Tag: bible

16 Ways Progressive Christians Interpret the Bible (Reblog)

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Reblog from Patheos.com by Roger Wolsey:

I’ve long stated that

Atheists and fundamentalists each tend to read the Bible in the same wooden, overly literalistic manner. The difference is that atheists reject what they read in that manner, while fundamentalists believe it.

There’s a lot of truth to that – enough that it tends to piss off members of both of those groups off when they come across what I said.

However, I’ve also said that

All Christians pick and choose which portions of the Bible literally, progressive Christians simply admit this and share how we discern.

That observation has resonated with many people – including many fundamentalists who are honest with themselves and who rightly contend that they don’t read “all of the Bible literally.” Some of these more self-reflective fundamentalists have asked me, “So, how do you progressives “discern” and interpret the Bible? Seems like you just read into it what you want it to say; twist it; and don’t take it seriously.” I generally respond by reminding them that – that which we criticize most in others, is often that which we struggle with most ourselves.

While no doubt true, and I fully stand by holding that mirror up to them, they deserve an actual response.

I can’t speak for all progressive Christians, but here’s how many progressive Christians approach, discern, and interpret the Bible:

Click here to read the full article

God Is With Us (in the little things)

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized2 Comments

Do you ever get scared?  I get scared sometimes.  I get scared of all kinds of things:

What if I get sick?  What if we run out of money?  What if I lose my job?  What if my marriage falls apart?  What if something happens to one of my kids?

What if this election doesn’t turn out the way I think it should?  What if the stock market crashes again?  What if essential relief and education programs get their funding cut by policy makers?

We live lives surrounded by fear.  The famous philosopher (and sometimes crankyperson) David Hume once went on a rant about all the things in this world that scare us.  First, he said, there are our natural enemies: those things that threaten our physical existence (i.e. predators, disasters, diseases).  Then there are our societal enemies: tyranny, oppression, injustice, inequality, violent rebellion.  Next you have our internal enemies: guilt, shame, fear.  Finally, as if all that weren’t enough, we have our own imaginary enemies that we make up ourselves: superstitions, taboos, mythical monsters.

Surrounded by so many enemies and things to be scared of on all sides, life hardly seems worth living, says Hume.  Why then do we go on?  Why don’t we just end it all?  Well, says Hume, because we’re scared of that too.  Death is the ultimate enemy to fear because no one knows for sure what lies on the other side of it.  And so, because we are ultimately afraid of death, Hume says, “We are terrified, not bribed, into the continuance of our existence.”

Now, this is a pretty dark portrayal of reality (David Hume was kind of famous for that), but I think he has a point in noticing that we live our lives surrounded by fear.  There’s always something to be worried about or afraid of.  This is the way it’s always been.

Way back in the 8th century BCE, there was a Jewish king named Ahaz who had a lot to be scared of.  His reign had been fraught with constant conflict.  Two of his enemies, the Ephraimites and the Arameans, had joined forces and were threatening to lay siege to the city of Jerusalem.  Ahaz was understandably scared out of his gourd.  The most sensible thing he could think of to do was to seek out support from a bigger, meaner bully down the block.  Back then, the biggest, meanest kid in town was the Assyrian Empire.

This, by the way, is the same rationale that leads some people, especially teenagers and young adults, to join gangs: they’re looking to garner a sense of safety when they feel like no one else cares about them.  But, as is so often the case with these kinds of things, there is a hefty price to pay and very little safety after all.  In King Ahaz’s case, he and his people would pay dearly for whatever protection they received from Assyria.  Having sacrificed freedom for security, they were no longer in charge of their own house.  The people of Judah paid tribute to the Assyrians and owed them allegiance, even to the point of worshiping Assyrian deities in the place of the Jewish God.  Because of fear, Ahaz lost sight of who he was and what he was supposed to stand for in the world. 

It didn’t have to be this way.  Isaiah the prophet, who was a pretty insightful dude, saw the bad end coming and tried to warn Ahaz.  He said, “These troubles are only temporary.  It’s not worth selling your soul in order to ensure your survival.  Have a little faith!”  He pointed to a pregnant woman and said, “You see this young woman?  By the time her baby grows up and is old enough to walk and talk, these conflicts will be nothing more than a distant memory.  Look at this woman and remember her.  Let her baby be a sign to you that God is with you, therefore you don’t need to be afraid.”

This was a powerful message.  And it’s one that has endured for thousands of years, even though its intended audience didn’t listen to a word of it.  Isaiah told Ahaz to look for God, not in grandiose displays of power or guarantees of success, but in the little things of this world.  The sign of God’s presence was that little baby, whose name would be Immanuel, which is Hebrew for “God is with us.”

Over seven hundred years after Isaiah first spoke these words, the early Christians would look back at them and say, “Hey, you know what?  Isaiah’s prophecy kind of reminds us of Jesus!  He wasn’t very powerful or successful by this world’s standards, but when we looked at him, we got that hunch that maybe “God is with us.”  Besides, Jesus taught us to look for God in the little things as well: in the birds of the air and the flowers of the field, in farmers sowing seeds and bakers baking bread. Jesus got us looking at all those little things in life that most people never pay attention to.  Because of him, we know that God is with us, just like Isaiah tried to tell Ahaz with that little boy Immanuel.”

