A Fresh Perspective

“Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly” (Matt. 1:18–19). Engagement in that culture was a legal contract. You couldn’t just say, “I’ve had second thoughts, I don’t want to be engaged anymore.” It could be broken only by going to court. It was as binding as marriage. So Joseph and Mary were engaged and may have been engaged for years. Often marriages were arranged by parents years ahead of time. Before they consummate their marriage, Joseph discovers that Mary is pregnant. Matthew says that Joseph is “a righteous man.” For many in that culture that meant that Joseph kept the law of God, he revered the law of God as holy and sought to obey it. That sounds good, but is slavish obedience to the law—to what...

Recently in a webcast, Richard Rohr offered a simple rule of thumb for discerning, evaluating, and judging the redemptive value of biblical texts. The first question to ask of any biblical text, he said, is not, “How does this text help me, save me, guide me?” Those are questions that leave the ego in charge. The first question to ask is: What does this text say about God? How is God imaged in the text? How does the text portray God? Father Rohr says: If the God depicted and imaged in the text is operating at a level lesser than the best person you know, then you know that the text is not presenting an authentic revelation of God. If the God portrayed in that text is not as just or loving or compassionate or understanding or gracious or forgiving or kind or fair as the best person you know, then you know it can’t be a reliable portrait of God. When we read accounts of God ordering Israel to put an entire civilization under the ban—to kill men, women, children, animals, and d...