Two All Too Common Errors

 

Two All Too Common Errors

February 15, 2022

 

The Bible is the foundational book of the Christian faith. It is about God and how we are to relate to God, or at least most of it is. I don’t, but most Christians think that it has authority because in one way or another it comes from God. We’re supposed to revere it, and in a way I do, but not like some people. I’ve seen a priest carry the Bible through the congregation in a Catholic mass and offer it to various people, including me, to kiss. That seems a bit like idolatry to me, and I try never to make the Bible an idol. Still, however we may think of it, the Bible is a big deal for us Christians. Especially if you think that it comes from God you’d expect it to be somehow more divine than human. Well, here’s a truth about the Bible. Time and again it commits two fundamental errors. Far too often (and once would be too often) it makes God too human and thereby makes God too small. That’s one of the errors. The other is that it takes ugly human prejudices and raises them to the level of sacred scripture. I want here to use two passages, one from the Old Testament and one from the New, to illustrate and critique each of those errors.

The All Too Human God

Isaiah 63:7-14 comes from what the scholars call Third Isaiah. Third Isaiah consists of the parts of the book of Isaiah written in the late sixth or early fifth century BCE after the Persians had let the Hebrews return to Judah and Jerusalem from their Babylonian exile. Verses 7 to 14 of chapter 63 of Isaiah begin by praising the "gracious deeds” and “praiseworthy acts” of God.[1] The text says that God became the people’s “savior in all their distress.” It says God saved, lifted, and carried them. So far so good. But then we run into trouble. We read:

 

But they rebelled

     and grieved his holy spirit;

therefore he became their enemy;

     he himself fought against them. Isaiah 63:10.

 

This verse is just one of a great many Old Testament verses that we can cite that say that because of the people’s faithlessness their God turned against them, punishing them with conquest by foreign powers. That notion is the main theme of the eighth century Hebrew prophet like Micah and Amos. We see it here in a text from over two hundred years after those prophets.

The problem with such verses is that they make God too human and thereby make God too small. The prophets specify basically two things the people do wrong. Sometimes their fault is that they do not worship Yahweh or do not worship Yahweh properly. At other times their fault is that they oppress the poor and vulnerable among them. In the prophets’ telling of it Yahweh experiences both of these failings as a slight. Yahweh is offended, and he reacts exactly the way so many people do when they feel slighted. He gets mad. He gets furious, and he turns against the people. Do you see how human that is? To this way of thinking God is nothing but humanity writ large; and even though the humanity in question is writ large, it makes God too human, too small.

In another part of Isaiah, this time from the prophet scholars call Second Isaiah, we see that at least one of Israel’s ancient sages knew better. In chapter 55 of Isaiah the prophet reports these words as the words of God:

 

For my thoughts are not your

thoughts,

     nor are you ways my ways, says

the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than

     the earth,

          so are my ways higher than your

ways. Isaiah 55:8-9.

 

How true that is! God is not merely humanity writ large. Yes, God is always present with us here on earth. And yes, God relates to us in a personal way, but that does not make God a person, not even a very big person. God does not react to things the way we humans so often do. While God is omnipresent here on earth, God also transcends us humans and our human ways absolutely.

It is so easy for us to make God too human and thus too small. We make God as judgmental as we are if not more so. We make God the issuer of laws just as we humans make laws. Some Christians make God bless or even commit violence because we so love violence. We make God hate the people we hate. We make God as angry as we are, but of course only at the things or people we are angry at. We make God demand and impose judgment on wrongdoers just as we pass judgment on wrongdoers. It is easy for us to make God too human, too small, and we do it all the time.

Yet God is not human, not even human writ large. God certainly isn’t less then human. God is much, much more than human. God transcends the human so much that God remains always ultimate mystery. God is the great known unknown. We know that God is love, but we always make God’s love too human, too small, too restricted. We know that God is a God of grace, but we so often limit God’s grace to people we approve of. We know that God is a God of forgiveness, but we insist that there are unforgivable sins and unforgivable people. We simply will not believe that God’s love, grace, and forgiveness are so much more than our ability to comprehend them that all we can do is stand in awe of the greatness of God.

