I want to apply some Holy-Spirit-guided hermeneutics to the questions of divorce and abortion.
Divorce
First, what does the Bible say about divorce? Nothing. Unless you wear a veil that blocks out the Holy Ellipses. In that case, you will see a fair bit. For example, in the Old Testament, there are a lot of laws that make it easy for men to get rid of a wife who doesn’t please him. For instance, at any moment during a marriage, the husband can demand some physical proof that his wife was a virgin when they married. If she cannot produce physical evidence that she had been a virgin at that time, she is executed. (I guess that’s not divorce, though, is it?)
But you will also find condemnations of divorce in various places including from the mouth of Jesus himself.
But most of these passages from Holy Scripture are Holy Ellipses.
The Holy Spirit has guided us into a more compassionate society. We realized that most marriages are miserable. If half of marriages end with the participants preferring divorce—which everyone knows is one of the most traumatic things that can happen to a person—think about how many marriages don’t end in divorce just because they are not quite as miserable as divorce!
It is interesting that the response to Jesus’ condemnation of divorce in Matthew 19 was, “are you saying no one should get married?” His listeners understood how difficult married life usually is. Maybe more interesting is Jesus’ answer which amounted to saying that it is easiest for a eunuch to enter the kingdom of God. Ouch! I’m glad the Holy Spirit has elided that part out so that true Christians never notice it!
So what do we do these days? Here is the Holy Spirit’s logic that underlies our current system:
Look, nobody likes divorce! It is one of the most traumatic things that can happen to a person. Nobody is “pro-divorce”. However, we consider the misery that marriage often is and the frequency with which marriages are abusive and destructive. When divorce is illegal, many unfortunate women live in very abusive homes. Under the circumstances, we believe that it is better for divorce to be legal and not prohibitively difficult.
So we build a society in which divorce—as much as we hate it—is legal and not too difficult to obtain. It is up to non-governmental organizations, such as churches, to try to deal with the causes of divorce (selfishness, unpreparedness for marriage, excess anger, etc.)
To argue this method from the Bible is difficult, let’s be honest. We have to look at abstractions such as the teaching that we are all stuck in sin or the importance of compassion for the vulnerable and let things like that outweigh the passages that speak directly on the topic. We also rely on the Holy Spirit to lead us away from the views based on naive interpretations of The Word of God on divorce and toward this view that justifies our behavior.
But we Christians agree that the system here in the US is humane and compatible with a Christian life-style. We don’t murder divorce lawyers or make loud protests against the legality of divorce.
Not only that, we divorce just as often as the broader population. Thus, the Holy Spirit really had to do something about those passages of Holy Scripture.
Abortion
There is only one passage of scripture (correct me if I’m wrong) that deals with the issue of abortion directly: Numbers 5. It is one of the Holy Ellipses that I’ve written about before. The reason it is a Holy Ellipsis is that it allows abortion at the whim of a husband.
So again, considering what the Bible says about abortion directly is out. We look at abstractions again. Since the Holy Spirit has elided those passages of scripture that advocate genocide, capital punishment, and war, we can see that the Bible is all about the sanctity of human life. Therefore, we are pro-life.
But in this case, the Holy Spirit’s way has not won the day in our broader culture. Abortion is still legal!
The anti-life (also called “pro-abortion”) lobby uses the following ridiculous “logic”:
Look, nobody likes abortion! It is one of the most traumatic things that can happen to a person. Nobody is “pro-abortion”. However, we consider the many complex issues that people face, such as rape, lack of education, poverty, etc. When abortion is illegal, many unfortunate women have dangerous, illegal abortions or live with starving children. Under the circumstances, we believe that it is better for abortion to be legal and not prohibitively difficult.
So we build a society in which abortion—as much as we hate it—is legal and not too difficult to obtain. It is up to both governmental and non-governmental organizations, such as churches, to try to deal with the causes of abortion (poverty, rape, ignorance of the causes of pregnancy, unpreparedness for parenthood, etc.)
Obviously, the people who make such an “argument” hate babies unless they are boiled and spiced. How anyone can follow along with a single phrase of that Satanic line of “reasoning” is beyond me! It makes me want to spit and roll my eyes!
