In the context of conservative churches, this saying has become a dangerous inducement to abandon Christian principles in the name of “doing something” about evil. All of that love your enemy, don’t seek revenge, wait on the Lord stuff just doesn’t cut it. Christian men need to do something about evil. With their tongues. With their fists. With their guns. Otherwise… well, you know what the quote says.

And yes, the Bible says we are here to serve and not to lord it over others. Says that we are citizens of heaven and not of this world. But we have to do something about evil! With our tongues. With our e-mails. With our vote. Otherwise… well, you know what the quote says.

What about things like non-violent resistance? What about denouncing injustice from outside the system? What about overcoming evil with good rather than answering it with evil? What about prayer? Nope. Sorry. Not good enough.

What about having the patience to let the Lord act? What about fighting evil empires with the same weapons the early Christians did? No way! If you haven’t noticed, they got thrown to the lions.

When we lay aside the fruit of the Spirit and embrace the works of the flesh, what do we think is really going on? Does that somehow become spiritual when done for a “good reason”?

When good men are induced to fight evil with evil, the result is still evil, no matter the initial justification. When we throw away the Kingdom’s armor and take up the world’s weapons, the triumph belongs to the world and not the Kingdom.

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to use evil’s tools to try and defeat it.

Photo by Konrad Baranski

While I’m still unconvinced of the worth of the saying itself, I will admit what others have said: much of my angst in this situation comes from the misuse of this quote, particularly by Christians. Vern commented yesterday: “It’s probably better to limit the quote to the political/social arena and not apply it at all to the living of Christians.” Much of my distress comes from the fact that the “all that is necessary” saying is frequently used to move Christians into the political/social arena! The quote is used to say, “If you aren’t active in this arena, you aren’t doing anything.”

And, in the midst of our prolonged back and forth, Nick made a couple of key statements:

However, (and I’m certain Tim will talk about this later in the week), the quote is rarely used to criticize people who are, in fact, doing *nothing*. Literally, truly, nothing.

It is used to criticize people who aren’t following the quoter’s recommended course of action. Ask any pacifist how often they’ve been rhetorically bludgeoned with this quote. Anyone who thinks that pacifism (or even QUIETISM, for crying out loud) is doing nothing has a painfully shallow view of spiritual warfare.

Sometimes, doing nothing is precisely what is necessary for one person. But that’s completely different from the idea that all men and women made good by the blood of the cross and the power of the Spirit should choose to do nothing against the forces of evil.

What I look forward to in the coming days is the shredding of the assumptions typically driving its use. Not a call to ACTION, but a call to a specific – typically nationalist – course of action. Actually, I find that is isn’t typically used as a call to action at all, but as a pejorative against indirect action, compassionate responses, and non-violence.

Nick could see where I was headed with some of this. Tying in with yesterday’s post, I want to talk about the idea that “merely” praying is “doing nothing.” (Just typing the phrase “merely praying” makes me gag a bit) That’s definitely our culture talking. Dan Bouchelle posted something the other day, quoting an African Christian who said, “You Americans sure can sing, but you don’t know much about how to pray.”

In general, we don’t believe in the power of prayer. I saw an extreme of this a few years ago. I was participating in a Church of Christ Internet group, and one member wrote something like: “We pray because God commanded us to. We know that it’s not going to change anything.” Wow! How sad.

Those who don’t believe in the power of prayer will often use phrases like “sit around singing Kum Ba Yah.” Don’t know why that poor song carries the brunt of their wrath, but it’s come to characterize someone who believes that God can and will intervene in this world… even if it’s not in the way we would want.

Maybe that’s why I’m troubled by the lack of God in this quote. It feeds that worldly mindset that says, “If I don’t do it, it won’t get done. God certainly isn’t going to do anything.”

Prayer is doing something. It is action. The problem is, relying on prayer takes more courage than most of us have. It requires a loss of control. It requires patience… some prayers in the Bible weren’t answered for decades. Decades! It requires us to accept God’s plans, rather than stepping forward and shaping our own story.

Prayer is not the only action Christians should take against evil. But it is by far the most significant. When someone says, “All we can do is pray,” it doesn’t mean all hope is gone. It means that we still have our greatest weapon.

All that is required for the triumph of evil is for good men to stop relying on God’s power.

I don’t like the saying. I used to. But the more I hear it used and abused, the more I feel a need to analyze it. And under analysis, it just doesn’t hold up.

