Some time ago I did seven interviews on theodicy, or the problem of evil. One of the people I interviewed was Elgin Hushbeck. He and Larissa Munz now produce the Into the Desert podcast. They just released a video titled Christianity’s Biggest Problem, which I’ll embed below.
The key value for this video is the way in which it outlines the question and potential problems.
Includes one with Elgin Hushbeck.
This is translated into modern English by Gemini AI, according to my prompts. Note that updates on terminology, especially including references to people groups and faiths that would not be considered courteous today are updated, and mentioned in the notes. This is done in accordance with my prompts and I take responsibility for the use of language. You can find the original sermon on ResourceUMC.org.
Note that this is divided into sections, and following each section there are comments on the updating of the language. Bold text indicates that there is a related note and is not used for emphasis. I invite readers to check the accuracy of this work, as this is experimental use of AI, at least from my point of view.
“The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” – Isaiah 11:9
Notes on Translation Choices:
The General Spread of the Gospel “The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” – Isaiah 11:9
Notes on Translation Choices:
The General Spread of the Gospel “The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” – Isaiah 11:9
Notes on Translation Choices:
Notes on Translation Choices:
The General Spread of the Gospel “The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” – Isaiah 11:9
Notes on Translation Choices:
(Featured image is By Viktor, licensed from Adobe Stock.)
Therefore I completely keep all your precepts.
I hate every false way.
I think I say something about how many ways one could go in meditating on each of these verses, and I certainly could. Today I’m thinking about this line especially from a Christian perspective.
I recall a young man coming to my door with his wife and his KJV Bible in hand, intending to convert me. It did not bother him that I was already a Christian. It was his duty to straighten out my theology in a hurry. Among the various things he told me was that the Sermon on the Mount did not apply to Christians in the “church age.” It was for the Jews and for a special transitional stage between the old covenant and the new covenant.
Our discussion roamed through the New Testament. Passages from Hebrew Scriptures were not of importance to him. I think we spent more than an hour not communicating with one another.
As he got up to leave he said he was worried about my salvation. “I have given you nothing but Scripture but you haven’t given me any scripture at all.” He paused. “Well, except for Matthew, and Hebrews, and James, and they don’t count.”
Now when I read the Sermon on the Mount as recorded in Matthew, I find sentiments that fit with this passage. Not only is Jesus saying to keep all the law all the time, but he’s asking us to keep the law in our hearts. If one is angry at someone that person is guilty of murder.
I can see why someone would want to dismiss the whole thing as applying to someone else. Big sigh of relief! It sounds pretty holy, but I don’t have to do any of it.
We often talk and act as though the big problem with Israel was that they had too many laws or that they were too intent on keeping them. That misses the point that God gave Israel all those laws. God said they should keep all those laws. Leviticus (19:2 and other places) says to “be holy for I (the LORD) am holy.” Matthew 5 doesn’t back off from this, saying that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven, and then in 5:48 “Be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect.”
Old Testament or new, there is nowhere in scripture where God’s plan is not a plan to create a holy people. The thing we need to catch on to, and bluntly, that I think the psalmist has 100% is this: God’s call is for completely keeping all the commandments, while at the same time, he recognizes in many other verses that it is only through God’s power that this is accomplished.
I’m again going to refer to the last verse, sort of a spoiler! “I have gone astray like a lost sheep. Seek your servant….” Note that it does not say, “I have gone astray like a lost sheep. Your laws are too tough, give me an excuse.” He does not say, “I have gone astray, please fix the map so it records that I am on course.
There is a glorious purpose to which God calls us all, and to which only God can bring us. We can’t attain this, but God can. And God promises to do precisely that.
Keep your eye on the goal. All * Completely.
There might be many reasons why someone would be ashamed of the good news about God that is represented in what we call the “gospel.”