This is why we can sympathize with the murderers of abortion doctors. This is why we loudly support laws that hurt poor people and have no effect on us. In Matthew 23.4, Jesus talks about laws that make life difficult for the poor but have no effect on those pushing for the laws. I figure that if Jesus talked about it, it is probably a good thing!
This is why, if you ask me how I’m going to vote, I say, “I love babies.” This makes it clear that anyone who disagrees with me on this issue hates babies.
Conclusion
The Holy Spirit has spoken on these issue. In neither case is the Holy Spirit’s answer particularly Biblical. (Isn’t God mysterious?)
The inexperienced and Holy-Spirit-lacking interpreter of the Bible would say that the Bible teaches that women are the property of men and abortion is a husband’s choice. If you’ve read the Bible and never notice those things, then you have the Holy Spirit working powerfully in you. I’ll write more about this in a future post.
The Holy Spirit has revealed the Truth to us. We can’t help it that the Truth justifies our way of life and let’s us condemn others.
I’m considering starting another series on hermeneutics. As I plan the series, I realize that there is a common thread underlying hermeneutical technique: the Holy Spirit. In this post, I am going to explain the role of the Holy Spirit in hermeneutics.
The Holy Ellipses
Turn in your Bibles, if you will, to 2 Corinthians 3.15–18.
15 Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. 16 But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
In verse 15, Paul is talking about the Jews but his words apply to everyone who is not a true Christian—that is, everyone who is not a conservative evangelical. When (or really “if”) they read the Bible, a veil covers their hearts. All they see is the words and what the words mean.
Or perhaps I could put it better: the problem is not so much that they only see the words as it is that they see all the words. This illusory vision is a result of the veil that is taken away when anyone turns to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit removes the veil so that instead of so many words, we see the ellipses.
As I study hermeneutical technique, I am struck heavily with the centrality of the role of the Holy Spirit in helping us to see the ellipses. Any true Christian has experienced this. How many times have you been reading the Bible and suddenly woke up at the end of a large section with no memory of what it was about?
The Abortion Example
I’ll give one example here. With the Holy Spirit, we read Numbers 5 and get to the end without having any thought about the words or their meanings. We know that that Chapter of Holy Writ is a Holy Ellipsis. We have never heard a pastor or teacher talk about that text.
Without the Holy Spirit, people see an outrageous law in which the priest performs an abortion at the whim of the husband. The woman has no say in it.
…if feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife and she is impure—or if he is jealous and suspects her even though she is not impure—then he is to take his wife to the priest.
In other words, if the husband wants an abortion, all he has to do is tell the priest that he feels jealous. Conveniently for him, no proof of infidelity is required—only proclaimed jealousy.
The priest then prepares a poison drink and administers it to the woman. The expected result is: “may the Lord cause your people to curse and denounce you when he causes your thigh to waste away and your abdomen to swell.” Not only does the woman lose her child at the whim of her husband, but she is forever shunned by her community.
The abortions were not always successful. If the baby and wife survived, it was considered a sign that she was innocent. (In this case, the husband is punished by needing to try again later.) If the unborn child died or the wife became infertile or died as a result of the poison the priest made her drink, then it was a sign that she was guilty.
It is by the work of the Holy Spirit that I, for example, would never notice this. (I heard about this from someone wearing a heavy veil.) It is by the work of the Holy Spirit that none of my Bible teachers noticed this or talked about it.
But what to do if some veiled person forces you to think about what this means? Or what if someone asks you to write a commentary on the entire book of Numbers including the Holy Ellipses? Now we are in an area that only the most experienced hermeneutical experts should tread.
I haven’t found a single truly Christian commentator who so much as mentions that there is an unborn baby being killed in this Holy Ellipsis.
Here is are some of the things the Holy Spirit guided experts do instead: some see the deeper meaning of the text. (Those without the Holy Spirit say they make stuff up.) They say that the potion that the priest prepares was no poison: it was just a ceremonial drink with dirt from the floor of the tabernacle mixed with some substance that is first spread on parchment then scraped from the page into the harmless, ceremonial drink. It was called “bitter” just because it was metaphysically bitter. Anyway, the point is that it was for ceremonial purposes only. Whatever happens, and they don’t mention what happens, it is God who does it. It was all supernatural and not natural.
