(4) “The Bible is clear” falls apart due to our selective application.
Do you eat shrimp? Do you insist that women cover their heads in church, or take off their gold jewelry? Have you sold all your stuff and donated the money to the poor as Jesus taught? Do you have a tattoo? Do you wear mixed fabrics? Do you wait seven days to have sex with your wife after her period ends? Do you worry that women who aren’t mothers aren’t saved? No? But isn’t the Bible clear on those things?
I understand that many Christians will point out that the laws spelled out in the Old Testament are no longer applicable today because Jesus fulfilled the law (Torah) and we are no longer slaves to it, meaning we don’t have to follow it. And I agree with that. What puzzles me is how someone who holds that position can then criticize others for being selective with the Bible. Huh? You just said that you are selective with the Bible, and not just that, but because of Jesus! (Damn good reason, don’t you think?)
(And how can someone claim that Scripture is inerrant, infallible, authoritative — but also that we can essentially write off about 75% of it? How does that work?)
(Also, the parts about selling your possessions and wearing head coverings and no gold jewelry and being “saved through childbearing” are in the New Testament, so the Old Covenant argument doesn’t solve the whole problem).
There’s a “having your cake and eating it too” phenomenon going on here. You can’t say that the Bible is clear – which is code for declaring it a tool to judge the behavior of others — and then quietly determine that it doesn’t enjoy full reign over your behavior. You have to pick one.
And we do all pick one – we don’t give Scripture total reign over the behaviors that we’ve concluded it isn’t the best guide for.
We all do this, from the most conservative Christians to the most liberal believers and everyone in between. We all “pick and choose” what verses we follow from Scripture. Let’s just come clean about this. No one is applying the whole of Scripture consistently (can someone please tell John Piper?). To that end, you just can’t maintain credibility in claiming “the Bible is clear” about one thing as you simultaneously dismiss another.
For example, you can’t cite Leviticus 18:22 to argue that homosexuality is a sin, but ignore Leviticus 18:19 which prohibits sex during menstruation. Similarly, you can’t cite 1 Timothy 2:12 to claim that women cannot teach men, but overlook 1 Timothy 2:9 which bars women from gold, pearls, and braided hair. It would be bad enough if these couplets in which one verse is considered universal and the other is dismissed as cultural were hundreds of pages apart in our Bibles. But they are not. Both of these instances are just THREE VERSES APART from each other. Come. On.
I would like to say our Christian cultural subtext out loud: The Law no longer applies…except when it’s convenient for my agenda.
If “the Bible is clear” is your rallying cry about, say homosexuality or abortion or doctrine or whatever, but you release yourself from adherence to other parts of Scripture, how do you reconcile the disconnect? To do so, you’d have to admit that either (a) the Bible is not clear on some things, or (b) you have a different standard for yourself than you have for other people.
Lest I give the impression that I do not include myself in this critique, I personally am incredibly selective with the Bible. I am neither proud or ashamed of this, it’s simply a fact and a testament to my humanity. Have I given all I have to the poor? No. On the other hand, have I stoned my disobedient children? Also no. (See, total loyalty to the edicts of Scripture can land you in jail for homicide).
I think it’s more than okay to be selective with Scripture, in some cases it’s morally abhorrent not to be! Paul was selective in what OT Scriptures he creatively reimagined in light of the Risen Christ. And Jesus himself, as is customary for Jewish rabbis, was playful with Scripture and didn’t seem to think it was a one-dimensional text that had a singular clear meaning for all time. “You have heard it said, but I say to you…” And when asked what part of the Law was the most important, he didn’t say “the whole thing,” but rather “Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself…”
I feel like Paul and Jesus are pretty good role models for how we ought to engage with Scripture.
Perhaps you’re thinking, “But you’re not Paul! You’re not JESUS!” And you are one thousand percent correct. I’m no Paul and of course I do not fancy myself anywhere close to approximating Jesus Christ. But most of us would agree that growing in Christlikeness is a noble goal – if not THE goal. It’s to that end I press forward, and I’ll do my best to practice my Rabbi’s Bible-reading habits too.
No one follows all of Scripture. I think it’s alright. If we can own this, we can be more humble in our faith and more gracious in our interactions with others.
As we mature in our faith, some of us may be able to shake off some of our personal biases and get closer to the true meaning of Scripture. But until then, most of us have our own Bible, made somewhat in our image. …Is it really fair to accuse someone else of selectively using Scripture, unless we’re prepared to admit to the same crime in the process? — John Pavlovitz
Additional reading:
- 5 Things I Wish Christians Would Admit About The Bible by John Pavlovitz
- Jesus Didn’t Read His Bible Like We Do by Peter Enns
- Would Paul Have Made a Good Evangelical? by Peter Enns
Photo Credits
- Photo by James Coleman on Unsplash
- Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
- Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
- Photo by Nina Strehl on Unsplash
