories, but these stories function more like parables crafted for the purpo
Read more

Crippling spirits and the liberating power of Christ (Luke 13:10-17)

The healing stories in our Gospels are never just about physical healing, they always have spiritual and theological meanings. The woman in our story had been plagued by a crippling spirit for eighteen years. It kept her bent over and unable to stand up. Can you see the fairly obvious symbolical and spiritual implications here? A crippling spirit of this kind can diminish our sense of worth and value. We find ourselves spiritually and emotionally and psychologically unable to stand straight and take our rightful place in the realm of God. Jesus calls the woman he heals in our story a “daughter of Abraham.” A daughter of Abraham who has been bound by Satan eighteen long years. Satan here is a symbol for the crippling spirit, the spirit that has kept her from living life in its fullness in God’s kingdom. But she is still a daughter of Abraham. She is still a daughter of God. She is still God’s chosen. God’s beloved. Jesus sees through and beyond the crippling spirit. Can we? A
Read more