Contradictions in the Bible
November 17th, 2009
So I was having an interesting and refreshingly civil conversation with an atheist blogger named ThoughtCounts Z in one of my recent (well, “recent” in terms of this blog) postings. Responding in the comments section started to feel awkward, so I thought about gathering my thoughts on the matter in a full-length posting. So be warned – this post may be quite long!
The gist of our discussion was about whether the Bible permits Christians to be friends with atheists. I feel like there’s not necessarily a problem with it, and verses about not being “yoked with unbelievers” or tossing false teachers out of our churches (at least, that’s how I interpret 2 John) don’t seem to mean that we are never to engage or be friends with nonbelievers. So I don’t see a “contradiction” between such verses and, say, Paul’s instructions to believers on how to behave when eating dinner at the homes of nonbelievers. ThoughtCounts Z seemed, at least, to credit my interpretation as reasonable, but she raises a more general point about how people should deal with “contradictions” in Scripture – isn’t it more reasonable to conclude that the book isn’t divine or authoritative?
So how should Christians deal with apparent contradictions in Scripture? Plenty of believers simply maintain a level of cognitive dissonance, or blithely dismiss one or more parts of the Bible out of wishful thinking – or, as my dad puts it, “the last verse read wins.” It’s an easy trap to fall into, and I pray that I don’t. I feel like the appropriate response varies from situation to situation.
Some “contradictions” require a reevaluation of how one verse or the other is interpreted (or even translated – human language is not infallible, and it’s sometimes worth checking into things). Or how BOTH are interpreted. If there seems to be a contradiction, perhaps one or more of the Scriptures don’t mean what you think they mean.
Others require a larger contextual understanding – God is unchanging, but the nature of God’s covenant with humanity certainly did change. The regimen of sacrifices and dietary regulations in the Torah were intended to be taken seriously by Israel, but later prophets and apostles (not to mention the Christ) made it very plain that such regulations were never really the point. Or an understanding that inspiration is mysterious and God did not dictate the Bible word for word – this means that if the writer of the Chronicles and the writer of Kings use different numbers to describe a battle scene, or Mark and Luke put events in Christ’s life in different order, it doesn’t remotely bother me, as such things aren’t really the point, and nowhere does God say that the Bible is comprised of the infallible and perfect words of angels, as some other holy texts claim to be.
But more importantly, I find the idea that “contradictions” can disprove the Bible to be problematic at a more fundamental level. Modern Western culture has things backwards, I believe, when it comes to the big picture of how the world works. We feel that “the ground truth” is logical, governed by strict laws, mathematical – even binary – in character, and that our emotions, perceptions, will, desire, consciousness, and languages are “heuristics” – that is, ways of simplifying a complex underlying reality to better get by in and understand the world. The idea is that, if we simply had a computer quick enough and powerful enough, we could crunch all the numbers in the universe and have perfect knowledge.
But what if that has it mostly backwards? What if the base of reality is perception, consciousness, will, desire, and language (”the word”), and our logic and reason are simply “heuristics” to help us simplify a complex, probabilistic, subjective, and personal universe to get by in it? I think there’s good evidence that this is the case. For example, the deeper one gets into physics, the less “sense” everything starts to make. As a computer science student, I spent plenty of time in classes proving that there are things that computers can’t do – problems that can’t be solved in a reasonable amount of time. True logic knows its own limits.
People sometimes point to computer models as though the mere fact that the results came from a computer means the results are reliable. But a logical system is only as good as the data that goes into it, the assumptions built into it, and the appropriateness of the logic to the task at hand. In computer science land, they say “Garbage in, garbage out.” I believe this to be true of all systematic logic.
While logic is the appropriate tool for building airplanes and radars, and (to a certain extent) for describing and understanding the physical workings of the universe, it is not always the appropriate tool for understanding human language or relating to other personalities – it is seldom the appropriate tool for understanding the eternal and the divine. After all, as God is perfectly supreme and in no way bound by our universe, on what basis can anyone “logic around” with God? God is outside of time, cause and effect, and even the proposition that something can not be both X and not X. Trying to reason about God as though any of these assumptions were true often results in goofy conclusions – consider the kerfuffle about predestination, or interminable arguments about the divinity/humanity of Christ, or the nature of the afterlife, or the nature of the trinity. It doesn’t take much logic to realize that these things are beyond our comprehension, and applying systematic logic as if God was a train in a word problem won’t make the mystery any less mysterious. We might fool ourselves, or we might get frustrated, but we won’t near the truth.
