A Theology of the Gray Areas?

Hey. So it’s been a bit. Things have gotten all crazy-like. This is the summary:

1) New class schedule. The bulk of my classes now dwell in the realm of Tuesday/Thursday. Thus after three and 2/3 years of college, I have one last change to get used to before the towel gets thrown in. It’s on its way.

2) General beginning of the quarter disembodied floaty feelings. I go to school and have new classes, but also spent the first part of the quarter feeling strangely out of place following break. It was as though I wasn’t ready to jump into the last lap on the race that has been college and the new Schedule allowed me for a time to wallow in that. No more though.

3) Out of the habit. I like blogging a lot. I just need to start doing it more.

In the overarching sense of things I am taking super awesome classes, using more abbreviated words than I thought possible, and trying to “suck the marrow out of life” to the fullest extent that I can through participating in the Holy Spirit’s work. Game on life.

A few silly things that I’ve seen/heard before I launch into the idea in the subject line. Some of them contain cursing. Be prepared to shield yourself from the reality of the people I see and interact with if you feel it necessary.

I was walking today with my friend Erendira along the canal and a classic “bro” and his friend aka “dawg” walked by us. This is how their conversation went (or at least the part we heard).

Bro: It was fuckin’ sweet dawg.

Dawg: yeah?

Bro: It was the plushest shit I’ve ever seen in my life.

That was it. Erin and I laughed. She asked, “I wonder if people think about what they say after they say it?” Mostly I think that bro did not. It brought me back to the days of high school in which I thought it hilarious to begin sentences with the F-word. It was great fun. Now, thankfully, while it may be funny I am learning that things that hilarity is not the thing that justifies actions I make. Keyword: Learning. I don’t use the F-word much at all, just to tell you this story really….

Another thing that I thought about in response to bro’s conversation was what could he have been discussing? He said “plush”. When people use that word, I think of really nice furniture. It strikes me as odd that bro would be so hardcore with his verbage regarding a super-pimp couch or something of the like. Honestly. The context of the word plush with cursing circumfixed around it for those of us who don’t hear cursing all that much serves only to emphasize the plushness of that thing he was discussing. This is either the world’s best and most comfortable piece of furniture or he is an incredibly inarticulate expressor of key things in his life.

I’m sure people might have said the same about me in years gone by, maybe even today. Nonetheless, somethings just need to be mentioned.

Another thing that I should tell you about is the absolute awesomeness of Dr.Frank Spina. The man is incredible. I have Biblical Theology with him from 6-8:30PM twice a week and it rocks. I am learning about the history of biblical interpretation from all the way back in the 1700’s until presently from a man whose intellect intimidates me. I’m no fool, but it’s nice to realize that among some people there is simply such a great gulf of wisdom and knowledge that all you can do is try to speak and be ready to be reminded that you may just be 22 talking with a man who has been interacting with the bible and Christianity for over twice your age. Seriously. I take notes on the coolest and most academically fun things I have in a long time. You might not like it, but I am finding myself to be someone who likes spending 6 hours in a library working on a sweet paper for bible classes. I have no idea where this madness will end….maybe I’ll get to be the next Frank Spina.

A thought that we learned: As a Christian I don’t believe that we can treat the bible as a historian would. A historian cannot discuss God’s work in history reconciling man to Himself through Jesus Christ. A historian can only talk about people who believed that God was doing this, and what they did. The historian cannot talk about God’s work bluntly. The bible as we learned, is about God. It’s not about us. If we take the bible as a narrative, the story is about God’s interaction with humanity/Israel…not the other way around. Key point: God initiates and we respond. Therefore, if we’re looking at the bible through a lens of cause and effect historical interaction we will miss the point because we cannot learn to see the text for what it really is. Some historical analysis is useful, but I don’t think we can sell out to it when we approach the text. Honestly, it fails to give the text the complexity that is due it.

