Jesus Christ Is The Word of God (part 2)

September 8, 2009 //

Wow, it has been 7 weeks since I posted anything to my blog. I know this because my son is 7 weeks old today and I posted this 2 days before he was born. (Note to self: posting a “part 1” and/or a potentially controversial opinion right before a major life change may not be the best idea.) I can’t remember at this point what triggered me to write that. It had been brewing for a while in my Mac Journal, but something must have set me off to throw it on out there. I was so worried about it afterward, I refused to tweet about it until I had a chance to post the “part 2” – which is right here.

My goal in part 1 was not to tear down Scripture or in anyway diminish its importance for living a truly Christian life. But this doctrine of inerrancy we have created and the notion that the Bible is the final authority on all matters of faith simply do not serve us well, because they place faith in the wrong location and they are ideas we have brought to Scripture, not ideas that have been revealed to us by Scripture.

You may be asking at this point, is he really saying the Bible is not inerrant? So, if Scripture is not inerrant, what is it? If there are errors, how do I know where they are? How do I keep from going down a slippery slope where I toss out anything I disagree with? These are serious questions. This is what makes people nervous. The doctrine of inerrancy was created to protect us against all this looseness. We don’t like subjective, we don’t want relative. We like objective, we want fixed, we want something we can possess.

But The Word of God is not something we can possess. The choice is not between objective and subjective – it’s between one subjective and another subjective. Objectivity is a myth, it does not exist. There is no approach to Scripture that doesn’t come with its own set of presuppositions and interpretive framework. Our interpretations do not amount to apostolic testimony. The Word of God confronts us, interprets us, not the other way around. The Word of God knocks us off our horses on the Damascus Road, interrupts us in all of our religious zeal, and asks, “Why do you persecute Me?”

The doctrines of inerrancy and final authority are only useful if I want to use the Bible to confront you, tell you how to live, lay out what God has called you to do or be. But this is not how we are meant to use Scripture. It is not a tool that helps me pick the speck out of my brother’s eye. It is a mirror that shows me the beam in my own eye. Scripture carries the weight and importance it does, not because it is some magic book I can use at my discretion, but because it is the primary place where God can come and speak to me, revealing traits of His character, confronting me in my sin and/or complacency, calling me to be and do what God wants of me.

This is a radical departure from how many churches and Christians use the Bible presently. Here we put aside our own ideas and ask the Holy Spirit to come and speak to us through Scripture. Here we grow ever more mistrustful of our pet theories, the standard interpretations, the usual way of doing business. Because, face it, we can’t trust ourselves to get this right. Remember the scribes and Pharisees? They were experts of Scripture. They had it memorized, they copied it by hand, they studied it night and day, they gave their lives to it. But they were completely wrong in their interpretations.

Completely.

Wrong.

Jesus blew their theologies, theories, interpretations, and understandings out of the water. Do we really think we are better than they were? The disciples weren’t, even after living with Jesus continually for three years. So, some 2000 years later, do we have some special ability to understand what Jesus means that they didn’t?

Actually we do, but only this: we have the same Holy Spirit that was poured out in the Upper Room on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2. But this brings us right back to be completely, utterly, always and forever dependent – wholly dependent – on God to tell us what Scripture means. Of course, this requires that we accept the idea that God still speaks to us, and that we listen. And the Spirit only reveals to us what we need to know in the moment, at that time, to carry out the work of the Kingdom that the Spirit has set before us. The Spirit does not give us pronouncements to make over the whole of the Christian church through all time. As Jesus told Peter when Peter asked about John, “What is that to you? You follow me.”

Scripture is an account of God revealing God’s self to humans, down through history, leading up to and culminating in the fullest revelation of God possible: the Incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thus all Scripture must be read through Jesus (both forward and backward) and thankfully He sent the Holy Spirit to do just that, as Jesus tell us, “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”

So it’s not up to me to tell you if a woman should be allowed to preach or teach in your church (I remember what set me off in part 1 now). It’s up to the Holy Spirit. Has the Spirit called some woman in your community to teach? Has the Spirit given her a message for your community? If so, then you would be wise not to hinder the work of the Spirit. Did Paul say women should be silent in the church? Yes, he did. Did he mean that as a directive to be obeyed by churches everywhere throughout history? Does what Paul wrote trump the call of God on a woman’s life to teach? Who’s in charge here, Paul or God? Are you really going to use Scripture to work against God’s will? Wow, that’s just what the Pharisees and scribes tried to do.

