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What Would Jesus Like?

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In the 1990s, evangelical reflection on morality was a simulacrum of Joseph’s amazing technicolor dreamcoat.  Only, evangelicals sported the psychedelic colors on wrists instead of backs.  For during this time, the first and greatest moral interrogative was “What Would Jesus Do?” (WWJD).  

The number of parodies to which the WWJD fad has now been subject undoubtedly suggests to some that the turn of the last century represents the nadir of evangelical reflection on morality.  This conclusion, while tempting, would be hasty.

On Drawing Lines in the Sand

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We like to draw lines in the sand. It shows that we’re serious. We have expectations. Beside, we argue, didn’t Dean Kelley say that conservative churches grow because they place expectations on their members? Shouldn’t we be avoiding Bonheoffer’s “cheap grace”?

There’s a big problem with sand. It doesn’t stay where you left it.

The wind blows across the dune and leaves no track of your footprints. The waves come into shore and obliterate the nice trench you just dug. Over time, water saturates the sand so that it turns to slush and the sandcastle falls down.

Why Social Justice Still Polarizes Evangelicalism

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While an undergraduate at Wheaton College, I once spotted a bumper sticker that pointed out: “Poverty, homelessness, and healthcare are moral issues too.”  It kinda blew my mind. At the time, I, like many young evangelicals, thought that the really important moral issues were all sex-related: homosexuality, extramarital sex, and abortion. 

That was 10 years ago, and I don’t imagine that many Christians today would be so taken aback by that bumper sticker’s sentiment. Which is great. Large numbers of evangelicals are now passionate about poverty, AIDS, violence, and human trafficking. The work of folks like Tony Campolo and Jim Wallis has paid off in important ways. Few would deny that poverty is an issue that the Church should address, because the biblical witness is unmistakable and unavoidable. 

And yet, if you bring up “social justice” during coffee hour in the church foyer, you’re still likely to evoke some strong and opposed feelings.  

Topic #4: Evangelicalism and Morality

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American Evangelicalism stresses the centrality of the Bible for guiding Christian morality. The process of moving from the Bible to Christian moral formation is, however, not necessarily straightforward. Difficulties arise from many quarters, but one the Bible itself explores is the changing moral circumstances of Israel from patriarchs to Moses through monarchy, exile, and return, and then in the teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus. As evangelical Christians seek to live moral lives, both as individuals and communities, important disagreements sometimes arise. One important aspect of this is that the cultures within which Christians live is highly variable across both time and space. The line between applying Christian morality to new situations and compromising our morals can be quite difficult to discern. In light of these issues, some “leading questions” are

Contextualized Interpretation

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Christian faith is essentially connected to the understanding of the Scriptures. As Christian believers try to understand the things of God, reading the Bible is essential in that discovery.  Most students of the Bible in the United States realize that the Bible was written in a very different time, location and cultural context.  As a result, many Christians appreciate learning about figures of speech, common phrases and cultural practices in ancient Middle East, as this will increase their comprehension of the biblical text and its message.  But we must not ignore that all readers will also bring their own cultural lenses to the interpretation of the biblical text.  So, those who seek understanding of the things of God through the Scriptures need to be aware of the limitations imposed by that fact, realizing that since we are living in a different location and culture, we may be missing some important aspects of the message in interpreting the biblical text. 

Evangelicals’ date with history

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The reception of Scripture involves many stages of faith seeking understanding. This reception includes critical reasoning in the process of doing exposition, theological formulation, and, above all, worshipful reflection. Faith and critical reasoning are held together through a hermeneutical model that is bi-focal, that is at once “from above” and “from below”. This model hearkens to Jesus’ conversation with Nichodemus early in the Gospel of John (3:1-15; cf., 8:23). Jesus speaks of the knowledge of God as “from above” and as “from below”. Paul can also say that he is speaking of revelation “according to the flesh” and “according to the Spirit” (Ro 1:3-4; cf.; 9:5; 4:1). Paul makes a related Christological distinction of titles: “Son of Man” (the historical Jesus) and “Son of God” (the Christ of faith). Jesus alone embodies both realities (above and below) in one person (Jo 3:13) since he is the Word of God incarnate. The hermeneutic “from above” and “from below” is not dualist, but an attempt to account for the demands of historicity and divine action. What is the meaning of the historicity of the gospels for Jesus of Nazareth as Messiah? What does the revelation by the Spirit in the same Gospels provide for Jesus Christ as Lord?

Untangling Inerrancy from Scripture’s Authority

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Our colleagues have bravely waded into troubled waters, where wave upon wave of discussions and disagreements swirl around these related topics of Scripture’s authority and inerrancy, and the particular challenges presented by the “modern study” of Scripture which evangelicals, for the most part, have mostly embraced in our own scientific approaches to “prove” the truthfulness of Scripture. After my hermeneutics professor in seminary railed against Bultmann, the remaining 14 weeks of the term were spent mastering the historical-grammatical method of interpreting the Bible. This systematic technique, quite scientific in its own approach, would guarantee a right interpretation of a passage, or so it was assumed.

A Mad Evangelical Tea-Party

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No, not that tea-party, with Sarah Palin pouring. I’m thinking rather of the tea-party presided over by the March Hare and the Hatter. The postings on “Evangelicalism and the Modern Study of Scripture” brought Lewis Carroll’s scenario to mind: a tea-party in which everyone is talking at cross-purposes. Of course the exchanges between Alice and her interlocutors are mostly quite rude, whereas the postings in our conversation are mostly respectful. But they do nevertheless induce vertigo.

Sharper than a Two-Edged Sword

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This essay will explore the ways in which many evangelicals use scripture as a rhetorical weapon. In short, scripture is too often used as a conversation-ender and not a means of hearing God speak to all listeners. This rhetorical stance is relatively new in Church history and has distorted the meaning of scriptural authority. In the process, the scripture has become a tool to use on behalf of a position rather than allowing the Holy Spirit to lead us to deeper understandings.