Even though it probably wasn’t created by Edmund Burke, this saying does seem to have arisen out of ideas that were popular in the 18th and 19th centuries. Man was king. There seemed to be no limit to what men could do. Who needed God? God could be acknowledged as a creator who set in motion a marvelous creation… and nothing more. If anything was going to be accomplished, it would be done by men.

If evil was to be defeated, it would be by good men, unfettered by the need to look to God for approval of their actions.

All of which makes me understand why non-Christians spout such phrases and marvel at the fact that Christians will repeat them. All that is necessary for the defeat of evil is God. It begins and ends there.

Look at the book of Revelation. What would the recipients of that book/letter have thought if someone had come and said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” I think they’d have said, “Here, read this. It says something different.” They were being called to “do nothing” in the eyes of the world. They were to pray. They were to be faithful. They were to expel false teachings from within their own community, but as far as the evil empire was concerned, they were to do nothing. (which would have drawn the ire of the “all that is necessary” crowd)

For God had promised to take care of evil. Maybe not as quickly as we’d like, hence the cry “How long?”. But it is God who is responsible for stemming the advance of evil. Even when we are called to be help in that, we need to understand that the victory does not hinge on our action. As Mordecai told Esther, “If you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place.” (Esther 4:14) If good men “do nothing,” God will raise up deliverance from another place. It doesn’t depend on us.

All that is necessary for the defeat of evil is God. It begins and ends there.

That’s my first criticism of this saying. It’s godless. We live in a society where saying we trust in God is admired and actually trusting in him is ridiculed. Sadly, that “god-free” attitude has permeated the church, as well.

Let’s make “In God We Trust” more than a phrase stamped on a coin. All that is necessary for the defeat of evil is God. Let’s act like we believe it.

Edmund Burke

There is a saying, usually attributed to Edmund Burke, that has been called “the commonest political quote you will find anywhere on the World Wide Web.”* It goes something like this:

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing

It goes “something like this” because the statement exists in many different forms:

• All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing
• All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing
• All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing
• All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing
• All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for a few good men to do nothing
• All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for a few good men to do nothing
• All that is necessary for the evil to succeed is that good men do nothing

And so on.

It’s rather obviously an apocryphal quote. In fact, you can’t find anything of the sort by Edmund Burke, unless you count the quote: “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”(Thoughts on the Cause of Present Discontents) You can find, interestingly enough, his thoughts on maxims in general:

It is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals that their maxims have a plausible air; and, on a cursory view, appear equal to first principles. They are light and portable. They are as current as copper coin; and about as valuable. They serve equally the first capacities and the lowest; and they are, at least, as useful to the worst men as to the best. Of this stamp is the cant of not man, but measures; a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honourable engagement.
(Edmund Burke, “Thoughts on the cause of the present discontents,” 1770. In The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, edited by Henry Froude, Oxford University Press, 1909, Volume 2, page 83, lines 7 to 16.)

The saying that evil men will triumph if good men do nothing is a good illustration of what Burke is saying. At first blush, it sounds reasonable enough. It’s easy to remember, at least in general terms. It’s general enough that it’s been used as a rallying cry for human movements of all stripes, for almost everyone considers themselves to be “good” and their opponents “evil.” It can be used to justify almost any action as long as the person doing it considers himself good.

I’d like to spend a few days talking about the concept, since I’ve heard it used to promote all sorts of political, social and military action on the part of Christians. Before I begin to analyze what’s being said, I’d like to hear your thoughts on the inactivity of good men and the triumph of evil.

Appendix: Martin Porter offered some helpful suggestions for avoiding bogus quotes:
Principle 1 (for readers)
Whenever you see a quotation given with an author but no source assume that it is probably bogus.
Principle 2 (for readers)
Whenever you see a quotation given with a full source assume that it is probably being misused, unless you find good evidence that the quoter has read it in the source.
Principle 3 (for quoters)
Whenever you make a quotation, give the exact source.
Principle 4 (for quoters)
Only quote from works that you have read.