And it’s not up to me to tell you if a divorced person should be allowed to teach or preach in your community. Did Jesus say divorce was wrong? Yes, he did. Did Jesus say divorced people should be banned from ever teaching or preaching? No, I don’t remember reading that. Again, whomever the Lord raises up, whomever the Father calls, whomever the Spirit empowers to say or do whatever should be allowed to say or do that. If our doctrines and theologies get in the way of the work of God, then we should probably rethink them.

One final almost final note for those of you who have a philosophical bent. I am arguing here against the lie of modernity that we can be the possessors and masters of knowledge, that we can approach Scripture objectively and somehow read it with no filters or lenses. This may lead you to think that I support the post-modern notion that modernity is wrong because multiple readings are valid, that all points of view are equal or have their own worth. To me, that is trading one lie for another lie. With the first, someone else tells me how to read Scripture and how to live, with the second, I decide how to read it and how to live. Sorry, but I don’t trust you or me to get it right.

The only “right” reading of Scripture is the one the Holy Spirit empowers as He communicates the truth of God into lives to heal, transform, confront, challenge, encourage them as the Spirit sees fit. Paul tells us that all Scripture is “God-breathed,” but we almost always fail to see that this cannot be static. Breath by its nature is not static. The Spirit blows where he will. We cannot contain, predict, bottle, or package this. We can, however, quench it, and this is precisely what the pseudo-doctrines of inerrancy and final authority do.

All authority has been given to Jesus, not our pet interpretations of the Bible. He alone is perfect and infallible. “When the perfect comes” in 1 Cor. 13 refers to Jesus, not the canon. Jesus is The Word of God, the revelation of the Father. Holy Spirit, come ever again and reveal Jesus to us, through Scripture, through the Body of Christ, through the poor, through whatever means You may use (we’ll even listen to a donkey). Set us free from our own preconceived notions, confront us, convict us, mold us into the likeness of Jesus. May we not cling to and love the darkness, may we learn to walk in Your light.

Categories Bible, Church

The Bible is Not the Word of God (part 1)

July 18, 2009 //

Why do we call the Bible “the Word of God” when the Bible calls Jesus the Word of God (John 1.1)? It seems that we make a leap from Scripture being inspired (“God breathed” as it states in 2 Tim. 3.16) to Scripture being this inerrant, perfect document, given to us from the very hand of God, with no meaningful human involvement. Isn’t there some space between those two views of Scripture? Need they be conflated?

Because that second view, the one prevalent in so many theological texts (like Grudem’s popular tome), puts us in quite a difficult place when it comes to whether women can speak in church, whether people who have been divorced can serve in ministry, etc. If you take the view that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, then a passage like this has to be taken literally and obeyed without question:

As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. (1 Cor. 14.33-35)

Paul’s statement usually leads to one of these responses:

Ignore it
Find some clever interpretive way around it (e.g., it only applied to some boisterous Corinthian women – this involves moving “As in all the churches” to the previous statement; it only applies to “public” gatherings, not private gatherings in homes, which was where most church services were held at the time; balancing it out with another place in 1 Cor., where Paul talks about women operating in the gifts of the Spirit)
Create some way in service to pay token obedience to this, despite the degrading effect it has on women (e.g., have women speak from the floor, not the stage; not allowing women to use the main pulpit; only allowing women to teach in all-women settings)
Use it as a weapon against women who would serve in ministry to bludgeon them into silence

The real issue though is that what Paul says here contradicts the attitude toward women that Jesus displayed in the Gospels and in pouring out His Holy Spirit on women and men on the Day of Pentecost – power that was poured out for the express purpose of speaking publicly all that Jesus had taught and accomplished.

The real issue is that this one statement in Scripture is not in line with so much else in Scripture.

Which is a real problem if you think the Bible is the inerrant, infallible, perfect Word of God.

The thing is, the Bible doesn’t make this claim about itself. The Bible makes this claim about Jesus Christ. The Bible doesn’t claim to be the Word of God. It says Jesus is. According to John 1.1, Jesus is the Word of God. Jesus is the perfect, inerrant, infallible Word of God. The Bible also tells us that nothing and no one is perfect, except God alone.

Even if the Bible had dropped down out of the sky, even if God had emailed us the PDF directly, even if no humans were involved in writing, editing, compiling, and deciding on which documents to include (OT, NT), the Bible would still be something other than God’s own Triune Person. The Bible is not God.