Historically, the shame was in worshipping a convicted and executed criminal, calling him God and following his teachings. Very few people doubt that Jesus died, and that he was executed by the barbaric method of crucifixion. Raised from the dead, alive today— that’s another matter entirely. But the death is the best established thing about Jesus.
I’ve entered into debates about whether such a person as Jesus existed historically. All of these debates start— must start—with a list of things that I will demonstrate, limiting myself strictly to the tools of a historian, to the extent that past events can be demonstrated. These are the things that Jesus did or that happened to him. Many scholars have created such lists. Invariably, “crucified by the Romans” is on them. Jesus’ death by crucifixion is as established as a historical fact gets.
It seems remote and distant to us. If we have shame in anything about Jesus or Christianity, it is something different than it was for Paul and other early disciples. For us, the cross is the symbol of a religion, a person, or a faith system. We see it on churches every day. We have pictures of crosses, sometimes with a figure of Jesus hanging on them. Sometimes the figure will be portrayed with a halo. We make earrings and necklaces with crosses. We know the crucifixion is a horrible thing, but the symbols involved in it have become commonplace and familiar, and they are objects involved in the rituals of the church, not in execution.
We may be ashamed of some of the people who carry crosses, or of some of the groups that worship in buildings with crosses on them. We may object to where crosses are placed, such as on the lawns of public buildings. But none of this is quite what the “shame of the cross” would have been for the early followers of Jesus. Put yourself back in Paul’s time. Jesus was recently executed. The one political power in the world was the authority by which that execution was carried out. That particular form of execution was one reserved for the worst, and especially for rebels and political offenders. There was a shame in worshipping someone who had been crucified. It had the aura and the stigma of worshipping a mass murderer, perhaps a bit like modern Americans would feel about a cult worshipping Charles Manson.
But in addition, it was something dangerous. The followers of Jesus were proclaiming as divine someone executed by the Roman authorities. Divinity was being carried by someone who was a rebel and a dangerous character. Proclaiming the kingdom of a rebel was an act of rebellion in and of itself. And here we have Paul proclaiming that he is not ashamed of this good news. He glories in the cross, glories in an instrument of shame. In disaster, he finds good news.
One of the key elements of that good news lies in the fact that you see a cross with much different emotions than did the people of Paul’s day. That element is transformation. The symbol of the cross has been transformed from one of disaster, death, agony, shame, and despair into one of hope for many people. Not all people, and we’ll discuss that as well.
That transformation comes from the way in which God used the experience of the cross. God came to the earth in the human form of Jesus. God experienced life with us. He took action as we might need to take action under the circumstances of our lives. He found himself in an occupied country, living under cruel foreign domination. He didn’t just come and appear on a mountaintop. He got involved in human experiences, human emotions, human weaknesses, and yes, human strengths as well. When it came down to it, he died a death in just the way that a human would have to do it in that time and place.
The first part, then, of the transformation was involvement. The cross would never have been transformed as a symbol without the involvement. God, the infinite gap-crosser, crossed the gap and stayed on our side long enough to experience the worst of the worst.
But not only did he get involved, he stayed involved. The second part of that transformation was endurance. God didn’t quit. He carried through. If he had not, we could think of the wonderful time when God was with people, lived with us, talked with us, worked with us, but we would always have a distance from him, because he would never have experienced the one thing that seems to terrify most of us—death. “Through death, he destroyed the one who had the power of death” (Hebrews 2:14). “He endured the cross; he treated the shame with contempt” (Hebrews 12:2).
Jesus knew when to ignore what others thought was shame. The shame was intended to fall on the one who was punished. But Jesus had no reason to be ashamed and he knew it. Knowing what one should ignore is an important part of living in this imperfect world. Many people, Christians and others, have endured torture and death with dignity and even peace because they knew this lesson. What was intended to bring shame on them instead became a source of glory.
