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Leviticus. Manuscript in Greek on papyrus, from Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, circa A.D. 200 (The Schøyen Collection)

When I first personally encountered God at the age of sixteen, I didn’t have much in the way of formal religious or theological training. The church I was a part of at that time had “New Christian” classes, focusing on the importance of reading your Bible, praying, attending church, dealing with sin in your life, and how to relate your new spiritual condition to others. These are good things to know—certainly elemental to any Christian life—and I embraced them, but there is one key element that I missed: hermeneutics, or how to study your Bible. When I discovered it a decade and a half down the road, its effect was equally life-altering.

One Sunday morning I was unable to make it to church, and tuned in to a local broadcast instead (from the non-denominational People’s Church, in the north of the city).  Charles Price (originally from Hereford, UK) is the pastor there, and he is both a gifted speaker and a man of considerable intellectual prowess.  His sermon that morning dealt with biblical hermeneutics, or how to understand Scripture by examining its context.  Those of you who live and work in academia will undoubtedly be familiar with such methods of textual criticism, but for the layman, here is a grossly simplified formula:  a word must be understood in the context of its surrounding verse; the content of the verse verse must be examined relative to the paragraph or section it is part of; the section is but one component of a larger chapter; the chapter should be understood as the subject of a whole epistle or book; the book should be understood relative to its author and placement within the biblical canon (Old Testament or New Testament); and finally all should be examined in accordance with what we understand to be the Scripture-revealed immutable character of God.

Now of course modern biblical hermeneutics is a vast and complex field of study, and one can scale up the complexity by comparing other translations (King James, New International Version, Revised Standard Edition, original koine Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic) and using other techniques beyond simple contextual method.  But for a layman’s purposes that will suffice in most cases; you can’t go far wrong by endeavouring to understand a verse as it relates to the rest of its chapter and epistle; looking at the broader picture will help you figure out when an author is employing allegory, metaphor, and simile versus instructive, narrative or historical writing.  Such an understanding will not just broaden your comprehension of Scripture, but it will help you avoid travelling down the wrong logical track and reaching a conclusion that is not supported by the text.

THE VERSE

Let’s apply this method to a particular text, one that atheists and agnostics will no doubt know as well as Christians—the venerable 1 Corinthians 13, old standby of marriage ceremonies everywhere.  We’ll start off with verse 4.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

Seems fairly straightforward, a description of love.  Without any other context, however, one could argue that when couples go out to dinner, and a spouse steals a tasty morsel from her husband’s plate, her “envy” of another’s meal indicates that she does not truly love them.  I don’t think this would be Scripturally sound, but when one takes such a narrow focus there is lots of room for misinterpration and wild flights of fancy.

THE PARAGRAPH

Now let’s look at a bigger portion of the text, verses 4-7.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Now we see that there are other characteristics of love as well.  With this new data we could argue that spouses that fart or belch (i.e. are “rude”) in each other’s presence are not truly loving.  Or that when your spouse reminds you (however sweetly and gently) of something you were supposed to do and didn’t (“keeping a record of wrongs”), that this is not loving either.  But this is not the point of these Scriptures—however beneficial and kind it may be to not belch, fart, or bring up someone’s failures.

THE CHAPTER

Taking a broader view and examining the whole chapter, we can see that this discussion of love encompasses other factors.  The first three verses in particular note that multilingual fluency, towering faith and prophecy are worthless if unaccompanied by love; or in the reverse, love is a pre-requisite of great spiritual deeds.  So this chapter, then, might be about something other than the romantic love (the Greek word is eros) of a husband and wife; even if a wedding ceremony is the context in which we most often hear it.  And in fact, these passages are about something else entirely.

THE EPISTLE / BOOK

Paul wrote this first letter to a church he founded some years before in the city of Corinth.  If you read the whole thing it will become apparent it was intended as a corrective; to put an end to what he saw as the erroneous doctrines of the Corinthian church that were fostering division amongst some of the congregation.  Chapter 12, immediately preceding the “love” chapter, focuses on spiritual gifts—that is, specific talents and skills that individual congregation members put to use for the benefit of the church.  Some of those skills are (surprise, surprise), multi-lingual fluency (“speaking in tongues”), strong faith, and prophecy.  Hmmmmm.

So what Paul was really talking about had nothing to do with husbands and wives, but a selfless kind of love that would be used in concert with these spiritual skills/gifts.  The actual Greek word used is agape, which we understand to be a thoughtful, unconditional love; oriented toward seeing a need and meeting it, and not expecting anything in return.  The King James Version renders the 1 Corinthians 13 chapter with the English word charity instead of love, which in some ways is more precise.  With charity thrown in there, I imagine its popularity at weddings would recede a little bit, as that would not tend to fit the theme of the day.

