Biblical Inerrancy
A topic that comes up in conversation for me with some frequency is that of Biblical inerrancy. It is something that sneaks itself into various conversations on a wide range of issues and seems to be surrounded by all kinds of assumptions that I feel are simply not true. To that end, I have decided to write out my thoughts on the topic of Biblical inerrancy.
Before I begin, I feel that a disclaimer is in order. It must be said at the very beginning that I do not identify myself as one who subscribes to Biblical inerrancy (precisely for the reasons outlined below), but I would like to encourage, as much as I can, for anyone who reads this to do so knowing that this is in no way intended to be an anti-Bible essay. I believe the Bible to be remarkably important, it is truly the sole source and norm for our faith and practice and that it is an irreplaceable witness to what God has done that is vitally important for us to take very seriously and to submit ourselves to the radical critiques that it makes on our lives. Reading the Bible has had an absolutely transforming effect on my life. I continue to read and study the Bible and I continue to use it as the basis of my preaching as a pastor. It should also be noted at the beginning that, though I do not subscribe to Biblical inerrancy, neither do I identify myself as a theological Liberal. To me the Liberal tradition is just as deeply problematic. In fact, a large portion of my critique, though at a tacit level, is that Biblical inerrancy has Liberal roots, inasmuch as it is, in its modern form, just another way of dealing with the challenge of Liberalism and so bears its stamp.
A distinction must be made here between Biblical inerrancy and Biblical infallibility. From one point of view, the words inerrant and infallible are synonyms; from another, infallible is actually a stronger term because while inerrancy implies that there are no errors, infallible implies that there can be no errors. However, in spite of how the words might be used elsewhere in discourse, within the context of this issue, they have become technical terms. Specifically, inerrancy is a stronger term than infallibility. Biblical infallibility states that, in matters of faith and life that is, what we believe and how we live, the Bible is absolutely trustworthy and must be taken seriously. Biblical inerrancy asserts that every part of the Bible (down to the very words) is true in every sense of the word. The reason for this is because, if it were not true in any sense of the word, the whole authority of the Bible would collapse.
It should be noted that the mainstream of inerrancy, when pushed (or even just when clarifying their position), will qualify their position by saying that the Biblical texts are inerrant "in the autographs," which means the texts were inerrant when they were originally written. Now, why would someone feel it necessary to make that clarification? Why not just say the Bible is inerrant, especially since that is how it plays itself out in day-to-day Christian life? The reason is because even those who hold to inerrancy are not convinced that the copies we have today are really inerrant. The impulse for affirming that the autographs were inerrant is understandable because such a view needs to affirm that the text, at least as given by God, is perfect in every sense of the word, but it is my contention that such a qualification actually destroys the whole inerrancist position.
The point is made that the Bible must be affirmed to be true in every sense of the word because if any part is not true in any sense of the word, the authority of the Bible falls to the ground. The reason why this is the case is because, once you have made the argument that one part of the Bible may not be true, we are left with the question, "Why do we say that about this part and not about some other part?" Before long, a questioning of one part of the Bible becomes a questioning of the entire Bible. If we judge the text to be errant based on some extra-biblical criterion, why can't we apply that to the whole of the Bible? And yet, the admission that the Biblical texts are only inerrant in the original autographs brings the problem back in for this simple fact. We do not have access to the original autographs. It is true that the Bible is just as reliable, both from a literary and a historical point of view, as any other ancient text, but what we have is not identical to the original autographs. However, though we have a high degree of certainty that our copies are not the originals, we cannot be certain precisely which parts were in deviation from those autographs. After all, if we could, we could simply restore our copies to the original. However, if our copies are not identical with the autographs, and we can not point to precisely where those discrepancies are to be found, what can stop us from saying that any particular point is in deviation from the originals? Yes, there is an absolutely reliable source of doctrine, but if we have no access to it, we are back to square one.
Another interesting weakness to the inerrancist position is put forward by Donald G. Bloesch, a leading evangelical theologian who passed away just recently. In his Essentials of Evangelical Theology, he says this. "The rise of pseudo-Christian cults that champion biblical inerrancy has been a source of embarrassment to those who contend that this doctrine is the foundation stone and practical guarantee of orthodoxy." He names groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons in the endnote as concrete examples of this tendency. Clearly, Bloesch notes, inerrancy as such does not guarantee orthodoxy. It should be noted that, though the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons also have other authoritative texts outside the Old and New Testaments (or rely on a particular version of them), other groups such as Unitarian (Oneness) Pentecostals fall into the same boat.
There is one more methodological objection to Biblical inerrancy before I go into a concrete analysis of the shortcomings of the position and how I deal with the problems posed by the Biblical text. It is my greatest concern that, in point of fact, Biblical inerrancy ends up being an idolatrous position. My biggest concern is a theological one, not that it takes the Bible very seriously, allowing it supremacy over our culture and our own opinions, but because it also gives it supremacy over Christ himself and transforms him into nothing more than just one more of the doctrines that the Bible teaches and one we should affirm on the basis of that Biblical authority, rather than emphasizing that the Bible is the written witness to the living Word of God that actually encounters us.
An example is appropriate here. A local physician and leader in a nearby local church wrote an essay in defense of Biblical inerrancy which was made part of his church's official resources for its members. It is a fairly long treatment of the issue, but in my judgment only the first few paragraphs actually dealt with the issue of inerrancy and about the alleged difficulties that arise, merely from denying it. The overwhelming majority of the work was concerned with demonstrating the historical reliability of the Bible, especially as compared to other ancient writings. In this, I agree in every regard. There is a reason why, when archaeologists have wanted to locate an ancient city in the Ancient Near East, they go to the Bible first to try to find out where it may be located. There have been doubts about the existence of groups of people spoken of in the Bible that have been consistently cast aside by subsequent research. If we ignore the problem of induction (which plagues all science, not just historical science), there is much to compel us to conclude that any other parts of the Bible that are open to doubt will be vindicated eventually.
What is interesting is that, though this is a fairly common way to articulate and defend Biblical inerrancy, it actually undermines it and proves my point. The question is whether the position of Biblical inerrancy relies on justification from historical and archaeological science to stand. If it does not, it makes one wonder why so much effort is taken to demonstrate the Bible's historicity. If the Bible's authority is supreme, even over historical and archaeological science, why use the results of such science used as reasons one should believe in the inerrancy of the Bible? If the legitimacy of inerrancy does indeed depend on the findings of historical and archaeological science, it undermines the position altogether. After all, it implies that the Bible is, in point of fact, not of ultimate authority but rather that historical and archaeological science has the final word. It is my contention that, in this particular treatment of the issue, the amount of time and energy spent on defending the historical reliability of the Bible shows that inerrancy cannot stand on its own but must be bolstered by an outside authority.
I would like to move now to a concrete examination of how Biblical inerrancy plays itself out, but before I do so, I must make one more observation. The real problem that we are trying to overcome with a doctrine of biblical inerrancy is the problem of interpretation as opposed to looking at what the text actually says. Once we cross the gap from looking at what the words on the page say to what we say they must mean (that is, placing a particular interpretation on the words that cannot be reduced to the words themselves), we have given up inerrancy. Allow me to demonstrate.
