The quote that is the anchor for today’s message does not come from some theological text nor from anyone’s current blog. It is actually just a bit of snark created and posted by my pastor friend Jeanne Loveless (thank you, Jeanne). It’s printed on a coffee mug and it reads thusly: I can do all things through a verse taken out of context.
I’m going to get back to that coffee cup in a moment but first I want to lay out my position on who wrote the Bible.
If you are a confirmed biblical literalist that means you accept every word, every jot and tittle, as coming directly from the mouth of God. The classic illustration of this shows a man with a pen and paper (or parchment) with God (presumably) whispering directly into his ear.
It means that you have to give equal weight to every word in the Bible -- no picking and choosing the verses that confirm your biases while ignoring the ones that disagree with you. It means the God who dictated all this put in some bizarrely pointless things as well as some accidently hilarious stuff, mixed in with the parts that matter. Such a belief also includes accepting that the God you worship enjoined the people newly returned from exile in Babylon to rejoice as Babylonian infants were beaten to death in retaliation: “O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!” (Psalm 137:8-9)
Ummm – No. If I thought for a moment that God actually enjoyed the thought of babies having their brains beat out against the rocks, I would not follow, believe in, and certainly not love any such being.
If that’s not your style either, then let’s spend some time talking about reading scripture in context. To read scripture in context is to accept the reality that the Bible is not a single book, but a library, a compendium of books, written in different centuries by people with differing beliefs and cultural mores. It is the story of a people’s growing and evolving understanding of who God is and of their relationship with that God.
What we call the Bible was written over the course of roughly 1500 years, written down by more than 40 different writers writing in multiple languages. Its time span covers wars and the rise and fall of kingdoms. It also covers the slow metamorphosis of the Hebrew religion from a polytheism similar to its neighbors, to a strict monotheism and a belief system centered in one God and one God only. That's a lot of evolutionary change for a faith system to go through and the people who followed it had to grow and evolve as well.
Some parts of the Hebrew Scriptures – what we today call the Old Testament – were written by priests of the Temple whose version of history always gives the Temple leadership precedence. Other parts were written by those associated with the royal line and their writings features the leadership of the royal government as predominate.
Major parts of the Old Testament are written as a history of the people. Some parts are prophecy, some poetry. Other parts are pure mythology stolen from neighboring nations.
Large parts of the Bible are xenophobic and horribly misogynistic. Many parts are sickeningly violent as I illustrated earlier. And this book is notorious for contradicting itself all over the place. Whatever it says in one spot, there’s bound to be another spot where it says the exact opposite.
Does any of this mean the Bible has no value? Absolutely not! It means it is a human document written and compiled by humans who are notoriously fallible. But it is also written by people trying their best to tell their truth as they knew at that time -- and this is a key piece for us to remember.
Which leads me to my main point – that we have to put some work into reading scripture. We have to learn to read the Bible in context. Who did the writing? Who were they writing it for? What was their time frame and their political status at that time? What were their primary cultural beliefs? Were they the top-dog or the underdog in their cultural setting? We read it in our time, but they wrote it in theirs. Whatever the answers to these questions, we cannot just pull random single sentences out, ignoring their context, and build whole theologies on them.
Horrible, sinful things have come from people reading scripture without context. Passages from scripture taken out of their rightful contexts were used by the church in our country to justify enslaving and mistreating African people, claiming the Bible said it was right to do so. More recently the Germans used scripture to justify their murder of six million Jewish people by quoting scripture passage that did not mean what they thought they meant.
Likewise, writings attributed to Paul and Timothy, among others, applied with no cultural context have caused untold misery to generations of women and girls by those who wish to strictly hold with first century mores (as they mis-interpret them). Mis-translated words also have caused terribly results when readers didn’t have the awareness to recognize that the translation was faulty. Twentieth-century terminology dropped into concepts lifted from the first century with no attempt to rectify cultural references have justified terrible actions against LGBTQ people -- all in the name of God.
Much of scripture is simply unhelpful, such as this gem from St. Paul: I wish those who unsettle you would castrate themselves! Really? This is wisdom for the ages. While we can understand Paul’s frustration with those who followed behind him seeking to undo all he had taught, I can’t find anything actually helpful in this verse. Certainly not without its context explained.
