Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Inerrancy and Bad Metaphors

"Inerrancy" is a term I have been prone to throw around casually with regard to the Bible. Most people with a passing familiarity with Christian belief take it as standard doctrine that the Bible is inerrant, or at least infallible. Inerrant states that the Bible is free from all errors or contradictions and is true in every aspect, spiritual and historical, while infallible is a more limited understanding that the Bible is true in spiritual and practical matters with the possibility for minor contradictions as a historical account.

I'd always approached discussions with biblical inerrancy as one of those standard Christian assumptions. If you're a Christian, let's agree that we both assume the Bible is true and therefore use it as a benchmark for any other conclusions or inferences we reach. If you're not a believer, then for the sake of this conversation, we'll treat the Bible as a useful historical and cultural text and exclude biblical inerrancy from our list of givens.

The idea of biblical inerrancy has only recently come to the forefront of theological discussion. Before modernism and postmodernism pushed the reader to consider the source and author's perspective for a written text, most people wouldn't think to call the Bible inerrant because it was assumed to be so. But now we are trained to read between the lines, put things in context, research amplifying information, ask who the author is and what his motivation might have been.

So I was sitting in bible study one day and we were considering one of King David's psalms. And we were running into a wall with one of the psalm's phrases; I'm not sure which, but for "a man after God's own heart," King David says a lot of angsty, emo things. So I asked, do we have to take everything in the psalms to be true?

Some girl: What do you mean, Matt? Don't you believe the Bible is true?

Well, sure I do, I said. I take it as historically preserved and accurate, and I take it as moral and spiritual truth as well.

Then you have to take the psalms as truth too.

What I'm saying is, even if the Bible is historically accurate and spiritually true, there are things said in the Bible that we don't take as truth. "Am I my brother's keeper?" for example. So here, included in the Bible, is a collection of poetry and songs written by a King of Israel. Good stuff, to be sure, but infallible?

The girl didn't understand my question, which might be just as well for reasons I'll bring up in a few paragraphs.

I recounted this story with another friend, my friend who's studying to become a pastor, and he shared his perspective. He said he didn't like to say anything about the Bible that the Bible doesn't claim about itself. This practice seems wise, since Proverbs 30 (and Matthew 5) warns against adding to Scripture. And my friend said that the strongest statement the Bible makes about itself is that it is useful:

"But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." -- 2 Timothy 3:16

(On a related note, it's clear from 2 Peter 3:15-16 that Peter at least considered Paul's epistles to be in the category of Scripture.)

The perceived danger with disavowing biblical inerrancy is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If the Bible is possibly flawed, then everything we thought was true tumbles into a whirling chaotic mess of doubt, and what do we base our faith on? Jesus Himself says (Uh oh! Did He actually say it?) that we are to follow His words as if we were building a house on a solid foundation.

My friend and I agreed that we generally believe in Biblical infallibility and probably inerrancy. The logic "God is perfect, the Bible is God's book, therefore the Bible is perfect" is not a watertight syllogism, but it's certainly tenable. Maybe there is no statement in the Bible that claims its own inerrancy, but there are still very good arguments based on archeological consistency, textual preservation, and the personal and historical work of the Holy Spirit that would give excellent bases to take the Bible as a book of truth, and moreover, truth that transcends any other source of truth out there in the canon of things-written-down. If people want to go on believing and telling each other that the Bible is inerrant and infallible, I don't take it as a bad thing because in all honesty, I'm still part of that camp, even if I might start to avoid saying it explicitly. And sometimes if you don't throw that card down on the table right away, you'll interact better with the other players at the poker table, and who knows, even learn a thing or two yourself.

While the poker metaphor is still hot, there's a definite wild card here, and that's the omnipresent Biblical phrase "w(W)ord of God." It's a definite player because it shows up everywhere in the Bible and there are so many significant things said about the "w(W)ord of God." John 1 ascribes that title to Jesus and His incarnation, but is that a universal application of the term? Consider as an example Psalm 30:4-5:

"Who has gone up to heaven and come down?
Who has gathered up the wind in the hollow of his hands?
Who has wrapped up the waters in his cloak?
Who has established all the ends of the earth?
What is his name, and the name of his son?
Tell me if you know!
Every word of God is flawless;
he is a shield to those who take refuge in him."

It would be speculative to delve into this discussion without more advanced etymological scholarship. I'm pretty sure I need to either find or become a Greek and Hebrew scholar before I can really say anything intelligent about the matter.