1 Kings 7:23 is a relatively unexciting text. It lies merely in the account of the building of Solomon's Temple, specifically within the context of Hiram the bronzeworker making various items for it. It reads this way (NASB), "Now he made the sea of cast metal ten cubits from brim to brim, circular in form, and its height was five cubits, and thirty cubits in circumference." The problem that arises here, that many have noticed, is that the text says that the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of this circular object is 3:1, which is not true (that is to say, it is not true in the absolutely most strict sense of "true" which is what we are talking about when we are dealing with Biblical inerrancy), as the ratio is π:1. This is a more striking issue than even the evolution controversy, since we are not concerned here with a question of evidence, but the simple fact that such a ratio is not 3:1.
Now, many people have come up with explanations for this, most commonly by running to 2 Chronicles 4:2 where the same details are given and by pointing out that 2 Chronicles 4:5 names the thickness of the sea as a hand's breadth. The argument goes that, if we take into account the thickness of the brim and compare the inner diameter with the outer circumference, we get a result that is remarkably close to the value for Pi (though again, not exact, though we will not press this point). My concern is that this, first of all, does not deal with the text as it appears in 1 Kings but interprets it in light of another text altogether. At the very least, this technique demonstrates that all parts of the Bible are not evenly weighted, that 2 Chronicles 4:2, 5 is a more important text than 1 Kings 7:23 and the latter should be interpreted in light of the former and not the other way around. I think that this raises the question "Who decides which texts are more accurate and how can we determine which texts are clear and which are unclear?" but that is not the direction I plan to go with this.
The fact of the matter is that, in both texts, the diameter and circumference are mentioned in the same breath, without even so much as a hint that we are not dealing with two different circles. It certainly appears, based only on the text, that regardless of whether we are talking about the inner or the outer circumference, we are dealing with the same circle. To argue that we can use the diameter of one circle and the circumference of another requires that we make an argument that goes above and beyond the words on the page and stems from a preconceived notion of precisely how we must get the words on the page to work out. That is, the text does not stand on its own, but must be interpreted to bring it into line with mathematical observations, so it must be carefully interpreted to make it work out.
So, we are left with a few options if we hope to keep this text while still holding to the innerancist position. The first is to say that, whatever mathematicians have found, the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of circles in general is actually 3:1. This falls to the ground unless we wish to subscribe to a wholesale rejection of mathematics, which would be, in my judgment, a foolish thing to do. A more moderate position is to say that, whatever might be the case with other circles, this circle has a ratio of 3:1. This, however, does not solve the problem, because now we have an example where the events and items spoken of in the Bible have no real connection to anything else in our world, which undermines its authority to speak to us.
A third option (which encompasses the standard solution just mentioned above) is to say something along these lines. "Look, if we look at the history of mathematics, we find that human beings have always known that the ratio between the circumference and the diameter of a circle is a little more than 3:1, but they only began to get any kind of conceptual clarity around the issue until about 400AD. The text in question is describing events that took place around 1000BC, 1400 years earlier. Maybe, just maybe, God wasn't concerned with getting such minute issues exactly right, as they have no bearing on any aspect of life, and maybe when the text says 'circle' it means 'something pretty darn close to a circle.' In that case, what good would it have been for God to say 'Make it 10 cubits across and 31.4159265359... cubits around?' None at all. It would only have bewildered the people. What really mattered? Getting the thing built. What harm is there in saying that God simply said, 'Make it ten across and thirty around; it's close enough for jazz?'" This is a position that I wholeheartedly embrace, but there is a serious problem for Biblical inerrancy that only becomes clear when we play out its implications.
The fact of the matter is that I know of no Christian, inerrancist or otherwise, who would say that any aspect of Christian faith stands or falls depending on our interpretation of 1 Kings 7:23. But if we take this third option, we have made a tremendous step. We have said that the text as a text cannot stand on its own; we must interpret it based on what we know to be the case independently of the text itself (whether simply because of mathematical considerations or by saying it must be interpreted in light of another text and is inadequate on its own). We have made a significant leap away from the text as such into the world of interpretation. We have said, "The text might say that the ratio is three to one, but what the text means is that it is close enough or that there is some other explanation." Let us now move on and see what can become of this position.
What would happen if we were to turn to Genesis 1? What if we were to say, "The text might say that creation took place in six days (defined as the sun coming up and going down, implying a day of 24 hours), but what the text means is that creation took place in an orderly way that follows this general pattern but that the word 'day' must be interpreted as 'period of time.'" Not every Christian would object to this, but there are many that would. And yet, at the end of the day, the crucial distinction between what we did with 1 Kings 7:23 and what we have done here are not fundamentally different. We have taken a text and said that it cannot stand on its own but must be interpreted in light of something we know elsewhere. Nothing but a sheer force of will can make someone say, "We can take that step with 1 Kings 7:23 but we cannot take it with Genesis 1."
To take it a step further, let us look at the accounts of Christ's Resurrection from the dead. What if we were to say (as many have done), "The text might say that Jesus was bodily raised from the dead in glory, but what the text means is that, on Easter morning, the disciples had such a profound encounter with the spirit of Christ (not without parallel in the history of Hinduism) that it was as if he had been raised from the dead." This is where many (if not all) Christians, myself included, should stand up and say, "That is going too far." If there is one thing that is necessary to keep the New Testament documents from falling into unintelligibility, it is the physical, literal resurrection from the dead. The resurrection is not just another doctrine to believe, it forms the epistemological cornerstone of all our faith. If Christ was not really raised from the dead, as Paul says "We are of all people most to be pitied."
And yet, if we have made the leap into interpretation based on external insights back in 1 Kings 7:23 (or anywhere else, I might add), on what grounds can we stand and say that a purely metaphorical interpretation of the resurrection is unacceptable? I think that, ultimately, this gets at the heart of the whole impetus of the Biblical inerrancist position. Nobody thinks that the gospel stands or falls with the diameter of the sea in Solomon's Temple, but it certainly does with the resurrection of Christ. How can we be flexible (or even self-consciously non-literal) with the former and not with the latter? It is precisely because it is hard to find a way to do this within the interpretational worldview fostered by Western culture that we find ourselves pushed into an affirmation of inerrancy. We desperately want to defend the resurrection and the incarnation and the only way we can see to do this is to affirm inerrancy.
I think that the whole view of Biblical inerrancy is an inverting of how things ought to be and a simple observation from our most basic Christian experience should help to make it clear. Very few, if any, of us, became Christians because we had a high doctrine of the Bible first and then were convinced of the gospel because it was in the Bible. Most of us encountered the living Lord first and only after that were driven to the text. We do not believe in Jesus because the Bible teaches about him (as if the Bible was the supreme authority and Jesus was merely one of the many doctrines taught in it), but rather we read the Bible because we have been confronted by God in Christ and through the Holy Spirit and the Bible is the only place to turn for reliable information about Christ.
