I want to share some principles that have kept me honest when tackling problems relating to faith, Christ, or the church. It was definitely the case for me that nearly every time I found myself with a serious issue, a critical look at my reasoning revealed that I was not following one of these rules of engagement, so to speak. This also seems to hold true when I talk with others, so I don’t think it was just me.
Please note, this isn’t a lesson on how to interpret the Bible. There are many of those out there, all of them taught by people who are way smarter than I am. Rather, these are easy principles you can apply to many situations, not least of which is your personal study. On that note, here they are in no particular order.
Remove the emotion from your intellectual objections.
All too often, our not so well-crafted reasons are made without ever realizing that their roots are buried in emotional scar tissue. Our previous experiences can and frequently do give us a bias, leading us to believe and repeat groundless statements without the due diligence they deserve. Our arguments might take many forms, but the common theme is this: they are often built to support our own desires, or to confirm what we in our anger or pain have already decided is true.
Even worse, how we feel about a specific topic can taint the way we look at the entire framework that surrounds it. For example, if we very much want to sleep around and live our life in the flesh, we might craft objections to the clear guidance of Scripture. If those fail, we might also protest the validity of Scripture itself.
We simply can’t reason well if we’ve allowed ourselves to be influenced away from objectivity. That’s just the reality of it. Our positions will always be questionable if the emotional baggage we carry leaves us, for lack of a better term, under the influence. The important thing, then, becomes to reflect sincerely and try to separate the two – emotion and reason – so that we can be confident the conclusions we’ve reached are unimpaired.
No blaming human error on God.
We’ve all seen this. Arguments designed to pierce straight to the compassion of the heart and undermine the goodness of Christians, and by extension Christ Himself. These claims are numerous, emotionally charged, and misleading. It’s an overgeneralization at best, and an unfair attempt at eroding the credibility of the church. Human beings have done bad things since the beginning of time. They have done them in the name of many deities and under many leaders, and they have done them for many reasons. I’ll spoil the Bible for you: that’s kind of the point.
God gave us free will, and we continuously mess it all up. What we should not do is blame that on God. We don’t get to take the misdeeds of a minority and apply their motives to everyone with a shared belief. Jesus is not responsible for what evil people do in His name, or for foolish people being led to ill intent by wolves in sheep’s clothing.
The problem is worse in places without God, and it’s not even close. Don’t take my word for it; do your own research. Look into regimes and cultures outside of the Judeo-Christian sphere of influence and see what you find. The truth will not be pleasant. Alternatively, think of the countless millions of Christians that are quietly helping both neighbor and stranger without a thought for gratitude or recognition. They will never make headlines, but you are surrounded by them.
Show me a Christian who is behaving wickedly, and I will show you a Christian who is not following Christ. Honestly, you show me a Christian who is being mean, and I will show you a Christian that is not doing what their Bible tells them to do.
Don’t bite the hand that is trying to feed you because it reminds you of a hand that once struck you. They are not the same, and you might miss your chance to eat.
Don’t confuse cultural context with doctrine, guidance, or agreement.
God is not in the habit of driving culture.
Think of it this way. Free will is of critical importance to our worldview. Our free will – and what we did with it – is central to the entire Biblical narrative and is in large part the foundation upon which everything else rests. Our sole contribution to salvation is a free will decision to repent and have faith. If our free will is so important to God that He is willing to let us make terrible mistakes and then be held accountable for them, would not the culture that exists around us be an extension of that? Even the Jewish people, called by God to be a pure and priestly nation – a covenant that they agreed to, by the way – lived in a world and a culture that was largely driven by mankind and as fundamentally flawed as we are.
We have to understand the Bible in this context. Those books were written at a certain point in time, for a specific audience, often with a specific objective in mind. Moreover, the speakers and authors – even Jesus – needed to communicate and relate to the crowds they were facing. I am unaware of any evidence to indicate that the Apostles, for all their spiritual gifts and knowledge gained at the feet of Jesus, would have been any less of a product of their culture than anyone else.
So then, while we can and should apply Biblical principles today, we must be disciplined in how we carry them forward. Conversely, we must be careful that we don’t read doctrine or guidance into the context of a culture that predates our own by thousands of years. Polygamy and slavery are two easy examples; hot topics that incite a lot of emotion, and must be thoughtfully unpacked if we are to do them justice.
You might hear this articulated as ‘descriptive vs prescriptive,’ which is fair enough. What matters is that you take the time to carefully consider the text, and the context, in order to discern whether the Bible is relaying God’s approval or simply telling you what happened.
Keep the big picture in mind.
This one is simple, but you will miss the mark without it.
Before we begin to question God’s will – and I think there is room for questions – we owe Him the respect that He is due. By that I mean we should take the entire concept of God and apply it to the problem. He is not a menu. We don’t get to pick the items we want, discard the rest, and then complain that the meal wasn’t to our liking.
All too often I hear, ‘If there is a God, etc.,’ and the first thing I notice is an unfair representation of His involvement. If we want to involve God, we must involve also the idea that He existed before time, that He sees and knows all things, that the future is like an open book to Him. That His purview is the expanse of creation, not just the time and space we occupy right now.
Most people are ill equipped to lead a cub scout troop, let alone all of reality. If we acknowledge that and at least try to keep the big picture in mind, it becomes a little easier to take the guidance of Scripture for what it is: inspired, deeper than our understanding, and ultimately given with our own best interest in mind.
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