I love that.  God is with us in the little things.  As we live our lives, surrounded and overwhelmed by fear, we often forget to pay attention to those little, everyday signs that God is with us.  Like Ahaz, we can sometimes be quick to lose sight of who we are and what’s really important, especially when we’re afraid.  It’s in those moments of overwhelming anxiety that we most need to take a step back, take a deep breath, and look… really look at ourselves, our lives, and our world.  We need to pay attention to those little things, the things we’re too busy for, the boring, ordinary things that happen every day, the things that don’t seem all that important: babies, bread, birds, flowers, seeds… because those places are the places where God meets us.

There may be no grandiose sign, no light from heaven, no singing angels.  There will be no guarantees of security or success.  Just the little things, little signs of Immanuel, that God is with us.  All we are promised from these encounters is a renewed perspective on who we are what life is all about.  The strength we find in these encounters is the strength to stand by our core values and central beliefs, come what may.  God is with us in the little things of this world to remind us that some things in life are more important than success or survival, therefore we don’t need to live in fear.  Fear is not the foundation of reality.  Deeper than fear, deeper still than the natural, societal, internal, and imaginary enemies who surround us on every side, at the very heart of reality, we have a friend who is always with us… a love that will not let us go.  My esteemed, late colleague, the Rev. Fred Rogers (host of the children’s TV show Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood) said it best:

“I believe that at the center of the universe there dwells a loving spirit who longs for all that’s best in all of creation, a spirit who knows the great potential of each planet as well as each person, and little by little will love us into being more than we ever dreamed possible. That loving spirit would rather die than give up on any one of us.”

With a God like this on our side, what do we have to be afraid of?

Immanuel, God is with us, even (especially) in the little things.  This is the message that Isaiah tried to deliver to King Ahaz, although Ahaz wasn’t willing to hear it.  This is the message we are meant to take with us from the Christmas season.  The question for us is: are we willing to listen?

Immanuel, God is with us.  Do not be afraid.

A Biblical Guide to Debunking the Heterosexual Agenda

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized33 Comments
Image
By Carloxito (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

SATIRE WARNING
Don’t get your knickers in a twist

If you want to get the non-satirical version,
read my follow-up post: The Real Story (Not Satire)

As a baptized, ordained, practicing, Bible-reading, Spirit-filled, Jesus-loving Christian, I just have to say how sick and tired I am of these straight-marriage activists spreading their heterosexual agenda all over my church and country!

Their sinful, detestable practices are unbiblical and unnatural in the eyes of science and God.  It may not be “politically correct” to say so these days, but I refuse to “tolerate” these perverts and their lies anymore…

Don’t take my word for it, here is what the BIBLE says:

Genesis 4

After God made Adam and Eve, they had three sons: Cain, Abel, and Seth.  No daughters.  Yet is specifically says that Cain got married to a woman.  Did you know that Cain, the first murderer, was a STRAIGHT?  Heterosexuality and murder have gone hand-in-hand since the earliest days of the human race.

What’s even worse is that Cain got married to a woman even though the Bible very clearly states that there were no human women (other than his mother) in existence at that time.  The conclusion is inescapable: Cain married an ANIMAL.  Heterosexual marriage sits at the top of a slippery slope that leads directly to bestiality.

Not only that, but the Bible tells us how Lamech, an early descendant of Cain the hetero and murderer, took two wives and was a very violent person.  Elsewhere in the Bible, there are other flagrant, unrepentant heteros like Abraham, David, and Solomon who have multiple wives.  Judah, another heterosexual pervert, impregnates a prostitute who turns out to be his own daughter-in-law!  Here again, we see the Bible clearly showing how sin begets sin and straight-marriage leads directly to POLYGAMY and FORNICATION.

Genesis 19

In the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Bible is VERY clear in its condemnation of the heterosexual lifestyle.  While the men of Sodom were at his door, Abraham’s nephew Lot (another known heterosexual) offers his virgin daughters to be raped.  After Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, Lot’s daughters, burning with heterosexual lust, get their father DRUNK and have SEX with him so that they will get pregnant.  The Bible is crystal clear on this point as well: Heterosexuality leads to drunkenness and INCEST.  That’s what these straight-marriage activists are pushing for.  DON’T LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT!!!

Leviticus

The Old Testament book of Leviticus spends significantly more time condemning straight sex than it does dealing with sexual activity between people of the same gender.  Therefore, heterosexuality is obviously a far bigger problem in the eyes of God.

The most direct and clear condemnation of heterosexuality can be found in Leviticus 19:19 –

“Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.” (Lev. 19:19, KJV)

God gave us an orderly and organized universe, therefore he is offended by different kinds of things mixing together.  If God went to such lengths to condemn the mixing of different cattle, seeds, and fabrics, why wouldn’t he also condemn the mixing of genders and their bodily fluids?  Do you think God would be so foolish as to overlook something that big?  Obviously not.  The meaning of this verse is clear: God never intended for people of different genders to mix sexually.

Matthew 5:27-29

Jesus never had a bad thing to say about same-sex relationships.  He obviously didn’t consider them to be much of a problem.  But he had quite a bit to say about the sin of heterosexuality!  In his Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus tells us that even those who secretly harbor heterosexual tendencies are in danger of burning in hell:

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:

But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

If the heterosexual orientation is so “normal”, as straight-marriage activists claim it is, then why is there no evidence that Jesus ever married a woman?  If the Son of God thought it was worth avoiding, then Christians should too.