So, as I said at the beginning of this essay, I do not subscribe to Biblical inerrancy. For what it is worth, most inerrancists whom I have taken through this whole line of thought have said that they don't take as rigid a position as I portray. My response is that, in point of fact, whatever term they may use, they are not inerrancists in the classical sense, but are likely infalliblists, which is based on weaker claims (weaker in the sense that they do not claim as much, not that they are weak arguments). One might ask me, "If you reject Biblical inerrancy, do you affirm that the Bible is inspired?" My answer is that yes, I do indeed believe the Bible is inspired. My understanding, however, is that biblical inspiration is much more complex and dynamic that most people think.
As is clear by my argument so far, I do not think that the Bible is primarily inspired in its writing, that is, I do not think that God is the only author of the Bible in the sense that the words are merely a transcript of God's words to the human who actually put pen to paper. Some strands of inerrancy argue that the Bible is even a transcript of the very thoughts of God (a view that is not the mainstream and has disastrous consequences for our doctrine of God). I used to think that this view was a fairly recent one, that it only arose in protest of theological Liberalism. I have been convinced since then by Karl Barth that this has been present in at least a few thinkers throughout the whole history of the church (Barth's argument and historical survey is long, but culminates in his Church Dogmatics I.2, pg. 529-30).
I commented at the beginning that, though I am not an inerrancist, I am also not even close to what many would call a theological Liberal. I believe in a literal incarnation, virgin birth, resurrection, and miracles. In light of this, it should come as no surprise that I do not believe that the Bible is primarily inspired in its reading. That is, though I believe that God actually does speak anew to us as we read the Bible, I do not think that we can reduce all the inspiration of the Bible to the activity of the Spirit as we read the text. After all, if it were nothing more than the Spirit moving and the text is not involved, why should we expect God to speak through the Bible and not other works of literature (such as Huckleberry Finn, as a professor of mine suggested)? I think that, though we cannot reduce the inspiration of the Bible to the text on the page, it must involve it or else we will end up with a view that is even less satisfying than inerrancy.
My understanding of inspiration flows more or less directly from my doctrine of Christ. It is my contention that Christ is, in the final analysis, the real foundation of the Christian faith, that it is not on the inerrancy of the Bible but on the living Person of Christ with which the gospel stands or falls. This manifests itself in dialogue with some Christians as a need to place Sola Christus above Sola Scriptura or even Sola Fidei. It manifests itself in dialogue with others by modifying the statement, "God will never reveal anything to you through his Spirit that is contrary to what is written in the Bible," with "God will never reveal anything to you through his Spirit that is contrary to what he has revealed of himself through Christ." It is given tremendously clear expression in the words of T. F. Torrance. "Now if we think of Jesus Christ in this way as the Truth in his own Person, our statements about him, biblical or theological statements, cannot be true in the same sense as Jesus Christ is true, for they do not have their truth in themselves but in their reference to him away from themselves, and they are true insofar as that reference is truthful and appropriate" (Reality and Evangelical Theology, 124).
My understanding of the role of the Bible is also deeply connected to the Christian doctrine of the ascension of Christ. In Christ, God himself came among us in a particular place and at a particular time. During that time, he taught, he lived and he formed a community of redeemed sinners to take the good news out to the whole world. And then, after he was raised from the dead and met with his disciples for forty days, he ascended to heaven. There is not only a particular location in space-time where God came to meet with us, there is also a particular location in space-time where God departed from being physically present. By doing so, God has marked off the years of Christ's earthly life and ministry to be the covenanted place where he can be met; he has subordinated all theological activity, all pretended claims to inspiration to those concrete years and that concrete revelation of himself in our midst.
It is because of this, because of these Christological considerations, that we cannot do away with the radically important place of the Bible in our Christian lives. To try to avoid the Bible as the source and norm of our Christian knowledge is to try to avoid the centrality of Christ and to look elsewhere to find God, that is, to search for God where God cannot be found. Not only this (as one might claim that the argument so far only sanctions the use of the gospels), but the fact that God did not become incarnate in a cultural vacuum but did so in Israel as a Jew, "born of a woman, born under the law," we must take the Old Testament seriously for without it, we cannot rightly understand the revelation of God in Christ. Additionally, because Christ did not simply come and go, but specifically commissioned the apostles to go and proclaim, their post-resurrection activities and pastoral correspondence is of incredible importance and cannot be jettisoned without tremendous disaster (not to mention the arrogance of assuming that we can understand Christ from our foreign culture and language better than those who lived with him for years). Unless one can find another collection of texts that so comprehensively bears witness, not just to Christ, but to the whole historical context, both before and the generation after Christ, we are not free to dispose of Biblical revelation.
I do not expect that everyone will agree with these arguments, and some may even become angry with me as I have come from a decidedly Evangelical background and am self-consciously departing from orthodoxy as defined by that community. I only stress once again that my doing so is not rooted in any way, shape or form in a rejection of the Bible, but in absolutely radical devotion to Christ as the Lord and center, not only of my life, but of all.
Showing posts with label Bible. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bible. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Monday, November 21, 2011
Some Thoughts about the Nature of Illustration in Sermons etc.
Some thoughts about the nature of illustration in sermons etc.
I have just begun my fifth year as a pastor. I must admit that my approach to preaching has changed over the years. Those who attend the United Methodist Church in Hudson might be able to point out one or two things that have changed since I have been there, such as cultivating a somewhat milder tone, but there are others as well. For example, before having to preach week after week, I thought of myself as an outline preacher. I always thought it was neat when someone could just stand up with a few scribbles on a piece of paper and then deliver a passionate and engaging message.
The transition from outline to manuscript, in hindsight, was inevitable. When I preached several times at my home church in Marshalltown as an intern, I only ever used outlines, but they steadily got to be far more detailed and each point turned into a paragraph. Once I had to write a manuscript for my sermon that I had to give at licensing school. One of the things I appreciated was the ability to think out in more precise terms what I wanted to say. As I put it into practice, I found that the Holy Spirit worked just as much when I prepared throughout the week as it did when I preached from an outline. In fact, I found that, by thinking out exactly what I wanted to say and seeing how it sounded out loud, I was able to use more precise language, reducing confusion and other good things. I found that I was more able to preach with boldness and conviction when I wrote out a manuscript than I ever was when I preached from an outline.
Though manuscript preaching is quite common in the mainline (or, at least, within some parts of the mainline), it was quite uncommon in the circles I found myself in before becoming a pastor. In spite of the fact that I found a manuscript extremely helpful, there was still a nagging feeling that I had, at least in this way, abandoned my tradition. I had to wrestle with this for quite a while.
All of this is to set the stage for some thoughts on illustrations in sermons, because this is also an area where I find myself at sharp distinction from, not only my tradition before becoming a pastor, but even among my seminary peers and throughout the mainline. I have personally never been in favor of filling my sermons with illustrations. The initial, gut-level reason why I have tended to avoid them is because I am simply not that creative of a person. I have always had a hard time figuring out good illustrations, so I more or less let them go. From time to time, someone (usually from outside of the church I serve) would talk about how helpful they have been in their lives, and I would begin to wrestle with the issue over again.
I found myself having conversations with people who love good illustrations in sermons and been able to discern my issues at a deeper level. I began to realize that, when people would speak of really powerful illustrations they have heard used, they would not be able to recall the point from the Gospel that was the real purpose. One person in particular related to me a youth leader he knew who frequently brought small items that were related to the message that they could take home to remind them of it. There was one particular item that he kept in his room and had a lot of meaning for him. But when I asked him, “What was the point of the message that went along with that item?” The response was, “I don’t remember.”
