Where now is your authority (Part II)

Someday perhaps Jesus will be immediately available to answer all the questions we have, but until that time Christians must turn to other sources to answer our questions regarding basic beliefs on theology and doctrine (orthodoxy) and on practices and morality (orthopraxy).  Currently, evangelicals turn to the Bible for authoritative answers to these types of questions.  This is not to say that this is the only source we use to determine our beliefs and morality, but it plays the same role that the Supreme Court does in American law.  Where conflicting opinions exist, we appeal to this authority to settle the matter with finality.  Today a small but growing number of evangelicals (for varied reasons) are no longer satisfied with the authority of the Bible and so a question looms large, “Where now is your authority?”

My answer:  Love

I assume that any evangelical will acknowledge the importance of love.  God is Love.  It is the greatest commandment (and the second greatest too).  It is what inspired God to send Jesus to Earth.  It is the overarching principle which gives the other gifts of their meaning.  1 Corinthians 13: 1-4 tells us that without love we are nothing.  Jesus mocked the Pharisees for following the religious rules without love. 

But appealing to the Bible to justify love as the ultimate authority is a self-defeating argument.  Instead I will compare the outcomes of using Love to using the Bible as one’s final authority.  Let me first compare the Bible and Love regarding issues of morality.

Love as an authority for morality

I ask myself which of two choices better provides a sound foundation for morality,

            1) Determine what the Bible says by looking to Love (Love above the Bible).

                                                or

            2) Determine what Love is by looking to what the Bible says (Bible above Love). 

History is replete with examples of Christians reading the Bible without love.  The Crusades, The Inquisition, excommunications, shunnings, conquistadors, burning of witches, the genocide of native Americans, slavery, oppression of women, and homophobia have all been motivated and justified on Biblical grounds without Love.  The reputation of Christ and Christianity have been sullied and the totality of the suffering, injustice, and depravity caused by this way of reading Scripture is overwhelming to me. 

Yet history is also filled with examples of Christians reading the Bible though a lens of  love; Prison ministries, homeless shelters, famine relief, education, abolition, the suffrage movement, orphanages, caring for those with AID’s , charitable hospitals, Mother Teresa’s comfort to lepers etc.  The people engaged in these activities read the same Bible as those who committed the atrocities, but they read and interpreted the Bible out of love.  It appears they weren’t asking themselves “What does the text require?” they acted as if they were asking themselves “What does love require?”

The list of ills stemming from Christians (or others) loving without the Bible is fairly insignificant by comparison.  Though the Bible contains the definitive sacrificial love story, the majority of people in the world know love when they see it without ever having opened a Bible.  Many of them love their children/families/spouses more consistently and sacrificially than I love mine own.  I am not arguing against the fact that Jesus’ life and His teaching on Love were transformational to the world, but ultimately it is Love itself, not the teaching on Love wherein the power of God resides.  Many people suffer not from ignorance about what the Bible says Love is, but from a lack of truly being loved at all.   

So it becomes obvious to me that between Love and the Bible, Love is the higher moral authority.  The Bible must be read through the lens of love and not the other way around.  Love must be the final arbiter of morality.  I will seek the Bible’s counsel on all moral issues, but when I sense there are conflicting answers and I need an authoritative answer, I will ask “What is loving?” over “What is Biblical?”

Love as an authority for orthodoxy

How does appealing to Love help us know what to believe about God, life and the afterlife?  What does Love have to say about all the systematic theologies that have been carefully crafted based on the Bible?  It is here where the stark differences between the nature of the Bible and the nature of Love will be felt most deeply (much like the early Protestants must have felt the profound differences between the nature of the Church and the Bible).  The difficulty arises in that Love does not offer the religious scholar the particularity and specificity that Biblical texts do, and therefore Love will not be able to decide the winners and losers of certain theological debates. 

But is this really a reason to reject Love’s role as authority?  If I am feeling wronged by God because Love doesn’t speak to my “important” theological issues let me remember some history. Though today’s evangelicalism centers on “getting people saved” from hell, the truth is God’s people have only known about heaven and hell for about 2,000 years.  From the time of Adam until the writing of the New Testament, Yahweh did not tell His followers about life after death, and the Israelites generally did not believe in it or concern themselves with it.  The Old Testament makes no definitive statements regarding what happens after we die.  It vacillates from a denial of life after death to agnosticism at most.  The afterlife and conceptions of heaven and hell are thoroughly New Testament notions.  Did God owe it to all those people in Old Testament times to let them know about the nature of the afterlife?  Apparently He didn’t owe them anything. 

