Essays

Christians, Gray Areas, and Bible Dynamics.

By Johnny Beloved ⋅ June 6, 2007 ⋅  forward to friend ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

I feel it’s fair to start by saying that this post will be lengthy, as it should most likely be divided into smaller posts. But I can’t seem to do that for some reason. Everything seems to come out of me at once.

Many Christians see only two colors. I went to a Christian school like that. Grew up in a Christian school like that. Subsequently home schooled in a home like that. A world where I was taught that there were two colors and everything around me–in every circumstance, in every situation, in every thought, deed or action, there were two choices–right and wrong. To metaphor this up, I could say that I was only aware of two colors–black and white. There was no in-between. No gray areas. I was raised to believe that “gray areas” are nothing more than the devil compromising my faith. Gray areas equal the very lukewarmness that causes God the Father to spit my no-good, compromising, devilishly twisted soul out of his mouth. I was taught that every gray area in life was a spiritual battleground where we wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers.

When you’re eight years old, doctrine like that is scary stuff.
Ever see the movie Saved!
That was my life.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I believe that there are many areas in life where we do struggle. And I believe that most of these struggles are spiritual in nature. But as I grew older, and started thinking for myself, questioning all the doctrine that had been shoved down my throat, I started to wonder: which struggles are spiritual in nature and which ones are left open to human discernment? The more I studied the Bible, the more I realized that life has more gray zones than either black or white. You probably encounter situations every day that the Bible doesn’t have a strict answer for. For example, there is no verse that says: “Thou shalt not do yoga.” It is a gray area, left to a single person’s understanding of the Bible and what God is speaking into his/her heart through the church, accountability partners and prayer; not to mention the influence of how that person was raised, what they were taught, what they believe and so on. You won’t get a single unanimous answer from Christianity concerning this topic. It just won’t happen.

Bible Stories Are Rated “R”

I love movies. My pastor loves movies (probably more than I do.) And I’ve never really understood why movies mean so much to me until last week. I was pondering some things (invariably, the things that I’m now writing in this post) in the shower and I began thinking about R-rated movies as it relates to my walk with God. Is it a sin to watch that stuff? Is it justified? Is it a judgment call? And the more I thought about it, the more questions I had. I could see both the pros and the cons that each side of the fence were likely to bring up. I understood that yes, there were probably reasons not to watch these movies, just like my parents had taught me. But these reasons weren’t convincing enough to outweigh the reasons for watching R-rated movies. I couldn’t put my finger on it as to why, however. So I dried myself off and headed to bed.

Vida was reading the Bible (her first time through) and she had a look of disgust on her face. Each night she reads, it seems to be a different look of disgust, like she’s continually shocked and horrified. Being a Christian for just over a year, these stories we cherish and love were quite a shock to her. I got in bed, looked at her and said, “What is it this time?”

Depending on the night and what stories she was reading, it would be “David had to go get 100 Philistine foreskins for Saul” or “David killed Uriah for his wife” or “Solomon is having a lot of sex with his whorish wives” or “Absalom had sex with his father’s women” or “Abimelech killed all 70 of his brothers…” Each time, her eyebrows are wrinkled in that certain way that seems to suggest that when she has a chance, she’s going to have a little chit-chat with God and what in the world he may have been thinking when he penned this or that little number.

It’s in these moments that I feel sorry for God. My wife is half Puerto Rican and half Mexican.

Christians, UNITE! (or not)

I was reading Dan Kimball’s blog today on the recommendation of Monday Morning Insight (one of my new favorites), and I was shocked. Therein, Dan attempts to define what he feels should be the general consensus for Emergents when we talk about Core vs. Non-Core beliefs. In another words, The Black and White vs. The Gray Areas. Now, let me be clear, I wasn’t shocked because of what he said, but because I could already feel the impending backlash from the ultra-conservative Evangelicals like Ken and Ingrid and their posse.

But I’m going to be honest, I agree with the list. Let’s take a quick look.

Core Beliefs: Inspiration of Scripture, Fruit of the Spirit Seen in our Lives, Deity of Jesus, Salvation Through Jesus Alone, Virgin Birth, Covenant of Marriage, Serving Those in Need, Triune God (Father, Son, Spirit), Resurrection of Jesus, Atonement for Sin, Future Return of Jesus and Judgment

Um. Yeah. I can’t argue with that.

Non-Core Beliefs: Alcohol, 6 Day Creation, Clothing, Music/Movies, How Jesus Will Return, Gifts of the Spirit, Election/Free Will, Apple/PC, Role of Women in the Church, Worship and Preaching Styles

Um. Yeah again.