1 Corinthians 7

The apostle Paul stated very clearly in his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 7, verse 1: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.”  This is his first condemnation of heterosexuality, but he doesn’t stop there.  In verse 27, he advises young men to “seek not a wife.”  He tells us why in verses 33-34: Paul says that a married person “careth for the things that are of the world” whereas an unmarried person “careth for the things that belong to the Lord.”  Once again, the Bible is clear in stating that heterosexual marriage puts people into a spiritually compromised position.

Conclusion

Don’t get me wrong in all this: I don’t hate straight people.  I love them as Jesus commanded me to.  I live in a part of town that has a rather large heterosexual population.  There’s even a straight couple that lives down the block from me.  In fact, one of my very best friends is straight, so I can’t be heterophobic.  I’m no bigot; I’m just a Bible-believing Christian who follows what the Word of God says, and the Bible is quite clear in its message that heterosexuality is less than God’s best for human beings.

My heart breaks when I see the youth of our nation getting sucked into a heterosexual lifestyle without knowing the clear and present danger that lurks there!  The mainstream media refuses to talk about this, but I have come to believe, through prayer and the study of Genesis 3, that God has sent the plague of pregnancy among the human race as punishment for the sin of heterosexuality.  Pregnancy and childbirth was one of the leading causes of death for women throughout history.  Recent medical advances have lessened that probability, but they can’t erase the fact that heterosexuality is still a SIN.

Statistics and medical data clearly show that people are more likely to get pregnant from straight sex than they are from sexual activity shared with a partner of the same gender.  Why would the numbers be so dramatically higher for straight folks unless GOD was trying to send us a message?

The message is clear: REPENT of your heterosexual perversion and turn back to God’s plan for your life!

Go find a good church that preaches what the Bible REALLY says about heterosexuality.  You can tell them by the rainbow flags hanging outside.  You can also find them by looking for words like:

  1. Integrity (Episcopal)
  2. Dignity (Catholic)
  3. More Light (Presbyterian)
  4. Reconciling (Methodist)
  5. Open & Affirming (United Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ, or Baptist)

This is a free country, so I don’t mind sharing it with straight people, so long as they don’t flaunt it in public.  Whatever sins they commit behind closed doors is between them and God.  But I have a big problem with the way these straight-marriage advocates push their unbiblical heterosexual agenda in the media and the government.  Did you know that some of them are even trying to get LAWS passed that FORCE you to marry people of the opposite gender?!  Some of these sick hetero perverts have even set up RE-EDUCATION CAMPS that brainwash kids and adults into accepting their agenda!  Before long, these fanatics will even be doing away with the separation of church & state in order to FORCE pastors and churches to marry ONLY straight people.

This is my country too and I WANT IT BACK!

Remember to get out and VOTE!

Only you can stop this heterosexual menace from conquering America!

(Reblog) The Problem With Assuming Liberal Christians Hate the Bible

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
Image
Gutenberg Bible. Image by Raul654. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

 

by Derek Penwell

Reblogged from Huffington Post

Liberal Christians aren’t liberal in spite of the Bible, but because of it. They don’t pursue justice for LGBT people because they haven’t read Scripture, but precisely because they have. And in the arc of the narrative of God’s interaction with humanity, liberal Christians find a radical expansiveness, an urgent desire to broaden the embrace of God’s hospitality to include those whom the religious big shots are always kicking to the sidelines.

Click here to read the full article

God-Talk

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Image

The most ancient shrine described in the Bible was a rock.  As the story is told in Genesis, Jacob founded the shrine because of a dream.  Traveling alone, he fell asleep one night in the mountains, with his head resting on a stone for his pillow.  Perhaps it was one of those bright nights when the stars are thick and close, like a spangled quilt thrown over the earth.  He dreamed he saw a ladder connecting heaven and earth, with angels climbing up and down.  “This is none other than the house of God and the gate of heaven” he exclaimed when he woke.  He set up the stone to mark the place and named it Beth El – the House of God.  Another night, on another journey, Jacob tossed and turned in fear that his brother, whom he’d wronged, might kill him.  An angel came in the darkness and fought him.  Jacob survived the fight but limped ever after, and he gained a new name – Israel, which means “one who struggled with God and lived.”

The divine-human encounter is the rock on which our theological house stands.  At the heart of liberal theology is a mysterious glimpse, a transforming struggle, with the oblique presence of God.  “Theology” literally means “God-talk” and derives from theos (God) and logos (word).  But talk of God is tricky business.  The same Bible that tells of Jacob’s marking stone also warns, “Make no graven images of God.”  God may be sighted by a sidewise glance, sensed in a dream, felt in a struggle, heard in the calm at the heart of a storm, or unveiled in a luminous epiphany.  But the moment human beings think they know who God is and carve their conclusions in stone, images of God can become dangerous idols.  In Jewish tradition, God is ultimately un-nameable, and some never pronounce the letters that spell out God’s unspeakable name.

In liberal theology, at the core of the struggle with God is a restless awareness that human conclusions about God are always provisional, and any way of speaking about God may become an idol.  This is why not everyone welcomes talk of God.  God-talk has been used to hammer home expectations of obedience, to censure feelings and passions.  It has been invoked to to stifle intellectual inquiry and to reinforce oppression.  For many people the word “God” stands for conceptions of the ultimate that have harmed life, sanctioned unjust systems, or propelled people to take horrific actions “in the name of God.”

