E
Weird Belief Produces Weird Christians
by Ed Gungor
We all have a set of “lenses” by which we look at the world—a method or principle we use to interpret truth. These “lenses” help us determine the meaning of what is going on around us. For example, in the premodern world a violent natural event like an earthquake or an exploding volcano was thought of as some kind of vengeance from the gods. That was their lens. Pagan gods do that sort of thing.
Whenever there was a natural disaster, people assumed someone had killed a sacred animal or had committed some heinous crime that angered the gods, and the cataclysmic event was retribution for that immoral act. In the modern world, we know natural disasters brew because of a number of very natural conditions. That is our lens. What premoderns saw as acts of the gods, moderns see as the logical result of nature’s adjustments. No vengeance here.
Different sets of lenses lead to different interpretations.
The lenses we use provide a framework for processing data, just like prescription eyeglasses “frame” what we (who need them) see. I remember getting my first pair of eyeglasses as a kid and being amazed at how it helped me see the world in a whole new way—clearly. I had become used to the blur.
A Conspiracy Lens
In my small hometown in rural Wisconsin, I knew a lady who believed there was no way the United States ever got those men on the moon—not really. When asked about the live television broadcasts that captured the event, she would say, “It was all Hollywood. They staged the whole thing. It was fake, and a bunch of people made a lot of money from our tax dollars.”
Her “glasses” made the whole thing appear as a hoax. She viewed life through a “conspiracy” lens.
When you use a faulty set of lenses (methods or tools) to interpret something, the world will end up looking distorted and weird, and not unlike trying to wear someone else’s glasses—it will give you a headache.
Sadly, there are loads of bizarre, very distorting lenses people use to interpret their lives. These distort the world of truth and give people lots of headaches. And there is no place where this is truer than in the context of religion. When it comes to what we believe about God (theology), how we think he wants us to live (doctrines), what we can or cannot do (commandments and injunctions), etc., Christians have so many different sets of glasses; we make Elton John’s eyewear collection seem paltry.
All kinds of things influence the way we see things: our experiences, our parents, Dr. Phil, our friends, the churches we’ve attended, The Matrix, our prejudices, expectations, hopes, failures, God, the devil, being American, an Oprah show we once saw—these all color the way we interpret our world and our faith. They color our lenses.
Sporting BluBlockers
Back in the ’80s there was a huge promotion for BluBlocker sunglasses. They boasted of providing UV and blue-light protection for the eyes. I sported a pair of those unisex “As seen on TV” sunglasses with a large degree of misguided pride (you should see the pictures!).
One day my family and I were heading out of town and we stopped to fill up with gas and grab some treats from the quick mart. Gail asked me to get her some of her favorite gum. I always recognized her gum by the color of the package. She liked the Wriggles kind in the big blue pack. I grabbed it, paid, and brought it back to the car.
We were heading down the road when she asked, “Why didn’t you get me my regular kind?”
“I did,” I answered.
“No, you didn’t,” she said as she pointed to the pack.
I took the gum, held it up, and said rather sarcastically, “Gail, the pack is blue. This is the kind you like!”
She paused for a second and said, “Take off the BluBlockers, Eddie.”
I reached up and pulled off the glasses and realized I had inadvertently purchased the green gum, thinking I was purchasing the blue gum. Something in the BluBlockers made the green pack look blue.
That’s what happens to us. Our lives are “colored” by our experience, and we interpret our surroundings uncritically. That means what looks true sometimes isn’t, and what looks untrue is sometimes true. All of us have some BluBlocker coloring going on in our lenses at some level. Our ideas, presuppositions, and even prejudices color our reasoning and interpretive skills. We don’t see accurately.
The Good Book
I love the Bible. It is a book full of narrative history, genealogies, laws, poetry, proverbs, prophetic oracles, riddles, drama, biographical sketches, parables, letters, sermons, and apocalypses.
I want to say it’s magical, but some of my evangelical brothers and sisters would get nervous. It is definitely a mystical book that fills the believing heart with life, wonder, grace, power, and comfort. All believers treasure the Bible. It has been the best seller in the world since printing began. When the Gutenberg press was invented, the first words it reproduced were the words of the Bible.
