The Blue Parakeet, 2nd

by Scot McKnight

  What about Applying Jesus’s Teachings Today?

  I have no serious desire, though every now and then the idea does pass through my head just to see what it would be like, to observe all of Moses’s laws “to a T.” And I suspect 99.99 percent of you, if not more, stand alongside me in my lack of desire to do so. But I am quite willing to say that most of us do want to follow Jesus. Many of us, in fact, claim we do apply Jesus’s teachings, literally to some degree, to everything we do.

  Why talk about this? Because it is the claim that we follow Jesus alongside the obvious reality that we don’t follow Jesus completely that leads us to ponder how we are actually reading the Bible. The passages we don’t follow are blue parakeets that make us rethink how we read the Bible. All I really want to accomplish in this chapter is to get us to think more carefully about:

  • the reality that we do pick and choose, even with Jesus and the New Testament, and

  • the reasons we have for our adopting and adapting.

  I’ve given away my secrets, so let me state them clearly: we don’t follow Jesus literally, we do pick and choose what we want to apply to our lives today, and I want to know what methods, ideas, and principles are at work among us for picking what we pick and choosing what we choose. It is my belief that we—the church—have always read the Bible in a picking-and-choosing way. Somehow, someway we have formed patterns of discernment that guide us. The deepest theme in our discernment is that we have a Great Tradition—a set of methods and beliefs and a culture that holds them together—that gives us instinct for knowing how to read the Bible.

  Picking and choosing, or reading the Bible with the tradition, is how the church has always read the Bible! It is no doubt safer to call this “adapt and adopt” or “conserve and innovate.” Whichever expression we use, it all comes down to one word: discernment. We have learned to discern how to live out the Bible in our world today; we have discerned what to do and what not to do, what to keep as permanent and what to see as “that was then.” We do more than read and apply; we read, we listen, and we (in connection with God’s Spirit and God’s people) discern.

  Perhaps your response to these claims is the same as that of A. J. Jacobs: “Once you acknowledge that we pick and choose from the Bible, doesn’t that destroy its credibility? Doesn’t that knock the legs out from under it? Why should we put stock in any of the Bible?”5 These are good questions, and many ask them. Just recently a student asked me those questions. But before any of us who claim to be Christians and who claim to follow Jesus can answer such questions, we need to look a little more closely at our practice of application. When we see how we actually live, we have two choices: either to become radical biblical literalists and apply everything (and I mean everything), or to admit that we are “pickers and choosers.” Since the evidence reveals that we are all adopters and adapters, we need to admit it and then seek to explain ourselves. That is what this book attempts to do. I hope others will join the conversation.

  I plan to give three examples from Jesus; we will explore other examples in the next chapter. I was tempted to go through example after example to bring out all the nuances, but that would have made this book too long. In most examples, I don’t even give my opinion. Instead, I discuss how we already discern how to live the Bible and, in most cases, without much consciousness of what we are doing.

  Jesus, Prayer, and Today

  One day the disciples asked Jesus for some practical advice about prayer. “Lord,” they said, “teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” In reply Jesus said to them (and I translate Jesus’s words literally for effect): “Whenever you pray, recite this prayer . . .”; then he gives the shorter form of the Lord’s Prayer (see Luke 11:1–4). The NIV, emerging as it does from a world that does not believe in recited prayers, translates these words this way: “When you pray, say . . .” I have translated “when” with “whenever” as a more literal rendering of the Greek expression. And instead of “say,” a more accurate rendering would be “recite.” I do so because Luke uses a present imperative; Jesus expects this very prayer to be repeated over and over—whenever they pray. The best way to translate something that is said over and over is “recite.”

  NIV Literal

  When you pray, say . . . Whenever you pray, recite this . . .

  Here is a fact from church history: to the best of our knowledge, the followers of Jesus have always recited the Lord’s Prayer whenever they have gathered for worship and prayer. The evidence for this is universal—every major denomination in the world prior to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries recited the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday. Why? Because Luke 11:2 taught them to do this. But many evangelical churches I have worshiped in and preached in do not recite the Lord’s Prayer whenever they pray together. We have “applied” the words of Luke 11:2 differently, so differently that our translations reflect our own non-recital of the Lord’s Prayer. Why? Because there is an unwritten, contrary-to-what-Jesus-taught principle at work that reciting set prayers leads to vain repetitions.

  I have no desire to engage that debate. What needs to be realized is that this practice of not reciting the Lord’s Prayer whenever we gather together is contrary to what Jesus said (and what the church has historically done).

  Not reciting the Lord’s Prayer is our application of what Jesus said. We have chosen, for pastoral reasons, not to do what Jesus commanded us to do and have chosen instead to apply these words in another way. How? We take them as a general principle instead of a specific commandment. This permits us to gather together in prayer without reciting the Lord’s Prayer. This decision permits us to see the Lord’s Prayer as a “model” prayer instead of a recited prayer. (For what it’s worth, I think the Lord’s Prayer is both a model and the precise words we should use whenever we gather in prayer. I recite it several times a day.)

