Selective Righteousness

 The longer I study the Judeo/Christian Scriptures the more I become aware how selective American Christians have become, choosing to emphasize some biblical content while ignoring and even denying the validity of other content. I also am discouraged by the way so many Christians more closely align with political agendas than with the teachings and ethics of Jesus of Nazareth, who they claim to follow.

… an expert in the law, asked (Jesus) a question to test him. ³⁶“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” ³⁷He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ [Deuteronomy 6:5] ³⁸This is the greatest and first commandment. ³⁹And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ [Leviticus 19:18] ⁴⁰On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:34-40)[1]

Two observations: first, “And a second is like it…” seems clear: loving God and loving neighbor are similar. This idea is reinforced in the first Epistle of John, who declares, “…those who do not love a brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.” (I John 4:20) Legalistic nitpickers (e.g., Pharisees) rationalize and justify being selective about who we “must” love and who we “don’t have to” love, distinguishing between loving one’s neighbor and loving “a brother or sister.” But in Luke, Jesus raises the bar higher when the expert on the law responded with, “But who is my neighbor?” The familiar Parable of the Good Samaritan follows, and he raises the bar even higher when he says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you...” (Matthew 5:43-45)

Significant numbers of people who claim to be Christian have no intention of loving an enemy; indeed, some seem to go out of their way to identify more and more enemies to hate. I am open to new evidence, but I am not aware of any part of the Judeo/Christian Scriptures that says God hates any human. Repeatedly the Scriptures say that God hates iniquity and sin, and Deuteronomy puts it definitively:

There are six things that the Lord hates,
    seven that are an abomination[2] to him:
haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
    and hands that shed innocent blood,
a heart that devises wicked plans,
    feet that hurry to run to evil,
a lying witness who testifies falsely,
    and one who sows discord in a family. (Deuteronomy 6:16-19)

In an NPR interview, former Southern Baptist pastor and denominational leader, Russell Moore, spoke of how many pastors are receiving serious pushback from their congregations when they preach about the ethics and values of Jesus.

He shared that one pastor preached on Jesus’ admonition to turn the other cheek and love your enemy, and after the sermon an angry church member raged, “Where did you get all those liberal talking points?”

Moore said, “What alarms me is that in most of these stories, the pastor would say, ‘I’m literally quoting Jesus from the Gospels,’ and the response would be, “Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak.”

Moore concluded, “When the teachings of Jesus are seen as subversive, we’re in a crisis.”

I believe we’re in a crisis in much (most?) of the church. When the Bible is selectively ignored or discounted and partisan political ideology takes precedence over the ethics of Jesus, Christianity morphs into Christian Nationalism, and we’re on the infamous “slippery slope.”

A second observation: “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” When Mark tells the story, he quotes Jesus as saying “There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark `12:31) In Matthew, Jesus’ proclamation is all-inclusive; indeed, he declares the command to love God and neighbor as the key for interpreting all divine revelation—not only the law, but the prophets as well.

To the one who accosted the preacher claiming that the ethics of Jesus don’t work anymore, I would reply, “They didn’t ‘work’ for Jesus, either. They got him crucified.”

It’s not that love doesn’t work. It’s that love is hard, so the darkness of this world prefers control. In the infrequent times love is truly tried, it’s discovered to be hard, so we give up and revert to what “works.”

We don’t follow Jesus because it “works,” which usually means it accomplishes what we want it to accomplish—it’s a tool in our hand for us to use. We follow Jesus because he “fulfills all righteousness.” (Matthew 3:15) So, if we need to be selective in our reading of Scripture, let Jesus be the standard of our selectivity—the whole standard by which we read and understand all divinely inspired writing. After all, not everything biblical is Christlike.

But the God who is love (I John 4:8) does not give up on love; indeed, not even the cross thwarted God’s commitment to love the world and all who inhabit it.

That’s the way it looks through the Flawed Glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

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[1] Unless otherwise noted, all scriptural references are from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, copyright © 2021 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America.

[2] This word, abomination, is a troublesome word that, in the original language does not mean what it usually is thought to mean; but that’s another subject I may undertake in a subsequent blog.