- 1 Corinthians 9:19-23 Tune in again for more chills, thrills... and one stupid story involving driving into a ditch.


Yu-Ling posted at 2/22/2004 11:24:00 PM

Tuesday, February 17, 2004

MISSING THE POINT: the Bible part IV [continuing from the previous post] Aware, then, of how we tend to 1) inadvertently misrepresent the BIble, and 2) analyze it to a lethal degree - with this in mind, let me offer 10 suggestions for reclaiming the Bible for contemporary readers, so we won't miss the point. Become Students, Seekers, Learners. Get humble. The latest theories about virtue say that understanding is not just intellectual; it is also inextricably moral. Humble and curious people understand more than proud and lazy people. Intellectually flexible people discover more than rigid ones. So we need to stop approaching the Bible only to confirm what we already think we know, and instead come at it like children, beginners - with a second innocence, as some interpreters call it. Admit that Parts of the Bible Perplex, Bother, Confuse, or Concern You. By taming the Bible - by fitting it neatly into our categories - we make the Bible safe but boring. The fact is there are parts of the Bible that scandalize me. Not that this causes me to elevate my tastes and critique the text (like some theologically liberal readers), or to explain away the plain meaning of passages that describe the terrorist-style slaughter of women and children in the name of Jehovah (like a lot of theologically conservative readers). Instead, I simply acknowledge that a passage bugs me. And I can live with that. Maybe someday it will be resolved for me. Maybe not. That's okay. Broaden Your Preoccupation with Propositions (What You are supposed to Think) so it includes Mission (What you are supposed to Be and Do). "We are embarked," as Blaise Pascal said. Because we cannot perfect our theory of navigation in a land-bound classroom, we must put to sea. It is only in sailing that we learn to sail. Similarly, we don?t perfect our theology in a seminary or Sunday school course, whose textbook is the Bible. Our understanding of the Bible must be hammered out en route, at sea, in the nitty gritty of daily life. So enough of trying to perfect our theory, hoping it will lead to a perfect practice. Instead we must learn by doing, intertwining theory with practice. This more ancient (and contemporary) approach to learning means that we won't expect to understand much more of the Bible until we start doing what we already know. This pushes us toward more missional readings of the Bible: What am I - and what are we - supposed to be doing in this world these days, to fit in with God's creative and ongoing mission? (as opposed to propositional or doctrinal readings). That is the urgent contemporary question. Sure, that requires careful thinking, careful analysis, careful scholarship - but these intellectual pursuits are always in service of the missional calling. They are undertaken on the voyage, out at sea. In such a missional light, can you see how absurd it is to think that we could get our theory right first in a classroom, without living and serving and loving and giving and suffering? Give this missional approach a test drive. If you want to read 1 Corinthians chapters 11-14 looking simply for propositions about the role of women in the church, you?ll find them. The case is open and shut, with the result that you'll require women to be silent in the church. But if you ask the more sophisticated question, What is God doing missionally in this passage? the outcome is less clear, but much more interesting (especially with 1 Corinthians 9:19ff as background). A missional reading of this passage reveals that St. Paul is seeking to live out the gospel in the framework of Corinthian culture - and this requires the voluntary relinquishing of certain freedoms in order to avoid cultural offense for the sake of the gospel. Taking the apostle's missional strategy seriously, and not just mining for propositions, we might decide that requiring women to be silent in church would be exactly the wrong thing to do in a culture like ours, different as it is from Corinthian culture. Drop any affair you may have with Certainty, Proof, Argument - and replace it with Dialogue, Conversation, Intrigue, and Search. The ultimate Bible study or sermon in recent decades yielded clarity. That clarity, unfortunately, was often boring ? and probably not that accurate, either, since reality is seldom clear, but usually fuzzy and mysterious not black-and-white, but in living color. So how about a Bible study or sermon that is successful not because everyone agrees on the preacher's interpretation, but because, when the sermon is over, everyone can't wait to talk about it and read and ponder and discuss it more, because they have become intrigued and mystified and enthralled? How about a congregation who may not have "captured the meaning" of the text, but a text that captured the imagination and curiosity of the congregation? Drop any Analytical-Reductionist tendencies and instead focus on the Big Story, always moving toward your place in Its Ongoing Trajectory. Could you tell the Bible story in 15 minutes? 10 minutes? 5 minutes? 2 minutes? If not, you may not be ready to read the Bible, because each part is understandable only when we have the bigger picture that gives it context. Without focusing on The Big Story, we are tempted to impose alien readings on the Bible. For example, if we reduce the Bible to an elaborate answer to the question, "How does a person go to heaven after he dies" - if we think this is the Big Question the whole Bible is answering - we'll be prone to misunderstand major parts of the Bible that were written before that question was on anybody?s mind (like the entire Old Testament). The OT people were far more concerned about being the people of God in this life, not after this life. So when they performed sacrifices, for instance, they weren't seeking to get a clean slate so they could die forgiven as individuals and go to heaven after they died. To the contrary, they were seeking to remain pure enough as a community to participate in God's twofold promise to them: being blessed by God, and being a blessing to the whole world. Find things to do with the Bible other than Read and Study it. If you've never learned lectio divina - an ancient approach to Scripture cherished by the Benedictines - find someone who can teach it to you (or check out a book or a Web site). Try an Ignatian reading, which requires you to imaginatively enter the story and seek to understand it from the inside instead of coolly analyzing it from a privileged distance. Ever spend your Bible study time simply memorizing the Bible? (Just maybe an hour spent memorizing an entire passage - not just a verse, which is often taken out of its context - can occasionally be worth more than an hour spent listening to someone's monologue about the propositions he has extracted.) Do a choral reading of a chapter of the Bible with a group - and do it several times, so it can be savored; then sit silently for 10 minutes to ponder and meditate on what you have read and heard together. There are so many great things to do with the Bible other than study it. Remember: most Christians, through most of history, across most of the globe, were illiterate. Yet somehow they managed to love and serve God without ever once, in their entire lives, reading the Bible themselves. Don't try to Solve Mysteries - Seek and Revere them. Too many modern minds want to banish mystery, following the lead of modern science. But more and more scientists have realized that while they can develop models and labels for more and more phenomena, the depths of meaning and mystery in the cosmos will always exceed their grasp. When you feel that you have penetrated to an insight, go deeper, higher, farther - until you realize you are peering into a depth you cannot fathom. Don't be disappointed, but rather rejoice and revere not only the wonderful clarity revealed in Scripture, but also the amazing profundity hidden in Scripture. Value Marginalized Readings and Readers. The Bible was the book of the Jews and early Christians, who were nearly always marginalized, oppressed, and in danger. Privileged, comfortable, and secure people - like most of us - typically misunderstand the Bible because we cannot sufficiently identify with its original characters, writers, and readers. If you are privileged, find people who are not, and listen to their readings of Scripture. Value where their readings differ from yours and from each other, and expect new insight to spring from those differences. Value dynamic tensions in the text itself. Some OT texts, for instance, present the Israelite monarchy as a bad thing (by choosing a human king, the people conformed to their neighbors and rejected God as their king), while other texts celebrate the monarchy as a gift from God. Instead of trying to explain one or the other perspective away, why not say that the Bible presents an ambivalent view of the monarchy - that in some senses Israel's monarchy was a mistake; in other senses, a gift from God? After all, wouldn't you agree that all governments offer perils as well as benefits? That they fulfill God's purposes (as St. Paul affirms in Romans 13) and are capable of great damage (as all the 'bad' kings of the OT easily exemplify)? And wouldn't oppressed people be most sensitive to the dangers as well as blessings of government? Think of the Bible as a Book of Answers and Questions. What if the Bible is intended not merely to tell you what to think, but how to think - in the apostle Paul's words to Timothy, to make you "wise unto salvation"? In that case, the questions the Bible raises in your mind may be more important than the answers you find in it. Ever notice, when Jesus was asked a question, how often he answered with another question? What if God's answers to us are often questions? And what if, by inspiring questions in us, the Bible actually reads us, instead of us reading it? Remember what the book of Hebrews says, about the Bible penetrating deep within our hearts, reading our soul and spirit. If you Preach, Preach Differently. Modern preaching is an acquired taste, and many churchgoers will be tempted to crucify you (or at least decrease their tithe to nine percent) if you depart from the conventions of modern homiletics. But some must step out and boldly go where no preachers have gone before, into the unexplored territory of preaching in the new, emerging world. Ironically, our style may become more like Jesus - even more like the Bible in general - as it becomes characterized by parable, story, conversation, proverb, poem, image, and surprise. All of which are a far cry from three points and an application, or "tell them what you'll tell them, tell them, and tell them what you told them," etc. If we're not careful, in fact, we may actually rekindle others' fascination with this wild and wonderful book called the Bible - and in the process rekindle our own fascination, too. This is how I, at least, am trying to reclaim the Bible, this amazing collection of literary artifacts. And my growing passion inspires me to action - not just to study, study, study, but to live, serve, love, seek, find, rejoice, suffer, sacrifice, worship, invite, give, and receive. Which, I think, has been the point of the Bible all along. Campolo Responds I strongly affirm Brian's suggestion that we put ourselves in the place of Scripture writers. He points out correctly that, in general, the Bible was written by people who were poor and oppressed - and until we get into the mindset of such people, we don't understand its meaning. Brian is quite right when he tells us that the Bible should not be considered a mere repository of propositional truths. But certainly we must be aware of those sections of the Bible that do contain propositional truths, and of the importance of analyzing those doctrines - for they have ultimate significance for the Christian faith. Most biblical scholars would contend that the apostle Paul's theological propositions have largely defined traditional Christianity. Also, Brian may have bought into postmodern thinking just a little bit too much for me. As I see it, Jacques Derrida, the famous postmodern deconstructionist philosopher, and his followers contend that the text of Scripture has no single interpretation; instead the Bible should be read as though it was a Rorschach test. They test us to see in the text whatever meaning we want impose on it. They tell us that no single interpretation should be considered objectively valid. The text, say these postmodernists, has a life of its own - and once it is written, the reader provides the meaning. To me, that approach to the Bible has inherent dangers.