See, what we as humans always want – what we have wanted since Adam and Eve ate the fruit – is to make it so that we do not have to depend on God. People who hold an inerrant view of the Bible are just the latest in a long line of people looking for some way that they can live apart from being at every moment dependent on hearing from God.

Remember the Pharisees, the scribes, and the experts on the law? They held this view of Scripture (Torah for them). They didn’t need to listen to prophets like Jesus, because they had the text right there. They knew what it said. They knew what it meant. They knew what God wanted from them. Except. they. were. exactly. dead. wrong. Jesus hammered them repeatedly because their own expertise in Scripture had blinded them to what Scripture really meant.

So what am I saying? Am I saying the Bible isn’t important? Am I saying it’s just some book written by humans with nothing special about it? Am I saying we don’t have to take it seriously? Live by it? Learn from it?

NO.

I love Scripture. I am committed to the Bible. I have devoted the better part of my life studying it and acquiring the tools to study it as deeply as possible. I could not feel more strongly about the importance of Scripture and the key role it plays in living the Christian life.

Which is why it drives me nuts when people misuse it to work directly against the kingdom Jesus came to establish. The Bible is for drawing us close to God and each other – not for driving us apart. Just like Adam and Eve were put in the Garden of Eden for fellowship with God and each other – not for estrangement.

To be continued…

Categories Bible, Relationship with God

Prayer: For Ordering A Life Wisely

June 29, 2009 //

This is one of my favorite prayers. It was written by Thomas Aquinas. I often pray this as part of my morning devotions.

For Ordering a Life Wisely

O merciful God, grant that I may
desire ardently,
search prudently,
recognize truly,
and bring to perfect completion
whatever is pleasing to You
for the praise and glory of Your name.

Put my life in good order, O my God.

Grant that I may know
what You require me to do.

Bestow upon me
the power to accomplish Your will,
as is necessary and fitting
for the salvation of my soul.

Grant to me, O Lord my God,
that I may not falter in times
of prosperity or adversity,
so that I may not be
exalted in the former,
nor dejected in the latter.

May I not rejoice in anything
unless it leads me to You;
may I not be saddened by anything
unless it turns me from You.

May I desire to please no one,
nor fear to displease anyone,
but You.

May all transitory things, O Lord,
be worthless to me
and may all things eternal
be ever cherished by me.

May any joy without You
be burdensome for me
and may I not desire anything
else besides You.

May all work, O Lord,
delight me when done for Your sake
and may all repose not centered in You
be ever wearisome for me.

Grant unto me, my God,
that I may direct my heart to You
and that in my failures
I may ever feel remorse for my sins
and never lose the resolve to change.

O Lord my God, make me
obedient without protest,
poor without discouragement,
chaste without regret,
patient without complaint,
humble without posturing,
cheerful without frivolity,
mature without gloom,
and quick-witted without flippancy,
fear You without despairing,
truthful without duplicity,
do good works without presumption,
reprove my neighbor without exulting,
and – without hypocrisy – strengthen
him by word and example.

Give to me, O Lord God,
a watchful heart, which no capricious
thought can lure away from You.

Give to me a noble heart,
which no unworthy desire can debase.

Give to me a virtuous heart,
which no evil intention can divert.

Give to me a constant heart,
which no tribulation can overcome.

Give to me a free heart,
which no violent passion can enslave.

Give to me, O Lord my God,
understanding of You,
diligence in seeking You,
wisdom in finding You,
conversation pleasing to You,
perseverance in waiting for You,
and confidence in finally embracing You.

Grant that as penance
I may be afflicted by Your hardships now,
through grace I may rely
on Your blessings on the way,
and in glory I may enjoy You fully
in the Kingdom of Heaven.

You who live and reign,
God, world without end.
Amen.

Categories Prayer

Rock the piano recital grace

June 19, 2009 //

Eph. 2.8 says:

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

I read this the other day and for some unknown reason a picture came to mind of God like a loving parent at a piano recital. I have now been on both ends of this deal, as the kid sweating through “Shenandoah” or the theme from “Chariots of Fire,” and now as a parent watching Emily and Katelyn. If you’ve been either recitaler or recitalee, you know how this goes down. The kid gets up there and plays, maybe well, or okay, or not-so-okay, or train-wreck. But this has no bearing on the reaction of the loving parent, does it? They clap and cheer and hug and video and shed a few tears. And they keep shelling out for those lessons, even if it is a futile endeavor. They may justify it as a good experience or something like that, but it’s really an act of love.

