Themes of L'Abri

In light of the L'Abri conference coming up this February, I thought it might be a good idea to highlight five themes of the ministry of L'Abri and Francis Schaeffer. Hopefully they will give you a good idea of the perspective of Christianity that L'Abri is taking.

1. The Truthfulness of Christianity (True Truth)

We need to rediscover the objective reality of Christianity, really see the God who has acted concretely in time and space. Christianity is historically true; God has involved Himself in the flow of history. This means that it isn't just "my truth," or what works for me, because if Christianity is true at all, it is true for all. And whether we believe it or not, it remains true. It also means that it is consistent with all reality around us, and therefore that God speaks into all reality. We must see reality as God sees it.

2. The Reality of the Supernatural

Scripture tells us that the God who is there is the God who is here. We must not live by simply what we can see. The unseen is just as real as what we do see, and our prayer life must reflect this reality. We will bear fruit that God has ordained because God is here. We need not pray in light of it as a ritual, but as a reality. God hears us. Really. Because the Christian life is not about the extraordinary, but about the ordinary that God works through. The spiritual aspect is the most important--once we are rooted in that reality, lives will be transformed.

3. The Humanness of Spirituality

To be spiritual is to fulfill our humanness--everything that it means to be fully human. We are called in Christ to rediscover what it means to be human in this world. We need to feel comfortable in accepting our Creaturely-ness--and to do this, we must bow before God as a creature, accepting our place in Creation. We must accept our limits, rest in being human, and be at peace with our Creator. We can look at our corner of Creation and find contentment. And ultimately, we can are reminded of what we are being saved to--a glorious, redeemed world in which that relationship will be completely made right and restored to its full glory and purpose.

4. The Significance of the Fall

The shadow of the Fall and the utter brokenness of this world runs very, very deep. There is a dissonance in all of creation, even to the Christian. The consequences of sin are hideous and corruption is so widespread. Much of the Western world has been convinced that we can fix everything, that we can civilize all of the world, but the problems we struggle with are so incredibly hard to get rid of: brokenness within our families, bigotry, educational reforms, politics, etc. Only with Christ will the groanings of creation be ceased--there are no quick fixes. While no enjoyment of creation should be taken away, we must live in light of the evil, carry an awareness of the shadow of the Fall, and we must bleed and weep with this broken world.

5. The Hope and Good News of the Gospel

God has saving designs for his entire creation.... a new heaven and a new earth, where he will restore not only our souls, but also our physical bodies and every aspect of creation. Brokenness happens at every level, therefore salvation will happen at every level. God's entire creation is given over to Christ. We have been born anew of God into this world, and we are working with God to redeem it. This has huge implications--every aspect of the world should be brought into the light of Christ; therefore we are called to be agents of change and transformation. We must look after our patch of Creation and love the man next door.

Art Every Wednesday (35)

Does art require pain?

Wade Bradshaw, in his book By Demonstration: God, wrestles with that question from a Christian perspective. He writes:

It is not only loss of freedom that artists fear from Christianity: they also fear loss of power. Again, I hear this both from artists who believe in Jesus and from those who do not: "If I allow this news of reconciliation with God to permeate my life, and I find myself hopeful, I shall lose the very thing that fuels my work." This sounds strange in the ears of many, but please realize that this is important to artists. These people believe that only despair can make fine art. Looking back over history, they demand, which of the greats was happy?

I remember my freshman year of college I was walking with my poetry teacher after class and asked him a similar question. Does an artist need to suffer to make good art? He grew concerned (understandably so... who knows why a student could be asking that). He thought for a moment and started to tell stories about poets who have pursued that belief and their lives have rode a downward spiral into despair and suicide. I assured him I wasn't contemplating suicide. I was trying to pick his brain about the romantic myth that artists have to wear ratty sweaters and cook their food over a bunson burner, that the only way they can get any truth on a page is by experiencing the pain of life to its dregs. My professor said "No" in a roundabout way - that seems to be the answer a professor would have to give a student. It wasn't until I came across this passage in Bradshaw that I started thinking seriously about the question again. Bradshaw thnks that it is a terrible mistake that artists make and argues that hope, not despair is better fuel for art.

