Cherry Picking the Bible with Jesus
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First Problem
In the spring of 1992, several young male students at an Assembly
of God Bible college in Sacramento, California, were confused about all those
women passages.
If you were raised in a conservative Evangelical church, you know the ones―women should be silent in the church; women were created second and were the glory of man rather than the glory of God; first God, then Jesus, then the man, then the woman; women must submit to their husbands; women should not teach; women should pray and prophesy with their head covered as a sign of submission; women would be saved in childbirth; women should have long hair; women must not wear certain clothing, etc., etc.
For two thousand years, those passages have supported male bias against women in academia, science, art, theology, and even sainthood. That constant disrespect is religion. It’s not love.
The issue was never discussed in our Bible college because one of the professors was a woman, and most of the leaders had mothers, wives, and sisters in ministries. However, one day, one of the students pounded his desk and demanded to know how to resolve the issue of women having authority when an inerrant Bible says they should not.
I had heard it all since 1965, and by 1992, when I was a student at the school, I had resolved all my issues with those passages and the apologetics trying to explain them away.
The Bible is authoritative, I decided, but not inerrant. Can we be brave and say it out loud without choking?
The Holy Spirit was promoting women to authority and ministry despite first-century biases that stuck women back at Genesis 2-4 for all time. Perhaps thwarting God was resisting the call of the Holy Spirit and not rising above the demands of first-century domestic expectations.
One of the students was from a typical, patriarchal church in Romania. Ruben took me aside one day and shared a story about a woman in his church who had a prophetic gift. She would occasionally approach a member and give them a word of knowledge or prophecy. Finally, the pastor told her to knock it off. She was exerting inappropriate authority.
For about a year, she obeyed him, but one day she warned him that she had a word for him. He was not thwarting her, but the Spirit of God, and if he didn’t release her from this ban, he would die in the next few weeks. His brains would be smeared upon the wall.
The pastor blew her off and continued the ban. Sometime later, while he was walking down a street lined with a wall, he was crushed against it by a car, and his brains were literally smeared upon it. Ruben’s story didn’t change my belief at all, but it certainly emphasized the seriousness of not separating culture from genuine revelation in the Bible.
The Bible college resolved the debate that was circulating among the students by banning all discussion of women and authority. The last word from the president was that suppressing women was an “act of the flesh.”
Second problem
I first learned Hebrew at the kitchen table of a wonderful rabbi in Lexington, KY, named Bernard Schwab. After about 9 months, he had me sit in his kitchen to read and translate Genesis 1-4. As I read, I was stunned. I laid the Torah in my lap and said, “Oh my gosh, there are 3 or 4 different documents here.” In Hebrew, they stand out.
The rabbi harrumphed and made a quick denial, the kind I had made to others in the past, but I had seen it, and I couldn’t unsee it. That revelation, combined with my interest in science, anthropology, and paleontology, I had some rearranging of theological furniture to do. Add an article in Bible Review explaining the contrasts in the stories,[i] and I was directed to a new hermeneutical path.
Can we accept that things that aren’t historically true are true in many other ways? There are profound truths in both Gen. 1 and Gen. 2-4 that we might miss if we don’t try to imagine the issues the ancient authors faced in their lives.
Problem three
The Torah commandments about food also became an issue for me. There’s Leviticus 11:1-8:
11 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, 2 “Say to the Israelites: ‘Of all the animals that live on land, these are the ones you may eat: 3 You may eat any animal that has a divided hoof and that chews the cud. 4 There are some that only chew the cud or only have a divided hoof, but you must not eat them. The camel, though it chews the cud, does not have a divided hoof; it is ceremonially unclean for you. 5 The hyrax, though it chews the cud, does not have a divided hoof; it is unclean for you. 6 The rabbit, though it chews the cud, does not have a divided hoof; it is unclean for you. 7 And the pig, though it has a divided hoof, does not chew the cud; it is unclean for you. 8 You must not eat their meat or touch their carcasses; they are unclean for you. (NKJV)[ii]
But wait. There’s a passage in Mark where Jesus berates the Pharisees for missing God’s point and instead following “traditions made up by men.” Verses 7:14-23:
14 Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. 15 Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.” [16] 17 After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. 18 “Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? 19 For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.) 20 He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. 21 For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, 22 adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. 23 All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”
Why are the disciples so...what was that? Shakes head, rechecks the passages. Dull! But didn’t the Lord say to Moses and Aaron…? Is Jesus calling us to read the Bible using common sense? Isn’t that a slippery slope? Who are we to cherry-pick God’s holy Word?
Consider the difference when Jesus refers to various passages: “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago…but I tell you…” (Matthew 5:21-44)
Compare with, “It is written.”
OK, maybe that’s a stretch. So, let’s compare “God is no respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34) with “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says.”
Back to the law again. Not grace, not the current fulfillment of Joel 2:28, “And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.”
Jesus has shown us clearly that he doesn’t always respect the law, even the Mosaic Law, where passages begin with “And the Lord said unto Moses.”
What does Jesus respect? The Ten Commandments, faith, kindness, mercy, loving your neighbor, passion, truth, forgiveness, humility, loving your neighbor, gratitude, resting in confidence in God, giving, helping the poor and disenfranchised, restraint on anger, restraint on luxurious living. Did I mention loving your neighbor? These virtues are how we genuinely, beyond words, love the Father.
Conclusion
Yes, Jesus is inviting us to view the Scriptures through a screen of common sense. We all cherry-pick Bible passages, whether we admit it or not. Catholics support the doctrine of transubstantiation with John’s “eat my flesh, drink my blood.” Protestants prefer the phrase, “do this in remembrance of me.” Holding both truths in tension is not compromise. Rather, we grow in maturity, from a Christian needing to be spoon-fed rules to an adult ready for the meat of the word.
In Genesis 2 and 3, Adam and Eve were intellectually naked toddlers restricted to a garden until they ate from the forbidden tree. They quickly grew in cognition―the ability to read, write, sing, invent, build, and destroy. That quantum leap is similar to the shock of outgrowing the rules of the law so that we can understand the meaning of worshiping “in Spirit and in truth.”
One way to please God is by growing up. We are under grace, not law. We are better disciples when we swap rules about clothes, hair, and gender for love and respect.
“20 Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: 21 “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? 22 These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. 23 Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.” (Colossians 2:20-23)
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