This is a passage from the email newsletter I get from a United Church of God (yes, that is that heretical group that brought us the likes of Herbert W. Armstrong) publication called “Good News Magazine.”  They have some pretty nutty ideas about some stuff, but sometimes they say some things that are so right on that I have to stop and listen.  This isn’t the whole of the newsletter.  I stop before they go into their rant about how all holidays are pagan in nature and ways the devil has deceived us into worshiping him when we should be worshiping God.  Still, though, it is hard to argue with what Clyde Kilough is saying here.

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In the midst of tough times, retailers this year are really hoping and praying—after first trying to seduce us through advertising—that “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” give them an economic shot in the arm. Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in the United States, is the busiest shopping day in the year, marking the official beginning of the Christmas shopping season. It is one of the main indicators of whether businesses will turn a profit, that is, be put “in the black”—hence the term, Black Friday.

This makes great fodder for TV news programs. Reporters often interview people lining up and camping out at midnight. They’re ready for the 5 a.m. openings, and, typically, the film crew will capture footage of the stampeding hordes when the doors unlock. The ratings always shoot up when you have a few tramplings in the herd of the unlucky slow ones who stumble and get run over—for them it’s “Black and Blue Friday.”

I understand how starving people can riot. I’ve seen the desperation of hungry people in third world countries. Maybe that’s why seeing crazed shoppers riot and fight over a half-price DVD is just plain embarrassing, because it tells the world something about what we’ve become. These stores aren’t selling food to the starving; they’re selling greed to the “haves” who want to have more! It’s consumer hunger in the land of plenty!

Astute marketers and advertisers have cleverly tapped into basic human nature, and so effectively that we fall for the idea that we’re actually saving money! Don’t we know that while they have slashed prices on some items in order to lure us into the store, they know that once we’re in there we’ll probably buy more things than we intended? Don’t we see that the hunger to have more is part of a larger, far more destructive picture? Don’t we understand that it is the materialistic mind-set that has led to horrific personal debt, overextending ourselves beyond our means financially, which has played a big part in the current economic crisis we’re facing?

But the saddest part of all is that this kicks off the holiday season in which people are supposedly focused on honoring the One who said, “You shall not covet”! This was not God’s suggestion, but His commandment! If we were really honoring Jesus, would we get caught up in such greed?

In a recent article on the Sojourner’s blog, Diana Butler Bass responds to Psalm 109:8 in light of a recent bumper sticker campaign using the Psalm as a prayer about President Obama.  Psalm 109:8 reads as follows:

May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership.

She comments that it was probably intended to be a joke by some right-wingers, but, she says, it ceases to be funny when you read on in the passage.  She then proceeds to quote C. S. Lewis’ thoughts on Psalm 109 especially.  To quote her quote:

In some of the Psalms the spirit of hatred which strikes us in the face is like the heat from a furnace mouth.  In others the same spirit ceases to be frightful only by becoming (to a modern mind) almost comic in its naivety.  Examples can be found all over the Psalter, but perhaps the worst is in 109.

She tows the line with Lewis and suggests that we should use these Psalms to speak to ourselves about our own sinful nature.  She even seems to suggest that we not read these Psalms at all in public worship.

While I respect Lewis, and I find Bass to be an interesting read, I think she, surprisingly, in this regard, is missing the most important thing about this Psalm: its honesty.  While it is true that these sorts of things usually represent the feelings of an oppressed people, it is more significant to me that the Psalm is even there at all.  If God didn’t want us to pray in this way, why would He have given us the example in the context of a book viewed by many as the Bible’s hymnal or prayer book?  I believe that there is a very real sense in which this passage is an example of the kind of honesty and openness that God desires of His people.

David comes to God with all these feelings of hatred toward his critics.  He wants them removed from office, their families disturbed, and their lives obliterated.  And he takes these feelings to God.  And in the process, he comes to the place where his anger abates and he simply asks God to bring salvation.

So, while I agree that this Psalm is an inappropriate joke against our president, I disagree that we should basically ignore prayers like this.  They aren’t merely pictures of our own sinfulness, but examples of the kind of honesty God wants from us.  They show us that nothing is hidden from God’s sight, so we might as well tell Him what’s on our minds, even if it’s messy and misguided or wrong.