I've told you that my friend Peter thinks the first eleven chapters of Genesis are parabolic in nature. And my friend Orestes interprets the book of Job as fabular. Clearly, Scripture is not something to take with blanket literalism, not if we respect it, but a dynamic entity with which we as Christians will have to wrestle. You know the great thing about wrestling with something? You have to get up close and personal with it.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Psalm 102

It's been a while since I considered a psalm. For some time, I've felt pretty distant from God emotionally, so the "hide not thou thy face from me" aspect drew me to the 102nd psalm. Here begins the commentary.


1 Hear my prayer, O LORD;
let my cry for help come to you.

The most sound way to read the diction is that the second clause augments the first; that is, the psalmist pleads for the prayer to come through to the Lord's attention. Alternatively, I like to think it could also be him asking that his cries for help be directed to the Lord, as opposed to some other false earthly source of hope or aid. It's a common failing to look to false doctrines or flawed humans when we should be looking to God; therefore, his prayer is appropriate.

2 Do not hide your face from me
when I am in distress.
Turn your ear to me;
when I call, answer me quickly.

3 For my days vanish like smoke;
my bones burn like glowing embers.

More than a time of dire trouble, I've recently been concerned with the temporal nature of life. How multiple days seem to pass quickly, uneventfully, without clear meaning, irrevocably. It's a distressing thought, well expressed by the line "my days vanish like smoke." It's not only times of tribulation, but also times of stagnancy, where it is well to ask God to enter into our lives.

4 My heart is blighted and withered like grass;
I forget to eat my food.

5 Because of my loud groaning
I am reduced to skin and bones.

6 I am like a desert owl,
like an owl among the ruins.

7 I lie awake; I have become
like a bird alone on a roof.

Again, I'd posit that we wither and atrophy not only at the presence of suffering and persecution, but also in the absence of a vibrant and dynamic relationship with the God who is our only source of life and vitality. Food and sleep lose significance and life loses color.

8 All day long my enemies taunt me;
those who rail against me use my name as a curse.

9 For I eat ashes as my food
and mingle my drink with tears

10 because of your great wrath,
for you have taken me up and thrown me aside.

11 My days are like the evening shadow;
I wither away like grass.

Here we enter into the question of whether the psalmist's sentiment, that the Lord has wrathfully thrown him aside, is theologically viable or not. I once got into an argument in Bible Study where one girl couldn't understand what I was asking: just because we accept the Bible and the Psalms therein to be true books, does that necessarily make the psalms themselves infallible expressions of truth?

12 But you, O LORD, sit enthroned forever;
your renown endures through all generations.

13 You will arise and have compassion on Zion,
for it is time to show favor to her;
the appointed time has come.

14 For her stones are dear to your servants;
her very dust moves them to pity.

15 The nations will fear the name of the LORD,
all the kings of the earth will revere your glory.

Recently, I was reflecting on the whole emphasis on God's glory and fame, and how big of a deal His reputation seems to be. I think a lot of the questions we have about the matter stem from the more self-centered cause that we want to be ourselves recognized too. Doubters will ask, why is God so concerned with His own glory? If He were so great, wouldn't His reputation be pretty immaterial to Him? And the answer that I find reasonable is that in a hierarchical paradigm where God is all-that omnipotent and expansive and awesome, the natural response of subordinate creation would be awe and worship. It just makes sense. Therefore any less of a response, any more casual or less reverent, is inappropriate and out of place, reflective of something broken in the relationship.

16 For the LORD will rebuild Zion
and appear in his glory.

17 He will respond to the prayer of the destitute;
he will not despise their plea.

18 Let this be written for a future generation,
that a people not yet created may praise the LORD :

19 "The LORD looked down from his sanctuary on high,
from heaven he viewed the earth,

20 to hear the groans of the prisoners
and release those condemned to death."

21 So the name of the LORD will be declared in Zion
and his praise in Jerusalem

22 when the peoples and the kingdoms
assemble to worship the LORD.

It's a pretty powerful idea that future generations not yet created would praise the Lord because of what their predecessors wrote down about Him.

23 In the course of my life, he broke my strength;
he cut short my days.

24 So I said:
"Do not take me away, O my God, in the midst of my days;
your years go on through all generations.

The author seems to be reminding the Lord of his own mortality. Other question: if the author's life is so tiresome and ill-begotten, why does he ask for more years? A few possibilities come to mind: certain aspects of our God-given lives are more advantageous to live out and experience than the glories of heaven, or the author has some purpose or work he still wants to finish, or the author is fallible and is expressing a misguided desire to stay on earth and defer his reunion with eternity.

25 In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.

26 They will perish, but you remain;
they will all wear out like a garment.
Like clothing you will change them
and they will be discarded.

