Scripture Seminar Eve

This week on campus we're kicking off a four-week seminar on Scripture. We're bringing in a local pastor to help students sort through the questions that are inevitably raised when operating in a context such as UNC, where Bible-bashing is both a science and an art form. Some of the issues raised are legitimate, some are pure conjecture or silly rantings of angry people.

But the problem for my students in their classes is that often the issues that are raised are discussed as if no thinking Christian has ever dealt with or thought about these questions before. There's problems with these texts, these professors say, end of story. No real opportunity for rebuttal.

So this is a crucial four weeks for us as I find many of my students, even from here in the Bible belt, struggle to trust the Bible as authoritative. Their favorite "out?" "I like Jesus, but I don't like/trust the rest of the New Testament." A couple reasons why this falls apart:

1. The story of Jesus was written down by his apostles and other followers. Jesus himself writes nothing down for us. To like or trust the Jesus of the New Testament is to trust the authors who have written those stories down for us. Luke writes another New Testament book (Acts) and John writes four other NT books (1, 2, 3, John and Revelation). Peter, a likely source for Mark, writes a couple books as well. It's all written down under the same authority. Either these guys are faithful reporters and interpreters of Jesus or they aren't. You don't get to pick and choose what you like and what you don't.

2. The only way that you can get warm-fuzzies from reading Jesus is to import a ton of the rest of the New Testament's interpretation of him into the gospels. Jesus never once utters the word "grace" in any of the four gospels. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, all the harshest and hardest words in the Bible come from Jesus. All the passages that give me the greatest hope for rescue and redemption both for me personally and for the rest of this world come from those who were with him who help to interpret both his life and actions.

My students who like Jesus in the gospels but are uncomfortable with the rest of the New Testament are able to do so only by buying into the lie that Jesus was a Teletubby. That's a complete neutering of the person and work of Christ. No one bothers to kill at Teletubby (except maybe Pat Robertson, but that's for another post altogether).

Jesus made folks angry, he speaks the most impossible commands and sets the most impossible standards. Afterwards, his disciples come along and help to interpret in full, after the cross and resurrection event, the purpose and meaning of Jesus words and work.

Thank goodness the New Testament is not solely Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Apart from the rest, we would be in quite dire straights, indeed. I only hope that these next four weeks on campus frees students up to receive the full blessing of the full canon of the Scriptures