This is a very serious, indeed a catastrophic, mistake to make, and the church ust recognize its allure for artists. However, I can say with the volume turned all the way up to ten that hope is a better fuel that despair. Hope is an imagination of how the world can be and , if that hope is true, how the world will be...

I had a friend who was very gifted. He was creative in many areas we recognize as art. He began as a student at L'abri, bu my family came to love him and so later he would just flow in and out of our lives as he traveled. He was very unpredictable, because social conventions meant little to him; yet love meant a great deal to him and because of this he was easily misunderstood as immoral and irresponsible, whereas I consider him one of the most moral people I have met. It was he who first really argued with me that he had to retain his despair and depression becaues it was these that fave him the his creative energy. I was still not clear about these things myself. I could tell that something was fundamentally wrong with his attitude, but I couldn't persuade him by showing him a better way. And this friend did commit suicide. The despair and depression, at first seem by him as a help of sorts, a precondition for creativity, overwhelmed him. He forgot that there was a reason to hope, and so he put an end to all his earthly creativity. I knew that what we had spoken about was important, but I hadn't realized until then that it was a matter of life and death.

Pain can make people make art. Artists are a peculiar creation of God, art can be part of the way they understand life. Like a cup, when they overflow, art spills out. But the myth that despair is the only thing that can make the cup run over is a lie. There is a romantic image of the artist as sufferer that only tells part of the truth. We live in a fallen world and so true stories told of this place will involve sadness, but if all stories only tell of the brokenness of the world then art will lose the power of telling the full truth. The brokenness of the world and every individual of this world is not the most true thing about the world. We live in a world that is itself being carried through a story. The story began with a pure, good creation, then it was broken and that is the world we see out of our windows. But even here there is great beauty in every broken thing. Nothing that exists can escape its original identity as being a good creation of a good God, and nothing can erase that identity. All things are a mixed bag of beauty and darkness, but that mixed bag has a destiny of redemption. The story of this world will be carried through to completion, and a complete redemption. There is power in that story and in that destiny. As artists fall in love with that story and come to know it as their own story their art will tell the same story.

As Simone Weil said, "The heart is pierced by two things: beauty and affliction." There is so much wonder in the world around us! What a shame it would be if the most sensitive people the Lord has made turn away from it. It needs to be exposed, captured, displayed for everyone to see and be captured themselves by. Artists should dedicate themselves to the beauty that really is there. Yes, there is beauty in telling a true story about the brokenness of the world. Yes, affliction can pierce the heart. But it is foolish to throw away the hope that this world is infused with in the name of affirming those two truths. Especially for the Christian, who holds as a conviction that this world is not run by chance and chaos, but by a good God who is himself an artists and who is creating a grand work of art that we all inhabit. There is enough richness is that idea to fuel great art if there is richness anywhere.

Brideshead Revisted: Intervening Love

After picking up Brideshead Revisited this weekend at the local Redbox, I thought I was in for a more typical period flick.  My wife is a big fan of Emma Thompson ever since her appearance in that Jane Austen classic, Sense & Sensibility.  This particular version is a 2008 version of the book by Evelyn Waugh (a Briton who converted to Catholicism in the 1930's after being an agnostic).  A simple viewing of the movie could make you wonder if the movie is actually antagonistic towards faith in Christianity.  The protagonist is an agnostic and the Catholic family he gets involved with is certainly messed up.  There aren't simple answers, nor characters with simple motivations.  And it's perhaps for that reason that I find myself continuing to think about some of its themes.

Evelyn Waugh (by the way, he's a male named Evelyn...poor chap) wrote about the book, that it "deals with what is theologically termed 'the operation of Grace', that is to say, the unmerited and unilateral act of love by which God continually calls souls to Himself."  This theme is not blatant by any means, but with much complexity and subtlety.

