The Rest of the Old Old Story

Below is an email I sent to a dear friend this morning concerning "parsimony" in Scripture interpretation. I believe all of it is true, but rather than explain why, I thought I’d initiate a little discussion.

My friend had written:

I’m starting to find that there’s a lot to the whole parsimony thing. I had been raised with complex answers to so many questions about the scriptures, but the simplest, (and often hardest to swallow and walk in faith in) is usually the right interpretation. ie: Jesus, Paul, James, John… they simply meant what they said.

My Response

I was thinking about that this morning.

The “born-again” crowd is given a few teachings that are not to be questioned. Then they read the Bible and the very books that supposedly produced those teachings–Romans, Galatians, Ephesians–are confusing, almost incomprehensible from a fundamentalist interpretation. Christians then just get used to the cognitive dissonance. “I believe the Bible. The Bible has all sorts of verses that I really don’t believe. Here’s the verses I use to ignore those verses. I believe the Bible is the infallible, inerrant Word of God.”

Parsimony destroys the entire fundamentalist system. It rips their most important doctrines to shreds.

On the other hand, after some years of reading the Bible parsimoniously and getting your beliefs bulldozed, all the Scriptures begin to fall right into place so beautifully that it’s breathtaking.

It’s a lot like having a scratch-off game card. As you scratch more and more off, you begin to see the prize.

I love the Psalms.

Sometimes I’m scared to start reading them because I can get so caught up in the message of just one Psalm. It’s amazing the truths that are laying there, just under the surface, for the person willing to dig for them and to get used to interpreting the Psalms.

It’s not just general truths about God you’ll find there. I wonder if the whole message of the New Testament couldn’t be reproduced from prophecies and spiritual statements in the Psalms.

I did another commentary on a Psalm yesterday, Psalm 73.

I wanted to share it with you. Just follow the link.

I also did a shorter one on Isaiah 35:8-10.

This morning my warehouse manager, Dean, came in to tell me that his mom had just called from Sacramento shouting, "I’m healed, I’m healed."

A few weeks ago, a set of shelves (installed by her and her husband) fell off her bathroom wall onto her. As she lay on the floor, seconds later, her sister called from Florida, not a very common occurrence. She took the call, slurring her words, barely conscious, and her sister yelled at her over the phone, trying to keep her awake.

The sister instructed Dean’s mom to call the next-door neighbor and that she’d call back in 2 minutes. The next door neighbor, fortunately enough, was up and dressed, which was unusual for her at 8 a.m. (I guess she’s an artist or something, Dean said.)

The neighbor called 911, and the EMT team showed up in 2 minutes. They found her unconscious, and they had to hit her with a defibrillator 3 times to get her heart going.

They got it going, but Dean’s mom was left with numerous stroke symptoms: weakness on one side, slurred, slow speech, and she had difficulty reading and writing. She also couldn’t handle light, needing sunglasses outside. She was weak and tired.

Recovery has been very slow for weeks, and two weeks ago I let Dean off for a few days to go visit her.

Apparently, his mom decided yesterday that she needed more prayer, and she went to see a friend at a charismatic, non-denominational church she attends. Her friend prayed for her yesterday, and today she woke up symptomless. No pain, no slurred speech, no weakness, and her reading and writing ability is back to normal.

Does This Happen All the Time?

No. A lot of people don’t get healed. I have another friend who works for me whose mom did have a stroke, and though she’s almost completely well, she had no miraculous healing, and she still has some effects of it.

Dramatic stories like this happen rarely, at least in my experience.

I’ve seen only a couple such things. Friends in foreign countries–friends I know are honest–have told me many more. There’s a lot of unbelief in the US, and we’re already inundated with the message of Christ. Where the message is new and the unbelief is less, God seems more prone to displaying miraculous power (Matt. 13:58).