*This phrase comes from an analysis of the many variations of the Burke quote: http://tartarus.org/~martin/essays/burkequote.html

• Past, Present, and Future walked into a bar. It was tense.
• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.
• An intransitive verb walk into a bar. He sits. He drinks. He leaves.
• A dangling modifier walks into a bar. After finishing a drink, the bartender asks it to leave.
• A question mark walks into a bar?
• The bar was walked into by the passive voice.
• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”
• A spoonerism balks into a war.
• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to drink.
• A sentence fragment that walks into a bar.
• A subject and a verb disagrees about which bar to walk into.
• An Oxford comma hops, skips, and jumps into a bar.
• The subjunctive would walk into a bar, were it in the mood.
• A prescriptivist walks into a tavern, because of course ‘bar’ means the counter at which drink is served rather than the establishment itself. He wonders why nobody else is there.

Giving credit where credit is due: Some of these were created by Eric K. Auld.

Wisdom literature requires special handling. I shared a bit yesterday from Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart. Let me this thought from Leland Ryken (with his son Philip and with James Wilhoit):

Because the wisdom writers primarily observe life, their utterances are not phrased with the same kind of divinge authority that the statements of the prophets have. The prophets speak the voice of God to people. The Bible’s wisdom teachers speak a word of testimony and observation to their fellow humans. (Ryken’s Bible Handbook, p. 271)

What we come down to is this: it seems difficult if not impossible to take every word of wisdom literature as having proceeded from the mouth of God himself. We have the long human speeches in Job, the contrasting viewpoints in Ecclesiastes, the elements in Proverbs and Psalms that seem to espouse viewpoints different from those provided in other biblical books. Can an inspired book contain human teachings? How do we separate them out from the divine proclamations?

In other words, how are we supposed to read wisdom literature?

Here’s my proposal, open for discussion and debate: I’m satisfied with seeing wisdom literature as a faithful telling of the reflections of godly men on God’s truths. Their place within the canon leads me to give them a weight that other human writings don’t have, but their humanness makes me evaluate every teaching in light of the rest of Scripture.

Is that fair?

Keith said in a comment:

As I understand it, the Middle Easten (especially ancient) view sees scripture as a series of propositions to be discussed, negotiated, haggled over. The thinking is that iron sharpens iron, and by debating scripture’s meaning, we get closer to the truth about God and us — rather than completely comprehending it.

It’s helpful to remember that the Jews had a very different opinion than ours as to the inspiration of the Old Testament. It was believed that the Torah, the Pentateuch, was delivered via plenary inspiration. God dictated every jot and tittle. Other writings were inspired, but their degree of inspiration was judged by comparing them with the Torah.

So books like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes were a step above the rabbinical commentaries on the Torah and on life, but they were not on the same level as the Law itself.

Frank mentioned Fee and Stuart’s How To Read The Bible For All Its Worth, which is one of those must-read books when approaching biblical interpretation. These authors talk about wisdom literature as “suggestive truth.” They state:

So it is with Hebrew proverbs. They must be understood reasonably and taken on their own terms. They do not state everything about a truth but they point toward it. They are, taken literally, often technically inexact. But as learnable guidelines for the shaping of selected behavior they are unsurpassed. (p. 196, emphasis in the original)

Fee and Stuart also offer the following hermeneutical guidelines for interpreting Proverbs:

• Proverbs are not legal guarantees. That is, the stated blessings of following the suggested course of action are likely to follow. Proverbs does not teach automatic success.
• Proverbs must be read as a collection. (I’d say that for Ecclesiastes, as well)
• Proverbs are worded to be memorable, not to be theoretically accurate. That is, they are not written as complete statements of truth. Their goal is offer advice that can be remembered (like “Look before you leap!”).
• Some proverbs need to be “translated” to be appreciated.

Those are their thoughts. I’ll share a bit from Leland Ryken tomorrow. All of this is to spur the conversation along about how to understand wisdom literature. I’d like to hear your ideas as well.

(I’ll also mention that Jerry pointed out that Patrick Mead is continuing the series I referred to the other day. It’s very worthwhile reading, though I’m not in full agreement with all that’s said there.)

I don’t know what to do with it. I’ve pointed out before that I don’t think reading every line as a commandment from God works. We pick out a command here or there to apply, but we skip the ones that make us uncomfortable. We cite this truism or that truism, but we avoid the ones that, well, just don’t seem true.

Interestingly enough, Song of Solomon bothers me less than other books, partly because there isn’t much there that we extract and try to apply as law. Job gives us a narrative, which helps our Western minds, and points to the end of the book as the part where the real truths are found. (Though that doesn’t stop us from using a quote here or there if it furthers an argument)

Ecclesiastes is somewhat the same way; it seems to be a progression towards real understanding at the end, although divine truths are mixed in with the human elements along the way.

