Category: Christianity

In some recent discussions, mostly related to my Seventh-day Adventist background (for those who may not know, I’m now a member of a United Methodist congregation but was raised SDA), I have encountered quite a number of questions regarding who various elements of scripture are for. For example, many Christians will say that the law of the Old Testament was for the Jews, and is not binding on them. Others will say that the law itself was made void for everyone due to the death of Jesus. Seventh-day Adventists divide the law into two major parts, the moral law or ten commandments and the ceremonial law which covers just about all the rest of the Torah.

Alden Thompson, an SDA author, uses the “law pyramid” starting at the top with the one law of love to God, then the two laws of love to God and love to one’s neighbor, then the 10 commandments, making this more explicit in more commands, then the 613 “mitzvoth” or commands found in Torah. Each group of laws expands on the principles in the greater law. (You can find Thompson’s eplanation of this in his book Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God?, in chapter 4, “Strange People Need Strange Laws,” page 60. (Note: This book is published by my company, Energion Publications.) The result is a variant on the SDA position which makes the 613 commands simply a more detailed expansion on the more basic one and two laws, but leaves an open question as to whether the 10 commandments are universally applicable (Thompson as a committed SDA believes they are), or whether one must take the laws more as a whole and determine their applicability to time and place.

I tend to bounce this question off of my SDA roots for the simple reason that I think that the more general Christian community has often not done enough thinking about what we believe about the law. In just about any congregation I will find people who think that the entire law was nailed to the cross, and no laws apply to us at all, to those who firmly hold that the 10 commandments must be kept, but aren’t sure just what the consequences will be for failure. At the same time, we have an almost exaggerated reverence for monuments of the ten commandments, expressed by people who are not all that sure about a good number of them.

I’m also focussing on the issue of the ten commandments, because that is a common area of disagreement. But I’m really more interested in how we read the Bible in general, because this same type of question is quite valid for any scriptural passage.

The fact is that none of the Bible was, in fact, written to me personally, nor to my church as a whole. (Now please pause a bit before jumping on me about the prayer of Jesus in John 17. I’ll allow that some passages can be read more broadly, but there are very few.) The SDA distinction between the 10 commandments divides a single instance of lawgiving into multiple parts, supposing one part to be directed to all people, and the other to Israel. But the 10 commandments themselves begin with “I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt . . .” (Exodus 20:2) That’s addressing a group of Israelites near Mount Sinai at a particular time and place. The Israelites through their celebrations participated as a people in God’s acts of salvation, and made themselves part of this as well. As Christians, we feel that we are a part of that deliverance as well, metaphorically through Jesus, called from Egypt (Matthew 2:15), and spiritually through being Abraham’s seed by faith (Galatians 3:29). We gain from the experience even though we did not experience it directly and physically.

So despite the fact that I believe SDAs have thought a great deal more about the law and its relation to grace, I find myself in profound disagreement here. The Bible itself doesn’t make a distinction between the 10 commandments and the rest of the law. There is no part of the Torah that was addressed to non-Israelites. There is no indication of greater sacredness, except for two things: 1) It’s actual content and 2) That it is spoken by God directly to the people. In the history itself I see considerable reason to believe that the fact that the 10 commandments were spoken by God directly is not a good indicator. As I read Exodus 19, God was quite prepared to give his law directly to the people, but the people were not prepared to receive more. But I do believe the actual content of the 10 commandments sets them apart to some extent.

But once I’ve said that the 10 commandments are addressed to someone else, I must start looking at the rest of scripture. There I find that this is nothing unusual. My favorite passages are all addressed to someone else! Even Jesus addresses most of his words to other people, to his Jewish audience, to his disciples, to crowds in Galilee. Paul addresses his letters to specific Greek churches. In Revelation, John addresses the report of his vision to the seven churches in Asia. There are a few items addressed to the church generally that I can read pretty directly, but I seem to be reading someone else’s mail a good deal of the time when I study scripture.