Another common tact is just to say that there is no baby and it is the wife who dies even though there is nothing in the text suggesting that. We true Christians want to believe this interpretations so badly that we just do. That’s the Holy Spirit, too.
Others talk about how much more humane this procedure was compared to what the polytheists were doing at the time: “Viewed in this light, its sanction by divine authority in a corrected and improved form exhibits a proof at once of the wisdom and condescension of God.” Again, no mention is made of the fact that the priest or God or somebody is killing an unborn child.
Are there any real hermeneutics experts out there who can help us deal with this Holy Ellipsis when we are forced to do so by veiled heathen?
Conclusion
Without the Holy Spirit removing our veil so that we see ellipses when we read certain parts of the Bible… So, let’s all thank God that He has removed the veil!
I’m thinking of starting a series on the work of the Holy Spirit in hermeneutics by looking at what the veiled people see in the some of the major Holy Ellipses in The Word of God. These examples will exhibit proof at once of the wisdom and condescension of God on our behalf. Seriously! What would we do without those ellipses?
See you next time!
Today, I’m continuing my series on Merely Reconciler’s question and answer with the college faculty.
In my previous post I talked about the question Dr. Reconciler took the most seriously: how to stop our University’s slide toward being intellectual and tolerant. Today, I’ll tell you about part of his answer to the first question he got.
A relatively new member of the philosophy department asked the first question. It was about academic freedom and specifically mentioned the question of evolution. I want to look closely with you at his response to this question.
A Preemptive Strike at Intellectualism
Merely Reconciler laid out what he called “all possible perspectives” into four “models”. Three theistic views which are acceptable at our University and one atheistic view that is not. He said that at secular schools, only one of the four models—”atheistic” science—was permitted and there are three theistic views we can choose from. Therefore, he said, we have more freedom.
This is a beautiful example of what I mean when I say that he talks like a preacher or a very good seminary professor. One of the things you learn in a homiletics course is to just say things that are obviously nonsense and figure your audience is made of uneducated people who are starving to believe whatever you say. I love that he treats the PhDs in his new audience the same way. This shows that he is sincere in his avowal to stop intellectualism at our University.
Let me explain.
- The fact is, there are dozens of atheistic views of evolution, theories on evolution, and philosophies of science applied to the theory of evolution. There is not just one.
- Scientists at secular universities can and frequently do hold any one of the three theistic views of evolution that Dr. Reconciler laid out. They are free to hold any theistic or atheistic view.
Now if there were an intelligent person in the room where he was speaking, they would be insulted by his gross misrepresentation of the facts and his assertion that we at our University have more freedom.
Do you get it now? He is intentionally insulting any intelligent person! It’s all part of his plan to stop intellectualism here! He doesn’t waste a minute! He hasn’t even started his job and he’s already fighting for us!
The Consequences of Believing Science
The first of the four perspectives was
a Dawkins-like macro thing which is completely unguided and not in any way the result of a creative act of God. We as Christians are not open to that position and if you held that view or came to that view over time, then we would have to have conversations about that.
This view is what is normally called “science”. This reminds me of something a Roman Catholic bishop said long, long ago:
This Galilean natural laws of mechanics and gravity thing which is completely unguided and not in any way the result of a creative act of God is not open to us Christians and you held that view of came to that view over time, then we would have to have conversations about that.
You might think that they are saying exactly the same thing. Unfortunately, there is an important difference.
The bishop was fighting against the progress of science toward finding patterns and simple explanations in nature instead of accepting the Christian, biblical view that the only force of nature is the hand of God and things fall to the earth only when God pulls them. This hasn’t changed. (Well, the Roman Catholic Church has retracted that view but the evangelical church has picked up the mantle of biblical tradition.) The difference is what these two men mean when they say, “have conversations”. The bishop meant conversations that ended in the loss of thumbnails or life. Merely Reconciler will probably only have conversations that end in the loss of dignity, motivation, job-satisfaction, or livelihood. I miss the good old days.
Where is the Line?
It sounds like science is not allowed any more at our University. So, what is allowed? Merely Reconciler laid out three acceptable views. One was “Young Earth Creationism”. About this one, Merely Reconciler
would say, I as provost would say to a person who holds that view, “You’re OK! Don’t let people force you to try to agree with them! That’s within the bounds of what we say and what we agree with.”
