Give me liberty.
In one of my last posts, I said something that I know will ruffle some feathers. The bible is not about me, not written for me. As you begin to study the original contexts of each of the books of the bible, along with their original occasions for writing, you begin to see how profoundly different the world of today is from the world of 2,000 years ago.
That’s a good thing. For two reasons: The first is that, it allows you to more clearly see ways in which we’re the same, areas in which things have never changed. That’s your entry into the applicability of the bible--how it can be applied to your own life, half a world away and 2,000 years removed from the world of first-century Palestine, from Jesus’ world. The second is that it releases you from man’s interpretations of the bible, and settles you in a world of fact.
Truly, I didn’t experience freedom from the tyranny of man’s interpretation of the bible until I realized that the bible is not written for me, or about me. God alone is Lord of my conscience, and he has set me free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are in any way contrary to his Word, or simply not contained therein.
What a liberating thought!
Yet some of those doctrines of men have been so deeply ingrained in my young mind that I have lived to impose them on myself, condemning myself in areas and for ‘sins’ that God himself never once spoke against.
Nevertheless, I read scripture in the voice of all of the fundamentalists and evangelicals that I sat under as a child. I read the words, and hear their broken interpretations of them in my heart, and all at once I’m back in their pews, listening to them spewing hatred and lies, and spinning off their ideas into new excuses to hate myself, to condemn myself, and to judge others.
If you bristle at this idea, or feel I’m attacking preachers unfairly, you’re going to have a lot of trouble with even historical, historically Baptist expressions of our faith. Go read Article 21 of the London Baptist Confession, 1689--the first modern, Baptist charter. I’ve had this conversation many times before and I always love that moment when the wheels start spinning, and the evangelical has to deny his own roots in order to justify his present position.
They don’t know their own roots. I’m speaking to the evangelicals who raised me: You have no idea where you even came from. Humble yourself. View yourself not as the culmination of all church-thought, not as the be-all, end-all, but rather, as part of a whole thing that goes way beyond you and isn’t about you.
There’s always this moment when, as we talk about setting me free from men’s interpretations of scripture, the evangelical realizes they’re out of their depth and they say something like, “Well, just because I’m a Baptist doesn’t mean I believe that.” I can tell you don’t believe in liberty, because I can see how you’ve labored so long under lies like ‘submission’ to the authority of your pastor and his condemnation. Then they’ll say, “Well, I just believe what the bible says.”
Here is what the bible says:
“There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?” (James 4:12 CSB).
“Who are you to judge another’s household servant? Before his own lord he stands or falls. And he will stand, because the Lord is able to make him stand” (Romans 14:4 CSB).
“Whether it’s right in the sight of God for us to listen to you rather than to God, you decide” (Acts 4:19 CSB).
“You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of people” (1 Corinthians 7:23 CSB). I will not be a slave to your interpretation of the bible. I read it for myself!
“They worship me in vain, teaching as doctrines human commands” (Matthew 15:9 CSB).
“If you died with Christ to the elements of this world, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations: ‘Don’t handle, don’t taste, don’t touch?’” (Colossians 2:20-21).
The apostle Paul said it best: “I will not be mastered by anything.” I will no longer allow myself to be enslaved to something you read on Facebook--not in scripture--and sought to impose on me. Your values are not biblical values! Evangelicals are letting Tucker Carlson interpret the scriptures for them rather than doing the hard work of gleaning insight from the book themselves. We saw that just this week, with Carlson calling out Dr. Russell Moore, my former Dean of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. After that, again this week, it came out that Carlson admitted to blatantly lying about his views on Trump on the air for all these years.
No offense, Tuck, but I don’t care what you think the bible says, I’m going to trust what I have read for myself, and gleaned from insightful and compassionate men that I know, like Russ Moore.
And, as I showed in prior posts, this is hard work. Approaching the scriptures in this way requires humility, most of all, to understand that the bible is not written for you, not about you, but rather, it was preserved for you to show you God’s actions and God’s nature toward another people altogether, another world away, and so many lifetimes ago. Yes, I’ve been set free from the tyranny of the moralists and their broken interpretations of the bible. But now I have to read the book for myself and draw my own conclusions, with the help of the Holy Spirit.
The honest approach is hardest of all.