There can be no doubt that many people read the Bible incorrectly and unwisely, missing such literary elements as figures of speech, including metaphors, similes, &c. Reading a metaphorical passage too literally is certainly one way of misreading scripture. Nevertheless, assuming the following account is accurate, there is something disquieting about the recent conference on Children, Youth, and a New Kind of Christianity: Emergent Christians Warn against the Bible’s “Loaded Guns”:
Carl Stauffer, professor of Development and Justice Studies at Eastern Mennonite University, warned against the Bible’s “seemingly divinely ordained violence.” Emergent Church guru Brian McLaren similarly worried about how church-going parents can give their children “loaded guns” in the form of “texts of terror” condoning war and other violence. He wondered whether unfiltered Bible-reading could “leave them with the idea that God is violent.” And he warned: “Bible-preaching/teaching/reading people are the most dangerous in the world for Muslims.”
After McLaren advised emergent parents to seek out the “texts of healing” in the Bible, he talked about how the Bible’s economic teachings could help stave off violence in society. The Old and New Testament narratives “focus on desire—especially competitive desire—as the root of violence.” The best-selling author complained, “Our entire economic system is based on rivalrous desire.” Author, educator, and panelist Ivy Beckwith explained: “Desire is another word for self-interest.”
Is the word unfiltered McLaren’s, or that of Barton Gingerich, the article’s author? It matters because, if it’s McLaren’s, it seems to imply that the Bible needs to be censored by the more enlightened — presumably the conference speakers themselves — for the benefit of the rest of us.
I personally know people who came to the faith, not by going to church or through a Christian friend, but simply by reading the Bible, a book they had not been familiar with up to then. They read it through in its entirety, including such grisly stories as that related in Judges 19-21. Despite the messiness and violence of the scriptural narrative, the Holy Spirit somehow managed to work in their hearts so that they were grabbed by it, fell in love with it and found their own place within it. They did not come to the Bible with the expectation that someone should make it “safe” for them. They never deemed it necessary to accept only those parts of scripture that they did not find offensive or that refrained from challenging their existing presuppositions. Far from it. They were cut to the quick, like the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:26-40) and the Philippian jailer (Acts 16:25-40), asking, not “Who can make the Bible palatable to me?”, but rather “What must I do to be saved?”
Like a microscope into their own soul, reading the Bible prompted them to repent and turn to God for mercy. If some people profess to find the Bible dangerous, perhaps the world could use more such danger.
May 16th, 2012 | 12:27 am | #1
The concern is nothing new. “Martin Marty notes that a missionary of the late fourth century…’omitted the Book of Kings from the canon for fear lest the belligerence of God’s people inspire bellicosity among the barbarian Goths.’”
http://www.amazon.com/Christian-Pacifism-Fruit-Narrow-ebook/dp/B005RIKH62/ref=pd_rhf_dp_p_t_1
The proper way to handle ‘loaded guns’ is to teach basic safety. Millard Lind’s classic, Yahweh Is A Warrior, would be a good starting point.
May 16th, 2012 | 2:10 am | #2
I positively cannot stand the censorship approach to translation and teaching. There’s too much of it already simply by the poor attempts to neuter translations (see, e.g., TNIV’s Gen 4:1 “with the help of the Lord, I have brought forth a man”, which makes no sense if “man” elsewhere in the translation only means “adult male”; or see NRSV’s use of “mortals” in Rev 21:3). I could go on about other types of censorship that hacks me off, but it’s getting past my bedtime.
Perhaps it’s my Schadenfreude, but I love that the Bible is deeper, more raw, and more real-to-life than cheesy fridge magnet quotes. I find it offensive that some would like to “correct” the text so that it is inspired by the Zeitgeist rather than the Holy Spirit.
The problem is our cultural expectations. The limit and danger is us, not God’s revelation. And as for children? That’s a tricky issue. The Bible is NOT a “children’s book”. If we shelter children from the scary parts of the Bible, they end up with a cookie-cutter understanding of God even when they grow up (sometimes). But if we just tell it like it is, then we might as well scar them for life with Hell Houses. I’m glad I’m not a pastor or parent and don’t yet have to answer this question.