-Rebecca Ann Parker in A House for Hope: The Promise of Progressive Religion for the Twenty-first Century (Beacon Press: 2010), p.23-24

Guest Blogger: Rev. Sarah Schmidt-Lee on How We Read the Bible

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized4 Comments

I’ve posted my wife’s sermons on this site before, but this is the first piece she’s composed specifically for this blog!  Rev. Sarah Schmidt-Lee has been the pastor of Westernville Presbyterian Church since 2006.  She is the first guest blogger on this site, but I’m certainly open to others.  Let me know if you’re interested.

Sarah keeps her own blog at suchkindways.wordpress.com

As a mainline Presbyterian with “liberal” tendencies, but with an evangelical upbringing that I value, I have often found myself interpreting evangelical or conservative theological positions for my friends and colleagues—helping explain how evangelicals read the Bible, understand theology, and interact with the world. My goal is always to help friends prone to dismissing evangelicals to see the thoughtful theology, good-intentions and desire for spiritual faithfulness that I’ve known at the heart of the best of evangelical church life.

But now, with nearly 6 years of ministry experience in a decidedly liberal presbytery, I finally feel fluent enough to begin interpreting back in the other direction. It is time for me to interpret liberal or progressive perspectives to my evangelical friends and colleagues, particularly in my denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA). It is time to talk about the fight over same-sex relationships that we all see coming at this year’s General Assembly. (And, despite the fact that I wish it were not a fight, I will call it such, because there are undeniable hard-feelings and hurt-feelings on both sides. Sounds like a fight to me.) It is time for me to help friends prone to dismissing liberals to see the thoughtful theology, good intentions and desire for spiritual faithfulness that I’ve known at the heart of the best of liberal church life.

First, we must reframe the way we understand the nature of this fight. This is not a fight over the “authority of scripture.” Framing it in terms of authority of scripture implies that evangelicals take the Bible seriously and liberals, or progressives do not. This is simply not true. The vast majority of Presbyterians who support same-sex marriage take the Bible very seriously and consider it the primary source of guidance and formation for Christian life. They do not ignore or dismiss parts of scripture that disagree with their political or social agenda. To imply so is insulting.

No, this is a struggle between two different hermeneutics (or, more precisely, two ranges on a hermeneutical spectrum). A hermeneutic is a fancy way of saying, “a way of reading the Bible”—the set of values and assumptions that inevitably shape the way we read scripture. Sometimes one end of this spectrum has been called “literal,” as in “I take the Bible literally.” Not only is this a gross oversimplification, it leaves the other end of the spectrum ill-defined. Is the opposite of “literal,” “metaphorical,”? “Figurative”? Or as one on-line dictionary suggests, “Inaccurate”? That is language that sets up a straw man. I prefer to think of this spectrum as one strung between these two poles: “I Take Everything in the Bible At Face Value” and “I Believe Everything in the Bible is Nearly Impossible to Interpret Accurately.”

Very few people land on either of these extremes. Most of us are somewhere in the middle, recognizing that while some things in scripture are very clear (“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself,”), other parts are very difficult to understand, because they were produced in cultures half a world away and thousands of years ago using languages as distant from modern Hebrew and Greek as “Beowulf” is from modern English. (“They shall not make baldness upon their head, neither shall they shave off the corner of their beard, nor make any cuttings in their flesh,” from Leviticus 21:5. What is the corner of a beard, anyway, and why shouldn’t it get shaved?)

Every evangelical I know is aware of this “hermeneutical distance.” I was raised in an evangelical church and family, and I grew up with the understanding that sometimes we need to learn a little bit about the historical circumstances in which a book was written in order to interpret the Bible well. For instance, we need to know that shepherds were not respectable members of society to fully appreciate the significance of the angels announcing Jesus’ birth to a band of these ragamuffins.

By the same token, every liberal I know would agree that there are parts of the Bible we should take at face value. “Whoever does not love, does not know God, because God is love.” 1 John 4:8 (NIV). “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39.

So, all of us on this hermeneutical spectrum take some parts of the Bible at face value and all of us use knowledge of the historical and literary setting to make sense of other parts. The difference is which way we look at certain parts.

Those who believe homosexual activity is a sin look at the handful of scripture verses that mention same-gender sexual interactions and they believe they can be read at face value. Just to be clear—I am not claiming that they refuse to examine the historical setting of these passages, but that when they do so, they believe that what they can discern of the historical setting does not change the “face-value” reading of the passage. Those who support same-gender relationships look at these same passages and what they can discern of the historical context in which they were written, and they reach the conclusion that these passages are not as clear as the “face value” would lead us to believe, and that, in their original context, these passages are not condemning the same kind of relationships they seek to support.

As someone who, during the course of theological education at an evangelical seminary shifted from the first way of reading these passages to the second, I can attest to the fact that these are not opposites, but surprisingly close positions on a spectrum—it was a slow, but seamless transition for me. I did not give up anything about the way I was raised to value and read scripture—I simply applied the same values in new ways and new places in the Bible. In fact, I know many people who still self-identify as evangelicals and support same-sex relationships, because they feel that they are continuing to read the Bible with the same primary lens—it’s just that when they focus that interpretive lens on these handful of passages, they don’t believe that they provide sufficient basis for condemning same-sex relationships.