Another idea. What are we saying when we say we are Christians? At a basic level of belief it means that we believe the witness of the apostles that they had with the Risen Lord Jesus Christ after His resurrection. As Dr.Spina put it it’s somewhat the same idea of how people believe that Australia exists. There’s nothing wrond with it. I like it a lot. The bible was written as the church (and synagogue) formed, thus I think that we’ve got to be real about where our faith comes from. We believe the witness of the apostles to the reality of God. This is where I think we get the phrase “apostolic witness”.

The bible gives us definitive backing in this, but at some level the faith to which we adhere does in fact lie outside the text in the realm of the real world. A world in which God either really interacted with man through Israel and Jesus Christ or a world in which He didn’t. I believe He did. Therein, being a part of the one holy catholic (with a small c, meaning whole) apostolic tradition I as a member of the body of Christ affirm that the bible has authority in being an anchoring force (among other things) in the foundations of the reality of God made manifest through interaction with the world through Israel and Jesus Christ.

It’s interesting how these ideas develop over time. Boyhowdy do I love this stuff. High five to Jesus for blessing me with good learning.

On to the topic on which I started the blog. Here’s the idea I wanted to jaw about. Maybe you’ll hate it. That’s fine with me. Maybe you’ll love it. Great. Give me your thoughts as they come I suppose. Here’s the thing:

I think that sometimes we interact with the biblical text in a manner that presupposes a black and white reality of all things biblical. For starters let me say that there are somethings that are rightfully thought of this way. The resurrection for example is one of these things. It’s black and white. It either happened or it did not. I believe it did. You can believe it didn’t, which I would say is silly. You don’t get to live in the inbetween zone.

On the otherhand, there are things that people like to try and make black and white that are not. Take for instance salvation. Some people on the basis of the biblical text  make it a firm statement that God has chosen some and rejected others. Some are destined to damnation and others to eternal life. This belief states that God chose this at the beginning of time. A calvinistic perspective. Other people say that people have all the say in this. God made salvation open to us and we are the ones who choose or reject God. Who is right? Well…neither. The biblical text has a great number of verses that would support either side. People who believe these things aren’t just pulling this out of their butts, it comes from a definitively honest look at scripture and the reality of some verses (more often than not at the expense of others). Some verses are given more authority than others. Sometimes we are led to assume that credibility to one of these choices can be possibly given based on a mere scale of the verses included. “My 5 verses beat your 3.” As though the bible were made of parts that can be separated from the whole and weighed for their corresponding value to a particular doctrine by some “objective” standard.

When we look at the text on this issue, and assuming that there are verses supporting both sides, should we not be forced into a position that acknoweldges them all? Should we discount the words of Jesus because Paul said X? Should we discount the words of Paul because of something that occurs in the Old Testament? Do biblical perspectives that display different ideas regarding man’s interaction with God force us to choose one and reject the other? Sometimes, perhaps they do. But I think too often we are quick to stand on firm cement of our own biblical interpretation so that we can stand somewhere we can grasp rather than stand on the rock of God’s truth that may indeed be hard to get and even more complicated than we can comprehend?

I think that sometimes we take the bible to be something that is easy to understand. That everyone can read the bible and walk away understanding exactly what to believe about everything. There are things that are clear as ice. Like I mentioned. Yet, there are also things that are not. What does it look like to let the text speak for itself in its entirety and at the same time view our own sinfulness as often times being manifest in our own interpretations of the texts? Maybe it means relying on more things than just the text. Maybe it means reading the text in community, with creeds, through the Holy Spirit and letting God do in theology what we are so  happily cliche to grant Him room to do in life. That being “working in mysterious ways.”

Do the mysterious ways of the Righteous One merit our presumtuous and arrogant assertions that we will immediately grasp what He does? Or rather does the reality of God force us to allow room for a theological perspective that allows shades of gray in some areas in the face of His overwhelming complexity and largeness?

Your thoughts?