Another of the acceptable perspectives was one in which natural forces are at work generally but God sometimes does a miracle to create a new species. (When no one is looking, of course, otherwise scientists would try to measure it and come up with laws explaining it.)
Finally, the most liberal of the acceptable views is this:
a view that holds to common descent and acknowledges the notion of a sort of theistic evolution where God is in some providential way guiding the process and yet scientists are able to detect mechanical functions by which new forms of life including new species develop and grow.
It is kind of scary to me that this is acceptable. It is so obviously contrary to scripture. Either you believe the Bible or you don’t. But I guess Dr. Reconciler is trying to appease the liberals. Now that he has power, I have no idea why he would try to do this.
Here is why I don’t like this border-line theistic view: it sounds quite like the way Christians do science at secular universities. That is, they do and teach science exactly the same way an atheist does except in their hearts they believe that God is involved in some way that might not be explainable from a scientific perspective. But there is a problem here: they are still doing science! Are we going to continue to allow that at our University? Apparently so.
Could a scientist who holds what might be called an atheistic philosophy of science (i.e., no appeal to God is needed in order to do science) but who believes that there are natural phenomena that science cannot and never will explain (e.g., God, resurrection, etc.) qualify under Merely Reconciler’s definition of “mere Christianity”? Say it isn’t so! This would be admitting actual scientists into mere Christianity! How can we have a reconciled community with people like that running around loose?
The Importance of Philosophy
Not long ago, my theological hero (who, by the way, considers Merely Reconciler his mentor!) scolded a science professor (who fortunately retired last year) because he invited an outside scientist to speak on campus. Why is a theologian scolding a professor in another department? Because the invited outside scientist did not hold the same philosophy of science that my theological hero holds.
Now that my theological hero’s mentor is in power, I hope my theological hero will feel empowered to do a lot more policing around here.
It shouldn’t stop at philosophy of science either. All philosophies need to be theistic. Any philosophy explaining something without reference to God’s involvement should not be allowed.
For example, closely related to science is mathematics. We have mathematicians here who do mathematics with no appeal or reference to God. I’ll bet some of them hold an atheistic philosophy of mathematics. They see no need to appeal to God in order to solve the problems of mathematics or the philosophy of mathematics! Surely, such a person cannot satisfy Merely Reconciler’s definition of “mere Christianity”!
My hope is that he is just trying to appease the liberals and in practice, he will get rid of them all.
And Papa Makes Two
Papa Bear and Merely Reconciler make an excellent team. Together, they should be able to get rid any remaining scientists or otherwise intelligent people here until only my heroes remain.
I’m very hopeful. Expect a much more up-beat blog here for years to come!
In the coming days, I’m going to post some more details from Merely Reconciler’s question and answer session with the college faculty.
The first questions began from the left. Questions about academic freedom and even a question about taking care of the environment! I’ll say a bit about some of these questions and his responses in a later post. But clearly Dr. Reconciler got tired of fielding questions from the left and said:
Let’s go to the right side. My left.
It is so refreshing to finally have someone at our University for whom the people on the right are to his left. I loved the emphasis he put on these two sentences. It’s clear that everyone knew what he was talking about because it got a good laugh. The person “to the right” he was calling on was none other than my biological hero.
My biological hero’s question started with a story from his own life. He reminisced about his first year at our University. Chapel attendance was high and students and faculty were all focused on their common faith. But things are different now:
There is huge pressure on schools to move away from that, to become more tolerant, to become more intellectual. How do we stop that from happening? How do we keep that distinctive that I fell in love with the first year I came here? And how do we keep from becoming those other schools where the students seem to not have that experience?
Merely Reconciler’s answer began with this:
Well, that’s a big question. That’s an important question to me.
Finally! Someone asked a big, important question!
The he preached about each of us faculty doing his or her best to “stop that from happening”. I hope the people sitting on the left were listening!
I haven’t officially announced this yet:
We have a new provost at our University! Merely Reconciler! He has more power than past provosts in that he is over the college, the seminary, and the graduate school!
He was previously a professor at our seminary and he has been a pastor for the past few years.
