August 10 Krum Star Article,
"Principles and Practice"
Note: the audio of this August 12 message
can be found here.
The virus protection program on my computer
kept giving me an error message. I needed to fix the problem
so I pulled out a repair manual and started to work on
it. Now, this particular repair manual was written for
my first electric typewriter, purchased in the mid-seventies,
but I figured both machines put words on paper, so the
manual should work.
Right?
Of course it wouldn’t work. What
a silly idea. While both my computer and my old electric
typewriter do eventually produce the same product, i.e.,
printed sheets of the current writing project before me,
they do so with totally different means. Certainly, the
principles would be the same—each machine needs
to be properly maintained in order to achieve peak performance.
But to take the typewriter manual literally and apply
it to my computer would only lead to frustration and eventual
failure. And I’d probably end up tossing the computer;
after all, it would not be fixable using such instructions.
With this understanding, I now approach
objection number six in the summer series of “Objections
to Christianity.” Number six reads: “The Church
is full of fundamentalists who take the whole Bible literally.”
And of course, along with all the rest of the objections
I’ve been writing and speaking about all summer,
this one certainly has merit. Respect for the holiness
and authority of the Bible has often turned into a slavish
literalism that has encouraged the use of certain Scriptures
as weapons or ways to hurt or limit people rather than
doorways to grace and the holy Presence of God.
The Bible is a wonderful and powerful collection
of writings that were created over hundreds of years and
written through the eyes of languages and cultures that
no longer exist in those exact forms. It has a simply
astounding unity—the theme of the redemptive movement
of a loving God who is continually wooing humanity into
reconciliation and new hope permeates the entire Bible.
It also has very problematic passages,
especially when one really does take them literally, and
without regard to cultural, social, world-view, and literary
contexts. Probably the most famous is this one from Deuteronomy
(the fifth book of the Old Testament), chapter 21:
If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son
who will not obey his father and mother, who does
not heed them when they discipline him, then his father
and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him
out to the elders of his town at the gate of that
place. They shall say to the elders of his town, "This
son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not
obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard." Then
all the men of the town shall stone him to death.
So you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all
Israel will hear, and be afraid.
What does one do with a problem child if
we are to take the Scriptures as literally true and we
read a passage like this? It’s a scary thought.
We’ll talk about it Sunday.
See you in church.
Christy
The Rev. Dr. Christy Thomas, Pastor, Krum
UMC
Questions or comments about this article?
Please contact me at christy@krumumc.org
or phone the church office at 940-482-3482.
