What is a Biblical Value?
Sermon by Steve Edington
October 16, 2011
I guess it was going to happen sooner or later as the Presidential sweepstakes make their quadrennial appearance. We may have a clause in our Constitution that forbids a religious test for holding public office, but that scarcely prevents religion from becoming a campaign issue. A little over a week ago the minister of one of the largest congregations in the Southern Baptist Convention, Rev. Robert Jeffress, senior minister of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, weighed in on former Governor Mitt Romney's Mormon faith. Rev. Jeffress informed his flock that Mr. Romney was not a Christian and that Mormonism is a cult. In a follow up comment for the press on his declaration, however, Rev. Jeffress did indicate that he was not saying that Mr. Romney was unfit to hold the Presidency, as he drew a comparison with the person who currently holds that office. Here's how Rev. Jeffress put it: "I'm going to advise people that it is much better to vote for a non-Christian who embraces biblical values than to vote for a professing Christian who embraces non-biblical values."
Okay, I know it's a bit of a challenge, but try to follow the bouncing ball on this one: Former Governor Romney is a non-Christian who embraces biblical values, and our current President, Mr. Obama, is a professing Christian who embraces non-biblical values. I offer all of this not to state an opinion as to which of these gentlemen, both very fine gentlemen of differing political persuasions, should occupy, or continue with, the United States Presidency. But when the minister of one of our nation's largest churches--with a membership of 10,000--and which is affiliated with our nation's largest, by far, Protestant denomination makes such a statement as the one just cited, it generates a certain amount of attention. And for me it begs the larger question that is also the title of my sermon for today: What is a Biblical Value? According to Rev. Jeffress a biblical value is something that even a non-Christian can embrace, and that a professing Christian can refrain from embracing.
One answer to the question is found right on the website of Rev. Jeffress' First Baptist Church of Dallas. It's clear and unequivocal: "We believe that all Scripture is divinely inspired and serves as the final authority in all matters of belief and practice." Try it again (with a little emphasis here and there on my part): "We believe that all Scripture is divinely inspired and serves as the final authority in all matters of belief and practice." Well, that's pretty straightforward now isn't it? But is it really? Let's run with that declaration for just a bit and see where it takes us.
Among the various verses in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy that condemn homosexuality, which I imagine Rev. Jeffress has no hesitation in citing, is also one that stipulates that a woman who is not a virgin at the time of her marriage should be stoned to death. [That would be Deuteronomy, chapter 22, verses 20-21 for those of you who are following along in your Bibles.] I wonder when the last time was that Rev. Jeffress preached on that divinely inspired, final authority passage. Try never. But his website does say, "All Scripture."
Let's cut to the New Testament where Jesus says that anyone who divorces and remarries has committed adultery. That would be Mark 10: 11-12. Surely among those 10,000 members of The First Baptist Church of Dallas are persons who have divorced and remarried. When do you suppose was the last time Rev. Jeffress called them out as adulterers? Try never. Or--if you can stand this little riff of mine any further, how about the passage in the New Testament Book of Timothy--the second chapter--that says women are to keep silent in church and can only be instructed by men. Surely among those 10,000 members are a goodly number of the female persuasion. When was the last time Rev. Jeffress told the women of his congregation to zip their lips as soon as they walk through the doors of his church and keep them that way until they got back out? Once again, try never.
So, what's up here? Are some Biblical values more Biblical that others? But how can that be if all Scripture constitutes the final authority of all matters of belief and practice. You may say that, and post it on your website so that even a Unitarian Universalist like me can read it. But when it comes to your actual on the ground practice, Rev. Jeffress, you don't really believe in, or live up to, your own statement. And I'm still left asking what is a Biblical value?
Okay, truth time: When it comes to this question I'm not really as clueless as I'm making myself sound. I was raised in a church that's nearly identical in belief and practice as the one Rev. Jeffress pastors, but with considerably less than 10,000 members. What I came to see, once I got some reflective distance on that setting, is that there are actually two Bibles in one.
Stay with me on this: There's the Bible as a collection of writings - some of them magnificent and lofty and wonderful and of great value; and some of them that are downright horrible. These writings took shape over the course of a thousand years or more, and they eventually came to be contained in a single volume. None of its authors had any idea they were contributing to a single work that would one day be deemed "divinely inspired." Let's call this "Bible I."
Then there's "Bible II" which is the icon, or the totem, called "THE BIBLE" in capital letters. In some persons' minds and hearts this Bible II stands a bulwark against all these supposed threats and dangers to something called "Biblical values." The best way for me to explain Bible II is to tell you a story that has given me one of the more lasting images from my years in the ministry; and that I'm sure will stay with me for the rest of my life.
In the waning months of my ministry with the UU congregation in Stony Brook, New York, and just shortly before I came here, a gentleman - somewhere in his 40s - began attending services. In a coffee hour conversation he told me about how he and his wife were members of a very evangelical, and near fundamentalist, congregation, which he was becoming increasingly disaffected with. His wife, on the other hand, was a very devout and committed believer in the religion of that church. As you might imagine this was creating some tensions in their marriage.
