|
|
|
Introduction
Historically Controversial Human Rights Issues in the Christian Church Over the centuries, there have been at least five major controversial human rights issues that have developed in the Christian Church, including:
Unfortunately, at different times in history, what many people have done relative to these issues is to select out particular verses and passages from the Bible to support less than whole or less than circumspect views on Gentiles, Jews, Blacks, women, and homosexuals. Have such people been malicious and stupid? No! Many were well-intentioned and earnest in trying to apply what they thought the Lord God Almighty wanted them to believe and how He wanted them to practice their religion. To be sure, some readings of Scripture can result in two different conclusions even among intelligent people of good will. However, it is important to also remember that, although Christians of good will can disagree on an interpretation of Scripture related to a serious issue, they should still remain in fellowship as they await a more perfect and complete understanding from their Lord. Judaization and the rights of Gentiles Because the earliest converts to Christianity were Jews, many of them struggled with the role of Gentiles in the church and the degree to which they would be permitted to retain their non-Jewish cultures, mores, and customs. When the twelve Apostles were sent out to preach, Jesus himself gave them these instructions: "Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel." (Matthew 10:5-6 NIV) Because he also taught that "Salvation is of the Jews," (John 4:22 KJV) many early Jewish converts to Christianity believed that in order for Gentiles to be received into the Christian body, they would have to first convert to Judaism. Even the Apostle Peter struggled with what he thought was the unclean nature of Gentiles until the Lord finally spoke to him on this issue in a vision and said, "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean." (Acts 10:15) Later, that Apostle recounted his revelation to Cornelius, a Gentile at whose house Peter had been invited to stay:
Nevertheless, many early Christians tried to impose Jewish traditionary and customary laws on Gentile converts to Christianity, even going so far as to convince them of the necessity for all believers to follow such practices, including circumcision:
I believe that, just as almost 2,000 years ago, when the Apostle Paul had to admonish the Apostle Peter for his unwillingness to fellowship with Gentile Christians by telling Peter that "he was clearly in the wrong" (Galatians 2:11), so, too, would he now rebuke the preachers, pastors, teachers, evangelists and prophets of today for their unwillingness to allow full participation and involvement by Christian homosexuals in the modern Church. Anti-Semitism and the rights of Jews Later, as Hellenist Christians gradually overtook Hebraist Christians in number, there was a shift from the Judaization of Christianity to de-Judaization. In Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith, Marvin R. Wilson notes:
Wilson traces how de-Judaization gradually gave way to anti-Judaism. For example:
To be sure, Jesus addressed the Jews of his day as illegitimate heirs to the promise given to Abraham:
Yes, there is rather sharp and bitter polemic against unbelieving Jews in the Bible, but when found it is spoken or written by other Jews (i.e., those who believed in Christ). As such, it was a family fight. Consequently, Gentiles should not take those passages and others like them out of their historic context and use them to justify their own anti-Semitism. It is recorded in Scripture that the chief priests and Jewish elders persuaded the crowd in Pontius Pilate's presence to ask for the prisoner Barabbas to be released instead of Jesus and to demand Jesus' execution. (Matthew 27:20) Finally, when Pilate washed his hands concerning Jesus' fate, the crowd who condemned Jesus then responded, "Let his blood be on us and on our children!" (Matthew 27:24) Although some nominal Christians, unfortunately, have lifted out of the Bible the idea that all Jews are Jesus-killers and used it as their foundation for anti-Semitism, true Christians should be strongly opposed to anti-Semitism, since the family of Jehovah (Yahweh) includes our brothers and sisters who happen to be Jews. (By extension --- so, too, must seemingly anti-gay passages be interpreted in their historic context and never used to bash gay people by straight people.) Slavery and the rights of Blacks Relative to the issue of slavery and human rights, students of the Bible could look at different passages in Scripture, especially within Torah (the first five books of the Bible), and find verses that support slavery. For example:
It is absolutely phenomenal, but it was not too long ago on the floor of Congress in the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s that our congressmen were debating the issue of slavery. For example, on February 1, 1836, United States Senator James Henry Hammond said the following on the House floor in support of slavery:
In order to bolster their case that slavery should be the law of the land, many elected representatives of the people held up passages like those previously quoted from Leviticus and Exodus as well as those written by the Apostle Paul, which express his seeming acceptance, or tacit approval, of slavery. For example:
