That Verse Means Whatever I Want It To Mean
I absolutely LOVE discussing issues with people, especially when those people have shown a desire to really discuss the issue and not fight about it. I do it here in the comments of this blog quite often, and on occasion, I do so at some of my friends’ blogs. Even more rarely, I may participate in a discussion in the comments of a “watchblog”. Regardless, it is always rewarding when someone wants to have a civil discussion about a biblical issue.
Todd over at Monday Morning Insight recently posted an article in response to VCY America (basically, the daddy organization of all the Slice folks, at least in practice) dropping Chuck Swindoll (a fantastic preacher) from their radio stations. Essentially, Chuck said some words that VCY thought were too crude for their audience, and they dropped them. If only that were where it ended, but sadly, instead of just saying that Swindoll violated their standards of decency, they accused him of sin.
And thus, preference and opinion entered the arena.
You see, the Bible has several places where it is a bit vague. For instance, the modesty principle. I’ve seen that verse used to condemn everything (mostly for women). And each sect of Christianity has their own interpritation of that principle. One group says that it’s immodest for women not to cover their head in church, others say it’s immodest for a woman to wear pants and a man to wear shorts, another group says that pants are actually more modest than dresses but think that women in “tight” pants or shorts are immodest. Others still say that tank-top shirts are immodest, but only if they have “spaghetti-straps”. And the funny thing is, each one of these groups think that their understanding and application of the principle is 100% right!!! If we look at it in degrees from 1 to 10, 10 being the most liberal and 1 being the most conservative, the people in degree 1 think everyone else is sinning, the people in degree 2 think degree 1 has taken the principle too far but degree 3 have not gone far enough, and so on…
And such is the case with the people who are “chastising” Swindoll. There are certain verses in the Bible that tell us that vulgar and corrupt communication is a sin. However, anyone with a decent knowledge of the history of languages will easily see that what man considers “vulgar” not only changes from generation to generation, but it in reality is completely devised in the minds of men! In fact, outside of the command not to take God’s name in vain, there are no words that the Bible says are “vulgar” or “corrupt”. Some draw the line at the standard “cuss words”. Some draw it at slang words like “crap”, “piss”, “shoot”, and “dang/darn”. Still others draw it at derivatives like “dagnabit” or “butt head” or even “shutup”. And each one of these groups think that their application of the principle is best and most scriptural.
But what is frustrating is the ridiculous notion that if you disagree with my application of the principle, you are disagreeing with God Himself! And since “God doesn’t change”, then you must be wrong!
These folks strike me as a bit arrogant. Not because they stand firmly on scripture … I fully support that. No, it’s arrogant when you start saying that you are biblicly challenging something, but in reality you have offered no Bible in support of your assertion. You take a broad principle, apply it strictly, and anyone who doesn’t apply it like you do is sinning. Now this is certainly your right, but when someone decides to take issue with your conclusion, you can’t just say “my words = God’s Words” and declare that everyone who goes against you is going against God Himself. The question very much is “is God offended?”.
And this is the bottom line. Many in the Christian blogosphere are essentially saying that if it offends them, it must also be offensive and sinful to God. How they draw that correlation is either beyond my ability to understand … or perhaps they just haven’t done a good job of explaining themselves. Methinks it’s the latter.
So if I can offer a bit of an exhortation today, it would be this. Don’t assume that just because your initial reaction to something is “oh, I don’t feel comfortable with that”, that God shares that sentiment. If you can’t say the word or do the action in good conscience, then don’t say or do it. But before you condemn everyone else who does it, please find some solid scriptural basis on which to base that declaration. Like I said over at MMI, it’s probably not a good idea to tell God what he thinks about something unless He told us what He thinks about it (that means, if it ain’t in the Bible, quit pretending it is!)
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I’m getting tired of these “watchdog” sites too. All they do is attract other elitist scripture-twisters who think they are doing me (and God) a favor. The posts at Slice are so baptized in religious pride, I can rarely make it through an entire article without feeling like I need a bath.
The thing about pride is that it is impossible to show someone they have are full of it… it’s their pride that keeps them from seeing, well, their pride. They puff themselves up like pharisees convinced that they are the last remaining remnant of defenders of the true faith.
If only they would put all that zeal and commitment into reaching out to their communities with the gospel. If Jesus were preaching today, I’m fairly certain that many of these people would be “denouncing” Him too.
DADGUMMIT.
Ben,
The sites serve an honorable purpose … at least in their intentions. However, as they would quickly point out to you, good intentions don’t always equal godly action. It’s great that they want to defend the Word of God against what they consider attacks from within, but 1) they go about it the wrong way, and 2) they’re actually incorrect in many of their opinions.
Indeed, pride is the hardest sin to rid yourself of. No one is allowed to tell you you’re prideful. After all, you’re doing the work of the Good Lord!!! And if zealously defending scripture makes you think I’m prideful, then so be it! Arggg!!!!
In reality, your last sentence is all too true. Jesus would have been far too radical for these guys.
I wanted to say it was good fighting in the trenches with you today. I don’t know that we’d both agree on everything theologically, but I think that I would like discussing theology with you. It wouldn’t be a drop-dead drag out war.
Oh well. Nice meeting you.
What you are talking about is called “soul competency” in theology. Look it up.
They brought me a computer but said I can only type for ten minutes, so I’m going to copy and paste an article off my website for you. Although I do not consider myself an abuser of the soul competency method of interpretation, this passage I will interpret here is based on only one passage (sort of) so I’ll accept the accusation of pulling this interpretation out of my butt:
The Mark of Cain and the Comfort of Noah
In the years after the Fall of Man, the curse of sin and the ground wreaked havoc on the creation of God.