I, Tobit, walked in the ways of truth and righteousness all the days of my life.  I performed many acts of charity for my kindred and my people who had gone with me in exile to Ninevah in the land of the Assyrians. (Tobit 1:3 NRSV)

What we have in Tobit is the story of a gentleman who has been faithful all of his life.  He was raised a Jew, became a Jew when he reached adult age, and remained a Jew despite any trials that he may have encountered.  We will talk about how faithful he was in a moment.  For now, let it suffice to say that we have a story about a very faithful, God-fearing man.

Before we go any further, I want to make a couple of things clear. Firstly, I do not think it takes away from the Scriptures to not have the Deuterocanonical books in our Bibles.  With or without them, the overarching message of the Bible is the same: God wants to redeem His fallen humanity.

Secondly, although I don’t think it takes away from the Scriptures, I believe that having them adds a dimension to the Scriptures that is missing from our Protestant Bibles.  We are without certain words of wisdom and analogies and pieces of history that have the potential to leave us confused as to what is being said sometimes.  So while not having them doesn’t take away from the message, having them can help us to better understand that message and to better put various events, especially in the life of Jesus, into their proper historical context.

Lastly, I understand the discomfort of some Protestants when it comes to the “Apocrypha.”  Protestants and Catholics have a LONG history of not getting along.  Hence why we are called “Protestants.”  Protestant religion began, after all, as people protesting the actions and decisions and beliefs of the Catholic church.  So, to say that we should reacquaint ourselves with the content of the Deuterocanonical Scriptures has the potential of being a source of tension and even Spiritual distress for some.  But while I understand this, I don’t think it is necessary.  For a long part of our history, these books were a part of our Bibles.  To reclaim them as the Scriptures they once were brings us into greater solidarity with our brethren from the past.  So, for those of you who may be uncomfortable with this brief study of the Deuterocanonical books, I ask this question: is it really worth distancing yourself from spiritual brothers and sisters over 400 pages of writing?

Back to the topic at hand.

The opening statement of Tobit alone shows us how helpful this story can be for the life of the Christian.  A lot of Christians really have been faithful to the ways of God.  They have been decent people. They have helped those in need.  They have worked in soup kitchens and built houses and turned mattresses over at the homeless shelter.

I alone went often to Jerusalem for the festivals, as it is prescribed for all Israel by an everlasting decree.  I would hurry off to Jerusalem with the firstfruits of the crops and the firstlings of the flock, the tithes of the cattle, and the first shearings of the sheep.  I would give these to the priests…I would save up a second tenth in money and go distribute it in Jerusalem.  A third tenth I would give to the orphans and widows and to the converts who had attached themselves to Israel. (Tobit 1:6-8 NRSV)

And what happened to him?

That same night I washed myself and went into my courtyard and slept by the wall of the courtyard; and my face was uncovered because of the heat.  I did not know that there were sparrows on the wall; their fresh droppings fell into my eyes and produced white films.  I went to physicians to be healed, but the more they treated me with ointments the more my vision was obscured by the white films, until I became completely blind.  For four years I remained unable to see. (Tobit 1:9-10 NRSV)

Life happens and these Christians become blinded by all the crap in their way.  No matter what we do, no matter how many people we ask for help, it all just seems to get worse and worse and we become more and more blinded.  And it seems to go on forever.  But, eventually, God heals us.  But, in so many cases, it is simply not in the way that we would want or the way we would expect, but we praise God anyway.

Blessed are you because you have made me glad.  It has not turned out as I expected, but you have dealt with us according to your great mercy. (Tobit 8:16 NRSV)

This is another of those ideas that are strangely missing from our Protestant Bibles because we don’t have this story.  As far as I know, no one in our Protestant Bibles is so blunt as to simply say to God, “This may not be what I wanted, but You sure have been merciful!”  But, so often, this is exactly what we say and how we feel about how God has worked.  It’s not what we expected, but God saw us through.

