Generally when pastors make the news it's not a good thing. That was the case this week when Pastor Alois Bell from St. Louis made the news for stiffing a waitress at Applebee's. Pastor Bell says it was a lapse in judgment, that her privacy was violated, and reportedly asked for the waitress to be fired.
Some lessons for all of us:
1. If you say something stupid you should assume everyone is going to hear about it. The waitress should not have posted a picture of the receipt, but she also shouldn't have been stiffed by a pastor. It shouldn't surprise Pastor Bell that the picture was posted and it shouldn't surprise the waitress that she was fired. This is all really pretty predictable stuff in the era of social media and camera phones.
2. Pastor Bell is correct when she says, "I've brought embarrassment to my church and ministry." It's pretty tough to preach about Jesus loving "the least of these" when you won't even give a waitress a tip that's well within societal norms. I would say she's embarrased Christians everywhere. In his book They Like Jesus but Not the Church, Dan Kimball shares his conversation with a waitress who says she hates working on Sunday mornings because when all the Christians get out of church and come to the coffee shop and are rude and don't tip well. So this latest experience is really just one of many being experienced across the country. I'm embarrased for our faith. Not that I'm any better. I've had plenty to apologize for in my life (and apparently Pastor Bell has at least sorta-kinda apologized). We all mess up. But,
3. We need to remember that when we mess up people are watching. They're watching when we don't mess up too, but they're more likely to notice when we mess up. Once upon a time "practice what you preach" was a nice phrase to use in a sermon as a reminder to the congregation to behave. Now "practice what you preach" is a necessity in ministry. If we don't practice it, people don't believe us. I'm not saying this to pastors only, but to all Christians. If we don't practice love why should people believe God is love? If we don't practice compassion why should people believe that God is compassionate? If we don't practice forgiveness (like forgiving Pastor Bell for messing up this one time?) then why should people believe in a God who forgives?
I feel sorry for Alois Bell. Hopefully she's learned an important lesson. Hopefully all of us have.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Scripture as Timeless Truth
This post is a supplement for my sermon on January 27th, Timeless Truth vs. Changing Times. You should be able to access the sermon here. If you were there you heard me say that the passage from 2 Timothy used so often to prove the inerrancy of Scripture (Every scripture is inspired by God [or God-breathed] and is useful for teaching, for showing mistakes, for correcting, and for training character, so that the person who belongs to God can be equipped to do everything that is good.[CEB]) is actually misused to make that point. Here's some of the reasons why:
1. When 2 Timothy references "scripture" it isn't talking about what you and I know as scripture. The Bible as we know it wasn't canonized (made "official" scripture) until the 4th century. Between the time of Jesus and then a strong consensus emerged about what writings should be considered sacred, but they would not have been called scripture. Instead, for the author of 2 Timothy scripture referred to what we call the Old Testament (more or less - that's a whole other story). So at most we're now talking about only the Old Testament being infallible.
2. We have only translations from copies of original manuscripts. Most people today who say all of scripture is inerrant will say that it is infallible in the original manuscripts. This shows an understanding that there is always something lost in translation (i.e. from Greek to English or Hebrew to English) and that even the documents we have in the original language read differently. A good example is the Gospel of Mark, where some manuscripts have a short ending, some have a long ending, and others have both the short and long ending. Which one is the God inspired one? The original one - whichever that one was. The problem is we don't know which one that was. It doesn't help us to know that the original manuscript was inerrant if we don't know exactly what the original manuscript was.
3. 2 Timothy doesn't actually say that even the Old Testament is inerrant. To say "inspired by God" or "God-breathed" is close to the same thing as inerrant, but not quite. More importantly, note what the next part of the passage says. Scripture is "useful for teaching, for showing mistakes, for correcting, and for training character..." It is inspired by God for these purposes. It is not inspired by God for teaching biology, astronomy, or history. Those topics that sometimes we want the Bible to be most authoritative about are topics that 2 Timothy says are not what it is really about.
With all that said, I truly believe in the Bible. If you heard the message on the 27th I hope that was clear. We just need to be honest about what it means to say we believe in the Bible.
1. When 2 Timothy references "scripture" it isn't talking about what you and I know as scripture. The Bible as we know it wasn't canonized (made "official" scripture) until the 4th century. Between the time of Jesus and then a strong consensus emerged about what writings should be considered sacred, but they would not have been called scripture. Instead, for the author of 2 Timothy scripture referred to what we call the Old Testament (more or less - that's a whole other story). So at most we're now talking about only the Old Testament being infallible.
2. We have only translations from copies of original manuscripts. Most people today who say all of scripture is inerrant will say that it is infallible in the original manuscripts. This shows an understanding that there is always something lost in translation (i.e. from Greek to English or Hebrew to English) and that even the documents we have in the original language read differently. A good example is the Gospel of Mark, where some manuscripts have a short ending, some have a long ending, and others have both the short and long ending. Which one is the God inspired one? The original one - whichever that one was. The problem is we don't know which one that was. It doesn't help us to know that the original manuscript was inerrant if we don't know exactly what the original manuscript was.
3. 2 Timothy doesn't actually say that even the Old Testament is inerrant. To say "inspired by God" or "God-breathed" is close to the same thing as inerrant, but not quite. More importantly, note what the next part of the passage says. Scripture is "useful for teaching, for showing mistakes, for correcting, and for training character..." It is inspired by God for these purposes. It is not inspired by God for teaching biology, astronomy, or history. Those topics that sometimes we want the Bible to be most authoritative about are topics that 2 Timothy says are not what it is really about.
With all that said, I truly believe in the Bible. If you heard the message on the 27th I hope that was clear. We just need to be honest about what it means to say we believe in the Bible.
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