Tithing, obedience and bad exegesis

Honestly, why do some people - particularly pastors - get so hung up on tithing? Yesterday's daily devotional from Purpose Driven Life (TM) contains this paragraph:

"Often we try to offer God partial obedience. We want to pick and choose the commands we obey... I'll attend church but I won't tithe... Yet partial obedience is disobedience."

And back in August 2009, the same good old Rick Warren went a little further. After quoting on tithing from Deuteronomy 14:23, he wrote:

"We develop spiritual fitness when we honor God by giving him a tithe every week... Why would anybody have to do that? Because God says so and that’s reason enough. If you don’t do it, you’re disobeying God."

Sorry, but that's just wrong, and irresponsibly wrong at that. Tithing is an Old Testament command; the New Testament equivalent is simply giving, and it is not so much a command as a request based on gratitude to God and love and care for others.

Bad exegesis

Failing to tithe is in the same category as failing to follow regulations on sacrifices for mildew infestations

It's plain bad exegesis (not to mention pastorally abusive) to rip a couple of verses about tithing out of Deuteronomy and Malachi and then claim that not following them is disobeying God's command. Tithing is part of the old Mosaic law and relates to the temple-centric structure of ancient Israelite society. Jesus doesn't mention tithing (except in a slightly disparaging passing reference to the Pharisees' habit of tithing herbs); it forms no part of the instructions to Gentile converts in Acts; and even Paul doesn't refer to it. Tithing simply is not a binding command on Christians, and failing to tithe just is not disobedience to God. Full stop.

Picking and choosing

Rick Warren talks freely of the danger of 'picking and choosing' which biblical commands we will obey. But he himself is picking and choosing which Old Testament laws he deems still to apply to Christians.

Failing to give, most importantly failing to love and care - these are the real spiritual problems to address in our lives. Failing to tithe comes into roughly the same category as failing to follow Levitical regulations on proper sacrifices for infestations of mildew.

The cynic in me can't help wondering occasionally whether tithing would be preached on so often if it did not directly financially affect churches and their leaders...

(NB I should point out that this does not apply to the leaders of the church I belong to, who take a very sensible and liberating attitude towards personal giving.)

Redefining salvation

...along with a bunch of other words. An attempt to rethink some core aspects of evangelical faith.

Imaginary regular readers of this blog (hello to my wife) may have noticed a bit of a chip on my shoulder about evangelical Christianity recently. I must be fair and acknowledge that there are many wonderful evangelicals, much that is good about evangelicalism, and much that is valuable that I've learnt from it. And I must also note that it has many and varied manifestations and not all my criticisms apply equally to all types of evangelical faith. And finally, there is much wrong with other streams and types of Christian belief - I just don't know so much about them.

I suppose the reason for my criticisms is that I have struggled to fit within mainstream evangelicalism for the past 15 years and have increasingly found that I'm not in accord with some of its core doctrines, priorities and methods - scriptural inerrancy, penal substitionary atonement, particular methods of evangelism etc. Rather than jettisoning the whole thing though, I'm trying to find ways of redefining the faith that work for me.

In the next post or two, I want to look at some key terms held dear by evangelicals and defined by them in very specific ways, and see if I can come up with re-definitions that fit better - for me at least. In no particular order...

1. Evangelicals

Evangelical definition: Proper Christians, who believe God's Word and the doctrines contained in it; who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour by faith through grace; who believe and preach the Gospel of Christ, and aspire to a life of personal holiness, good works and mission. They hold particular doctrines as of central importance - inerrancy and centrality of Scripture; the absolute Sovereignty of God; utter depravity of humans; penal substitionary atonement; exclusivity of Christ as the way to God; future judgement and hell for non-believers. Particular views of God, church, mission etc are also implied.

Re-definition: A particular type of Christian, but neither the only valid variety nor necessarily the best. Strong on theology, doctrine, teaching and a particular style of mission/evangelism, but often weak on creativity, beauty, contemplation, mystery and social justice. Negative tendencies include literalism/fundamentalism, puritanism and pharisaism, dogmatism, and over-formulaic approaches to life and faith.

2. Liberals

Evangelical definition: The opposite of evangelicals; often seen as the enemies of true Christianity. Liberals are wishy-washy and half-saved at best; they don't really believe anything, don't take the Bible literally, have lax morality and have compromised with the world.