At one point, the main character is blaming belief in God as the reason why his friend was so grievously injured in life by his family.  His friend's mother was particularly overbearing. Belief in God, meant believing in moral restraint, and in the case of violating those moral restraints...guilt.  If we abandon those beliefs, we would be free from guilt and free to indulge our desires.  Why wouldn't God just sit back and not intervene in order to let people have fun, if he existed?  Isn't love granting freedom for people to do what they want?

All this would be true if humans always desired things that were good for themselves.  But clearly, this is not the case.  We are masters at choosing what makes us miserable.

In this reality, what is more loving: being overbearing or disinterested?  Do we find pleasure in complete freedom to follow whatever we want or within boundaries?  What if people want something that is destructive for themselves?  Loving our brother means we intervene in their life in order to sometimes save them from themselves.  Love wants the best for the other even when the other does not want it.  This is the biblical concept that we are our brother's keeper.  In this view of love, God lovingly restrains and even brings difficulties in our lives to intervene for our best even when we don't want it.  He won't let us be.  He pursues us and calls us back to Himself.  And, in this view of love, the protagonist falls short in the movie, and he realizes it.  He hasn't loved his friend well or others for that matter.  He has a right sense of guilt that be can't be explained if there is no God.

Love is willing to intervene.  I'm challenged to see my life hardships and disappointments as from a God who is willing to intervene.  And, I'm challenged to be willing to intervene in the lives of those whom I am called to love.  And, I'm challenged to let others love me by heeding their intervention.

Conversations with a Skeptic

I've been checking out the Mars Hill College Mission website the past few days and happened upon some really cool things. One that stuck out to me the most is a short conversation series they did called 'Conversations with a Skeptic.' An atheist was ripping on Mars Hill on his blog so coffee was drank and these conversations happened:

Conversations with a Skeptic 1
Conversations with a Skeptic 2
Conversations with a Skeptic 3
Conversations with a Skeptic 4

Check them out!

Art Every Wednesday (34)

Art helps us remember what it means to be human, which raises the question: what does it mean to be human? For the Christian that answer grows out of the fact that we are created beings made in the image of our creator. Certain things we don't share with God (omnipresence, infinity, perfect moral character) but certain things we do, and what it means to be human is derived from the shared aspects. God thinks. We are rational beings. God creates. We are creative beings. God works. Work is part of what it means to be human (not an aspect of the fall). God is relational. We are beings that need to be in community and we wither when we are isolated. We are finite. We need to eat and rest and take care of ourselves. We have bodies. The list can go on.

But there are still deep questions. What does it look to "de-humanize" a human life? What does it look like to become more human. Art can step into this mystery and offer answers. Here are two movies that offer answers that a congruent with the Christian perspective and help to begin to ask the question of what it means to be human.

"Stranger than Fiction" is the story of Harold Crick, an IRS agent whose life is devoid of color, flavor, passion, and intimacy with others. He counts the number of brush strokes in when he is brushing his teeth in the morning and ties his tie in the single windsor rather than the double because it saves time and makes him more efficient. He meets Ana Pascal who is in touch with everything Harold is not. She has tatoos. She is sensual. She is a baker and serves homeless people baked goods for free. She cares about the world around her. The two characters collide and the movie is the story of how Harold Crick regains his humanity. Makes for great discussion.




"The Lives of Others" is an incredibly poignant movie that tells the story of another man's regained humanity from a historical, more serious perspective. Gerd Wieseler works for the state security in East Germany before the Berlin wall fell and he is assigned to surveil two young artists. He listens to their every word and watches their every movement. Like Harold Crick his life is devoid of color and he is little more than a cog in a beaurocratic machine. Also like Harold Crick his encounter with people whose lives are full of life leaves him changed. He listens from their apartment above them as they fight, make love, grieve, long, and live out lives that are rich with the full range of human emotion and he is drawn in.