Let me take a brief detour here to make a point about revelation in general. My wife was recently asking me about the story of John the Baptist identifying Jesus in John 1. The question is this: If Jesus is John’s cousin, does he not already know him? Doesn’t he have some history on which to base his conclusion and identification? Assuming we take Luke seriously, certainly John has some basis for knowledge, but apparently God didn’t choose to just tell him, “John, your cousin Jesus is the anointed one. When he comes to be baptized, point him out!” Instead, he tells John that the person on whom the Spirit descends like a dove is the anointed one. Sounds convoluted, doesn’t it? Sometimes I have to wonder about these things. Revelation seems to come in such a round about way.

But you could look at books like Ezekiel, Daniel, or Revelation in a similar way. Ezekiel is amongst the exiles in Babylon, but is moved around by the Spirit in vision. The major thrust of the entire first chapter is simply that God is present, active, and powerful even away from Israel’s land. (Admittedly there is more there, but that’s the key message.) Why couldn’t God just say, “Ezekiel, I’m here and I’m still in control”? Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 2 could have had a dream that showed armies moving and maps. The man knew most of those countries after all. But instead we have an image, and a call for Daniel to interpret. Later, in Daniel’s visions, for some reason we have a vision followed by an angelic interpretation. Those of us who have studied these books for years hardly notice. That’s just the way it is. But if you stand back and think about it, it can seem a little strange. Revelation again presents symbolically much that we might like to have laid out plainly. I’m reminded of Tolkien’s hobbits who “liked books filled with things they already knew, set down plainly without contradiction.”

Jesus also used some convoluted ways, using parables and signs to aid in his teaching. He even expressed his reasons (Mark 4:10-12). Discussing this passage extensively would go beyond the scope of this essay, but let me simply suggest that Jesus was keeping the message from people who were never going to get the message anyhow. He was confusing the “5 minute a day” crowd. I regularly encounter people who want to become good Bible students on 5 minutes a day. I have to tell them I have no such quick method. Knowing your Bible, and more importantly knowing the God of the Bible requires much more commitment than that. (For more on parables see Interpreting Parables.)

For whatever reason, God has generally chosen to give his word in a context of experience. From that experience we can then derive principles, lessons, and even commands that apply to us personally or as a community. In this way all of scripture is important, even though it may not apply to me directly.

The key is that in each of these cases, God is dealing with real people in a real way. I want to know God better and so the way that he dealt with Israel back in the wilderness, or the way he dealt with the church at Corinth or the churches in Asia is very, very important to me, because it tells me how God deals with people under different circumstances and at different times. This doesn’t make the 10 commandments inapplicable, but it may make them applicable in a different way. At the same time, it means that all those other chapters in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are also applicable in that they say something about how God works. If we believe that God was really dealing with Israel, operating in a relationship with them, then we need to ask what we can learn from the way in which he dealt with them.

Recently, in studying through the Torah I have found that there is much more there than normally meets the Christian eye. We are so used to dismissing the “ceremonial law” as all pointing to Jesus and done away with at the cross that we have missed much of the content. There are things to learn here about community, about holiness and sanctification, about sacrifice, about thanksgiving, about order, and about commitment to God as his people.

At the same time, as we realize these laws were not given to us gentiles, we are not looking to replicate the sytem of worship of the Israelites. We want to learn everything we can about living in covenant with God as it is applicable to our time, our covenant and our relationship with God.

In that sense, the 10 commandments are simply a part of that whole picture. As you study them, I think you will find that they embody much more universal principles than do the many laws, and that you will find many more ways in which they apply to your personal and church life. Nonetheless there is more there to learn throughout the Torah (Pentateuch).

Sometimes choosing a pew Bible is a kind of afterthought. I grew up in churches that didn’t even have pew Bibles. It was expected that all the church members would have their own and would bring them to church. But for many churches the pew Bible can have a major impact both on worship and on learning.

One church I was associated with decided to get some new pew Bibles. They wanted to get the NIV, because most of the members used that at home, and the pastor also used it in preaching. Then it turned out that they could get NRSV pew Bibles cheaper from their primary source, and so the church now has NRSV Bibles in the pews. Most commonly scripture readings are taken from a different version, and the pastor uses a third version in preaching. The members still own the NIV more than any other version, so the pew Bible is of a version that is rarely used.