For the time being, we will leave it at this.  In the coming weeks, we are going to briefly look at the themes of some of the Deuterocanonical stories and snippets of wisdom from the pieces of wisdom literature included in this section of the Catholic and Orthodox Biblical canon.  In future studies, we will make connections between things said in these books to things said in the New Testament.  We will even use some of the historical narratives to put various aspects of the Jesus story into proper perspective.  In the mean time, spend some time reading Tobit and let God reveal to you the truth that He has placed there for your life.

This past week, my small group spent most of the time discussing Philippians 1:6.  I came away thinking that the basic idea of the verse is that, no matter what may be happening, God is not finished with you yet.  The verse, a much over-quoted one, says it this way:

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. (ESV)

We got to talking about some Scriptural analogies for this, things like Job and some personal life experiences and I got to thinking about a little story about a man named Tobit. This story is about a faithful Jewish man, named Tobit, who is always careful to observe the Law in every matter.  One day, someone dies and he becomes so distressed that he runs immediately to bury the body, which, of course, makes him ritually unclean.

He is outside the city, and he sits down by a wall for a rest.  Unbeknownst to him, some birds are hanging out on the same wall, directly above him, and, as he sleeps, in typical bird fashion, they poop all over his eyes.  When Tobit wakes up, his eyes are covered in a white film and he is unable to see anything.  After a journey and a wedding and some conversations with an angel named Raphael, Tobit’s sight is restored and everyone lives happily ever after.

In retrospect, this story has much to say to the Christian.  There are a lot of times in our lives when there is just so much poop clouding our vision that we simply can’t see what God is doing.  And it is very encouraging to know that “he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”  You may not be able to see through all the crap, but God is working and He will finish what He has set out to do in your life.

Protestant Christianity is left without this analogy, though.  Our Bibles do not include the story of Tobit.  As a result, we are left trying to figure out those times of blindness on our own.  The Bible simply does not speak to those times in our lives.  Yeah, we have Paul, but most of us were not Christian-killers who ran into a glowing Jesus while out on orders.  And we’ve all had moments when we should have listened to those asses in our lives who were trying to give us good advice.  And the Protestant Bible speaks to those situations, but when the crap of life clouds our vision…well…the Bible is silent.

There is a lot of wisdom and a lot we can learn from those books known as the Apocrypha.  It’s one of those things that I think the Catholics have that we Protestants lack.  In sticking with the tradition of Martin Luther and the particular Jewish Scriptural canon he decided was the right one, we are left lacking in some ways.  I think it is time that we sort of reclaim the apocrypha as Protestants and stop being afraid to use it.  Our fellow Jesus followers may find strength and encouragement there that they never had before, and it may be a way to combat that growing number of people leaving the faith because they feel it is irrelevant and doesn’t speak to their life in any meaningful manner.

Let’s start by reclaiming the story of Tobit.

I was asked by a church I have applied at for a youth minister position to give them a statement of faith.  So, I’ve decided to share that here for your enjoyment and discussion.

Personal Statement of Faith

As a preface, my general statement of belief is in line with the Southern Baptist Convention’s Baptist Faith and Message (BFM), although I differ slightly in some matters. As a result, I have felt compelled to both quote directly from the faith statement found at http://www.sbc.net/aboutus/basicbeliefs.asp as well as make my own statements. Any quotes from the BFM are in italics to aid in differentiating between the two.

The Scriptures

The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God’s written revelation of Himself to man. For the Christian, the Bible is the final authority in all matters of faith and practice and should act as a guiding rule especially when God appears to be silent. The Scriptures, though, are not the only manner in which God has revealed Himself. God can also be found, although incompletely, through what is known as General Revelation. God has revealed to humankind His existence through the created order, other people, and at times even through statements made by adherents of other religions. All truth belongs to God and is intended to point us to God, but the Bible is the culmination of this truth for it completes God’s general revelation by showing in a specific manner what god is to be worshiped and in what manner He desires this worship to be done.

God

There is one and only one living and true God, but He has chosen to reveal Himself in a Trinitarian manner. The eternal triune God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence, or being.

God the Father

God as Father reigns with providential care over His universe, His creatures, and the flow of the stream of human history according to the purposes of His grace. He is personally involved in the smallest details of His creation, although it is a mystery as to how He is able to do so and still hold people responsible for their sins.

