It’s All About the Context

If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time you know that I am absolutely passionate about the Bible.
I love reading it and studying it.
Mostly because of the huge impact that this little collection of myths and stories has had on the history of the world. I think that it is quite safe to say that no other single source has driven so much of our culture and art, as well as our treatment of one another and the world itself, as the Christian scriptures.

So, what animates my desire is to look with open eyes and listen with an open heart to find out what these ancient texts may really say to us in the 21st century. How may they inform our own lives and culture? And, perhaps more importantly, how can we faithfully critique the beliefs and understandings of those who have engaged them in the past?

As I look around at the way that religion in general and the Christian view in particular, I see a lot of chaos. There is a tectonic fault that has appeared over the centuries that threatens to send a temblor of unprecedented magnitude through the culture.
The source for this threat, I believe, is in how we seem to accept former understandings and interpretations today as if they were, in fact, gospel truth.
Spoiler alert:
They’re not.

While I could go back to the 2nd and third centuries to show how things began to come off of the rails, today I just want to focus on a slice of history.
About 500 years ago there was another tectonic shift in theological understanding. Although the shift began in the 15th century, it came to fruition in the Reformation of the 16th. Martin Luther, John Calvin, and a bit later Thomas Cranmer, revolted against the abuses of the Medieval Roman Church. And, rightly so. Change was desperately needed.
These people rethought what it meant to follow Jesus more authentically than what the Church of Rome allowed.
As far as I’m concerned, the Reformation was a good thing.

FOR THAT TIME!!!

However, what was good in 1520 is not necessarily good in 2020.

That brings me back to where I started today.
So much of the Church, especially the Protestant variety, still holds to the ideas and reflections of those 500 year old white guys. And, they do so uncritically.
I think that is a really, really bad thing to do.
I just need to look around at all of the abuses, terror, and genocide that has been inflicted on people in the name of this Old Time Religion to know that it is indeed flawed.

One of my professors in seminary mentioned that she thought that, perhaps, we were ripe for a new Reformation.

I agree. With my whole heart, I AGREE!

We have more information and scholarship available to us than those old reformers had.
We can now put Jesus and Paul and Peter and the rest into a context that must inform the way that we view the ancient texts that they, and many, many others, were responsible for creating.
Earlier theologians, like those mentioned above, but also going back through Aquinas and Augustine and others, did not have the resources that we do today. They wrestled with the texts in a context where Neo-Platonism and the philosophy of Aristotle were used to try and make sense of a Bible that was created by people who lived and breathed a completely different worldview.
It was a lot like how we say that they were comparing apples to grapefruit. Not gonna be a good fit no matter how you slice it.

Today’s scholarship has begun to ask better questions of the texts. And, subsequently, has been able to offer better interpretations to us.

As I lead Bible studies, I always try to hammer home the idea that Context is Everything.
Scholars over that last few decades have been able to provide this context for us.
The information available enables us, that’s you and me, to view the words of of the Bible with a more critical eye. We can better understand who wrote the texts. To whom were they written. Why did the writer record these specific words to these particular readers?
This IS Context!
This IS what we need to get a better grasp on what these stories and letters and poems and myths might give us something that is useful for us.
Now.
In this Place.
In our Culture.

What I am finding out is that the Church is, indeed, in need of Reformation.
The Church needs to step up and do the same hard work that those earlier reformers did.
We must reflect theologically on these Ancient Texts so that they can be, as the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews wrote, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword.”
If the Word of God is, in fact, living, then we must seek to revive it in our day.

Or else, it will atrophy and die.

And, that death will take us down a road that I don’t think we want to.
Especially, since many churches in our culture are already showing us where that road leads.