- "I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love." ~ Wendell Berry
- “Choose being kind over being right and you’ll be right every time.” ~ Richard Carlson
My heart aches to the point
almost of tears when I dwell on “man’s inhumanity to man”. Jesus ate with
sinners of every variety, touched the untouchables, healed the unclean and even
reminded those in Nazareth that when there was famine in Israel, God sent Elijah to feed a woman from Sidon; when there were many lepers in Israel, God had sent Elisha to heal a Syrian named Naaman—both of whom were heathen aliens!
Jesus refused to condemn a
woman caught in the act of committing adultery (a capital offense in that
culture), he visited in the home of Zacchaeus, a treasonous, embezzling
Publican, and he advised carrying a Roman soldier’s pack not just one mile, as
the law allowed, but two miles.
Jesus called upon his followers to forgive
others 70 X 7 times (literally 490 times, which is more than any of us would
ever attempt; but which in the numerology of the day was probably intended to mean an infinite number of times) and never, ever to retaliate or seek vengeance. He
even forgave the ones who nailed him to the cross.
Jesus reserved his strongest
reproof for those who openly boasted of their piety and moral superiority and
then used their considerable religious
authority to dominate all who dared any divergence from their dogmatic
pronouncements.
The Pharisees boasted of their
righteousness. Perhaps they even kept checklists of the laws they obeyed. They
dotted every “i” and crossed every “t”; but Jesus said, “…unless your
righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and
Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20 NRSV).[1]
But so many who claim to follow
Jesus call others the foulest of names over disagreements about political
ideologies, and seek legal authorization to discriminate against people they
judge to be the vilest of sinners (but will gladly serve sinners of every other category). Then we all
assemble at church and congratulate each other on our moral superiority.
We tend to read Scripture
selectively. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Jesus read Scripture
selectively, too; and so did Paul. The crux of the matter is not whether we read the Bible selectively,
but rather, which texts we select.
Jesus selected those that lead to compassion, healing, restoration, reconciliation
and love. He rejected those Scripture passages that lead to vengeance,
retaliation and violence or domination of any kind.
Theologian, Walter Wink, begins
the 9th chapter of his
book, The Powers that Be,
with these words:
“American culture is presently in the
first stages of a spiritual renaissance. To the degree that this renaissance is
Christian at all, it will be the human figure of Jesus that galvanizes hearts
to belief and action, and not the Christ of the creeds or the Pauline doctrine
of justification by grace through faith. And in the teachings of Jesus, the
sayings on nonviolence and love of enemies will hold a central place. Not
because they are more true than any others, but because they are crucial in the
struggle to overcome domination without creating new forms of domination.”
As I said earlier, we all
read the Scriptures selectively, and that’s not necessarily bad. Having
surrendered all anxiety over my eternal destiny to the one who said, “My grace
is sufficient,” it is my intention, and my prayer, that my reading of Scripture
will always put me on the path of following Jesus, even in—especially in—the
selection of Scripture texts I choose as my standard for living.
Having arrived so late in
life at this paradigm of faith, I have a deeper sense of freedom and joy in
Christ, and I have a smidgen of resentment for all those years wasted in the old
pattern of reading the Bible to find evidence that I’m right. I’ll never be
totally right, except in the act of entrusting my eternal destiny to Christ and
moving on to serve him.
That’s how I see it through the flawed glass that
is my world view.
Together in the Walk,
Jim
[1] I believe the Pharisees were totally sincere in their attempts to be
faithful; but, their faithfulness had become misdirected toward legalistic and
unquestioning obedience to a set of laws, and their manipulation of those laws
pointed them away from their intended purpose, which was to describe a
relationship with God that resulted in loving treatment of persons.
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