All of this was a very long way of saying that most liberals who support same-sex relationships still take seriously the authority of scripture—we just read the Bible differently. This is not a fight between those who take the Bible seriously and those whose political or social agendas trump their commitment to the Bible. This is a fight between a group of people who value the Bible and read it one way and a group of people who also value the Bible and read it a different way.

Second, I would like to reframe the stakes of this fight. As I understand it, many evangelical pastors and congregations are concerned that if same-gender marriages are allowed in our constitution, there may come a day (sooner or later) when these marriages would be proscribed—in other words, that they would be required to perform those weddings (or ordinations of those in same-sex relationships) even though they believe they are prohibited in the Bible. This is the worst-case scenario—the loss of freedom of conscience. At best, they will find themselves serving within a denomination that no longer reflects their values.

First, I would like to say that I wholeheartedly support the freedom of conscience of all my colleagues. I believe our denomination should leave space for theological diversity—as much of that hermeneutical spectrum as we can bear. So, I will do all I can to actively prevent the worst-case scenario from happening.

But here’s what I need my evangelical colleagues in the PC(USA) to understand. That freedom of conscience you are fighting to preserve is one that has already been explicitly denied to your more liberal colleagues for the last 16 years.

Serious discussions about the Presbyterian church’s stance on same-gender relationships began in the late 1970s (in both the UPCUSA and the PCUS, for those of you who care). In both cases, the earliest theological papers acknowledged a diversity of ways to interpret the scripture passages in question—an acknowledgment that was not reflected in the subsequent theological statements adopted by each General Assembly—what began as open dialogue was shut down. There was, however, recognition that discerning a candidate’s suitability for ordained ministry was the responsibility of the session and presbytery, so while the General Assemblies adopted theological statements on their understanding of same-sex relationships, presbyteries still felt free to examine and approve candidates in same-sex relationships, when they recognized God’s call in their lives.

So—just to put things in perspective—there are pastors in our denomination who are in committed same-sex relationships, who were ordained before I was born.

But, in 1996, the ordination standards in the Constitution of the PC(USA) were amended to require all candidates for ordination to live “in chastity in singleness,” or in “fidelity in a marriage between a man and a woman.” In a denomination that claims to value theological diversity, our constitution was amended to limit the interpretation of the parts of scripture regarding same-sex relationships to only their “face-value,” reading, and ever since then, those who read these parts of the Bible differently have been prohibited from exercising their freedom of conscience.

The fight to remove that clause (which happened last year) and to open up the definition of marriage is not an attempt to deny any one’s freedom to interpret the Bible faithfully and act upon those convictions. It is precisely the opposite—it is an attempt to return that freedom of conscience to those in our denomination who for almost 20 years have faced the reality that in order to respond faithfully to their understanding of God’s call in scripture, they must defy church’s constitution. Most of these clergy and congregations have remained within the denomination, longing for and fighting for the chance to act upon their conscience.

The liberals in our denomination have endured almost two decades of serving a church that not only no longer reflected their values, but overtly prevented them from acting on one of their theological convictions. They’ve looked at young people who would make excellent pastors and said, “You’ll have to seek to serve in a different denomination. We’re not allowed to ordain you.” They’ve told members of their churches “I can’t perform your wedding because the denomination prohibits it.” The worst case scenario has happened. So, forgive your liberal colleagues if they don’t have much patience for those who worry their ability to exercise freedom of conscience may be lost. They already lost theirs and have not entirely got it back, yet.

I, and most of the liberal church leaders I know, want all of our members to have freedom of conscience. We do not want to force churches who read the Bible differently from us to hire gay or lesbian clergy or perform same-sex weddings. But we do want to have the ability to act on our own convictions—to live with faithfulness to the way the Spirit is leading us to read and interpret scripture—to affirm the ways we see God calling our friends and neighbors to service in the church and to fidelity in marriage.

Romancing the Book: Evangelical Lessons for Liberal Christians

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Evangelical Lessons for Liberal Christians3 Comments

This is part 2 of 3 in a series of posts called Evangelical Lessons for Liberal Christians.  Evangelicals, much maligned among liberals, nonetheless possess an impressive array of gifts and skills that can benefit the larger Christian community, including those who do not share their beliefs and biases.  Liberal Christians are so quick to self-identify as “not evangelical” or “not that kind of Christian” that we have developed a nasty habit of tossing babies out with the bathwater.  I’m suggesting that we all go outside and recover these babies from the muddy ground outside (although we may have to give them another bath before we bring them back into our house).

Wow… I’m really stretching that metaphor.

In my first post, entitled God Has No Grandchildren, we talked about how evangelicals have done an amazing job of taking personal ownership of their spiritual lives.  For them, Christianity is not a set of dogmas, morals, and rituals to which one defaults by accident of birth.  For them, it is a whole-hearted commitment of one’s self to an ongoing relationship with the divine.

In today’s post, I want to talk about the Bible.

