Monthly Archives: February 2020

What if the Bible Is Not Our Guide?

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This Book Doesn't Have Any Answers

Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth – the B.I.B.L.E.  Have you heard the Bible explained that way?  It’s clever.  But is it accurate?  

I said in my teaching Sunday that I used to think the clever acrostic is accurate.  But not anymore.  Let’s be honest.  The Bible isn’t really a very good instruction manual or guide book.  

I know.  That rubs us the wrong way.  But, as Billy Sunday said, and I paraphrase:  “If something rubs you the wrong way, maybe you need to turn around.” 

I needed to turn around.  Maybe you do too. 

Think with me:  The Bible tells us, for example, to “Be kind to one another,” “Love one another – even our enemies,” “Give generously to the poor.”  All good. 

But next to these good things are some bad things- really bad things:  

Rape (Deuteronomy 21:10-14; Numbers 31:15-18); 

Slavery (1 Peter 2:18; Titus 2:9) 

Genocide (Deuteronomy 7:1-2; Deuteronomy 20:15-17) 

…are all commanded – by God.  At least the writers pass the buck to God for these commands.  Are those instructions ones that we should follow?  I hope you’’ll answer “No”.

One more thing. It doesn’t make much sense to claim that the Bible is an “infallible” guide in what it says if we cannot agree on what it says.  “But we agree on the essentials,” I hear someone saying.  We really don’t.  Go to amazon.com  and type in “four views” in the search bar and get ready to “turn around.”  We’re given page after page of books about various ways of interpreting key Christian doctrines:

Four Views on Hell

Four Views of Atonement

Four Views on Divine Providence

Four Views on Eternal Security

These are not peripheral issues.  These are some “big rocks” of Christianity.  In each book we find opposing views in which each proponent is absolutely certain that their particular interpretation of the Bible is the right one.  

If the Bible spoke clearly on these issues then why isn’t there a “The Only View” series.

So, if we remove the Bible as our guide, what do we put in its place?  Are we just free to do whatever we want – to do what is right in our own eyes (Judges 21:5)? 

I offered, Sunday morning, an option given to me by mother throughout my junior high and high school years.  Here is the question she told me to ask myself when considering the rightness or the wrongness of an action: “When you consider this action, ask yourself, ‘does the life of Jesus well up inside of you?’”  

That’s good.  

Denise and I went to Little Rock after Sunday’s service to see my dad.  Drinking a glass of wine and eating Girl Scout cookies, (what are the rules for pairing wine with Girl Scout Cookies) with dad, my sister and Denise, around dad’s kitchen table, I asked dad about mom’s counsel to me.  He told me mom read that in a book by Watchman Nee, an author that greatly influenced my parents.   

For 52 years I’ve been under the impression that mom came up with that on her own!

So, this morning, I did a quick Google search trying to find the exact quote.  I didn’t find mom’s version of it but I did find the following statements by Watchman Nee.   

Read them with an open mind.  Contemplatively. And get ready  to “turn around.”  

“Brothers and sisters, as we live before God, our actions must not be determined by good and evil, but by the life within.”

Hmm. “Actions determined…by the life within.”  Let’s go on…

“When we have the life within and feel life rising up, we are doing the proper thing.” That sounds a bit like Mom’s version. 

Then there’s this from Nee: “Many problems arise because we only have a standard of right and wrong.  Many mistakes are made because we do not have the standard of life.”

Then Nee, a mystical Christian,  offers this prayer,

“Grace me so that I live by the tree of life, not by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  I want to constantly pay attention to life…”

Mom was telling me, and I’m just now really hearing it: “Don’t live by an external rule book (the Bible), instead, live by an internal life – the life that is “graced” by  the Spirit of Christ.  

Have you been indoctrinated into seeing the Bible as your guide?  

Yes.  We need a guide.  No doubt about that! 

But have we settled for an external law when we have within us an internal life?  

“So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives and you will not obey your selfish desires (Paul to the Galatians, found in 5:16).

“And when that one comes, the Spirit will guide you into all truth” (Jesus, to his disciples, recorded by John, in 16:13).  

“Pay attention to life” the Christ-shaped life within (Watchman Nee to Mom; then Mom to me).  