One Sunday, a few weeks after our initial conversation, he managed to convince his wife to come to a service with him. Maybe he wanted to show her he wasn't getting sucked into some weirdo cult with a wacky cult leader. ["See honey, that minister up there is just an ordinary type of guy."] Whatever the case, they both sat right in the front row. In that worship space the front row was only a few feet from the pulpit, which was on just a slightly elevated platform.
So I was up there holding forth on a pretty basic, UU type of sermon - something about Thomas Jefferson as I recall - when I noticed that this gentleman's wife was clutching a Bible right over her heart (just like this) as if she were trying to ward off an evil spirit or something. Her knuckles, as she clutched her Bible, stayed white throughout the sermon, if not the entire service. Even though I wasn't doing anything hostile or threatening - at least not deliberately - I'm quite sure she felt like she was in a hostile and threatening environment, and that if she just held tightly enough to her Bible she'd come through it and still be OK.
I tell this story not to mock or denigrate this woman's faith. I grew up with folks like her; and for the most part they are good and honorable and decent people. Whether or not she and her husband were able to work things out with their marriage and their religious beliefs is something I never found out as I left that ministry shortly thereafter to come here. But the image of this very devout woman clutching a Bible as if it were a life preserver, while sitting right in front of me is, as I say, a picture I'll always carry with me from my many years in the ministry.
It's an image I recall when I reflect on the iconic, or totem-like status of the Bible for some. It's a status that transcends the actual text. Certain verses, in fact, become used in service of the icon, while those that do not serve the Bible's iconic status get overlooked - like the passages I cited earlier, and which I'm sure Rev. Jeffress wouldn't go near.
If, say, same-sex marriage poses an imagined threat (and that's all it is) to all that is right and good about our society, then the verses that condemn homosexuality will be extracted and held up, in order that "biblical values" can be maintained. The way it goes is that when someone like Rev. Jeffress sees something they view as a hostile threat to all that is right and good and proper in our contemporary cultural life, they find a Bible verse that condemn such a thing; they wave that verse from the rooftops, and then say that they're upholding "biblical values." I know I shouldn't just pick on this one minister as there are thousands, if not millions of people in our country who share his thoughts. But he's the minister, as noted, of one of our country's largest religious bodies, and - as such - wields a great deal of influence.
This is an old song, really. During the days of the Abolitionist Movement in this country, for example, there were devout folks who saw the end of slavery as a threat to the established order. They took as their Biblical text another passage from the Book of Timothy that says, "Those who are under the yoke of slavery must regard their masters worthy of full respect." Therefore, with respect this particular text, the Abolitionists were "un-biblical" and the supporters of the institution of slavery were upholding "biblical values." So, whether it was to support the institution of slavery in pre-Civil War days, or to deny basic human rights to gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered persons today - this kind of cherry picking of Bible passages to substantiate bigotry or moral shortsightedness has been with us for some time; and is really a form of idolatry.
To expand on that point, the idolatrous status that the Bible has attained in for some in this country can be largely traced to the mid-to-late 19th century and the simultaneous rise of modernism and Christian Fundamentalism. Fundamentalism in America is not an "old time religion." It's a movement that began about a century and a half ago in reaction to a whole bunch of modernistic ideas that were erupting at about the same time. These eruptions included Darwinism and the discovery of evolution, the scientific age in general, the beginnings of the drive for women's rights, the advent of psychology and psychological analysis, as well as the advent of modern Biblical analysis and criticism which was coming to be taught in the more liberal theological seminaries.
In the face of all this change and upheaval, certain sectors of American Protestantism reacted much in the same way as did the woman who was listening to my sermon back there in Stony Brook. They moved to an insistence upon the verbal inerrancy of the Bible, where there had not been such an adamant insistence previously. Fundamentalism was an effort to cling to a world view that was falling away - to try to keep it still propped up - and the insistence on Biblical inerrancy was one way of doing that. The upholding of Biblical inerrancy became equated with the upholding of Biblical values. This was when the Bible went from being revered and respected - as I believe it should be - to being made into an idol, or into a bulwark that could be held up against a radically changing world. This was an effort that, at least in part, has succeeded and continues to fuel the cultural wars and struggles that persist to this day.
But if one dismisses the Bible as an idol or as an icon or totem - as I do - what about the Bible as a book? Now that I'm done with my rant, this is the direction I'll be going for the rest of this sermon. I draw a distinction between a narrow minded appeal to something called "biblical values" and finding value in the Bible, which I do.
For openers, this collection of writings called The Bible is one of the foundational documents of the Western World. It serves as the basis for much of our cultural language. Having some familiarity with the Bible is a matter, really, of cultural literacy. Consider, for example, these expressions: He had to make a Solomon-like decision; That was a real David and Goliath contest; I was fortunate to have a Good Samaritan nearby; I think I just need to "consider the lilies" for awhile; Let's separate the wheat from the chaff here; That's like casting pearls before swine. Each of these expressions - and that's just the very short list - is rooted in Biblical story, passage, or image. To be ignorant of the Bible is to be ignorant of the origins of much of the language we speak.