The transformation that Jesus accomplished on the cross, symbolized by the transformation of the cross itself, is something that we all can grasp. Circumstances and our environment are not fixed things that we have to take as they are. They can be transformed by our attitude and by the way that we deal with them. Every cross in your life, everything that you would prefer not to have done or not to have encountered can be transformed. When we give testimonies of things that have happened to us, this is what we are doing.
Some think that testimony meetings are about telling how dark our lives were before God intervened. And sometimes they are. But if you are focusing on the darkness, and the negative things that have happened, perhaps you haven’t let those things be transformed yet. Did you become involved, stay involved, and endure? Did you have contempt for the supposed shame? The real point of a testimony, a witness, is to present how things have changed, not how much they are the same.
But there’s one more part of this process. Some of you may be wondering whether I’m going to ignore it. Jesus triumphed over the adversity. He rose again from the dead. His movement should have died. It came back to life. Without this, the transformation could not have taken place. In this sense, only one who was God, or totally in tune with God’s spirit, could have triumphed. We daily deal with circumstances and troubles. Jesus was dealing with the nastiest circumstance of all—death. He was there to deny and destroy the one who had the power over death.
I’m not going to argue here about the physical resurrection of Jesus. It’s very hard, if not impossible to prove a miracle. But I do think the greatest evidence that something different happened that day in Palestine is that the movement surrounding Jesus didn’t go away. Having seen Jesus crucified, his movement should have failed, but it didn’t.
But the critical element in transforming the symbol of the cross from one of shame to one of hope and glory was simply that the followers of Jesus believed that he had conquered death. You may debate me about the idea that without something special happening on the morning of the resurrection, the followers of Jesus would simply have scattered. You may have another explanation you think works as well. But I think there can be no doubt that unless the followers of Jesus believed that something had happened, there would have been no transformation, no Jesus movement, no Christianity, and the cross would forever have remained a symbol of shame, or passed into history as an example of the barbarism of ancient cultures.
But the fact is that those followers did believe, they didn’t scatter, but continued to proclaim the victory of the person the Romans had crucified. And it was in that proclamation that the cross was transformed. Jesus could have died with dignity, endured the shame, and risen from the dead, but if nobody had arisen to proclaim those facts, no transformation would have taken place. It took human beings getting involved, carrying the message, and acting on the good news. I’m sometimes accused of being very human oriented in my religious beliefs. But I believe that this orientation toward what people do and how they respond is thoroughly Biblical. Not only did God accomplish reconciliation through Christ, but he gave us the same ministry. In other words, God knows and intends the human element to be critical in carrying out his mission on earth.
And that leads to the other side of the issue of shame. We need to be prepared to deny the shame just as Jesus did on the cross. But we also need to be able to see shame when it’s appropriate. A great deal of who we are and how we live will be determined by our response to shame.
In Ezekiel 9 we have a part of a vision of Ezekiel. The prophet has been shown abominations that the Israelites are committing right in the temple precincts. Then a man is sent out in the city to make a mark on certain people. The ones who are marked are those who “sign and cry” about the abominations committed in the land (Ezekiel 9:4). (I like the good old KJV “sigh and cry” because the Hebrew words involved here are alliterative). Then others are told to follow and slaughter everyone who is not marked. Notice that it is not the ones who themselves are not committing abominations, but those who are deeply bothered by the evil things that are going on.
I have seen this passage turned outward many times, as though it is a call to Christians to sigh and cry about the abominations committed by everyone else. But we should remember that this passage was written by an Israelite prophet to Israelites. If we are going to transfer it to Christians we need to transfer it all the way. It isn’t speaking to Christians about their attitude toward the actions of non- Christians, but rather about their reaction to their own abominations.
I said that the cross was a symbol of hope for some. But it’s a symbol of death and destruction for others. It becomes a symbol of shame again when those who proclaim it use it in shameful ways. The crusades, the inquisition, the holocaust—all were justified at some point by reference to Christianity and to the cross. All too often, others did not stand against those who abused the cross, and did not proclaim its true meaning. We can choose either to restore the cross again as a symbol of hope, or we can use it as a symbol of hostility, destruction, and death. In order to restore the cross to the glory of Christ’s transformation, we need to get to the point where we sigh and cry for the abominations committed by Christians.