What about Proverbs? Even as we work our way through all of the literary devices (hyperbole, synecdoche and all of those other words we learned in English class), we still detect a real humanness to some of what’s said.

What about Psalms? Some of the Psalms are easy, but some are quite difficult. An obvious example are the imprecatory psalms, where the writer calls down curses on his enemies. Other psalms seem to present a “good people get good things, bad people get bad things” theology that doesn’t fit with other parts of the Bible (like the book of Job!). Yet the Psalms are quoted heavily in the New Testament; Peter even says that Psalm 2 was spoken by the Holy Spirit through David! (Acts 4:25)

So how should we read wisdom literature? How do we understand “inspiration” as applied to such books? How do we know when we’re hearing the voice of God and when we’re hearing the voice of man?

(Photo by Erik Tryggestad, Christian Chronicle)

Oh, that’s right. I have a blog. Sorry, but sometimes life gets in the way of blogging. I used to have a “post or die” mentality, making sure that I had something out five times a week. Now I accept the fact that the world somehow goes on turning, even when I can’t put anything up here.

I was at the Pepperdine Lectures last week, representing Herald of Truth. Before that, I got to speak at the Long Beach Church of Christ; it had been ten years since I’d visited that wonderful congregation. 30 years ago (wow!), I spent two summers out there. I also went on two Spring Break campaigns there, and they helped support us while we were in Argentina.

I visited the Inland Valley Church of Christ in Ontario, California, on that Sunday evening. My friend Carlos Gonzales is the worship leader there. They have a strong bilingual church, with Tom Allen, a Bolivian native, as their preacher.

Before going to the lectures, I had joked that I was going there as Juan Monroy’s handler. Turned out to be more true than I realized. Juan spoke twice, had a book signing and received an award from the university. I spent most of my time with him, driving him back and forth from the campus and making sure that he had what he needed. Ammiel Perez from Cuba was also there and needed similar attention. I’ve had brothers serve me in the same way when I’ve traveled to other countries, so it was a pleasure to get to minister to these men.

Saw a few people, but mainly in passing. To all those I missed, or barely spoke to, I offer an apology. I would have loved to have had more time to visit, but sometimes it doesn’t work out that way.

I’m grateful for workshops and conferences that allow us to gather and be fed. After hearing one of the main lectures, Juan said to me: “This has been so good for me. I’m all the time teaching others… once in a while, I need to be fed as well.” Amen to that.

Back during the Cold War, a circus from Czechoslovakia was touring Western Europe. One of the clowns, a midget, decided that he wanted to defect. Slipping away from the group, he escaped to the U.S. Embassy. When the guards at the gate asked him his purpose, the midget replied, “I just wanted to know if you could cache a small Czech.”

A zoo keeper discovered that if he fed his porpoises seagull, they lived forever. One day, as he was making his way to the porpoise cage with their daily lunch, he discovered that two of the lions had escaped. His fellow keepers had shot the lions with tranquilizer darts, and the felines were sleeping soundly, right by the door of the porpoise enclosure. Not wanting to keep his clients waiting, the keeper stepped over the beasts on his way to feed the porpoises. Later that day, he was arrested for transporting gulls across staid lions for immortal porpoises.

The concept of dividing the globe into longitudinal strips to establish time zones was first proposed by Sweden’s Alex Andersrag. Few people today remember that these zones were once known as Alex Andersrag Time Bands.

The chess convention participants were arguing long and loud in the hotel lobby, disputing which of them had played the greatest games of all times. Finally the manager threw them out, saying, “No one wants to hear chess nuts boasting in an open foyer.”

Had enough?