I think we intuitively understand that reason isn’t the best tool for interacting with other people. Sure, a person can be both happy and unhappy all at the same time, but does that mean God can be perfectly loving and perfectly just at the same time? I suppose because God is supposed to be “perfect,” some take that to mean that God is easier to stuff in a box and logic around with, rather than infinitely more difficult. What if our longing for simplicity and pure truth, unadulterated with complexity, probability, emotion, and perception, is itself irrational and inappropriate? It seems to me that a great deal of wisdom consists of letting go of the need to understand everything in terms that enable us to predict, manipulate, and feel certain about them.
Otherwise, you wind up chasing your tail. You read “God is love,” and if you treat that as a mathematical certainty, you end up attaching a lot of baggage to the phrase, as though now the “perfection” or “inspiration” of Scripture is fully backing your own personal concept of divine love. So if your own personal concept is all puppies and rainbows, and you read one of the many other revelations where God is not all about puppies and rainbows (to put it mildly), or, say, observe nature or human history for any amount of time at all, you might get frustrated and confused. You may even doubt whether God really is love, instead of doubting whether “God is love” means what you think it means, and adjusting your understanding accordingly.
Now, does all this take big religious questions out of the realm of arguability? Not really. It takes them out of the realm of systematic understanding and “provability” – but, of course, they were never really there in the first place. But it doesn’t mean that every interpretation is equally valid or likely, or that any religious faith (or lack thereof) makes as much sense as the next. There’s still room to argue about things, and even be right or wrong to some degree. The Bible could still make some critical claim that could be demonstrated not to be true – as Paul said, if Jesus was not resurrected, then it’s all been in vain. These questions are not entirely ethereal. However, things are fuzzier and more complex than we often allow for, and require a great deal more humility than we often give them.
I do not believe that something can only be either mathematically provable or essentially unknowable. There’s plenty of room in between. People who believe in the (potential) infallibility of human inferences seldom turn their own level of analysis and criticism on their own beliefs – it’s easy to see other people’s beliefs as irrational and wrong, and assume your own are the reasonable status quo. The “burden of proof” falls easily on other people. I know I’m often guilty of it – to be constantly doubting oneself is intolerable.
Too many religious arguments that I got into when I was young devolved – after we both realized we didn’t have enough information to be really certain – into arguments about whom the burden of proof should fall on. This is sort of like saying, whichever side I want to be true gets to be true. It’s kind of lame. Trouble is, that may be the best we can do sometimes.
I suspect that, while reason can help clear away some chaff and help us work our way towards a level of knowledge about the universe, there’s a good deal of truth that can only be known by revelation, and this only by analogy and often through human language. This puts the big questions more in the realm of trust than a lot of folks are comfortable with. Can we trust the writings of the prophets and apostles, or the sayings of Jesus? Can we trust the community that passed these teachings down and preserved them? The New Testament doesn’t ask its readers to accept Christ on the basis of no evidence, but on the testimony of witnesses – which we have, passed down generation to generation. It requires trust, and that’s a hard thing to move once it’s gained or lost – someone who has been mistreated by the church (and there have been plenty, unfortunately) is going to be harder to convince of the church’s trustworthiness. I expect that, Christianity would have an easier time of winning people over if we were better about actually living out Jesus’s teachings. Arguments and logic play a part, but they are seldom “the clincher,” so to speak.
So all this to say, presumed “contradictions” in the Bible don’t necessarily bother me. I’m inclined to see good faith on the part of the prophets and apostles who wrote the Bible, and where there’s ambiguity assume that the more ambiguous can be interpreted in the light of the less ambiguous. It’s a matter of trust more than anything else, I suspect.
So, to ThoughtCounts Z, I’m sorry that it took me so long to respond, and I’m still not sure that this kind of posting is really the right way to go, as I felt uncomfortable using the second person for most of it, so it felt awkward. I’m also going to stuff some individual responses to your last comment in parentheticals, like this:
(I didn’t intend to imply that Leviticus is a more inspired or authoritative book than the Psalms – my point is simply that if any book should be parsed like law, it would be a book from the Torah, which was intended as law, not the Psalms, which were intended as poetic expressions. Thanks to the revelations of later prophets and apostles, we now know that while God intended the law to be followed, the law was never really the point (see Isaiah, Romans, Hebrews), so no, I don’t hold everything in Leviticus to be authoritative for modern Christians – although some of it certainly is. I imagine books have been filled trying to sort through it all, but that’s the quick-and-dirty, I guess.)
