Friday is for Friends: Rachel Held Evans

Along these lines is a comment by Rebecca Manley Pippert that I came across some years ago:

"Jesus always seemed to be doing two things: asking questions and telling stories. Christians always seem to be doing two other things: giving answers and 'preaching.'

"All four are necessary -- at the right time and in the right place. But we tend to forget that the God of the Bible was an extraordinary communicator; we ignore Jesus’ example of how to start conversation, and we jump in prematurely with answers and sermonettes before the listener’s curiosity is aroused."

This is a great post. It makes me reflect on "ownership" of the text. It seems so often that an interpreter wants to "own" the text. My lens -- historical-critical, grammatical-historical, or whatever -- is the lens through which all should see the text. There's a tension here, because if the text is going to serve a normative function in the Christian community, it must have normative meaning(s) at points. But the best commentary, I think, is that which avoids pretensions of ownership.

It's always humbling when you find yourself getting irritated with Jesus! (Another cryptic response?! Another story?! Just answer the dude's question!) :-)

When I first started paying attention to how Jesus quoted Scripture, it actually reminded me a lot of the poets I studied in lit class in college. It seemed the good ones always used allusion masterfully. The Wikipedia entry on allusion is actually pretty good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allusion. It says, "Allusion is an economical device, a figure of speech that draws upon the ready stock of ideas or emotion already associated with a topic in a relatively short space."

With literary allusions, you don't expect the metaphor or reference to be perfect. You simply expect it to conjure the mood of a shared memory.

I enjoyed this and resonated with it, especially the journey from childhood story to God's answer book to doubt to some sort of cohesion through a narrative framework.

The problem for me is that the opportunity for self-righteousness always seems to afford itself. To draw upon some adages, knowledge is power and knowledge puffs up. Interpreting the Bible is often just a way for me to gather ammunition. I suppose there is a diffeence between knowing Jesus and knowing scripture.

Well, off to convince everybody we share a common story and that they should have this superior hermaneutic...

I'm reading a great book called "The Future of Faith" and I think it's something that all followers of Jesus should be reading to get a better understanding on why we believe what we believe and how we are moving into an age of The Spirit.

Steven,

If you are reading it - join in our conversation (Faith and the Future - on the sidebar or here for yesterday's installment.

Isn't anyone going to mention the fact that it is 2009 and she said "oh snap"?!?! ;-)

But seriously, thank you for writing this. A big part of what keeps me on the outer periphery of these movements and revolutions in Christianity is that too often it looks like all that is happening is that literalist elitism is being replaced by narrative contextualist elitism. With a kind of vehement open mindedness that creates its own very insidious dogmatic outlook couched in the supposed abandonment of dogma.

It is heartening to know that some people have begun to realize this and are trying hard to break free.

I sure have been a snob. I embarrassingly remember how loudly I agreed with a pastor's criticism about the Amplified Bible. It's still not a favorite of mine, but there's no need to run it into the ground as though it was written by Satan himself. I've also learned not to force my views of scripture onto others and judge them as somehow inferior if they do not read it in the same way that I do. I've learned to take my own advice which is, "there's room in God's economy for all of us." Now I try to only speak out against and/or correct truly false, anti-biblical thinking. I try to leave room for anything else that does not fit into either of those categories.

Awesome job, Rachel!

Great post as usual, Rach. I figured out a couple of years ago that I had become a sermon snob of sorts. God broke my heart and my pride....and I am thankful for that!

Rachel,
Excellent post. I can relate to your story. If it weren't Jesus, we'd accuse him of "prooftexting". We still need to grow in our understanding of the ways in which the word of God is "living and active". I do need to pick up Scot's book on this.
Peterson has also been a great help to me, especially in "Eat this Book". I believe it was here that he roughly stated that we tend to focus more on "exegeting the word of God" rather than letting the word of God "exegete us". In this way, the Holy Spirit can speak the same written word uniquely into the soul of each person who hears/reads/receives it(smaller stories that he can intricately weave into his Larger Story). Lectio Divina has been a helpful way of reading for me in recent years, tho I have also been able to become "snobbish" here as well:)

Updated for Jim#14 and a 2009 audience: "Yo, Jesus. I'm really happy for you, and I'mma let you finish, but John the Baptist had one of the best biblical references of all time."