Yu-Ling posted at 2/17/2004 02:31:00 PM

Friday, February 13, 2004

MISSING THE POINT: the Bible part III [continuing from the previous post] These misrepresentations were not malicious. But as we move from a western culture unified in the modern western mindset to a global culture with multiple perspectives sharing a more diverse postmodern mindset, it’s time to take a fresh look at the Bible and debug our software of needless modern viruses. Otherwise people will reject the Bible needlessly – at least that’s what they and us will think they’re rejecting. What they’re actually rejecting is the modern Western straitjacket in which we have corseted and even detained the Bible. Those of us from theologically conservative backgrounds (that would include Fundamentalists, evangelicals, charismatics, and Pentecostals) are experts at identifying the modern liberal distortion of the Bible. To wit: liberals denied miracles, the supernatural in general, perhaps even God himself. So the Bible had to be expunged of all these primitive – that is, non-modern – elements, sanitized to fit the restricted and bland tastes of modernity. The Bible was put through the very small holes could be accepted: no pulp, no substance, just the filtered version of the Bible remained. While we conservatives were decrying the modern liberal bias, we didn’t realize we had developed our own modern conservative bias. We put Bible through a different colander. The result? Hardly anyone in conservative churches actually encounters the Bible any more. Instead, we read edited versions, annotated with commentary, sliced and diced and strained through a number of conservative filters – Dispensational, charismatic, Reformed, whatever. To understand a text usually means merely I) finding the evidence that supports our preferred interpretation, and 2) reshaping, negating, or taming any biblical evidence that undermines our interpretation. Perhaps more significant, we conservatives reflect the spirit of our modern age by redefining hearing or reading or interpreting as analyzing. Analysis, for premodern people, was one tool in the intellectual arsenal; for modern people, it has become the only tool. Let me define analysis simply as breaking a whole down into its parts, as seeking understanding by reducing. To understand a car, we analyze it – take it apart, reduce it to a collection of rings, valves, pistons, and thingamajigs. To understand a cat, we dissect it into systems- nervous, digestive, reproductive, circulatory, etc. Analysis, however, has two sides to it. Having broken anything down into its parts, we make some things clear, but other things less clear. Take the car we took apart. Who owns it? What effect does it have on their social status? What roles does it play in the global economy, or in the local environment? Having its parts laid out in front of us does not answer questions like these. Or the cat we dissected: who owned it? What was its personality like? What dogs did it torture? What cute and furry little kittens could it have given birth to if we hadn’t killed it in order to analyze it, to “understand” it? Similarly, when we theological conservatives seek to understand the Bible, we generally analyze it. We break it down into chapters, paragraphs, verses, sentences, clauses, phrases, words, prefixes, roots, suffixes, jots, and tittles. Now we understand it, we tell ourselves. Now we have conquered the text, captured the meaning, removed all mystery, stuff it and preserved it for posterity, like a taxidermist with a deer head. But what have we missed? What have we lost by reduction? For starters, by reducing the Bible to its parts, we forfeit the chance to ask holistic questions (as opposed to analytical questions). For example: - Was this Bible book an example of a common Middle Eastern genre in its day? - If so, how does it relate to other examples of the genre? - Does this passage explore themes that are explored by other sacred texts from other religions? - What similarities and differences can be found? - What were the cultural customs and standards of day, and how does this story reflect them and perhaps violate them? - How would it have felt to be each of the characters of the story? - How does this whole book fit into the whole Bible? - What themes does it share in common? - What emphases are different and unique? - Where do we see the unique personality of the writer coming through? - Where do we see particular biases or literary devices or concerns of that specific time and place? Instead of asking these kinds of holistic questions, we typically jump to the more familiar analytical questions: - What do the Hebrew or Greek words in these sentence mean? - What universal principles and accepted doctrines can we associated with this text (or can we use it to “prove” it)? - How does this passage apply to our lives today? These analytical questions, familiar to any theological conservative, speedily convert a biblical text into something supposedly useful to us – points for sermons, proofs for arguments, easy-application moral lessons for life. The less familiar holistic questions ask us to engage more deeply, patiently, and respectfully with the text – more like a lover of landscapes and less like a miner looking for a hill to strip-mine for a quick and saleable product. Answering the less familiar questions involves different kinds of scholarship than we are used to, and requires of us little-used faculties – such as imagination and systems thinking.