God treats us like that, accepting us no matter how badly we’ve done (or how well we think we’ve done). God’s grace is free and generous, lavish and never-ending, well beyond the patience of even the best human parent. And God’s not like the tone-deaf parent who doesn’t really know how bad the recital went; God knows exactly how it should be played, aware of how all the notes, rhythms, and phrasings are supposed to go. Yet, God cheers us and hugs us and loves us anyway.

As true as that is, that’s not the end of the story. As comforting and encouraging as it is to have parents who support you as you mutilate the music, how much cooler is it to totally r o c k ? It won’t make the parentals love you any more, but isn’t it always better to rock than not to rock? Should the kid take their love and acceptance as a free pass to stink it up, or as a secure foundation from which to pursue excellence boldly?

See the very next verse in Ephesians (the one right after we usually stop quoting) says:

“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

God’s grace is not contingent on our works; our works don’t earn us anything. But God’s grace does not give us an excuse to slack off and not do any works. We were created for good works. Our sin wrecks all that, but God pours grace into us to re-enable us to do the good that we were created to do.

When you’re playing music, the surest way to mess up is to be afraid that you’re going to mess up. As soon as you think to yourself, “here comes that hard lick, I hope I don’t blow it” – - BAM – - you blew it. Just like you knew you would. Knowing that the people you’re playing with believe in you and won’t blink if you do slip up frees you up to play really well, often times better than you thought you could play.

God believes in your ability to do good because God created you and knows what you are capable of doing and being. God’s grace enables you to do good and is there to cover you when you do slip up. There is absolutely nothing to fear, nothing to lose, by taking the risk to do what God is telling you to do. There is actually everything to gain because with God’s grace supporting you and cheering you on, you will totally rock.

Categories Relationship with God

What third graders have to do with prison planning

May 22, 2009 //

“In this country, we do the projections on how many prisons to build based on third-grade African-American male reading levels. We do so little for you after the third grade we can essentially know how many of those young people are going to end up in jail. That’s the biggest social injustice imaginable.” – Michelle Rhee, chancellor of the Washington D.C. public school system, in an address at Duke University’s Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy [quoted in Duke Magazine Jan-Feb 2009]

Rant begins in 3…2…1…

I read this recently and it shocked me. Injustice. The way we’re doing things isn’t working too well. And it’s getting worse. Here in North Carolina, we’re dealing with a massive budget shortfall by taking money away from teachers and other municipal employees (except the former governor’s wife, who refuses to give up her cushy $170,000 gig, the one she got through the buddy system. Well, she might be willing to give it up for an $850,000 buyout…)

[Pause for sub-rant digression.]
And why do we have a massive budget shortfall? Because we were counting on both the return on investments and the tax revenue from citizens’ investment incomes and suddenly that has gone away. Why? Because the entire system was rigged. A good while back in the USA, we shifted from making money by providing good and services to making money by money itself. There are now layers upon layers of “profit” in nearly all our transactions. Countless, faceless middlemen taking a cut of everything. This kind of inverse pyramid scheme is not sustainable indefinitely. It eventually collapses under its own weight. This may be merely a recession we’re in, but it also might be a major system correction that will take longer and be more painful than we want to think about.
[End of digression.]

But back to my main point (rant). So our prison growth planning is tied to how many African American 10 year olds can’t read. And our traditional approach of throwing money at the problem is no longer available to us (never mind that it never worked all that well anyway) because all the money is gone, as most of it was pretend money to begin with [suppressing urge to digress again]. What can we do then? What we should have been doing all along – teaching our own children and helping teach any other children we can make meaningful contact with. Here are a few ideas:

1.   Read to your children. Turn off the TV, computer, cell phone, Blackberry, and iPhone/iPod and read your kids a book. Read them something they like. Read them something classic. Read them something quirky. Let them sit in your lap or snuggle up next to you on the couch and read to them.
2.   Volunteer for a local program in your area teaching people to read – children or adults. Note that the prison planning people focus on African American males? We should focus on them as well.
3.   Does your church read to your children? Does your church know if all the children it cares for every week are learning to read? You have them for 2-3 hours every week. How about smaller classes for the children, where they can sit on the floor around the teacher and listen to the Bible story? Oh, but that would mean we would need more volunteers. Yup.
4.   Stop depending on the government to educate your children. It never was their responsibility to begin with. They are not very good at it. I’m not saying you have to home school. But public school alone is not enough. Bright kids in a good environment will do okay (but why is okay good enough?). Bright kids in a less stable environment won’t do okay, and neither will kids that need any kind of special attention. They all could use some special attention, but that job is too big for the poor public school teacher making $30k (well, before the new payroll deduction to help the budget problem).