Therefore maybe I am misguided if I think that Love is a poor authority on issues of theology because it isn’t very detailed or specific.  Maybe specificity and details aren’t part of what God wants to provide to us.  Maybe if he wanted us to know the details of issues like His second coming or the exact nature of the Trinity He would have given us golden tablets engraved with detailed explanations.  Maybe God doesn’t want me to spend a lot of time trying to comprehend the incomprehensible, trying to systematize the unfathomable, and trying to reduce and categorize the infinite.  Maybe the most important thing I need to know about God is that God is Love, and the most important thing I need to know about myself is that God loves me.

So now when I consider the vast ocean of doctrines on man, creation, God, heaven, hell, salvation, justice, mercy etc., I will keep in mind first and foremost that God is a loving God.  All of God’s other attributes are brought under the subjection of God’s Holy and perfect Love.  From this foundation I will ponder the deep questions of God and through this lens I will read the Bible for further glimpses of who God is and who I am. 

Where now is my authority?  How do I know what to believe and how to behave?  There are many sources (including the Bible), but ultimately I believe in Love.

Where now is your authority? (part I)

Where now is your authority?

I attended a Christian conference in 2008 that inspired and challenged me.  One speaker ended their talk with the question above.  It has haunted me ever since.  The speaker had summarized the historical roots of evangelicalism* by analyzing each of the major Church “splits” and describing how each of them had fundamentally changed Christianity.  Specifically each transition involved a fundamental shift in what we believed to be the central authority in the Christian religion. 

For example, shortly before The Reformation, Roman Catholics viewed the Church itself as the ultimate representation of God’s authority on Earth.  Christians were expected to turn to the Church to find expressions of God’s power, His love, and His Truth.  Hierarchical structures were clearly delineated (all the way to the Pope) to settle disputes on church matters and doctrinal orthodoxy.  The Protestants however, became fed up with the corruption and inadequacies of the Roman Church and consequently rejected the Church’s authority and replaced it with the Bible.  Sola Scriptura is now the pillar of Protestantism which affirms that the Bible is the ultimate and only source of Truth.

The speaker made a number of observations about the various movements and trends currently at work within Christendom which are consistent with the idea that we are once again undergoing a transformational shift in where we place our authority.  The reasons for this change are many, but the speaker mentioned one that struck me as particularly insightful.  As evangelicals have earnestly reached for deeper Biblical insights by examining ancient cultures and the nuances of the Greek and Hebrew language, we have accidentally discovered that there is no such thing as THE Bible.  There is only the Bible “as interpreted by” or “as seen through the eyes of”, and therefore the distinctive claim of the Bible as a truly objective arbiter of Truth has been lost.  Additionally, for many evangelicals, the Bible’s other shortcomings are being increasingly highlighted in this connected and well-informed world.  The speaker did not make any suggestions as to where Christianity will turn next for its authority, but rather left us with the question maddeningly unanswered and hanging in the air, “Where now is your authority?”

I find myself in a position spiritually that I would never find myself in financially or professionally.  I am a proactive and methodical planner.  Though I have changed jobs/employers a number of times in my career, I have never left a job before having been hired for my next job.  I have never purchased a car or a home until I knew that the previous one was sold.  In other words, in these areas of my life, I step out only when I know that there is something to step onto.  But now spiritually I see that as I relinquish my death-grip on the Bible, I don’t really know for sure what will take its place. 

Many early Protestants must also have been more than a bit apprehensive.  For centuries the Roman Catholic Church was the representation of God, His blessing, His Truth, and His refuge.  Christians could go to Cathedrals to see the Beauty of God.  They went to the Priests to confess to God and be assured of their forgiveness and acceptance.  In times of need the Church provided for their physical needs and even provided a place of safety in times of war.  If anyone had a theological question, no one was more learned or knowledgeable than the monks.  The Church in all this and more was the manifestation and revelation of God.

And yet the Protestants replaced the Church with a cold hard book (during a time of wide-spread illiteracy no less!).  The very nature of “the Church” and “the Bible” are so different from each other that to replace one with the other was incomprehensible and blasphemy to many.  How could a material object replace the Church with its spirit-filled flesh and blood members and clergy?