How can one choose a good pew Bible, especially considering the inevitable differences in the desires of various church members?

The key to this process is to be very clear first about your mission, and then about your use of scripture in your worship services. Ideally, your use of scripture will reflect your church’s mission, and will help your church carry out your mission.

Most churches will speak of a mission to the community and of outreach when discussing their mission. But often the actions of the church speak of a considerably different mission. For example, if a church claims to be dedicated to reaching modern young people, and yet uses the KJV in preaching and teaching, there is probably a disconnect between the claimed goal and the actual goal.

Assuming your church is trying to reach someone, let’s look at some of the groups you might want to reach:

1. Persons who have never been church members and who did not grow up in church
2. Persons who grew up in church, but have left
3. Churched persons who are dissatisfied with their current congregation
4. Needy persons who can be reached with literacy programs
5. Young people
6. Persons whose primary language is something other than English
7. College age adults
8. Educated and professional people
9. Existing, long-time members

I personally think all of these groups, and many more that I have not mentioned, should be reached by a church, and many of them are not. I would not criticize a church for having an outreach to any of these groups as its goal, or the goal of one of its worship services. But it is important for your church to recognize who they are really reaching. Often we speak of outreach to the unchurched, but we run worship services that are designed for habitual church goers.

Further, we must ask what role scripture plays in the worship service. Do you use scripture readings as a means of worship? Do you use responive readings? Are members of the congregation asked to read scripture out load? Is scripture primarily a part of teaching? How important is easy understanding to the effect of your scripture reading.

It is not sufficient just to choose a Bible with a good “public reading” rating on one of my version charts. That was one of the ratings I was not even sure I should use because it is so subjective. What I like in public reading may well be very different from what you like. The CEV, for example, was translated with oral reading in mind, yet I know many people who abhor hearing it in public scripture reading, even when they appreciate it for private reading. I personally rate the CEV at an ‘8’ (out of 10) for public reading, and the ESV as a ‘5’, but I know many people who would rather hear the ESV.

In addition, I know many people who love the KJV for public reading because they think it just sounds like a Bible. It has a “spiritual ring” to it for many people’s ears. But those same people will admit that they really don’t understand what they hear very easily.

Young people are likely to follow modern versions with little “church language” such as the CEV, the NCV, or the TNIV. Older members, or more educated (or perhaps just more intellectual in attitude) may prefer something that sounds a bit more dignified, like the REB, the NRSV, or the ESV. Those versions, however, contain a good deal of church language, and so may be less effective for teaching.

Consider also what most church members are using at home. If you are going to use a different Bible in the pew than people normally bring to church, be aware of the questions that may occur. If you use responsive readings, check your hymnal as well and find out what version is used in preprinted responsive readings.

If you find the need to compromise between a more “majestic” sounding version for scripture readings as part of worship, and a more readable version for teaching in church, consider putting an “easy to read” version in the pews, and printing scripture readings and responsive readings in your bulletin. Consider also doing some teaching about Bible translations so that your members will understand why versions are different and be able to make intelligent choices about them.

For further information, see my book What’s in a Version?. I also am available to teach classes on Bible translations in churches.

I’m back to my discussion of inspiration, dealing with the issue of how one determines whether someone can speak for God. In this entry I’m going to look at the last two items on my list, divine widom, and the gift of discernment, which are closely related.

As a preliminary, let me comment that I have noticed that most of the gifts of the Spirit have their “talent” counterparts. There are those who exhibit wisdom, and then there is the gift of messages (or words) of wisdom. There are talented teachers, and then there are those whose ability to help guide a group into understanding spiritual truths seems supernatural. There is a talent for languages, and then there is the gift of tongues as exhibited on Pentecost with everyone hearing in their own language. I don’t want to take up space in this entry by digging more into this idea, so if you think I’m off-base here, we’ll need to wait for another set of entries to discuss it more. But for the moment, I want to suggest such a relationship between a wise person, and one who has the gift of discernment or, I would suggest, shares in the divine wisdom.