I won't ruin the endings, but I give these movies a huge recommendation. It helps give images for how to think through what it means to be human, which is often all we need to begin to ask the questions of our own lives. And the questions are often all we need to begin to make change.

Christianity and Technology Week (4)

Mark Edmundson, college professor, writes about some of the impacts of technology on the lives of his students.

Read the article here.

Christianity and Technology Week (3)

Take a look at Luke Miedema's take on the gospel according to facebook. He has some interesting thoughts about what facebook.com reflects about our culture and how it is in turn shaping it. The posts are a good excercise in discernment and thinking about things through the Christian worldview.

{Part 1}
{Part 2}

Also look at this post from Don't Eat the Fruit.

Christianity and Technology Week (2)

D. A. Carson, professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, writes about technology in culture in Themelios, an international journal for pastors and students of theological and religious studies.

Read the full article here.
He writes:
Scarcely less important than speed of access is the Internet's sheer intoxicating addictiveness–or, more broadly, we might be better to think of the intoxicating addictiveness of the entire digital world. Many are those who are never quiet, alone, and reflective, who never read material that demands reflection and imagination. The iPods provide the music, the phones constant access to friends, phones and computers tie us to news, video, YouTube, Facebook, and on and on. This is not to demonize tools that are so very useful. Rather, it is to point out the obvious: information does not necessarily spell knowledge, and knowledge does not necessarily spell wisdom, and the incessant demand for unending sensory input from the digital world (says he, as he writes this on a computer for an electronic theological journal) does not guarantee we make good choices. We have the potential to become world citizens, informed about every corner of the globe, but in many western countries the standards of geographical and cross-cultural awareness have seriously declined. We have access to spectacularly useful information, but most of us diddle around on ephemeral blogs and listen to music as enduring as a snowball in a blast furnace. Sometimes we just become burned out by the endless waves of bad news, and decide the best course is to turn the iPod volume up a bit. (emphasis mine)
{Link and quote from Don't Eat the Fruit}

Christianity and Technology Week (1)

It is technology week on the blog. All week I am going to be putting up resources to help us think with discernment about the technology that floods our lives. The following is a speech given by Neil Postman pointing out 5 things we need to know about technological change.

Neil Postman: Five things we need to know about technological change.

John Dyer writes about each of Postman's 5 things on his blog Don't Eat the Fruit, a blog which considers, among other things, Christianity and technology. All of the resources I will be putting up this week are coming from Don't Eat the Fruit.

Posts on Don't Eat the Fruit:
1. Technology is always a trade-off.
2. Technology causes winners and losers.
3. Technology contains a powerful idea.
4. Technology is ecological, not additive.
5. Technology tends to become mythic.

Fair Trade and James 5

Anytime someone mentioned “fair trade” or “sweat-free” (no sweatshop labor), my eyes would glaze over … partly out of ignorance and partly out of a sense of being overwhelmed. Yes, I was one of those people. My hunch is that many of us are like that. We don’t want to support the injustices of our economic system and yet we see no other way to live – getting informed and getting involved just seems so daunting. We don’t know where to begin. Well, this past week, something finally pushed me into action. I was preparing a talk for Veritas on the last few sections of the book of James and came across these verses: “Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. (James 5:4-5)” As I read those verses, I just couldn’t get away from the question: am I enjoying a certain standard of living and cheap prices on certain products at the expense of someone else? As I did some research on fair trade, the only honest answer was yes, yes I was. The reason I am able to enjoy certain purchases at certain prices is because certain farmers and certain workers are being cheated in the process. For example, the average coffee farmer only gets $0.25 per pound from the middlemen that facilitate much of our coffee industry. That $0.25 per pound does not even cover what it costs the farmer to produce it. This means that the average poor farmer only gets $0.04 cents from our $3.99 mocha. This is injustice. This is the kind of thing that James was addressing in his letter – whenever we are a part of withholding fair wages from workers, we are a part of injustice. James says that this type of injustice gets the attention of the “Lord of hosts” (a title for God emphasizing his frighteningly great power as He comes with a host of angelic warriors to eliminate evil and set up justice). You and I don’t want to be the oppressors when the Lord of hosts is coming! Although I realize that the issue of unjust wages for workers goes much farther than just coffee farmers, purchasing products that are certified “fair trade” is one small practical way that we can do justly. Products with the “fair trade” label have been purchased from farmers at a fair price, usually triple to quadruple the normal price. These prices not only enable these farmers to continue their work but provide enough profit for them to support their families, improve housing and health care, and often keep their children in school. In short, it helps break a cycle of poverty and injustice! Although the products can be more costly, it is obviously worth it! Fair trade is not just limited to coffee; other fair trade certified products such as tea, chocolate, dishes, art, jewelry, toys, etc. can also be purchased. The Mustard Seed on 9th Street next to Kaldi’s is a recently opened shop devoted entirely to supporting and selling fair trade products. Many of the coffee shops in town also offer fair trade certified coffees. There’s even a Sam’s Choice fair trade coffee at Wal-Mart! With fair trade certified products becoming more and more available, we can’t just look the other way anymore. We can’t allow the immensity of the problem to paralyze us from acting. Purchasing fair trade products is one simple and practical step toward justice.

