As Christians, we may firmly believe that the Bible is inspired by God, but on many occasions we can’t take as absolutes what individual Bible verses say.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash.
This is clearly the case with biblical proverbs. Otherwise, how are we to interpret contradictory instructions like these ones in Proverbs 26:4‑5?:
Do not answer a fool according to his folly,
or you yourself will be just like him.
Answer a fool according to his folly,
or he will be wise in his own eyes. [1]
Here’s another example: The majority of our churches don’t prohibit our womenfolk from speaking in church services, in spite of this very clear instruction by the apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 14:34:
Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak […]
In this instance, it’s pretty easy to not read the verse in question as an absolute prohibition (and maybe almost completely ignore it), because there are other passages that clearly imply that women could speak in church meetings.
Photo by StockCake.
But what are we supposed to do if there aren’t any other clear biblical passages to give us the “perfect excuse” for qualifying or not applying certain verses?
Christians who fought for the abolition of slavery faced that problem. Prominent Christians of the time (some were slave-owners) branded them as “unbiblical” and “revisionists”. But the abolitionists insisted that more general principles of the Bible and the gospel had to prevail, and they ended up convincing everyone else.
To be honest, we have to admit that we qualify much of what we read in the Bible. Sometimes our excuse is that we’re dealing with specific words to a specific person in their specific circumstances. So we don’t tend to insist on Jesus’ words “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor” (Mark 10:21) to everybody that wants to follow him, right? On the other hand, we delight in encouraging each other with what God said to Joshua “Be strong and very courageous” (Joshua 1:7). In other words, we are selective.
Is that okay? Is it wrong? There’s no easy answer to that, even for commands that could be taken as general ones. Tell me, if not, how or when we are supposed to apply a blunt instruction from Jesus like this one in Mark 9:47😳:
And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out.
☝️Actually, both Jesus and Paul were selective in how they read and applied the Holy Scriptures they had [2]. That’s something I comment on in my book.
But then… if neither they nor we take as absolutes and systematically apply certain individual verses from the Bible, maybe we shouldn’t be doing that either with the handful of verses that appear to condemn same-sex sexual relationships.🤔
In my subsequent posts I will be commenting on these verses.
📌 If you would like to comment on this post (in the language of your choice), you can do so at the end of the Spanish version, here.
Notes
[1] All the Bible quotations in this post are from The Holy Bible, New International Version® (Anglicised), NIV®, copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.®, used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
[2] For example, in Luke 4:18‑21, when Jesus announced his ministry by quoting from Isaiah 61:1‑2, he significantly stopped the quote mid-sentence and omitted the last part of the second verse, which speaks of God’s “vengeance” (according to the NIV and nearly all Bible translations, though CEB and NABRE speak of God’s “vindication”). And in John 8:1‑10 Jesus adroitly manipulated the conversation with the scribes and Pharisees to avoid applying the Law’s clear command to stone the woman caught in adultery. Paul, for his part, felt able to reject the applicability of circumcision and Jewish food laws for his Gentile converts. And both Jesus and Paul qualified or went beyond the Scriptures they each had that dealt with divorce.