It is not my intent to resolve this issue. Instead, we conclude on an important note: the pattern of discernment varies from age to age and from church to church and from person to person within a church. This illustrates that the pattern of discernment can sometimes be messy.
We have two options:
uniformity of all in all things, or
diversity in the striving for unity.
This is precisely what Paul means by the verses in our final example, which is next.
7. All Things to All
First Corinthians 9:19–23:
Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.
Paul’s adaptability to context has drawn attention. Gordon Fee, a New Testament scholar, speaks of Paul’s “apparently chameleonlike stance in matters of social relationships.”7 The apostle began a sermon to philosopher types by exploring the gospel in philosophical terms (Acts 17:16–34). When it came to traditional Jewish food laws, he evidently just turned his head (see 1 Corinthians 8; also, written later, Romans 14:2–3, 6). Why did Paul do this? Because of the gospel, because Paul knew the King and His Kingdom Story. If one wants to be completely faithful to Paul today, one would have to submit every act and every idea to the principle of what furthers the gospel the most. Because of that principle, Paul adopted and adapted.
Yes, Paul was a chameleon—he changed colors everywhere he went—but he kept the same body. His gospel mission shaped everything he did. His gospel was the same, but his circumstances shaped how he went about his business of spreading the gospel. Paul’s process looked messy to outsiders but was recognized as Spirit-led to insiders.
Some are a bit taken aback by Paul, but reading the Bible as the King and His Kingdom Story makes me think Paul is doing nothing new here. Adaptability of message and lifestyle is a theme written into the fabric of the ongoing development of the Bible itself. God spoke in:
Abraham’s days in Abraham’s ways (walking between severed animals)
Moses’s days in Moses’s ways (law and ceremony)
David’s days in David’s ways (royal policies)
Isaiah’s days in Isaiah’s ways (walking around nude for a few years)
Ezra’s days in Ezra’s ways (divorcing gentile spouses)
Jesus’s days in Jesus’s ways (intentional poverty)
Peter’s days in Peter’s ways (strategies for living under an emperor)
John’s days in John’s ways (dualistic language—light and darkness)
Adaptability and development are woven into the very fabric of the Bible. From beginning to end, there is a pattern of adopting and adapting. Any attempt to foist one person’s days and ways on everyone’s days and ways hampers the work of the Holy Spirit. Can we be biblical if we fail to be as adaptable for our world as the Bible itself was for its time? Is this messy? Sometimes it is. Was the Jerusalem Council messy? Yes, it was. Did they discern what to do for that time? Yes, they did. Was it permanent, for all time, for everyone, always, everywhere? No. What gives us discernment for our world is listening to the Spirit in our times in light of the redemptive benefits of the King and His Kingdom Story.
All genuine biblical faith takes the gospel message and “incarnates” it in a context. The following observation unmasks all that we are advocating.
What is good for Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Ezra, Jesus, Peter, and Paul is also good for us. But the precise expression of the gospel, the King and His Kingdom Story, or the manner of living of Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Ezra, Jesus, Peter, and Paul may not be our expression or our manner of living. Living out the Bible means living out the Bible in our day in our way by discerning together how God would have us live. To do this, we need to baptize each wiki-story and each moment of our life into the King and His Kingdom Story as the large encompassing Story of the Bible.
We can be firmer: since it is clear that each of these persons adapted the Plot and the Story for their day, it is unlikely that their message or manner of life will be precisely the same as our message and our manner of life. We are called, as they were, to learn the Plot and the Story of the King and His Kingdom and its redemptive benefits, to listen to God, and to discern what to say and how to live in our day in our own way. We will speak to our world only when we unleash the gospel so that it can speak in our day in our ways. We are called to be faithful, and we do this by reading the Bible and knowing the Bible and living out the King and His Kingdom Story in our world today.
What this book is advocating is not new. It is my belief that most Christians and churches do operate with a pattern of discernment, but it is rarely openly admitted and even more rarely clarified. Discernment, I am arguing, is how we have always read the Bible for our world; in fact, it is how the biblical authors themselves read the Bible they had. I want to begin a conversation among Bible readers about this very topic: What pattern of discernment is at work among us?
