Some rules

We're incredibly talented at getting everything wrong.



I saw a copy of this statue in Moscow a few years ago. I genuinely thought that it had been mislabeled - because I couldn't think of any story in the Bible where Moses grew horns.

When the Bible was first translated into Latin this was one of the linguistic mistakes. When Moses came down off the mountain his face shone with a beam of light ... but it was originally translated that his face had a large horn on it.

Hundreds of years after the mis-translation this beautiful statue was painstakingly carved by a great master. But, it's wrong.

The Jews genuinely believed that they had the whole "Messiah thing" figured out. They thought they knew when he would come, how he would come, what he would look like, and what he would do. They were wrong. When the Messiah came he was backwards of everything they expected. He never had great wealth, he never commanded an army - their Messiah was a homeless teacher/carpenter. They had all these strongly held beliefs, but they were wrong.

I see millions of Christians with very strong opinions. Some Christians believe that it is okay to kill abortion doctors to stop abortion because abortion is murder. Some Christians believe that immigration is a social justice issue and that we should support all immigrants, legal and illegal. Christians on one side of an issue believe very passionately that God hates ___________________ and Christians on the other side of the issue believe very passionately that God supports _________________. Of course both sides manage to pluck a few words from the Bible to tell us all how God feels.

The more I study the Bible the more I realize that I don't really know how God feels about many things - and neither does anyone else. And that's okay.

Here are a few things that I think Christians should think about before declaring how God feels about a topic:

1. How important is this issue in the long run? I know it's important to Fox News and CNN, but how important is it to Jesus and His bride? Is it as important as 30,000 children dying every day? Does a wrong answer to this question send people to Hell? Did Jesus spend any time talking about it? How important is this issue?

2. Does the whole cannon of scripture back up my strongly held belief? Yes, I know what First Hesitations 2:19 says ... , but if that stands in contrast to the life and ministry of Jesus, are you really willing to bet all your chips on this belief? Would you have found the Bible verse that supports your cause on your own? Do you only know it exists in the Bible because of propaganda material you have read that supports your strongly held belief? Is it only mentioned once? In passing? By someone other than Jesus? In a long list that we otherwise disregard? If this issue is really important in the long run I believe that it would be a recurring theme in the Bible.

3. Is there a third way? Solomon charged the women to saw the baby in half, knowing that the mother would want her child to live no matter what. Solomon had two options - mother 1 or mother 2 - but he chose the third way. Do we really believe that the God of this universe will only pick from the two options we clearly see and that God couldn't find a third way? Really? Before we declare that God loves black and hates white or loves white and hates black - let's step back and realize that perhaps God's solution is bigger than we might realize.

4. Are we interpreting the Bible passages correctly to arrive at our strongly held belief? (Hint - if your strongly held belief is based on something in Revelation you should probably tone down your rhetoric a bit!) Are we reading Paul like a new Christian in Corinth or are we reading him like an American sitting inside our air-conditioned den? Leave room for grace in instances where our reading might be mistaken.

5. Does my strongly held belief leave room for the Grace of God in case I'm wrong? When you get to the Pearly Gates will God chuckle amusedly that you really thought ________________________? Or will God grieve that thousands of people are in Hell because you falsely taught ____________________________?

I hope these rules and guidelines help everyone understand where I come from when I write about socio-political topics. I hope these are useful for everyone else, as well.