End of rant.

p.s. Please note that I am not ranting about public school teachers. Those folks are some of the most undervalued, underpayed, undersupported people in our society. The system is rigged against them. They have too many students, too few resources, and too little time. Most of them do the best they can given the situation. But the situation is not going to improve. We must supplement the effort these folks are giving.

Categories Ethics, Social Justice

Pillars of cloud and fire

May 20, 2009 //

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When the Lord tells me to go somewhere, do something, or say something, I tend to want to know why, what the end result will be and how things are going to play out. But the Lord hardly ever gives me all the info I’m wanting.

What he does give me is his presence – the Holy Spirit guiding me continually, as long as I’m paying attention to the pillars of cloud and fire in my life.

But I guess I’m still stuck where Adam and Eve were: looking for knowledge so I can do it myself, while the Lord is offering his presence because (pardon the southernism) Lord knows I can’t do it myself. Lord knows his way is better.

Think about this: if the burning bush morphs into a flat screen tv and gives Moses a look at what’s coming over the next 40 years, do you think he goes to Egypt? Maybe not. That was an awful lot of wandering around and putting up with whiners for a long time. But he would have missed those face-to-face chats with God and would not have been… well, Moses.

How about you? Are you content to follow the pillars of God’s presence around (even when it seems aimless)? Or are you yearning for knowledge that might enable you to do it on your own, or have more control of things, or have a better handle on the situation – or any other way we want to phrase the desire we fallen humans have to be anything but radically dependent on God’s presence and grace at every moment?

Yeah, me too.

What do you say we put down the fruit that is not good for us and stick to a manna diet?

Categories Relationship with God

FREE book for you

May 16, 2009 //

There is something you should know about me: I really like Karl Barth. Barth (btw, silent “h” at the end, pronounce it just like the only son of Homer and Marge Simpson) was probably the most prolific theologian of the twentieth century. Want proof? Here’s the Barth shelf from my little library (right above the Thomas Aquinas shelf, my other hero).

16-05-09_0238

All of those are by Barth. The black ones are all volumes of his Church Dogmatics (of which I still lack two volumes). I also have another half shelf of smaller works and German editions. Makes for some nice, light bedtime reading, let me tell you.

Barth gets overlooked sometimes because a lot of what he wrote is a pretty tough read, often made tougher still by less than helpful translations from the German. But even if you have never read his works (or even heard of him before now), you have likely read others who were heavily influenced by Barth. He stood up to the Nazis when few in the German church did and he helped push theology beyond the futile problems of modernity. He also has some smaller books that are easier to get into, like Evangelical Theology, Deliverance to the Captives, and a little one called “The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life.”

I was using that book as a text in a theology course I was teaching at Lee University a few years back, when it suddenly fell out of print for about a year. Undaunted, I got a copy of the original German off of eBay (back when I still used eBay) and produced my own translation. Since I had used the book in a previous semester, I knew some of the questions that it brought up. To save myself some time and effort I addressed those questions as footnotes to the text.

Now I’m giving to you for free if you want it, as a PDF file: Karl Barth’s The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life. I hope you enjoy it; I would love to hear your thoughts on it.
Peace,
mike

Categories Ethics

God is speaking – to YOU

May 8, 2009 //

The other day, Anne Jackson asked a question on her blog, “when the devil latches on and screams at you… what do you do to shut him up?” There were many really good responses posted, but also many more that took a do-it-yourself approach to the issue, ignoring the best solution of all – let Jesus tell you the truth. Let the Lord rebuke the devil for you. This is the approach the archangel Michael took in Jude 9, so it’s at least worth considering.

This got me to thinking: why are we so ready to accept that the devil talks to us, that demons talk to us, but we aren’t nearly as ready to accept that the Lord talks to us? I know the accuser has a loud, irritating, impossible-to-ignore voice, but I also think we too often forget to open our ears to what the Lord is trying to say to us. After all, we have quite a talkative God:

God created everything by speaking.