However, I think we have done a disservice to people by giving them the impression that the Bible is easy. We imply that it’s easy to understand and easy to apply. But that’s like saying marriage is easy. Certainly marriage can be wonderful, but it is not easy. It is not easy for men to understand women, and vice versa. The same is true for the Bible. Understanding it is often very difficult. There are texts that seem impossible to comprehend. That is why, throughout history, so many have misused the Bible in so many horrible ways.
It is hard to imagine, but the sacred Scriptures, which have brought unspeakable comfort and blessing to countless millions, have been used to bring pain, horror, and death to many. The Bible was used to justify the instruments used on “heretics” (the Christians who disagreed with the Christians who were in charge) during the Inquisition. Christian leaders used iron collars with spikes to impale the throats of those who opposed them, as well as stretching machines that tore people apart—in the name of God, of course.
Throughout history, the Bible has been used to defend violence against racial minorities, women, Jews, abortionists, and homosexuals.
On a less destructive but equally ridiculous note, believers throughout history have used the Bible to “prove” specifically when Jesus Christ would return. (I guess Jesus never got the memo.)
When faced with the possibility of war, one group has used Scripture to prove we should go to war, while the group on the other side of the ideological aisle used the same Bible to prove we are never supposed to go to war.
How can this be? How can there be such divergent thought about the truth?
BluBlockers.
Some would argue that the Bible doesn’t need “interpretation,” and for many texts that is true—they just need to be obeyed. Paul commands, “Do everything without complaining or arguing” (Phil. 2:14). That doesn’t need interpretation; it needs obedience, plain and simple.
But not all texts are that simple. And if we are not careful, we will think our understanding of what we read is the understanding that the Holy Spirit intended. But that is a huge assumption, and it ignores the fact that our experiences, the culture we live in, and prior understanding of words and ideas always inject themselves into what we read. We are kidding ourselves if we think our unseen biases cannot lead us astray and cause us to read unintended ideas into the text. We have to come to grips with the fact that the gum isn’t always blue, even if it looks that way to us.
I’m droning on, but I need to cite one example.
Let’s say you grew up believing that it is wrong for people to get tattoos and have their body pierced. Maybe you heard your mom and dad say it was wrong. Or perhaps it’s because, when you were growing up, tattoos and body piercing were only fashionable for mean-looking bikers, biker chicks, and those on the short end of the socioeconomic scale. Is that an unfair prejudice? Yeah. But if that was your experience, and it impacts how you think.
Whatever the reason, inbred opinions cause us to read Bible texts with a predetermined selectivity—some texts literally pop off the page at us, while others remain completely ignored.
We come across a verse like, “Do not cut your bodies . . . or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the Lord” (Lev. 19:28) and it leaps off the page to us. And when an internal “resonance” occurs, it can feel very much like a spiritual epiphany—like the voice of God. No wonder tattoos and piercings trouble us so, we reason. God feels that same way!
Never mind that in the previous verse men are told, never “cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard” (Lev. 19:27). We ignore that. But if we choose to obey the command that forbids tattoos or piercings on the basis of God’s Word, we must by necessity of reason demand that men grow side “mullets” and scraggly, untrimmed beards—with a great big “Praise the Lord!”
So, why aren’t we fair and reasonable with Bible texts like these? Because something in us longs to emphasize the verses that resonate with our own opinions and biases, while ignoring the ones that don’t. However, it’s one thing to interpret things in a biased, squirrelly way; it’s quite another to slap God’s endorsement on our interpretation. But people do it every day.
Seventeenth century mathematician Blaise Pascal once wrote, “Truly it is an evil to be full of faults, but it is a still greater evil to be unwilling to recognize them.” We must recognize our inclination to believe that we think clearly and accurately all the time. But we are all Blublocker’d and we must acknowledge that.