I want now to dig a little deeper into a few examples in a brief fashion (slavery, atonement, and justice) and then concentrate more on one example: women in church ministries. I am not asking you to agree with me in the next few chapters, but I am asking you to admit that everyone today is using a pattern of discernment when it comes to theological topics like slavery or women in church ministries. Passages in the Bible about slaves, about atonement, about justice, and about women are often blue parakeet passages. Perhaps we need to ask how many of these blue parakeet passages we are silencing today.
The next few chapters will illustrate what it means to read the Bible with tradition instead of reading the Bible through tradition. It will illustrate how we practice the principles of conservation alongside innovation. In essence, I think the church has at times stayed on course but at other times it has gotten off track, misread some passages in the Bible, ignored others, and then fossilized that reading of the Bible into the Great Tradition. Sometimes the innovation needs to end and we need to back up into conservation. Other times we need an instance of organic innovation. While I respect that tradition, I have learned that reading the Bible with tradition encourages each generation to think for itself by returning to the Bible, confessing the Bible’s primacy, and unleashing the power of the gospel in our day in our way.
PART 4
READING THE BIBLE AS STORY
Three Examples
CHAPTER 11
SLAVES IN THE KING AND HIS KINGDOM REDEMPTION STORY
Learning the theory of reading the Bible as Story is one thing. Doing it is another. In this section I give three examples of reading the Bible as Story. I look at slavery, at atonement, and at justice. Each one illustrates reading the Bible in light of the King and His Kingdom Story and its redemptive benefits and is illuminated by thinking of them through the Bible’s Story. Each illustrates both conservation and innovation, both adoption and adaptation.
Slavery in the Bible’s Story
To read the Bible well we need to read it not just in terms of its redemptive benefits—are slaves redeemed?—but in terms of the King and His Kingdom Story. We need to look at the Bible’s end goal when it comes to slavery and slaves and to read the Bible in light of that end goal. This makes for a huge difference in our thinking and understanding. But if we stop with the redemptive benefits we might just conclude: “As long as slaves hear the gospel and get saved, they’re fine as slaves.” Instead, when the kingdom of God becomes the larger story and vision in our reading of the Bible, we must conclude: “Slavery
falls way short of God’s reconciled, peaceful, just, and loving society.”
The Vision of Redemption in the King and His Kingdom Story
There is no slave, and there is no slave owner in the great and final vision of redeemed creation in Revelation. I’m mistaken: the “slaves” of the final scenes in Revelation are servants of the Most High God. Which is to say, no humans have servants and there are no slave owners or slaves. Thus, the Bible tells us in the new heaven and the new earth all of God’s “servants will serve him” (Revelation 22:3) and to these servants God is revealing his future plans (22:6). There is no slave and no slave owner because the vision described by the apostle Paul in Galatians 3:28 and Colossians 3:11 will become a reality:
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)
For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. (1 Corinthians 12:13)
Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. (Colossians 3:11)
The oneness of redemption that we have already discussed comes to completion in Christ: slaves and free are “one in Christ,” and slave and free distinctions are erased in “one body,” and there is in Christ “no . . . slave or free.” That’s the final paragraph in the King and His Kingdom Story about slaves. To read the Bible in light of this Story means to see that God’s aim for humans is the abolition of slavery.
It was not always that way, though, and one of the noisiest blue parakeets in the whole Bible is what it says about slavery.
The Need for Redemption
What is slavery? We must get this clearly understood before we can even begin to see how the Bible’s Story shapes the story about slavery. These are the basic elements of slavery: a slave is (1) someone who is owned by a slave owner, (2) who uses that slave for profit (or pleasure) (3) against the will of that slave or, in unusual cases, (4) by the decision of the slave in order to pay off debts or because the slave loves the slave owner and his family. Slavery, then and now, describes almost always an involuntary labor force and the power to enforce ownership of someone without their consent. A good slave owner treats slaves better than a mean slave owner. In the history of the church there has been a mistaken contention that New World slavery in the colonies, the Caribbean, and South America was worse than ancient slavery in Israel, Egypt, Greece, or Rome. The evidence, however, is against this: slavery in both situations was about involuntary ownership, and brutality was found both in the ancient world and in New World slavery.