I’m combining my discussion, because I think the relationship between wisdom exhibited as wisdom, i.e. a Proverbs sort of wisdom, and the gift of discernment is very close. I think we ignore that relationship at our own peril. The problem is that the gift of discernment doesn’t have some specific physical manifestation to identify it. It can be claimed in the same way as the gift of prophecy, or as any message from God. One person can make the claim of the gift of prophecy, while another claims discernment and backs them up. The result is just as circular as any other test I’ve mentioned.

So let me start with wisdom. I think it is critically important that we pay attention to the fact that the Bible includes wisdom literature. Many of the Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes fall into this category. If you pay attention as you read these books, you will see something significantly different from the message of the prophetic books. The prophets stand on their claim to receive messages from God through the Spirit. Their sanction is their inspiration by God. They invite you to accept or reject their message, and experience the consequences (graphically presented) of your choice.

Wisdom writers, on the other hand, appeal to the nature of the created universe, to the experience of how God works, and to the understanding the community has built up. They are clear that the message comes from God and is a divine message, but it is a process of the mind that has perceived God’s revelation. I don’t believe that this is any less “inspiration” than the prophet’s message, but it invites the reader to participate in another way, by thinking and getting themselves involved in the divine wisdom.

Jesus also spoke in this wisdom mode. There has been a debate amongst historical Jesus scholars about whether Jesus was a wisdom teacher, an eschatological preacher, with the latter being similar to the prophetic approach. I would suggest that the question narrows Jesus too much. Jesus spoke in the form of wisdom at times and in the form of prophecy (Spirit driven speech) at times. One of the reasons I think that those on the outside couldn’t understand the parables was that the parables were not in the form of announcements; rather, they were in the form of seeds. It’s wrong to look for the interpretation of a parable. One needs to look for how a parable can seed into one’s thinking and change one’s whole approach to life. That is divine wisdom operating within.

But divine wisdom is not a purely human endeavor. It is not that people figure out God. Rather, it is that people grow in wisdom by looking into God’s actions, in the physical, spiritual, and moral realms. Psalm 119:104 says we get wisdom through God’s precepts. Sometimes I add this to my list of tests–the obedience test. If we set out to obey God with all our hearts and minds, we will not ultimately be led astray. When we are led astray, it’s because in some sense we have kept an agenda other than finding divine wisdom. Wisdom literature emphasizes that wisdom starts with fearing God (Proverbs 1:7). Following God’s wisodm involves acknowledging him as creator, and finding his wisdom in the creation (Proverbs 8:22ff, Psalm 104). Divine wisdom is one thing that appears to be promised on the only condition that we seek it wholeheartedly (James 1:5).

That divine wisdom forms the foundation for our understanding of discernment in the community. I think by now anyone who has stuck with me through all these essays will realize that I put the greatest weight on the community of faith in discerning God’s message. Abraham had very little community to work with. We’re told in Joshua 24:2 that Abraham’s family were worshipping other gods. He simply had to move on faith. God honored his determination to obey and gave him direction clearly enough. Over time, the community of faith has exercised its discernment in preserving and granting authority to certain written material as part of our body of faith literature. The study of canonization is itself fairly complex. (I talk about this just a little bit more in the Participatory Study Series pamphlet What is the Word of God?) Let me just say here that if we do not believe that God leads spiritually in the community as it selects a body of literature that is authoritative, we should probably give up the notion of any canon at all.

If we do accept God’s working in the community, then the more times we have someone who has heard God’s voice, the greater the body of knowledge we have to work from. I suspect that God expects more in terms of discernment from me than he did from Abraham on this issue. Not because I’m wiser than Abraham, or more spiritual, or anything of the sort, but because I have much, much more material to work with, and thus many more ways to check what I hear.

In sports that allow plays to be reviewed, the reviewer can see the play from various camera angles. Often I look at a play as it’s shown on TV and I see one thing, and then some other camera angle makes it clear that the reality was somewhat different. Abraham had one camera angle. I have many. My lousy spiritual eyesight can be aided by many different views.

I would suggest that the gifts of wisdom and discernment relate very closely to the divine wisdom and need to be judged as such. A “word of wisdom” or as I prefer, “message of wisdom” is something that can be tested by the community at the time it is spoken. We especially compare it to the divine wisdom. Does this word reflect the fear of God? Does this wisdom reflect God’s activity in the world? Is it in accordance with God’s precepts from which we get understanding? An absolute statement by someone who claims discernment can be tested in the same way.