Now, it is certainly true that husbands and wives acting with agape (selfless) love makes a marriage a much happier place to be, and in the ideal sense, this is how we should all endeavour to act to our loved ones.  But it is equally true that this is not at all the point of Paul’s letter.  He wanted the members of the Corinthian church to act selflessly when exercising their God-given talents and skills within that city.  And in the broader sense, so too any of us engaged in missionary work, outreach and service for our churches, whether abroad or in our local communities.  He wanted churches to solve their doctrinal differences in sensible ways, with respect for each other; and for married and unmarried persons alike to bring their lives into alignment with what they perceived to be God’s will.

This book also contains some challenging passages related to head coverings and the role of women in the assembled church which would be too lengthy a sidebar to address here, but my view is best summed up by Professor Graham A. Cole (lengthy article/exegesis here):  “On my view women may indeed teach men the Bible. Godliness and giftedness are the keys not one’s sex.”

CONCLUSION

I hope you will forgive me for skipping the last two steps as I thought the progression of the context would be clear enough after these examples.

A lot of churches don’t give you anything like a basic framework for studying the Bible.  Their instructions basically boil down to “read it every day, pray and ask for guidance about what you are reading”.  Which isn’t bad idea, but it is not all that methodical.  It can help you identify preachers who are reading in rather more than the text says, too.  When I was a lot younger, only a few months old in the faith,  I attended a week-long seminar by a well-known evangelical association.  It offered what we might call basic principles for living the Christian life.  Since this was the tail end of the ’80s/beginning of the ’90s, the speaker did address some pop culture trends.  One of which was Cabbage Patch dolls.  The speaker seemed to think that the seemingly innocuous dolls were a vector for demonic activity.  That they were given the names of African and South Pacific kastom deities, and that the unsuspecting parent who let their kids play with these dolls was allowing demons to enter their home.

Needless to say I thought at the time that none of the scriptural basis this seminar provided for these “insights” would have held up to serious scrutiny.  To say nothing of the magical thinking that believes the process of modern manufacturing can somehow integrate the assimilation and indwelling of spirits.  I don’t think we have a good scientific process for even identifying the presence of spirits, let alone getting them to agree to line up and be a product in an assembly line.

The Cabbage Patch Kids were a fad, soon forgotten as children of the 80s grew up and moved on to more mature pursuits.  If I had known a little more about contextual analysis I would have made a point of refuting such nonsense then and there.  But alas it would be many more years before I would discover it.  I use this illustration only to say that contextual analysis might have saved this preacher and his association from making such outlandish and ridiculous claims; certainly it would prevent a large part of the audience from buying it, too.

I have a couple of Bibles of varying translations at home for study purposes. A slimline NIV is generally the one that gets carted around for quick reference, although I also like to check the NASB, and of course the King James is everyone’s favourite for more poetic language.  These days it is often easier and faster to refer to an online site like BibleGateway, which can offer up most English translations (and if you can read Greek, it has three popular koine translations, too).  Although there are various subtle differences between the translations, the one thing that is truly remarkable is how well each agrees with the bulk of the others—and with the fragmentary oldest documents we have found so far, long before the canon we know today was agreed upon—despite being handled by thousands of translators over a couple of millennia.

When we aim to interpret the Bible, we should do so with every effort made to understand the context, rather than cherry-pick a verse and assign it our preferred meaning.  This is far more difficult than it would initially appear, especially when there are a couple of passages that appear to run into the wall of our present-day egalitarian cultural sensibilities.  Because we cannot reach the authors, determining their actual intent and the reasons for their remarks can not always be definitively solved by textual criticism; some of that will have to wait for the day when we can speak to them in person.  But in 95% of the cases, simple contextual hermeneutics mixed with a little understanding of history will go a long way toward helping us average laymen put Scriptural passages into something like a proper context.  In my case it has certainly fuelled a desire to know more about many eras of human history, so that I can better understand the cultural contexts of the author.

But while a more thorough knowledge of history may be an aid to better textual analysis, it is important to remember that the greatest challenge Christians face on a day-to-day basis is not sussing out the meaning of the Bible verses we don’t understand; it is trying to act in accordance with the letter and spirit of the passages we do understand.

RELATED: This simple but concise Bible interpretation website will go a long way toward helping the curious but inexperienced Scripture-reader move toward a more sophisticated method of study and analysis.

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One of the readings from this morning’s service had particular resonance for me: James I 17-27.

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.

My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.