Yu-Ling posted at 2/13/2004 04:04:00 PM

Thursday, February 12, 2004

MISSING THE POINT: the Bible part II I’m posting part two of ‘missing the point about the Bible’. Hopefully, I can completely post the entire section very quickly, then I can write some more personal sharing soon (ie. new revelations about singleness). What we (mis)represented the Bible to be It’s often the friends of the Bible who do it the most damage, as they entirely miss its purpose and message. Case in point: because modern Christians loved the Bible, they paid it four compliments, which have damaged as well as enhanced the Bible’s reputation. - We compared the Bible to things we value highly. Think encyclopedias (books with answers to everything), blueprints (how-to manuals), scientific formulae (universal laws), constitutions and annotated formulae (universal laws), constitutions and annotated codes (rule books), and the like. In so doing we raised expectations; unfortunately, people expecting these things (answers to everything, a how-to manual, etc.) are often disappointed, thus turning people away from the Bible. - We claimed that the Bible was easy to understand, that any child could understand it. In some places that’s probably true – but according to the Bible itself, at least some parts of it are very difficult to understand and easily misinterpreted (see 2 Peter 3:16 for example). Our sales pitch tried to commodify the Bible like other modern products – It’s easy! It’s fast! It’s convenient! – and in so doing, we unintentionally sanctioned misunderstandings and bastard readings. - We presented the Bible as a repository of sacred propositions and abstractions. Which was natural, for we were moderns – children of the 18th-century Europen Enlightenment – so we loved abstractions and propositions. Our sermons tended to exegete texts in such a way that stories, poetry, and biography (among other features of the Bible) – the ‘chaff’ were sifted out, while the ‘wheat’ of doctrines and principles were saved. Modern Western people loved that approach; meanwhile, however, people of a more postmodern bent (who are more like premodern people in many ways) find the doctrines and principles as interesting as grass clippings. - We mass produced the Bible. Thanks to technologies from the printing press to the Internet, you can find a copy of the Bible or hear Christian preaching just about anywhere, anytime now. Our mass production had benefits, of course – yet its ubiquity only reinforced the idea that the Bible is cheap and common. Furthermore, the Bible’s ubiquity also fueled the perception that any individual may arrive at interpretations that are not only valid, but authoritative. This individualism transformed the Bible from the sacred text that gathers the community of faith into the ubiquitous text that divides through a multiplicity of divergent interpretations.


Yu-Ling posted at 2/12/2004 04:05:00 AM