Salt & Hate

This weekend the C+C group screened Voice of the Martyr’s latest documentary, Underground Reality: Colombia which follows four college students from Australia, the US, and Canada as they meet and serve with native and foreign Christian workers who suffer terribly for the sake of Christ.  At one point, Brad, the young man from Australia reflects,

“I feel like the world hates our message.  And I don’t want to be hated.  But Jesus said, ‘You’ll be hated.  If they hated me they’ll hate you also, if they persecuted me, they’ll persecute you also.’” [Paraphrase of John 15.19-20].

And as I recall these words of Jesus I also remember the promise of salt and light where people would “see our good works and praise our Father in Heaven” in contrast to living the sorts of lives that would discredit us as believers [Matt 5.13-16].

At the intersection of these passages all I can think is that we strive to be hated, mocked, or ridiculed for the right reasons, not the wrong ones.  In my mind that means two things: (1) we need to listen to valid criticisms and repent [thus the unChristian book/series] and (2) we need to make sure the message we are hated and ridiculed for is the message we live and die for.

Discussion Question: Along the lines of point #2, are there any non-essentials we need to let go of or refuse to let identify us because they are not worthy of the attention they draw and because of the obstacles they’ve become?

Please, Don’t Read the Bible Literally…

Earth-rise

…  read it literarily.

Seems Christians get themselves into trouble when they don’t take a Bible passage like its author meant it.  For example, I came across a bizarre Web-Site the other day: Geocentricity.com (i.e. belief that the Earth is the stationary center of the universe).  On their website I found this curious statement:

This site is devoted to the historical relationship between the Bible and astronomy. It assumes that whenever the two are at variance, it is always astronomy—that is, our “reading” of the “Book of Nature,” not our reading of the Holy Bible—that is wrong. [emphasis added].

As I read this I wonder why he added “our reading.”  On the one hand it seems quite humble of him (and somewhat protective of the Bible).  On the other, it’s horribly arrogant because he takes authority away from the Bible and places it in himself.  If reading the Bible literally gets you here, we need a better way to understand the Word of God.

In cases like this I’d say the problem is not with what the Bible says but a misunderstanding of how it’s said. In other words, the way the Bible says something is just as important as anything else.  If we misunderstand how it speaks in a given instance, we almost certainly will misunderstand what it speaks.  As for our Geocentric friends, they read passages like Matt 5.45 “He causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good” or 1 Ch 16.30 “The earth is firmly established, it cannot be moved” and their commitment to reading the Bible literally forces them to a Geocentric view of the cosmos.

Here are just a few of the ways (i.e. literary forms and devices) that the Bible uses to communicate truth: history, poetry, prophecy, law, instruction, proverb, parable, song, apocalyptic, metaphor, synechdoche, and many more.  While this is a somewhat daunting list, the reality is that properly understanding many of these forms is spectacularly intuitive if you simply relieve yourself of the pressure to take as literal those things that were never intended to be taken as as literal.

Note: Reading the Bible literarily means taking miracles contained in historical narrative at face value; it’s pretty clear the authors of the Bible intend us to understand that Jesus actually rose from death, that He literally fed the 5000, that He factually raised Lazarus, and so on.

The Bible is Bull[oney]

I’m not passionate about apologetics – I used to be, but I guess I felt like I was arguing around the block with too many skeptics without ever getting to explain the message about Jesus because of red herring after red herring.  That or the death of modern thought moved me to more of an interest in proclamation rather than debate.  Nevertheless, I am a college pastor and the importance of apologetics is being awakened in me as many of my students have been vocal about their faith on campus and, to no real surprise, have also been getting it shoved back in their faces.  One student was shown the following video and she forwarded it to me:

So what’s the best approach here?  What should apologetics look like?  Answering every objection item by item?  Defending a skeptic’s inaccurate view of our faith (in other words, defending a straw man?)  Do we just bypass the objections and yell the gospel louder?  What to do about the cosmic gulf between where skeptics like Penn & Teller are and where we are?  Is it even possible to find a common or neutral ground to have a discussion or will one or the other have to go on the road (sports analogy-wise)?  Do we focus apologetics on those who do not believe or on those who already believe?

Discussion “Question”: Answer any of the questions above or describe the role apologetics play in the way you tell people the message about Jesus.