As far as religious communities go, none have had a more passionate love affair with the Bible than have evangelicals.  They tend to take it with them wherever they go: church, work, school, and vacation.  They sometimes refer to it as their sword (a source of strength) and other times as their love letter from God.  Most of the time, they simply call it the Word of God.  They have confidence that the voice of the Holy Spirit is able to reach, comfort, and guide them through these words on a page.  Like newlyweds in the bedroom, evangelical encounters with the Bible are intense and frequent (if a bit messy and awkward).  They tend to devour it, even though they don’t understand much of what they’re reading.

Liberal Christians, on the other hand, tend to relate to the Bible like an older couple in a long-term relationship.  In place of the young lovers’ passion, they have developed a deep respect for its mystery and complexity.  They let those old, familiar words wash over them and anchor them to all time and eternity.  There are still some things they don’t like about the Bible, but they’ve learned how to accept those things and still appreciate the Bible for what it is.

Liberal Christians, while they tacitly accept the appellation “Word of God” as applied to the Bible, tend to cringe at notions of inerrancy and infallibility.  For us, the Bible is not a magical book that was somehow “beamed down” from heaven without flaw or error.  Why then do we still refer to them as the Word of God?  I love the answer given in the Catechism found in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer (1979):

We call them (the Holy Scriptures) the Word of God because God inspired their human authors and because God still speaks to us through the Bible.

I love this answer’s dual emphasis on inspiration and continual speaking.  Liberal Christians believe that the divine Word is speaks to us “in, with, and under” (a phrase I’m borrowing from Luther’s sacramental theology) the human words on the page.  For those of us in the Reformed (and always reforming) tradition of Protestant Christianity, we identify Christ as the true and Living Word of God.  The scriptures, as we have them, constitute a witness to that Living Word.  In other words, the early disciples experienced something extraordinary in the person of Christ and spend the rest of their lives wrestling with what it meant.  The Christian churches have continued to wrestle with that mystery for almost two millennia.  These days, we are less certain than ever about our particular answers, but more convinced than ever about the overall importance of what we’ve found.

In our less glorious moments, liberal Christians have tended to abandon this treasure of the faith to those who would abuse it and co-opt it for their own selfish ends.  Our respect for the complexity and mystery of the Bible has sometimes led us to throw our hands up in despair that anyone could ever know what this crazy book is talking about.  We despise trite and easy answers taken from text on a page, which leads us to sometimes give up hope of finding any guidance at all.  In our very worst moments, we tend to cut and paste the parts we like and throw out or ignore the parts we don’t.  My favorite example of this kind of project is the famous Bible produced by my American forbear, Thomas Jefferson.  He didn’t like the idea of supernatural miracles, so he just cut those parts out.  These days, many liberal Christians have a tendency to cut out the parts about judgment and sex, as if the Bible had nothing valuable to say about these topics.  To be fair, many evangelicals do the same thing.  They underline their favorite verses about individual salvation and “the pelvic issues” while they ignore the passages that emphasize the importance of social justice or suggest the possibility of universal salvation.

The tendency toward idolatry is a human universal, not unique to evangelicals or liberals.  We all have an instinctual urge to recast Jesus as an advocate for our own personal ideology.  We all tend to hear our own voices, rather than God’s speaking to us in the text of the Bible.  Anne Lamott once wrote, “You can safely assume that you’ve made God in your own image when she hates all the same people you do.”

I was speaking with a colleague once at a pastor’s retreat on Christian spirituality.  I was talking about the central role that the Bible plays in shaping our spirituality.  He asked, “Does it have to be through the Bible?”  I responded that it doesn’t have to be through the Bible, but it gets to be.  As Christians, we have the privilege of conducting our collective faith-journey in dialogue with this cacophonous chorus of voices from the past.  I see the Bible as a library, rather than a book.  It’s a messy collection of stories, poems, and letters that chronicle our ancestors’ relationship with God.  They stretched to describe the indescribable.  They failed to capture the essence of the divine in their writings, but they did leave a number of helpful signposts.  I love the scriptures for their messiness.  It gives me hope for myself.  God never gave up on Abraham, Israel, or Peter, so I have every reason to trust that God will not give up on me.

The exercise that has most helped me recover the Bible as a tool for my spiritual growth is a practice developed by monks over a thousand years ago.  It’s called Lectio Divina, which is Latin for “Divine Reading.”  Here’s how it works:

  • Sit down with a short passage of scripture (e.g. Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15).  Read it slowly.  Out loud, if you can.  Maybe even stopping at every verse or sentence.
  • Pay attention to any words or phrases that “jump out at you” or seem to touch your life in some significant way.
  • Take a moment to process what that word or phrase means to you right now, in this moment.  You’re not looking for once-and-for-all absolutely authoritative interpretations.  You’re listening for what God is saying to you today through this passage.  God might be saying something completely different to someone else through those same words.  God might say something completely different to you tomorrow through those same words.  The Spirit blows where it wills…
  • Craft a prayer of response to what you think you’ve heard.  This can be a prayer of thanksgiving, a request for help, or a dedication of oneself to service.
  • Sit still for a period of extended silence while you contemplate God’s presence within and around you.  It might help to focus your attention on the normally unconscious act of your breathing or perhaps pick a special word to guide and focus your meditation.
  • Close by reading the passage slowly once more.  Be thankful for what you have encountered in this process.

I think that liberal Christians have an opportunity to re-engage with the Bible in a passionate way.  We can begin our “second honeymoon” with this old partner and rekindle in ourselves the romance we admire in our evangelical brothers and sisters.