Even in my own experience, I have found that this is the case. Relatively recently, I used an illustration that I thought was better than most. Not only did I make the point at the very beginning that the illustration was very limited, I also made sure to frequently point away from the illustration to the reality I was hoping to communicate. The talk was very well received. The young people who heard it loved it and really resonated with the illustration. However, it became clear that their grasp on the illustration was far stronger than their grasp on the actual point made by the Gospel. The talk was relatable, but I began to think that it could be argued that, since in practice, the illustration overshadowed the Gospel in the hearers, it was not truly a Gospel message, not truly the Christian faith proclaimed and received.
It is only recently that I found, in the course of my reading, a truly clear and deeply theological argument along these lines. Let us say that we have an aspect of revelation, “Thing A.” Because the ways and thoughts of God are not like the ways of human beings (Isaiah 55:8-9), we should not be surprised that it is not easy for us to understand. After all, it stands against the ways of the world and it stands against us inasmuch as we are sinners who are not fully conformed to the image of Christ. In order to understand the revelation of Thing A, we introduce an illustration, “Thing B.” The moment we try to illustrate Thing A with Thing B, our attention becomes divided between the two, if it is not wholly captivated by Thing B.
The problem is that, while Thing A is revelation, Thing B is not. At its best, the illustration would intend to make a leap from Thing B (the illustration, created out of our own imagination) to Thing A (revelation, given by God). But how is this possible? How can we make a jump directly from something that is not revelation to something that is? How can we say that the two Things are similar in any meaningful way for the church if one is revelation and one is invented by human beings? It might be argued, “But Thing B is so much easier to understand than Thing A, so we should start there.” I do not deny that Thing B is easier to understand. How could it be otherwise? Thing B stands far closer to us than Thing A because Thing A stands against us as the Word of God while Thing B was invented by the creativity of human beings.
When we illustrate the Gospel with images that we have thought up ourselves, what have we done? If people walk away from the sermon or other message remembering the Gospel and the revelation from God and not the illustration, then the illustration was unnecessary. If they walk away remembering the illustration and not the revelation, they have walked away with something, but it is something of fundamentally human creation and not the word of God. There is a word for substituting something of human creation for the revelation of God. Idolatry.
When I first heard illustration bluntly called idolatry, I thought to myself, “Well, I probably wouldn’t go THAT far.” However, the more I think of it, the more I think that it is true. What can we make of the desire to illustrate the Gospel to make it easier to understand by making it something of our own creation? What are we to do if illustration is as important as we make it by our constant use of it? What are we to say to those who think that illustration is so important for sermons and other Christian proclamation that it is not just helpful but necessary?
I cannot finally stand in judgment of others on this as it probably would not take someone long to find all kinds of other problems in my sermons that I post for all to see, especially if they were looking for them. However, I have become more convinced than ever before that illustration is not where I should be putting my energy. I refuse to feel that my preaching is inferior because it is devoid of illustration. I hope that people would walk away from my sermons remembering nothing that was said than remembering something of my own clever invention that replaces the Gospel in their minds.
I have just begun my fifth year as a pastor. I must admit that my approach to preaching has changed over the years. Those who attend the United Methodist Church in Hudson might be able to point out one or two things that have changed since I have been there, such as cultivating a somewhat milder tone, but there are others as well. For example, before having to preach week after week, I thought of myself as an outline preacher. I always thought it was neat when someone could just stand up with a few scribbles on a piece of paper and then deliver a passionate and engaging message.
The transition from outline to manuscript, in hindsight, was inevitable. When I preached several times at my home church in Marshalltown as an intern, I only ever used outlines, but they steadily got to be far more detailed and each point turned into a paragraph. Once I had to write a manuscript for my sermon that I had to give at licensing school. One of the things I appreciated was the ability to think out in more precise terms what I wanted to say. As I put it into practice, I found that the Holy Spirit worked just as much when I prepared throughout the week as it did when I preached from an outline. In fact, I found that, by thinking out exactly what I wanted to say and seeing how it sounded out loud, I was able to use more precise language, reducing confusion and other good things. I found that I was more able to preach with boldness and conviction when I wrote out a manuscript than I ever was when I preached from an outline.
Though manuscript preaching is quite common in the mainline (or, at least, within some parts of the mainline), it was quite uncommon in the circles I found myself in before becoming a pastor. In spite of the fact that I found a manuscript extremely helpful, there was still a nagging feeling that I had, at least in this way, abandoned my tradition. I had to wrestle with this for quite a while.
All of this is to set the stage for some thoughts on illustrations in sermons, because this is also an area where I find myself at sharp distinction from, not only my tradition before becoming a pastor, but even among my seminary peers and throughout the mainline. I have personally never been in favor of filling my sermons with illustrations. The initial, gut-level reason why I have tended to avoid them is because I am simply not that creative of a person. I have always had a hard time figuring out good illustrations, so I more or less let them go. From time to time, someone (usually from outside of the church I serve) would talk about how helpful they have been in their lives, and I would begin to wrestle with the issue over again.
I found myself having conversations with people who love good illustrations in sermons and been able to discern my issues at a deeper level. I began to realize that, when people would speak of really powerful illustrations they have heard used, they would not be able to recall the point from the Gospel that was the real purpose. One person in particular related to me a youth leader he knew who frequently brought small items that were related to the message that they could take home to remind them of it. There was one particular item that he kept in his room and had a lot of meaning for him. But when I asked him, “What was the point of the message that went along with that item?” The response was, “I don’t remember.”
Even in my own experience, I have found that this is the case. Relatively recently, I used an illustration that I thought was better than most. Not only did I make the point at the very beginning that the illustration was very limited, I also made sure to frequently point away from the illustration to the reality I was hoping to communicate. The talk was very well received. The young people who heard it loved it and really resonated with the illustration. However, it became clear that their grasp on the illustration was far stronger than their grasp on the actual point made by the Gospel. The talk was relatable, but I began to think that it could be argued that, since in practice, the illustration overshadowed the Gospel in the hearers, it was not truly a Gospel message, not truly the Christian faith proclaimed and received.
It is only recently that I found, in the course of my reading, a truly clear and deeply theological argument along these lines. Let us say that we have an aspect of revelation, “Thing A.” Because the ways and thoughts of God are not like the ways of human beings (Isaiah 55:8-9), we should not be surprised that it is not easy for us to understand. After all, it stands against the ways of the world and it stands against us inasmuch as we are sinners who are not fully conformed to the image of Christ. In order to understand the revelation of Thing A, we introduce an illustration, “Thing B.” The moment we try to illustrate Thing A with Thing B, our attention becomes divided between the two, if it is not wholly captivated by Thing B.
The problem is that, while Thing A is revelation, Thing B is not. At its best, the illustration would intend to make a leap from Thing B (the illustration, created out of our own imagination) to Thing A (revelation, given by God). But how is this possible? How can we make a jump directly from something that is not revelation to something that is? How can we say that the two Things are similar in any meaningful way for the church if one is revelation and one is invented by human beings? It might be argued, “But Thing B is so much easier to understand than Thing A, so we should start there.” I do not deny that Thing B is easier to understand. How could it be otherwise? Thing B stands far closer to us than Thing A because Thing A stands against us as the Word of God while Thing B was invented by the creativity of human beings.