God the Son

Christ is the eternal Son of God. In His incarnation as Jesus Christ, He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He honored the divine law by His personal obedience, and in His substitutionary death on the cross, He made provision for the redemption of men from sin. As important as His death was, though, He also came to live and show us what God is like. We are to seek in all that we do to emulate the life of Jesus; to live as though Jesus were living our lives every day. We must also never forget the resurrection for, without it, death could not have been overcome and the final redemption of all of creation could not be fully realized.

God the Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, fully divine. He exalts Christ. He convicts men of sin, of righteousness and of judgment. He enlightens and empowers the believer and the church in worship, evangelism, and service.

Man

Man is the special creation of God, in His own image. He created them male and female as the crowning work of His creation. By his free choice man sinned against God and brought sin into the world. As a result, all of creation is in constant turmoil. Because humanity is responsible for the original fall of creation, he is therefore responsible to work toward a better physical world. Creation care has been a God-given responsibility from the time of the garden, and is no less important now that sin has entered the picture. Because of sin, man is in desperate need for God’s salvation, which can only be found in Jesus Christ.

Salvation

Salvation involves the redemption of the whole man, and is offered freely to all who Christ died for. It is only found in Jesus and can only be obtained by those who “declare with [their] mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in [their] heart that God raised him from the dead” (Romans 10:9). God will see to the perseverance of His followers, although we are responsible to “work out [our] salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12), knowing that “it is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance” (Hebrews 4:4-6a).

The Church

The Church consists of those who have been bought and paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ. In a local context, a church exists for the edification of believers first and foremost. Evangelism is the mission of the invisible church (Christians), but is to be clearly seen in the actions and teaching of the local congregation.

Last Things

God, in His own time and in His own way, will bring the world to its appropriate end. Jesus Christ will return personally and visibly the dead will be raised; and Christ will judge all men in righteousness. The unrighteous will be consigned to Hell. The righteous will receive their reward and will dwell forever in Heaven with the Lord. I do not make a specific stance regarding the order of events or timing of a “rapture” or any other such matter as I believe that they are a matter of conscience. I also have not done enough study on the topic to be able to, with conviction, say anything more specific.

I love the writings of John Piper.  Simply love them.  I have rarely found something that I disagree with.  My issues, when I have them, tend to be in matters of how he says something or some of the implications in how he says things.  But rarely do I have an issue with him in matters of theology.  Until recently.

In the past couple of months, he has had a couple of posts that have bothered me on some level.  The first was one in which he interpreted the meaning of a tornado.  I didn’t necessarily agree or disagree, I just thought it seemed presumptuous to know the mind and ways of God while not being present to actually hear what was being said in the conference in question.  Mere hearsay, in my opinion, is not enough to go on when trying to understand God and His ways.  I think Piper would agree.  So I didn’t really understand his point in writing the post.

The second thing was something posted on the Desiring God blog.  It was a partial transcript of a radio interview in which he was asked the following question:

What would you say to someone who uses this passage [Ecclesiastes 4:2-3] to say that abortion is a better alternative than the life awaiting some babies?

His response starts off okay, until he implies that the book of Ecclesiastes is “bad theology.”  He likens the book to how “Job has 29 chapters of bad theology, inspired by God to be known as bad theology.”  While I agree with Dr. Piper that “Ecclesiastes is a difficult book to interpret,” I don’t think relegating it to the category of “bad theology” is the answer to that difficulty.

But Piper insists that the Bible has bad theology.  To quote:

That sort of thing is in the Bible. Inspired lies are still lies. They’re just to be known as lies!

My disagreement with Dr. Piper was solidified when he made this comment:

In the last chapter the sum of the matter is this: “Obey the commandments of God,” because all the efforts that Solomon made had gotten him nowhere. This is bleak theology in Ecclesiastes, not admirable theology.