I was involved in a program a few years back in which we had an opportunity to write statements about ourselves on sticky notes, stick them to our shirts, and then engage others in the group in conversation based on what was written on their notes. I included “Christian,” “individual liberty,” and “no coercion” amongst the items on my list. Several people thought this was a surprising combination. To them, Christianity stood for compulsion, force, and tyranny. How could I be both a Christian and an advocate of liberty? I wish I could blame the problem on their prejudice, on their misconception of what Christians are. But too often Christians behave in a way that is completely the opposite of the principles Jesus taught, and totally incompatible with the way he behaved. At the same time, other Christians are silent. We need to be ashamed of what is truly shameful, and proud of what is worthy of pride.
The answer lies in the symbolism of the cross. In the cross, God displayed his willingness to cross the gap and communicate with us where we are. He endured the force. He was subject to the compulsion. He was executed by the existing tyrants. In so doing he gave an example of liberation.
But many of his followers have missed the message. They have decided that Jesus was so right that anyone who disagreed with him had to be forced into right thinking. They inverted the message, making Jesus into the tyrant and the torturer. If you really think about what happened on the cross, I think it will become terribly clear what a horrible reversal this is. Too often Christians have sided with the soldiers driving in the nails.
So how do I respond to these things done in the name of Jesus?
I’m quick to say that this is not what Jesus taught. But I reject the notion of telling other people that those who did this were not “real” Christians. I may even believe that in my heart, but if I defend myself by that means, I force others into deciding who is and who is not a real Christian. It’s likely that they won’t take on the task.
What I have to do is acknowledge the wrongs that have been done, and testify to the transformation that Jesus intended. I need to sigh and cry—I need to specifically, openly, and sincerely denounce the shameful actions of my fellow Christians, and do so without distancing myself, without setting myself up as the one true Christian and good guy. I only compound the problem when I try to make others sort one Christian out from another. That is not their task. This is the time to acknowledge the problem.
Please notice carefully that I say we need to denounce the actions. We deal with the fruit, not the people. Let God deal with the people. Gossiping is not sighing and crying, even if you do it with a whiny voice! Make sure that what you are sighing and crying about is an abomination. I have heard sighing and crying in the church about everything from minor discomforts and annoyances to personal preferences. In fact, we are much more likely to sigh and cry about our comfort than about real abominations.
Christian readers may protest that they, as Christians, did not do any of these things. That is very likely true. But they were done in the name of Jesus, they were done in the name of the same faith, and they were often done without protest, or without adequate protest from other Christians. As we continue in the same tradition, we need to deal with the things that have happened in what is now, for good or bad, our history.
Why should Christians take on such a burden? Because we are the ones who know the power of transformation. We are the ones who worship the crucified one. We are the ones who can make a difference if we will truly follow the one who transformed the cross from despair into hope.
And we need not be ashamed of that!
Sometimes the process of preparing to teach Sunday School takes interesting turns, at least for me.
I’m currently teaching from the Sermon on the Mount, and I was thinking about the transition from the beatitudes to the discussion of fulfilling the law. Sometimes we get so used to the way Scripture passages read that we don’t really notice the impact they would have had. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness …” transitions to “unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees.” We’re used to thinking of Pharisees as bad guys, and we can immediately translate that statement mentally into something less than it would have been to those who first heard it.
It’s easy to suggest that the Sermon on the Mount does not represent some singular sermon, and that perhaps the beatitudes and the teaching on the law contained in Chapter 5 weren’t really run together that way when Jesus taught them. Indeed, the different settings for portions of the sermon in Luke might suggest that we have compilations of sayings rather than complete sermons.