(Again – thanks for engaging, if you’re still around.)
Adding Dumbo Clones to the New Testament
October 25th, 2009
Sometimes a perception or an idea can be far more powerful than the reality. For example, lots of folks have a very powerful image of Disney World as a park for small children. So they pack up their hypersensitive 3-year-olds and quickly discover that trekking around a lagoon of international shops and restaurants was not little Emma’s idea of a good time. Or that a whole lot of rides in the Magic Kingdom are actually kind of scary.
Disneyland, of course, was not designed to be a park for 3 year olds. It was designed to be a park for families. In fact, the principal source of its appeal, in my opinion, is the way it caters to many types of people at once. Take, for example, the witty, more adult lyrics of the Country Bear Jamboree combined with the humorous, cartoon-like audio-animatronics of the bears themselves. Or the Haunted Mansion – both grotesque and non-threatening (somehow) all at the same time.
Nonetheless, in spite of all this, Disney has decided over the years to fulfill the expectations of parents who were shocked and offended that so much of the Magic Kingdom involves shrunken heads and rotting corpses. So they’ve added Dumbo clones wherever they can.
Dumbo, of course, is the most merciless kiddie ride in the entire complex. Little kids force their parents to wait in line for hours to spin around in a circle on what is essentially a 30 second carnival ride. Three-year-olds were walking down Main Street expecting a park full of Dumbos, and the Imagineers decided not to disappoint – even if, in my opinion, such changes make the Magic Kingdom’s appeal much less timeless and sublime. The scary parts of Snow White’s Adventures are eviscerated. The Extra TERROR-estrial Alien Encounter is converted into a pablum Stitch-themed experience. The jokes at the new Monsters, Inc Laugh Floor are barely even groan-worthy. And there are Dumbo clones everywhere.
I think some of us want to do the same thing with the teachings of Jesus. We have this image of Jesus as this really nice, unassuming guy, a guy who somehow exudes nothing but compassion and love from every pore. He’s only the Jesus of the children’s church bulletin board – a smilingly inoffensive man surrounded by multiethnic children. But then folks actually open up the New Testament and discover that Jesus seems to have done (along with his incredible acts of mercy, love, and self-sacrifice) a lot of things that aren’t quite as nice: brutal rebukes of his enemies, frank discussions of agony and destruction for those who reject God, parables designed to deliberately hide the truth from most people, woes and curses and profoundly shocking statements left and right. The Jesus who welcomed small children is the very same Jesus who cursed a fig tree for not bearing figs when he wanted them. But rather than deal with the complex, real, dissonant Jesus, I think some of us would rather have Dumbo clones.
Perhaps we tastefully ignore the harder teachings. Perhaps we constantly find ways of interpreting his sayings as to reduce their difficulty. Perhaps we project our own values and ethics – more a product of our American upbringing than God – onto Jesus, and put words into his mouth and actions into his life for which we have no evidence.
And when all the construction projects are finished, we’re left with a world that makes a 3-year-old happy for a few minutes, and offers little magic (or truth) for a grown-up.
Quarreling About Words
August 14th, 2009
My friend Taylor Williams recently pointed out a verse I hadn’t really given much time to before: 2 Timothy 2:14.
Warn them before God against quarreling about words; it is of no value, and only ruins those who listen.
I often find myself frustrated over arguments about words. They seem so pointless and divisive. It’s nice to see the thought in one of Paul’s letters.
We Need More Sentiments Like This
August 14th, 2009
… on both sides! I’ve been trying to (gradually) expand my blog readings to include folks whose worldviews I don’t agree with as much, and occasionally I’ll find a gem of common sense and human decency, like this post on The New Republic’s blog The Plank. I’m not sure if leftists would agree, but I think Ramesh Ponnuru and some others (not everyone, unfortunately) on National Review Online are also good at giving the benefit of the doubt to the other side and having fair, thoughtful debates without compromising their positions. At least they give that impression. If only all political debate could be like this.
In fact, it’s easier to concede points to the other side when you don’t get the impression that they’re out to destroy you. Your personal pride is less of an issue. An environment of mutual respect makes it easier, I imagine, to arrive at something like the actual truth.
Allan Bloom
August 9th, 2009
I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind until I read the essay that presaged it over on National Review Online. It’s an awesome read (although kind of dense), and not as long as the book. (For those who’ve never read Bloom, his book is an exploration of the modern philosophical environment found in universities – how the “democratic ethos” has waged war on the pursuit of truth, among other big, important issues.)