Then there is the question of how those of us of the liberal religious persuasion participate and engage in a culture where the Bible is such a foundational text. An error religious liberals are often prone to when it comes to the Bible is that in tossing the icon or idol overboard, the book gets tossed as well. Here's where I turn to the wisdom of my friend and colleague in the UU ministry, and a former President of our UU Association, Dr. John Buehrens. [Some of you may remember when Rev. Buehrens spoke from this pulpit eight years ago following a trip by Interfaith Leaders trip he'd made to Iraq, to alert us - correctly, and tragically as it turned out - to the coming Iraqi War.] Let me offer you a passage from John's book Understanding the Bible. Its subtitle is "An Introduction for Skeptics, Seekers, and Religious Liberals." Here what he says:
"Today, otherwise intelligent people - religious liberals, seekers after wisdom and justice, even skeptics and the news media - often speak as though the Bible (only) says and means what the fundamentalists say that it says and means! This shows not only a lack of understanding, but also a failure of maturity and wisdom. Those who reject the Bible fail to realize that to 'throw the Bible out' because others have turned it into an idol...doesn't mean that it ever goes away. Rather it simply means that it ends up only in the hands and on the lips of others--often reactionary others--where it can and will be used against you."
Rev. Buehrens calls himself a "Biblical humanist." However much that may sound like an oxymoron to some it really isn't. He means that his essential humanism is informed by some of the wisdom and teachings found in the Bible. The Bible is not as central to my own humanistic leanings as it is with my colleague and friend, I understand, and to some extent share, his take on it.
This brings me to my final point which is to briefly share with you how, over my time in the ministry, I've developed my own version of biblical values. My move to this stance coincided, not surprisingly, with my move to the UU ministry. I have come to view the Bible as an account of the human search for the Divine, the Sacred, the Holy, or for God if you will, rather than as a text authored by God for us supplicant human beings. Some of those human searches that gave us the Bible were noble ones, others were terrible failures.
Put another way, the Bible is a human document about the efforts of human beings who were trying to reach out beyond themselves for whatever they sensed was greater than themselves. They gave this "greater thing" many names: God, Jehovah, Yahweh, The Most High, The Almighty, to cite but a few.
Some of the qualities and activities that got attributed to God, as described in the Bible, are horrific, if not terroristic. I'm thinking here of the bloody massacres done in the name of Yahweh and recorded in the Book of Joshua, as but one example. That was one of those terribly failed searches to which I just referred. Other such failures are the portrayals of an avenging, judging, minute law-giving and sometime petulant God that show up in the Old Testament - or for that matter the God who requires the blood sacrifice of his own son in the New Testament. Such portrayals represent a very crude effort on the part of human beings to imagine the Divine.
At the same time, there were much more noble and enlightened efforts to imagine the Divine. There are the descriptions of the Hebrew prophets calling, in the name of Yahweh, for a more just and humane society. There are the stories of the Prophet Amos standing in the town squares of his day and calling out "let justice roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream." When I read the accounts of his prophetic ministry I have to believe that Amos would have fit right in with the "Occupy Wall Street" folks who have been in the news of late.
Then there's Jesus, another of the Hebrew prophets really, who - also in the name of God - teaches the ways of love and kindness and compassion and healing; traits, that is to say, that represent some of the best of human efforts to find our better selves. Enlightened as he was, Jesus was also a product of his time, and his teachings on divorce indicated that he was still a part of the culture of his day in certain respects.
The Stories in the Book of Exodus - interwoven as they are with a tribalistic and nationalistic kind of god - also tell of the struggles of the escape from human bondage and the attainment of human liberation; it's a narrative that strikes a universalistic human chord about struggles for freedom every where. This is a story we tell every spring over in our dining room when we celebrate our annual Seder.
What I see in the Bible then is a progression - not a straight line progression - but a progression nonetheless from the portrayals of a very narrow, if not dangerous kind of god, to one that embodies certain universal human values. These universal values are not unlike those laid out in our Unitarian Universalist Statement of Purposes and Principles. My point, then, is that the Bible is not so much about God, any kind of God, as it's about human beings trying to discover a greater purpose and meaning - a greater holy and sacred meaning - to their lives, and using the term "God" in doing so.
To say that the Bible is a human creation, and that it has value as such, does not denigrate or devalue it any more than it denigrates good art or literature or poetry to say that they are human creations. And just as there is good, uplifting and inspiring art and poetry as well as bad - if not terrible - art, literature and poetry, well the same goes for this human document called The Bible. There is much within it that is good, uplifting, and inspiring; along with, well, a certain amount of chaff that needs to be separated from the wheat, to invoke a little biblical imagery once more.
One of the sources of our faith - as cited in our Unitarian Universalist Purposes and Principles - is "wisdom from the world's religious traditions which inspire us in our ethical and spiritual life." Some of that valuable wisdom is found in this intriguing, fascinating, and in places disturbing collection of writings called The Bible. Properly approached it can bring more light and knowledge to our lives and to our own journeys of faith.
Stephen Edington
October 16, 2011