As a pastor, probably the verse I have heard misquoted more than any other is Deuteronomy 32:35 which is always presented to me as “Vengeance is mine!” as if scripture is giving the speaker permission to enact vengeance. When you read all of Deuteronomy 32, as you should if you’re going to toss this verse around, you find that the speaker here is God and the context is a threat of punishment against the Hebrew people for turning away from God. This line means vengeance belongs to God, and not to any one of us.
Let’s get back to my original coffee-mug quote: “I can do all things through a verse taken out of context.” Now obviously, this little bit of sarcasm is a play on one line from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians, chapter 4, verse 13 – “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” – and it is a classic example of scripture being taken out of context. Quoted in its entirety this is a perfectly legitimate statement explaining that when Christ strengthens us for a particular task, we can do that task.
But all too often it is quoted in a shortened version and used to suggest that simply because we “know” Christ we are therefore equipped to do anything – and I don’t believe that’s what it means at all. I “know” Christ, yet I am not a pastor who could go out and start a new church from scratch. I can’t leap tall buildings in a single bound. I believe if I should ever be called to do such a thing, that then I would be equipped to do it but I don’t believe I am especially enabled to do anything that pops into my head, just because “God is on my side.” And yet, this particular scripture is misquoted all the time to justify questionable results.
Does all this mean we can’t read scripture for ourselves without a theological education? No. Few of us have that to lean on. What we all do have, however, is common sense. If we are well-grounded in the teachings and examples of Jesus, then we are going to know when something is authentically from God and when it is not. If you can’t imagine it coming out of Jesus’ mouth, then it is probably not a general teaching on living a life in God. It is more likely an historical record pertaining to a particular event in history when the people did not know any better.
We know better. Christ’s own Spirit lives in us. It’s part of us. It helps us understand and reason our way through questions that arise. Don’t be afraid to question scripture. God isn’t going to get mad because we ask questions. Find someone you trust and ask your questions. Line up your pros and cons. And trust the Spirit within you.
As Disciples of Christ we are expected to question and work out our own understanding of what scripture seeks to tell us. Listen, then, and trust the Spirit’s leading. Trust God to help us understand and to hear what we are meant to hear.
Amen.
I’m going to get back to that coffee cup in a moment but first I want to lay out my position on who wrote the Bible.
If you are a confirmed biblical literalist that means you accept every word, every jot and tittle, as coming directly from the mouth of God. The classic illustration of this shows a man with a pen and paper (or parchment) with God (presumably) whispering directly into his ear.
It means that you have to give equal weight to every word in the Bible -- no picking and choosing the verses that confirm your biases while ignoring the ones that disagree with you. It means the God who dictated all this put in some bizarrely pointless things as well as some accidently hilarious stuff, mixed in with the parts that matter. Such a belief also includes accepting that the God you worship enjoined the people newly returned from exile in Babylon to rejoice as Babylonian infants were beaten to death in retaliation: “O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!” (Psalm 137:8-9)
Ummm – No. If I thought for a moment that God actually enjoyed the thought of babies having their brains beat out against the rocks, I would not follow, believe in, and certainly not love any such being.
If that’s not your style either, then let’s spend some time talking about reading scripture in context. To read scripture in context is to accept the reality that the Bible is not a single book, but a library, a compendium of books, written in different centuries by people with differing beliefs and cultural mores. It is the story of a people’s growing and evolving understanding of who God is and of their relationship with that God.
What we call the Bible was written over the course of roughly 1500 years, written down by more than 40 different writers writing in multiple languages. Its time span covers wars and the rise and fall of kingdoms. It also covers the slow metamorphosis of the Hebrew religion from a polytheism similar to its neighbors, to a strict monotheism and a belief system centered in one God and one God only. That's a lot of evolutionary change for a faith system to go through and the people who followed it had to grow and evolve as well.
Some parts of the Hebrew Scriptures – what we today call the Old Testament – were written by priests of the Temple whose version of history always gives the Temple leadership precedence. Other parts were written by those associated with the royal line and their writings features the leadership of the royal government as predominate.
Major parts of the Old Testament are written as a history of the people. Some parts are prophecy, some poetry. Other parts are pure mythology stolen from neighboring nations.