The problem is, this idea seems to contradict the character of God.  Jesus once said, in the very same Bible as Ecclesiastes,

My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me. Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. Whoever speaks on their own does so to gain personal glory, but he who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about him. (John 7:16-18 TNIV)

It seems to me that Jesus is saying, here, that not only is there nothing false about the man speaking on God’s authority, but also that there is nothing false about God.  Someone speaking on God’s authority is speaking God’s message.  Since there is no falsehood in the man speaking God’s message, then it stands to reason that there is no falsehood in the message either.  Since there is no falsehood in the message, there must not be any falsehood in the Originator of the message.

That being said, it is a standard belief, even of Piper’s Bethlehem Baptist Church, that the Bible is totally true with no error in it whatsoever.  If this is the case, how can there be lies in it?  Much more, how can there be God-inspired lies in the Bible, if at all?

On another level, it seems to me that to take the approach that certain passages of Scripture are “lies” opens a can of worms that no one likes to deal with: that whole issue of “cherry-picking” passages from the Bible.  If certain passages, or books, are lies, then they no longer apply.  But who determines what is true and what is a lie?  If it is individuals, then we can’t fault Jefferson for cutting out the parts he felt were untrue or the Emergents for dropping the doctrine of hell from their theology or changing that doctrine.

Of course, it is widely agreed that individuals are sort of ignorant when seeking to interpret the Scriptures on their own.

Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. (2 Peter 1:20 TNIV)

We need, first and foremost, the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  But, it is also agreed, that we need the community of faith to help us interpret the Scriptures.  This community of faith extends to even ancient traditions from the past.  And as we look back at the traditions and beliefs of the church, we find, consistently, that the Bible, while culturally influenced, has never been believed by Christians to contain “lies.”  We’ve reinterpreted passages and have acknowledged the places where a specific culture is being addressed.  But never has the Christian church called these things “lies.” It seems a little careless on John Piper’s part to say otherwise.

One of the prerequisites for being involved with, and even becoming a member of, the church that my family has started attending is being a part of a small group.  This is a pretty common idea in the modern church, and one which I am glad has become so normal.  The idea of a church calling themselves a “church of small groups,” while cliche, is something that I applaud.  I think it more truly embodies the goal that the early church had in mind than the push to be bigger and more cutting edge and state-of-the-art that was so popular a few years back.

So, I got involved in a small group. But, because of the work schedule of my new job stocking shelves at a mostly regional grocery store/supercenter, I wound up unable to be involved in one of the more traditional small groups.  So, I had to choose to get involved with the men’s group that meets at 6:30am every other Friday.  The last session ended their discussion of Rob Bell’s book Velvet Elvis.  After some discussion of the last two chapters of the book and some general feelings about the book as a whole, conversation moved to a decision on what the next series would be.  It was decided to cover Philippians.  The group leader wanted to do an inductive study, so he wanted us all to read the book over and over again, in its entirety, before the next session, a week from this Friday.

Sadly, I’ve only read it once.  I just can’t seem to motivate myself to read it again.  Frankly, my initial thought is that I have no idea what he’s talking about because it seems that he is referring to things that were mentioned in some previous, now lost, correspondence from the church to Paul.  But one thing stuck out to me, and has been lingering in my head for the almost week that has passed since I read the book.

Yet it was good of you to share in my troubles.  Moreover, as you Philippians know, in the early days of your acquaintance with the gospel, when I set out from Macedonia, not one church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you only; for even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me aid more than once when I was in need. (Philippians 4:14-16 TNIV)

One of the things that really gets under my skin is the Church’s lack of aid given to those who are in need.  I am well aware that there are individual congregations who put out a lot; who support and send missionaries all over the world; who go out of their way to aid the homeless.  But, overall, there is a real lack of concern for those who are in need.

A number of times, I’ve been told the story of how, when my wife’s grandfather got sick, he and her grandmother stopped going to church.  He was sick, and she didn’t want to leave him home alone.  No one from their church came even to ask if everything was okay.  At one point, there was something wrong with the house, and the only people who would offer to volunteer some help were a couple of neighbors who were not Christians and “F—ed” and “G– D—ed” everything in sight as they worked.

When I say that there is a “real lack of concern for those who are in need,” that is what I am referring to.

I like how The Message renders this.

You Philippians well know, and you can be sure I’ll never forget it, that when I first left Macedonia province, venturing out with the Message, not one church helped out in the give-and-take of this work except you. You were the only one. Even while I was in Thessalonica, you helped out—and not only once, but twice.