One final comment I need to make has to do with how we find an objective standard. Obviously I believe that the Bible is a valid source for me in terms of faith and practice. Otherwise I wouldn’t belong to a denomination that claims that as a doctrine, and I wouldn’t be a Bible teacher. I think, however, that our witness needs to be more community based. As Christians (and I’ve been speaking in a Christian context here) we need to make our witness clear. We cannot simply provide a list of reasons one should regard the Bible as true; we need to show that the Bible is the book of a community in which God is present. I think this is where we frequently fail. And to bring this entry full circle, we frequently fail because while we’ve accepted some pronouncements as true (which is good), we have failed to let the divine wisdom be planted in our hearts and minds and start to bear fruit.

We need to make divine wisdom the hallmark of our community.

Note: Other articles of my own that I have used in this series include Inspiration, Biblical Authority, and Inerrancy and The Authority of the Bible.

Wayne Leman on his Better Bibles blog, created an exceptional entry on the need for having translations that put the Bible into comprehensible, current English.

Too often in the church we assume that people know things. We assume they know how to find the church, when services are, what is appropriate for them or for their children, what to do in church, where to find a Sunday School class, and many other things. We do the same thing with many of our doctrines. People are assumed to understand justification, sanctification, glorification, atonement, expiation, and so forth.

But many people don’t understand these words, and they don’t know our ways. They may not be willing to expose themselves to potential ridicule by asking what may seem to be a stupid question.

I’m going to refer you to Wayne’s blog for more, but let me suggest quickly that there are two ways we can address this. First, we can translate what we say on a daily basis into real, everyday English. This is something I need to work on! Second, some of the things we do may be incomprehensible because they’ve lost their meaning. Perhaps we need to change our ways, so that we can communicate God’s love more effectively through our actions.

In my initial entry on testing prophets I listed five approaches to determining whether a word someone claims comes from God is actually from God. The third of those items was “Access to inside information, or is in God’s councils.”

You may be wondering, and rightfully so, how I distinguish this from other approaches. Surely this one is totally covered by the prediction or sign test. But I found this specifically in the foreward by Mark Chironna to Jim Goll’s recent book, The Seer, which my wife and I are studying together. The statement there was that “. . . the earmark of a true prophet was that they stood in the divine council and conclave” (p. 12).

What struck me immediately is that this is the type of statement that is commonly made by either theologians or very spiritual people who are experienced in prayer and in dealing with issues regarding the prophetic. I don’t really take exception to it except that “earmark” normally means something like “a distinguishing or identifying mark.” I get regular questions from people who have received impressions, visions, dreams, or heard something that they believe was the voice of God. How are they going to know whether this is God’s leading or not? If someone has claimed that God told them something, how does one know whether they truly are? This “earmark” is unlikely to work well, because the question remains of where the mark is. What does the inexperienced person do?

I have seen this kind of answer in conferences, and people appear satisfied with them, but I also know that when they go home they still have the same basic question–how can I know. In other words, the earmark doesn’t work well, or isn’t visible to most people. I’m going to deal with this more as I proceed through this series. But right now I just want to suggest that the answer to a question like this has to be practical. We can’t just discuss the theology of how inspiration works and assume that people can apply that knowledge practically. Very often I think that those who proclaim the theology don’t themselves know how to apply their knowledge practically and then just play it by ear. That can be very dangerous if the issue is a question of whether someone is speaking for God.

Some also will simply claim that nobody now is speaking for God. (There will also be those who claim that nobody ever has spoken for God, but I’m assuming right now they’re not very intersted in this essay.) But those Christians who claim that the gifts of the Holy Spirit have ceased still need to deal with the issue of Biblical inspiration itself. Anyone can still ask why one should accept the Bible as inspired, and not other works from ancient times. In addition, there are Christian groups who claim that prophets still speak in modern times. (Jim Goll, whose book I cited earlier, is one such.) So in any case, one needs to have some kind of practical approach to these problems.

I’ll continue through the list of tests in my next entry.