We can’t trust ourselves; we must ask for help—from God and others. This is why the psalmist cried out, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Ps. 139:23–24).
by Ed Gungor
We all have a set of “lenses” by which we look at the world—a method or principle we use to interpret truth. These “lenses” help us determine the meaning of what is going on around us. For example, in the premodern world a violent natural event like an earthquake or an exploding volcano was thought of as some kind of vengeance from the gods. That was their lens. Pagan gods do that sort of thing.
Whenever there was a natural disaster, people assumed someone had killed a sacred animal or had committed some heinous crime that angered the gods, and the cataclysmic event was retribution for that immoral act. In the modern world, we know natural disasters brew because of a number of very natural conditions. That is our lens. What premoderns saw as acts of the gods, moderns see as the logical result of nature’s adjustments. No vengeance here.
Different sets of lenses lead to different interpretations.
The lenses we use provide a framework for processing data, just like prescription eyeglasses “frame” what we (who need them) see. I remember getting my first pair of eyeglasses as a kid and being amazed at how it helped me see the world in a whole new way—clearly. I had become used to the blur.
A Conspiracy Lens
In my small hometown in rural Wisconsin, I knew a lady who believed there was no way the United States ever got those men on the moon—not really. When asked about the live television broadcasts that captured the event, she would say, “It was all Hollywood. They staged the whole thing. It was fake, and a bunch of people made a lot of money from our tax dollars.”
Her “glasses” made the whole thing appear as a hoax. She viewed life through a “conspiracy” lens.
When you use a faulty set of lenses (methods or tools) to interpret something, the world will end up looking distorted and weird, and not unlike trying to wear someone else’s glasses—it will give you a headache.
Sadly, there are loads of bizarre, very distorting lenses people use to interpret their lives. These distort the world of truth and give people lots of headaches. And there is no place where this is truer than in the context of religion. When it comes to what we believe about God (theology), how we think he wants us to live (doctrines), what we can or cannot do (commandments and injunctions), etc., Christians have so many different sets of glasses; we make Elton John’s eyewear collection seem paltry.
All kinds of things influence the way we see things: our experiences, our parents, Dr. Phil, our friends, the churches we’ve attended, The Matrix, our prejudices, expectations, hopes, failures, God, the devil, being American, an Oprah show we once saw—these all color the way we interpret our world and our faith. They color our lenses.
Sporting BluBlockers
Back in the ’80s there was a huge promotion for BluBlocker sunglasses. They boasted of providing UV and blue-light protection for the eyes. I sported a pair of those unisex “As seen on TV” sunglasses with a large degree of misguided pride (you should see the pictures!).
One day my family and I were heading out of town and we stopped to fill up with gas and grab some treats from the quick mart. Gail asked me to get her some of her favorite gum. I always recognized her gum by the color of the package. She liked the Wriggles kind in the big blue pack. I grabbed it, paid, and brought it back to the car.
We were heading down the road when she asked, “Why didn’t you get me my regular kind?”
“I did,” I answered.
“No, you didn’t,” she said as she pointed to the pack.
I took the gum, held it up, and said rather sarcastically, “Gail, the pack is blue. This is the kind you like!”
She paused for a second and said, “Take off the BluBlockers, Eddie.”
I reached up and pulled off the glasses and realized I had inadvertently purchased the green gum, thinking I was purchasing the blue gum. Something in the BluBlockers made the green pack look blue.
That’s what happens to us. Our lives are “colored” by our experience, and we interpret our surroundings uncritically. That means what looks true sometimes isn’t, and what looks untrue is sometimes true. All of us have some BluBlocker coloring going on in our lenses at some level. Our ideas, presuppositions, and even prejudices color our reasoning and interpretive skills. We don’t see accurately.
The Good Book
I love the Bible. It is a book full of narrative history, genealogies, laws, poetry, proverbs, prophetic oracles, riddles, drama, biographical sketches, parables, letters, sermons, and apocalypses.
I want to say it’s magical, but some of my evangelical brothers and sisters would get nervous. It is definitely a mystical book that fills the believing heart with life, wonder, grace, power, and comfort. All believers treasure the Bible. It has been the best seller in the world since printing began. When the Gutenberg press was invented, the first words it reproduced were the words of the Bible.