  Let’s be honest: we treat this commandment of Jesus the way we treat most of the commands in Leviticus 19; we ignore it or dismiss it.

  Jesus, Conversion, and Today

  A second example is what Jesus requires or expects of those who want to enter the kingdom of heaven, all from the Gospel of Matthew.

  They must have surpassing righteousness (Matthew 5:20).

  They must do God’s will (7:21).

  They must become as a little child in humility (18:3–4).

  They must cut themselves off from whatever is in the way (18:8–9).

  They must abandon riches (19:23–24).

  They must separate from the teachers of the law and the Pharisees (23:13).

  How do we “apply” these so-called entrance requirements of Jesus? We mostly don’t apply them. We have discerned what they meant and how we can make use of them in our world.

  For many Christians, these statements by Jesus sound far too much like “works righteousness.” That is, we prefer a similar kind of saying in John 3:3: “No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” How is one “born again”? Many answer that from the same chapter, verse 15: “that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”

  Here’s a question: What would the gospel look like—in a four-point gospel tract—if the “abandon riches” statement was the basis for the framework? How about this?

  Point 1: God created the world for all of us.

  Point 2: Some out of greed have established systemic injustices.

  Point 3: Jesus calls us to abandon all of our riches to rectify this.

  Point 4: If you abandon your riches, the kingdom will come and the world will be what God wants.

  Most in the history of the church have not believed that such a four-point gospel tract expresses the gospel. Some, thinking more historically, see these entrance requirements as no more than statements by Jesus to fellow Jewish contemporaries who needed to hear those words to see what repentance and faith looked like. Regardless of what we do, we, in effect, minimize what Jesus said.

  While I do think we can offer a more robust gospel t
han we do today,6 the intent here is to get us to think about how we are reading the Bible. How do we know whether we are doing the right thing when we, in effect, suspend Jesus’s commands?

  Jesus, Ethics, and Today

  How do we apply Jesus’s moral expectations? In particular, how do we apply the kinds of moral demands of Jesus we find in the Sermon on the Mount? We should be marked by a righteousness that (greatly) surpasses the righteousness of the Pharisees and teachers of the law (Matthew 5:20); we should avoid anger because Jesus teaches that anger is murderous (5:21–22); married folk should avoid lusting after others sexually because Jesus teaches that lust is adulterous (5:27–30); and we should, apart from the one exception for sexual infidelity, neither divorce nor remarry (5:31–32). To put all of this in one attractive container, we should be “perfect . . . as your heavenly Father is perfect” (5:48). Even the disciples wondered if words like these were too much to handle; when Jesus said something similar sometime later, his best followers blurted out: “It is better not to marry.” (19:10).

  How do we apply words like those in the Sermon on the Mount today? Let’s look at the different approaches in the history of the church to just one saying in this sermon: “Be perfect” (Matthew 5:48). What have we done with this statement of Jesus?

  • Some say Jesus is exaggerating, raising the standard higher than we can achieve, but if we strive for it we’ll do better than we are now.

  • Others say that “being perfect” is what our moral life will be like in the eternal kingdom, and Jesus is teaching the final and eternal ethic God designs for us.

  • Still others suggest that “being perfect” forces us to look inside to our heart of hearts to see our sinfulness.

  • Yet others think Jesus means exactly what he says: he expects us to be perfect.

  • Another: some think “perfect” actually means “whole” or “mature,” so that being whole and mature is what Jesus really wants.

  • One final one: some think “perfect” means to love our enemies and all we encounter.

  We probably will not agree on how to read the word “perfect” in Matthew 5:48, but I hope this little section gets us to think harder about how we are reading the Bible. We are not trying to resolve all these issues. Instead, we are intent on demonstrating that we apply some of what Jesus says and we choose not to apply other things Jesus said. In other words, there is some adopting and adapting, some conserving and some innovating involved even with the sayings of Jesus. If there are two choices—totally literal or discerning a pattern—most of us will choose the latter every time.

  By now I hope you are a bit unnerved about what I have said. This chapter is intended to provoke in order to get you to think about how you are actually reading the Bible. Some of you may want to turn back to a much more literal take-it-all-or-nothing approach, but I’m guessing most of you are now becoming aware that you do in fact adopt and adapt. What we must now pursue are the answers to this question: What principles do we use to adopt and adapt the Bible?

  To answer this question we must broaden our vision from applying Jesus’s teachings to applying those of the whole Bible. When we do, we will discover that we use various patterns of discernment. In the next chapter we will go through seven more examples, each of which startles us as Bible readers, just like the sudden appearance of a blue parakeet in the yard.

  CHAPTER 10

  FINDING THE PATTERN OF DISCERNMENT

  Why Do We Not Follow the Bible Sometimes?