The burden of my argument is not to point out how horrible or immoral slavery is --- we already know that. Rather, it is to point out that, for the greatest period of time that Christianity has been on the earth, there also has been slavery and that many Christians either owned slaves themselves or entirely condoned slavery, and that nowhere in Scripture are Christians specifically forbidden from owning slaves. This illustrates that a majority of Christians can be wrong a majority of the time --- just as they have been about gay people! Nonetheless, as they mature in Christ, each and every Christian can come to a more enlightened moral understanding relative to specific human rights issues involving Blacks as well as gays. Female preachers and the rights of women Concerning female clergy, even in this day and age there are some individuals who will not enter into a church where a woman is preaching, because they feel that it is against God's Word and Will. Often, to justify their position, they quote Bible passages such as the following:
Those who would quote such passages to support an anti-feminist viewpoint fail to realize that the distinct separation of the sexes in the Apostle Paul's day not only determined where woman sat within the synagogue but also curtailed their opportunities for education as well. Society was distinctly different then. It was still a mostly patriarchal, male dominated and male dependent society that had been born out of hunter/warrior days, when brute strength alone provided the survival advantage and edge. Perhaps the unique cultural situation regarding women that Paul was addressing in the previously quoted passages is no longer fully understandable to us (many Bible references to situations and cultural practices are no longer fully understandable). But, whatever he meant, because Scripture cannot contradict Scripture, these difficult passages must be interpreted in the light of other Bible passages, which indicate parity of the sexes in God's eyes (discussed later in Chapter One). To be sure, the Apostle Paul's actual practice, which included an extensive use of women co-workers in the gospel, as well as the whole Bible's understanding of human as both male and female, made in God's image, must be factored in:
Homosexuality and the rights of gays and lesbians Indeed, individual Bible verses have been used to foster ethnocentrism, racism, and sexism. However, it should be clear that only half-truths are presented when the Bible is not taken in its entirety. That is why, rather than building church doctrine upon only a few selected verses, Christians need to hold the whole Bible while they simultaneously attend to its various parts in seeking to understand the fundamentals of their faith. They must understand that the Bible is an inspired book, and that there is a continuity in it unequaled and unparalleled by any other book, especially when one considers the numbers of individuals who were involved in its production. It is only when Scripture is taken in its entirety that one comes to a more perfect and complete understanding of the whole truth on any particular topic or issue. One's approach to Bible study, interpretation, and application needs to be hermeneutically-sound if one is to derive and practice the truer, or higher, meaning of Scripture. For the sake of clarification, hermeneutics is herewith defined as "the science and methodology of interpretation, especially of the Bible." (4) In other words, we must resist using only a few words or verses of Scripture to represent the entirety of God's Word just as we should resist only using a half-truth to represent the whole. "Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." (2 Timothy 2:15 KJV) Study involves time, effort and energy and a consistent interpretation based on the entirety of God's Word. If we selectively pull out
a verse here or there, and build a theology around it, we really are not
bringing honor and glory and praise to the Lord God Almighty. What we
are doing is furthering a personal --- and perhaps political --- agenda,
and that is not pleasing to the Lord at all. Such has been the case with
Bible passages that have been used to support Judaization,
anti-Semitism, opposition to female clergy , slavery and the general
idea that one group of human beings is superior to another. Though I
believe that the writing of the Bible was under holy guidance (i.e.,
that it was authored by the Holy Spirit), I believe that dependence on
some single verses or passages will lead to error in its interpretation
and application. While some Bible verses express absolute truth, they
may not have universal application. For example, I believe that the so-called clobber passages (i.e., those verses that are commonly used against homosexuals to tell them that their sexual orientation is an abomination to God) have been interpreted out of context, because their historical and literary contexts are ignored. In other words, they have been interpreted without holding the whole Bible and simultaneously attending to its various parts. This, of course, I will attempt to prove through careful analysis and synthesis of those passages against their historical and literary backdrops (i.e., their historical and literary contexts), which includes understanding passages immediately adjacent to them as well as those located in other parts of the Bible that provide insights to their intended, as well as actual, meaning.
|