Re-definition: As 'liber' means 'free', the positive meaning of liberal is one who has embraced the freedom of Christ and eschewed or shed the straitjacketing doctrinal rigidity of many brands of evangelical orthodoxy. Liberals are often much stronger than evangelicals on love, creativity and social justice. I've said in a previous post that I'm starting to see myself as an Evangelical Liberal.

3. The Bible

Evangelical definition: Holy Scripture; God's Word - eternal, inerrant, all-sufficient and self-interpreting, and from which can be mined doctrines to be believed, commands to be obeyed and promises to be claimed. The Bible is the believer's supreme guide and authority in life and in all matters of faith, morality, doctrine etc. If the Bible says something, it is to be taken literally if possible and to be accepted without criticism. Though notionally valuing all parts of scripture equally, evangelicals tend to place particular emphasis on the theological and doctrinal letters of Paul.

Re-definition: The Bible is a complex, multi-genre library of texts arising from the community of faith and their unfolding relationship with God. It can be seen as 'breathed' through its human authors by God, who continues to breathe afresh through the texts, bringing out new meanings, interpretations and emphases. The Bible is therefore not a fixed, static stone tablet but a living, breathing, dynamic text to be ongoingly engaged and wrestled with. Nor is it inerrant or 'perfect' in a modern historical or scientific sense; but it is nonetheless chosen and used by God for his purposes. Many non-evangelicals prefer to see the Bible as 'the Witness to the Word' rather than 'the Word of God', a title they (and the Bible) reserve for Jesus.

4. Truth

Evangelical definition: Correct ('sound') Christian doctrine as read from the Bible and expounded in propositional, expository preaching. Christian Truth is absolute, eternally fixed and unchanging. It is the opposite of error and false doctrine. Other forms of Christianity are generally deemed to have less of the truth than evangelicalism.

Re-definition: Jesus alone is the Truth - the truth about God and the truth about humanity. Truth is therefore not primarily propositional or doctrinal, but personal (the person of Christ) and relational. It is also not necessarily simple, systematic and fixed, but rather dynamic, paradoxical and often deeply counter-intuitive.

In the next post: Redefining the Gospel, evangelism, mission, grace, holiness...

"But the Bible says...!"

An unprovoked rant against knee-jerk proof-texting and a particular way of viewing the Bible.

God said it, that settles it?

When presented with any new idea, particularly in the fields of theology, ethics, church practice or morality, in my experience many evangelical Christians will respond with a cry of "But the Bible says...". I say this as a recovering evangelical, having used this approach many times myself.

There's even a mantra that used to be popular in more fundamentalist circles which goes "God said it, I believe it, that settles it".

The trouble is that this is, quite frankly, trite and facile. Sorry if I'm causing offence.

A complex Bible

The Bible can be used to make almost any point you wish

Unfortunately by its very nature the Bible, like statistics, can be used to make almost any point you wish. It can be (and has been) used in support of both slavery and its abolition, of both chauvinism and feminism, of racist apartheid and the civil rights movement, of capitalism and communism. This doesn't mean that there isn't a truth to be reached and that we should just give up. What it does mean is that we can't just find a bunch of verses that seem to agree with our position and say "But the Bible says".

For what the Bible says on any subject is invariably varied, nuanced, complex and contextual, requiring careful (and prayerful) interpretation. The Bible is not a simple divine textbook from which neat answers can be read for all given situations that will arise. Neither is it a fixed stone tablet from which universally applicable and eternally valid truths, commands or divine promises can be mined to order.

Sadly for those who crave certainty there is no holy grail of once-for-all, one-size-fits-all truth that can be applied directly to any and every time and circumstance.

For this reason "what does the Bible say?" is not to my mind a particularly useful question. Far better to ask "what does the Bible mean when it says that?" and "what is the Holy Spirit speaking to us today through these words?"

Avoiding pitfalls

we need to be open to engaging with opposing viewpoints

Of course, there are dangers in this approach as well. We can quite easily persuade ourselves that the Bible means pretty much anything we want it to, even when it appears to be saying the exact opposite. We need safeguards against our own inevitable prejudices and blind spots, and it seems to me the best ones are humility, openness and prayer.