One Example of a Common Sense Liberal

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Common Sense LiberalismLeave a comment

Today’s post and yesterday’s (Why Liberal?  Confessions of a Recovering Evangelical) started as one, but my introduction mutated into a post in its own right.  Funny how that tends to happen when you’ve got ADD.

As I’ve said before, there is no such thing as a monopoly on common sense and family values.  Liberals in both the political and religious realms have a justly earned reputation for being elitist and overly academic.  however, I think it’s time we got to work on correcting that, especially if we hope to engage with the hearts and minds of people off-campus.  I don’t mean that we dumb it down or reject the contributions of scholarship; I mean that we communicate what we believe in ways that are more simple and direct.

One person who is already doing an amazing job at this is an older guy in Georgia who owns a peanut farm, volunteers with Habitat For Humanity, and teaches Sunday School at his Baptist Church.  By the way, he is also a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and served a term as President of the United States.

It’s Jimmy Carter.

Say what you will about his presidency and policies (I have beef with both), but Jimmy, more than any other living president, embodies a sense of personal wisdom and human decency that is rarely found among national politicians.  Perhaps that contributed to the fact that he did not serve a second term.  My wife says that Jimmy Carter is living proof that personal integrity doesn’t always make for the best presidents.

This former-president’s most recent project is the production of a study Bible with his own notes and reflections on the text.  This may be a bit ambitious on my part, but I would hope that a project of this magnitude might find its place in history alongside the famous Jefferson Bible.

You can see and/or order Carter’s Lessons from Life Bible at Amazon.com by clicking here.

In order to promote this new publication, Carter gave an interview to folks at the Huffington Post.  I provide a link and invite you to read the interview as an example of one Common Sense Liberal Christian speaking his mind about the faith of his heart.  On a human level, here is an example of how one can be an open-minded, open-hearted, and faithful Christian.

Enjoy!

President Jimmy Carter Authors New Bible Book, Answers Hard Biblical Questions

Elements of Worship: The Word

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Elements of Worship, Sermon1 Comment

Starting a new sermon series at First Pres, Boonville.  This is part 1 of 5.

The text is II Timothy 3:10-17.

Click here to listen to the recording of this sermon at fpcboonville.org

Does anybody here remember the Periodic Table?  I’m taking you back to 6th grade science class on this one.  It’s an oddly shaped chart of letters and numbers that’s somehow supposed to explain everything that exists.  Personally, I always thought it looked like somebody started writing the alphabet and then got really confused.  I’m told that students used to have to memorize the whole thing, but they did away with that by the time I got to Middle School (mostly because scientists were coming up with all kinds of new additions like Einsteinium and Nobelium, so the Table was getting bigger every year).  These days, I think we’re up 118 entries.  The Periodic Table is divided into metals on the left and non-metals on the right.  At the far right, there are the Noble Gases like Helium and Radon.  On the far left are the Alkaline metals like Lithium.  Each individual unit on the Periodic Table is called an element.  Elements are the basic units of chemistry.  An element represents the most basic level to which a compound or molecule can be broken down using chemical processes.  To go any father (i.e. protons, neutrons, and electrons), you’ve got to use nuclear means.  So, they are called elements because they are the basic components of the science of chemistry.  In the olden days, that same term was applied to the basic forces of nature: earth, air, water, and fire.  These were called the four elements.  These days, when kids get old enough to go to school, they begin at a basic and introductory level in an elementary school.  An element is a basic component of some larger system or process.

Starting today and continuing for the next four Sundays, we’re going to be talking about elements in church.  Now, we won’t be talking about chemical elements on the Periodic Table.  No, for these five Sundays, we’ll be talking about the Elements of Worship.  We’ll be looking at a kind of Periodic Table for the Church, if you will.  Each week, we’re going to look at a different element and see how each element fits into the big picture of what we do each week in church.  There are five Elements of Worship that we’ll be looking at.  The five elements are as follows: Word, Prayer, Service, Sacrament, and Relationship.  Everything we do in church, from the Announcements to the Benediction, is made up of these five elements in some combination and configuration: Word, Prayer, Service, Sacrament, and Relationship.  Even though we’re only focusing on one element per week, it will quickly become clear that none of these exists in isolation from the others.  They are all connected and intertwined with each other like a great big spider web.  We can’t really think about one without touching on the others.  Nevertheless, you’ve got to start somewhere.  So let’s get going…

This week, we’re focusing on the element of the Word.  By that, we specifically mean the Word of God.  Now, I know what you’re all thinking right now: “I know what that is.  He means the Bible.  The Word of God is the Bible.”  My answer to that is: “Well, yes and no.”  You see, the Bible never actually refers to itself as “the Word of God”.  In the Hebrew Scriptures (what we call the Old Testament), “the Word of God” typically refers to a particular message that came to particular prophet at a particular place and time.  Thus, it says in Genesis 15, “The word of the Lord came to Abram”.  Later on, in the New Testament, “the Word” mostly refers to Christ himself.  Jesus Christ is the living Word of God.  Thus, the Word of God is a person, not a book.