Paul was dealing with an almost identical problem that we modern Christians deal with on a regular basis.  Even in the presence of another, perfectly capable, body of believers, it seemed like there was only one congregation who put out of their abundance to aid those who were in need, and it wasn’t even the local one.

Which reminds me of another, although very over-used, passage of Scripture.

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

As my wife and I have been reading through William Barclay’s commentary on the Gospel of Mark, we have found a lot of interesting things, most of which occur within his comments on various passages of Scripture.  But the other day, I noticed something that he did in his own translation of the passage that seemed to me to drastically change what Jesus was saying.  It was something that I actually had to do some further study myself on to make sure that what I was seeing was actually there.

Mark 11:23 is the passage in question.  In this familiar passage, Jesus tells us that if we have enough faith, we can move mountains.  The idea being that whatever difficulties we face in life, no matter how insurmountable, if we have faith, we can move those difficulties.  Not only can we move them aside, though, but we can eradicate them from our path completely.  Here’s the quote:

Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, “Go, throw yourself into the sea,” and do not doubt in your heart but believe that what you say will happen, it will be done for you. (Mark 11:23 TNIV)

We see this verse all the time, and we have heard it read countless times.  It is always the same and always says the exact same thing, no matter how dated the translation.  From the 1611 KJV to the Holman Christian Standard Bible, the idea is presented that if we believe that it will happen, God will do it for us.

Despite the tradition surrounding this passage, though, William Barclay renders it slightly differently.  His translation goes like this:

This is the truth I tell you – whoever will say to this mountain, “Be lifted up and be cast into the sea,” and who in his heart does not doubt, but believes that what he says is happening, it will be done for him.
(William Barclay.  The Daily Bible Study Series: The Gospel of Mark [Revised Edition].  Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press.  1975.  275. Emphasis mine.)

This seems to be quite a difference from the traditional rendering, so I took some time to do a fairly literal translation myself, and, despite my rusty Greek translation skills, this is what I came up with:

For truly I say to you that whoever says to this mountain, “Be lifted up and be cast into the sea,” and has no doubt in his heart, but believes that what he is saying is becoming [real], it shall be done for him.

Interestingly enough, Barclay doesn’t spend even a sentence of his commentary discussing this difference between the traditional rendering and the literal.  But I happen to think that this is a very significant difference. 

In the traditional rendering, we are led to think that if we pray hard enough that something will happen, and have the smallest amount of faith that it will, then we will get whatever we ask for in prayer.  This has, I feel, led to some horrid theology surrounding prayer, such as the idea that we have to “pray through” to God until He finally hears us.  Now, while there is some truth to this idea, I don’t think this is what Jesus is referring to here.  Rather, in this instance, Jesus is speaking of the kind of faith required to move mountains.  And Jesus is saying something drastically different from the “pray through” idea.

Here Jesus is calling us to active faith that doesn’t just believe that something will happen, but that acknowledges that something is happening in the here and now.  He isn’t calling us to a passive faith that waits for God to move, but an active faith that already sees God at work moving our difficulties from our path.

Which has an unbelievable impact on how we pray.  Rather than praying and hoping, we are to be praying and believing.  We see God at work and are, rather than asking Him to do something for us, asking Him to let us watch as He is doing it.  It isn’t a hope in the future, but a belief in the here and now.

It is the kind of prayer that Moses was participating in when he was up on the mountain.  Or the kind of prayer that Elijah was doing when he was in the mountains.  It is a prayer that acknowledges that we are already in God’s presence as we are praying. 

This is the kind of prayer that allows us to see God’s backside or to hear His voice or to reach out and touch Him.  This is the kind of prayer that Jesus is calling us to.  Are we praying that way or are we still waiting for God to do it for us even as He is doing it right in front of our bowed heads and closed eyes?