I also find it interesting how, in spite of Bloom often being claimed by conservatives, many liberals aren’t at all hostile to his arguments. I found this interesting article in the New York Times trying to claim Bloom as a friend of both left and right, and I think it makes a number of fair points. Bloom, being a classicist and lover of the quest for virtue, was not necessarily a friend of populism – and a certain breed of modern conservatism, represented by, say, Sean Hannity or Sarah Palin, relies heavily on populist sentiment. I’m not really big on that part of conservatism either.
Nor am I big on the idea of “the market” as a good in and of itself. As far as I’m concerned, capitalism, being essentially “freedom,” is the freedom to do good or to do bad. Such freedom is necessary but not sufficient for good to occur. Capitalism and democracy are not intrinsically good – they’re better than the alternatives in lots of important ways, but they’re not enough. And there’s certainly a great deal of evil that such freedom allows – evil that has to be fought. So those particular arguments against conservatism don’t much bother me. (Christ is higher than politics, after all.)
So I guess all this to say that I’m heartened that folks from both sides of the political spectrum can come together around Bloom’s writing – if this article is representative of anyone on the left other than the author. I hope so.
Reading “Surprised By Hope” By N.T. Wright, Part 1 (I Hope)
August 6th, 2009
I’m not very good at reading theology books. I’m not a big reader to start with, but theology books are even tougher to get through – very rarely have I found a book that I actually thought, after reading, “Wow! That was enlightening/useful/unexpected/good in some way!” I think I had those kind of thoughts about Mere Christianity, but that was back in like the 7th grade.
Not that there haven’t been times where I’ve longed for some wise believer to be able to make sense of things for me – the Bible is not the easiest book to grasp, and there’s lots of potential for misunderstanding and self-deception. But the “wise believer makes it easy for me” thing just doesn’t happen. Too often you get books that start by telling you how “shocking” their conclusions are and generally not leaving you to make up your mind about their arguments, or spend a lot of time trying to elevate issues that struggle to feel like they matter, or tell smarmy anecdotes, or belabor obvious points for chapters upon chapters, or hide seething judgmentalism, or any number of things that leave me going, “Is there any wisdom in the entire world of Christendom? Anywhere?”
N.T. Wright’s book What Paul Really Said was one of the rare books I really enjoyed reading, although I think I didn’t (and still don’t) really grasp his point. He spent a good deal of the book trying to elaborate on what was meant by “the gospel” and how it was larger than what we usually mean when we say “the gospel,” but his thoughts didn’t gel sufficiently. Nonetheless, he seemed to be the scholarly, wise believer I was hoping for, so I kept reading over certain passages trying to figure out what he was really getting at. I’m still not really sure.
I’m not really enjoying, however, Surprised by Hope. Nonetheless, I hope that by blogging my thoughts about it as I read (slowly), I’ll be motivated to actually finish it. Surprised by Hope is about heaven – or really, about the resurrection, and how there’s an important difference between the two ideas. Wright tells us that our beliefs about the resurrection matter because they affect our engagement with the here and now.
There’s truth in his arguments, I suppose. He elaborates for a while on how vague, syncretic, strange, and mixed-up the average Christian’s view of the afterlife really is. There’s really no arguing with this.
Where I find myself questioning his thesis is on the idea that any of this actually matters. He argues that our belief in a disembodied heaven versus a bodily resurrection coincided with, and also inspired, Christianity’s disengagement from efforts to improve society. He hasn’t convinced me – at least not yet. It seems improbable, because I don’t give a flying small mammal’s posterior about the question – either way could be right and it would affect me emotionally not the slightest. The idea that God is in control and will reward righteous behavior and show mercy to those who believe is really the big, important point. The details seem to be (a)beyond our comprehension, and (b)irrelevant.
I’ve always hated arguing about eternity – as though it were possible to stick a concept like heaven or hell or the soul or divinity in a box and reason about it in some productive, not-intrinsically-stupid way. God has revealed things to us, and we know pretty much what God told us. Arguing about the nature of hell beyond “it’s going to royally suck and you DON’T want it, whatever it is, to happen to you,” is silly. Arguing about what eternity looks like for the saved beyond “it’s going to be really awesome and, whatever it is, you DO want it to happen to you,” is silly. Arguing about whether we have “an immortal soul” is silly. Arguing about the trinity is silly. It doesn’t leave a lot of space for intellectualism, but I shed no tears for that.