Here’s why:

1. The Bible wasn’t written to record history. I know I’ve said that, but it needs to be emphasized. Look at the book of Genesis. We blow through centuries of the world’s existence, then come to a screeching halt when we get to Abraham. We stroll through his life and that of the next few generations. Then in Exodus we blow by several centuries before stopping again at Moses. It’s not the story of everyone; it’s the story of certain people that shaped the formation of the nation of Israel.
   At first glance, the stories from the books of Samuel and the books of Kings are repeated in the books of Chronicles. But they’re not. The first four books were written to a nation in exile, explaining how they ended up in exile. The last two were written to a nation that was rebuilding. Chronicles emphasizes the covenant and the temple, because the people were being called to rally around those two elements. It’s not just history about the different kings. It’s the history that’s needed to teach.
2. The Bible was written in a way that fit its original context. It wasn’t written for Westerners. It wasn’t written to satisfy the modern mind. It doesn’t treat facts the way we treat them. Numbers are more symbolic than they are quantitative. When one writer says 7000 were killed and another says 70,000, we say it’s an inaccuracy. They don’t see it that way. The 7 is symbolic as are the thousands. Lots of people were killed in an impressive victory (perfect, even, with the numeric symbolism).
3. The Bible expresses things within the understanding of its readers. We know that the sun doesn’t really rise nor set. The ancient readers didn’t know that. We know the earth doesn’t have four corners; they weren’t aware of that. Much has been made of people finding scientific clues in the Bible, but I think that’s a misguided effort. God wasn’t teaching them natural science. He was teaching them how to live according to His covenant.

Others express these concepts much better than I. I lay them out to show my current understanding of inspiration and revelation, that they intentionally occurred within human contexts, adapting themselves to those contexts. When we try to force them to play by the rules of our context, we find that they don’t always oblige.

One common view is that every detail mentioned in the Bible must be precise or the Bible can’t be considered to be an inspired book. One verse that fuels that view is Matthew 5:18: “I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.” In the language of the King James, Jesus says that jots and tittles are important, that every stroke of the Law must remain unchanged. (In my experience, this is a key passage for King James Onlyists, who argue that every word must remain unchanged. None of them tell me why that doesn’t apply to the Tyndale version or the Bishops’ Bible; apparently version inspiration skipped from the Textus Receptus to the KJV)

From this stems the view that every scientific fact mentioned in the Bible must be 100% true, every historical detail must be 100% accurate, every geographical description must be 100% precise.

In my view, this is an attempt to make the Bible something that it never declares itself to be nor was intended to be. God wasn’t trying to teach ancient man modern science. Jesus can call the mustard seed the smallest of all seeds without obliging Christians to argue with the scientists who can point to numerous smaller seeds. Jesus was speaking within what those people knew and understood.

In the same way, because the thrust of the Bible was not to provide a historical record but was instead to teach religious truths, we can have varying accounts of the same incident. Take, for example, the description of the setting of one of Jesus’ miracles, as seen in three different gospels:

“And as they went out of Jericho, a great crowd followed him. And behold, there were two blind men sitting by the roadside, and when they heard that Jesus was passing by, they cried out, “Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!”” (Matthew 20:29–30)

“And they came to Jericho. And as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a great crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”” (Mark 10:46–47)

“As he drew near to Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. And hearing a crowd going by, he inquired what this meant. They told him, “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.” And he cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”” (Luke 18:35–38)

If we just read these three accounts as they are, we have to deal with some interesting things. Just on the location and number of blind men, we get no agreement:

Matthew: Leaving Jerusalem, two blind men
Mark: Leaving Jerusalem, one blind man
Luke: Entering Jerusalem, one blind man

If we want to force the Bible to be precise in every detail, then we have to do some gymnastics here. Maybe Jesus was entering new Jericho as he left old Jericho (yes, I’ve heard that one argued). Maybe there were two men, but Mark and Luke just chose to speak of one of them. Maybe these are three separate incidents in which almost the exact same thing happened.

Or maybe we need to accept that the intent of Matthew, Mark and Luke wasn’t to write a history book or a biography, but a gospel. Maybe we need to adjust our expectations of the Bible and its content.

The churches in El Salvador are very active and seem to be extremely well organized. There is little dependence on outside influences, and we’re doing our best not to interfere with that. That’s why these trips are so important, so that we can talk with the brothers, get their input, hear their concerns and learn from their suggestions. It’s also helpful to them to know exactly who they are partnering with.

Steve Ridgell and I arrived on Thursday. Our colleague from Honduras, Rigoberto Vargas, had arrived on Wednesday. He came to the airport with Julio Mejía Mateo, the local preacher that will be spearheading our effort. We spent Thursday afternoon visiting with them, finalizing our plans for the next few days.