The Curse, which according to scripture extends to both the physical and moral realms of creation, both animate and inanimate, living and non-living, affects all of life. Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden, and an angel of God was set against the Tree of Life and the entrance to the Garden, lest Man should return, eat of the Tree and obtain eternal life while in his unregenerate state, and be condemned forever.
The Curse of sin is just that, we are now under the curse of sin, condemned to die, both physically, and spiritually. The antidote to this death, in scripture, is Christ the Redeemer. Before Christ’s return, His Parousia (Gk., “appearing”), all men will know physical death. But also, because of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, some men will know salvation by receiving His Spirit. Salvation, in and of itself, does not save a man from this body of physical death, before the Eschaton (the Last Day, a period described in various ways in scripture, sometimes of the period between Christ’s ascension and His defeating Satan on the Last Day by throwing him in the Lake of Fire, this would be the extended sense of the term, or of the Parousia (the Second Coming) to the Last Day when He defeats Satan, or just of the day of Satan’s defeat itself).
The Curse is comprehensive in that it extends both to the moral realm and to that of the cosmos. Thus, as I have taught in Presuppositional Creationism, there is a difference between the creation before the Fall and after. If you wish to think about these “separations” reread Genesis careful, chapters 1-3, and they will become apparent. Francis Schaeffer also discusses these separations quite articulately in Genesis in Space and Time.
Adam and Eve were judged temporally for their sin. What this means is that God did not judge them eternally, or they would have been lost forever at that point, and mankind with them. He provided them grace and time to repent, thus the skins of animals were placed over their nakedness, they were expelled from the Garden for reasons stated above (there were other reasons, but we will discuss these another time, as a hint the Garden, sin or no sin, was not the end all of creation for the human species, they were meant to go forth and take dominion of the cosmos, not stagnate in the Garden sitting around picking fruit and naming animals. There was more work to do than that). As sin began to take effect on them and the cosmos, those effects began to change their world.
For example, part of the judgment they received from God was that the world would become by nature, thorns and thistles, instead of by nature provision, working against their dominion of it. Those thorns and thistles would one day win the battle against them, taking them to their grave and making dust of them. Entropy was introduced, the running down of the universe, and of their physical lives. Violence would now be a part of the cosmos. Death would now be a part of the cosmos. Secondly, this temporal judgment is seen in the promise, called the protoevangelium (Luther coined the phrase), the promise of a redeemer to come who would crush the head of the Serpent and reverse the effects of the Curse forever. The reversal of the effects of sin are definitive, and progressive, and eventually, final. Salvation is a process of history (Ger., heilsgeshictliche).
In like manner, the Fall is progressive. After the Fall, the effects of sin slowly and progressively permeate society, man’s body (human longevity), and nature itself. Eventually, violence so racked the earth that the very lineage of the Messiah redeemer Himself was threatened, and God brought the Flood to cleanse the earth and start again.
What is the Mark of Cain and the Comfort of Noah?
Cain slew Abel. The violence of the Fall extended to the social life of man, and brother slew brother. A mark of grace was placed upon Cain, on his forehead, to warn others not to harm him. Just as Adam and Eve experienced temporal grace, so Cain. The mark was likely a physical mark of some type, reference the vision of Ezekiel 9:4 for a physical mark in the forehead for the purpose of divine retribution. The line of Cain developed, as did the line of Seth. The line of Cain begat violent men, and infected as well the line of Seth, down to the time of Noah.
The Flood became justified because the earth had become so violent during those 1600 or so years between the Fall and the Flood, so that the line of Messiah was threatened. Noah carried the line of the Messiah, the Seed of the Protoevangelium (Gen. 3:15), from Adam’s third-born son who replaced Abel. Cain’s line had become as murderous as their forefather. The Curse was working its terrible power throughout the universe. I believe the effects of the Fall upon the cosmos were of a more intense nature in the years between the Fall and the Flood, so that even nature had become not only violent against man, but against itself. This may be why dinosaurs have such grotesque and exaggerated morphological features, violent fangs and such bloodthirsty and ferocious nature. They may have been species where the genetic code went wildly out of control. The physics of nature did change after the Fall, as compared to before, and events and objects such as supernovas and black holes, became common in the universe. Thermonuclear fusion in stars became the norm, rather than some other process we cannot fathom, before the Fall. Entropy became the basis of the universal physics, from which both man and nature needs to be redeemed.
This is the exaggeration of the Curse (“red with tooth and claw”). I base this belief on an interpretation of Genesis 5:28-29 which is a prophecy that explicitly states that Noah (and the Flood by implication) is to be God’s vehicle to “comfort” the earth, to ease the Curse of the ground. Noah’s name means “One who will comfort you because of the curse of the ground.” Not the Curse of sin, mind you, though that is certainly in view. But of the “curse of the ground.”
After the Flood, nature became less intensely entropic in both nature and in social depravity in order to allow for a world and universe where the line of the Messiah could develop in salvation history and birth the Incarnate Jesus, the Savior of mankind. This supernatural alteration of the cosmos and thus, history, and of human society, is where we get the confusing message of the physical record which speaks of massive evolution and sudden creation, uniformitarianism, and catastrophism. The mixed up record is such that no evidence of a worldwide Flood or of the pre-Flood and pre-Fall worlds are possible, also serving to protect the Free-will of mankind, a subject we shall devote ourselves to later.