My Response to a Meme
A friend of mine posted this image to a social media page and commented that while he’s read the Bible a lot, things written in it don’t make a lot of sense. At the time I said there was too much wrong with the meme to address in a social media context (especially when replying from one’s smartphone!). So I’d like to address them now.
First of all, there are different worldviews when one reads the Bible. The predominant view where I and my friend live is a very wooden, literal sense. This is the worldview of Christian Fundamentalism. It’s the worldview that states things like, “God said it. I believe it. And that settles it!” I used to think that was a great saying until I realized it’s completely wrong. The underlying thought for that saying — and the worldview that promotes it — is what we read in the Bible shouldn’t be questioned. That the stories and things said in the Bible can’t be seen in anyway other than what’s written on the page. This is quite naïve (and dangerous) and doesn’t take into account the evolutionary progress of the people within the pages themselves. Nor does it take into account the very difficult and lengthy process of translating ancient languages, customs, and cultures into our modern context.1 Lastly, this view doesn’t take into account that each person comes to the text with their own set of lenses — prejudices, worldview, etc.
For example, people who hold to a wooden literal sense of the Bible (from now on we’ll use the word “literalists”) see that the creation story in Genesis 1 took only 7, 24 hour days. Literally. Of course, literalists can’t explain why they consider the creation of the world took 7 “days” when the text states it only took 6 “days” (God rested on the 7th day; cf. Genesis 1.31 and Genesis 2.2). Neither can they tell us why they believe in literal 24 hour “days” when the “literal” reading of the creation account suggests more of a 12 hour “day” — evening to morning (see Genesis 1.5, 8, 13, 19, etc.). Nor can they tell us what the “light” was that was created on the first “day” (Genesis 1.1-5) when the sun wasn’t created until the fourth “day” (Genesis 1.14-19). However, literalists believe it was a literal “serpent” that literally spoke to the woman in Genesis 3.
Next, there are many different views when it comes to the topics of predestination, free will, and “original sin.” However, it’s only in the West that Christians believe in “original sin.” The Eastern Orthodox don’t hold to this view nor do people of the Jewish faith. Furthermore, some people don’t believe in predestination and others don’t believe in free will. And those who do believe in predestination (a very small subset of Christianity) fall into different categories, too. Some of those people believe that God predestined all things — good or evil — before time began and chooses who would be rescued and who would be condemned (a understanding called supralapsarianism). Others hold that God predestined things after the supposed “fall” of humanity but still chose who would be rescued and who would be condemned (infralapsarianism). As can be seen from the meme, the author of it suggests a supralapsarian worldview. There are very few people who hold to this idea that God preordains all things — including evil.2 But “evil,” we’re told, is how we would view certain things. Supralapsarianism holds that, since God is good, all of God’s choices and actions are “good.” That means the “fall of humankind” was “good.” That the crucifixion of Jesus was “good!” That the slaughter of the innocents (Matthew 2.13-23) was actually “good!” The truth is this view runs contrary to Scripture itself —
Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter.
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter.
The question for my friend (and others like him) is this: Do we read Homer in the same way? Or Shakespeare? That is, should we read those works in a wooden, literal way? If not, why not? If not, why do we read the Bible in this way? We read the Bible this way because that’s what we’ve been taught (especially where we live). We’ve been told to read the stories of the Bible in an extremely literal way. As we’ve seen, however, that way of reading the Bible creates all kinds of problems right from the start — quite literally, “In the beginning …”
Another way of reading the Bible, though, is actually a much more ancient way. In his book, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time, scholar Marcus Borg refers to this ancient way as “historical-metaphorical.” It takes into account that the creation stories4 coincide with the ancient Hebraic work week (working for 6 days and resting on the seventh) and recognizes that the creation story written in Genesis 1 was probably written during the time of the Babylonian captivity. It was told as a way of cementing for the Jewish people their own creation story (contrasted against the creation story of the Babylonians). It also sees that the creation story should be interpreted with the insights gained from science. That is, there’s no reason one can’t see the “days” of creation as metaphors for epochs of time — of ages — between each “day.”
The “historical-metaphorical” way of reading the Bible also takes into account the evolutionary understanding of people I mentioned above. That is to say, the people of the Bible are at different places on the evolutionary scale (just as we are from them). What this means is they would have understood things quite differently from each other and us. Let me explain.5
Suppose we have before us math textbooks on a long table. Each book coincides with the different grades of school, K-12. We might pick up the second or third grade textbook and find something about subtraction. We might read, “You cannot subtract a larger number from a smaller number.” The reasoning behind this statement is that it ties into the developmental stage of the students — they have yet to understand subtraction so rudimentary rules apply.
Next we pick up a sixth or seventh grade math book. Here we read, “Today we’re going to learn how to subtract larger numbers from smaller numbers.”
Now, these two ideas aren’t contradictory to each other. Nor does the latter understanding make the former understanding “false” or “wrong.” The former understanding has to be grasped and grasped well before one can learn about the latter understanding. In other words, the student must learn how to subtract real or positive numbers before being introduced to the concept of negative numbers.
The same is true when reading the Bible. The people of the Bible had to understand certain foundational concepts about God before they could learn other, more advanced concepts. We actually see this happen within the Bible itself. In the book of Exodus we read:
God also said to Moses, “I am Yahweh. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name Yahweh I did not make myself fully known to them.”
Here we see that Moses’ ancestors understood God in one way; that God wasn’t “fully known to them.” But Moses and those with him in the Exodus would now understand God in an additional way.