Does anyone have a good answer on how to relate the Bible to children?
May 16th, 2012 | 9:37 am | #3
“Emergent Church guru Brian McLaren similarly worried about how church-going parents can give their children ‘loaded guns’ in the form of ‘texts of terror’ condoning war and other violence. He wondered whether unfiltered Bible-reading could ‘leave them with the idea that God is violent.’”
The connection between the text & the critique is unclear to me. If the two sentences can be read as the latter following from the former, then the 3ms subject of the former should be the assumed antecedent of the subject of the latter sentence. If typical grammatical rules can be presumed, then Barton Gingerich believes Brian McLaren, not Professor Stauffer, to suggest that the Bible should be filtered. Additionally, the context suggests that the filtering occurs for children. I don’t think the conference speakers are proposing an elitist move wherein they themselves should filter the material but parents for their children. Whether other statements from these authors point toward the validity of this critique, I do not know. However, this quote on its own does not warrant the critique. Perhaps a more suitable quote could have been selected? In the end, I do not share with children the concubine’s brutal rape and her dismemberment (Judges 19-21). I would shutter to explain to my daughter how a rape could be so brutal as to extinguish her life even as her master sits on the other side of the threshhold which she grasps as she dies.
May 16th, 2012 | 10:26 am | #4
Thank you, Laura Elizabeth. I’ve made the correction. You’re right: it was McLaren, not Stauffer, who used the word filtered.
You are right as well that not everything in the Bible is appropriate for young children. But the reflections in the latter part of the article appear to suggest that the conference speakers are doing more than this — that they are, in fact, questioning a rather key component of the Christian faith with which they feel uncomfortable, viz., the atonement of Christ for our sins. Taking Christ’s death as simply moral influence (Abelard’s view) causes me to think that more is going on here. This quotation in particular I find problematic:
I agree with Westerhoff that retribution is not the heart of justice, but tribution is. I know this is something of a neologism, but what I mean by it is that justice consists of giving everyone their due, i.e., what they deserve. This necessarily includes retribution, viz., punishment for wrong-doing, but it is not limited to that. It certainly cannot be excluded from justice, properly understood.
I recognize, of course, the danger in trying to discern the trajectory of someone’s thought from a few snippets lifted out of context. I hope the participants are more respectful of God’s word than they appear to be here. Nevertheless, even the title, “a new kind of Christianity,” makes me uneasy, at the very least.
May 16th, 2012 | 12:02 pm | #5
Thank you for the clarification. Their larger theological program on atonement is not something I can assess with any brilliance, if even nuance. I will leave this to your capable hands. As a lover of the Iron I, I am acutely sympathetic to those who find themselves confounded by the violence & historicity of the texts on Israelite emergence in the Cisjordan. Truly, these are matters that call for intellectual humility rather than a brash claim of finding a new Christianity.
May 16th, 2012 | 2:08 pm | #6
“Carl Stauffer, professor of Development and Justice Studies at Eastern Mennonite University, warned against the Bible’s “seemingly divinely ordained violence.” Emergent Church guru Brian McLaren similarly worried about how church-going parents can give their children “loaded guns” in the form of “texts of terror” condoning war and other violence.”
Stauffer and McLaren are LibProts.
May 16th, 2012 | 4:10 pm | #7
The wars of conquest in Joshua are indeed troublesome, but no more troublesome, as I see it, than the doctrine of hell and eternal punishment or the many imprecatory psalms calling down God’s judgement on the wicked. But as you say, we need to approach these elements with a great deal of humility.
May 16th, 2012 | 5:25 pm | #8
Your collapse of ethical categories in scripture is a bit too indiscriminate for my tastes. Imprecatory Psalms wishing the death of a political enemy to the king where the life & death of that individual remains in the hands of God is quite different ethically from a conquest that didn’t happen quite as the Deuteronomistic Historian purports.
May 16th, 2012 | 5:26 pm | #9
But now we’ve run too far from the original post. So perhaps this is a good ending point.
May 21st, 2012 | 10:24 am | #10
[...] Koyzis at Evangel: I personally know people who came to the faith, not by going to church or through a Christian [...]
May 22nd, 2012 | 5:13 pm | #11
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