While sure, the words can sting a bit, and naturally, just royally tick me off to a certain degree, I actually feel somewhat better for the experience. Strange, I know, but I do enjoy having my stances challenged. Even though I know I am probably going to be unable to reason with an individual who refuses to listen to any sort of argument that challenges their "literal" or "face value" interpretation of scripture (and the fact that I was a woman meant in his mind whatever I had to say was null and void anyway...), it forces me to think even deeper about an issue, re-open scripture and take a look at what it is saying. Naturally, there is always that niggling little fear of "gee, what if he's right? What if I am doing this for my own wanton desires and am just grasping at interpretations that I like but aren't necessarily scripturally sound?" After all, God's word is God's word, but our understanding of God's word can sometimes be VERY flawed. I'm no exception.
Luckily for me, this time, my stance on this issue only solidified further because I began looking even more broadly at the 1 Timothy text and realized something rather startling as I did so... Paul actually negates himself from being a leader in the church if the stipulations set forth are to be adhered to for all times and all places!
1 Timothy states that church leaders are to be above reproach--yet Paul was a murderer and persecutor of Christians before his conversion! It says that they should not be quarrelsome, and we know for a fact that Paul frequently quarreled with the church in Jerusalem, with his own companions (Barnabas actually left and went his own way over a dispute with Paul), and with someone at Corinth (see 2 Corinthians). Leaders should also be "well thought of by outsiders." Hmmmm... I remember at least one letter where Paul had to defend his position as an apostle because people didn't like him much. Thus, Paul was apparently violating his own ordinances!
However, as I continued to engage in the argument with this man, I found myself thinking about the Pharisees, and how they misinterpreted the "intent" of scripture and were focused so heavily on the "letter of the law." Jesus' chastisement of the Pharisees runs throughout all the gospels, but in particular, I remembered how Jesus was constantly "reinterpreting" scripture for them. They missed the intention of why the law existed in the first place, and that it certainly wasn't so that they could neglect helping other people. In particular, I was reminded of how they screwed up the Sabbath laws, being so concerned about making sure they didn't "work" that they neglected helping people.
This then led me to something else Jesus had to say about "the weightier matters of the law" and "straining gnats" in Matthew 23. I re-read this entire chapter and realized... you know what, Jesus DOES point out that there are things in scripture that actually ARE more important than others! This doesn't mean other things are somehow "negated" or that some of these "smaller points" are not still important, but that if justice, mercy and faith are compromised in order to carry out some of these smaller points, then we have our priorities a little mixed up.
As frequently happens, I was reading Matthew 23 and I had some vague recollection that I'd read something else about this particular topic one time as well - so I pulled out my "Opening the Book of Faith" book and Mark Allan Powell's section "How Can Lutheran Insights Open Up The Bible?" The parts that caught my attention were as follows:
"There is a famous bumper sticker that reads, "God said it, I believe it, and that settles it." Lutherans would want it to be a little bit longer: we would want to say something about understanding what God has said. It doesn't do any good to believe what you think the Bible teaches if you have misunderstood what the bible teaches. What would we want the bumper sticker to say? 'God speaks to us through the Bible, we interpret the Bible to understand what God wants to say, and then we believe it--and THAT settles it.' But of course, that is much too long. Lutherans have never been good at bumper stickers." (p.27)I knew I had always followed this line of thinking, but this just clarified it into terms that were more clearly understood. Combining this way of interpreting scripture with the contextual issues that are always present, I felt solidified in my understandings of 1 Timothy. It isn't that we should just ignore 1 Timothy, but we must look at the overall "themes" of 1 Timothy, while also being conscious of the context into which 1 Timothy was written.
"Lutherans believe that difficult passages of Scripture are to be interpreted in light of those passages that are more readily understandable, and that all of scripture is to be interpreted in light of the Bible's central themes and motifs. We often try to reconcile what is said in one part of Scripture with what is said in other parts of Scripture, sometimes recognizing that there is tension between texts that seem to say different things. We try to be faithful to the entire Bible rather than just picking some parts and leaving others alone...This principle of interpreting Scripture in light of Scripture keeps us from using individual verse to justify things that might not pass muster with Scripture as a whole...The goal is to find the heart of Scripture so that we don't end up majoring in minors. Some religious people in Jesus' day got in trouble because they concentrated on little concerns and ignored big ones...In practice, interpreting scripture in light of scripture means that Lutherans must do some initial work at defining the teaching of "scripture as a whole" so that they will be able to interpret individual passages in light of the broader themes and overall message. When we do this, people who are not Lutheran often think that we are interpreting the Bible in light of our own theology. We understand why they think that, but we think that we are interpreting scripture (individual passages) in light of scripture (the Bible as a whole)." (pp.33-35)
Thus, I think there are three things that we must always ask ourselves when we are working on interpreting scripture:
- What is the context within scripture? Are there other parts of scripture that uphold or contradict this passage?
- What is the context socially? What was going on that would have prompted this passage to be written?
- What was the intent? What was the "theme" or issue that is being addressed?
Oh, I knew that in theory, but for some reason it took this "individual" pushing me to analyze the issue further that I truly understood what that meant. The "intention" of 1 Timothy is how to deal with good order in the church and how to teach sound doctrine. The issues that were impeding those tasks in the first century are somewhat different than the issues that impede us today. Clinging to the same solutions don't help us solve the problem--and in many cases turns into an oppressive doctrine that hampers the gospel, justice, and mercy. It doesn't make what 1 Timothy says untrue, it simply doesn't make it completely applicable to the here and now.
If one of the larger issues of scripture is spreading the gospel of Christ, oppressing a majority of the world's population (women) from engaging in that activity simply makes no sense in light of the rest of scripture. Is stifling a woman's gifts for ministry going to further the gospel? Is it engaging in love, mercy and faith? In short... no. It isn't. So what was the "intent" of 1 Timothy? To stop the teachings of false teachers. How is that accomplished? By removing the women who had fallen prey to these false teachers from teaching others--in particular the men.
So, if the guy who sent me hate email should ever run across this blog, I'd like to say "Thank you, you helped me find even more reason to think the way I do!" :-)
At any rate - to read my short article about Christians becoming like the Pharisees, click here.
