The optional Jesus

Perhaps the timing is just coincidental, but it does seem as though the election and reelection of Barack Obama has emboldened the “evangelical left” (for want of a better term). They seem to think the reelection of Obama marks the end of the culture wars. The liberals won.

So it’s now safe for the evangelical left to come out of hiding. To stop pretending. Drop the doubletalk. Admit what they’ve been thinking all along. For instance:

For what makes the Church any different from a cult if it demands we sacrifice our conscience in exchange for unquestioned allegiance to authority?  What sort of God would call himself love and then ask that I betray everything I know in my bones to be love in order to worship him?

I’ve decided to quit apologizing for my questions.  It’s not enough for me to maintain my intellectual integrity as a Christian; I also want to maintain my emotional integrity as a Christian.

http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/scandal-evangelical-heart

To begin with, I read the Bible under the operative assumption that a superintending (divine) intelligence has brought these disparate writings together into a canonical whole. That means that I am committed to resolving the tension between prima facie contradictory statements. Like pieces of a puzzle, they fit together into some greater unity. And making them fit doesn’t commit me to making them both come out as true.

http://randalrauser.com/2013/02/errant-statements-in-an-inerrant-book/

It seems quite clear that the Laws of Moses were very far from perfect. They are morally substandard in serious and unsalvageable ways. So that’s a problem that’s not neatly resolved. My approach, as I detail in my book, The Human Faces of God, is to read these morally problematic texts as “condemned texts.” They are still scripture. And God still uses them to instruct us, but God uses them as negative instruction. They’re there to challenge us to use critical moral reasoning, and to warn us away from making the same moral mistakes made by so many of our spiritual forebears.

The slavery laws are wrong, and that they were written by humans who got God wrong. But we can find God throughout the pages of the Bible by using our God-given moral reasoning. Wherever there is truth, wherever there is justice and compassion, that’s where God is. That doesn’t mean those parts are really inspired by God while the other parts aren’t. The inspiration lies not in the verbatim language of scripture, but in the struggle of God’s community to know God, the struggle that’s reflected in the conflicting views throughout the Bible about who God is and what God desires.

It is not blasphemy to question the character of the different portrayals of God in the Bible. That’s not the same thing as questioning God’s character. That’s just saying that the men who wrote the Bible sometimes were very wrong about God’s character. I would argue that it’s blasphemy to affirm some of the ways that God is characterized in the Bible. It’s precisely out of zeal for God’s character that so many Christians throughout history have been forced to reject certain portrayals of God in scripture.

http://religionatthemargins.com/2012/04/blasphemy-for-gods-sake/

When the Bible is used for such evil ends, there is no mistaking the fact that something has gone terribly wrong.

Most Christians would attribute this misuse of the Bible to faulty interpretations and misguided interpreters.  And this certainly is part of the problem. But, unfortunately, the problem runs deeper than this.  It runs right through the pages of Scripture itself.

To put it bluntly: not everything in the “good book” is either good, or good for us. I realize this may sound blasphemous to some people and flies in the face of everything they have been taught to believe about the Bible. When the Church grandly proclaims the Bible to be the Word of God, it gives the impression that the words of Scripture are above critique and beyond reproach. We are taught to read, revere, and embrace the Bible. We are not taught to challenge its values, ethics, or portrayals of God.

But this way of reading the Bible is problematic, to say the least. At times the Bible endorses values we should reject, praises acts we must condemn, and portrays God in ways we cannot accept. Rather than seeing this as a sign of disrespect, we should regard engaging in an ethical and theological critique of what we read in the Bible as an act of profound faithfulness.

What happens when people dig into the Bible and find things there that are not only unsavory, but downright unhealthy for them? What happens when reading the Bible pushes people away from God rather than leads them closer to God?

If we feel compelled to accept what we read at face value, and are forbidden from asking honest questions about the troublesome texts we encounter, we run the risk of using the Bible in ways that may harm others (not to mention ourselves!).

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2013/02/when-the-good-book-is-bad-challenging-the-bibles-violent-portrayals-of-god/

What are we to do with passages of Scripture that sanction violence and portray it as something good? How should we regard what one might call “virtuous” violence in the text?