When we illustrate the Gospel with images that we have thought up ourselves, what have we done? If people walk away from the sermon or other message remembering the Gospel and the revelation from God and not the illustration, then the illustration was unnecessary. If they walk away remembering the illustration and not the revelation, they have walked away with something, but it is something of fundamentally human creation and not the word of God. There is a word for substituting something of human creation for the revelation of God. Idolatry.
When I first heard illustration bluntly called idolatry, I thought to myself, “Well, I probably wouldn’t go THAT far.” However, the more I think of it, the more I think that it is true. What can we make of the desire to illustrate the Gospel to make it easier to understand by making it something of our own creation? What are we to do if illustration is as important as we make it by our constant use of it? What are we to say to those who think that illustration is so important for sermons and other Christian proclamation that it is not just helpful but necessary?
I cannot finally stand in judgment of others on this as it probably would not take someone long to find all kinds of other problems in my sermons that I post for all to see, especially if they were looking for them. However, I have become more convinced than ever before that illustration is not where I should be putting my energy. I refuse to feel that my preaching is inferior because it is devoid of illustration. I hope that people would walk away from my sermons remembering nothing that was said than remembering something of my own clever invention that replaces the Gospel in their minds.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Read Your Bible
11/09/11 Read Your Bible GUMC Youth
One of the single most important things you can do as a Christian is read the Bible. There is no shortcut to learning about God, knowing how you should go about your life and about the promises that God has for you that somehow lets you bypass the Bible and just listen to what other people have read. If you wanted, you could say that the whole message for tonight is a giant commercial for reading the Bible, but I hope it isn't boring.
Before we talk about some of the reasons why you should read the Bible, I want to share about my own experience reading the Bible. You see, I can give you all kinds of good reasons to read the Bible, but none of those reasons can possibly be as convincing as a personal testimony to how it has changed my life. Always remember that Christian faith does not always get a lot of good press these days. There are plenty of groups out there that make a lot of people decide that they want nothing to do with Jesus. With so many reasons not to believe floating around, we need to remember that the Bible is only convincing to people if they have already made up their minds that they even care what is in it. If the Bible is nothing more than a book, it is hard to get people to read it. It is only when you become convinced, either by your own experience or because you have been convinced by the experience of others, that God uses the Bible to speak directly to us today, that you will read it and make it a habit. Your personal testimony, your own growth, your own faithfulness, will do far more to convince the unbelieving world of the truth of the gospel than any academic argument.
Before I can say anything else about my growth through studying the Bible, you need to be reminded that I did not grow up in the church; not at all. I did not go to church and Sunday School until I was a sophomore in high school and I only went to a youth group for a little bit before that, and when I went to those things, it was just as much because my friends were going than because I was actually learning anything. So if that is you tonight, I know exactly where you are coming from. I know what it is like to sit in a youth room listening to someone talk about the Bible and have absolutely no idea what he is talking about, not sure where anything was in the Bible. I used to call myself "The worst Bible navigator ever." It didn't matter how many times we looked at a book in the Bible, I never learned where it was. I didn't know the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament other than their names. I barely knew anything about Jesus. I went more because I didn't really have a whole lot of friends and it gave me something to do on a Wednesday night.
What this means is that many of you have a much better start than I had. Many of you have been raised in the church, you have heard the stories of the Bible from an early age and you have been put into a position where you can hear the word of God being spoken to you and heard by you. I don't know if any of you have maybe heard God speak to your heart, encouraging you to become a pastor or pursue some kind of vocational ministry, but you are afraid or feel like you couldn't do it because you don't know much about the Bible, think again. My first pastor asked me if I felt called to be a pastor. When I heard that, I laughed at him. I couldn't imagine that someone like me could be called to be a pastor. I didn't know anything about the faith at all! And yet, as you can all see, here I am. This is my sixth year as a pastor.
Alright, so here's my story. I started going to youth group because my older brother (who, by the way, is still not a Christian) was going and I wanted to go, too. He wasn't always excited that I was there, but I sure was. Eventually, someone I knew from that youth group invited me to come to an after school Bible study that met twice a week. All during this time, I wasn't going to church at all. One Sunday, I got a call telling me that a guy from the Bible study was getting baptized that morning and that there was a reception at someone's house. So, even though I wasn't there for the baptism, I went to the reception. When I was there, I heard that some people were going to a study with the pastor of this church and asked me if I wanted to come. When we got there, some of the people said, "Hey Travis, you should totally stay for youth group" (this was a different church than before) so I did. Then, one of the kids from the youth group who knew I played guitar said I should stay because they had a small band that practiced after youth group. So, I went from not going to church at all to going to church, Sunday School, a study group, youth group and a band practice every Sunday all in one day.
Eventually, I became a Christian. I would say that I really became a Christian when I went to Chrysalis and things started to sink in deeper than they ever had before. However, just a few months later, my family moved to Iowa. I got involved in a youth group that I am amazed my faith survived. Eventually, I got plugged into a group with a bunch of people I went to school with and I really started to grow more, but I wasn't really reading my Bible. During this time, I got involved in a small group, let by my youth pastor, where I learned how to pray and talk about my faith. What is kind of funny is that it seemed like everyone else in the group except for myself and my friend David were certain they were called to be pastors or other leaders full-time, and, as far as I know today, only David and I are in full-time ministry.
All of that is important so I can tell you about what happened when I was in college. I became deeply aware of the fact that I hadn't spent much time reading my Bible and I knew that I should do it. I kept trying to make myself do it, but it just never seemed to work. Over a few months, I found myself in two or three different groups of guys and, in each of them we realized that none of us were getting into our Bibles like we knew we should. In one group, we split up into groups of two and my partner and I decided that we were going to try to help each other stay on top of our Bible reading. We both thought that jumping into reading it a bit everyday would be too much to expect, so we thought about doing it just a few days and then getting back together to see how we did. I didn't do it. Neither did he. We never met again.
The next group I was in decided that we were going to read one chapter of the Bible every day, and we'd all read the same chapters together, then we'd get together at the end of the week and discuss what we'd read. Now, at the end of the first week, I had the seven chapters read, but I didn't read everyday. I had to do a lot of catch up. When we got back together the next week, there was this guy, Nick, there. I had met Nick before and I had realized that he was really the first person I ever met who really knew his Bible. I suppose that my pastors knew their Bible pretty well, but Nick the first person I had ever met in my life who took reading his Bible extremely seriously and applied it to every aspect of his life. I knew that, if you want good suggestions on how to do something, you ask someone who has actually succeeded in doing it. I knew that I needed to ask Nick how he read the Bible and see if that would help.
What Nick told me was surprisingly simple. He said that, when he got started reading the Bible, he followed a simple rule: "No Bible, no breakfast." If he didn't read his Bible, he simply didn't eat. Now there are people in the world who just don't eat breakfast, so it might seem that this idea wouldn't work for them, but then it would just become "No Bible, no lunch," which doesn't have a neat alliteration, but would still be effective. Anyway, I am someone who has always eaten breakfast, so I thought this might help me and I decided to give it a try.