But, and it’s an important ‘but’, someone thought these two things went together. I love form, source, and redaction criticism and believe they provide important insights, allowing us to learn from the prehistory of the text in front of us, but in a case like this, they just kick the ball down the field a bit. We still should ask just why the passages go together.
Let me skip my own answer, which I already had in mind, and go with the experience of thinking about the passage. I like to read what I’m going to teach very early, usually the Sunday afternoon after the previous lesson, and then think about it through the week.
In this case, I had just gotten a new audio Bible (NRSV) for Audible (unfortunately it is no longer available). I wasn’t actually intending to think about the passage, and I just let the audiobook continue from where I had last left it, which happened to be in Revelation 6. I got to 6:16, and heard the words “the wrath of the lamb.” Or “hide us … from the wrath of the lamb.”
Now here’s another phrase that doesn’t always have full impact. It takes on that “scriptury” sense in which we imbue it with holiness and piously let the jarring nature of the statement slip by.
So picture a cute, wooly, harmless lamb. Now picture crowds of people calling for mountains or large rocks to fall on them — splat! — to save them from the wrath of, well, that fluffy bundle of cuteness. For Monty Python fans, let me note that it calls to my mind vorpal bunnies.
So we go back a bit in Scripture to Revelation 5:5-6:
(5) One of the elders said to me: ‘Do not weep; the Lion from the tribe of Judah, the shoot growing from David’s stock, has won the right to open the scroll and its seven seals.’ (6) Then I saw a Lamb with the marks of sacrifice on him …
Revelation 5:5-6a
I could spend all kinds of time on this, but I’m just looking at one thing: The Lion is the Lamb. Of course, if you read the texts I first reference in context, you’d also note that the fear of the wrath of the lamb was combined with fear of the one sitting on the throne.
In this case, we have a direct literary relationship. In chapter 6, John is doubtlessly connecting referencing this lamb, who is also not just a, but the Lion. Slightly more intimidating than the wooly lamb I evoked earlier.
So this turned my mind to something I get from orthodox theology, in this case the incarnation. Jesus is presented as totally human and totally divine. Compare Hebrews 2:17-18 to Hebrews 7:26-28 display a combination of incompatible features. One plus one equals one. Not normal logic.
I like to distinguish belief in three ways. There is believing that. One can believe that something is true without absorbing it or responding to it. I believe that an aircraft is airworthy and safe, but I stay on the ground. Then there is believing in. In this case belief leads to a trust in the thing in which we believe. I believe that the aircraft is airworthy and safe, so assuming the crew is good as well, I get on board and fly. Then there is believing through. That is when I use one belief to impact the way I understand and respond to other things. In the case of the aircraft analogy I now learn to put reasonable trust in things in which it is reasonable to have confidence.
In Christian terms, I go from believing that Jesus rose from the dead, to putting my trust in “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith,” and from there to living a life defined by not just by the hope of the resurrection but of the character and power combined of one who gave himself to death and arose. There is some room here to live in hope. The hope comes from seeing other things in the light of my belief in the resurrection.
Now back to the incarnation, and lions, and lambs.
There are many things that thinking conditioned (transformed?) by the incarnation can be, many of them at the same time. One is that we lose the binary sense. To take us back to Revelation 5, we can see in one person the Lion and the Lamb. We can see gentleness and sacrifice on the one hand and wrath on the other, all in the form of a wooly lamb, one that someone already sacrificed. That’s seeing these things through our belief in an orthodox doctrine. I have heard folks argue forcefully for an orthodox statement of doctrine, but seeing it only as a thing that must be affirmed to be true, and not something that impacts the rest of our lives.
I maintain rather that if you really believe in something like the incarnation, it will reshape your thinking all over the place. Constantly. Irrevocably.
I recall hearing Deanna Thompson, author of the Deuteronomy volume in the Belief Commentary series. She is a feminist and a liberationist. She recalled wondering why she should be the one to write a commentary on Deuteronomy. But she said that as she wrote the commentary, she realized that “a God without wrath will never liberate anybody.” A God such as the one presented in Deuteronomy.