People probably read verses like the ones above and think, oh, it means that God lasts forever and has an eternal nature, but I suspect few people have thought about the heavens, the stars and galaxies and nebulae billions of years old, being discarded and changed like used garments. We can't even fathom how crazy ancient certain celestial phenomena are in comparison to how long we've existed, much less the timelessness that the psalmist ascribes to God by comparison.

27 But you remain the same,
and your years will never end.

28 The children of your servants will live in your presence;
their descendants will be established before you."

Do we have that same communal and multi-generational attitude about faith? When I think of my faith with the Lord, do I think of myself and my ministry, or do I aspire to a long-lasting vision of thousands of descendants enjoying the fruits of a tree I labored to plant right now? God sees His work on a large scale, and we would understand Him better if we endeavored to adopt that mindset as well.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Hypocrisy

is the one word that almost always comes to conversation when people mention why they disdain or rejected the church. The mention of the word implies that there was once a genuine interest in what the church was centered around: Christ, His mission of love, and our resultant mission of love; but when stark disparities arose between the "talk" and the "walk," people were turned off and walked.

My friend Joe mentioned this experience last night at dinner, remarking that he had always been expecting a church to be passionate and proactive about going out and doing something good, vice showing up once a week and checking off their good deed for the day. It's an almost archetypal commentary, albeit with many singular exceptions.

Hypocrisy is, at its most distilled definition, saying one thing and doing another. The fact that the church is errant, that its members are sinful, does not alone make it hypocritical: we espouse a doctrine that claims that man is depraved and sinful and that our sinful nature is everything absolutely wrong in the world. Our story is a story about Christ's love, not our own. In fact, it's a story of the redemption of our fallen nature through no action of our own. If we sin, we are simply being consistent.

But we also preach a doctrine of love and redemption, and if people see us as hypocritical, it's because they expect that love is transformational. That if we as Christians really encountered and believed in this amazing, divine love that we claim to experience, on a daily basis, we would be different people altogether.

The broad fact that so many outsiders see Christians as hypocritical means that there could be a universal expectation or understanding that true love transforms people into their better selves, and if you believe in good creation, into who they were meant to be. In this age of deconstruction and relativity, I think that a universal assumption like that is remarkable.

In this discourse, I sort of bastardized a lot of significant parts of our theology. The Bible does speak to Christians walking by the guidance of the Holy Spirit to lead transformed and perfected lives of righteousness and love. It does espouse a definite morality for the adherence of its followers. It doesn't say we can get away with murder because we are fallen, but that we are through Christ "a new creation." But the point still stands: people expect the love we talk about to be life-changing and epic. People are interested in the idea of life-changing love. Aren't we supposed to have the ultimate answer for that? If there's hypocrisy anywhere, there it is.

RAOK

Since I graduated college and moved three times in the course of about a year, it's been challenging to find solid Christian fellowship and community. You find a church or a bible study or community group, and most of the regulars already have their preset social circles. They're not trying to be exclusive: it's just human nature.

Here in this particular phase of my career, I'm a hard guy to get to know because of I'm on 12 hour days, rotating shift-work. In other words, I basically cannot attend or commit to anything regularly because I might be starting my day at 4 am or 4pm, who knows. The mercurial schedule makes it so that I can attend church maybe once or twice a month and bible study with about the same frequency.

My friend Nathan happens to be my friend, not because it was easy or convenient for him, but because he makes it a priority and an intention to be my friend. When I first met up with him about five months ago, he said he really just likes hanging out with me and wanted to be my friend. Nathan is a newlywed, which means he has extra incentive to stay in the house, especially at odd hours of the night. But he's chosen to make room in his schedule for me, often last-minute or at unconventional times of day, purely because he values our relationship.

That's the thing that I'll remember most about Nathan. Not his earthy wisdom, not his Christ-centered ethos, not his sense of humor, not his insight, although all those things are certainly there, but his simple demonstration of kindness and love in going out of his way to do something good for me. He is a busy, busy man, and he made our friendship a priority.

It's a nice thing in itself, but it also gives some perspective. Do we love God because He is perfect and righteous and holy and just and magnificent? Or do we love Him because in an extreme act, He went out of His way to do something great for us? He is a busy, busy God, and He made our relationship a priority.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

The Start of Something New

So I'm getting married next month and it seems like time for some reflections on that elephant. To clarify, by elephant, I'm referring to the significant happy event, not the fiancee.

The format of my reflection shall be a dialogue between two fictional characters, Bebo and MattDunn. It shall remain a didactic exercise for the reader to determine whether one of these personae is allegorical for a real-life person of relevance and whether one is simply contrived for this blog post.