Here at the college he held a Q&A session. I’ll tell you more about this another time.
Dr. Reconciler has been a pastor for the last few years and it shows. He is a natural preacher! Very inspiring!
He also said that he was very broad in his definition of the word “Christian”. He said that he likes C. S. Lewis’ approach with his “Mere Christianity”. But I take some comfort knowing Merely Reconciler’s track record of relationships with people who don’t agree with him: I’m sure we don’t have to worry about any heterogeneity at our University going forward.
He also talked a lot about his focus on reconciliation. His past experience on the issue proves that he and I mean the same thing by that word. That’s why I’m calling him “Merely Reconciler!”
I really hope Merely Reconciler can have a strong influence on Rudyard and keep our University from heading off the rails. The combined strength of him and Papa Bear should be able to overpower President Rudyard’s attempts to define reconciliation in some way that involves really engaging with outsiders. You can expect lots of stories with happy endings in the coming years. I suggest we start by ending the careers of some of the liberals who are bringing this place down!
In my next few blog posts, I will elaborate on some of these questions and his answers to them.
Hooray!!
Our University is big on reconciliation and diversity. We have a “reconciliation studies” program and some of the big names in the field are faculty here. Our new president and provost push the issue hard. But not too hard. They are wise enough to know where the limits of such a program need to be: it is reconciliation among true (or “mere”) Christians.
Reconciliation and True Christianity
We love to have people with unusual skin colors as students, faculty, and staff. But only if they are true Christians. And by “true Christian” you know exactly what I mean. I mean they were adopted as infants by white, conservative, evangelical parents and raised in a suburban mid-western US home with a man in charge.
When we get a differently-pigmented person who is a true Christian, we put their photo on every University publication. We put them in charge of the reconciliation task force. We celebrate their true Christianity with vigor!
This is what we call “reconciliation”. “Reconciliation” means “making us normal true Christians—who are born into true Christianity—friends with other people by converting them into true Christians”. It’s true that it is easiest to convert outsiders by adopting them as infants. Once they are brainwashed by another culture, it is difficult to clean their minds. They have already established bad language and conflict-resolution habits.
When true Christians join our faculty, we promote them and select them as department chairs. And this is true regardless of race!
Diversity
When we say “diversity” we mean “diversity of skin colors among people raised in conservative evangelical mid-western US homes with men in charge”. We are willing to work very hard to maintain this kind of diversity. And the payoff is great: everybody gets along pretty easily.
You see, we just don’t get along very well with outsiders. Outsiders have different styles of communicating and conflict-resolution. They don’t deal with communication and conflict in the true Christian way that we people in suburban Minnesota do. They have different mannerisms. And since they are therefore not really true Christians, we know to weed them out so that we can have true reconciliation here.
For example, recently our University has had to lay off a member of the staff from the IT department. The heads of IT knew that they had an employee who was Chinese. I mean, really Chinese. She was born and raised in China. Yes, she was also a woman. Because of this, she didn’t really fit in with the true Christian culture here. The true Christians here found it difficult to pronounce her name, difficult to understand her accent, difficult to deal with her Chinese (unchristian) style of communication and conflict resolution. Naturally, she doesn’t satisfy our definition of “diversity” so she had to go.
Her position was faculty-IT consultant. We needed an easy way to legally lay her off. If she had been the most recently hired faculty-IT consultant, it would have been easy. But she wasn’t. If she had not been the only faculty-IT consultant with a PhD in the use of technology in higher education, it might have been easier. But she was the most qualified person on her team. It wasn’t easy, but we did it. We came up with a complex process for selecting the person to be laid off. This process was vetted at the highest levels of the University and with the University lawyers. It was hard work, but we did it.
We love diversity and reconciliation. But people like her stand in the way of a harmonious, reconciled community.
Celebrating the Reconciled Bubble at Faculty Retreat
Some make the mistake of thinking that reconciliation and diversity are just about skin color. Not so! It is really about culture. As we have demonstrated, if a person of race is adopted as an infant, they can easily become a true Christian.
The tricky part of diversity and reconciliation is figuring out which of the normal-looking people fit into the reconciled bubble that is our University. Here is why this is the difficult part. These stinkers look like true Christians! It can take a while to notice that they have cultural habits indicative of being raised in the northeastern US, or the southern US, or the western US. They can pass as true Christians long enough to get through our thorough hiring process or our careful admission process. How can we have a reconciled bubble with people like this around?
