Each denomination has its own blue parakeets.
McKnight explains that once while watching birds in his backyard he saw a blue parakeet fly in and land among the sparrows. He thought surely the parakeet had escaped from someone’s home and likely would want to return to its owner. But his efforts to catch the bird all failed. The blue parakeet had its own agenda and there was nothing he could do about it.
Just so, there are certain passages in the Bible that don’t seem to fit. Whatever your faith tradition, there are going to be some passages that you struggle to fit in. Your scholars will come up with elaborate explanations for how they fit, but each generation will re-discover them and wrestle with them. Sometimes, a part of the church will decide to rethink the denomination’s theology in order to make these verses fit better. And the story repeats itself a generation or two later.
The history of Christianity is filled with stories of the struggle to cope with the blue parakeet verses.
In the Churches of Christ we pretend that John 3:16 isn’t a problem for us, but for us, it’s a blue parakeet. So are the speaking-in-tongues verses. But everyone has a blue parakeet or two flitting around his backyard.
McKnight suggests that different people take different approaches to taming parakeets.
Retrieval
Some churches read the Bible to retrieve everything that was practiced in the First Century. If the early Christians met in homes, we should do the same. If they enjoyed table fellowship each week, so should we. If they washed feet, so should we. Indeed, some see all commands as perpetual.
Those in this camp tend to see scripture as a book of laws or a constitution. They assume therefore that the book has rules for how to assemble and worship and organize, and so they interpret reports of what the early church did as commands.
Sound familiar?
McKnight argues that it is, of course, impossible to live like First Century Christians in the 21st Century. Rather, he says, we are called to live “twenty-first-century lives as we walk in the light of the revelation God gave us in the first century.” Page 27.
You see, he says, we can “retrieve only what we can salvage for our day and for our culture.” We leave behind those things that too uncomfortable and preserve what seems to fit based on very subjective judgments. “This, of course, means culture dictates what is of value in the Bible. This is a mistake.”
He doesn’t explain this in detail, but let me try. When I was a child, the Bible said women have to wear hats to church. And they did — expensive, fashionable hats. When hats went out of fashion, 1 Corinthians 11 was conveniently re-intepreted.
But if we’d ever read the passage in light of its original meaning, not 20th Century culture, we’d have seen that the command was all about submission — to God and to husbands. And wearing expensive, fashionable hats has nothing at all to do with submission. Or modesty. Or Christianity. Rather, we found a very superficial correspondence between ancient culture and modern culture, found the correspondence comfortable, and congratulated ourselves for wearing the hats we were going to wear anyway.
The role of women is a similar issue. For much of the history of Christianity the surrounding culture freely permitted denying women authority over men or the right to teach men. But in the last 50 years, the commands don’t seem quite so clear. Are the commands we read in 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2 like the command to wear a head covering? Or are they eternal commands?
The question wasn’t even asked 50 years ago. Women were obviously incapable of such responsibility. Besides, a good Christian woman was too submissive to even want authority — or so we were taught. But now we all know women who are fabulous teachers and Bible students. Our culture has changed, women have shown themselves quite capable, and now the question is upon us.
And we can’t help but observe that the younger the Bible student, the more likely he is to find the “role of women” verses to be based on a First Century culture that is long gone. But we really need a better standard than what seems right based on when or where we grew up!
This may explain how other denominations now are looking to much like ourselves to many Parakeets. We had a person preach to us that claims no ties with the church of Christ. He was speaking on the Holy Spirit that it is not just in the word. What he perhaps didn't realize we all agreed with him. Then he talked about the 190 splits of the American Baptist and how he was saddened by them. Ok I thought now this is getting weird. Now I see that a Blue Parakeet few into his backyard.
Jay, you have opened the door or maybe you have shown us the door that was already open. The point we have to address is simple. What will we do with this Blue Parakeet in 21st century USA?
Two points:
First, part of the problem is words. Even your own, Jay. You regularly speak about the problems of a legalistic interpretation of scripture — yet in this post, you refer to the "commands we read in 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2."