If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

In a broad sense it can be seen as a companion to Mark VII 1-23, where Jesus warns the Pharisees that adherence to human tradition is no substitute for a repentant heart and teachable attitude.  In specifics though, there’s two things James mentions which apply to me in particular.  The first is the verse about being quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger.  In the abstract I think we’d all like to be seen as the sort of person who can take a slap to the face and, instead of letting anger dictate our actions, examine it coolly and come up with the most optimal situation-changing response.

I can tell you right now though, that’s not me.  And I’ll be honest, I haven’t tried all that hard to alter this nature; didn’t really see a need to do so.  I can react to emergency situations without losing my head, but when I get angry there is no question that I let that anger govern my course, and frequently say hurtful things I ought not to.  In my callow youth I would even take a perverse sort of pride in how quickly I could reduce an opponent to tears.  Winning the argument was really only accomplished when you’d broken their spirit.  As an adult,  however, one comes to understand that being the last man standing is not much of a win when it sacrifices a friendship or relationship.

As the verse tells us, man’s anger rarely results in the kind of righteous action that God desires.  Or to be blunt, acting in your anger is probably going to make a hash of things and relationships, so it’s better to try and rein that in, so that you’re not reacting rashly out of raw emotion, but instead out of a cool, realistic appraisal.  Ideally, that’s the kind of person I’d like to be.  I understand we’re all going to get angry; even God experiences anger, as the Bible notes on several occasions.  So logically speaking, getting ticked off is not—in and of itself—a sin.  Where it becomes problematic is how we decide to react to that anger; does it overwhelm us and cause us to descend into evil thoughts and deeds?  Or does it motivate us to take righteous constructive action?

The second-last verse in that reading is also, I think, particularly appropriate for bloggers.  As one grows accustomed to running his/her mouth (or keyboard), and receiving accolades for doing so, it can reinforce pride and a certain sense of rhetorical or logical infallibility.  And whether or not one is a blogger, I am sure every human being on the planet can identify with this particular caution.  Sometimes the things we say (whether gossip or harsh words) can undo all of the good works and good examples we have set so far.  Sometimes it is far too easy to hurt feelings and draw rhetorical blood in the heat of the moment; but the wise will recognise that God is not calling us to win every argument.  What we are called to instead is to live our lives as if our religion mattered; to hear the Word and to act.

I would like to be a man that is quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger.

Today’s hymn selected from the service is “From all that dwell below the skies”, written in 1719 by the prolific English hymnwriter Isaac Watts, set to the tune of “Lasst uns erfreuen”.

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In an earlier post I mentioned that I am trying to regularly attend church services again.  One of the reasons I alluded to is that—whatever one might think of “church people”, or the vagaries of a particular denomination—I had a personal revelation which would preclude me from giving up on the entire enterprise.

In this morning’s service there was a quote from John VI 56-69, which deals with the Eucharist (i.e. communion, taking bread and wine) specifically, but contains a statement from the Apostle Peter that I can identify with:

From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.

“You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.

Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

On May 31st, 1988, my mother became a Christian.  She had prayed to God, received forgiveness, and described the experience as like “a weight being lifted off your shoulders”.  I must admit this is a description which struck me as odd, if not nonsensical.  How can you not know you are carrying this weight?  How many pounds would you estimate this unknown weight to be?  How was the weight distributed; like a rucksack’s shoulder straps and waist belt, or something else?  Mom had no answers to my prosecutorial examination; she didn’t think in such analytical terms.

While I was generally on board with Christian morals, I was not a big fan of church.  There was nothing particularly wrong with the church that we went to, except that to my 15-year-old mind it went on far… too… long.   When the service got out, the lobby and various other areas would be jammed with the thousand-strong congregation.  And it would stay crowded as everyone hung around to chat with each other; after-service socialising was like a sport to those people (including, unfortunately, my mother).  This is all fine and good when one is an adult, a Christian, and has many church friends to chat with about the sermon and topics of the day.  But I was a teenager, looked upon “church people” as akin to lepers or the mentally deficient, and every moment spent there was a moment not spent playing D&D, or running through the ravine with my buddies (decked out in accurate Canadian Forces Mk 82 camo, helmet and webbing, radios crackling away).  Spending up to an hour at church after all official worship ended was virtually intolerable.

I did make some friends at church, mostly guys who also attended my high school.  Naturally I gravitated toward gents my age also interested in aviation or military matters, but we tended to exist at the fringes of the high-school-age youth group.  Paradoxically me and most of my church youth group pals had not dedicated our lives to Christ; indeed we had no intentions of doing so.  Most of the youth group could not comprehend our interests, and we found theirs to be several shades of boring.  I saw no point in it.