The Lamb is the Lion. They are not incompatible.
And then another thing came to mind. I recently watched the movie “Aristocats” again. It’s a favorite of mine. It includes a song with the line:
Everybody! Everybody! Everybody wants to be a cat!
Aristocats
At this point I imagine you’re thinking I’m a bit odd in the things I connect. I also assure you that I like cats.
But if you look around church, everybody wants to be a cat. That is, we want to get to the Lion part of the act, or the rider on the white horse. We long (as the readers of Revelation did) for the avenging God who does nice things for the good guys (surely this includes us!) and gets all the bad guys. If possible, we want to skip over all the lamblike stuff, and definitely that “slain” stuff.
So I wind back toward my original topic again, as I know you’re wondering what all of this has to do with Matthew 5? And indeed, in listening to Revelation I had every intention of not working on my Sunday School lesson.
But Matthew 5 challenges us in a similar way. Jesus is here both the lamb who has humbled himself and is living as one of us, the “gentle Jesus, meek and mild,” and also the one who says our righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees (remember that the audience would see that as a high standard), that we must be perfect, and that even being angry or insulting a brother can lead to hell.
The Lamb is the Lion. Love and wrath work together. It’s not either-or, but both and.
Featured image by Catherine Stockinger from Pixabay
My latest interview on theodicy, or the problem of evil, is with Dr. Allan R. Bevere. Allan is a retired United Methodist pastor and has a PhD in New Testament from the University of Durham (UK). You can find detailed information on this interview series, along with links to previous interviews here.
Thus far I have interviewed three people regarding theodicy, or looked at from another direction, the problem of evil. You can follow the link for current interviews. Tomorrow, I will be interviewing Dr. Allan R. Bevere, retired United Methodist pastor for the fourth interview in the series. I have commitments for several more interviews.
One of the questions that I repeat in the interviews from multiple angles is that of omnipotence. Is God omnipotent? What does that mean?
Today I want to share a link to a brief essay from someone who does not believe God is omnipotent and does not believe the concept is scriptural, Dr. Thomas Jay Oord. He is suggesting the word “amipotent” instead. He is writing a(nother) book, but he offers this summary of the idea as it relates to scripture: Omnipotence Not in Scripture.
The most recent interviewee, Elgin L. Hushbeck, Jr. strongly affirmed omnipotence.
Yesterday I interviewed Dr. Robert LaRochelle as the first in a series of interviews on theodicy. You can find more information on this series on the page titled, shockingly, Theodicy Interview Series, which also includes the questions that will be asked of each interviewee for this series.
Subtitle: Following Jesus into a Life of Peace, Compassion & Wholeness
I find it hard to fairly review study Bibles. On the one hand, I am a bit hesitant to have so much text combined with the text of scripture, because everything we do to add to the text, even arranging it into chapters and verses, tends to bias our viewpoint. But on the other hand, it is possible to provide people with necessary background and help them get more out of their study.
In this second sense, a study Bible is a bit like having a number of teachers gathered to help you understand the text. Few benefits come without some downsides. As I like to say, while every cloud may have a silver lining, silver linings tend to come with clouds.
So when the opportunity arose to review this Bible, I found the idea fascinating. Former U. S. president Jimmy Carter has been a Sunday School teacher for decades. While I confess that I worked diligently to get him out of office back in 1976 and 1980 as a precinct captain for Ronald Reagan, my appreciation for him as a person has grown remarkably since.
The Bible itself is the NRSV, one that I regard as quite good. The copy I received was hardcover. There is a leather bound edition, which can be found using the cover widget at the left hand side of the page. I don’t believe I need to add anything to my previous comments on the NRSV.
The paper is thin “Bible” paper. The text is of adequate size, though there is a certain amount of crowding required for the amount of text included in the edition. The introduction makes the purpose of this edition clear.
