The god of liberal Christianity

In my last post, I wrote about what is probably the most difficult issue I have with my faith: The multiple voices in the Bible, and how we (conservative Christians in general) elevate certain passages to supreme status, and reinterpret all conflicting passages, effectively neutering them of their meaning. In particular, the voices of Jesus and Paul stand out in stark contrast, especially when asking the question "What must I do to be saved?".

In that post, I discussed this post by James McGrath over at the blog Exploring our Matrix. In it, he discusses this problem, stating that his transition to liberal Christianity is a result of just these types of problems. McGrath states:

My own Liberal Christian position is a result of struggling with these sorts of issues. It doesn't seem to me that there is a single voice in the Bible, and we can simply listen to it and do "what the Bible says"... And so whatever it means to be a Christian, it cannot mean "believing the Bible". Because part of the challenge of the Bible itself is that it presents us with conflicting voices, and in doing so forces us away from the easy path of simply picking texts and following them, making us instead recognize that we are part of a 2,000-year-old dialogue that requires us to figure out for ourselves what it means to be a Christian in our own particular time and context.

I tend to agree with McGrath, that the proof-text approach taken by fundamentalist Christianity doesn't do justice to the character of the Bible. Furthermore, I think that anyone that says "I just believe the Bible" doesn't read it very often. Or they don't read it and actually think about what it says. To those who say just that, I would ask (taking McGrath's example): When you read Matthew 28 and Luke 24, do you "believe" that the disciples first saw the resurrected Jesus in Jerusalem, or almost 70 miles away in Galilee?

For McGrath, the solution to the problem was liberal Christianity, the willingness to approach the Bible as one would any other historical document without any preconceived notion of inerrancy or divine inspiration. For liberal Christians, the Bible is seen as a record of man's experiences in interacting with God. It may seem that a similar destination is in store for me, but there is a problem with that: To me, it seems that it is much more likely that God simply does not exist, than for the god of liberal Christianity to be real.

If God does exist, and He is interested in communicating with us (As the Bible, read as a historical and divinely inspired document would suggest) than would He not act to communicate with humankind in some sort of transferable way? Would He not leave more of a mark than just the "experiences" of some people in history? To me it seems more likely that He isn't out there at all.

To be fair, it isn't quite true that the Bible is the only way God has provided for us to know Him. But the god of of liberal Christianity (to me) seems totally fuzzy and unknowable. I think that if these problems end up pushing me to something other than conservative Christianity, it will be to atheism (or more likely agnosticism) than to liberal Christianity.

Jesus didn't really mean that, did He?

So this is my first post in a while... I've kind of been on a break - a reading, writing, thinking break. Sometimes I get a little overwhelmed with things - with ideas - and just have to take a little break. So that's what that was.

So what's important enough to jerk me out of hiding? Well, it was this post by James McGrath over at the blog Exploring our Matrix. [Don't ask what I was doing reading a blog on a "reading break"] In it, McGrath is musing about what it would be like if fundamentalist Christians were to oversee a "final exam" that everyone must take before they were allowed to enter heaven. (He suggests two questions: Would you pass?)

This caught my attention because I recently had to complete a similar "exam": An application to participate in a local ministry contained the question:

If you died today and stood before God, and He ask you “Why should I let you into My heaven?” What would you say? This is not a testimony!

Now, I understand why the application included this question, and don't really have a problem with it. And that's not why I'm writing this post. I'm writing because the rest of McGrath's post hit a nerve. It perfectly describes the problems I'm having with my faith. In a nutshell:

It doesn't seem to me that there is a single voice in the Bible, and we can simply listen to it and do "what the Bible says"... And so whatever it means to be a Christian, it cannot mean "believing the Bible". Because part of the challenge of the Bible itself is that it presents us with conflicting voices, and in doing so forces us away from the easy path of simply picking texts and following them...

Yet this is exactly what "Biblical Christianity" (as it's often called in my context) does: It elevates certain passages to supreme status, and reinterprets all conflicting passages, effectively neutering them of their meaning.

Here's a good example: My pastor once gave a sermon on forgiveness, and at one point discussed Matthew 6:14-15 where Jesus makes the following statement:

[I]f you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

My pastor gave this as an example of why forgiveness is so important: because "God takes forgiveness seriously." He explained that this verse refers to "relational forgiveness": That our relationship with God is hindered if we do not forgive others.

I was puzzled at this interpretation because there is nothing in the context of Jesus' words that would indicate anything other than the obvious interpretation: That if we do not forgive, God will not forgive our sins. On the contrary, other statements of Jesus indicate that a lack of forgiveness will result in nothing less than hell: In Matthew 18:21-35, the unmerciful servant is sent to be tortured effectively forever for refusing to forgive.

When I questioned my pastor about this, he said that since we know (from Paul's writings) that we are saved by faith alone, we must interpret Jesus' words in light of this knowledge. Therefore, Jesus could not have meant that we will not be forgiven if we do not forgive.

This answer frustrates me to no end. In his post, McGrath addresses my pastor's answer:

[W]hile one might say "Scripture must be interpreted in light of Scripture", it still remains to be asked why one should start with the typical Evangelical prooftexts in Paul and John, and say that the others must be interpreted in light of them, rather than reversing the procedure and saying that the passages that seem to affirm "judgment" being on the basis of faith alone must mean something else.

I agree with McGrath. I would go one step further and ask: (as I have elsewhere) if God did become man, and that man is Jesus Christ, can't we expect Him to know what He is talking about?

I have more to say about this, but I'll put that in another post.