The next morning, I got up, and before heading down to the dining center for breakfast or eating something in my room, I remembered: No Bible, no breakfast. I went and sat in my chair and read the next chapter of John, the book that group was reading. It seemed so easy to do. I got up the next morning and did the same thing again. After months of repeated failure, after trying time after time to find some way to get the job done, something as simple as "No Bible, no breakfast," finally worked for me. Not only did I start reading the Bible, a chapter a day, but I quickly began to really love the Bible and I started to read more than one chapter a day. I found out the next book we were planning on working through and I read that. I started to get so far ahead of the group that I had to figure out what I was going to read on my own.
I went through all that about how hard it was for me to start reading my Bible so the significance of the transformation can be as impressive to you as it was to me. I used to see those "read through the Bible in a year" plans and was amazed. How could someone read the whole Bible in just a year? It seemed like such a huge book. What I realized was that, because I got so excited about reading the Bible, I wanted so badly to know what was in it, that I read the whole thing, without really even trying to do it, in five months. People have asked me when I first knew that I was going to be a pastor. I don't know exactly when it was, but when I started reading the Bible, I knew for sure I was going to be a math teacher. When I was done, I knew that I was going to be a pastor. Now, that is not to say that, if you read the Bible, you will become a pastor. I can point out all kinds of people who have read the Bible, even very quickly, who have not been called to be pastors, but that is how it was for me.
The whole reason that I tell this story, the reason why I put my whole past in the Bible out for you all to see is not because I want you to think about how cool I was to read the Bible because, if you think about it, I really wasted a lot of time. I had been a Christian for about three years before I started taking the Bible seriously. I didn't start reading the Bible until I was nineteen years old. I've only been reading the Bible with any regularity for about eight years. I don't know if you think I know anything about the Bible, but if you do, think about how much more you will know by the time you are my age, because you started so much earlier. Think about how much opportunity you would give God to transform you if you started today, or stayed on top of it.
Now that I've shared my story and now that I have made it clear that I think that reading your Bible is something worth fighting for, it is something worth making sacrifices for, I want to try to explain the "why" behind the "what" of my story. Folks, there is nothing magical about the Bible. It isn't as though every single page is going to flood you with joy, simply because every word on it teaches you some great and glorious thing you never heard before. If you approach reading the Bible like that, you will get discouraged so fast. It is true that the Bible has lots of great teaching in it, teaching that will strike you like lightning when you read it. Sometimes, even, something you've read a million times will jump off the page and change you when you read it just that one more time. But there are lots of things in the Bible that aren't what we would normally call "Inspiring." There are lots of things in the Bible that are challenging, that are frustrating, that are even frightening. Very often, the passages that make us feel incredibly uncomfortable are the ones that mean the most to us, that change us the most.
We read the Bible for lots of reasons. We read the Bible to learn how to live but, contrary to what some people will say, it is not actually a handbook for daily life. There is almost nothing in it, short of the book of Proverbs, that is ready-made to lift out of its context and shoved into our own. We read the Bible because it points us to Jesus. We read the Gospels because they tell us about Jesus' actual life and history on earth. We read the letters because they point us to how the reality of the Gospel transformed the lives of those first Christians. We read the Old Testament because it is only when we understand the whole history of Israel, when we know the stories, and what the law and the prophets say, that we can really understand Jesus how we ought to. We read the Bible because, in all its parts, it is a comprehensive witness to all that God has done.
I have said over and over again that who we are is partially dependent on those we surround ourselves with and that, sometimes, in order to change what we believe, to change what we think, we need to change what we do. It is completely true that God can speak to you just as much on the sports field, or in a musical rehearsal as he can in church. But if you are seeking God, if you are hoping to hear a word from him, where should you go? If you were an alcoholic and you wanted to get sober, where would you go? Would you go to a bar? Of course not. You would go to a support group, to a counsellor. You would go where you had a chance to find what you were looking for. You would put yourself in a position to be changed.
That, in many ways, is the reason we read the Bible. We read it because it is the record of God interacting with countless people over countless years. We have the promise that the same God who was in relationship with all those people in the Bible is the God who pursues relationship with us. Just like you can't get to know someone unless you spend time with them, we cannot get to know God unless we spend time with him, with his word in our hands and getting into our hearts. Let us pray.
AMEN
One of the single most important things you can do as a Christian is read the Bible. There is no shortcut to learning about God, knowing how you should go about your life and about the promises that God has for you that somehow lets you bypass the Bible and just listen to what other people have read. If you wanted, you could say that the whole message for tonight is a giant commercial for reading the Bible, but I hope it isn't boring.
Before we talk about some of the reasons why you should read the Bible, I want to share about my own experience reading the Bible. You see, I can give you all kinds of good reasons to read the Bible, but none of those reasons can possibly be as convincing as a personal testimony to how it has changed my life. Always remember that Christian faith does not always get a lot of good press these days. There are plenty of groups out there that make a lot of people decide that they want nothing to do with Jesus. With so many reasons not to believe floating around, we need to remember that the Bible is only convincing to people if they have already made up their minds that they even care what is in it. If the Bible is nothing more than a book, it is hard to get people to read it. It is only when you become convinced, either by your own experience or because you have been convinced by the experience of others, that God uses the Bible to speak directly to us today, that you will read it and make it a habit. Your personal testimony, your own growth, your own faithfulness, will do far more to convince the unbelieving world of the truth of the gospel than any academic argument.
Before I can say anything else about my growth through studying the Bible, you need to be reminded that I did not grow up in the church; not at all. I did not go to church and Sunday School until I was a sophomore in high school and I only went to a youth group for a little bit before that, and when I went to those things, it was just as much because my friends were going than because I was actually learning anything. So if that is you tonight, I know exactly where you are coming from. I know what it is like to sit in a youth room listening to someone talk about the Bible and have absolutely no idea what he is talking about, not sure where anything was in the Bible. I used to call myself "The worst Bible navigator ever." It didn't matter how many times we looked at a book in the Bible, I never learned where it was. I didn't know the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament other than their names. I barely knew anything about Jesus. I went more because I didn't really have a whole lot of friends and it gave me something to do on a Wednesday night.
What this means is that many of you have a much better start than I had. Many of you have been raised in the church, you have heard the stories of the Bible from an early age and you have been put into a position where you can hear the word of God being spoken to you and heard by you. I don't know if any of you have maybe heard God speak to your heart, encouraging you to become a pastor or pursue some kind of vocational ministry, but you are afraid or feel like you couldn't do it because you don't know much about the Bible, think again. My first pastor asked me if I felt called to be a pastor. When I heard that, I laughed at him. I couldn't imagine that someone like me could be called to be a pastor. I didn't know anything about the faith at all! And yet, as you can all see, here I am. This is my sixth year as a pastor.
