A Fresh Perspective

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...

Biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan argues in his book, God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now , that in the biblical tradition, both Old and New Testaments, two incompatible and contradictory explanations of God’s final victory over the evil and injustice of the world run side by side, often in the same biblical books. One explanation is extermination. It is reflected in the Noachic solution to evil in the world, namely, the complete destruction of the wicked.  Crossan writes, "In this vision, God’s solution to the problem of human violence is the Great Final Battle in which good triumphs over evil—and triumphs, let us be clear, by divine violence. The symbolic place of that cosmic cleanup as cosmic slaughter is at Har Magiddo in Hebrew (hence our English “Armageddon”), the mountain pass where the spine of Israel’s hill country cuts westward toward the coast and skirts a great plain suitable for battle." Examples of this approach can be found in Mica...

As a result of the Supreme Court’s refusal to take up cases seeking to overturn decisions that struck down bans on gay marriage, same-sex marriage is now legal in 24 states. And that number is likely to expand in the near future. To celebrate this progress I pulled out my Bob Dylan CD to hear Dylan wail, “The Times They are A Changin.’” The moral arc of history just bent a little more toward justice.  I believe MLK would say, “Amen.”   The church should be setting the pace. All the wrangling we do over a handful of biblical texts (Lev. 18:22/20:13; 1 Cor. 6:9; Rom. 1:26-27; and 1 Tim. 1:10) that condemn some form of same-sex relations is such a waste of time. In terms of the Christian’s practical discipleship to Jesus, all that matters is how well we love one another. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the handful of texts above which condemn some deviant form of same-sex behavior (like pederasty, master-slave sex, temple prostitution, or sexual excess) act...

Part 1 (Aug., State Journal) Today and in my next two articles I will be exploring the question: What should a modern day, Jesus inspired sexual ethic look like for Christians who aspire to follow Jesus? Jesus, of course, does not address this subject directly in the Gospels. But he does speak to it indirectly. By way of introduction we should first ask: Does the Bible as a whole teach a clear sexual ethic? It does not. The sexual mores condoned and practiced in the Old Testament Scriptures almost always favor patriarchal preferences and prejudices. Consider the following examples: (1) Polygamy (having many wives) and concubinage (a woman living with a man to whom she is not married) were regularly practiced and accepted as normative in the Old Testament without a single word of condemnation by a biblical writer. (2) Prostitution was considered quite natural and necessary in patriarchal biblical times as a safeguard for the virginity of brides and property rights o...

Keep in mind that stories and particularly the parables of Jesus may mean different things, have different emphases in different contexts. It’s certainly possible that a story in the original life-setting of Jesus meant one thing, and then in the life-setting of the church years later meant something else. And no doubt these stories were modified and altered as they were orally passed down several decades before taking a particular written form. This is why New Testament scholars remind us that it is very, very difficult to speak with any certainty about the original form of a story, because the story has been modified through the many retellings of the story. It is helpful, I think, to consider this story about the father and his two sons (which is very different than Luke’s story about a father and two sons) in light of its placement in Matthew’s Gospel. Just prior to this story Jesus has engaged in three prophetic acts – he led a peaceful procession into Jerusalem on a donkey, ...

Vickie Beeching , the widely acclaimed Christian songwriter and performer who recently came out as gay, is a superb example of how LGBT Christians can help the church be the church. The path forward, however, will not be without setbacks, obstacles, and many twists and turns.  Brian McLaren recently attended a forum on global human rights for LGBT persons where he recommended finding ways to help religious leaders move incrementally along a spectrum with four spaces: Zone 1: Promote violence against and stigmatization of gay people in the name of God and religion.   Zone 2: Oppose violence but uphold stigmatization of gay people in the name of God and religion.   Zone 3: Oppose violence and seek to reduce stigmatization of gay people in the name of God and religion.   Zone 4: Oppose violence and replace stigmatization with equality in the name of God and religion. Blogger Fred Clark (Slacktivist) has noted that these zones do not reflect “a good...

The stories Jesus told enabled him to both conceal and reveal truth. There were people in the high ranks of the Jewish religious establishment who were completely closed to Jesus’ teaching – they were set on getting rid of Jesus at the first opportunity. The stories Jesus told had a way of conveying truth in a kind of veiled way. On the other hand, there was perhaps no better way of trying to get through to people who had their defenses up. One of things that often blocks spiritual teaching – one reason we do not receive spiritual teaching very well - is because of our assumption that we already know. And this is why direct teaching that counters what we think we know hardly ever gets through, because we react in anger and defensiveness. It may be teaching that we need to hear, but we can’t hear it because we think we already know, and the first thing we want to do is prove the other person wrong. So Jesus tells stories. We are naturally drawn into a story. And the stories Jes...