Last night in theology class I was exposed to a new understanding that is kind of rocking my world...or at least my understanding of the bible.
The Jews of Jesus' time did not live in a constant expectancy for the Messiah. It was something they would yearn for during times of oppression, such as when they were ruled over by the Romans, which is the context that Jesus arrived into. And even the concept of a Messiah was not one of a soul savior, but rather a king or ruler that would save them from subjugation by the Romans. This brings a whole new light on Jesus' question to Peter...who do the people say I am? and Who do you say I am? It makes sense that Jesus kept telling people he encountered to not tell others about him as noone knew what the Messiah was really about...ushering in the kingdom of God on earth, rather than a finite kingdom of man. All of this I had a sense of before, but the idea that the Jewish people were not waiting expectantly for a Messiah (perhaps in the way Christians are waiting for the return of Jesus with consistent expectancy) really makes me see Jesus and the Bible in a whole new light.
There's more. With regard to the New Testament, I knew that Paul's epistles were letters to church's that he helped plant. But what I had never really contemplated that these letters were the work of a missionary taking the gospel truths and putting them into a new culture, with new customs and understandings. So, the Bible we read, and accept as truth for us today, is actually a recontextualized presentation of the gospel. This has such huge implications for me...
This idea reminds me of the book Peace Child. It is about missionaries in Papau New Guinea that work to bring the gospel to a tribe that offer their children as sacrifices in order to make peace with another. The missionaries used this practice as a way of describing what God did by sending his Son to die to make peace with all of humanity. They contextualized the gospel to make it understandable to the tribe. But I wonder...what if we as first world, wealthy western people were told to accept this tribal understanding as the gospel and apply it to our lives. What would be the implications for us trying to understand and practice the gospel within the context of sacrificial killings of children, community/tribal living, etc.?
Would accepting their context mean that we would need to begin practicing sacrifices to understand the gospel? Would it mean that we need to start living in tribes so we can practice the gospel in the same way? Would it even make sense for us to engage their gospel since it is two very different cultures?
As most ideas, this one leads me to the idea of women in the church. Are we imposing a first century, Greco-Roman concept of women's roles to our 21st century context in order to stay faithful to the bible's teachings? If Paul had written planted churches in a society where women had equal status and education as men, would he have written the same admonitions of women? If Jesus entered our current world how would he have approached us? I can't imagine that he would enter with parables on the church steps and sermons on mountain tops.
In some ways all of this gives me a new excitement and hope about the biblical text. It holds so much more opportunity and freedom to me to explore the themes and ideas rather than the actual facts and propositions. In other ways it fills me with doubt and skepticism about the usefulness of the bible to me today. As we move further away from that context of 2,000 years ago, should the bible become less significant? It seems like in our stretching to make the bible relevant for today so much evil and harm is done toward others. What would the church look like if sought first the kingdom of God rather than the biblical text?
4 comments:
These are awesome thoughts. You must go to MHGS. ;)
I think that I'm going to have a lot to say on this, so I hope you don't mind a long post.
My journey with the Bible through the years has been a journey from mystic to rationalist, and back to mystic again.
I started secretly reading the Bible when I was 12. I had to keep it a secret from my parents, because I knew that they would be concerned with the idea of me "filling my mind with all of that dogma, fear, and alienating paradigms." I had been raised with a whole library of sacred texts from various faiths and I would pour over them again and again. I was not a pious kid, I just wanted to be like Luke Skywalker and figure out a way to levitate things with my mind.
I approached the Bible like any book: you start at the beginning, reading out loud if neccessary to get the tone and character drama.
When I visited various churches in my town, I couldn't find any that actually read from the Bible. They all seemed to focus around singing stupid songs and then listening to a guy talk about 10 steps to a happier marriage or the true meaning of Christmas, etc...
When I was in high school I started to get involved with a college ministry where I started learning how to excel in the craft of defining truth using out-of-context, verse-by-verse exegesis.
I was never very good at this method, but I tried really hard to fit within that paradigm, since that was the only accepted way to approach the text in the Christian community I was in.
After 5 years of this, I had managed to work my way up in the ranks of Christian hierarchy and somehow found myself at a leadership conference in Malibu, BC. I sat in on a workshop entitled "Falling In Love with God's Word." For some reason I recorded the whole workshop and have listened to it at least 20 times since.
I'll never forget when this speaker yelled, "just READ the Bible- and don't try to LEARN anything from it!!" Those words sounded like absolute heresy to my ears and it frustrated me. It sounded like this guy had fallen off the train to liberal-sville.
But he challenged us to try it for ourselves- "Just read an entire book of the Bible in one sitting. Don't stop at every passage and figure out what it means. Read it outloud. Don't use commentaries. Just enjoy the story! And do this 30 times in 30 days- the same book, 30 consecutive times! And see what happens..."
I didn't. But then a couple years later, I found the audio again and decided to try it- with the Gospel of John. (I was an unemployed snowboard bum so I had plenty of time on my hands)
I now realize how important context is to an understanding of Scripture. (Of any text, really.)
Your questions that you've raised here are beautiful. I agree that the role of women in the church needs to be addressed in light of social context and we should be aware of the syncretism of gender hierarchy that has influenced the church.
I think that, if you are able to approach any text with a spirit of empathy and an appreciation of story- then even a 3000 year old text can become incredibly relevant to our present context.
Thanks Chris for your thoughts. Your journey sounds like one that so many are going through. It is almost like a returning to a child-like (not child-ish) reading of the text.
Malibu, BC...is that the Young Life camp? I have spent a couple of weeks there myself as a YL leader. It is itself a mystical place that can draw us into the mystery of God!
You spent a couple of weeks there? Wow, then you know how cool it is. Malibu is so incredible... especially off season, when you're one of only a few people around. I have so many wonderful memories there. Truly some of the sweetest years of my life, my mentor, Jon, and I would go up there together a lot. I also worked for Beyond in '98 and brought my YL boys up there for discipleship week a few years in a row.
Where did you lead YL?
I was a YL leader in Scottsdale/Phoenix for about 5 years. We took kids to Malibu two or three of those years for a week. I know many people that have done Beyond too, but I was never up for it. I bet if we got into it we would find we know a lot of the same people...YL is such a small world!
A friend of mine Google Earthed Malibu once and it was so amazing to see the tiny dot of a camp surrounded by the massive peaks. Just beautiful!
Blessings.
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