So, this morning I started reading Radical Discipleship Interesting. Glancing at the upcoming chapters, I suspect that the author and I will have some serious disagreeemnts. however, the first chapter makes good sense to me. The trouble I've run into this morning is that reading a passage I particularly liked to my roommate/landlady sparked what could have turned into a nasty debate if I hadn't simply decided to stop responding.
I was reading a section wherein Camp points to the differing perspectives from which people come to the New Testament, and how that affects the questions we as readers ask. So I read this section of the chapter out loud to Ida, whose response was that it's true but irrelevant--because the book holds all the answers to those questions, and stays the same no matter what. This led into a lecture from her on the fact that the Holy Spirit is no longer there. According to her theological tradition, apparently, the Holy Spirit existred solely for the purpose of prtecting the message of the gospel until it was written down in the first century A.D. As such, with the completion of the Bible in its present form, the Holy Spirit disappeared. It is therefore no longer to be seen as a guide in the world; for that, only the written text matters.
I'm sorry, but I call bullshit. Part of this is due to my Quaker readings and experiences, I suppose. A great deal more of it has to do with the experiences of others that I have heard about. Some of those having the experiences weren't even Christians. Yet they were led by something to do the right, Christian thing. Barring an actual visit by Christ, what is it then that leads us to act in accordance with God's will, if the Holy Spirit is no more? What is it that led a friend of mine to pull over on the roadside to help in an emergency on the interstate? What led an ex-girlfriend's father to stop once on an icy road to help a woman change a tire, even though it meant he was late for his worldly appointment? What prompts the atheist I used to live with to give freely to those who were unfortunate, even though they were strangers? Is it not through the Holy Spirit that God leads us, guides us toward goodness?
On the other hand, we have people like Ida, I suppose. Ida's devotion to the exact wording, the written document, of the New Testament, is her guide. She does that which she believes to be right, not because she is led inwardly to do right, but because "The Bible says..." and therefore she has to do it. As much as I like Ida, as much as she often seems to be such a good and righteous person, sometimes I can't help but shake my head in sadness at her motivations. In many ways, she seems to be exactly the kinds of Christians that Lee Camp has in mind when he says "'Salvation,' instead of being construed as the gift of a transformed, abundant life in the now-present kingdom of God, begins to be equated with an otherworldly reward. More crassly put, 'salvation' is increasingly viewed as a fire-insurance policy, a 'Get Out of Hell Free Card' guaranteeing an escape from the fires of torment and ensuring the receipt of treasures in heaven."
Now granted, I don't feel it's necessarily my place to judge, since I don't consider myself a Christian. Yet even what I've read of the New Testament seems to point rather glaringly in the opposite direction from what Ida's denomination practices. Frustrating morning.
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3 comments:
Huh. I'd never heard that interpretation of the Holy Spirit -- and I'd be interested to know where she got that.
I (obviously) don't agree with her, but I also think that God has always been moving in the world (i.e., even in "Old Testament times") -- he gave Moses the words he needed to say to Pharaoh, and that sort of thing. And then there's all the prophets. But I do think of the Holy Spirit as the, well, the presently abiding nature of God, so I don't mean that I quite disagree with you.
I do agree with Ida that the book holds the answers -- and while I know the scholarly, "academic" side of the history of the Bible (at least in a cursory way) -- that is, I know that it was set down in different times by different hands -- I do believe that God guided not only its writing but its formation. If pressed, though, I'd say that "The Word" is actually Jesus Christ (and Christianity, for the most part, has never revered the actually words of its holy text the same way that, say, Islam has).
I think that really does depend on the denomination. In trhe Church of Christr, from what I've seen, they really do see the written Bible as a piece of God, to be glorified as such.
Another of her interesting tidbits--the other night she explained to me that the book of Revelation is not prophetic, but is a metaphor for what happened after Christ's death--the triumph of Christianity over Satan, binding him and preventing him from doing as much in the world as he once did. Which I disagree with wholeheartedly again, mostly because of what Camp says in that opening chapter about the increasing power of the church being sort of contrary to Jesus' teachings.
Yesterday morning, we also got into a discussion on book burning, because Ida has burned books before, and she says she probably will do so again--these books, she maintains, had no redeeming value for her, so therefore couldn't have for anyone. Some of them she admitted she never actually read, she burned them because of who wrote them and therefore what she assumed was in them. So, yaya for book burning I guess. Honestly, sometimes she really gives me the creeps.
I've torn up and recycled books before. Because I thought they had no redeeming qualities, and could potentially damage whoever ended up having them (lots of fuddy duddy new-agey stuff from my sort-of grandma, mostly).
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