What then can we say about the Bible?  First of all, the Bible is more of a library than a book.  It is a massive collection of stories, poems, and letters composed and compiled over a period of many centuries.  Thus, I like to refer to them as “the scriptures” (plural) rather than “the Bible” (singular).  These writings chronicle the ongoing relationship between God and God’s people.  Opening the scriptures is kind of like finding your grandparents’ old love letters in a trunk in the attic.  When you read them, you get these insightful little snapshots into a romance that has spanned the ages.  We treasure these fragments but we would never mistake them for the relationship itself.  That is something that can only be experienced firsthand.  Thus, the scriptures point beyond themselves to the deeper reality of a relationship into which you and I are invited.  Marcus Borg calls the scriptures “a finger pointing to the moon.”  If you’re looking at the finger, you’re looking at the wrong thing.  Look instead to where the finger is pointing.  Then and only then will you “get the point”.  Jesus himself said as much in John 5 as he was debating with the Pharisees, a group of religious people who had worked very hard to preserve the scriptures in their own tradition.  Jesus said to the Pharisees, “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf.”  The scriptures point beyond themselves.  They are a means to an end, not an end in themselves.

In this day and age when the culture prizes knowledge that can be objectively verified and scientifically proved, people of faith often experience the temptation to find absolute certainty on historic and scientific facts documented in the scriptures.  They believe that the authors of the scriptures were inspired by God in the same way that a secretary takes down a dictation.  For them, the Bible (singular) is literally “the Word of God”.  They see the Bible as a single book with a single author who can never be wrong.

Reading the scriptures in this way can provide a comforting level of certainty in these uncertain times, but it can also cause all sorts of problems.  First of all, the words of the scriptures can be and have been used to justify all manner of brutality and injustice.  Advocates for slavery, exploitation, genocide, racism, sexism, and homophobia have all used the texts of the scriptures to support their causes.  A further (and bigger) problem that arises when we read the Bible as the literal Word of God is that our confidence in the book actually undermines our faith in God.  We mistake that box of Grandma and Grandpa’s love letters for the relationship itself.  We worship the Bible instead of God.  It seems to me that the second of the Ten Commandments has something to say about that: “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”  The way I like to read that sentence is: “You can’t put God in a box.”  I think the same holds true whether that box is a statue, a building, or a book.  Make no mistake: worshiping the Bible in God’s place is idolatry.

Presbyterians, on the whole, do not tend to view the scriptures as a single, inerrant document.  We see them collectively as the “unique and authoritative witness” to Jesus Christ as the living Word of God.  For us, the scriptures are that “finger pointing to the moon” and we want to look (and go to) where that finger is pointing us.  We want to get closer to Jesus.  We want to grow in our relationship with God.  For us, the stories, poems, and letters contained in the scriptures are a record of our ancestors’ relationship with God, centering around this amazing person named Jesus.  They remembered, reflected on, and wrestled with everything his life meant to them.  Finally, they wrote it all down in the best way they knew how, using the words and ideas they had available to them at that time.

And so we listen: we listen to these words of our fellow human beings with the ears on our heads, but we also listen for the Word of God with the ears of our hearts.  We believe the Word of God still speaks to us through these human words, limited and imperfect though they may be.  To do this, we need help.  In order to take us from these human words to God’s Word, we need something Presbyterians call “the inward illumination of the Holy Spirit”.  That’s why we stop to say a short prayer right before we read from the scriptures each week during worship.  Go ahead and check it out in your bulletin.  Right before the scripture reading, there is something called the Prayer for Illumination.  We’re asking God to turn the lights on inside of us so that we can see things more clearly.  We’re asking the Holy Spirit to help us find God’s Word in these human words.  This event is central to our worship as Christians.  When we come together, we prepare ourselves to receive God’s Word by gathering together, praising God, confessing our shortcomings, and making peace with our neighbors.  We listen for God’s Word in the reading of the scriptures and reflection on the sermon.  We respond to God’s Word by affirming our faith, praying for our needs, giving thanks for God’s blessings, and offering our whole lives to God’s service in the world.  Finally, we follow God’s Word back out into the world, trusting that the One who meets us in this place will continue to guide us out there during the other six days of the week.  It’s all about God’s Word, not a book but a person, Jesus Christ: God’s living Word.  As the lights come on inside of us and we begin to hear God’s Word through the human words of the scriptures, our lives will begin to look more like Jesus’ life: the life of a radical healer, teacher, revolutionary, and friend.

I can’t help but mention the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, whose 83rd birthday just so happens to be today.  Dr. King knew what we’re talking about today.  During his lifetime, people from all over the United States, even pastors, used the words of our scriptures to put him down and keep African American people under the thumb of segregation.  But Dr. King didn’t listen to those words.  He opened the scriptures and heard the Word of God saying to him (in the words of the prophet Amos), “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”  The Word of God showed Dr. King how to dream that his “four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  In spite of being ridiculed, beaten and arrested, Dr. King heard God’s Word in the book of Isaiah, dreaming of that day when “every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”  On that day, he said, all God’s children: black and white, Jew and Gentile, Protestant and Catholic, will join hands and sing together, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”  Through the inward illumination of the Holy Spirit, these ancient scriptures became for Dr. King vessels for the Word of God.  That same Spirit lives in you, illumines you.  May the Word of God be a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your path.  May you be able to say, along with Martin Luther King:

I’ve heard the lightning flashing, and heard the thunder roll.
I’ve felt sin’s breakers dashing, try’n to conquer my soul.
But I’ve heard the voice of Jesus telling me still to fight on.

He promised never to leave me, no, never alone.