Here’s a very informative 8 minute video that will introduce you to Fair Trade:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZpUwCfINh8

To find a short listing of stores that carry fair trade products:
www.transfairusa.org/content/WhereToBuy/

“Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him.” Proverbs 14:31

Bible In A Year Podcasts

Plans for reading the Bible in a year. Just copy the link location and then paste it into "Subscribe to podcast" in iTunes. Here you go.

Art Every Wednesday (33)

The following is an interview with Leszek Vincent, a plant scientist that has done a lot of work on the Crossing pond. I wanted to have a conversation with him coming from the perspective of botany and life sciences as art in order to pick Leszek's brain about some of the things he has done to make the pond beautiful on an aesthetic level and on the functional level. Living next door to the pond for 3 years I have had the chance to see it go from dismal, mud and gravel lined area to a beautiful, diverse habitat and this is a chance to peek behind the curtain on the process.

The idea of botany as art may not make sense at first, but I believe that it is. God made the earth and it was good, and now we build on top of his creation, using the elements that God has made. Mankind has been entrusted with the care of the world and Leszek is working to restore one little corner of it. Like a painter he works with a palette of things the God has made in order to create a tiny work of art.

Enjoy the interview.

A: Take me through snapshots of the lake from the time the Crossing moved in and into the future. What have you done and what has been your goal at every stage?
L: Well, initially when we bought the property there was talk of the lake being filled in for various reasons... insurance, safety, aesthetics. Then we began to see it as a great opportunity to turn this environment around, and providing some measure of restoration to the pond. We began to see it as a really positive thing politically, socially, in terms of community, and in terms of making a statement about Christianity. We wanted to get people asking, "Why is a church doing something like this?"

Then in 2005 I started talking with the construction people here and began exploring possibilities of moving the topsoil (the moved a lot of earth in order to build the building and didn't have a place to put it) over to the pond area. I started thinking "if we are going to try and do some restoration do this lake area we could use that topsoil." We could trap the goose poop into the ground where it could help fertilize the ground and cover up the gravel.

When we bought the property the lake was lined with gravel and because of the large numbers of Canada geese the pond has become quite polluted since the goose poop could not sink into the soil and fertilize it. Instead it all ran into the pond when it rained. We used the topsoil to cover up the gravel and the goose poop, which let the poop add nutrients to the soil and the gravel simply became part of the mix.

We still had to manage the geese though. It has never been my intention to make all the geese go away, but just to reduce their numbers on the property. I began to think about what long term plan we could put in place to manage the geese. We tried a silt-fence first just to put a bit of a physical barrier between the lake and the geese so they couldn’t see over it. I put stringers across the lake and it looked a bit like a used car lot. The geese got used to it though.