Examples of “virtuous” violence abound in the Old Testament and are embedded in some of its most beloved stories: the flood narrative (Genesis 6-8), the story of the ten plagues, culminating in the death of every firstborn Egyptian (Exodus 12), the drowning of the entire Egyptian army (Exodus 14-15), the “conquest” of Canaan (Josh 6-11), Jael’s slaying of Sisera (Judges 4), and David’s slaying of Goliath (1 Samuel 17), to cite just a few notable examples.

In each of these passages—and many others like them—lethal violence is condoned and sometimes even celebrated.  Passages like these create significant problems for Christian readers.

As Christians, we have a moral obligation to critique the assumption that violence is somehow “virtuous,” in spite of what the Bible suggests on numerous occasions.

Violence is not a virtue. It is not a fruit of the spirit or a mark of discipleship.

Surely, those of us who follow the prince of Peace, the God of Life, must raise our voices in protest and object. We must say, “This is not right!” Such violence is never justifiable and should never be condoned.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2013/02/when-the-bible-sanctions-violence-must-we/

One very important step we can take is to be intentional about problematizing and critiquing “virtuous” violence when we encounter it in the Bible. This is not hard to do, especially if you are willing to read violent verses from the perspective of the victims. For example, when reading the flood narrative, try reading the story through the eyes of those people outside the ark. Or instead of reading the story of the battle of Jericho with the Israelites who are circling the walls, try reading the story from the perspective of the Canaanites sitting inside the city.

Reading in this way complicates the notion of “virtuous” violence considerably. It is hard—some would say impossible—to justify the killing of infants and toddlers in stories like these. Reading this way sensitizes us to the problem of violence in these texts and keeps us from simplistically classifying such moral atrocities as good.

When read from the perspective of the victims, the myth of “virtuous” violence is exposed for what it really is: a myth. As I said in my previous post, violence is not a virtue. Violence is destructive and harmful. It is not the kind of behavior that should be sanctioned or celebrated, even when the Bible suggests otherwise.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2013/02/learning-to-read-the-bible-nonviolently/

The violent verses that cause the most problems are those that contain divine violence and divinely sanctioned violence.  Passages that portray God engaging in acts of violence are problematic because they often depict God behaving in ways that are difficult—if not impossible—to justify.

If we are committed to reading the Bible in an ethically responsible manner, we need to read it actively rather than passively.  We must be willing to question what we read and to critique values and perspectives in the Bible that are problematic or oppressive.  Reading responsibly means being prepared to challenge views and assumptions in the Bible that are ethically problematic or morally offensive.  For example, it means recognizing that slavery is unacceptable, patriarchy is oppressive, and violence is not praiseworthy despite the fact that numerous biblical texts suggest otherwise.  When we read responsibly, we refuse to sanitize these troubling texts or the violence sanctioned in them.  Instead, we are honest about the Bible’s limitations and recognize that some things in the Bible are ethically and morally problematic.

Reading the Bible responsibly also means reading it in ways that help us think accurately about God.  This involves making distinctions between the way God is portrayed in the Bible and the way God really is.

I argue that we should not uncritically assume that all these portrayals are trustworthy representations of God.  Instead, we should make distinctions between the way God is portrayed in the Bible and the way God actually is.  This is necessary given the contrasting views of God in Scripture and the compelling archaeological, historiographical, and cultural reasons suggesting God did not say and do everything the Old Testament claims.

The Bible should never be used to harm others.  Yet, as I argue in this book, the problem is not just that people have misinterpreted or misapplied these passages.  Rather, the texts themselves are often quite problematic.  They sometimes condone, sanction, and even celebrate violent acts and attitudes.  This is even true of some of the most beloved Bible stories, like the story of David and Goliath.  This creates a real dilemma for individuals who look to the Bible for moral guidance, or who wish to use the Bible to promote Christian values.

http://randalrauser.com/2013/01/violence-and-the-good-book-my-interview-with-eric-seibert/

In a sense, I think this is a healthy development. By that I mean we see a self-segregation of sheep and goats in the evangelical movement, as covert unbelievers emerge from the shadows and openly, indeed, brazenly, disassociate themselves from the authority of Scripture. Separating themselves from pious remnant helps to purify the church.

