A Fresh Perspective

A good number of evangelical Christians self-identify as Bible believers. It’s a peculiar way for a Christian to self-identify when you think about it. A Christian is someone who has some kind of relationship to Christ. After all Christ is part of the word  Christian . And yet for a good number of evangelical Christians Bible believer is the term of choice. It’s not accurate though, because no self-identified Bible believer actually believes the whole Bible — at least not in the way they claim to. Read post at Baptist News Global .

What was behind Jesus’s use of scripture? In my  last blog , I noted that there were some scriptures Jesus let go of while others he held on to, some scriptures he ignored while others he emphasized, some scriptures he dismissed while others he applied to his own mission and ministry. What guided his process of sorting through the inconsistencies, contradictions, different perspectives, and theological views in his Hebrew traditions and scriptures to discover and discern God’s will for his life and for the world? The scriptures themselves that pass on to us the Jesus traditions give us hints. The answer is not explicit, but it is implicit. In the Synoptic Gospels, before Jesus begins his ministry, he encounters God at his baptism by John. Mark’s version says, And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” (...

What can Jesus teach us about appropriating scripture for the purpose of discovering and fulfilling God’s will today? The passage in Luke 4:16-30, which sets forth Jesus’s program, is very instructive in this regard. It’s difficult to know how much of this passage, if any, is historical and how much is purely theological, since the passage is unique to Luke. Luke is setting forth the mission and agenda of Jesus as he understands it. What I find fascinating is how Luke presents Jesus’s use of scripture and what we can learn from it. First, we learn from Jesus that there are scriptures we need to let go of because they simply do not apply to us and they have nothing to do with God’s will for us today.  Luke says, When Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “Th...

The story of Jesus presented in our canonical Gospels has transformative power. Minister and author John Ortburg tells about a friend of the family who became really upset when her daughter told her that someone at school had been talking to her about God. She wanted nothing to do with God, or so she thought. Nor did she want her daughter to have anything to do with God. That night, however, she couldn’t sleep. For some reason around midnight she got up, went downstairs, and picked up a Bible. She couldn’t remember the last time she had even held a Bible, let alone read one. But like many folks who are not religious she did have a Bible in the house. When she opened it she noticed it was divided between an “old” part and a “new” part. She decided to start with the new part. So, in the still of the night she began to read the Gospel of Matthew. Several hours later when she was half-way through the Gospel of John she realized that “she had fallen in love with the character of Jesus.” Sh...

There are some Christians who give the Bible godlike homage. It might as well have come floating down from heaven on the wings of angels. Should we ascribe to the Bible divine status? In Nazi Germany a Jewish fugitive fleeing for his life came to a small town. He sought out the house of the Christian pastor, hoping to find refuge. He knocked on the door and when the pastor opened it, he told his story and asked if he could stay a few days until it was safe to travel again. The pastor invited him to step inside and wait. The pastor knew that if this young man was caught hiding there the whole town would be held accountable and suffer greatly. So immediately he withdrew to his prayer room and closed the door. He asked God for guidance and then opened his Bible. He happened to come upon the verse in John’s Gospel that says, “It is better for one man to die, than for the whole people to parish.” He knew he had his answer. So he sent the man away. Later that night an angel appear...

This is a kind of reverse reversal story. Much of Luke’s Gospel is about Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem , but these two disciples, possibly a husband and wife, are leaving Jerusalem . They are on the road to Emmaus, but it’s not like they were going anywhere in particular, they are simply leaving Jerusalem , because for them the story of Jesus had ended, and it ended badly, it ended in tragedy. The one in whom they had placed their hope for the redemption of Israel was rejected and crucified. But then something happens. They meet a stranger along the way. And as a result of this encounter, hope is reborn, a new faith is ignited that reverses the reversal – that turns them around and sets them on a new direction. How many times has the direction of your life changed because of an encounter with God, because you met the living Christ? Hopefully, at least once. Possibly, many times. This appearance story, I believe, sketches out the contexts where such encounters can occur, whe...