I do not see them as commands, but rather as Paul applying the only command of Jesus, to love others as he loved us, to a specific situation. So what we often interpret as commands (because they come from New Testament writers), are rather examples of how to apply this most basic of all principles to a specific situation.
And that is the second point: These are not commands, they are examples of application. Some situations are so difficult to fully comprehend that we may in fact be wise just to follow the example. But the issue to be addressed is how to love others as Jesus loved us in each situation. That's something very difficult to do — will often result in different actions by different people, each of whom is trying to apply the same principle. Which is why only God can judge us — since only He knows our heart and knows what is truly consistent with his model of love.
Loving as Jesus loved can only be lived out in current time — neither the first century nor the 21st century is what is critical — but rather the context and the people with whom we are interacting at the moment. That is where we must apply the principle.
When two sets of scriptures seem to contradict, we tend to choose a winner and find a way to diminish the other. Your articles on a "third way" address this problem. My conviction is that we have to treat both passages as 100% true, and wrestle with what that means. And we must be humble about the fallibility of our wrestling.
Jay,
I am reading this book; although, it is a little slow going due to my other work. McKnight has raised some very interesting points; however, I am not fully convinced of all his arguments. Maybe he can reel me in as I progress through the book.
WRT the role of women in this post, I have never personally witnessed a COC that articulated its position based on the inferior capability or responsibility of females. I’m sure that happened somewhere, at some time, but I haven’t seen it. McKnight states that culture shouldn’t dictate what is of value in the Bible, but that seems to be what we are intimating. Paul’s argument for roles goes all the way back to creation, so for him, the differentiation of roles was good and acceptable from creation all the way to the first century and then beyond. That doesn’t seem culturally based to me, especially since there was no culture at the beginning. Everything was new, with God directly interacting with the first couple. It was very good. More than any other time in history, culture would have been influenced by God himself.
When did roles change? The 21st century? How did they change? When did something approved by God become disapproved? I need to know that.
If acceptable roles, from creation thru the 1st century to the 20th/21st century, change based in part on culture, what does that say about other issues like homosexuality, cohabitation, etc? If we say that roles have always been based on culture, why did Paul relate it to creation?
So far, I have more questions than answers.
Thanks,
Kevin
Kevin,
I answer the creation argument re the role of women in the eBook you can download from this site: Buried Talents.
And in that book, I quote a couple of sources in relatively recent Church of Christ literature that attempt to justify the traditional view of women by stereotyping women as gullible or worse. There are plenty more. Fortunately, in the last few years, preachers have largely learned better. But when the tradition was created, it was justified based on a very low view of women. The historical record is clear.
I don’t doubt that it existed or that it still exists today. I just haven’t witnessed it personally. Quite the opposite actually. While worshipping with a highly, highly evangelistic and outreach oriented congregation in OK, women were frequently praised as being better at evangelism, spreading the Gospel message, and teaching individual Bible studies.
On the other hand, half of my family is Baptist, and I have seen a bit more of the attitude of which you speak within those circles. Not widespread in my experience but still there in isolated pockets.
We often look at the scriptures as commands and in a sense they are things we are suppose do and not do, but we are supposed to do and not do because of our love for God and not just because there is a check list.
But we should look at the scriptures in terms of application. II Tim. 3:16 “All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for…” We need to wrestle not with the blue parakeet, but rather admire the blue parakeet and see what it can do for us. Often we become at odds with scripture instead of just accepting it as it is and that means looking at it from different persepectives. Sometimes the blue parakeet turns out to be a red finch or not a bird at all.
The problem that I have seen in most assemblies is that we see the blue parakeet and then look the other way and then when it flies back in view we turn around. We don’t face it and we don’t face it together, even when the blue parakeet is as large as an elephant, or we acknowledge it and then turn back to the red parakeets that we know and love and can understand. One of the frustrating things is when a preacher gets up and preaches on things we are already doing. He will preach against instrumental music, which conclusions I don’t agree with, but we don’t use instruments anyways. He will give a sermon to convert sinners, even when there are no sinners present. We like comfortable lesson that gets us no where. Many things we percieve as issues, when they are just our issue that we have with others, so our blue parakeet is someone elses blue parakeet, even when they don’t have that one.