I will live in the awareness of the presence of life in me and I will pay attention to it.

That will be my guide.

Kindness Week and President’s Day

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kid President kindness

Kindness on President’s Day

February 17 is both President’s Day and the beginning of Random Acts of Kindness week.  Initially, that sounds like a weird combination, but maybe not.  

Think about food combinations.  What sounds awful may actually be delicious. 

*Ice cream and French Fries.  Dip your fries into a Wendy’s Frosty.  Salty and sweet.  Hot and cold.  What’s not to love?

*Strawberries and Balsamic. Now, I’m all over that. 

*Banana and Bacon.   Thank you Elvis for this one. 

Let’s add President’s Day and Kindness Week to the list of weird but totally doable combinations.  

Our favorite President, by almost every poll every year, is Abraham Lincoln.  I wonder if his kindness is one thing that pole vaults Lincoln over the others. In Lincoln, we see a combination of strong leadership with pervasive kindness. 

We respect that.  We like someone who “leads with kindness.”

“Kindness” includes, but goes way beyond, sweet little acts of kindness.   

 “Love is kind” is what Paul writes in the “Love” poem of 1 Corinthians 13.  But he frames “kindness” in the context of relating to the “problem people” in our lives. 1 Corinthians 13 was written to a community in conflict. They were angry with each other.  They were at each others’ throats.  They were divisive. They had fallen into the dualism of “us-vs-them”.

Sound familiar? 

To that group of fighting folks then and to the fighting folks today, Paul says “Love is kind.”  

In an environment of hate we are to love, and that love looks like kindness – kindness to all.  

We see such kindness in President Lincoln.  

Historian, Paul Boller Jr, writes about Lincoln that, “No president has been vilified the way Lincoln was during the Civil War.  He was attacked by all sides: by abolitionists, Negro-phobes, states’ righters, strict constructionists, radicals conservatives and by people who just did not like his looks or resented his storytelling…”

Yet, the direction of his life and response was kindness.  “Kindness was,” Donald T. Phillips writes “the very foundation of his personality.”

Here are two examples out of a life-time of examples:

Some weeks after the 1860 election, Springfield banker John W. Bunn met Senator Salmon P Chase coming out of Lincoln’s law office in Springfield.   

“You don’t want put that man in your cabinet,” he told Lincoln.
“Why do you say that?” Lincoln asked.
“Because,” said Bunn, “he thinks he is a great deal bigger than you are.”
“Well,” said Lincoln, “do you know of any other men who think they are bigger than I am?”
“I don’t know that I do,” said Bunn,  “but why do you ask?”
“Because,” said Lincoln, “I want to put them all in my cabinet.” 

Ok, that story is more about “humility” than “kindness,” but I like it.  Humility and kindness is a naturally combo – like peanut butter and jelly.

At the end of the Civil War, Lincoln refused to execute Confederate Generals for treason.  Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman once asks Lincoln explicitly whether he wanted Jefferson Davis captured or allowed to escape. Here’s Lincoln’s response.  It’s a good one:

“I’ll tell you, General, what I think of taking Jeff Davis.  Out in Illinois there was an old temperance lecturer who was very strict in the doctrine and practice of total abstinence.  One day, after a long ride in the hot sun, he stopped at the house of a friend, who proposed making him a lemonade.  When the friend asked if he wouldn’t like a drop of something stronger int he drink, he replied that he couldn’t think of it.  ‘I’m opposed to it on principle, ‘ he said. ‘But,’ he added with a longing glance at the bottle, ‘if you could manage to put in a drop unbeknownst to me, I guess it wouldn’t hurt me much.’  

Now General I am bound to oppose the escape of Jeff Davis; but if you could manage to let him slip out unbeknownst-like, I guess it wouldn’t hurt much.” 

Abraham Lincoln was not a vengeful person. And in his Second Inaugural Address he challenged the nation to move on “with malice toward none; with charity for all.”  

In February 1865, Lincoln told his friend Joshua Speed, “Speed, die when I may, I want it said of me by those who know me best to say that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower when I thought a flower would grow.”  

He died from an assassin’s bullet 2 months later, April 15, 1865.  

In honor of President Lincoln, let’s plant flowers of kindness, not just this week, but every week until we are united with Love.  