We think that God operates more or less the same way we do. Yet we are finite, God is infinite. We are limited, God is limitless. God’s love, grace, and forgiveness are infinite, without limit. So whenever we think God and God’s goodness are limited we’re just wrong. We’ve made God too human, too small; and a too small God is not God at all. Even the Bible makes this mistake, but we really do need to let God be as great, as infinite, as God really is.

 

Cultural Prejudice as Scripture

 

The second error I want to consider here is the way the Bible contains things that are nothing but human prejudices that we make divine because they are in the Bible. All of the books of the Bible were written in and for cultures were patriarchal, androcentric, and misogynist to the marrow of their bones. They held women to be of little or no account. Men ran things. At least in public men decided things. Women didn’t. That’s just how it was.

That cultural prejudice against women shows up in the Bible in many ways. I’ll give you just one example. In 1 Timothy we read:

 

I desire, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or argument; also that the women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes, but with good works, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God. Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty. 1 Timothy 2:8-15.

 

This passage has an exegesis of the story of Adam and Eve that would get an F in any respectable seminary, but that’s not what I want to focus on here. I want to focus on lines like men are to pray, but let women be silent with full submission. Don’t let them arrogate to themselves the role of teacher. Never, ever let he have any authority over any man. Blame her not him for human sins. These lines truly are appalling. They’re obviously wrong, but there they are, in the Bible. Tragically, verses like these have buttressed Christian misogyny from the late first century CE until recently, and sadly far too many Christian churches still use them to suppress and silence women.

1 Timothy says it is by Paul. It isn’t. One way that we know that it isn’t is that in his authentic letters Paul expresses a view of woman very different from the one in 1 Timothy. In Galatians Paul says, ”there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:28. We know that 1 Timothy’s diametrically opposed view of women is cultural prejudice not divine wisdom. How do we know that? We know it first of all because we know that any culture of the ancient world in which 1 Timothy could have been written was patriarchal, androcentric, and misogynist. What 1 Timothy says about women states what we know to have been the view of the culture that produced the letter. The letter deviates not at all from the cultural norms, bigoted as they were, of its time and place.

We know that what Paul says about women in Galatians is divine wisdom. We know that first of all because what Paul says differs radically from the cultural norms of its time and place. It turns those norms upside down. It rejects them and gives us something entirely different in their place. Second, we know that what Paul says about women in Galatians is divine wisdom because it is a statement of greater inclusivity and respect that were the ways of the culture in and for which it was written. We Christians know as much as it is possible for us to know about God’s will and ways through Jesus Christ. The Gospels that tell us about him don’t always get it right, but we do learn from what they say about Jesus that God’s ways are the world’s ways turned on their heads. And we know that God loves all people, including especially the people earthly cultures marginalize and oppress. In most human cultures that includes women. The world far too often excludes. God includes. When we put all of these truths together we see that in what it says about women 1 Timothy is merely stating a cultural prejudice. The Christian tradition has elevated 1 Timothy to the status of sacred scripture with tragic results from 1 Timothy’s day to ours.

So there we have two all too common errors in how we see God, although I suppose the second error is really an example of the first error. The Bible makes these mistakes. That doesn’t mean we have to or even may. Sometimes the Bible makes God too small. We must always remember that God isn’t small at all. The Bible sometimes (often, actually) expresses cultural prejudices. We must always remember that cultural prejudices are not divine wisdom even though they appear in the Bible. We really do need to see those things as error. God is big beyond our imagining. God includes without limit. So let’s not let the Bible lead us to make God too human, too small. Let’s not ascribe human prejudices to God. Let’s let God be God.

 

The Scripture quotations contained here are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used with permission. All rights reserved.

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[1] The text says “the Lord” not “God.” I’ve said a hundred times before, and I’ll say it again here. In the Old Testament when you see the English word Lord typed that way in what are called “small caps,” you know that the Hebrew word being translated is the sacred name of God usually rendered in English as Yahweh. Never, ever in the Old Testament does the word “lord” however it is printed mean Jesus.