However, I think we have done a disservice to people by giving them the impression that the Bible is easy. We imply that it’s easy to understand and easy to apply. But that’s like saying marriage is easy. Certainly marriage can be wonderful, but it is not easy. It is not easy for men to understand women, and vice versa. The same is true for the Bible. Understanding it is often very difficult. There are texts that seem impossible to comprehend. That is why, throughout history, so many have misused the Bible in so many horrible ways.
It is hard to imagine, but the sacred Scriptures, which have brought unspeakable comfort and blessing to countless millions, have been used to bring pain, horror, and death to many. The Bible was used to justify the instruments used on “heretics” (the Christians who disagreed with the Christians who were in charge) during the Inquisition. Christian leaders used iron collars with spikes to impale the throats of those who opposed them, as well as stretching machines that tore people apart—in the name of God, of course.
Throughout history, the Bible has been used to defend violence against racial minorities, women, Jews, abortionists, and homosexuals.
On a less destructive but equally ridiculous note, believers throughout history have used the Bible to “prove” specifically when Jesus Christ would return. (I guess Jesus never got the memo.)
When faced with the possibility of war, one group has used Scripture to prove we should go to war, while the group on the other side of the ideological aisle used the same Bible to prove we are never supposed to go to war.
How can this be? How can there be such divergent thought about the truth?
BluBlockers.
Some would argue that the Bible doesn’t need “interpretation,” and for many texts that is true—they just need to be obeyed. Paul commands, “Do everything without complaining or arguing” (Phil. 2:14). That doesn’t need interpretation; it needs obedience, plain and simple.
But not all texts are that simple. And if we are not careful, we will think our understanding of what we read is the understanding that the Holy Spirit intended. But that is a huge assumption, and it ignores the fact that our experiences, the culture we live in, and prior understanding of words and ideas always inject themselves into what we read. We are kidding ourselves if we think our unseen biases cannot lead us astray and cause us to read unintended ideas into the text. We have to come to grips with the fact that the gum isn’t always blue, even if it looks that way to us.
I’m droning on, but I need to cite one example.
Let’s say you grew up believing that it is wrong for people to get tattoos and have their body pierced. Maybe you heard your mom and dad say it was wrong. Or perhaps it’s because, when you were growing up, tattoos and body piercing were only fashionable for mean-looking bikers, biker chicks, and those on the short end of the socioeconomic scale. Is that an unfair prejudice? Yeah. But if that was your experience, and it impacts how you think.
Whatever the reason, inbred opinions cause us to read Bible texts with a predetermined selectivity—some texts literally pop off the page at us, while others remain completely ignored.
We come across a verse like, “Do not cut your bodies . . . or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the Lord” (Lev. 19:28) and it leaps off the page to us. And when an internal “resonance” occurs, it can feel very much like a spiritual epiphany—like the voice of God. No wonder tattoos and piercings trouble us so, we reason. God feels that same way!
Never mind that in the previous verse men are told, never “cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard” (Lev. 19:27). We ignore that. But if we choose to obey the command that forbids tattoos or piercings on the basis of God’s Word, we must by necessity of reason demand that men grow side “mullets” and scraggly, untrimmed beards—with a great big “Praise the Lord!”
So, why aren’t we fair and reasonable with Bible texts like these? Because something in us longs to emphasize the verses that resonate with our own opinions and biases, while ignoring the ones that don’t. However, it’s one thing to interpret things in a biased, squirrelly way; it’s quite another to slap God’s endorsement on our interpretation. But people do it every day.
Seventeenth century mathematician Blaise Pascal once wrote, “Truly it is an evil to be full of faults, but it is a still greater evil to be unwilling to recognize them.” We must recognize our inclination to believe that we think clearly and accurately all the time. But we are all Blublocker’d and we must acknowledge that.
We can’t trust ourselves; we must ask for help—from God and others. This is why the psalmist cried out, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Ps. 139:23–24).