The Bible and the Churches of Christ
In a recent post, I talked about how understanding chapters, verses, concordances and the printing press challenged my faith in Church of Christ dogma - and most Evangelical dogma. It all appeared anachronistic (the view didn't make sense from a historical perspective).
As I continued to learn how to read the Bible, my faith in Church of Christ dogma was challenged in other ways. Most importantly, I realized that the foundation assumption of the Churches of Christ was false. We teach that the First Century Church was a perfect church. They believed the right things. They practiced ritual correctly. And God was happy. We seek to mirror their beliefs and practices. We do this largely by reading Paul's letters to those churches.
Here's the big problem with all of that. Paul is usually writing to these churches because of their imperfections. He's writing to correct them. If they needed correction, then the First Century Church wasn't perfect. And if we're going to be like them, we're also going to be imperfect and need to be corrected.
What's more, when Paul writes these letters, he addresses the imperfect believers as brothers and sisters. He doesn't assume that imperfection equals disunity. Church of Christ founders would have agreed with that perspective. While they emphasized doctrinal correctness, they fellowshiped ecumenically. For the last century though, this hasn't been the norm. Instead, the Churches of Christ excommunicate not only other denominations, but also churches within their own community for disagreements over how best to share communion or whether or not Power Point is biblical. I wish I were making this up. Oddly, the church obsessed with doing things in Bible ways is approaching unity and division unbiblically.
The Bible and Christianity
When I learned to read the Bible with a focus on books rather than specific messages, I also began to see that different books in the Bible contain different, even competing theological perspectives. I recently discussed how Genesis tells us to welcome foreigners. Ruth has a similar message. Nehemiah has a competing message - "don't intermingle with those who aren't your kind." Most of the Bible isn't all that concerned with women as people, Luke is almost obsessed. He was the 1st Century version of a Marxist Feminist. I'm not kidding. Is there a Gospel story about a poor person? There's a 80% chance it's in Luke. Is there a story about a woman? There's a 90% chance. Is there a story about a woman who gives her two pennies? That's definitely going to be in Luke. Obviously, I like Luke. The other Gospels, however, don't have the same emphasis on women. The Gospel of John isn't even all that concerned about the poor.
This may not seem like that big a deal. If one Gospel omits a perspective, the others have it. But, that wouldn't have always been true. In the earliest centuries of Christianity, the church in a particular city might not have all of the Gospels. They might only have Mark and Luke, but not Matthew and John, for example. Each of these books was on a scroll. The earliest churches didn't have whole books of the New Testament.
Knowing all of this, I read the Bible differently. I saw a variety of nuances not only in the messages given by a single author in a single book, but in the complexity of the messages within the Bible as a whole. I began to understand that the messages aren't simple black and white rules. The Bible isn't a rule book or a constitution. It's a multitude of genres of literature written by a variety of people who didn't always agree about the nature of God. They disagreed not only about what was most important to God, but even whether God wanted one thing or another from us. The Bible often raises as many questions as it does provide answers. It might be easy to look at Genesis or the words of Jesus and say, "we should welcome the stranger." But the Bible also warns us about people who are different from us. The Bible as a whole forces us to take both perspectives seriously. Used well, it shouldn't be used to beat each other up. It should be used to facilitate conversation and understanding that might lead to consensus. And when that doesn't happen, we should at least be reassured by the text that the people who came before us didn't always agree either.
In a recent post, I talked about how understanding chapters, verses, concordances and the printing press challenged my faith in Church of Christ dogma - and most Evangelical dogma. It all appeared anachronistic (the view didn't make sense from a historical perspective).
As I continued to learn how to read the Bible, my faith in Church of Christ dogma was challenged in other ways. Most importantly, I realized that the foundation assumption of the Churches of Christ was false. We teach that the First Century Church was a perfect church. They believed the right things. They practiced ritual correctly. And God was happy. We seek to mirror their beliefs and practices. We do this largely by reading Paul's letters to those churches.
Here's the big problem with all of that. Paul is usually writing to these churches because of their imperfections. He's writing to correct them. If they needed correction, then the First Century Church wasn't perfect. And if we're going to be like them, we're also going to be imperfect and need to be corrected.
What's more, when Paul writes these letters, he addresses the imperfect believers as brothers and sisters. He doesn't assume that imperfection equals disunity. Church of Christ founders would have agreed with that perspective. While they emphasized doctrinal correctness, they fellowshiped ecumenically. For the last century though, this hasn't been the norm. Instead, the Churches of Christ excommunicate not only other denominations, but also churches within their own community for disagreements over how best to share communion or whether or not Power Point is biblical. I wish I were making this up. Oddly, the church obsessed with doing things in Bible ways is approaching unity and division unbiblically.
The Bible and Christianity
When I learned to read the Bible with a focus on books rather than specific messages, I also began to see that different books in the Bible contain different, even competing theological perspectives. I recently discussed how Genesis tells us to welcome foreigners. Ruth has a similar message. Nehemiah has a competing message - "don't intermingle with those who aren't your kind." Most of the Bible isn't all that concerned with women as people, Luke is almost obsessed. He was the 1st Century version of a Marxist Feminist. I'm not kidding. Is there a Gospel story about a poor person? There's a 80% chance it's in Luke. Is there a story about a woman? There's a 90% chance. Is there a story about a woman who gives her two pennies? That's definitely going to be in Luke. Obviously, I like Luke. The other Gospels, however, don't have the same emphasis on women. The Gospel of John isn't even all that concerned about the poor.
This may not seem like that big a deal. If one Gospel omits a perspective, the others have it. But, that wouldn't have always been true. In the earliest centuries of Christianity, the church in a particular city might not have all of the Gospels. They might only have Mark and Luke, but not Matthew and John, for example. Each of these books was on a scroll. The earliest churches didn't have whole books of the New Testament.
Knowing all of this, I read the Bible differently. I saw a variety of nuances not only in the messages given by a single author in a single book, but in the complexity of the messages within the Bible as a whole. I began to understand that the messages aren't simple black and white rules. The Bible isn't a rule book or a constitution. It's a multitude of genres of literature written by a variety of people who didn't always agree about the nature of God. They disagreed not only about what was most important to God, but even whether God wanted one thing or another from us. The Bible often raises as many questions as it does provide answers. It might be easy to look at Genesis or the words of Jesus and say, "we should welcome the stranger." But the Bible also warns us about people who are different from us. The Bible as a whole forces us to take both perspectives seriously. Used well, it shouldn't be used to beat each other up. It should be used to facilitate conversation and understanding that might lead to consensus. And when that doesn't happen, we should at least be reassured by the text that the people who came before us didn't always agree either.
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