On Friday we visited two radio stations, a print shop and the local Bible society. We worked on getting final prices so that we can give the project a definite structure. Friday evening, we met with a small group at Julio’s congregation. He encouraged them to “ask us questions about anything.” The first question concerned what Peter writes about Jesus preaching to the spirits in prison… and the questions didn’t get much easier from there.

Saturday morning Steve did some sessions on leadership. We didn’t know how many to expect since the seminar was arranged on somewhat short notice, but we had approximately 70 people there. They really appreciated what Steve had to offer. Then I described the project to them, letting them know that we wanted all of their congregations to participate and feel a part of the project. Saturday evening, we went with Adrian Larin to his congregation, where they were having a meeting of married couples. I got to share some thoughts on marriage with that group.

Sunday morning we were with Julio Mejía Mateo’s group. They have Bible class at 8 with small groups, then a general study at 9, followed by worship at 10. Steve taught a men’s class at 8, then I taught at 9 and preached at 10. After lunch, we had a strategy meeting: me, Steve, Rigoberto, Julio, Adrian and Jorge Navidad.

Sunday night wasn’t a work night, so we went to the small store of one of the sisters from Julio’s church and got to eat pupusas, a famous dish that is very popular in El Salvador. The woman let us know that her food was very safe, that many famous people had eaten her pupusas, including Pope John Paul II. I pointed out that that was no real comfort, since John Paul II is deceased! She got a good laugh out of that one.

Monday we headed home. Gotta say it… I love my job.

I think they were suffering a bit of post-Easter depression. Not the kind that comes from too many chocolate eggs or lack of sleep from going to a sunrise service. No, this was the real thing.

Peter and the other apostles had lived an emotional roller coaster that few of us can imagine. Their beloved Teacher, the one they thought was going to be king, had been arrested and killed. Then, a few days later, they learned that He had risen from the dead! They saw Him, ate with Him, then were told to go to Galilee to wait.

It was during that wait that I think they got the blues. Or, if not that, they at least got bored. So Peter suggested they do what they had always done before meeting Jesus: go fishing.

Chapter 21 of the gospel of John tells us how they worked all night without catching anything. A few weeks before, they had been part of the big show. They were the disciples of the Great One, the Maestro, the Messiah. Now they were spending all night throwing nets into cold, dark water, without anything to show for their efforts.

That’s when Jesus showed up on the shore. That’s when everything changed. That’s when one command from His lips filled their nets to the breaking point and almost capsized their boats. That’s when Peter and the others knew they were back in the presence of the Risen Lord. Jesus had come to meet these Galilean fishermen at the place they knew best.

How far is it from the temple in Jerusalem to the banks of the Sea of Galilee? It’s the same distance as it is from church on Sunday to the office on Monday. It’s the distance from Holy Communion to lunch out of a bag. It’s the distance from Easter bonnets to oil-soaked coveralls.

Special religious days can be nice for recharging our batteries, but the Christian life is lived out 24/7, both in holy places and on dirty streets. God comes to meet us anywhere and everywhere. He doesn’t just wait for us inside a church building on Easter Sunday. He’s willing to be there with us, every day of the year.

Jesus came to tell the apostles that it was okay for them to be fishermen. He also came to remind them that they had been called to be fishers of men. God wants to come and make your job a calling, to make your employment a vocation. He wants to make every day a holy day, and every place a sanctuary.

The day we call Easter comes once a year… but today and every day can be just as special! Let God transform your ordinary into something high and holy.

Patrick explains in yesterday’s post:

When I was a boy and up until I was in my late 20s I only heard one version of how we got our Bibles. I was told that every single word came directly from the mouth of God (via the Holy Spirit). There was no input from the human writers. They were merely stenographers for the Spirit. As an illustration of this my father and other ministers would bring up the story of Balaam’s donkey. “God didn’t just give that donkey an idea and let him express it in his own words” they would say. And they said that the exact same mechanism was involved in writing the Bibles – Jeremiah, Peter, Paul, and Amos all wrote down what they were told to write, word for word.

I have talked with many people who think that the Bible was dictated, word for word, by the Holy Spirit. Any perceived humanness is the Spirit’s attempt to make the Bible more understandable, they say.

Patrick does a good job of reminding us that this view of the Bible arose with fundamentalism in the 19th century. It is a child of modernism, an attempt to make the Bible fit the scientific method.