But Protestants of course did not completely eliminate church.  We Protestants still meet regularly.  We still worship together, take communion, hear teaching and use the church community as a means of support in times of need.  But the Protestants did “repurpose” church.  We stripped it of its position.  No longer was it the complete revelation of God, no longer was it the ultimate repository of Truth, no longer would it be venerated.

Likewise as I consider replacing the Bible with some other authority, I am deeply struck by just how different this other authority must be.  And just as the Protestants undoubtedly missed certain aspects of having the Church as their authority, I also will miss certain aspects of the literally black and white Bible as my ultimate and unquestioned source of Truth.  But just as the Protestants never eliminated church, likewise I do not intend to void my life of Scripture.  I still will read and learn from the Bible.  I will learn about God, about man, and about life from the Bible.  I still believe in the centrality of the Bible (and of the Church) to the life of the believer. Nonetheless I have given the Bible a different role in my spiritual journey, and I must answer the question, “where now is my authority?”

 

*Evangelicalism is rooted in Protestantism which split from the Roman Catholic Church about 500 years ago during The Reformation.  The Roman Catholic Church had split from the Greek Orthodox church some 500 years before that (known as The Great Schism), and the Greek Orthodox church had split from the Coptic Church about 500 years before that.  Going back yet another 500 years brings us to Christ himself walking the planet and founding Christianity in the first place.  The speaker noted that from a historically perspective Christianity is due for a significant upheaval.

Purity - Part I

Whenever humans (who are made in the image of God) are viewed as mere objects, degrading treatment and outright oppression surely follow.  Our culture's obsession with sex has separated sexuality from intimacy and is one of the main reasons that the objectification of women continues in this modern era.  It is right and natural that the church would be concerned about such abuses and the needless suffering they cause.  However as I have been looking deeper into our “purity” movement, I have come to understand that our “solution” can be just as objectifying and damaging to women as the hyper-sexualized culture we so readily condemn.  

I teach at a Christian high school where every female student knows what the word “purity” means.  They know how to maintain their purity.  They know how to lose it.  They know the value that their parents/church/school put on it.  They know how important it is to their self-esteem and who they will disappoint and hurt if they fail to protect it.

And this is what I've realized that these young women all "know":

Purity is the absence of any sexual activity.  Purity is the absence of any sexual thoughts or desires.  A girl maintains her purity by guarding against any hint of sexuality.  She flees from temptation by thinking on holy things (anything other than sex).  Not only must she maintain her purity by these actions, but she needs to help her “brothers in Christ” maintain their purity by dressing modestly.  And they know that “modestly” means “unattractive to boys”.  If boys are attracted to them, they are causing them to stumble – causing them to sin. 

If she views herself or allows others to view her as a sexual being she is certainly not being pure, and if she participates in any sexual acts, then she has lost her purity.  She knows it can never be regained.  It is lost forever.  She knows that she is now “used” goods.  Her value, like a new car driven off the lot, has dramatically depreciated.  She knows she has taken the greatest joy a man can ever have (marrying a virgin) away from her future husband.  This future husband will never be able to fully appreciate or be fully intimate with her.  She may find a man that loves her, but he will never fully respect her.  He will always have a sense of self-pity and she will always have a sense of indebtedness because he has sacrificed and settled for a woman who has been used and discarded.

The problem is that each and every one of these statements is crap.

Purity is not the absence of sexuality, rather it is the absence of evil.  This verbal sleight of hand creates the powerful subtext, “sexuality is evil”.  God created us as sexual beings and has made sexuality fundamental to our identity.  A tremendous intellectual and emotional dissonance occurs when we teach these contradictory messages.  It shouldn’t have surprised me when I recently read that women raised in the “True Love Waits”/“Kiss Dating Goodbye” frenzy are now dealing with feelings of shame and guilt on a par with victims of childhood sexual abuse.  Rather than being free to fully experience “sex as God designed it to be”, these women are dealing with deep emotional scars distorting any sense of a healthy sexuality.  And why would we expect a woman to be able to enjoy sex when they have been told for years (or decades) to not just abstain from intercourse, but also to suppress those “evil” desires in the first place?  What sort of dark, twisted compartmentalization goes on in any individual who is forced to fearfully kill off their natural sexuality?