The introductions to the book are time-limited as one might expect in a Sunday School class dedicated to getting to the things the class wants to talk about. They make no effort to cover the book introduced in any detail. They are more a theological note of introduction, leaving any content to follow-up studies.
The devotional content is, well, devotional. While I could quibble theologically with some of it, most of it is just encouragement drawn from scripture, and the Baptist roots of the author are evident, though not thrown in anyone’s face. Titles like “Love That Covers” (1 Kings 2:3,9) or “Encountering God in Creation” (Romans 1:18-32) give the flavor.
The problem I had with this Bible was in classifying it. Is it a study Bible? No, I don’t think so, as it is missing most of the landmarks that would help a student understand the Bible better. Is it a themed devotional Bible? This is much closer, as the devotional content is quite strong. But I still don’t see it fitting the definition.
I recall the Spirit-Filled Life Bible that looked for the work of the Holy Spirit throughout scripture. Well I was concerned that this focus on one subject would prevent readers from hearing the main point of the text, the Bible had a devotional theme that followed through.
Unfortunately, in the Simple Faith Bible, it seems to me that the editors and layout designers of the Bibles have failed to truly wed the devotionals to the text, so that you have loosely collected devotionals bound in one cover with the text of the NRSV Bible. Yes, the content is placed with the scriptures, but there is so much that has no comment, even limited comment, and there is so much that is skipped, that the two never come together.
I would add my personal complaint. There is a view in the study of scripture that says, “Let’s study the stuff that makes us feel good and skip the stuff that annoys one.” I personally have written in defense of some form of “cafeteria Christianity.” We all do some picking and choosing, but try to deny it. Some do it by just reading the stuff we like and skipping over the stuff we don’t. Others explicitly choose, which is more honest, I think. Yet others interpret away the things they would prefer were different.
In fact, a blind selection, or one that is denied can create more divisive debates as people build their Christianity on different scriptures while pretending they are doing otherwise.
In the Simple Faith Bible we have a number of interesting cases. For example, in Romans 1:18-32, where many root debates on homosexuality, we have the “Encountering God in Creation” article, which mentions nothing about sin of any kind. Now this passage is not primarily about homosexuality, though this is not mentioned, but it is also not primarily about encountering God in creation. It is rather saying that humanity is wicked and lacks a good excuse. This leads up to informing us that God has an answer for the humanity God created.
In Numbers 31, as the Israelites slaughter infants, we have a note about God’s attitude to wealth. I once called this an “unpreachable passage” while trying to propose ways from preaching it. We may not like it. In fact, we probably don’t, but if this is a devotional Bible, might someone decide to read it from cover to cover? If so, what about the difficult stuff?
In Leviticus 19, verse 32 elicits a note on caring for the elderly, but skips verses 33 and 34 about treating the aliens living among you well. On the other hand, we miss Leviticus 18:22 which is famous again in the homosexuality debates. My hermeneutical challenge to both sides is to create a hermeneutic that applies the texts you want to apply and bypasses the others without using some form of special pleading. Of course, the very challenge I am making calls for special pleading, so no takers so far!
Bottom line on this is that I find quite a number of the notes by Jimmy Carter quite uplifting and helpful in a devotional sense, and appreciate them, but I would probably prefer them in their own devotional volume to be read separately. In a devotional book, you understand that you are dealing with passages that happened to strike the author in a particular way.
As a Bible, this is fine. The devotional that happens to be bound with it is uplifting. The combination … I find troubling.
I received a free copy of this Bible from Zondervan in exchange for an honest review, and blog as a #BibleGatewayPartner.
I didn’t want to comment on the murder of 49 people in Orlando, not because I don’t sympathize with the victims or condemn the killing, but because I dislike getting tangled up in politics on this blog.