So what do we expect of this holy book? If it is inspired, what does that mean? Terms get tossed around like inerrancy and literality. Patrick describes the Chicago Statement on inerrancy:

It says, in part, “Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God’s acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God’s saving grace in individuals’ lives.” It goes on to state that the Bible’s words came directly from God and are, therefore, completely moral and without error in everything it affirms – historically, scientifically, and theologically.

Is that what inspired means? Does every detail in the Bible have to be correct for the Bible to be inspired? I have some thoughts on the subject, but I’d like to hear yours. How much room for “human error” is there in the text of the Bible?

• “Since the Bible says the Old Testament was nailed to the cross, we know that…”
• “Given that the Bible says Christians must obey all laws, then…”
• “Seeing that the Bible has commanded us to take up a collection every Sunday…”

Maybe part of the solution is what we talked about last week, spending more time reading God’s Word and less time expounding on it. We’ve got to get back to the original starting point… even if we end up at the same place!

• “Colossians says that the written code that was against us was nailed to the cross. I think that’s talking about the Old Testament, so…”
• “Paul talks about submitting to the authorities. Part of how we do that is by obeying the laws those authorities create. Therefore…”
• “Paul talked to the Corinthians about setting aside money each week as a collection for the church in Jerusalem. This would seem to mean that we should also have an offering each week. That’s why…”

As Travis pointed out, this would seem a bit wishy washy to some. People want the preacher to speak with authority. I disagree with them. I want God’s Word to speak with authority. I will do my best to help people understand what that authoritative word has to say, but I want them to be aware that I am a fallible expositor of that word. (None of my regular readers needs to be reminded of that!)

Do you have better suggestions? How can we avoid imposing our interpretations on the text itself?

Here are some times I’ve heard people misuse these phrases:

• Years ago, in a meeting with other church leaders, one very good student of the Bible said, “The Bible says the man is to make the decisions in the family.” When pressed on the point, he referred to the passages that speak of male headship. What he should have said is, “The Bible says the man is the head of the woman, which I understand to mean that the man makes the decisions.” I don’t agree with his interpretation, but at least the statement would be accurate.
• In another meeting, during a heated discussion, one young member referenced the Psalms to support his point. As soon as the young man mentioned the Psalms, the preacher interrupted and said, “My Bible says that’s been nailed to the cross.” Were it possible to be sued for textual malpractice, this man would have lost his preaching license.
• Taking their cues from Romans 13, I’ve heard Christians say, “The Bible teaches that we are to be good citizens,” and “The Bible says that Christians are to obey all laws (unless they contradict God’s law).” Both of those affirmations are based on an interpretation of “Submit to the authorities” and “Honor the King.” They need to be acknowledged as such.
• One person who participated a few years ago in our discussion about alcohol contacted me on Facebook to discuss the subject a bit further. He made the statement, “My own personal rule or standard is that if I drank anything strong enough to make me drunk it would violate the prohibition against strong drink.” Unless he’s found some new passage that I’ve never heard of, the “prohibition” he’s referring to comes from Proverbs 20:1. Rather than open the whole discussion again, I merely told him: “As we’ve seen before, we have differing views on whether or not God prohibited strong drink.” But it was a bit discouraging to see him continue to tout advice from wisdom literature as a biblical prohibition.

All of that to say, I’m trying to do better at owning my own interpretations. There is a difference between what God’s Word says and the conclusions I draw based on what is said. If I don’t learn to discern between the two, it will be hard for me to learn much of anything.

Photo courtesy of Creation Swap

Johnny and his cow

Johnny worked all day at the mint. His job was a rather unexciting one: he sorted dimes. The dimes would come through, and he would pull out any of the coins with flaws. The good ones went into one bin, the flawed ones into another.

Johnny lived in a small house down the block from the mint. He lived alone except for his one pet, his cow Lulabell. Johnny loved Lulabell, and she loved him. Every morning, before going to work at the mint, Johnny would take Lulabell for a stroll around the neighborhood (along with the biggest pooper scooper you’ve ever seen!).

For his birthday one year, Johnny received a subscription to Wines of the World Club. This allowed to him receive a special bottle of wine each month. One month, Johnny got a bottle of Japanese rice wine. He loved it! So much so that he drank a tad too much one night and fell into a deep sleep, without setting his alarm.

The sun woke him the next day, and Johnny realized he was running late. He jumped out of bed, dressed quickly and raced to work.