Kindness Week and President’s Day

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kid President kindness

Today, February 17, is both President’s Day and the beginning of Random Acts of Kindness week.  Initially, that sounds like a weird combination, but maybe not.  

Think about food combinations.  What sounds awful may actually be delicious. 

*Ice cream and French Fries.  Dip your fries into a Wendy’s Frosty.  Salty and sweet.  Hot and cold.  What’s not to love?

*Strawberries and Balsamic. Now, I’m all over that. 

*Banana and Bacon.   Thank you Elvis for this one. 

Let’s add President’s Day and Kindness Week to the list of weird but totally doable combinations.  

Our favorite President, by almost every poll every year, is Abraham Lincoln.  I wonder if his kindness is one thing that pole vaults Lincoln over the others. In Lincoln, we see a combination of strong leadership with pervasive kindness. 

We respect that.  We like someone who “leads with kindness.”

“Kindness” includes, but goes way beyond, sweet little acts of kindness.   

 “Love is kind” is what Paul writes in the “Love” poem of 1 Corinthians 13.  But he frames “kindness” in the context of relating to the “problem people” in our lives. 1 Corinthians 13 was written to a community in conflict. They were angry with each other.  They were at each others’ throats.  They were divisive. They had fallen into the dualistic thinking of “us-vs-them”.

Sound familiar? 

To that group of fighting folks then and to the fighting folks today, Paul says “Love is kind.”  

In an environment of hate we are to love, and that love looks like kindness – kindness to all.  

We see such kindness in President Lincoln.  

Historian, Paul Boller Jr, writes about Lincoln that, “No president has been vilified the way Lincoln was during the Civil War.  He was attacked by all sides: by abolitionists, Negro-phobes, states’ righters, strict constructionists, radicals, conservatives and by people who just did not like his looks or resented his storytelling…”

Yet, the direction of his life and response was kindness.  “Kindness was,” Donald T. Phillips writes “the very foundation of his personality.”

Here are two examples out of a life-time of examples:

Some weeks after the 1860 election, Springfield banker John W. Bunn met Senator Salmon P Chase coming out of Lincoln’s law office in Springfield.   

“You don’t want put that man in your cabinet,” he told Lincoln.
“Why do you say that?” Lincoln asked.
“Because,” said Bunn, “he thinks he is a great deal bigger than you are.”
“Well,” said Lincoln, “do you know of any other men who think they are bigger than I am?”
“I don’t know that I do,” said Bunn,  “but why do you ask?”
“Because,” said Lincoln, “I want to put them all in my cabinet.” 

Ok, that story is more about “humility” than “kindness,” but I like it.  Humility and kindness is a natural combo – like peanut butter and jelly.

At the end of the Civil War, Lincoln refused to execute Confederate Generals for treason.  Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman once asks Lincoln explicitly whether he wanted Jefferson Davis captured or allowed to escape. Here’s Lincoln’s response.  It’s a good one:

“I’ll tell you, General, what I think of taking Jeff Davis.  Out in Illinois there was an old temperance lecturer who was very strict in the doctrine and practice of total abstinence.  One day, after a long ride in the hot sun, he stopped at the house of a friend, who proposed making him a lemonade.  When the friend asked if he wouldn’t like a drop of something stronger int he drink, he replied that he couldn’t think of it.  ‘I’m opposed to it on principle, ‘ he said. ‘But,’ he added with a longing glance at the bottle, ‘if you could manage to put in a drop unbeknownst to me, I guess it wouldn’t hurt me much.’  

Now General I am bound to oppose the escape of Jeff Davis; but if you could manage to let him slip out unbeknownst-like, I guess it wouldn’t hurt much.” 

Abraham Lincoln was not a vengeful person.   And in his Second Inaugural Address he challenged the nation to move on “with malice toward none; with charity for all.”  

In February 1865, Lincoln told his friend Joshua Speed, “Speed, die when I may, I want it said of me by those who know me best to say that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower when I thought a flower would grow.”  

He died from an assassin’s bullet 2 months later, April 15, 1865.  

In honor of President Lincoln, let’s plant flowers of kindness, not just this week, but every week until we are united with Love.