As we have seen in the various wiki-stories of the Bible, God spoke in those days in their ways, and one of their ways was slavery. Nearly every statement about slavery in the Old Testament can be challenged by what Paul says and especially by the absence of slave owners and their slaves in the kingdom of God. This is why we need to learn to read the whole Bible through the King and His Kingdom Story. The Bible’s march is toward the eradication of slavery, but the march was slow, and that eradication didn’t occur. Many times in reading the Bible we will be tempted to say, “Way too slow!”
To make a long listing of details short, here are some clear indicators of the brutality of slavery in the Bible—besides the obvious fact that a slave is a slave is a slave, that is, a slave is a human being involuntarily owned by a person powerful enough to own another human.1
If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money. (Exodus 21:7–11)
Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property. (Exodus 21:20–21)
When you go to war against your enemies and the LORD your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives, if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife. Bring her into your home and have her shave her head, trim her nails and put aside the clothes she was wearing when captured. After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month, then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife. If you are not pleased with her, let her go wherever she wishes. You must not sell her or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her. (Deuteronomy 21:10–14)
There were slaves in ancient Israel; they were “property”; a father could sell his daughter into slavery but the slave owner could not then sell that daughter to gentiles; slaves could be beaten and treated harshly; slaves could be taken as war brides.
There is nothing pretty here, and it is not wrong for us who know the King and His Kingdom Story vision of the eradication of slavery in the kingdom of God to be irritated or depressed or even angry about these instances of slavery in the Bible. They are nothing less than shocking blue parakeet passages.
Signs of Redemption Anticipating the King and His Kingdom
There are signs of redemption in the Old Testament, and I want to point out a few of them. I begin with creation itself in which all humans, male and female, are created as an “image of God” (Genesis 1:26–27). The expression “image of God” refers to the vocation of Adam and Eve as representatives of all humans: they are to rule, as the Bible says in Genesis 1:26, over all creation under God who is the one true God and ruler of all. Humans are sub-rulers. The shocking (blue parakeet) reality is that the minute humans begin to rule over other humans, which is what slavery is, they have usurped God’s rule. But the sin of Adam reveals itself immediately in his desire to “rule” over Eve (Genesis 3:16), and slavery is but an extension of that sinful, idolatrous desire to rule other humans. That sinful choice to rule others on the basis of power, then, contradicts the order of creation we see in Genesis 1:26–27: Adam and Eve are to rule over animals, but not over other humans. Why? Because only humans are “Eikons” of God.
Israel developed a sympathy for slaves because Israel spent 400 years in slavery in Egypt. This is a second sign of redemption in the Bible’s story. From the moment of the exodus, God told Israel over and over to Remember! Notice these verses:
Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. (Deuteronomy 5:15)
Then you shall declare before the LORD your God: “My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous. But the Egyptians mistreated us and made us suffer, subjecting us to harsh labor. Then we cried out to the LORD, the God of our ancestors, and the LORD heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression. So the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with signs and wonders. He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey; and now I bring the firstfruits of the soil that you, LORD, have given me.” Place the basket before the LORD your God and bow down before him. (Deuteronomy 26:5–10)
The children of Israel were slaves in Egypt; they were treated harshly; God looked with favor upon them and rescued them at the exodus. They were guided through the wilderness where they received the law at Mount Sinai, and eventually they crossed the Jordan River and settled in the land. But they were to remember their slavery, and this memory of slavery written into the fabric of their own Story gave them opportu
nities to be kind and compassionate to slaves. Yet being kind to their own slaves is not the eradication of slavery. These passages remain blue parakeets in our Bible. Humans have an incurable drive to rule, and ruling over other humans forced to submit is called slavery. We resist their ruling over others as we observe a few signs of redemption in their laws about slaves.
So the third sign is the redemptive moments in the laws. A small step in the right direction of full redemption in the Story of the King and His Kingdom is seen when ancient Israel limited enslaving fellow Israelites to six years:
If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free. (Exodus 21:2–4)
Restriction on the years of slavery is good; the children born to slaves who are not freed with a parent who is freed is not good. An even better sign of redemption is the Israelite slave owner treating the fellow Israelite slave and his family so well that the slave chooses to remain in the household of the slave owner.
But if the servant declares, “I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,” then his master must take him before the judges. He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life. (Exodus 21:5–6)
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