First thing God did after creating Adam – spoke to him.

Spoke to Cain, Enoch, Noah.

Uses the title “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” as self-identification: all people God spoke to.

God spoke face-to-face with Moses again and again while they wandered around together for 40 years with the Israelites.

Half of the Old Testament is made up of God speaking to various peoples through the prophets.

Jesus did a lot of speaking while on earth, of course, but He also promised to send the Holy Spirit to teach us, remind us of what Jesus said, comfort us, and counsel us. All of these involve communication.

Jesus spoke again to Paul and got his attention quite well.

Jesus spoke all kinds of stuff to John the Revelator.

The Spirit has spoken to many people throughout the history of the church: Origen, Chrysosthom, Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, Thérèse of Lisieux, John Wesley, and William Seymour (just to name a few).

All of this speaking coming from a God who does not change and who doesn’t play favorites can only mean one thing: God is still speaking today and would like to communicate with you. Especially in those moments when the enemy is all up in your ear yelling his lies and accusations. You don’t have to deal with that alone and really you can’t. The Lord says the battle belongs to Him.

The battle is won by the Lord’s power, which often comes when the Spirit speaks the truth over you and into you. Scripture plays a role in this, but remember that Scripture is a means God uses to speak to you, not a means by which you get to figure it out alone.

Categories Relationship with God

To all victims of $20,000 sins

April 30, 2009 //

Jesus tells this parable in Matt. 18.23-35 about two servants and a master to make a point about forgiveness, or actually two points, the second point being the point of this post. The first servant owes his master 10,000 talents, the second servant owes the first servant 100 denarii. The first point Jesus makes comes when the master very graciously forgives his servant of his massive debt; the second comes when that servant refuses to forgive what his fellow servant owes him.

I have heard sermons through the years that focus all the attention on Jesus’ first point: that the first servant being forgiven such an enormous debt is a metaphor for how much God has forgiven us, through the death and resurrection of Jesus. This much is certainly true, but too often the second point, the one more germane to the discussion going on in Matt. 18, gets missed altogether. This happens when the other debt, what the second servant owed the first, is trivialized or disregarded in light of the larger debt. We seem inclined to think of 10,000 talents as a near infinite sum of money (as Jesus intended), but we wrongly assume that 100 denarii is some small pittance, say $5 or $20 or something like that.

It is useful to pay closer attention to what Jesus does here, because as it turns out, He is a rather clever fellow. Paying closer attention, though, can be difficult, especially when the biblical scholars you depend on let you down. The footnotes in the NIV for this passage tell us that 10,000 talents equates to “millions of dollars,” while 100 denarii only amounts to “a few dollars.” Other (more careful) translations will tell you that a talent was worth about 20 years’ wages and a denarius was worth a day’s wages.

We can translate this into terms that make sense to us. The U.S. Census Bureau tells us that the median U.S. income in 2008 was $50,233. A bit of straightforward math later and we have the master forgiving the first servant from a debt of just over $10 billion. So the first servant was like the Bernie Madoff of his day, I guess. But take special note of how much the second servant owed the first: $19,320 (which is what a person at the median income level would earn for 100 days of work).

Okay, the smaller amount still pales in comparison to the first amount, so it is by no means wrong to teach that we must forgive others for the hurts they cause us, since we all stand forgiven of a whole lot more by the Father. But, the smaller amount is still a significant amount of money. Jesus’ second point is that we really have the ability to hurt each other and forgiving that sort of hurt is sometimes not very easy. (I don’t know about you, but I would want to be paid back if someone owed me nearly 20 grand!)

This makes even more sense when we look at the context for this parable. Ch. 18 begins with the disciples having their favorite argument: which of them was the best. Can you imagine such an argument going very far without some pretty hurtful stuff flying around? I know people who have been hurt (by church stuff, by fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, by family members, etc.), and that hurt gets compounded when it is trivialized and passages like this misused to basically teach the one who has been hurt to just “get over it.”

That’s not what Jesus is teaching here. He knows how hurtful we can be to each other. He knows only too well how much pain people can inflict on each other. It does help to think about the $10 billion debt we each had that He wrote off for us. He will also help you find the courage and grace to forgive the $20,000 debts owed to you. And He also knows how to do that without making you or your pain seem insignificant. Because you’re not and it’s not. He died for that pain. He rose again for you.

Categories Forgiveness