Untitled Sermon (10)

KMT Part II

I found this particular part of your answer fascinating: “How I 'feel' about it [and objective truth claim] has no bearing on if the claim was made, or what it is likely to mean.”How interesting.  Sure, I understand the first part, that your feelings don’t affect the fact that the claim was made.  But the second part?  The fact that your “feelings” don’t come into play in deciding what it means?  This is really illuminating. Because of course this gets right to the heart of your question about how my “feelings” affect my discernment process. Perhaps we should break down what we mean by “feelings”, shall we?  Emotions are information, plain and simple.  I found this article from Psychology Today pretty informative regarding how emotions actually help us make MORE rational decisions, rather than dumbing down our intellectual responses.

Not sure what the point is of parsing rationality. An objective claim is a statement that can be proven true or false, while rational thought is a process of thinking based on facts and logic. I use emotions to feel out all sorts of things, I’ve merely stated that emotions are not a tool I use when evaluating an objective claim.

It’s not uncommon to hear that being “emotional” is the opposite of being “rational.” For many people, the idea of rationality evokes images of a person engaging in intelligent, calculated reasoning—ignoring the “illogical” influences of emotion. This suggests that there is no place for emotion in rational thinking. However, some recent work from our lab suggests the opposite. We found that individuals who score higher on tests of intelligence and rationality don’t ignore emotions. Instead, they pay more attention to emotions, are better at recognizing and understanding emotions, and are better at using emotional information when making decisions. While this might seem surprising at first, it makes more sense when you think about it a bit. In fact, it’d actually be quite odd if it were helpful to ignore emotions. This is because most intelligent decision-making requires emotional information. Emotions tell us what we want and what we don’t want, and we can’t make smart decisions without first knowing what our goals are.”

“Emotions tell us what we want and what we don’t want.” Exactly my point.

There are currently over 45,000 denominations of Christianity, all professing to be using sound logic to interpret the Bible.  If you visited any decent seminary, you’d find professors and students engaging in what they believe to be sound exegesis of Biblical texts- allegedly rooting the correct meaning out of a Bible verse through an objective analysis of the text.  But more often than not, what is actually being done is “eisegesis”, which is projecting biases and presuppositions into the text.

Talking generally does’t really help. Perhaps you can give me an example of where you think someone is using eisegesis instead of exegesis. Surely you would not agree that when someone brings something in to a text, say, I like to murder people, and said that’s really what Jesus means by do not murder, would I be correct or incorrect?

We just can’t help it.  We are complex beings, and our emotions and insights and backgrounds and cultural identities and desires are not as un-tangleable as we would like to believe they are.  Everyone reads the Bible through some kind of lens- the Bible itself doesn’t “say” anything.  It’s a text, and texts by themselves have no inherent meaning.  People assign meaning to texts, and people are not machines.  We bring our own lived experiences and circumstances into our readings, and what we glean from the text varies significantly, even with statements that were objectively made.

Do you think the Biblical writers or Jesus intended their words to have a meaning?

This is why even the most fundamental, foundational tenants of Christianity are disputed within the Church.  The idea that there is an enduring “core” theology that is accepted as “Christian” is simply not true.  What “biblical Christianity” looks like to one group looks entirely different to another.  And history shows us a complex tapestry of belief within the body of Christ followers that have been woven through time.  And often that tapestry was influenced very heavily by fallible, power-hungry individuals who had very specific agendas.  (Like Constantine, for instance, though the examples here are legion).

Are you trying to claim the major doctrines of the church have not been consistent through time? If someone uses a text to espouse a terrible thing, would that mean that the text was teaching that thing? Perhaps you can let me know what items you think the church has done that are terrible. Then let me know if you think the Bible teaches we should do those things.

Strict Biblical exegesis has been used to justify all kinds of horrors throughout that tapestry.  Slavery, genocide, war, white supremacy, religious intolerance, victimization of the gay community, oppression of women, child abuse, and opposition to scientific progress.... just to name a few.

So, if someone read a text (presumably the men you mention) and concluded that its meaning was that God wants us to make slaves and to kill gay people, would their interpretation be correct or incorrect vs. what the scriptures teach on those two issues?

Men who claimed to be following objective logic have wreaked havoc using their Biblical interpretations like weapons for as long as the Bible has been around.  They have made the Bible “say” what they needed it to say in order to push an agenda or uphold a deeply held bias in order to maintain power over the “other”.

Were they correct in doing so? Why or why not?

In Jesus’ day, he often called out this kind of objective, rational interpretation of scripture when it was used without any regard for human flourishing and was used to control people rather than contribute to their liberation.

Do you think Jesus thought they should know better? Why specifically would he assume that?

When Jesus was openly critiqued by the Biblical “experts” of the day for breaking Sabbath to heal a crippled man or to feed his disciples, he responded by saying that “Which of you, having a donkey or an ox that has fallen into a pit, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?”

And what was He teaching there? Do you think he was teaching them not to use scripture, or that they didn’t know their scriptures enough?

Jesus is pointing to the very fact that when we hear objective claims like “On the sabbath you should not do any work” we need to apply our own discernment, wisdom and compassion to the text.  Jesus was constantly reframing strict purity laws in the light of what matters most, which is love of God, self and neighbor.  And love is not simply “rational”.  In fact, the economy of God’s grace is completely unfair and irrational (what? The workers who showed up an hour before quitting time get a full wage???  The prodigal son gets a party???)

Cite a text where Jesus is teaching that we need to apply our own discernment to an OT text. How does scripture define what the greatest commandment (love of God) entails?

It seems God is in the business of surprising us with his grace.  And grace is deeply rooted in love, and not something we can objectively get a handle on.

What do you think the Biblical text teaches about grace?

Jesus wasn’t followed from town to town because he was objectively and rationally sound in his interpretation of Scripture, he was followed because he was dynamic and loving and preached liberation from oppression and had an upside-down message about the first and the last and he wasn’t afraid to challenge the religious elite when they used their power and prejudice to garner power at the expense of the most powerless among them.

Cite a text where we’re told the reason people were following Jesus was because of his dynamic love and liberation.

So yes, I use discernment when I interpret scripture, just like Jesus did.  I use my critical thinking skills, and historical context, and I attempt to use exegesis while recognizing that I am inevitably also using eisegesis.  But where I am wrong, I would like to be wrong in that I haven’t been loving ENOUGH.  I am always reaching for more compassion, grace, peace, prosperity and love of neighbor, God and self.

Do you think Jesus used eisegesis? Is so, give me a reference.