Here is one method we used recently that went a long way toward identifying these people: the theme of one or our recent faculty retreats was “inbreeding” or something (I forget the exact phrase we used.) We had many more speakers than usual that year and they were all internal. When I say “internal” I mean really internal. For example, many of our faculty got their bachelor’s degrees here at our University and they were all given an opportunity to speak. People whose families had been connected to our University for a hundred years were featured also.
This retreat was very, very helpful. Because there were so many speakers featured, it was easy to tell which few people stayed seated the whole time. Now we can keep those people in mind (I should say “out of mind”) when it comes time to select department heads or give promotions or tenure. In order to be a truly Christian reconciled bubble, we need to be wary of those who stayed seated.
I highly recommend other Christian universities try this trick at your next faculty retreat. Remember, you don’t have to ask the outsiders to stand up and say what heathen part of the country they come from because you can tell the outsiders just by who stays seated the whole time. Fortunately, in our case, it wasn’t many.
The Importance of Protecting Reconciliation
Let me explain why this is so important. It’s all about satisfying our students. Truly Christian college-age people have trouble with faculty who are not truly Christian. If a professor has a communication style that is not mid-western, it is offensive to our faith. So when these outsiders are not around, the true Christians will complain about the outsider. It’s a good way for mature Christian students to bond and enhance their friendships.
Now imagine that a department head gets wind of students complaining about not being able to interpret the facial expressions of their professor. If that department head is an outsider to true Christianity, the department head might encourage the students to get over it and learn to work things out. Seriously, that is what happens at some secular universities!
But not here! This is why it is important to ensure that only the true Christians are promoted. In this truly reconciled bubble, the department head has the maturity to recognize the antichristian immaturity of the person who has been corrupted by living outside a reconciled bubble for longer than she (or he) could hold her breath. The truly Christian department head joins the students in their complaining and enhances his (or her!) bond with the students. Then the department head (who had not been corrupted by the poisonous air outside the reconciled bubble) can use every means at his disposal to make life for the outsider uncomfortable. This tends to convince the outsiders to leave so that the rest of us can thrive in our diverse, reconciled bubble.
Our University is proving that reconciliation is very hard work. But when you see how easily we all get along, you know it is worth it.
Unlike white male judges who are true Christians and thus have no culture, background, or distorted lens through which they see the world, Sonia Sotomayor comes from a culturally contextualized version of Christianity. Instead of judging in a way that would provide for the legitimate needs of rich white men, she would judge in a way that might give other people things that seem right to them.
Whatever happened to justice? What happened to equal protection under the law?
This country was built by Negroes, china-men, and hispanics working for white men. White men are the foundation of this country! We were the ones who subdued the wild natives! After all that hard work is done, suddenly these racist immigrants come along and take over this beautiful thing we have created with our own hands at their ancestors’ throats!
Now they say, “Oh, our rights are just as important as yours!” That is not what our founding fathers had in mind.
At the moment, I’m too upset and scared for my country to say more about this.
How it started
Ched Meyers spoke at our college Chapel on March 30. The title of his talk was “Sabbath Economics.”
I had never heard of this guy before but apparently he’s written some books about the economic implications of the teachings of Jesus and the Old Testament. I didn’t go to Chapel that day because I am taking a Lenten fast from making a show of how spiritually mature I am. Perhaps on Easter day, when I break my fast, I’ll tell you all about it.
His talk started a discussion on the college faculty email list and I wanted to share some highlights.
The online discussion was started when one of the good guys on campus shared that one of the visitors from France who went to chapel summarized Meyers’ talk with one word: “marxisme”. Naturally, this got our attention!
Another faculty member, my biological hero, responded. He first gave another summary of the parable:
The interpretation of the “parable of the talents” which claimed that it was not about our stewardship and use of God’s gifts to us, but rather a statement on the injustice of a monetary system that unfairly treats the poor. That Jesus really intended the hero of the parable to be the servant who buried his one talent in the ground in defiance of the oppressive monetary system of the rich against the poor. Our speaker claimed the reaction of the master who punished the servant who buried his talent was evil, and reflects the injustice of our world. This interpretation prompted the suggestion from the pulpit that the millions of dollars spent on a new addition to the University’s buildings might have been better spent to help the poor.