If a Christian commits an illegal act, we often separate him (or her) from “our” Christianity, or even claim that the perpetrator was not a Christian at all. From local history here in the Pensacola area, I recall Paul Hill who committed murder here at the entrance to an abortion clinic. Paul Hill was an ordained (and later defrocked) pastor. He built his view on principles that were held by a large number of Christians. Yet when he went so far as to take two lives because of those views there were those who said he wasn’t really a Christian.
That’s a claim of convenience. It keeps us clean. It prevents us from having to examine ourselves, and that is very unfortunate, even dangerous.
On the other hand, we have the problem of someone looking at Paul Hill and saying, “See! That is what Christians do! Paul Hill was a Christian and he was also a murderer. So also all Christians!” That is an equally dangerous view. A faith tradition as broad and varied as our own is bound to have some people who go off the rails. If some Christians are opposed to abortion as murder, someone is bound to decide to become a vigilante and “fix” the problem. This isn’t an argument against the view that abortion is murder. Rather, it tells us that human beings will carry things too far, or perhaps jump the rails to something completely different.
In fact, we can have similar results in society as a whole. I am always concerned when legislation is proposed and passed in the heat of emotions following an event. Rarely, I believe, is such legislation the best choice. We are capable of passing immoral laws because we are outraged by evil. Evil can generate more evil.
Neither blaming the entire group of which a person is a part, nor excluding that person from your own group will help. A person who, up to yesterday, you would have called part of your own religious (or other social) group has now committed a crime does not become something else when he commits a crime. He was something else while living among you. The terrorist, murderer, or child molester of tomorrow may be sitting down the pew from you in church. There are evil people out there and there are triggers waiting to start them on doing evil deeds.
The same is true of other faiths and social groups. There are Muslims who are appalled by acts of terror. There are Muslims who are evil. Just as we would wish to have the evildoer separated from our faith, and don’t like the idea of “Christian terrorist,” so Muslims would like to have terrorists separated from their faith. We don’t want to have all Christians blamed for the Paul Hills of the world. Muslims don’t want to all be blamed for the actions of one man in Orlando.
This is not a matter of numbers. Some will point out to me that there are more Muslims espousing terror and violence by far than Christians. I’m not going to argue the statistics. I recently spoke at an interfaith event along with a number of other people, including a Muslim Imam. He’s a fine person and an advocate of peace. He doesn’t cease to be those things because others commit acts of terror. He is who he is, and so are millions of others.
We need to grant them the courtesy we want people to grant us. We are each who we are apart from what other people who may claim the same label(s) does. Where attitudes of our group contribute, we need to fight that. In my experience, peace advocates tend to fight just such attitudes.
And then there are the victims. It was interesting watching who mentioned what. The victims were from the LGBT community, gathered at a place where one would expect to find them. It appears that the perpetrator of this act of terror hated and despised gay people. This is also a fact and needs to be mentioned. LGBT people are targetted these days for who they are. It’s monstrously wrong to do so and we need to be aware that it is happening and conscious of what makes that happen. Think: What is it in my language or behavior that might make someone else think a gay person is less of a person than I am? Then don’t do or say that.
We need to sympathize with those who are injured, and in doing so, we need to be willing to name them and to name the reasons they were targetted. We need to condemn evil, and at the same time give the same courtesy we would expect to the innocent.
About a year after 9/11 I was traveling and rode in a taxi with a driver who was a Sikh. I made bold and asked him whether he had been threatened following the attacks because of his appearance. I recognized him as Sikh, but he might easily have been misidentified as a Muslim (some Sikhs were). He told me that for several months he could not wear his turban because of the threats. It was unfortunate that a man with no connection to Islam, much less the terrorists, was treated in this way.
But it is equally unfortunate that Muslims with no connection to the terrorists are treated in that way because of hate for their group. We make every effort to be separated from evil acts by those who call themselves Christians. We should be equally sympathetic to those in other religious groups who are trying to do the same thing. It’s easier to blame the group. It’s more productive to be precise and accurate.
Not to mention more Christ-like.