Alright, so here's my story. I started going to youth group because my older brother (who, by the way, is still not a Christian) was going and I wanted to go, too. He wasn't always excited that I was there, but I sure was. Eventually, someone I knew from that youth group invited me to come to an after school Bible study that met twice a week. All during this time, I wasn't going to church at all. One Sunday, I got a call telling me that a guy from the Bible study was getting baptized that morning and that there was a reception at someone's house. So, even though I wasn't there for the baptism, I went to the reception. When I was there, I heard that some people were going to a study with the pastor of this church and asked me if I wanted to come. When we got there, some of the people said, "Hey Travis, you should totally stay for youth group" (this was a different church than before) so I did. Then, one of the kids from the youth group who knew I played guitar said I should stay because they had a small band that practiced after youth group. So, I went from not going to church at all to going to church, Sunday School, a study group, youth group and a band practice every Sunday all in one day.
Eventually, I became a Christian. I would say that I really became a Christian when I went to Chrysalis and things started to sink in deeper than they ever had before. However, just a few months later, my family moved to Iowa. I got involved in a youth group that I am amazed my faith survived. Eventually, I got plugged into a group with a bunch of people I went to school with and I really started to grow more, but I wasn't really reading my Bible. During this time, I got involved in a small group, let by my youth pastor, where I learned how to pray and talk about my faith. What is kind of funny is that it seemed like everyone else in the group except for myself and my friend David were certain they were called to be pastors or other leaders full-time, and, as far as I know today, only David and I are in full-time ministry.
All of that is important so I can tell you about what happened when I was in college. I became deeply aware of the fact that I hadn't spent much time reading my Bible and I knew that I should do it. I kept trying to make myself do it, but it just never seemed to work. Over a few months, I found myself in two or three different groups of guys and, in each of them we realized that none of us were getting into our Bibles like we knew we should. In one group, we split up into groups of two and my partner and I decided that we were going to try to help each other stay on top of our Bible reading. We both thought that jumping into reading it a bit everyday would be too much to expect, so we thought about doing it just a few days and then getting back together to see how we did. I didn't do it. Neither did he. We never met again.
The next group I was in decided that we were going to read one chapter of the Bible every day, and we'd all read the same chapters together, then we'd get together at the end of the week and discuss what we'd read. Now, at the end of the first week, I had the seven chapters read, but I didn't read everyday. I had to do a lot of catch up. When we got back together the next week, there was this guy, Nick, there. I had met Nick before and I had realized that he was really the first person I ever met who really knew his Bible. I suppose that my pastors knew their Bible pretty well, but Nick the first person I had ever met in my life who took reading his Bible extremely seriously and applied it to every aspect of his life. I knew that, if you want good suggestions on how to do something, you ask someone who has actually succeeded in doing it. I knew that I needed to ask Nick how he read the Bible and see if that would help.
What Nick told me was surprisingly simple. He said that, when he got started reading the Bible, he followed a simple rule: "No Bible, no breakfast." If he didn't read his Bible, he simply didn't eat. Now there are people in the world who just don't eat breakfast, so it might seem that this idea wouldn't work for them, but then it would just become "No Bible, no lunch," which doesn't have a neat alliteration, but would still be effective. Anyway, I am someone who has always eaten breakfast, so I thought this might help me and I decided to give it a try.
The next morning, I got up, and before heading down to the dining center for breakfast or eating something in my room, I remembered: No Bible, no breakfast. I went and sat in my chair and read the next chapter of John, the book that group was reading. It seemed so easy to do. I got up the next morning and did the same thing again. After months of repeated failure, after trying time after time to find some way to get the job done, something as simple as "No Bible, no breakfast," finally worked for me. Not only did I start reading the Bible, a chapter a day, but I quickly began to really love the Bible and I started to read more than one chapter a day. I found out the next book we were planning on working through and I read that. I started to get so far ahead of the group that I had to figure out what I was going to read on my own.
I went through all that about how hard it was for me to start reading my Bible so the significance of the transformation can be as impressive to you as it was to me. I used to see those "read through the Bible in a year" plans and was amazed. How could someone read the whole Bible in just a year? It seemed like such a huge book. What I realized was that, because I got so excited about reading the Bible, I wanted so badly to know what was in it, that I read the whole thing, without really even trying to do it, in five months. People have asked me when I first knew that I was going to be a pastor. I don't know exactly when it was, but when I started reading the Bible, I knew for sure I was going to be a math teacher. When I was done, I knew that I was going to be a pastor. Now, that is not to say that, if you read the Bible, you will become a pastor. I can point out all kinds of people who have read the Bible, even very quickly, who have not been called to be pastors, but that is how it was for me.
The whole reason that I tell this story, the reason why I put my whole past in the Bible out for you all to see is not because I want you to think about how cool I was to read the Bible because, if you think about it, I really wasted a lot of time. I had been a Christian for about three years before I started taking the Bible seriously. I didn't start reading the Bible until I was nineteen years old. I've only been reading the Bible with any regularity for about eight years. I don't know if you think I know anything about the Bible, but if you do, think about how much more you will know by the time you are my age, because you started so much earlier. Think about how much opportunity you would give God to transform you if you started today, or stayed on top of it.
Now that I've shared my story and now that I have made it clear that I think that reading your Bible is something worth fighting for, it is something worth making sacrifices for, I want to try to explain the "why" behind the "what" of my story. Folks, there is nothing magical about the Bible. It isn't as though every single page is going to flood you with joy, simply because every word on it teaches you some great and glorious thing you never heard before. If you approach reading the Bible like that, you will get discouraged so fast. It is true that the Bible has lots of great teaching in it, teaching that will strike you like lightning when you read it. Sometimes, even, something you've read a million times will jump off the page and change you when you read it just that one more time. But there are lots of things in the Bible that aren't what we would normally call "Inspiring." There are lots of things in the Bible that are challenging, that are frustrating, that are even frightening. Very often, the passages that make us feel incredibly uncomfortable are the ones that mean the most to us, that change us the most.
We read the Bible for lots of reasons. We read the Bible to learn how to live but, contrary to what some people will say, it is not actually a handbook for daily life. There is almost nothing in it, short of the book of Proverbs, that is ready-made to lift out of its context and shoved into our own. We read the Bible because it points us to Jesus. We read the Gospels because they tell us about Jesus' actual life and history on earth. We read the letters because they point us to how the reality of the Gospel transformed the lives of those first Christians. We read the Old Testament because it is only when we understand the whole history of Israel, when we know the stories, and what the law and the prophets say, that we can really understand Jesus how we ought to. We read the Bible because, in all its parts, it is a comprehensive witness to all that God has done.
I have said over and over again that who we are is partially dependent on those we surround ourselves with and that, sometimes, in order to change what we believe, to change what we think, we need to change what we do. It is completely true that God can speak to you just as much on the sports field, or in a musical rehearsal as he can in church. But if you are seeking God, if you are hoping to hear a word from him, where should you go? If you were an alcoholic and you wanted to get sober, where would you go? Would you go to a bar? Of course not. You would go to a support group, to a counsellor. You would go where you had a chance to find what you were looking for. You would put yourself in a position to be changed.
That, in many ways, is the reason we read the Bible. We read it because it is the record of God interacting with countless people over countless years. We have the promise that the same God who was in relationship with all those people in the Bible is the God who pursues relationship with us. Just like you can't get to know someone unless you spend time with them, we cannot get to know God unless we spend time with him, with his word in our hands and getting into our hearts. Let us pray.