Then he told of his discussion of chapel with some prospective students’ parents:
The parents that I talked to were not comfortable with this sermon. One father asked me if we often had speakers “from the outside” talk in chapel. This seemed to be a concern to him.
Another online response from out of the blue:
…although if one, on the one hand, reads Marx and, on the other hand, reads what Jesus says about economics in the gospels and observes how he and his early followers lived, it becomes easier to forgive someone who gets the two a little confused on some points that were apparently very important to both Jesus and Marx.
I guess you have to expect the liberals to grasp at straws like this, but this is sad.
The online discussion went on for some time along those lines. I will only share with you one more post and then drill down to the truth of the matter straight from the mouth of Jesus himself.
My English hero: the thoughtful conservative
The last post I want to comment on came from my English hero. He started with this [I added some italics and underlining for emphasis]:
Ched Meyers’ Chapel talk of March 30, “Sabbath Economics,” provided an excellent example of the “cultural captivity of the church” of the left-wing variety. Nothing in his bizarre reading of the Parable of the Talents (he identified the “wicked and lazy servant” as the hero) would cause the slightest discomfort to the soft socialism that characterizes the unreflective elements of progressive and academic culture.
Allow me to give another example of a bizarre reading of one of Jesus’ parables. In Luke 16.1-9, Jesus tells a story about what he calls a “dishonest steward” who, knowing he is in trouble with his boss, forgives the debts of some of his boss’ debtors so that he will have friends he can turn to when he gets fired. It’s hard to believe that anyone would be so unreflective as to portray the “dishonest steward” as the example we should follow but some do. I’ve heard one bizarre reading of this which concludes:
Use your filthy money to make friends with the poor and they might accept you into the kingdom of God once your money fails you.
If Ched Meyers wants to keep company with soft socialists who can stomach such nonsense, fine. I’m just glad that people in that crowd rarely come to our University.
My English hero continues:
The talk equated actions based on self-interest with greed and then identified greed as the mainspring of capitalism. But is the greed of some businessmen worse than the envy of some socialists? I have no doubt that the people who get up early to deliver my newspaper, bake my bagels, and prepare for my surgery are motivated by self-interest rather than love for me. But if I had to choose, I’d prefer the self-interested doctor (who, even if greedy, must provide a valuable service in return for his wage) over the envious activist (who provides nothing in return for indulging his passions).
Amen! It is a lie to pretend that those self-indulgent, envious activists are motivated by love, compassion, or injustice. Nonsense. Envy and self-indulgence is their true motivation.
I heard about one such envious activist (living just before Jesus’ death) who convinced thousands of people to sell everything they owned and redistribute their wealth among the poor. This guy also healed a lot of sick people who couldn’t afford the self-interested doctors of the day.
And what service did this envious, self-indulgent activist provide for those of us who know what is important in life? Nothing… until after he died… then he built some mansions for us to live in after we die… which is pretty cool… but he did that out of greed and self-interest and not self-indulgence.
My English hero went on to point out some of the mistaken assumptions that he assumed Ched Meyers was making about how economics worked. Then he made the following points:
I know biblical scholarship has moved beyond the older view that the parables have one point and that efforts to find multiple meanings in them are misguided. But that view is far preferable to Meyer’s discovery of an entire economic system in one parable – or more precisely, his attempt to reconcile the Parable of the Talents with his preconceived economic ideology.
The nerve of Meyers to completely ignore the rest of the Bible. I will show below that all of Jesus’ other teachings are clearly capitalist and incompatible with any other economic system. Everyone knows that the Bible speaks with one voice and that voice says “capitalism”. Obviously, Meyers could not have found anything in the Bible restricting the amount of interest one can charge nor anything about forgiving debts nor any socialist laws requiring landowners to allow poor people to steal from their fields nor anything remotely resembling anything but free-market capitalism. Least of all from the mouth of Jesus.