This evolutionary understanding of God in the Bible continued until Jesus. The New Testament writers are quite clear on this point. Paul wrote, “Christ is the visible image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1.15; NLT6; cf. John 14.9; 2 Corinthians 4.4). In other words, according to the people of the New Testament, if one wants to know what God is like one simply looks to Jesus of Nazareth.
Paul wrote a famous passage one hears a lot at weddings. The passage is taken from 1 Corinthians 13 which is often called the “Love Chapter.” In it, Paul wrote that Love is patient and kind, etc. However, what has been helpful for me is to replace the word “love” with the word “God.” Since God is Love (1 John 4.16), what would this passage tell us?
God is patient and kind. God isn’t jealous or boastful or proud or rude. God doesn’t demand God’s own way. God isn’t irritable, and doesn’t keep record of being wronged. God doesn’t rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. God never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
This is the image of God that Jesus portrays. This is what God looks like. This is who God actually is.
The meme also indicates that God, through Jesus, sacrifices himself to himself (and in these types of things God is always male). This understanding is known as the Penal Substitutionary view of atonement. That is, God must be paid before God will love people or rescue them from sin (that, according to the meme, God gave people to begin with). I agree with the point the meme is trying to get to: that’s a really messed up way of understanding God. But that’s a very real view that a lot of people from the West have about God (especially where we live). However, let’s be very clear — it’s certainly not the God we see revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. And as we saw above, if one wants to know what God is like, one looks to Jesus.
The God Jesus reveals loves the outcast and is considered a “glutton and a drunkard” by the religious leaders of his day (Matthew 11.19). The God Jesus reveals also eats with “tax collectors and sinners” (which meant they were considered family; Luke 5.29; et al). The God Jesus reveals sacrificed Godself for others, not because a debt was owed and needed to be paid, but because they were God’s friends and God loved them and they needed to be rescued (John 15.13; cf. John 3.16; Romans 5.8). The God Jesus reveals sees that Love is the greatest of all commands (Matthew 22.36-40). It’s because of Love and peace that others will know that people follow Jesus (Matthew 5.9; John 13.34-35; see notes there, too). The God Jesus reveals shows us that God is Love (1 John 4.16).
There’s another way of understanding Jesus’ death and it, too, is one of the oldest. It’s called Christus Victor (based on the Ransom Theory). It’s the idea that Jesus’ death was a part of a cosmic drama, “a passion story of God triumphing over the powers and liberating humanity from the bondage of sin,” death, and the devil. These things weren’t part of God’s intention but intrusions in God’s creation. Jesus’ death, then, is not a payment to God but part of God’s grand rescue operation, codenamed: New Creation (Isaiah 65.17ff; 66.22-23).
God promised this rescue mission from the very beginning. Since I’ve already written about this at length in my Goodness of Humanity series, I’ll just touch upon a couple of things here.
God devised a rescue mission to reconcile all of creation back to Godself (2 Corinthians 5.18-19). The mission was put into place when God chose Sarah and Abraham:
Yahweh said to Abram (aka, Abraham), “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I’ll show you. I’ll make you into a great nation, and I’ll bless you; I’ll make your name great, and you’ll be a blessing. I’ll bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
“ … through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you’ve obeyed me.””
“Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you’ll spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.”
Here we see that it was through Sarah and Abraham God would “bless” all humanity. That is, humanity would be “made holy,” or “consecrated.” Paul tells us that the promises were actually made to Jesus and that, though Jesus, God would rescue creation (Galatians 3.16). And that’s exactly what happened:
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation — if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.
Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation — if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.
Paul tells us the Gospel7 is that “all things” (including people) were once alienated from God but now “all things” (including people) have been reconciled back to God because of Jesus’ death. God is “not counting people’s sins against them” for they’re now “without blemish and free from accusation” because of Jesus. This is the Good News. People can experience this right now. They don’t have to wait. They can be part of God’s continuing rescue operation right now. What we read about in the New Testament is the beginning of the implementation of God’s rescue operation: New Creation. Everyone everywhere is invited to be a part of God’s New Creation. As Paul wrote, “ … if anyone’s in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here” (2 Corinthians 5.17 (adapted).
But New Creation takes time to grow just like everything else. In the stories (parables) Jesus told, we see a gradual change taking place. The story of the woman making bread is a good example (Matthew 13.33). Jesus tells of a woman who took a little bit of yeast and mixed it with some dough. She continued to knead the dough until the yeast was worked throughout all of the dough. In the story, the “dough” would be the cosmos and the “yeast” would be New Creation. We see, then, that New Creation doesn’t come at the end of history but actually starts within history and continues to spread until the cosmos is permeated with it.
Well, I could write a whole lot more but this post has gone on long enough. I hope my friend and anyone else who is struggling with the Bible will find this post helpful. I do have some book recommendations that would be of tremendous help, too — at least they were for me:
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In the Love of the Three in One,
Br. Jack+, LC
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1. And, in most cases, those same people only use the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. Since they believe that the KJV is the only English translation ordained by God, all other translations are “of the devil.”
2. In fact, I can probably count on one hand the people I know who believe this.
3. Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
4. Yes, there’s more than one creation story. Genesis 1 and 2 contain two different creation stories. In Genesis 1, all the animals are created before humans. And humanity is created together, equally. In Genesis 2, the human (Hebrew: אָדָם — human, humankind) is created first, then the animals, and finally the woman (Hebrew: אִשָּׁה — woman, female; and with her creation the human finally becomes “man,” Hebrew: אִישׁ — man, male).
5. The follow three paragraphs were my recollection (and paraphrase) from Brian McLaren’s book, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith.
6. Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©1996, 2004, 2007, 2013, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
7. The Greek word is εὐαγγέλιον (euangelion) and means “good news” or “glad tidings”.
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