So, at least, as of midway through Chapter 3, Wright hasn’t convinced me that he’s not just piddling around in silliness. He hasn’t yet offered any evidence other than a sort of vague correlation that our belief about this particular afterlife-related question is related to our view of social justice. It seems more probable to me, at least at this juncture, that if Christians disengaged from trying to improve the world, it’s because they came to feel that they owned the world – the Constantinian problem. They became a fundamentally conservative force – preserving the power they had acquired – rather than a force for change. I don’t know that evolving (or devolving) beliefs on the nature of the afterlife had anything to do with it. It would surprise me, at least.
Now, this could certainly all be premature on my part. Part of me hopes it is, and I’ll get to write a “I was wrong and stupid about N.T. Wright’s book” post. Hopefully, I’d be tough enough to own up to it. We’ll see.
A Promising Story
August 2nd, 2009
There’s an article in the Washington Post on a Harlem private school program (and then some) that seems to be having good results with children from problematic backgrounds – it’s encouraging to read, and I pray that stuff like this takes off.
I have to wonder, though, whether it might be defeating the purpose for the Department of Education to get involved in “spreading the model,” so to speak, since (as a conservative) I have to wonder whether the fact that this program ISN’T a bureaucratic, publically funded institution is part of the reason for its success in the first place (although the article itself is careful to say that the full success of the program is yet to be gauged).
Psalm 17
July 15th, 2009
The last few verses of this Psalm struck me just now as staggeringly beautiful – here they are in the King James:
13Arise, O LORD, disappoint him, cast him down: deliver my soul from the wicked, which is thy sword:
14From men which are thy hand, O LORD, from men of the world, which have their portion in this life, and whose belly thou fillest with thy hid treasure: they are full of children, and leave the rest of their substance to their babes.
15As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.
I found Psalm 17 looking up the concept of “reward,” to see what I could find to clear up some nagging issues. There are those who argue that the Old Testament isn’t as concerned with the afterlife as the New Testament is, or that we put too much pleasure in the hereafter rather than the here and now. They may be right or wrong to whatever degree.
But all the intellectual ponderings and struggles occasionally fade away in sheer bliss when you read a verse like 15 – no excess of words, beautifully balanced, loaded with layers of meaning, a perfect poetic expression of astonishing faith, contentment, and joy. Maybe I’ll just bask in it for a while.
Too sentimental?
I don’t care.
N.T. Wright on Heaven
July 3rd, 2009
There’s a series of very interesting videos of an interview with N. T. Wright over on YouTube. N. T. Wright is a problematic figure for me – sometimes he seems like the wise, believing public intellectual I’ve always longed for, and sometimes he seems to dwell too much in abstractions, or miss what I feel to be the actual, important point. On top of that, he can seem condescending to me. There will probably never be a human figure I can simply put all my trust in to help me understand things. Oh well.
My initial gut reaction to this heaven video was one of frustration – why argue about the nature of eternity, or “what’s going to happen” at the end times or when we die, if eternity is beyond our present ability to understand? However, I feel like it wouldn’t be fair to leave it at that, as the video doesn’t go into details as to why Wright feels any of this is important. So I’ve ordered Surprised by Hope to find out. Hopefully, my initial gut reaction will prove to have been premature.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
Whither Perseverance?
May 31st, 2009
I’m starting to wonder about something. I feel like Christianity has a tendency to want to turn faith and love into “chicken soup for the soul,” and I think I’ve been very guilty of this myself – searching scripture for references to peace, joy, and promises, and forgetting about suffering and perseverance. It’s a half-truth – an understandable half-truth, but a half-truth nonetheless.
I think the half-truth takes a lot of forms with different people, some of them contradictory, but all of them have, at root, the same incomplete picture of who God is. It might look like, for example:
- The “health and wealth” gospel, in its most egregious and shameless forms – corruptions of the prayer of Jabez, etc.
- A subtle belief that the extent of Christianity is to affirm the American middle class lifestyle – don’t get drunk on weekends, provide for your family, stay true to your wife, attend services regularly. Church is a step on the way to a pleasant existence with kids and a nice school district.
- A belief that the extent of Christianity is to affirm your crunchy, urban lifestyle. Jesus’s teachings are turned to support moral consumer habits and trendy attitudes – the blue state version of the same red state half-truth.
- A simplistic view of God termed “moralistic therapeutic deism” – God is “there for me,” and exists primarily to comfort me when I’m down. Sure, God wants me to be a good person (whatever that means), but doesn’t ask for any radical lifestyle changes. God is a teddy bear in the sky.
