I GOT A TOUGH QUESTION THIS WEEK.
It was about some of the Apostle Paul’s seemingly unChristlike attitudes and bad advice.
The writer didn’t ID which ones. He didn’t need to.
- Paul sent runaway slaves back to their slave masters. Philemon
- He told women to cork it in church and let men do the talking. 1 Corinthians 14:34
- And he stopped a hair short of calling gay people perverts. Romans 1:26-27, nicknamed “the clobber passage”
The writer asked this:
“In my mind, the implications of this are pretty big. What does it mean for how we view scripture? And if scripture is not the infallable word of God, then there are not many churches or ministries that would accept my membership if I wouldn’t be able to agree with the normal evangelical statement of faith. Do you have anything that would help me as I wrestle through this?”
Yes I do.
My friend left the church
A good friend of mine left the church he attended over this very issue.
The pastor taught that Paul got it wrong on several key social issues, and that Paul was reflecting attitudes in his own time and culture. And the preacher added that Paul’s attitudes are not a good fit for our day and time.
Even most evangelicals seem to agree that Paul’s advice that runaway slaves go back to their slave masters is advice they would not recommend to anyone enslaved today. And Paul’s attitudes toward women isn’t something that’s going to go over particularly well in most Christian households with women. Including the households of conservative evangelicals.
Some churches go so far as to say Paul got it wrong on homosexuality as well. I think most folks today who know and love homosexual family members and friends understand that homosexuality is often not a choice and would not be the choice the person would make given the hostility they face.
I’m guessing the writer thinks Paul missed the mark on these three points. I won’t argue that. I’ll just tell you what I advised him.
“If you find yourself agreeing with the idea that there’s a lot of humanity recorded in the scripture because humans have been involved in preserving it and copying it for millennia, you are going to find yourself out of sync with the teachings and sermons of many in evangelical and mainline churches.
So what?
I told him if he can find a church with engaging preaching, music that doesn’t break the ears, and people who treat him kindly, he should consider going to that church.
“Go to that church even if you don’t agree with what the preacher teaches about eternal security or free will or who’s going to heaven and who’s going to hell and whether or not you have to tithe. Don’t flaunt your differences. But don’t deny them either.
When you find yourself needing to talk about what you believe, keep the conversation upbeat. Don’t raise your voice or call the other people idiots even though you know they are. Just go to church and listen to God’s spirit speak to you there. Be kind to the people around you and if the music is too loud, move as far away from the speakers as you can.”
We’re not likely to find a church whose teachings we agree with on every important subject.
In fact, I’m not sure how important it is to find a church like that. But I’m convinced it’s important to find one that keeps us thinking and searching for what is true and that allows us to let go of ideas we’ve outgrown as we’ve matured in the faith and learned more about what it means to follow Jesus.
What about the Bible?
The writer wanted to know if this less than traditional approach undermines the divinity within scripture.
I’ll be thinking about that for a while.
In the meantime, a word of advice from my seminary theology prof: Shepherds didn’t go to Bethlehem to worship the feeding trough that held Jesus. They went to worship Jesus.
We don’t worship the Bible, which contains the story of Jesus. That would make it an idol. We worship Jesus .
Are there mistakes in the Bibles we hold in our hands?
Sure. Need me to point out a few? I’m working with Numbers now. That writer seemed to need a calculator. Or perhaps the numbers got miscopied sometime during the past 3,000 years.
Do you think?
Whatever may be lacking in today’s copies of the Bible, I would expect God’s Spirit to make up the difference…at least on the most important points:
- Love God.
- Love People.
Anyone who feels satisfied with where they are on that is running this race far ahead of me.
Stephen M. Miller,
I enjoy your opinion and thoughts on the Bible, on life, and on religion. I agree with your ideas about the Bible, especially on the above topic. Over the years I have grown from being an Evangelical Christian to a more mainline, open liberal. Although, always a United Methodist, I used to be a believer in the fashion of teacher, Norman L. Geisler, but moved away from such a conservative view of the Bible because what I learned at the seminary at Boston University School of Theology, a UMC seminary, was much of what you wrote about fallible humans writing under the inspiration of God’s Spirit. I write sermons while I pray that God’s Spirit is leading me in what I write, but I still find my own culture’s values and mores filter into my writings. My transformation to become more Christlike in my thoughts and behavior is an ever-growing process. I haven’t arrived yet. At seminary, I learned a lot about the Bible and about men and women who are homosexuals. I became friends with many gays at B.U. and since graduating have become friends with others who live that lifestyle and I feel humans need to be more loving and accepting of people who are different in sexuality, race, religion, and politics.
Thanks Richard. These are tough questions, especially for ministers as they lead their people.
Always love reading your spin on things. It makes it real, and makes me smile.
Thank you Steve for your ministry. You said so much, that it would take a treatise to answer dome of these questions you posed. Lets’s just say that the Scripture is inspired — that’s all the Scripture says. Let me suggest that the Bible does not condemn homosexuality — the so called “clobber passages” are dealing with perversity behavior (Romans1) in the Roman Empire, pedophilia, and male prostitution religious practices. Most Bible scholars believe this and there are many books written on this subject. In modern evangelicalism, so much of the Bible is used as a weapon against gay people, and frankly, I’m tired of hearing false ideas to separate the body of Christ. Another example is the literal six day Creation without knowing anything about the grammatical and literary structure of Genesis 1.
The Apostle Paul’s writing on Women and and slaves has to do with the time he lived in. He wanted the get the Christian movement off the ground — religious leaders would never have recognize women elders in the congregation (as was the custom in all the churches AT THAT TIME). In fact, the Apostle Paul, is the most INCLUSIVE leader in the Christian church! Women were allowed to learn the Scriptures in Christianity, where Judaism forbade it. There is so much of the epistles that needs to understood in the time it was written.
You’ve got a head on your shoulders, Wayne. The questions about Paul spin around how to interpret what he says. He can come off as a good guy or as a jerk, depending on the way we interpret what he said. Either way, we should cut the guy some slack. We didn’t walk in his sandals. And we couldn’t have kept up with him if we did.
One Bible is inspired, persevered and intact today. Every word is Holy Spirit inspired and the Apostle Paul was chosen by the resurrected Christ to take his revealed mysteries to the nations and Jews. The Homosexual comments are from God, not Paul. They are true today. (My son is gay.) The slave issue has been taken out of context: If they were Jew of the Jew, they were commanded to treat them like fellow members of the body of Christ. They were not the slaves of the Babylonians, Egyptians, Romans, etc. They were more like indentured servants.
Lastly, there are very few churches today that rightly divide prophecy from mystery and dont even know how to pronounce dispensation let alone teach it.
Thanks for writing. I think a follow up question some Christians might ask is how you know the Holy Spirit sanctioned every word in the Bible, whether it was the words on the original documents (which apparently have been lost) or the words in the English Bibles we have today.