Some church families did make an impact though, especially one pastor and his family who lived on our street.  They were the sort of folk who, if you happened to mention a need, would go out of their way to fulfill it.  They didn’t merely talk the talk, they walked the walk as well.  So while I was not enamoured of the way this family related the minutiae of everyday life through the prism of God, they did earn my respect through striving to meet the spiritual and temporal needs of the neighbourhood.  And when Mom had to travel out of town for a week in October of 1989, I was entrusted to their care.

Since their elder daughter and younger son both attended the church youth group, I was more or less obligated to attend while living under their roof.  The youth group met on Wednesdays, and on this one particular night they viewed and discussed a video pertaining to the Book of Revelation.  Now this is not an easy book to digest at the best of times, containing much apocalyptic symbolism, and so I came back to the pastor’s house full of questions.  When trying to determine if something is worthy or rubbish, I like to gather as much data as I can, and not having had much prior exposure to Revelation there was a lot of ground to cover.  I knew from prior conversations that the pastor’s wife had a near-encyclopaedic knowledge of the Bible, so I her asked to explain Revelation to me, and the symbolism of the various events and personalities.  That simple query became a four hour examination encompassing hundreds of questions, and when I finally ascended the stairs to the guest room, I thought I had a clear picture of Revelation and my eventual place (as a non-believer) within it.

This prompted a thought, not unlike Pascal’s Wager.  If I were to reach the end of my life and discover belatedly that God does exist, then I will have missed a pivotal aspect of the human experience based on nothing more than an erroneous assumption.  I decided then and there to find out; it’s either true or it isn’t.  Now I do not recall the exact words and thoughts that I had, but I know I sat on the edge of the bed and thought something like this:  “God, I want to know if you are out there.  I do not want to reach the end of my life and find out too late that I have missed the most important thing.  If all of this is true, I do not want to perish in meaninglessness.”

And to my amazement, God answered.   Not an audible answer, but a sensation unlike any I have felt before or since.  It was—just as Mom had described it—like a weight being lifted off my shoulders.  (Incidentally, my answers to my own questions would be 1) I do not know why I wasn’t previously aware of this weight; 2) I would estimate the weight at 50-70 pounds; 3) the weight was not like a rucksack with three main areas of pressure, more like a heavy cloak which settles comfortably over everything without putting stress on any particular point.)

On October 26th, 1989, I had transmitted a message in the blind, and God had answered it.  I was elated; if it hadn’t been three or four in the morning, I would have whooped for joy and woken the whole house.

Now sadly this experience cannot be validated with instrumentation.  There were no witnesses, other than God and myself.  Even if there were witnesses, they could not truthfully describe inner thoughts of a mind other than their own, and they could not describe a sensation occurring in a body other than their own.  And you as a reader are free to accept or reject this account; I can’t provide any more documentation than I have here.  It simply is what it is.  But it is why—despite all of life’s triumphs and tragedies, despite its apparent unfairness, despite vile things men and women may claim to do in faith—I cannot turn my back on church or Christianity.  I have that memory of first discovery, where God demonstrated His existence to me.  Who else could I follow?

And if it all seems highly improbable, my advice is, don’t take my word for it—find out for yourself.

(To follow last week’s tradition, here is a song from this morning’s service—”Immortal, Invisible God Only Wise”, written by Scottish poet and minister Walter Chalmers Smith, set to the tune of “St. Denio” by John Roberts.)

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Although I have been a Christian for some twenty years, I have not always been a churchgoer at the same time.  I’m not quite sure how that happened, exactly.  I guess I just tried to find a denomination/church whose doctrine matched my own understanding and, not having found any, eventually gave up altogether.

Which is not to say that I gave up on God.  When one has a personal sort of revelation you can’t very well deny that which is engraved in your memory.  But having attended various Protestant denominations over two decades, I did despair of finding a community of believers whose doctrine I could agree with in minute, microscopic detail.

I had a conversation with mom a month ago, though, that put it all in a different light.  She quite rightly pointed out that I am never going to find perfect agreement and alignment with the doctrine of any human church, and that the life of solitary believer who rarely interacts with his brethren rather misses the point.  A member of the body of Christ, separated from that body and having no communication with the other parts, can neither exercise its God-given gifts nor be blessed through others using theirs.

So I’m struggling back into regular church attendance.

Here is one of the tunes from today’s service, “I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say”, written by Scottish pastor and author Horatius Bonar, set to the tune Kingsfold by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

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And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.

And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.

And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them,

Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.

And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.

But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.

And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.

– Luke II 1-20, KJV

Image: Dome detail, St. Anne’s Anglican Church, 270 Gladstone Avenue.

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