In a recent piece for the Washington Post E. J. Dionne beautifully wrote of our imperfect quest for the truth. Christians need to humbly acknowledge, wrote Dionne, how “imperfectly human beings understand the divine” and how, “over the history of faith, there have been occasions when ‘a supposedly changeless truth has changed.’” Truth exists, but our experience of it is limited and fallible. Christians would do well to humbly acknowledge that our sacred texts are also limited and fallible. Jesus did. According to the Gospels, Jesus had no problem dismissing, rejecting, and reinterpreting the sacred texts within his Jewish tradition. For example, some religious authorities in Jesus’ day abusively used Deut. 24:1 to justify divorcing a wife for any reason whatsoever, very much the same way religious authorities today abusively use Scripture to condemn the LGBT community, condone violence, and subjugate women in the home and in the church.     Jesus dismisse...

            No biblical inerrantist who claims to apply the Bible literally actually does. Consider these examples.             In 1 Peter 3:3 Christian wives are told not to braid their hair or wear gold ornaments or fine clothing (see also 1 Tim. 2:9). How many literalists do you know who apply that literally?             In 1 Corinthians 14:33b-35 the Law is invoked to silence women in the church. They are not permitted to speak or even ask questions in the assembled congregation. Do you know of any church claiming to believe all the Bible (God said it and that settles it) who actually practices this? (Many progressives believe this passage was inserted into the letter by a later Christian scribe as a reaction to Paul’s egalitarian practice of including women in ministry and leadership; see 1 Cor. 11:5; Rom. 16:3-16; Gal. 3:28.)  ...

I believe biblical texts reflect degrees or levels of inspiration. Our ability to discern the redemptive value of a biblical text and to apply it as an instrument of transformation largely depends on our state of spiritual consciousness and our capacity for spiritual discernment. Frankly, it depends on whether or not we know God, whether or not we have had authentic God encounter.     Some biblical texts are simply regressive. Those texts, for example, that sanction divine violence are most likely projections of the community’s fears, insecurities, and blood thirst. When we read accounts of God ordering Israel to put an entire civilization under the ban, to kill men, women, children, animals, and destroy everything, we know that cannot possibly be the God of Jesus. Those of us who have encountered the God of Jesus know that the God who Jesus says loves his or her enemies would never order genocide. Some biblical texts are human projections that reflect humankind’s ...

New Testament scholar Marcus Borg tells a wonderful story illustrating two different ways to approach Scripture. For many years Borg taught an introductory-level Bible course at Oregon State University . At the beginning of the class, he always informed the students that the course would be taught from the perspective of the academic discipline of biblical scholarship. Borg would tell them that they didn’t have to change their beliefs, but to do well in the class they would have to be willing to look at the Bible from that viewpoint.  He explained that the Bible is the product of two ancient communities. The Hebrew Bible is the product of ancient Israel , the Christian Testament is the product of the early Christian movement. As such, the Bible tells us not how God sees things, but how those two ancient communities saw their relationship with God.   R oughly 20 percent of the students that took the course believed that the Bible was inerrant (literally the Word of G...

One of the most important tasks we engage in as a Christian community is the task of interpreting and applying the Christian Scriptures to our personal and communal lives. But reading (understanding and interpreting) the Bible in ways that can be transformational can be challenging. One Bible passage says one thing, while another Bible passage seems to contradict it. How do we know what to take seriously as “God’s Word” to us and what should be taken with less seriousness, or perhaps even disregarded because of the flawed theology of the biblical writer? And how do we make the distinction?   The early Christ followers give us a key to reading and applying sacred Scripture. In Acts 2, Luke presents an account of early Christian preaching. Peter speaks to the Jewish community in Jerusalem in light of the outpouring of God’s Spirit on Jesus’ disciples on the day of Pentecost. Bible scholars point out that Luke tells the story Luke’s way, giving it his own theological twist and e...