Inescapable Interpretation

I wanted to expand a theme that I have been pursuing earnestly. The idea that a significant aspect of discipleship is interpretation so as to "rightly dividing the truth [about God]". Interpretation, the way we understand anything, forms a controlling framework for how we live our lives. Just look at the enormous damage fundamentalist evangelicals have done to the cause of Christ who’s work is, in every case, redemptive. Those whose double-minded view of God drags out the spewing hatred, judgment, and retributive attitude that only a human mind could conceive, (1 Jn 1:5b God is light, and there is no darkness at all in him), and foisting it upon other human beings in the most damnable ways.

I want to share a bit concerning a recent post put on social media. My tongue is still bleeding from biting in avoidance of comment regarding the passages in James 1: 22-24.

Jas 1:22  Obey God's message! Don't fool yourselves by just listening to it. 23  If you hear the message and don't obey it, you are like people who stare at themselves in a mirror 24  and forget what they look like as soon as they leave. 

The underlying point of view in this individual's mind (interpretive framework) was that one should certainly be fearful and under bondage to insure that you are quite busy... with something. Apparently with something other than whatever James is talking about such as is on the average evangelical's activity chart all the while looking over your shoulder to see if God is about to crush you. The important point James makes is found in 2:8 and is part of Jesus' greatest commandment. 

Jas 2:8  You will do all right, if you obey the most important law in the Scriptures. It is the law that commands us to love others as much as we love ourselves. 9  But if you treat some people better than others, you have done wrong, and the Scriptures teach that you have sinned. 

James bookends this "commandment" with practical examples but the message is still the same: love your neighbor as yourself. They will know you by your love. If taken as a list of do's or else, as it was in this person's view, it violates the spirit of the message and brings once again the commandment and death.

I mourned in my soul that after all Jesus showed us of the Father that a brother would put himself under a yoke of bondage, narcissistic bondage, to "hoping" he's doing "enough" hoping one is doing "the right work", in essence saying "look at me [facebook] Jesus I'm doing the stuff!" I rather wanted to retort with Paul in Galatians 5:1 Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Additionally this brings into consideration words as thought buckets. James uses the word: "word", be doers not merely hearers. There are many places in the NT where the phrase is used "the word of the Lord." We just assume we know what that meant! It is clear in this passage that the "word" James is speaking of is revealed in 2:8. I propose that we've probably filled our buckets with something other than what was is really there more often than not.

Double mindedness in James is precisely not one whose faith vacillates from weak to strong but one whose view of God vacillates from the ultimate giver of good, loving and faithful to man to the withholder of good and harbinger of punishment. The content of the preceding verses provides the context that shows this; v6 uses pistis, persuaded + without wavering [diakrinō] separate thoroughly and is connected with the asking. It is precisely because the world Jesus walked in and James wrote in still maintained a paganistic view of el-o-heem, (the gods) that this is so. The "gods" since antiquity were malevolent and punitive without the "right" sacrifices, This describes the world many Christians still live in and it would be appropriate to term that thinking as pagan. 

This approach then enables us to read the Old Testament and distinguish between religion and revelation. Revelation is shown whenever the testimony about God aligns with Jesus' testimony about God; we find religion, idolatry, myth, or a projection of humanity when it does not. I think it is a serious error to pluck the sacred texts, any of them, from the world within which they came to be. To look at these texts divorced from that context is to risk missing the point in colossal ways. So what is James saying? Jesus' Abba is not like the other gods. He is good and gives good gifts to those who ask without reservation and that upon hearing of this we should do likewise. All of this is part of what makes Jesus message so remarkable and revolutionary. If Abba was just like the other gods we're wasting our breath and should eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.

El-o-heem is, by the way, the name used in the first creation narrative from Genesis 1:1-2:3. The name used in the second creation narrative beginning in 2:4 (yes I see them as two separate stories) the writers now add the unpronounceable name YHWH which demonstrates to me that between the two narratives, however long that was, a shift of significant theological understanding and anthropological development has occurred. This also sets in motion the much later shift from henotheism to monotheism. At the time of Jesus and Paul the henotheist view is still prevalent otherwise why would there be any talk at all about food sacrificed to idols and the need to disregard their importance? Now we begin to see the gradual but relentless unveiling of God to humanity. The story of humanity's descent into sacrificial violence is held in juxtaposition to the revelation of the one true God which is completed in Jesus.

Regarding interpretation I offer this excerpt from "The Jesus Driven Life":

Jesus’ parables fall into exactly the same two categories as his understanding of what constitutes the greatest commandment, what it means to love God and love our neighbor. The parables then are an invitation to participate in this new way of being and living and loving in the world which reflects the authentic character of who God is, not as abstract, but specifically who God is in Jesus, the True Human.

From this observation on the parables and the greatest commandment I want to draw a conclusion: Life is all about interpretation, about the way we interpret our sacred texts, our experience and the world around us. There is no life without interpretation. As we saw in 1.2, the context for the greatest commandment in all three Synoptic Gospels had to do with interpretation; likewise the parables have to do with the way we interpret God and ourselves in relation to each other. It is not a question of whether or not we interpret. We do. We are not automatons who simply live a program; we humans seek meaning and significance in all of life, from the smallest thing to the biggest event. Jesus’ intention is to draw us out of the box of our pagan sacrificial logic, out of our idolatry, and into the wonderful mystery of his compassionate Abba.

Hardin, Michael (2010-04-02). The Jesus Driven Life: Reconnecting Humanity With Jesus (Kindle Locations 2227-2231). JDL Press. Kindle Edition.