However, I could tell a hundred less dramatic stories, and I’ve forgotten many times that. I remember, for example, getting up one morning during a drought here convinced God wanted us to pray for an end to the drought. At our gathering that morning, I asked everyone to pray, and one of the ladies said, "Can we pray the rain starts Tuesday? We’re taking my students to the zoo on Tuesday."

The rain began as they were in the parking lot leaving the zoo. That was in the late Spring of 2007 or 2008, I don’t remember which.

One of the things that builds my faith the most is how often I know, before I ever pray, whether there’s power in our prayers. It’s not that we simply prayed for a drought to end. I’m sure we did before that Sunday, and it didn’t happen. But when we were led to pray, and we prayed, it happened.

I’ve named several posts the Righteousness of God (I think). How could I describe the righteousness of God in one post? In fact, how could I describe the righteousness of God at all?

In the end, the righteousness of God is displayed in the lives of spiritual people. What I am about to write is not just the product of reading Scripture. It is the product of reading the lives of the saints of God.

And their lives are every bit as much the Word of God as the Scriptures are.

God’s righteousness

We don’t know very much about righteousness/doing good. Most of what we think is doing good isn’t.

Well … maybe not most, but a lot.

Part of the reason we abandon our own righteousness (Rom. 10:3-4; Php. 3:8-15) is so that God can create his.

His righteousness is undefinable.

The Scripture defines it in very general terms by saying the “the fruit of the Spirit is” and “against such things there is no law” (Gal. 5:22-23).

We don’t follow a law because if we do the law becomes our guide rather than the Spirit being our guide.

If the Spirit is our guide, he is able to begin working a righteousness in us that is the product both of changing us and showing us what to do. Each of those things produce different results. When he’s leading us, and we do what we feel from him, then we do acts of righteousness. When he’s changing us, we begin to do acts of righteousness we don’t even know about. We are simply kinder, easier to be around, more encouraging, and more convicting … mostly without our knowledge.

The result of a spiritual righteousness is that you never feel adequate in yourself. You always wonder why God has mercy on you, but you know he is having mercy on you because your relationship with him is peaceful, growing, and good.

No law could produce such a righteousness. When you obey the law, you know you’re righteous.

Well … you think you are. Paul said before he met Christ he was “blameless” according to the Law. After he met Christ he realized he was the chief of sinners, the ultimate example of someone undeserving of the mercy of God.

Big difference in how he saw himself, no?

When the Spirit produces righteousness, you live like that. Your confidence in facing the judgment is that you know him. The Spirit bears witness with your spirit that you are the child of God (Rom. 8:16). You know, deeply and fully, that when you sin you have an advocate with the Father (1 Jn. 2:1). You feel the love and mercy of God. Your gratefulness grows, your fear of displeasing him–and even of being judged by him for disobedience–grows, and your righteousness grows without pride.

This is the path. God doesn’t need you to be at the end of it. He’ll get you to the end of it. He just wants you to stay on it. You are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works that he has prepared beforehand to do (Eph. 2:10).

The Judgment and Previous Posts

Correcting the commonly held false beliefs about the judgment means reminding Christians that there is one (Rom. 14:10; 2 Cor. 5:10). It means telling them that it’s according to works and that they ought to fear (1 Pet. 1:17).

However, correcting false beliefs about the judgment is one narrow part of God’s plan. If it’s all you look at, then you will think you need to trust in yourself and your obedience for righteousness.

That will not work. That’s just a good way to find out Romans 7 is true.

You do need to obey. You do need to fear. But you need to await the hope of the righteousness which comes by faith (Gal. 5:5). That’s a real, lived-out righteousness (1 Jn. 3:7), but it nonetheless comes by faith, imparted by the grace of God (Rom. 6:14).

Stay on the path. That’s our biggest job, our ultimate work of righteousness (Jn. 15:1-5). It is God who is committed in Jesus Christ to getting you to the end of it (Php. 2:13; 1 Cor. 1:7-9; Jude 24).