I researched what other states are doing and read quite a lot of literature and realized that we need a long term perspective. Something this project teaches is perseverance. This is a long haul. It is not something where you just put down your credit card and get a turn around. I realized that what we really need to do is grow a barrier of plants around the lake. I had in mind 3 species of plants in mind that were native to the area and would be aesthetically good and would provide a barrier structure. We bought the plants and they really took root and are now part of the new lake shore environment and provide a visual barrier for the geese as well as adding to the biological diversity of the environment.

A: Other than the functional side of making a diverse and sustainable environment how has beauty and the aesthetic side factored into it?
L: I am biased here. I am a plant scientist. For me, the ugliest plant – one that is perceived to be very ugly - can be something that holds great beauty because I can look beneath the surface. I wanted to go the extra mile and help us to get together and communicate something to our culture that we Christians can be very productive and constructive in turning our around situations that have gone to a bad place. There is a bit of a parable in this. You look at the gravel-lined lake and think “What can you do with this? It is dead. Lets just fill it up.” But there was an opportunity here. We could have some problems, but we felt we could take the risk, expend money and energy and really turn something around.

This facility can communicate something of the richness of how life really can be, far from being perfect, it is full of flaws, at the same time there is a resonance of beauty and wholesomeness that we have tried to bring back into the environment, and we have turned something that is really bad back into some that this is much much better.

A: What single thing are you most proud of in your work with the pond?
L: Proud of? Nothing really. I am very thankful. We have had some people who have contributed time. We have gotten state funding. We have been able to connect with people outside the church environment which has given us opportunities to talk with people who never would have given a second thought to church in territory that is their comfort zone. It has caused a bit of a shock to some people. I don’t try to take advantage of it, but it has been great to keep these long term conversations going.

Things I am proud of? I am thankful for the spin-offs that are growing. I am teaching a seminar on storm water management using the property as a case study. Last year we had a lot of engineers and city developers come to a workshop at the Crossing. They were visiting best management practice sites and the Crossing was one of them. They are looking for demonstrations of solutions that have been put in place. We have gone through the work and now we can show people “This is what it looks like” “This is what it took to get us there.”

Things I am proud of? Nothing really. People have teased me by calling this place Lake Leszek and actually this is the last thing that I want to have as a label. Partly because it starts developing a bad thing in me. I am vulnerable, we all are, to want to be known for something. I don’t want that. It does not develop the right heart. For the record it is not Lake Leszek. It is the Crossing’s lake.

If you want to try and put the flavor or pride on it, it is to see people coming out there and enjoying the environment. People coming up to me and saying, "We really love the flowers.”

When I look out there being a plant scientist –I have dealt a lot with plant genetics – and I see the diversity of species that we have compared with what we had (it was dismal) it is great to see what has come back in. It is great to see something of a natural situation which people are enjoying. I love to see kids coming out of their classrooms and walking around and picking flowers. I enjoy that. If that helps kids to connect with the environment and to think and enjoy that is great. I don’t ever want it to be something where people are standing behind a fence and saying “Wow, that looks great.” I want them to be able to experience it for themselves.

Endurance in Love

I had a conversation recently about whether or not people can change. A friend and I were on a road trip and we got to talking about a mutual friend of ours who had caused deep hurts in the lives of others around him. It was a conversation about weariness in loving someone and endurance in the face of great hurt, and I was trying to make a case that we live in a world where nothing is beyond redemption, and everyone can experience the sea change.

Everyone has experienced the frustration of a relationship that seems stuck so deep in harmful patterns that the hope of change begins to seem like a naive pipe-dream. In the hardest times of those relationships it is not difficult to find reasons to quit. There are hundreds of reasons. This blog is about reasons not to, and how the gospel makes Christians people who are so radically for others that they endure.

