[Islands, Not Worlds:]
A Call for Contextual Honesty and Hermeneutical Humility
By Darren King

Generally (and please note I said *generally*) I try and stay out of debates with people from the so-called young, restless and Reformed crowd. Why? Well, because our stones tend not to reach each other’s islands anyway. There’s just too much water in between. As such, by the end of the exercise I usually just end up with a sore arm and a bunch of rocks at the bottom of the sea, stirring up sediment and sentiment (of the not so constructive kind).

But, that being said, I couldn’t help but respond to one poster recently – at the Out of Ur blog – when he took aim at Barack Obama. This fellow wrote:

To date, Obama has said that his mom wasn't a believer but he knows she will be in heaven anyways because she was a good person, and that he wants his daughters to be responsible, but that if they make a mistake he doesn't think they should be "punished with a baby." He also said that he believes that Jesus' teaching on loving people in the sermon on the mount supersedes the Apostle Paul's writings decrying homosexuality in "some obscure passage in Romans" (that passage being Romans 1:26-31).

There is tasteless Christian leadership and then there is complete rejection of everything God says.

Here my problem lays not with the fact that this fellow holds to a different view than me. Its no shocker that, being young, restless and Reformed, he’s going to come at this from a whole different perspective. What gets at me is when people such as this suggest that those who hold to a view different view actually leave the bounds of the Christian faith altogether. My response to this fellow, named Todd, was as follows:

1.) We do not know who will be saved. That one is not for us to know- and there are many different positions on the issue.

2.) Do you not see how premarital sex (while not advised, wrong, etc) that leads to pregnancy could be seen as something unwanted if the sexual activity had nothing to do with the hopes of procreation?

3.) The homosexuality issue also is a multilayered one. If you would study biblical interpretation outside of your own small circle you would realize that. (Here I wasn't defending homosexuality, just drawing his attention to the fact that it is a contentious issue precisely because different views exist).

4.) Todd, In case you would suggest that you just take the Bible literally, while others don't, there are plenty of biblical instructions that you do NOT apply literally- stoning adulterers, forcing women to wear head coverings, etc., etc. And please don't play the "well, those are just cultural observances that aren't relevant for today" card. That line is not easily demarcated. And that's exactly why we have so many views and interpretations of "what God says".

Do you not realize this? Stop being so quick to judge. We all apply God’s will with fear and trembling in the midst of plenty of unknowns and our own cultural, contextual flavors/biases.

Was this a little, what shall we say?... Forceful? Perhaps... I admit, I was a little flabbergasted at the moment.

But anyway, the fellow retorted with the following post:

Obviously, Darren King, you would not meet the criterion laid out by the Barna Group as an Evangelical.

In turn,
(1) To be considered a Christian it is across the board necessary to declare faith as the primary cause for salvation, even if your theology holds that works are necessary to maintain it. If you believe that faith in Christ is not a necessary component of salvation then I can not call that belief Christian. Period. That might seem harsh, but we can't just let people wear this name because they want to. It has to mean something.

(2) Guess what? Actions have consequences, and sexual actions sometimes have procreative consequences. Would you say that if someone was driving their car and accidentally hit some else (their fault, if you want to be nitpicky) that they aren't responsible for the damages done? Besides, try rectifying that action with Scripture and not doing any hand-waving.

(3) Please provide a Biblical interpretation that actually maintains the integrity of all of Scripture which says that homosexuality is not a sin. I have yet to see this done. As RC Sproul says, we all have to agree that the Bible teaches homosexuality is a sin, the question we are arguing over is whether of not we are going to obey that.

(4) How do you know I don't stone adulterers or require women to wear head coverings in church (those are so original by the way)? I believe that we have to take into context the whole canon of Scripture, which is my point on all three of the issues above I believe, and when we do that faithfully I think we can come up with well founded Biblical principles as relates to all of these.

It cracks me up how we are so quick to judge people like Dobson and Robertson (who I do not claim to agree with either) and yet so quick to defend people who are obviously missing the point like Obama or Oprah.

If you want to have a conversation, let's have a conversation. But having a conversation doesn't mean that people's feelings won't end up getting hurt sometimes. Hard words make soft people, while soft words, though they may make us feel good about ourselves, make us hard to the actual offense of the Cross.

I agree with the last part. Let’s have a conversation. And it doesn’t have to be in the context of a tea party. But, on the other hand, let’s not resort to demeaning others either.  And, admittedly, calling someone’s views incorrect, ill-advised, what-have-you, and not demeaning them, is sometimes a hard line to spot- let alone hold to. But we should certainly try.

My next response the included the following comments:

Sure. No one's debating that “sexual actions sometimes have procreative consequences”. I was merely pointing out that one can act sexually irresponsibly, get pregnant (or get someone pregnant) and regret the consequence. The point being: as with the Catholic Church and its stance on birth control as pertains to AIDS in Africa (for instance), of course we want to call for abstinence. But we also want to, knowing the erring nature of human beings, take advantage of additional tools, such as birth control, to mitigate even more serious consequences.

Now, by Todd’s own admission, interpretation is more an art than a science. After all, he wrote:

I believe that we have to take into context the whole canon of Scripture, which is my point on all three of the issues above I believe, and when we do that faithfully I think we can come up with well founded Biblical principles as relates to all of these.

I’m glad Todd thinks so. But reality suggests that when people take into consideration the whole canon of Scripture, as he asks us to, as well as considerations that include genre and cultural backdrop- I would add, they come up with some very different “well founded Biblical principles.” In fact, even in my own (relatively young 36 year old life) I've seen my views shift.
To the posts both I and this other fellow offered, a third person, Mike Rucker, added the following editorial comment:

Darren, Todd -
Are you guys sure you're commenting on the right post? If you're trying to set up the first round of the new church celebrity deathmatch, it's on a different page...

But you two make the perfect picture of the paradox we have to work within: Darren errs on the side of grace (as do I - guilty as charged), Todd errs on the side of law.

So - to your corners... come out at the sound of the bell, and let's settle this thing once and for all.

But never forget that scripture calls us a peculiar people...

Now, while I very often agree with what Mike has to say, here I think the question isn’t: Do we err on the side of grace, or on the side of law? But rather, what kind of posture should we take, knowing full well that great diversity exists across the spectrum?

This situation reminded me of the letter Tony Jones received a couple of weeks ago, by someone who had decided to survey the books offered by Christian publishers on multiple views of doctrines. Believe it or not he came up with 119 views on 29 topics!

My main point was (and is) to argue that, while Todd basically declares Obama unChristian because of views that Todd sees as irreconcilable with an historical understanding of Christianity, that there has been (and continues to exist) much more diversity of opinion on these matters than Todd will admit too.

Obama falls outside of the defined bounds of the young and Reformed crowd that Todd and Driscoll belong to, yes. And he might even fall outside the bounds of some people's definitions of the evangelical pale (though this gets more slippery). But, beyond those two groupings/flavors of Christianity, there is greater diversity still. And of course, it is here that the majority of the world's Christian population actually reside.

In other words, my main point was/is to not to compare and contrast "Grace" versus "Law"- (which would be to, among other things, set up a false dichotomy) but rather to demonstrate that how one even perceives these two concepts is completely determined by a whole set of preconceived notions about how to interpret Scripture, the nature of God, the nature of Man, etc. And these various conceptions all play together in - very often - mutually exclusive feedback loops.

Clearly there is great diversity here. This *should* (one would think) lead us to adopting, not the view that we're right and the other is wrong, but, considering how much difference of opinion tends to exist, that perhaps we ALL need to hold to a hermeneutical humility that fits the reality.