- A push to make Christianity “practical” for the “here-and-now,” as opposed to a focus on the afterlife (expressed by Pastor Bob Cornwall in a post linked to by fellow Boston-area worker Steve Holt as the future direction of American Christianity)
- An overemphasis on natural living, spiritual disciplines, and meditation, carrying the implicit belief that being right with God means feeling peaceful all the time
- An overemphasis on the idea of “community,” particularly the good parts – forgetting that community (like marriage, like friendship, like lots of things) is really hard, often hurts like crap, and takes work.
There are many other ways the half-truth gets promulgated – and I would like to reiterate that I don’t think it’s a lie. Just an incomplete picture of who God is (as all pictures must be). God really does grant good things in the here and now, really does work all things for the good of those who love God, really does give us a spirit of peace that passes understanding. It’s all true. But it’s not the only truth.
The actual lie part of the half-truth that I find myself having to pull away from is this: the more “in tune” you are with God, the more you obey his will, the happier and more pleasant your life will be in the here and now. It’s the life trajectory we want – it’s the American dream, the human dream, in any of the various forms it takes – urban or rural, blue state or red state, old or new. We want life to gradually get better and better, more stable or more exciting (depending on our personality), more peaceful or more thrilling. First you add an education to the pot, then a marriage, then a job, then a family, a house. Or maybe it’s a different set of things – a job that gives you variety and independence, a lifestyle that gives you excitement or tranquility when you want them, a sense of purpose to your life but not a purpose that encroaches too much. I feel this way a lot (granted, more the red-state version than the blue-state, but you get the idea).
If you could draw a graph where the x-axis is “walking with God” and the y-axis is “peace” or “happiness” or “prosperity” or any number of positive things that we want for our lives, you might get the impression listening to various Christian authorities that the graph looks like a big, diagonal line going up all the time. The more you walk with God, the happier you get.
I don’t think the Bible teaches that. I don’t think life teaches that. The universe is practically screaming at us that there’s more to it than that. Pain, suffering, and death play a huge role in the life of a Christian. They have to, because love always comes with hurt, and life always comes with death. Paradoxically, Jesus both conquers death and submits to it – in fact, teaches us to die every day – take up our crosses daily and follow him. The metaphors we often get for the Christian walk in scripture are things like running a race, doing a job – even fighting a battle. With these metaphors, the chart I talk about would actually look like the letter U. Things start out pretty good, and then you work, and you suffer, and you hurt, and you die every day, and then – you receive your reward, and it’s the most glorious thing ever.
The “U” looks a lot more like Jesus’s life than the upward diagonal line. Think of Philippians 2. Did Christ live a funky, crunchy lifestyle, being in tune with nature and living the good life so much that people were just naturally drawn to this life-well-lived? I don’t believe so. He suffered, was persecuted, and died horribly – as far as living life well in the here and now, it seems like he could have done better.
Consider Matthew 8:20:
Jesus replied, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
He talked about his life as a cup that he had to drink, and nowhere does he imply that this cup is overbrimming with chocolatey goodness. And here’s a difficult teaching (Luke 14):
25Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: 26“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. 27And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
28“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? 29For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, 30saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’
31“Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. 33In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.
34“Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? 35It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out.
“He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
Gee. Is Jesus really saying that, for some people, not following him is the rational choice, because it’s going to be so difficult and challenging that they won’t be able to complete the job? There are gazillions of passages just like this throughout the New Testament – shockingly brazen, frightening, and tremendously convicting and challenging. Where does all this fit in with the idea of God who wants us to live more “effectively” in the here and now? Where does perseverance fit in? Where does persecution and suffering and dying every day fit in? Walking with Jesus isn’t the way to live more effectively in the here and now. It’s a way to die more effectively in the here and now. Over and over.
I want to be able to read Scripture and not feel like I have to massage or maneuver around the words to get it to make sense. Accepting that the cost of following Jesus is high, and that there will be suffering and death, makes the words fall into place so much more easily for me. The continual talk of perseverance and discipline makes sense again. The peace and joy that God offers, paradoxically, I think, become even more astonishing and important, given the task at hand. Suffering is no longer an indication that I’m doing something wrong – that God lied or reneged on his promises – that God isn’t there. Suffering is part of the walk, part of the path God has laid out for us. And he will help us endure it. But we still have to endure it. It scares the crap out of me, but it’s much better than wondering if the negative feelings that come with life “mean” all these really awful things.
And, weirdly, being ok with suffering on some intellectual level feels right to me. Does it feel right to you?