Large parts of the Bible are xenophobic and horribly misogynistic. Many parts are sickeningly violent as I illustrated earlier. And this book is notorious for contradicting itself all over the place. Whatever it says in one spot, there’s bound to be another spot where it says the exact opposite.
Does any of this mean the Bible has no value? Absolutely not! It means it is a human document written and compiled by humans who are notoriously fallible. But it is also written by people trying their best to tell their truth as they knew at that time -- and this is a key piece for us to remember.
Which leads me to my main point – that we have to put some work into reading scripture. We have to learn to read the Bible in context. Who did the writing? Who were they writing it for? What was their time frame and their political status at that time? What were their primary cultural beliefs? Were they the top-dog or the underdog in their cultural setting? We read it in our time, but they wrote it in theirs. Whatever the answers to these questions, we cannot just pull random single sentences out, ignoring their context, and build whole theologies on them.
Horrible, sinful things have come from people reading scripture without context. Passages from scripture taken out of their rightful contexts were used by the church in our country to justify enslaving and mistreating African people, claiming the Bible said it was right to do so. More recently the Germans used scripture to justify their murder of six million Jewish people by quoting scripture passage that did not mean what they thought they meant.
Likewise, writings attributed to Paul and Timothy, among others, applied with no cultural context have caused untold misery to generations of women and girls by those who wish to strictly hold with first century mores (as they mis-interpret them). Mis-translated words also have caused terribly results when readers didn’t have the awareness to recognize that the translation was faulty. Twentieth-century terminology dropped into concepts lifted from the first century with no attempt to rectify cultural references have justified terrible actions against LGBTQ people -- all in the name of God.
Much of scripture is simply unhelpful, such as this gem from St. Paul: I wish those who unsettle you would castrate themselves! Really? This is wisdom for the ages. While we can understand Paul’s frustration with those who followed behind him seeking to undo all he had taught, I can’t find anything actually helpful in this verse. Certainly not without its context explained.
As a pastor, probably the verse I have heard misquoted more than any other is Deuteronomy 32:35 which is always presented to me as “Vengeance is mine!” as if scripture is giving the speaker permission to enact vengeance. When you read all of Deuteronomy 32, as you should if you’re going to toss this verse around, you find that the speaker here is God and the context is a threat of punishment against the Hebrew people for turning away from God. This line means vengeance belongs to God, and not to any one of us.
Let’s get back to my original coffee-mug quote: “I can do all things through a verse taken out of context.” Now obviously, this little bit of sarcasm is a play on one line from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians, chapter 4, verse 13 – “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” – and it is a classic example of scripture being taken out of context. Quoted in its entirety this is a perfectly legitimate statement explaining that when Christ strengthens us for a particular task, we can do that task.
But all too often it is quoted in a shortened version and used to suggest that simply because we “know” Christ we are therefore equipped to do anything – and I don’t believe that’s what it means at all. I “know” Christ, yet I am not a pastor who could go out and start a new church from scratch. I can’t leap tall buildings in a single bound. I believe if I should ever be called to do such a thing, that then I would be equipped to do it but I don’t believe I am especially enabled to do anything that pops into my head, just because “God is on my side.” And yet, this particular scripture is misquoted all the time to justify questionable results.
Does all this mean we can’t read scripture for ourselves without a theological education? No. Few of us have that to lean on. What we all do have, however, is common sense. If we are well-grounded in the teachings and examples of Jesus, then we are going to know when something is authentically from God and when it is not. If you can’t imagine it coming out of Jesus’ mouth, then it is probably not a general teaching on living a life in God. It is more likely an historical record pertaining to a particular event in history when the people did not know any better.
We know better. Christ’s own Spirit lives in us. It’s part of us. It helps us understand and reason our way through questions that arise. Don’t be afraid to question scripture. God isn’t going to get mad because we ask questions. Find someone you trust and ask your questions. Line up your pros and cons. And trust the Spirit within you.
As Disciples of Christ we are expected to question and work out our own understanding of what scripture seeks to tell us. Listen, then, and trust the Spirit’s leading. Trust God to help us understand and to hear what we are meant to hear.
Amen.
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