Great post, but I'm wondering how it fits with the "Abusing Scripture" thread we had several days ago.

Seems to me like there are times when we need to be "snobs" in the sense of correcting or resisting "abuse". If I see somebody pushing scientifially literate people away from the Gospel by insisting on reading Genesis as a science textbook, or if I see out-of-context Scripture used to push a personal agenda, I don't think I should let it pass just to avoid being a snob.
I suppose a key is to act in love and humility and awareness of the likelihood of logs in my own eye.

Great post, Rachel. Thank you. I appreciate and need the reminder. I also really like the image of Jesus expressing anguish through the words of the psalm. Good stuff.

You poor, poor little people. You don't have the single meaning of every passage figured out. How sad. ;^)

Seriously, can this become too open-ended, where every interpretation is allowed?

(Why do I feel like Tim Keller is getting a laugh at this topic, given some recent comments at this blog- my own included)

meaning meaning meaning . during the 9-5 daily grind, I spend a lot of time trying to work out the meaning of documents that were written in the last few years, in the language I have mastery over. These documents are all written with the intent of being accessible to all (i.e. they are regulations). However, in spite of this, the meaning is the cause of hours of debate and a lot of money.

What's my point? . . I don’t have one. But I do have a question: How do we then expect documents written 2000 years ago in languages almost forgotten to be accurately interpreted?

Does this leave us in literary no-mans land? No! far from it. It means we have to wrestle with our historic/sacred texts. Just in the way people always have (St. Paul, Jacob even Jesus' interpretive battles with the religious in His day). It's kinda fun. Although i can see the tendency, as with anything for those that have thought about something for a while to be snobbish about those that haven't. Same goes in my professional field.

Hi, This is my first look at this blog -- recommended by my son. You have so succinctly said exactly what I've thought over my many years of Bible reading. Thank you!

I want to relate a true story of how that childhood belief in the Bible stories actually saved my life. (Brief background. 1. I grew up in Sunday School from babyhood in a church that allowed no teaching aids except the Bible, even for children. A talented teacher would hold the Bible in her hand while she told the most marvelous stories from it that kept us enthralled. 2. From babyhood my mother took pictures with a box camera -- pre-flashbulbs -- and she counted the time exposure seconds by saying rhythmically "Stand still, don't move, stand still, don't move"; I was trained to stand stock still when she said that.)

The true story: While visiting my grandfather's farm, I wanted to watch the hogs eat. I was leaning on a low rail fence watching real animals grunt and gobble up their food. Fascinating to a little city girl. I then heard my mother, from the porch of the house, saying, "Stand still, don't move. Stand still, don't move, stand still . . . ." I did move my eyes to the side and out of the corner could see my grandpa running toward me quite fast, with an ax raised over his head. The only thought I had then was a vision of a picture in my Bible Story book, of Isaac laying bound on the altar and Abraham's hand raised with the knife, and an angel stopping him from killing Isaac. That picture kept me from moving, because I "saw" that angel protecting me like it protected Isaac. Grandpa got to me and began chopping at the ground by my feet. He was killing a cottonmouth snake that, my uncle tells me, was poised to strike me. That snake is a viper and very poisonous. My uncle said that he was sure I was as good as dead, for we were miles away from any antivenom and I was a small child. And when he heard my mother say "stand still, don't move," he was sure I would start to move and the snake would strike. But that didn't happen.

That's how that Bible story from childhood literally save my life!

Maybe we should start a group on Facebook...

Great post.

Yes. Excellent post, Rachel. I can identify. We can be so "right" and yet at the same time so wrong. God's Spirit uses all of God's people, and we need to humbly remind ourselves of that. While at the same time, seeking to wisely share our own faith and gift among God's people, but not as those who think we have the final or best understanding.

And the emphasis on story has helped me immensely as well, and I'm still working on it.