Tag Archives: Biblical interpretation

Sharing our faith or imposing our beliefs

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Bible studyI recently read a very interesting article by Dyron Daughrity in Missio Dei, a missions journal from the Stone-Campbell Movement. Here’s the abstract of the article:

This paper looks at problems that have occurred in Church of Christ missions by focusing on a case study in India called the Arise Shine Church of Christ Mission. The paper argues that paternalism in a cappella church missions has led to a “time capsule effect” wherein churches in India have become stultified. Indian Church of Christ members have developed a hybrid identity. They try to be faithful to the sending churches—in this case Canada’s valiant missionary J. C. Bailey—but they have to balance it with faithfulness to their own culture. Several issues are brought forth such as Bible translations (especially the use of the King James Version), contextualization and indigenization, and the unfortunate dependency that often arises in Church of Christ missions efforts.

In the article itself, Daughrity says:

The Church of Christ in India, however, has not turned into the fused symbiosis that Walls witnessed in Africa. Rather, the time capsule would be a more fitting analogy. And major challenges loom because of this theological and cultural stagnation. Members remain deeply loyal to the form of Christianity brought to them decades earlier by stalwart missionaries.

I have seen the same thing throughout Latin America. I remember having a discussion about a controversial topic in the church in Córdoba, Argentina. We had discussed for nearly an hour, when one member who had been converted 20 years before said, “You can say what you want; I know what the missionaries taught me.” She then pronounced a stance on that issue. No appeal to Scripture or biblical principles. This was what the missionaries had taught, and that was good enough for her.

You don’t have to go overseas to see similar things, of course. People will hold to what granddad taught or what their favorite teacher taught, even if they may not understand the reasoning behind the teaching.

I’m not sure how we avoid this. I have some ideas. One thing that I try to do in my ministry at Herald of Truth is focus on teaching people how to study the Bible rather than on the content of the Bible. That can be a scary thing, for you run the risk of people reaching different conclusions than you have. But if they reach those conclusions based on the Word of God, is that such a bad thing? Isn’t there a chance that they’ll reach right conclusions on subjects where we’ve missed the mark?

What are your thoughts? Is this sort of thing avoidable?

Frameworks and outcomes in Bible study

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I’m not sure that I know how to build off of yesterday’s post and explain what’s going through my mind. I’ll try.

When we go out to teach people about the Bible, we are also teaching them a philosophical approach to the Bible. Part of conversion has to do with them accepting our theoretical framework.

People who present commands, examples and necessary inference as a hermeneutic framework need to find people who accept that framework. When they do, they have a much better chance of convincing them via their syllogisms. If not, people won’t be moved to change their lives based on arguments they don’t understand or don’t agree with.

Once you find such people, you can then continue to shape them using arguments based on the same framework. In the same way, any challenge to that approach to the Bible is a major threat, for it removes the way these teachers know how to instruct and motivate. If I accept that 1 Corinthians 16 is not laying out the universal mechanism for churches to take weekly collection, then how am I going to get people to give money to the church, if I only know how to work off of the commands, examples, inferences framework?

Going way back to the discussion that started all of this (instrumental music), it’s easy to see why our approach to the Bible is so important. If we can’t agree on the process, it’s going to be hard to agree on the outcomes.

The Bible as books

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I appreciate the good discussion yesterday. Some seem to suspect that I have some plan for building off of what I presented yesterday. Sorry to disappoint… the questions I ask are serious requests for input. These are issues I’m working through, not issues for which I’ve discovered some secret solution.

I know that many of the ills that I see can be solved by an emphasis on context. I’ve never heard someone say, “His problem, he’s using that verse in context.” A basic grasp of context won’t cure everything, but it goes a long way toward a healthy understanding of the Bible.

One solution that occurs to me is to quit presenting the Bible as a book. Instead, present it as an arsenal of books. You go to a business seminar, and the speaker recommends multiple books. This one will help you with time management, this one with communications, this one with employee relations. The speaker may quote a thing or two from each book, but you come away understanding that you need to read the whole book to grasp what the author wants to communicate.

