A Good Rebuke from a Good Friend

(Ben´s response to what I wrote about bad Bible interpretation. It speaks very well for itself)

Since I’m supposedly a theologian extraordinaire and I’ve already talked with the author about most of this, I offer some counterpoint: One must remember and be aware of the fact the great strength and great weakness of our Anabaptist heritage is our literal interpretation of Scripture. This has led at times to prophetic portraits of Christian ethics and community, and has at other times created really bad stuff which borders on cultic esotericism. We can at least laud our charismatic young sister for believing in the authority of the Scripture, even if she doesn’t possess sufficient hermeneutic principles to avoid bordering on heresy. (Although, in saying that, I also have to laud the preacher at the cult who continually repeated that everything he said was based on Scripture.)

One must also remember that this charismatic young woman has a strange polarization of Christian witnesses influencing her hermeneutics: mainly a legalistic authoritarian tradition and a Pentecostal-esque fervor which is almost inevitable in South American evangelical Protestantism. Does that excuse bad teaching? Not exactly, but it’s important to remember that that neither she nor her mentors were in any moment knowingly leading others astray through faulty and wrong Bible teaching. They were doing the best they could with the best that they had, which is pretty valuable in the ethics of the Kingdom.

Allow me to clarify something more: the principles which this sister was using bad Biblical exposition to teach were very important points which the group needed to hear. She used a great deal of discretion to guide the group into greater intentionality in worship; most of things she purported make a lot of sense when compared, for example, with 1 Corinthians 14. Obviously proper ends require proper means, but I was greatly comforted by the fact that her message was pertinent and timely in addressing the situation of praise and worship team.What I would like to highlight is that “orthodoxy” (even just the word) rings pretty clangily without a thoroughly established context of love. Good doctrine is essential; but good doctrine is pointless without love. Of course I’m quick to admit that without a good doctrinal base, love becomes perverted and even impossible. But if the chief end of man to love God and enjoy him forever, orthodoxy can do no more than provide the necessary direction for that love.

Orthodoxy without love does not create orthopraxy. Quite contrarily, it creates the vilest of character qualities, the subtleties of which C.S. Lewis is so good at describing in many of his works. So I am willing to suggest that Jason’s equation may be a bit wrong. I’ve even seen that bad doctrine is often transformed by a genuine love for God into pretty good practice. I think the promise about the Holy Ghost teaching us what we need to know really holds true, and that through her deep devotion to the One and True God of Scriptures, our charismatic young worship leader is being led by the Counselor into the whole Truth. Of course, that Spirit-leading will almost necessarily involve me and other Biblicist brothers and sisters who are willing to humbly speak the truth in love. But thankfully, even if we’re too concerned for orthodoxy that we’re impeded in loving our sister, the Spirit is capable of innumerable other means, and will keep the Church, his body of believers, strangely saintly.