Meanwhile, Lulabell was waiting for her morning constitutional. She waited and waited, then decided something was wrong. She broke out of her pen and went to the house. She peered in all the windows, but couldn’t find Johnny. She finally pushed her way inside, knocking over Johnny’s sake in the process. Horrified at the mess she’d made, Lulabell licked up all of the spilled wine.

The sake went straight to her head. Lulabell went outside and began running in circles. She started running up and down the street. Johnny looked at the window of the mint and saw his beloved Lulabell running free. Worried that something would happen to her, he called to her.

Lulabell was so happy to see her master that she rushed past the security guards, barged through the doors and headed to Johnny. Arriving at his work space, she danced around in a joyous state… until her hoof caught in the bin of approved dimes. Lulabell kicked instinctively, and dimes poured out, rolling down the hall and out the door. Frightened, Lulabell kicked again and again, spilling more and more coins. The mint was shut down for the day.

The local newspaper came to cover the story, of course, and the headline the next day read:

COW WITH SAKE LETS THE GOOD DIMES ROLL

Just in case you don’t get the reference, here’s a link to a very popular commercial from the 1970s.

Newspaper image courtesy of The Newspaper Clipping Generator

Apparently, Christian Smith’s book The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture moved a lot of people to think about narrative theology. At least it sparked a lot of discussion on the subject.

One blogger who sought to summarize narrative theology is Roger Olson. He boiled his thoughts down to these points:

1. Narrative theology focuses on the Bible as a dramatic account of God’s activity.
2. Narrative theology acknowledges that the Bible contains propositions, but it says biblical propositions are not independent of or superior to the metanarrative of God’s saving activity.
3. A biblical proposition is “God is love” (1 John 4:8), but it needs interpretation. The only way to interpret “God is love” is to look at the biblical story that reveals God’s character through his actions.
4. According to narrative theology, the Bible contains many kinds of statements—commands, propositions, expressions of praise, prayers, poetry, prophecies, parables, etc. All must be interpreted in light of the great story of God and its purpose—to reveal the character of God through his mighty acts leading up to and centering around Jesus Christ.
5. Theology is our best human attempt to understand the biblical drama-story. But a theologian cannot do that properly unless he or she is “living the story” together with a community of faith shaped by the story.
6. Doctrines are secondary to the story. They are judged by their ability to draw out and express faithfully the character of God as revealed by the story.
7. The task of the church is to “faithfully improvise” the “rest of the story.” Christians first must be grounded in the story. Second, they must together (communally) improvise the “rest of the story” faithfully to the story given in the Bible.
8. The alternatives are to either a) regard the Bible as a grab bag of propositions to be pulled out to answer questions, or b) regard the Bible as a not-yet-systematized system of theology (like a philosophy). Both alternatives fail to do justice to what the Bible really is—a grand drama of God’s mighty saving acts that progressively reveals his character culminating in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

I want to explore that some more next week, but for now, let’s hear your thoughts and critiques.

What I’m trying to say is that we often don’t know how to read narratives. [Jeff Hobbs made some interesting points (here and on Facebook) about everything being narrative, but let's leave that for another discussion] We take a story and make the incidentals into the main points. It’s like reading Don Quijote to learn about how to use windmills or reading Moby Dick to study boat building.

Too often, we try to make narratives a part of a system of laws. In the Wright quote yesterday, he talked about turning the gospels into epistles. To do that, we have to create teaching points, “timeless truths” that we can pull out of every story.

In my experience, we’ve done that more with the book of Acts, since the gospels don’t really count. (Yes, that is sarcasm) We read Acts 20:1-12 and come away with lessons about the frequency of the Lord’s Supper, debates about whether the passage describes one meal or two, etc. Is that even close to what Luke was talking about? Acts 20 tells us the story of a man raised from the dead, and we’re focused on the meals surrounding that act?

In fact, most churches thoroughly enjoy studying Acts, up until about chapter 14. Then it starts to drag, because it becomes harder and harder to pick apart the stories. Part of the problem is that we really need to read the stories of Paul’s journeys all in one sitting to get the feel for them. More than stories, it’s one story, with different episodes. Those episodes find their meaning as part of the whole.

So how do we let narratives tell their own story? How do we keep the Bible stories within the framework of the bigger picture… and the really big picture? I’m at that point where I can see what not to do and haven’t yet come to what should be done. Guidance would be appreciated.