What if we taught the Bible in terms of books? (Or sets of books, in some cases… you can’t really separate Leviticus from Exodus, for example) When teaching a general Bible class at Abilene Christian (“Christianity in Culture”), I emphasized chapters. I made them learn what chapter in the Bible contained certain ideas. Now I’m thinking that may not be big enough. I understand that we can’t present a whole book of the Bible in one lesson, at least not books like Isaiah or Genesis. But maybe it would help to remember that neither chapters nor verses existed in the original; the ancients worked with books.

So you take a new Christian and you say, “Here’s sixty-six books that will teach you about the Christian faith. They’ve been conveniently bound into one volume.”

No, I haven’t thought of all of the practical ins and outs of this. Frankly, this idea was born after reading yesterday’s comments, so it’s fairly young and fragile. Be gentle with it, like you would a newborn. :-)

Is there any value in changing this perception of the Bible? Even if we don’t radically change our teaching, if we can get people to think in terms of books, maybe it would help them wean themselves off the “verse by verse” approach that distorts the Bible’s message.

Looking forward to the discussion.

photo by Jane M Sawyer

Why some people don’t like educated preachers

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Diploma and mortar boardIn thinking about how people love “quick and easy” Bible study, as we discussed yesterday, it’s easy to see how an anti-intellectual spirit can grow in our churches.

Joe Churchmember reads “Abstain from all appearance of evil.” (1 Thessalonians 5:22), and he can understand it: don’t do anything that looks bad. Then new preacher Dr. McSmartypants comes in and says that passage is talking about testing the spirits (holding onto what’s good, avoiding every form of evil) and Joe Churchmember feels like Dr. McSmartypants is taking a simple passage and making it confusing. He may even say, “I shouldn’t have to have a college degree to understand your sermons!” [Interesting note: my spell checker flags “Churchmember” but not “McSmartypants”]

I think that also explains the popularity of topical preaching. In a topical sermon, the preacher can string together “easy” verses, not having to wrestle with context, culture, linguistics or any of those other things. He can say, “We put money in the collection plate EVERY Sunday because 1 Corinthians 16 says ‘Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him'”, and the whole congregation will nod in agreement.

When I was in college, one of my friends told of having been rebuked by an older member for not using the King James Version. The reason? “We didn’t lose arguments back when we used the King James.” Says something about the strength of the reasoning behind those arguments.

So how do we convince people to have the patience to do serious Bible study? How do we encourage them to read the Bible, while still saying, “You can’t always take a text at face value”? How do we make the Bible accessible to the masses while maintaining intellectual integrity?

Any suggestions?

Photo by Mary Gober

So how’s your list of widows coming?

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Continuing yesterday’s discussion (thanks for the comments!), I want to give a good example of how our conversations are shaped by our current situation. Churches of Christ are part of the stream of belief that is called the Restoration Movement. The Restoration Movement flourished in the United States in the 19th century, and many of the doctrines that we hold were shaped around what was and wasn’t practiced in churches in general at that time (particularly Presbyterian and Baptist).

I know that idea is distasteful to many, which is why I want to offer an example. My colleague, Steve Ridgell, is doing a series of blog posts on gender roles in churches of Christ. Yesterday he brought something that is rarely discussed: the list of widows, as described in 1 Timothy 5.

“Honor widows who are truly widows.” (1 Timothy 5:3)
“Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age, having been the wife of one husband, and having a reputation for good works: if she has brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work.” (1 Timothy 5:9–10)
“If any believing woman has relatives who are widows, let her care for them. Let the church not be burdened, so that it may care for those who are really widows.” (1 Timothy 5:16)

So there was to be a list of widows that would be honored and cared for by the church. (Context shows that this care includes financial support) These women were to be active in the church, and there seems to be an implication that they will be expected to continue to serve. Seemingly, according to verse 12, they made some sort of pledge of devotion to the church.

Do you know of any congregation that does this? Do you know of any congregation that has seriously discussed how to fulfill this?

My thought is that we are quick to dismiss this passage because it hasn’t been a part of our practice nor that of churches around us. We may talk about it out of curiosity, but few seek to practice it in any way, despite it meeting all of the standards that command-example-inference hermeneutics would demand.

Some would argue that the lack of clarity on the exact practice is what limits us, but shouldn’t that merely be a call for further study and investigation as to what Paul is talking about?

We don’t practice it because nobody practices it. Which means our beliefs come less from the Word than from the beliefs of those around us.

Or am I missing something?

photo by Ariadna on www.morguefile.com