Adding to God (April 2012)

Do Not Add or Subtract...
Over the past two months we talked about how our perceptions of our mothers and fathers could color the way we see God. This month we'll be talking about the ideas we add to scripture, and how they affect the way some see God. This month's passage is Romans 14:4-13.

⁴ Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand. ⁵ One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. ⁶ Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. ⁷ For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. ⁸ If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. ⁹ For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. ¹⁰ You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. ¹¹ It is written:  “‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will acknowledge God.’” ¹² So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God. ¹³ Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister.

Do you know of some things that people add to scripture? There's a good chance something just popped into your mind, an example of the kinds of things we add to scripture that may, or may not, change the purpose of a passage. Did you think of anything? What was it? Why do you think that came to mind? Is it something from your past or something that you've noticed in others that is particularly irksome? I actually just recently wrote a post about one of my pet peeves of belief. It may surprise you that this isn't a problem I have with my own beliefs, but the beliefs of others.

See, beliefs we don't understand or agree with bother us because we don't get it. But the worst thing we could do is belittle those that hold the belief or refuse to hear them out as they try to explain it to us. And yet this is often what we do, isn't it? We cast our vote without listening, claim the biblical high ground, and place a wall around ourselves that keeps us from talking with one another. And since we don't really talk about these deeply personal deep matters, we don't really know others on a personal level, unless they agree with us.

The things that we add to, or take away from, scripture can be deeply personal to us. We can choose to focus on certain passages that bolster our views - to the exclusion of other biblical points of view - or ignore those passages that are particularly menacing to our opinions. We are persons who, as we read, personally interpret our Bibles from personal places for personal reasons. This can be hard to hear because many of us say in our hearts: "I'm just taking the text as it is, I'm just reading what's there, and everyone else is dreaming up things that aren't really there."

Admitting that our personal stories intersect with God's word to experience that deeply personal God can be something of a double-edged sword, can't it? What if I were to say we need to try to remove our personal biases from our readings of the Bible? That can be confusing because we know that God is a deeply personal God who meets us where we are and works in and through us in spite of our failings.

But see, what I've just done is given all of us the freedom to read God's word from our current place in the faith and not judge ourselves or others too harshly in the process. The truth is, we can't read the word devoid of our personhood because it's who we are. God knows that, and that's okay! As we grow in Christ, we learn and change. And in time, we begin to value our relationship with Jesus as He teaches us (and others) and put much less stock in what others think, and trying to prove who's right or wrong.

And in truth, does arguing our case well make us more valuable as a person before God?