Colour Supplement

Articles by writers around the world

Sunday 26 August 2007

 

Fighting over The New Testament

By Gordon Atkinson

 

 

I’ve been a part of the Christian Church all of my life. I’ve watched how things work within the faith, and I’ve been particularly fascinated by the ways we Christians use and abuse the New Testament.

The New Testament - the uniquely Christian part of the Bible - is a messy collection of books and letters. No one can be absolutely sure what parts are important and what parts are the cultural containers that hold the important parts. In First Timothy, Paul instructs Timothy to drink wine regularly to help with his stomach problems. It seems unlikely that this should be understood as a universal command for all Christians throughout the centuries. And I’m not aware of any church that treats that passage in such a way.

Not that a glass of wine at night isn’t a splendid idea and something I might like to suggest for some of my more “intense” brothers and sisters.

So from the start, we have a collection of documents that is unclear and can be difficult to interpret and understand. That’s a good thing to know before we go any further.

From what I’ve seen, only very serious Christians take the time to actually read the New Testament for themselves. This collection of sacred writings taxes scholars, so it is certainly a challenge for everyday people. We do the best we can, but no one can understand all of the New Testament. And even those who have read the whole thing will have forgotten most of it by the following Tuesday. The New Testament is too much to hold in your mind.

What most Christians do is read selections of the New Testament, usually in a haphazard manner over a period of years. They pick out the parts that seem important or relevant to them and focus mainly on those selected scriptures. Most people get guidance in this selection process from whatever Christian tradition they follow. Pentecostals from Georgia find some parts of the New Testament particularly compelling. Episcopalians in Boston might focus on other parts.

But we all share this in common: we pick and choose scriptures, cobbling together something we call a theology. The word theology literally means “God words,” and a theology is a series of belief statements about God and Jesus and how Christians ought to live.

Now it is true that a few extraordinary Christians over the years have tried to understand and organize everything in the New Testament. Some have created great, hulking volumes of systematic theology that no normal person could ever read or understand. But trying to create a systematic theology is rather like a physicist trying to come up with a unified theory of everything. It’s a great idea, but so far no one has been able to pull it off in a way that satisfies everyone

If what I’ve written makes you angry, please note that I’m being descriptive. I’m simply describing what I have seen. If you know of a monk-like person who sat on a pillar for 40 years, can quote the entire New Testament from memory, and has now perfectly integrated all of it into his theology and life, then your exception is duly noted. Good for you, and good for your monk friend.

So our little slanted, incomplete, biased, and selective theologies are the best we can do. Given how our theologies are formed, it’s a constant wonder to me that people are surprised and even angered when they meet someone whose ideas about God differ from their own. I’d be more surprised if I met someone who shared my own beliefs, point by point, all the way to the end. Now that would be strange.

Oh, and there is one other thing. There are parts of the New Testament that are just embarrassing and otherwise inconvenient to our modern lives. We just ignore those parts and go on about the business of creating little theological systems that suit us.

That last paragraph is going to get me at least 20 scorching emails. Tut, tut, please settle down. I’m only telling you what I’ve observed. In my experience, people either ignore or conveniently avoid reading parts of the New Testament that are inconvenient for them.

Again, the exception of your monk friend is duly noted.

Now this is important to remember: all that I’ve described so far is what the best and most serious Christians do. Your average Christian might never read the New Testament at all. He or she likely doesn’t even know the names of the 27 writings that comprise our canon of scripture. These people show up at church now and again. They listen to what the minister behind the pulpit is saying and take that as gospel truth without asking any significant questions. Ironically, these are the people who are often the most dogmatic and outspoken about Christianity. Oftentimes it is these people you see waving Bibles around, shouting and screaming about how every blessed word of the Bible sprang straight from the lips of the Almighty.

Anyone who has actually slugged it out with the New Testament, reading it carefully and trying to piece together the truth about God, Jesus, and how we should live, will be so filled with humility and grace that they will probably never yell at anyone about anything, much less the Bible.

Now I’m fine with this whole process. I mean, it’s not like we have a choice. This is the best we can do. So I’ve made my peace with the reality of the situation. And that’s probably why I’m less dogmatic and picky about the details than some.

But what truly amazes me is what happens when two Christians find themselves in a dispute over some doctrinal issue or passage of scripture. Suddenly they forget how messy the New Testament is, how contradictory and convoluted parts of it can be. They forget that their own theology is a product of very selective reading.

Forgetting these things, they run back to their studies in search of verses of scripture that support their position. They pull out books and commentaries; they scan denominational pamphlets or find help online in locating these verses.

Suddenly, single verses are seen to support whole theologies. Some verse from First John now has the power to shore up an entire worldview. Some obscure phrase from Jude is thought to have the final answer on how men and women should relate to each other. And some phrase that Jesus used in a parable now means that people who disagree with you and your ideas about God will roast slowly over an open fire in the pits of hell throughout all of eternity.

These furious exchanges of quotations are like people lobbing mortar shots at each other from trenches. Those involved only get angrier and more entrenched. I guess eventually they get tired and stop. One or perhaps both camps claim victory. No one generally learns anything constructive from these battles.

How do I know so much about this? Because I used to be right in the middle of those fights. In college and seminary, I stood on street corners, arguing and fighting with fundamentalist street preachers. I remember once dragging the Greek New Testament (I had all of one semester of Greek under my belt) down to the street corner to show a sweating, shouting evangelist an aorist verb.

He stared at the Bible for a moment, then looked back at me. Then he shouted, “Your pride will be your downfall, and you will burn forever in the LAKE OF FIIIIIRE!!!!!

I mean, what can you say to that?  "Nu-uh!"

So now I’m gently sliding into middle age. I’m tired of fighting over the Bible. Honestly, I couldn’t care less about most fine points of theology. I know a little too much about how the New Testament was formed, and I know a little too much about what’s in there and how hard it is to keep it straight.

I have much simpler questions for people now.

“You reading the New Testament? Trying your best to understand it?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you trying to follow Jesus as a disciple, trying to understand what he said and live the way he did, where possible?”

“Yeah, I’m trying.”

“MY BROTHER!”

Gordon Atkinson is pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in San Antonio, Texas and has his own outstanding website www.reallivepreacher.com.  We are most grateful to Gordon for his permission to reproduce his essays here.

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