Stories from Prison

Richard Beck shares an amusing anecdote from his first night attending a Bible study at a prison:

One of the teachers was talking about the boyhood of Jesus and was commenting on how the bible says very little about the early years of Jesus. Reflecting on this, he asked the class "Why do you think the bible doesn't share much about the childhood of Jesus?"

No one answered until one man raised his hand and said, "I think it's because in the Coptic gospels Jesus appears to be a mean little boy."

Silence and a lot of confused looks followed.

I just smiled to myself and thought, "I might really like this class!"

What Jesus Never Said about Hell

I grew up in the church tradition where "narrow is the way" to heaven and "few there be that find it." To put it more accurately, I grew up in church circles dominated by a view that the vast majority of human beings, perhaps more than 99% of the world, will wind up in hell for not "responding to the gospel." This view is presented as Biblical, seen as a significant part of any sermon about the gospel, and used as a key motivation for missions and evangelism. Though Jesus supposedly said more about hell than about heaven, most references to hell are contained in a rather meager handful of "red letter" verses from the mouth of Jesus himself. And despite what he does say about hell, there are some very interesting statements that he does not make—if hell was as important to Jesus as we make it out to be today.

Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, for example, has lots of useful information about how to pray, give to the needy, and fast, along with admonitions not to worry and not to store up treasure on earth. All of which is fascinating and good, but completely irrelevant if the audience is going to wind up in hell. However, he does not couch these useful tidbits with a preface like, "Most of y'all are going to hell, but until you do, here's some advice about your personal finances for your days here on earth," or, "We both know you're going to hell, but let's talk about something else today." If this passage is one of Jesus' most significant messages, as many people believe, then why does Jesus say nothing about eternal punishment for most—to the multitude sitting right there at his feet? Or was he only addressing the few who would wind up in heaven and ignoring the lost causes?

We have no record of Jesus warning the woman at the well about hell, despite her string of relationship misadventures. We have no record of Jesus souring his friendships with tax collectors and winebibbers at all those dinner parties by insisting on changing the topic to God's dissatisfaction with their sinful lives and their pending damnation. No warnings about hell to the other thief on the cross. No intimate pleading with Mary and Martha, or with his own family members, for that matter, about their need to wait until after his death and resurrection and then to be "washed in the blood," lest they burn in eternal fire. Sinners, friends, strangers, or family members; all appear to be spared hearing from the lips of the savior himself the gospel message of salvation from hell.

Now, arguments from silence are problematic. Perhaps Jesus constantly hammered people about hell but the gospel writers glossed over that fact, choosing instead to share with us Jesus' many parables of the kingdom and assorted comments on other topics. But it is curious that we find no Jesus theme of "Repent, ye sinners, or I'll throw ye into hell for rejecting me!" anywhere in the gospels. Very curious, indeed. In Matthew 4:17, we read that Jesus began preaching "Repent," but nothing about hell. In a few other verses, he does warn about hell—or warn about two different words that in some translations of the Bible are sometimes translated "hell" but that maybe don't mean the "hell" that we assume today, to be more technically accurate. But these warnings are sometimes in parables, where literal, factual truth may be neither required nor assumed; mainly concern punishment for sins rather than for not being born again; and are primarily directed at religious leaders and others who thought they were already saved. The fact of the unwashed masses going to hell doesn't seem to matter so much, though God so loved the world.

 If hell is the overriding concern, and the reason he came to die on a cross, then why didn't Jesus say that? Why substitute temporal trivia, really, for crucial warnings about the paramount disaster of eternal damnation for billions of souls? Why so many, very inclusive "your father in heaven" statements to the crowds he addressed, as though the audience was already in the family of God? Was Jesus just sharing facts about a precious few other somebodies with the throngs of hell bound listeners, or did he mean that they were the blessed, and destined for heaven?

Now, maybe hell wasn't the point that the gospel writers wanted to stress in their portrayal of Jesus' message. That is possible. But maybe someone else created the "fear of hell" bandwagon, and Jesus never intended for anyone to ride on it. Maybe he never desired the gospel to be shrouded in "Turn or burn" rhetoric. Maybe, just maybe, he had other, more hopeful plans for the billions of people he came to die for, those who we preach are eternally trapped in the fires of hell.

More on this later.

Do We Know What Jesus Knew?

The Internet Monk posted an interesting list of questions about Jesus' knowledge. And it's followed by about thirty pages of comments about what the answers mean to our understanding of the God/man incarnation.