Before proceeding any further, I’d like to highlight just how radical their alternative really is. Seibert, for one, is exhorting us to switch sides. To show our solidarity with the Canaanites.

In the OT, the Canaanites are the epitome of religious and moral degradation. So Seibert’s proposal could not be more subversive or seditious. It’s like taking the side of John’s theological adversaries in 1 John.

Just to summarize the proposal, these people are telling us that we should regard the Bible as an anthology of conflicting voices, conflicting depictions of God, competing for our endorsement, and it’s our duty to choose sides. To pick which human voices echo the real voice of God.

Assuming, for the sake of argument, that we play along with that proposal, the question this naturally raises is our selection criteria. How do we salvage the truer portraits of God in Scripture from the portraits which falsify God?

One proposal is a “Christocentric hermeneutic.”  That’s the filter which proponents like Randal Rauser, Roger Olson, and Eric Seibert propose. Here’s one example:

 

When we attempt to use the Bible to think about God’s character, we need to utilize a principled approach to help us determine which portrayals reflect God’s character and to what extent they do so.  To make this determination, I propose using a Christocentric hermeneutic (Christ-centered method of interpretation).  This is based on the premise that Jesus is the clearest and fullest revelation of the moral character of God.  By using the God Jesus reveals as a standard, other portrayals of God in the Bible can be evaluated to determine the extent to which they reflect God’s character.  This process of evaluation makes it clear that some Old Testament portrayals of God, like those portraying God commanding genocide, do not reveal what God is really like.  We should freely acknowledge this even as we attempt to find ways to use these troubling images—and the texts in which they reside—more positively.

http://randalrauser.com/2013/01/violence-and-the-good-book-my-interview-with-eric-seibert/

And that has a pious veneer. How could any Christian object to a “Christocentric hermeneutic”?

There are, however, obvious problems with the Christocentric filter:

i) Since these people repudiate the verbal inspiration of Scripture, there’s no particular reason for them to think the Gospels are an accurate record of what Jesus really said and did. What if Gospel writers are putting words in Jesus’ mouth? Inventing Jesus?

ii) Moreover, the notion that Scripture contains conflicting views of God extends to the notion that Scripture contains conflicting views of Christ. Liberals don’t think the NT presents a unified Christology. Rather, liberals think the NT presents a number of conflicting Christologies. So before you can use Christology to filter the Bible, you have to decide which NT portrait of Jesus portrays the real Jesus, or something approximating the real Jesus. You need a prior filter to filter out the distorted Christological filters. 

iii) Furthermore, the same people who are apt to find parts of Scripture so objectionable are apt to find parts of Jesus objectionable. If you find some OT stories embarrassing, then Jesus has the embarrassing habit of endorsing the creation account, the flood account, the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah, the fate of Lot’s wife, &c.

Indeed, liberals admit that Jesus was a child of his times. Randal Rauser toys with a kenotic Christology.

In addition, Jesus isn’t always very nice or politically correct. He has puritanical views of sex. He only chose men to be apostles.

He demands unconditional loyalty. Unquestioning faith in whatever he says and does. You must be prepared to lose your job, friends, relatives, and even your life, to follow him. He threatens you with hell if you don’t obey his every command. Sounds like we’re coming full circle–right back to Yahweh.

iv) In fact, some proponents have already taken the next step. Thom Stark considers Jesus to be a flawed role model. Likewise, Peter Enns has sympathetically hosted an interviewee who says:

When Jesus tells us to love our enemies and then slanders their sexual morality  (“wicked and adulterous”) and their pedigree (“brood of vipers” i.e. “children of snakes” i.e. “sons of the devil”), that should give us pause.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2013/02/raw-revelation-the-bible-they-never-tell-you-about/

These “Christians” are becoming so emancipated that they part company with Jesus whenever he gets in their way.

After they jump from the skyscraper, is there anything to break their fall? Anything to stop or slow their fatal, precipitous descent to the pavement below? Anything to grab onto or hang onto on the way down?

What’s left? What’s their contingency plan? What’s their fallback strategy? Does Peter Singer become the new Messiah? Or David Benatar? Or Barack Obama? Or Paul Watson?