Bebo: Thanks for meeting me here in this quirky coffeeshop, MattDunn.

MattDunn: You're welcome, Bebo. I don't even like coffee, but I'm a bit of a junkie for human companionship, so I'm generally amenable to meeting with anybody, anytime, anywhere if it means good conversation.

Bebo: So is it true that you're getting married? Facebook tells me so, but you've also been twice previously married on Facebook, so I don't know whether to take you seriously.

MattDunn: Yup. It's true. It's happening.

Bebo: Wow, so tell me about your fiancee. What do you like about her? How and why did you come to decide that she was going to be the one for you?

MattDunn: I wanted to start my dynasty soon, and she's a woman of child-bearing age with all indications of fertility.

Bebo: True statement, but that describes all the dozens of women over the years who fallen madly in love with you that you've had to fight off with a stick.

MattDunn: Well, I'll tell you, when we first started dating, I found myself focusing on more of the differences between us than any valuable commonalities. And I'll tell you, most of us aren't born naturally able to love unconditionally and sacrificially, and to think of each other in the best possible light. I think by default, we tend to want to find carbon-copies of ourselves. So I was a little more critical of her then. I used to think: she doesn't sing as well as I do, she doesn't dance as well as I do, she doesn't cook as well as I do, she doesn't follow sports, and she doesn't watch a lot of movies, so what does she have going for her?

Bebo: Seems a little harsh.

MattDunn: I agree completely, and it's pretty immature, but when you think about it, everybody seems prone to that sort of self-centered thinking. Girls will grow up making lists of attributes for their ideal husband: he has to love animals, he has to be a musician, he has to be funny, he has to be taller than I am, he has to care about third world countries, or whatever; the point is that most people make lists of what they're looking for in their counterpart and expect a real, three-dimensional, breathing human being, flawed and fantastic at once, to match up with this fantasy wish list. It's trivial and superficial and unrealistic when you put it like that, but it's common, and I fell into that a little bit.

Bebo: So it wasn't her fault for not measuring up to your expectations.

MattDunn: It was my fault for projecting trivial expectations on her. You can't approach a relationship with the subconscious hope of the other person changing into someone else for you. That's not fair to them. Where do you get off asking them to change like that?

Bebo: So can't a person have standards for marriage?

MattDunn: Absolutely they can and they should. But they should realize that they're not on the market for finished products. People are meant to do a lot of their growing up through the experience of marriage; they're not supposed to be polished, completed works prior to it. I know a lot of girls in college who automatically ruled out a lot of earnest and good guys around them because they weren't able to see that the guys were works in progress, still learning to be real men.

Bebo: Yeah, you still haven't answered my question about why you picked your fiancee as the one for you.

MattDunn: Simply put, she has the biggest heart of anyone I know. I've never known anyone who loved me as completely and unconditionally and sincerely and unreservedly as she does. She is never too tired to talk about my day. She is never unwilling to put aside what she has in front of her to take care of something for me. She used to walk a mile and back to my apartment just to do my dishes or laundry when I lived off-campus. If there's anything she can do to better my day, she does it without question or hesitation. She never holds back affection or affirmation. She always, always smiles a megawatt smile when I come into the room. It's like I turn on her smile just by existing. She has a lovely smile. She is my biggest fan, and if one of our deepest needs is to be known and loved and liked for who we are, I will never find someone who could love me better. There's an excerpt from a book I was reading recently called Third Class Superhero by Charles Yu:

It's the truth like he has never heard the truth before. She doesn't mean it with sentiment or virtue, doesn't want credit in the big book of good deeds or bonus points towards Heaven. She doesn't regret it or begrudge him a single minute of her life. Her love for him is not something that can be changed -- it's physics, not emotion: It's the atomic weight of radium. It is vast and it is exact. It is tender and finite and inexhaustible. Her love for him is a fact. Her love for him is a brutal fact about the world.

That's what I think about it, Bebo, and I'd have to be a prize idiot to walk away from that kind of love. It's the best thing in the world.

Bebo: MattDunn, it sounds like your time dating Emily has really deepened your understanding of what love is.

MattDunn: It's definitely transformative. It's also nice to find a sweet Christian girl who will watch South Park and The Ultimate Fighter with you. And on days that I miss The Ultimate Fighter, she'll even send me a link so I don't have to search for the episode on Google and spoil the results of who wins the fight for myself.

Bebo: How does Jesus Christ fit into your perception of marriage?