Now, what separates the Core Beliefs from the Non-Core Beliefs? Only one thing: Dynamic Scripture.

The Dynamics of Scripture

There are many occasions in Scripture where the Truth is non-negotiable. In verses like the Ten Commandments, Scripture is very black and white. “Do not kill” is pretty cut and dry. You don’t do it. If you do, you will reap in kind. But for every black and white verse, there are twenty gray ones. And each gray verse is interpreted by different people in different ways. This might be a little graphic for you, but for example, throughout the entire Bible, there isn’t a single verse that addresses masturbation explicitly. The most conservative among you will point to the story of Onan. But if you go back and read the story, you’ll find that God explicitly told Onan to do something and when he jacked off on the ground instead of impregnating his dead brother’s wife, it was direct disobedience. God struck him down and rightly so. (If God told you to take have sex with someone, why would you say no?) God struck him down for the disobedience and not the masturbation itself. Even James Dobson will tell you that masturbation is a healthy thing.

But trust me when I say that there are countless Christians who will both agree and disagree with me. The same debate is amply demonstrated on women in church leadership, worship styles, alcohol, language and so on and so forth. Go to the right blog and you’ll find Christians who will condemn you to Hell for not interpreting the Scripture the exact same way they do. There are Christians who believe that their interpretation is the only interpretation. They stand for truth and everyone else is wrong. They are the remnant that Jesus is coming back for. They are holy and blameless and everyone else is sucking like babes off of the breast of a pansy theology.

Yeah well, there’s no helping that.

But this is what I call the Dynamic of Scripture. It’s dynamic because each human has free will, each human is an individual unit, none of us look at anything the exact same way. We’re not clones. There are countless verses that mean different things to different people. The relationship you have with Jesus Christ is going to be tailored to your soul. God is going to speak into your heart differently than he speaks into someone else’s heart. The words Jesus has for you, the messages, the change he has for your heart is for your heart alone. And though the verses may be the same, what you get from them will be different than what anyone else is getting. This is why Paul spoke that everything is permissible, but not beneficial. Some choices are just between you and God. What the Bible says about alcohol is interpreted differently by different people. How you view alcohol is going to be different than what the recovering AA addict is going to view it. Paul spoke of Non-Core Beliefs all the time. Like eating meat sacrificed to idols, circumcision as it applied to Gentiles, and more. There are gray areas where only God can teach you, where only God can convict you, where only God can inspire you. Change you. Save you.

God’s Word is dynamic. It is alive. It changes people.

It’s also full of sex, murder and violence.

Back To Movies

So back to my original quandary concerning R-Rated movies. There are movies, like Magnolia or Memento, or American Beauty or Eternal Sunshine or (take your pick) that are full of sex, violence, murder, drugs, cheating, rape and so forth. But one has to ask themselves how the Bible is any different?

Movies (at least the ones I watch) aim to expound on a Truth that we can all relate to. And in the midst of their drugs and sex and bloody guns, they also carry the poignant display of God’s grace in time of need, comfort when we’re hurt, the magic of faith (read Chronicles of Narnia, faith is magical–it makes the impossible possible. If that isn’t magic, what is?) and so on. Sometimes, these truths are conveyed more strongly when the worlds inside these movies are within our degrees of acceptance. So yes, they are going to portray real world events. Unwed mothers, street violence, excessive drugs and alcohol–and if you were really honest with yourself, you’d admit that the Bible does the same thing.

The Bible has more violence, more sex, more pain than any book I’ve ever known. If one was to make the Bible into a movie, no Christian would go see it because it would be X-Rated. But in the midst of all this, there is the redemptive story of God’s love for us. How would we truly know the love of God if we had nothing to contrast it with? We can’t even begin to understand how deep his love runs, hence the violence and the pain and the wars. We know the world’s pain because we share in it, and we should, because we caused it. Jesus came and died because we fucked up. That’s the plain honest no-holds-barred truth of it. The world, as we know it, is our fault.

This is why Jesus came. Why we have forgiveness. Why we have grace. Why we have redemption. How we regain our innocence. How we relearn to love. How we relearn humility and honor and peace.

Jesus wasn’t a cookie-cutter Christian. He knew our pain more than any of us. To pretend otherwise is delusional.

After so much to say, I have to wonder what do you think about all this? Do you agree or disagree? There is a lot here to comment on (or not). Thanks for reading.