I want to say two things:

1. Loving people in this fallen world with often mean seeing people as God intends them to be.

2. The Gospel makes us strong enough to pay the high cost of loving.

Hope seems naive because it looks at the world the way it is and acts to make it into something that it is not. It isn't naive to believe that by acting in the light of a future hope you can become an agent of making that hope real, but you can believe that naively. That kind of mindset isn't rainbows and butterflies - that is a fighting mindset, a stubborn refusal to act as though the world's wounds belong. Christ, who came to save the sick, set the church on a course of costly love. He saw the world and everyone in it as God intends them to be, not simply as they are, and when he entered the sick world everything he did was in service of that hope of restoring it to health. But it cost him.

If that is the kind of love we are called to then we will pay a cost too. The question then becomes, how can we pay it? The gospel makes us strong enough to pay the high cost of loving. In essence, it says that we are already rich. It says that every believer has already been given everything in Christ. I once heard a girl say that she wasn't a Christian because she didn't need a crutch, but the gospel doesn't make you strong by letting you limp through life leaning on some sunny, harp-filled Heaven. It makes you strong because it says that at the heart of the universe is a God who knows your name and has already paid the cost of loving you and that love is making you into what God intended you to be. When that message really gets inside you it makes you bold. It makes you tough. You can suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and absorb them. You can love when loving when it demands an impossible cost because your soul's deepest needs have already been richly provided for and no one can ever take away that treasure. You can take risks because you have a greater security. You can act in hope because you can't lose what you need most. She was right though, that kind of strength is a kind of weakness, but it is a weakness that makes you unbreakable.

Top 10 of the Blog 2008 (10)

"ReThink the Bible (1)" - September 19, 2008


Thomas Jefferson thought it was hard to read the Bible because there were so many unbelievable things in it, so he made a new one. He took the 4 gospels and literally cut everything supernatural out of it, creating his 46 page book Morals and Teachings of Jesus of Nazereth. He said this in a letter to John Adams in 1813:

In extracting the pure principles which [Jesus] taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled…I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently [Christ’s], which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill.”

Jefferson liked the morals of the Bible, but didn’t really like the Bible itself. I think this is a problem for lots of reasons, but this is the one I want to address in these three posts: Jefferson thought it was hard to read the Bible because it was wrong and he needed to cut things out of it to make it right, but the Bible’s answer is that it is hard to read because we are wrong and it needs to cut things out of us to make us right. You might say, of course that is what the Bible’s answer is, it is speaking of itself. But look at what Jefferson did closer and it begins to unravel.

The prerequisite for doing what Jefferson did was attaining a certain height of knowledge form which he can look down and discern right from wrong as he looked at the Bible, from which he would be able to separate that “diamonds from the dung.” That is exactly what he was claiming with his scissors, that he had reached this height of omniscience. That is what every culture thinks, whether it be 18th century Enlightenment, Easter Buddhism, the worldview of the American New Age spirituality, Postmodernism, etc. Every worldview and every culture thinks it’s finally hit on the truth, and every culture is wrong. Every culture is wrong.

No culture in any time period has had a stranglehold on truth. If this is true of a culture, it is certainly true of an individual. Jefferson wasn’t speaking out of omniscience, he was just speaking from cultural arrogance. He was a product of humanistic (counting man as the center of all things), rationalistic (all things can be known through the reason) Enlightenment thinking which discounted the supernatural from the beginning. He made the mistake of assuming the boundaries of his knowledge were the boundaries of all knowledge and he cut out what didn’t fit his preconceptions.

What of the Bible’s answer to the question “Why is it hard to read the Bible?” It says that the Bible itself is not what is wrong, but it is we who read it that need correction. The truth of this answer is in its humility and its realism. It’s humble because it recognizes that no one culture or individual is omniscient. If we are too see beyond the horizon we need someone from that country to return from there and describe it to us. There is always much we do not know. It is realistic because it assumes that we don’t want to hear what we don’t want to hear. The engine of censorship doesn’t’ stop just because we are reading the Bible.

So what needs to be re-thought? Rather than scissors, we ought to approach the Bible with that same humility and realism, living with the questions and holding out the possibility that it may be we who are wrong, not the Bible.

[Series: Rethink the Bible (2), Rethink the Bible (3)]