What happens when you let God read the Bible for you?
A lot of Christians spend a lot of time quoting the Bible, as if doing so automatically says something about God.
But a lot of the time, quoting the Bible says more about us than it does about God.
For instance, people in the 16th-19th century who pointed to the Bible as justification for the Transatlantic slave trade and its resulting practice of chattel slavery told us far more about themselves than they did about God. People who point to the Bible today to restrict women from performing certain functions in the church and in society are telling us far more about themselves than they are about God. Those who point to Christian scriptures to die on the hill fighting against civil authorities issuing marriage licenses to same-gender couples are telling us far more about themselves than they are about God.
The Bible presents a few different snapshots of God, but the only time God is presented as trying to keep people from living in freedom is when the serpent deceives Adam and Even in the garden.
In Genesis, God is introduced to us as creator. In Exodus, God is revealed to us as a liberator & deliberator. In the Law, God we learn some of what God’s holiness requires. In the prophets, we learn some of what God’s mercy and justice requires. And in the gospel, we get to learn how this God (who is with us) handles the word of God to the extent that it can be presented in scripture.
You might know the pattern by now: “you have heard it said… but I say…”
Time and again, we see Jesus addressing and refining the ways that people interact with the words their community holds sacred.
But there’s one of them that always stands out to me. And it stands out because the more I think about it, the more humbly I have to approach the Bible every time I open it.
Every single time I read Matthew 19:8, I have to entertain the fact that I’ve been wrong about a whole lot as far as quoting the Bible is concerned.
It might be helpful if I shared a bit of the text here:
3 Some Pharisees came to him, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” 7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?” 8 He said to them, “It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”
-Matthew 19:3-9 (NRSV)
It seems relatively straight forward. Divorce is bad. But there’s a legitimate question in there in verse 7. “Why Moses got us signin’ them papers then?” (Matthew 19:7, Treyslation)
The most often cited passage of the Hebrew Bible cited when people are trying to piece together the Jewish foundations of this dispute is found in Deuteronomy 24. It reads:
1 If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, 2 and if after she leaves his house she becomes the wife of another man, 3 and her second husband dislikes her and writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, or if he dies, 4 then her first husband, who divorced her, is not allowed to marry her again after she has been defiled. That would be detestable in the eyes of the Lord. Do not bring sin upon the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.
-Deuteronomy 24:1-4 (NRSV)
Now, a lot of people have spent a lot of time trying to wiggle around this uncomfortable passage by saying that Moses does not command or even permit divorce, but merely acknowledges the reality of divorce. Which is a weird thing to spend time doing. Because on top of that not being what most people understood to be happening in that text, that’s not even what Jesus argues. Plus, that passage is smack dab in the middle of walls and walls of text with Moses very explicitly telling people what to and not to do. Moses sure picked an awkward time to merely acknowledge a reality without commenting on its permissiveness or morality. But Moses’s clarity on these matters is central here. That’s part of what makes the text so sacred. It helps define them as a people.
Which leads to a pretty important observation if you don’t blow by it…
Jesus uses this particular passage (and the question asked of it) to provide and example of a time when the sacred scriptures do not fully and clearly present the will & character of God.
Did you catch it? Jesus straight up says it! It’s right there in Matthew 19:8. It was because y’all are hardheaded that Moses said any of that stuff in the first place. But that ain’t how it’s ‘posed to be.
When we let God read the Bible for us, we learn that the inspiration of the Holy Spirit has not erased the human fingerprints from the text. Our own hardheaded and hardheartedness is right there in the text. Sometimes, our own faults are the meat of the text. We can end up doubling down on nonsense when we quote the Bible apart from the Spirit of God.
It is for this reason I think of these words regularly:
“If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, it is time we got rid of Him.”
-James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
When God reads the Bible for us, it always makes us larger, freer, and more loving. If reading the Bible isn’t doing that, then we’re probably telling on ourselves.
This is how we do it…
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While you’re here…
My first book (!!!) Theologizin’ Bigger releases next week!!!! There’s still time to preorder!
If you have a book club, small group, church meeting where you think you’d like to have me speak in person or via Zoom I’d love to see if we can make that happen! Or if you or your church have an email newsletter, I could provide you with an excerpt from the book (with my publisher's okay).
“Our own hardheaded and hardheartedness is right there in the text. Sometimes, our own faults are the meat of the text. We can end up doubling down on nonsense when we quote the Bible apart from the Spirit of God.” Bro be preaching. This right here is so true.
This reminds me when Jesus was going off and said “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me” You can’t read with your own discernment at all. You’ll miss the whole point. Thanks for this breakdown man. Love these!
Oh--didn’t even realize that’s the name of your podcast! I was just referring to the Treyslation of Matthew 19:7 in this post 😀. But yes, now I’ll definitely check out the podcast!