We need to be open to the Spirit, open to our being wrong and needing to rethink, and open to engaging with other and opposing viewpoints in humility and charity. We need to discover what our own blind spots and preconceptions are so that we can learn to counter them. And we need to read each biblical passage as far as possible in its historical, literary and theological context, in light of the whole Bible, and with reference to what other Christians through the ages have understood by the passage. Only then can we hope to be as free as possible from personal prejudice, partisan polemic and pointless proof-texting.

Related posts:

• Why I believe Creationists get it wrong part 2 - Scripture

Why I believe Creationists get it wrong part 2 - Scripture

Creationists generally fit into the fundamentalist wing of evangelical Christianity, viewing the Bible as God's perfect, inerrant, timeless Word and so to be read as literal, historical and scientific fact wherever possible. Wherever the Bible's account of origins appears to differ from that of modern science, science must therefore give way. They argue that God is perfectly capable of saying plainly what he means, and he knows far better than modern scientists what happened at the beginning.

Finally they believe that the whole Bible stands or falls as a unit, so if you question the historicity of Genesis 1-2 you also by implication query the historicity of the gospels.

Inspiration and inerrancy

It's probably no surprise that I disagree with this view of Scripture at almost all points. I do accept that the Bible is divinely inspired ('God-breathed', 2 Tim 3:16) but I have a very different understanding from the Creationists of how that operates and what that means. For a start, I do not believe that divine inspiration must imply 'inerrancy' as they understand it, still less complete historical or scientific accuracy at all points. In my view this is to fall into the same Modernist-paradigm trap as Dawkins that there is only one kind of truth and knowing which is the Factual, ultimately the Scientific. This is certainly not how the original Hebrew authors would have approached Truth, nor does it in fact provide the best or fullest description of Reality. Scientific and historical truth are both important, but truth can also be personal, relational, philosophical, paradoxical, poetic, symbolic or mythopoeic.

To read Genesis 1-2 as teaching history and science is, I believe, to do serious violence to the texts, to the type of literature, its cultural context, and the intentions and understandings of the original authors. Gen 1 is essentially a poetic polemic for monotheism in a polytheistic cultural context, and Gen 2 can best be read as a mythological and theological account of the origins of evil, sin, pain and death. This does not mean that it contains no history, still less that it is untrue - indeed, it makes it more deeply and timelessly true.

The Gospels and Genesis

But if you believe this, how can you say whether any of the Bible is historically true? Most importantly, what of the Gospels, the accounts of the birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ? If these events were not historical, then the entire basis of our Christian faith is gone (1 Corinthians 15:14). But in the Gospels we have a very different kind of writing and literature to the early chapters of Genesis. The gospel writers, particularly in the Synoptics and Luke most of all, are explicitly setting out to record eyewitness accounts of events that took place within their own lifetimes, whose actuality or otherwise would in most cases be fairly easily disprovable were it not true. Here we have the beginnings of recognisable modern historical writing - theologically-interpreted history to be sure, but history nonetheless. C.S. Lewis wrote that, to a scholar of mythology, the resurrection accounts bore none of the hallmarks of myth but stood out very clearly as historical accounts. The Garden of Eden, by contrast, with its talking snake and Trees of Life and of the Knowledge of Good and Evil - quite clearly not standard horticultural varieties - bears all the marks of a mythological-symbolic story of origins, written primarily to convey theological rather than historical truths.

Can God not speak plainly?

Finally, let's deal with the point of whether God is incapable of speaking plainly. Of course he's capable, but that does not mean he always chooses to - look at Jesus' many parables and highly symbolical sayings. And sometimes plain factual statement is not actually the best way to convey what you are trying to say - particularly if you are conveying spiritual truths which are beyond the capabilities of normal human language and experience.

Can a leopard change its spots?

Of course, I need to always be open to the possibility that I may be wrong about all this. I sometimes wonder what it would take to make a dyed-in-the-wool Creationist or Evolutionist change their views - so much has often been invested emotionally in their position that to change would almost be a religious conversion (to a Creationist it would probably feel like apostasy, and might even involve a loss of faith). And I also wonder if Creationists and Evolutionists have such fundamentally, structurally incompatible worldviews that it's often not even possible for them to speak comprehensibly to each other.

Nonetheless, I fervently wish that Christians didn't have to divide and fight over this issue, one on which I believe no-one's salvation need depend. I also wish that in their legitimate concerns over some of the implications of evolution, Creationists did not have to set themselves up - and Christianity by implication - as such easy targets for scornful atheists.