  Our all-too-glib and frequently heard Christian claim to practice whatever the Bible says annoys me. You might be annoyed that I just said this, but I’d like a fair hearing. I ask you to consider the following clear teachings of the Bible that few, if any, Christians practice. Perhaps you can ask yourself this question as you read through these passages: Why do I not do what this passage in the Bible teaches?

  As you look at these examples, you will discover what I am calling a pattern of discernment. The pattern of discernment is simply this: as we read the Bible and locate each item in its place in the Story, as we listen to God speak to us in our world through God’s ancient Word, we discern—through God’s Spirit and in the context of our community of faith or the Great Tradition—a pattern of how to live in our world. The church of every age is summoned by God to the Bible to listen so we can discern a pattern for living the gospel that is appropriate for our age. Discernment is part of the process we are called to live, and discernment sometimes means conservation and at other times it means organic innovation.

  DISCERNMENT: General Thoughts

  In general, I am thinking of what a local church or a local denomination does in order to discern how best to live out the gospel in its day and in its way. While personal discernment for my own life is important, that is not what I have in mind here. Instead, I am concerned with how a local church, often in deep conversation with a denomination, discerns how to live. In fact, often the discernment process occurs at the denominational level to guide each local church.

  We do not need to get into all the ways various Christian churches make decisions. Rather, our concern in this book is about discernment at the local church level. Part 5 will probe how churches (locally or denominationally) make decisions about women in church ministries. A tension occurs when a young woman believes she is called to preach or teach publicly but a local church or denomination has “discerned” that to be unacceptable. The young woman’s belief is important to me, and I will deal with this, but our main concern is not so much with her discernment as with the church’s.

  A second general issue concerns diversity. Every culture will decide its own patterns for living out the Bible. Turkish Christians will not have the same pattern as that of Southern Californian Christians. Russian Baptists will live out the gospel in ways that differ from Brazilian charismatics. Anglicans in India will choose ways that differ from Anglicans in Wheaton. This is perhaps obvious to many, but we must remind ourselves of the vibrant diversity of the church at the local level. Seeking unanimity on all things is unwise; permitting discernment at the local level can sometimes create too much diversity, but it is wiser to have decisions made on some problems at the local church level than to have everyone under lock and key.

  Discernment can be very messy. Discernment is called for on issues that are obviously unclear in the Bible, the gray and fuzzy areas.

  No one argues with the clear and unmistakable teachings with which most Christians agree. No one believes it is right to murder. No one believes spousal abuse is right. No one thinks selling off children is acceptable. And in spite of the question about premarital sex that my reader asked on my blog, detailed in the previous chapter, most don’t think premarital sexual intercourse is Christian behavior. These are the clear teachings in the Bible.

  Churches, for instance, do need to discern if they want women to preach on Sunday. They will also have to decide how gays and lesbians will participate. These are messy areas. Here’s the rub: to avoid the messiness, some revert to seeing the Bible as a law book. Eventually, though, a day will come when it becomes clear that discernment is going on. Decisions are being made. And that’s what I’m most concerned about in this book.

  DISCERNMENT: Specific Examples

  Let’s look at some examples—some of them quite messy—and we will learn about the unstated principle of discernment at work in the church.

  1. Divorce and Remarriage

  Let me make five quick observations to get in our minds what we mean by discernment in divorce and remarriage.1 First, Jesus was against divorce, as is clear from Mark 10:11–12: “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.”2

  Second, on another occasion Jesus “discerned” there is, in fact, an exception—sexual immorality.3 Look at Matthew 5:32: “But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery
, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (emphasis added). Now we’ve got clarity: divorce is wrong except in the case of sexual immorality. If you want to know what Jesus and Jews of his world understood by “sexual immorality,” turn to Leviticus 18 where you can read a list of sexual sins. All those, and probably more, were in Jesus’s mind when he said “sexual immorality.”

  Third, the apostle Paul encountered a new situation in which he had to discern how the teachings of Jesus could be lived out when a non-Christian spouse deserted a Christian spouse. Was divorce also permissible for this situation? In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul discerned it was permissible. Paul knew precisely what he was doing—adding to what Jesus had taught. In 7:12 he says: “To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord).” What did he discern? “But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace” (7:15).

  Being true to Jesus, Paul is not looking for exceptions. He prefers that husband and wife stay together because the Christian might “save” the partner (7:16). But if the nonbeliever deserts, Paul discerns divorce is permissible, and he does so because we are called “to live in peace,” which probably means Paul wants the Christians not to be disruptive in society.

  Fourth, churches are called to enact similar discernments today, and long, hard, prayerful sessions have been directed at discerning whether abuse and desertion and immaturities are permissible grounds for divorce among Christians. No one says it is easy, but we have the following confidences: the guidance of the Spirit is promised us as we pray, as we study Scripture, and as we join in the conversation with church tradition. There will be both conservation and some innovation. It would be much easier for God to have given us rules and regulations for everything. But God, in his wisdom, has chosen not to do that. Discernment is an element of what it means to walk by faith.