Certainly none in the traditional evangelical community focus on only parts of the Bible and interpret those parts without taking into account the rest of it. The reason my Sunday School teachers only read a couple of Jesus’ parables to us is because those are the ones whose true interpretations best represent Jesus’ main message. The “parable of the talents” was one of the ones that my Sunday School teachers would read regularly and draw the obvious conclusion that God wants us to use all our talents to make as much money as possible and if we didn’t God would torture us. Although I did feel I was getting mixed messages when they also said not to become a porn star.
My English hero continued:
Many of us have urged [the University] to consider occasionally inviting a conservative to speak on issues of social justice—perhaps as often as once a year. Some of the world’s best thinkers on international poverty, such as Hernando de Soto, have been explaining how the lack of secure property rights prevents the poor from advancing in the developing world. In this country, Maggie Gallagher and others have shown that American poverty is strongly associated with the failure to establish and maintain stable marriages.
Hernando de Soto works so hard to bring the poor into the capitalist system. We must help some of them help us exploit the rest of them. And don’t forget Maggie Gallagher’s important and needed work in the area of changing the subject!
I hope someday we will expand our conversations on social justice to include voices such as these. Apart from the quadrennial presidential debate and our response to Soulforce, many of us cannot recall an invitation to a conservative on these issues in nearly two decades. But if we begin including their voices, please let us not invite those who represent a similar cultural captivity on the other side. We need to hear more thoughtful voices at [our University].
Amen! Keep up the good thoughtful work, my English hero! Up until his post, everything said on the subject in the online forum had been merely citing sources, considering both points of view, asking questions, constructive, irenic criticism. None of that got us anywhere. We need thoughtful voices like my English hero who have to guts to honestly represent his opponent as the straw man that he is and then call him and anyone who agrees with him shameful names. (For a moment, when I read my hero’s post, I thought, “Don’t straw men have feelings, too?” But they don’t.) Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The truth from the mouth of Jesus himself
Since so many people seem to believe that Jesus’ parables are open to interpretations other that the one handed down by the tradition of Sunday School, I propose that we look at Jesus’ non-parable teachings because they are so much easier to understand.
From Matthew 6:
Do not accumulate wealth on earth where moth and rust consume and thieves break in and steal… for where your wealth is, there your heart will be also.
Obviously, Jesus is teaching us to protect our wealth from moths, rust, and thieves. He is saying that we should put our whole hearts into protecting our stuff. Amazingly, some can even misinterpret Jesus’ plain teachings as something other than capitalist.
From Luke 6:
Woe to you who are rich because this is all the comfort you are going to get.
I hear that the word “Woe” is not a curse or a prediction of bad things to happen but is instead an expression of sympathy. Jesus is acknowledging that riches bring comfort and he is sorry for us who don’t get enough of it.
If someone steals from you, don’t ask for it back.
Give to everyone who asks from you.
Lend expecting nothing in return.
If you want to be children of your Father in Heaven, be generous to the selfish and ungrateful.
From Luke 14:
When you have a party, don’t invite your rich friends. Invite the poor, the outcast, the disabled.
Clearly, Jesus was talking to someone else when he said this. I hope they listened and learned the lesson he was trying to teach them. Whatever that was has been, unfortunately, lost to the ages.
From Luke 18:
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
We have all heard the story that a pastor made up about a gate in Jerusalem called “The eye of the needle” that was so low that camels had to kneel down to pass through. Jesus is saying that we rich should be humble and realize that there are still plenty of riches out there in the world that we have not yet exploited and there will always be people (like Jesus) who are richer than we are.
From Luke 16:
It is impossible to love both God and capital. Because if you love one, you will of necessity show contempt for the other.
The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all of this and they scoffed at him.
Here Luke is teaching us that the idea that loving God means showing contempt for capital and vice versa is something to be scoffed at.
Conclusion
Now, all of you envious activists, take heed.
- Stop your bizarre interpretations in which the wicked people who don’t follow the rules of capitalism are the heroes. Nobody is falling for your unreflective nonsense.
- Stop your envious work trying to convince people to sell their possessions and redistribute their wealth. We’ve killed people for that kind of behavior and we’ll do it again!
- To those of you who are helping the poor, sick, and undignified who cannot afford self-interested doctors: you are providing no service of any value. Stop indulging yourselves!
- We want to hear more thoughtful voices at our University!