MattDunn: I can think of three distinct ways that the personage of God is irrevocably intertwined with the concept and practice of love, and marriage, at its most ideal, is the culmination of love here on earth. The first way is that we humans are created in the image of a loving God. Bespotted and adulterated as we have made ourselves, 1 John 3 tells us to "behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! [...] Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him." That same chapter tells us that our ability to love is a God-given gift: "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not love God, for God is love." So if we can act in love and live a life where we love others in a mode pure and complete, we are doing so because God made us as reflections of His nature and design.

Bebo: All right, fair enough. We were made by a loving God in His own image, so it stands to reason that our capacity to love would follow suit. What's your second connection to God?

MattDunn: Well, it's the fact that Jesus Christ demonstratively taught us to love. Everything He wants us to do, He did himself. In 1 John 3, we are told that we love "because He first loved us," and that "in this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His son to be the propitiation for our sins." Jesus didn't just sit outside the temporal realm and make broad declarations about love -- He came down and did it the hard way. So when Paul tells us men in Ephesians 5, "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her," it is a powerful command to love sacrificially.

Bebo: So how does that play out in your personal relationship with Emily?

MattDunn: One of the biggest lessons we have to learn to be decent human beings is learning how to forgive. And forgiveness is not a blanket nicety: it's a personal surrendering of your own rights to allow for the shortcomings of another person who has damaged you in some way. Sometimes when Emily did something stupid or wrong, I would kinda hold on to that anger or the fact that I was right and she was wrong, and even if I said I forgave her, I would remember it the next time she made the same mistake. There's no such thing as "forgiving and not forgetting." Forgiving means you have to give the other person a blank slate, every time, up to infinity, no matter what. But the lesson was really transcendent for me because it made me think of how my sins were personally grievous to God, to the point where He had to bleed and die for them to be forgiven: not just statistics on a sin-spreadsheet He could erase with the push of a button. And yet His mercies are still new every morning, so that's something that's expected of me.

Another more metaphorical example is debt. Emily has a pretty sizeable college tuition debt, and when we get married, I will assume and pay most of the debt. This situation had the potential to engender resentment and frustration, but a good friend pointed out to me that when Christ positioned Himself as the bridegroom to take the church as His bride, He had to pay off her debt with His life and in doing so made her perfected and spotless and new. He counted it as worthy to pay off her debt because it meant He had his perfect bride. There's certainly something there I can take away from His example as I go about paying Emily's financial debt.

Bebo: MattDunn, you are very wordy and long-winded, and I'm starting to suspect my only role in this dialogue is to break up the paragraphs into more accessible chunks.

MattDunn: By Jove, I think he's got it!

Bebo: That's what I thought. What about the third way that God connects to your up-and-coming marriage?

MattDunn: Just that imperfect people like me are unable to love completely without the daily and miraculous grace of God. It doesn't come easily or naturally to us, despite being made in the image of God. The call to love someone as your wife is an incredibly high and demanding task to be commissioned with, and I'm definitely not up to it on my own, so this marriage will be an exercise in faith and dependence on God for it to work.

Bebo: That's it?

MattDunn: What? What do you want from me?

Bebo: You've spent all this time talking about love, and you haven't even mentioned 1 Corinthians 13. Or the whole Genesis 2 description of Adam and Eve being created compatible for each other.

MattDunn: Oh, everyone talks about 1 Corinthians 13. It's expected.

Bebo: So what is marriage to you? Is it mutual cohabitation with benefits?

MattDunn: It's supposed to be the ultimate witness and testament to God's love. You're supposed to be able to point to a marriage and say, that's what love is, and that's the best glimpse in this lifetime of what God intended when He designed us to love, and the best gift that He has ever given us. I don't think that's true of most marriages, but it's supposed to be. And yes, I'm also looking forward to the benefits.

Bebo: Sex!

MattDunn: Uh, a mobile beer bottle dispensary, but sure, that too. My friend Patrick, who plays a lot of video games, once referred to women as "mobile spawn units." That's another good role for them.

Bebo: So talk to me about your take on the biblical roles of man and woman in marriage, and how instrumental communication is going to be, and whether you've been introduced to the 5 Love Languages or the Act of Marriage, and how will key aspects of your marital intimacy change as you grow older...

MattDunn: No, that stuff doesn't interest me so much. Look, we'll make it work. Marriage has been made to work with great success without a lot of taught methodologies. I love her and she loves me, it's a true statement on bad days as well as good, and God is on our side on this one. It'll all come out okay.

Bebo: What's the best piece of marital advice you ever heard?

MattDunn: From the movie Claudine: "Love is when a man brings the groceries instead of eating yours."

Bebo: So is there a possibility that you'll be getting married and then deployed the next day?

MattDunn: No way, that only happens in the movies.