How can we simultaneously point to the shallowness of the world's glorification of women based upon their sexuality while at the same time teach girls that their value to their future husband depends upon their lack of sexuality?  A girl’s virginity has been somehow elevated from a simple statement of a girl’s sexual experience to some sort of material/emotional/spiritual “gift” that she gives away to men.  The metaphor has been stretched too far when we use words that pretend that an actual object of value has changed hands. On first thought the notion seems pleasant enough (who doesn’t like gifts?) but can we at least be loving enough to stop for a moment and consider the implications of viewing a woman’s sexual status as a tradable commodity?  And what kind of man (maybe a pimp?) determines a human's value based on the condition of a hymen?

What happens to the woman taught to believe this?  Upon bequeathing her prized possession to another, she must immediately feel devalued (whether or not within a marriage).  She no longer has the worth she once did (as they say, she “gave it away”) while the man has apparently become enriched.  It is disheartening to realize that there are followers of Christ that actually view sex in these terms.  I know a beautiful Christian woman who spent her wedding night locked in the bathroom crying as her groom gently tried to talk her out.  How can this be considered a healthy view of sex?  Does this not just reinforce the world’s ugly imagery of “deflowering” a woman?  Isn’t it the world’s perversion that says that a man’s success can be measured by how many conquests he achieves?  

One of our chapel speakers this year exhorted the girls in the audience to make the boys “earn” them.  He said that the girls should respect themselves and not make it easy on the boys.  If the boys didn’t treat them right, then the boys didn’t “deserve it”.  This is purity?  This is how a girl respects herself??  The world says that women are sex objects and we say “No, you should respect yourselves, you are expensive sex objects!”  This is the Christian message???  Would this speaker have ever thought to tell the boys to make sure the girls earned them?   This speaker (one of many that will inform these student’s views of sexuality) subtly but unambiguously told the girls that they were objects to be won, and he told the men that the competition is on.  Men must “earn” women.  The men who play the best will score the most.  Game on.

I also recently attended a “purity talk” given at a local Christian college given to about 100 college-aged Christian men.  The speaker repeatedly and emphatically exhorted these young men to “Keep your hands off your girlfriends!”  He laid out his logic clearly.  He explained that even if they loved their girlfriends, there was still a chance that someday they would break up and their girlfriend would end up marrying someone else.  If this were to happen it would create tension and awkwardness between themselves and the new husband.  Why?  Because they would be guilty of stealing something that belonged to the future husband.  His whole argument for “purity” had nothing to do with love or intimacy between a man and a woman, rather it centered on conflicting ownership claims of two men over the sexuality of the same woman.  The husband was entitled to the full value of his wife’s sexuality and the speaker assumed that some of this value would literally have been taken away if the woman had had any sexual thoughts/feelings/experiences before they met.  I’m sure this would have sounded right to me years ago if I said it fast and didn’t think about it too long.  But now when I stop and see the blatant objectification of it all, I am grieved and angered.

We are reinforcing rather than rejecting the world’s objectification of women.  We are burdening women with the responsibility of eliminating not only their own sexual thoughts, desires, and actions, but their “brothers” as well.  And this burden will not be born without failures and the ensuing shame and guilt that come from all the “purity” talks they have endured predicting the condemnation of their peers, their future spouse, and their Lord.  We are defining sex as some sort of zero-sum game where women start with a fixed amount of physical intimacy that they rapidly and irredeemably lose whenever they express their sexuality.  We are perverting what should be a beautiful, expansive, and enriching part of life and jamming it into a little tiny space between our unrealistic religious restrictions and the world’s glandular self-gratification.  

We must finally acknowledge that sexuality exists in single Christian men and women (the average age before first marriage in the U.S. is now 29 for men, 27 for women).  We should be promoting a healthy, Godly sexuality. One that helps men move beyond our natural tendency to objectify women (instead of one that excuses that tendency and casts the blame on women).  One that helps men and women embrace sexual desires as a natural part of godliness.  A view that celebrates gender differences (vive le difference!) not as a means to subjugate women, but rather as a means to more fully enjoy intimacy with a complementary partner.  A view that accepts, respects, and loves individuals not only as emotional, intellectual, and spiritual beings, but also as sexual beings.  

Until we can accomplish this, how foolish we will look proudly walking around with a plank in our own eye as we loudly decry the sexual destructiveness of the world.