AMEN
Monday, October 31, 2011
Difficult Passages in the Bible
Difficult Passages in the Bible
From time to time, I have given myself what have turned out to be difficult preaching assignments. What makes them difficult depends on the task at hand. For example, once I set out to preach at least once from every book of the Bible. This was difficult because it is next to impossible to attain any level of continuity from week to week if you do this (one could, I suppose, break it down into series where themes are developed throughout the Bible, but I did not do this; perhaps I was not even equipped to do this at the time). Usually, though, the difficulty takes the form of looking at a large chunk of scripture or an overarching theme, that forces me to preach on a text that is particularly difficult.
Now, what makes a text difficult? Sometimes, it is difficult because it tends to be interpreted in a particular way over and over again so that there is one particular interpretation that overshadows the text so strongly that it seems like it is the only way to read the text, when it is, in fact, distorting it. When preaching on such texts, one cannot simply say, "If you interpret this text this old way, you are an idiot." Not only is it not tactful or loving, it simply isn't true. Many brilliant and faithful interpreters have contributed to the misunderstanding of some texts, not because of any fault in themselves but because the influence of that particular interpretation is so very strong. When addressing some texts, the difficulty often comes in, not only because it requires a great shift of thinking of the preacher themselves, but also because one needs to take the central insights of the dominant interpretation seriously, even if a correction needs to be made.
When I think about preaching on difficult texts, however, it is a different kind of text that I am thinking about. I am thinking about texts that tell me things I don't know if I want to know about God, texts that, at least at first glance, make me want to skip over them (if I am preaching through a book, passage-by-passage) or interpret them in a way that basically says, "It doesn't really mean that." The problem with the first way out is that it shows that certain passages are helpful and worth studying while others are not. It means that there is something that is revealed about God (or humanity) in those passages that I do not want to take seriously for one reason or another. The problem with this is that, even if Christian preachers are afraid of taking those passages seriously, those who read the Bible in order to make Christians look foolish are not afraid of doing so. If we as Christian leaders are not willing to take those difficult passages seriously, we are terribly ill-prepared to dialogue with those who are and such a weakness will not have good results for us.
The problem with the second way out is that it presupposes that there is something wrong with the Bible that we need to correct. Now, as many of you know, I think that the position that has classically been known as "Biblical inerrancy," has some serious problems and that I do not hold it (though I am very interested in discussing the issues at stake with anyone who wants to), so my concern is not "If there is even the tiniest problem with any part of the text in any way, the authority of the Bible collapses to the ground." Rather, it is because my sustained encounter with difficult texts has shown me that they are often precisely the points where our nice, neat ways of understanding God are challenged by the reality of God itself and shown to be wanting.
What I have learned after forcing myself to take difficult texts as seriously as possible is that the sermons are, in my opinion, better, my understanding of God is drastically deepened, and I find more joy, knowing that God's revelation continually demonstrates to me that God is far greater, far richer, far more faithful and good than I could ever imagine. Those passages that once seemed so difficult, so troubling, so frightening to have to explain to a congregation or youth group have, more often than not, become some of my very favorite passages. At the very least, they quickly become crucial texts for the interpretation of the whole tapestry of Biblical passages, as their significance proves to be more comprehensive than we would be led to believe, considering how seldom people actually talk about them.
What I am saying is that, regardless of whether you are a Christian preacher, or even a Christian leader, take those hard texts seriously. Do not brush past them, do not interpret them in a way that makes their offensiveness vanish into thin air (though you may find they are not as offensive as you first thought, when you learn what they have to teach). Read them, ask the tough questions, work with others in trying to understand them. Your hard work will be richly rewarded.
From time to time, I have given myself what have turned out to be difficult preaching assignments. What makes them difficult depends on the task at hand. For example, once I set out to preach at least once from every book of the Bible. This was difficult because it is next to impossible to attain any level of continuity from week to week if you do this (one could, I suppose, break it down into series where themes are developed throughout the Bible, but I did not do this; perhaps I was not even equipped to do this at the time). Usually, though, the difficulty takes the form of looking at a large chunk of scripture or an overarching theme, that forces me to preach on a text that is particularly difficult.
Now, what makes a text difficult? Sometimes, it is difficult because it tends to be interpreted in a particular way over and over again so that there is one particular interpretation that overshadows the text so strongly that it seems like it is the only way to read the text, when it is, in fact, distorting it. When preaching on such texts, one cannot simply say, "If you interpret this text this old way, you are an idiot." Not only is it not tactful or loving, it simply isn't true. Many brilliant and faithful interpreters have contributed to the misunderstanding of some texts, not because of any fault in themselves but because the influence of that particular interpretation is so very strong. When addressing some texts, the difficulty often comes in, not only because it requires a great shift of thinking of the preacher themselves, but also because one needs to take the central insights of the dominant interpretation seriously, even if a correction needs to be made.
When I think about preaching on difficult texts, however, it is a different kind of text that I am thinking about. I am thinking about texts that tell me things I don't know if I want to know about God, texts that, at least at first glance, make me want to skip over them (if I am preaching through a book, passage-by-passage) or interpret them in a way that basically says, "It doesn't really mean that." The problem with the first way out is that it shows that certain passages are helpful and worth studying while others are not. It means that there is something that is revealed about God (or humanity) in those passages that I do not want to take seriously for one reason or another. The problem with this is that, even if Christian preachers are afraid of taking those passages seriously, those who read the Bible in order to make Christians look foolish are not afraid of doing so. If we as Christian leaders are not willing to take those difficult passages seriously, we are terribly ill-prepared to dialogue with those who are and such a weakness will not have good results for us.
The problem with the second way out is that it presupposes that there is something wrong with the Bible that we need to correct. Now, as many of you know, I think that the position that has classically been known as "Biblical inerrancy," has some serious problems and that I do not hold it (though I am very interested in discussing the issues at stake with anyone who wants to), so my concern is not "If there is even the tiniest problem with any part of the text in any way, the authority of the Bible collapses to the ground." Rather, it is because my sustained encounter with difficult texts has shown me that they are often precisely the points where our nice, neat ways of understanding God are challenged by the reality of God itself and shown to be wanting.
What I have learned after forcing myself to take difficult texts as seriously as possible is that the sermons are, in my opinion, better, my understanding of God is drastically deepened, and I find more joy, knowing that God's revelation continually demonstrates to me that God is far greater, far richer, far more faithful and good than I could ever imagine. Those passages that once seemed so difficult, so troubling, so frightening to have to explain to a congregation or youth group have, more often than not, become some of my very favorite passages. At the very least, they quickly become crucial texts for the interpretation of the whole tapestry of Biblical passages, as their significance proves to be more comprehensive than we would be led to believe, considering how seldom people actually talk about them.
What I am saying is that, regardless of whether you are a Christian preacher, or even a Christian leader, take those hard texts seriously. Do not brush past them, do not interpret them in a way that makes their offensiveness vanish into thin air (though you may find they are not as offensive as you first thought, when you learn what they have to teach). Read them, ask the tough questions, work with others in trying to understand them. Your hard work will be richly rewarded.
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