Some of my favorites:

3. Did Jesus miss any questions on the test? Did he have to study?
4. Did Jesus use tools to measure in his carpentry work? Or did he just know what to do?
8. Were Jesus questions real questions? Or were they all rhetorical?
9. If Jesus did not have exhaustive divine knowledge as a human being, does this impact our view of him as God incarnate?

Or, in the words of Relient K's lovely Christmas tune, I Celebrate the Day:

And the first time that you opened your eyes
Did you realize that you would be my savior?
And the first breath that left your lips
Did you know that it would change this world forever? 

Yet another example where language, story, and theology collide, hinting that the certainty of our formulations might just be more easily said than realized. It is one thing to affirm, in the words of the Athanasian Creed, that Jesus was "fully God, fully man," but what does this mean, practically speaking? That he always won games of chance? That the other kids as he was growing up stopped including him in riddles and jokes because he already knew the punchlines? Or that there is something about the nature of Jesus' omniscience that we haven't fully comprehended?

The faith of the Christian rests on the clear statements of Scripture alone even when we are not able to rationalize them.

The "clear statements," as opposed to the not-so-clear statements that the Bible also contains. There are some things that we just don't know—even if we read the Bible. We can speculate, opine, and argue, but we really don't know, at least in a way that we can articulate with words. As A.W. Tozer said, "Truth lies deeper than the theological statement of it" (That Incredible Christian). And that's OK, for we are known, and loved. And I'll take that over my own knowing any day.

Jesus, Satan, and Bible Kryptonite

"Jesus defeated the devil with the Word of God." This commonly heard saying refers to Jesus' temptation by Satan in the parallel passages of Luke 4 and Matthew 4. Is this adage correct, however, and what is usually meant by those who say it? Using the terminology of the OIA method, we can analyze this statement and note the range of interpretations (I) and applications (A) that are assumed or implied by it:

1. The devil was defeated (I)
2. Scripture (not Jesus?) defeated the devil (I)
3. The devil would have / might have been victorious if Jesus hadn't quoted the Scripture (I)
4. The devil did not decide to leave, or choose to leave, or agree to leave Jesus, but was powerless to resist the Bible quotations (I)

And therefore:

1. We can use scriptures to defeat the devil, just as Jesus did (A)
2. Scripture should be our primary weapon against the devil (A) —or perhaps—
3. Scripture is our only weapon against the devil (A) 

Backing up however, we should also note some facts or observations (O) about this story:

1. Jesus quoted some Bible verses to the devil (O)
2. The devil "left him" (Matthew 4:11, Luke 4:13) (O)

The devil left him. The question is whether it was because of the Scripture quoting. This is a possible case of the Correlation / Causation error.

Two nearby events can but don't always mean that one caused the other.

If we were to spend more time in the Observation stage of our reading, and if we held back the urge to jump to the "obvious" conclusions, then we should also notice the following:

3. The devil did not immediately disappear after hearing the first scripture (O)
4. The devil did not eventually leave after the first instance of Jesus quoting the Scripture, either (O)
5. The devil still hadn't been driven off after the second scripture (O)
6. The devil himself knew and quoted the Scripture (O)
7. The devil quoted the Scripture, seemingly without harming himself (O)
8. Jesus (in Matthew's account) eventually added some other words to a third scripture (O)
9. Those words were "Away from me, Satan," by the way (O)
10. After the third Scripture quote, and (in Matthew) the command to leave, the devil left (O)
11. In Luke's gospel, the devil left—not "driven off by the scriptures," but when he "had finished all this tempting" (O)
12. In both accounts, the verb used is translated as "left" or "departed," rather than "fled" or "retreated."

So, when we try to interpret and apply this story, we have several questions to ponder. If scriptures have the power to drive away the devil, why did it take three tries? Wasn't the Scripture powerful enough? Wasn't Jesus powerful enough? Wasn't scripture in the mouth of Jesus powerful enough? And what does this mean for us?

Now, is the Bible important? And relevant when facing temptation? I believe so, from experience, and from Jesus' example. But is the Bible the devil's Kryptonite? I don't think the two versions of our gospel story support such a conclusion, and I'm wary of creating a doctrine out of a single episode in the Bible. Especially a doctrine that trivializes the Scriptures by reducing them to magical incantations and charms to ward off Satan or his minions. "The devil is a better theologian than any of us," A.W. Tozer cautions, "and is a devil still." He already knows the Bible—and in the original languages, I'll wager.

Could Jesus have defeated the devil without the Scripture? I would hope so. Are we powerless without Bible verses? Is that the source of all power we have? I would hope not. How about you?