Generally speaking, your typical Conservative Christian doesn’t think of Karen Armstrong when seeking a picture of modern biblical scholarship.  Interestingly enough, they probably should.  Your most Conservative Christians interested in any form of scholarship are Calvinists, and, according to Karen Armstrong,

Calvin was convinced that the Bible had been written for simple, unlettered people and had been stolen from them by the scholars.  But he realized that they would need guidance.  Preachers must be well read in rabbinical and patristic exegesis and acquainted with contemporary scholarship. They must always see a biblical passage in its original context but at the same time they must make the Bible relevant to the daily needs of their congregations.
(Karen Armstrong.  The Bible: A Biography.  New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly Press.  2007.  165-166. Emphasis mine.)

Karen Armstrong is definitely familiar with contemporary biblical scholarship, and this is one of the things that makes The Bible: A Biography such an interesting and useful read, especially for the conservative Christian.

Unlike the authors of The Birth of Satan, who state themselves that they treat the Bible like it is any other ancient document, Armstrong takes the Bible seriously.  From the outset of her work, she treats the Bible as though it is a spiritual text.  In doing so, she responds to its history in a manner that elevates it to a revered status.  From the time when the Law was passed on orally to its first appearance as a written text, she never ceases to emphasize the spiritual and religious significance of its words.

She begins her biography discussing the beginnings of the Torah, or Law and then follows the evolution of the Law into a written code of ethics.  In the process, she emphasizes the fact that, for the ancient Jews, “Scripture” was not a closed work.  Because God was infinite, His revelations were infinite as well.  Two people could come up with two vastly different interpretations of a law and both be right.

The interesting thing here is that, unlike other works of Higher Criticism, she takes the Bible’s side when it comes to the influence of other cultures on the Biblical text.  She views this influence as reactionary in a way.  The Jewish people were seeking to articulate their story and show the supremacy of their God.  To cite an example from the book:

In the ancient Near East, gods usually created the cosmos after a series of violent, terrifying battles; indeed, the Israelites told stories of Yahweh slaying divine sea-monsters at the beginning of time.  But [the Torah's] creation myth was non-violent.  God simply spoke a word of command and one by one the components of our world came into being.
(Armstrong, 28)

This shows the supreme power of Yahweh in that this god doesn’t have to kill a whole bunch of bad guys who get in the way to free himself to be able to create.  This God can simply speak, and the elements obey.

She then discusses the place of Scripture in the lives of Jews at the time of the destruction of the temple.  The majority of the Law could not be literally obeyed without the presence of a priesthood and temple, so a radical reinterpretation of what it means to obey the Law took place.  After the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D., the religious leaders spoke of the household as a temple and of the men of the house as the priest.  Each home was the place of religious instruction and ritual fulfillment.

Then comes Jesus.  At this point, her writing diverges along two separate and yet strangely similar stories.  While the Christians are creating their own Scripture in the form of the Gospels and epistles, the Jews are doing the same thing.  In the place of the Gospels, the Jews were writing two works, the Mishnah and a later commentary on it.  Unlike Christians, though, whose Scriptures quote from the Torah and the Writings, the Mishnah does so much less, if at all.  For the Jews of this time, God was still revealing Himself to them.  His revelation was ongoing.  For Christians, on the other hand, Jesus was viewed as the culmination of God’s revelation of Himself to humankind.

She then moves into a discussion of midrash, or exegesis, of the Scriptural text.  Both Christians and Jews had their own, distinct exegeses of the text.  But, interestingly enough, there was a common lens through which to interpret Scripture: love.  Armstrong quotes Augustine on the matter:

Whoever, therefore, thinks that he understands the divine Scriptures or any part of them so that it does not build the double love of God and of our neighbor does not understand it at all.
(Armstrong, 124)

She also points out that Jews at the time had a similar way of viewing Scripture.  The prevailing interpretive lens for them was compassion.  No matter what law or what story, everything must be read in such a way as to point to the underlying theme of compassion for others.

She then discusses Lectio Divina and how both Jews and Christians had their own forms of this.  For the Jews, they sought to internalize the Law, for Christians, they sought to internalize the Gospel message.  For both Jews and Christians, this was primarily done in the context of something like a monastery.

She then discusses the era of Sola Scriptura.  Both Jews and Christians also had their own forms of this.  In response to a growing body of people questioning commonly held ideas, whether right or wrong, the religious felt that they needed some certainty.  Scripture gave them that certainty.

