The Plain Truth

 Quick survey: Who here believes...

The earth is flat?

Women must cover their heads in church?

The sun revolves around the earth?

Women must be silent in church?

It's acceptable to enslave people?

Women must wait and direct any questions they may have to their husbands at home?

Men must keep their hair short?

Any one divorced and remarried is an adulterer?

Tattoos are an abomination?

We can't eat lobster, shrimp or pork?

Without asking for a show of hands, let's move on...

When Galileo (a devout Christian) began to talk about the earth revolving around the sun, he was excommunicated from the church for going against the plain truth of scripture and the historical teachings of the church.

When churches began to allow women to have positions of authority in their churches and *gasp* even preach, many were kicked out of their respective denominations for going against the plain truth of scripture and the Church's historical teaching (unfortunately, some are practicing this, still today).

When folks, both inside the Church and outside, began to speak out against slavery, and later Jim Crow laws, they were ostracized, most vehemently by other Christians. It went against God's natural laws, they said.

The Bible has been used to justify slavery and segregation, abuse of women and children, the genocide of Native Americans. We used it to kill those judged to be "witches." It's been used to blame mental illness on demonic activity.

Still today, it's used to create hysteria around vaccines and CRT. For some it's used as evidence to shame people with illness and disability on the grounds of sin and lack of faith. We use it to cancel celebrities and amusement parks, movies and other churches.

As far back as our own original scriptures, folks were arguing about whether they could allow gentiles into the Church, and if they did, should they have to eat like us, cut themselves like we do? Scripture was very clear on these topics. Yet...they changed.

Add to this literally thousands of denominations forged solely from divisions on thousands of more minor differences in interpretations and understandings of our scriptures.

You wanna know what the plain truth is? The Bible is ancient literature written within ancient cultures. It's inspired. It's important. It is truth. It's packed with wisdom that all of us need and can apply within today's world, nations and cultures. But it's not easy. And it's often not plain. 

"The plain truth of scripture" is too often used to shore up hard things, things we do not want to investigate, wade through or have to admit we may have been wrong about. I believe strongly that God preserved our scriptures for us to be able to continue, as early Jews and Christians did, to discuss and disagree and pray over these words and seek the wisdom God has for us within them -- together. Going back to the early Church that I mentioned above, I don't think we fully grasp the seismic nature of what happened in that space within the earliest days of the church. This was not a minor disagreement. It was MAJOR. They were being asked to consider moving in a different direction from bedrock teachings of the Jewish faith since Moses - thousands of years of teaching that they firmly believed went from God's mouth to Moses' ear - and then to them. And what, after much discussion (likely very heated) and prayer did they say? "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us..." And they changed. I am NOT saying that we should not have opinions - we should. I do. Strong ones. I AM saying that we need to be careful to hold those loosely, holding ourselves accountable to others in both our local communities and the wider universal Church. We've mostly lost this skill. Instead, leaving near zero space for disagreement, we face forward and listen to one person TELL us what is safe to think about scripture and it's application today - ostracizing any that dare to doubt or question.

Change is hard. But it is not impossible. It will require some humility to admit that we've been deeply, dangerously, wrong before and we'll all be wrong again. All manner of atrocities have been justified as "biblical." The litmus test could much better be, not "Is it biblical?" but, "Does it look like Jesus?"

We need to be very, very careful about who we judge and exclude, who we cancel and who we deem to be deceived or heretical, based on "plain truth." Our history shows us that future generations have a much clearer understanding of the ways we were deeply misguided and do not look kindly on the ways we justified harm and exclusion. We'd best approach certitude carefully and with great caution.

If we are going to err (and we are) may we err on the side of love. Again, I think it bears repeating: 

Does it look like Jesus?