There is great danger in allowing our “observations about
the truth” to become “the truth.” When I teach biblical interpretation every
fall (and other times), when we get to the genre of prophetic literature, I
always point out how poorly the biblical scholars of the day understood
prophecy. In fact, they were so far from what God intended those words – Isaiah’s
suffering servant songs, for example – to mean that their only alternative was
to kill Jesus.
This is, by the way, precisely the point of Jesus’ parable of the landowner in Matthew
21:33-46. Jesus aggressively says that they have missed the point of the
prophets and are about the kill God’s Son. The final few verses of the text
make it clear that the opponents of Jesus got the message loud and clear.
Two important issues led the “best of biblical scholarship
of that day” to insist that Jesus had to go. One of those issues was something
akin to what I once heard Fred Craddock call “concordance preaching.” They
picked a verse here, another verse there, and pretty soon the picking and
choosing routine gets put together in a way that means what they are speaking
has nothing to do with Scripture.
Second, they made political alliances out of a thirst for
power and protecting “place,” not seeking justice. In an incredibly ironic
twist of plot lines, they are willing to get in bed with none other than
Pontius Pilate, their closest Roman leader, in order to get rid of a Jesus who
didn’t meet their ill-formed understanding of Messiah. And that ill-formed
understanding of Messiah was rooted in the abuse of “the Law and the Prophets.”
I’m not convinced we actually know a lot of truth – truth in
the sense of ultimate, eternal truth. We do know a lot of Holy Spirit inspired
observations about the truth and should use that kind of truth to help shape
our lives. So far so good. But when we allow our own observations about ultimate truth to become “the truth” we
journey down a road that might make us want to kill Jesus!
Let me illustrate. The Bible seems pretty clear in its truth
claim that God made humans male and female. The whole binary creation story in
Genesis makes it difficult to miss that kind of truth. More than one biblical
author, and Jesus himself, will say that on the basis of that truth, marriage
is one man, one woman, committed to each other for life. In our traditions as
followers of Jesus in the United States, we typically go get a marriage license
to make it legal and have a wedding in a church to make it spiritual.
In that one brief paragraph, three different kinds of truth
are in play. Ultimate truth about humans made male and female; a Holy Spirit
inspired observation about marriage, certainly true, but not ultimate; and a
true statement about our traditions.
Where the problem arises is that it is so easy to let the
third “true statement” become biblical doctrine that all must follow. For some,
it is easy to suggest that the second “inspired truth” is ultimate truth and if
you aren’t married, somehow you aren’t what God calls us all to be. (If that’s
true by the way, the apostle Paul jumps off the deep end in places like 1
Corinthians 7.)
It appears to me that a whole lot of what creates what I
name above as “confusing times” is that we are doing exactly what the ancient
Jewish leaders did with Jesus. We do a lot of concordance like pronouncements
about what “the Christian worldview is” and we are far too quick to jump in bed
with politicians – some on the right, some on the left.
The result of such thinking – at least in part – is that we
end up with such a mixed message about the gospel that no one much pays any
attention these days. Here are some questions.
·
Can I be consistent with “the Truth” revealed by
God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth and on the one hand travel to the state
capital every year to protest abortion (which is “the law”) and on the other
hand say ripping children from their parents is acceptable because “it’s the
law?”
·
But I can also flip that question around. Can I
be greatly concerned about children being ripped from their parents at the
border on the one hand; but insist that abortion is a personal preference
matter on the other?
·
Do we realize that the government Paul said
believers should respect its role in Romans 13, also insisted that only Caesar
was Lord. Do you really think Paul obeyed that Law? Or, have we misunderstood
observations about the truth with the truth?
·
The Exodus story in the Old Testament is the
story that seems to be the paradigm for the Jesus story in the New Testament.
In Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy we see story after story of
international boundaries, etc., being ignored. I’m not opposed to the idea of
boundaries, etc., but honestly isn’t that a political and not theological
issue? The God revealed in Scripture seems to be a bit of an “Exodus-kind-of-God.”
How do we know that He hasn’t orchestrated this migration toward the US – in part
because we haven’t gone to places where such needs exists?
·
Then there is that troublesome text from Matthew
25. You know, the one where Jesus does some separating at His glorious
reappearing and the primary basis of the separating is “what we have done to
the least of those among us.” Does that text have anything to say to our “confusing
times?”
·
To get closer to home, if I’m outraged about
abortion, or outraged about what is going on at the border right now – what should
my attitude be about children in our culture whose lives are crushed under the
heavy weight of things like hunger, poor parenting, random gun violence, drug
abuse, sex trafficking, unwed pregnancies, bad schools, extraordinary
incarceration rates, district attorneys who ensure re-election by over prosecution
and fill our jails with people who could be productive outside, legislators who
make laws but see themselves above the law, and . . . that list doesn’t seem to
end?
There’s a remarkable line in Ephesians 3:1 that I think
should prick the conscience of every person who seeks to follow Jesus. Here’s
what it says, “For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the
sake of you Gentiles . . . “ Paul, the former Jew, former “Pharisee of
Pharisees,” former persecutor of the Church has been sitting in jail for what
may be as long as four years. Why? “For the sake of you Gentiles.” For Paul,
the Jesus story was far more important than personal preference, cultural
traditions, and even previously erroneous understanding of Scripture. There is
no better picture in Scripture of the transforming power of the gospel!
He preached “Christ, and Him crucified” in a culture and under
a government that declared only Caesar is Lord. He not only went to jail –
tradition says he eventually was beheaded for sticking to that story.
The only question for me – and I hope you – is: “For what are
you willing to go to jail?” Or, perhaps, die?
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