She then briefly discusses Scripture in the 18 and 1900’s.

She ends by asking a question: What are we to do with this information?  After her brief, yet detailed, discussion of the history of the Bible and the way it has been read, she brings us to an application.  Like Calvin, she calls us to both be familiar with Higher Criticism and also make these ancient, sometimes contradictory, texts relevant again.

For the more Conservative reader, this book will cause much stress.  She refers to various Biblical stories as “myths,” which, for the literalist, is simply a no-no.  She seems to call into question the exclusivity of Christianity by comparing the similarities in the developments of, for example, mystical Christianity and Kabbalah.

These interpretive issues aside, this book presents in a reverent and beautifully-written manner the prevailing thought among adherents of Higher Criticism.  It gives us the information about the formation of the Bible without leaving us divorced from the religion of it.  In fact, she states, in so many words, that Higher Criticism, for all it has given us, has left us without a religion at all.  For all it has done for our understanding of where the Bible came from, she says, it has left us without something that is vitally important to our humanity.  But, unlike the majority of Higher Criticism adherents, she doesn’t want us left without our religion.  And in this work, she doesn’t leave us wanting.

When I posed my question the other day, I thought there would be more response than there was.  That is okay, though.  What responses I did get were instrumental in my writing this post and continuing the discussion briefly.  This also plays into a topic I hinted at a few posts back about Jesus and His view of Scripture, the Law in particular.

Ethics seems, overall, to be a very subjective thing.  What is right for one person may not be what is right for another.  This is not to say that there are no moral absolutes.  On the contrary, there are many.  Not murdering, not raping children, and loving our enemies are a few.  But when it comes to our individual, every-day existence, things begin to get a little fuzzy.  At times, the line between what is right and what is wrong becomes blurred.  The question I posed the other day is a case in point.

For starters, you have what I suggested that Jesus calls us to set a priority and help who needs the most help.  Jesus is very clear on this matter.  He states,

It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners. (Mark 2:17 TNIV)

Jesus came to do for us what we are unable to do for ourselves, namely free us from slavery to sin.  And, after ascending, He entrusted us with the incarnational task of doing the same.  But this is where the line begins to blurr.

On the one hand, the drug addict needs healing.  She is the sick one.  The infant has parents who can take care of him.  So, in light of Jesus stating that it is the sick who need help, it is the addict that is in the most need.

But Jesus doesn’t make it that cut and dried.  He also makes it clear that protecting children is of the utmost importance to Him, even going so far as to condemn to death those who would harm or stand in the way of children coming to Him.  The reality is, a child in the presence of someone with a drug problem immediately puts the child in danger and makes it more possible for him to sin.

So what do we do?  What is the proper ethic?

I think this shows how truly subjective the Law really is.  In fact, Jesus defends this idea very bluntly.

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “What is written in the Law?” [Jesus] replied. “How do you read it?” (Luke 10:25-26 TNIV)

When the legal expert asks what gains a person eternal life, Jesus doesn’t tell him.  Rather, Jesus asks him, “What does the Law say to you?”  Jesus asks for the man’s legal opinion.  Jesus is changing how we are to interpret God’s word.

In practical terms, Jesus is asking the same of us.  How do we interpret the Scriptures?  Jesus is not defending a closed-canon approach to Scripture where the Bible is our instruction manual and has all the answers to every question we can possibly ask.  Rather, Jesus is saying that revelation is an ongoing process.  Through God’s word, God will reveal to us His will not just in a corporate setting, but on an individual basis as well.  And, sometimes, one individual’s understanding may seem to be at odds with another’s.

Ancient Rabbis did not view this as a problem.  They saw God as infinite and therefore His revelations were infinite.  God was full of tensions and seeming contradictions, but this is because He is incomprehensible.  And if God is incomprehensible, then so is His will.  For one person, particularly the parent, protecting their infant is their primary responsibility.  For another, their calling may be to help the addict.  Putting one’s focus, because of what they believe God is calling them to, on one person or the other is not a problem.  God’s will is infinite and therefore no two people have the same individual calling.

I guess ethics is a little more subjective than we want to think it is.