Feeds:Sunday
So today I came along what might just be the locum durissimum of the Bible. Granted, I'm using a weighted scale, here, since one expects the New Testament to be a little less harsh than the old. Y'know, forgivenes.... and all that. And I was reading the NIV, too, which is not exactly know for harshness (though that may have something to do with how harsh it seems, by contrast; I just looked it up in Kig James's and it didn't really stand out that much).
The NIV reads Matthew 7:21-23 as, "Not everyone who says to me,'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'"
Now, there are many different interpritations of the Bible, and, obviously, this one condemns those who use the name of God without the spirit, eg. bad televangelists, that guy in Leap of Faith, the Crusades, the inquisition (I find it -interesting is the word I think I want- that my mind jumped first to modern examples, serveral of which are not listed for reasons of politic). But it totally doesn't stop there. We are not exempt from this purvue. I feel like this passage sneaks up on the message of grace and hamstrings it while no one is looking. I mean, it's still there, but now it's barely limping along. How can we trust in grace to be saved, when this passge seems to say all at once both that we cannot be saved by faith, unless it be carried out in our actions, (I apologise if I'm slipping into jargon; I'm hoping to make this rant intelligible to anyone who cares to read it, not just the churchy types) and that, forthermore, those actions which we might presume to be good (miracle, prophesy, clensing, all in the name of God) are no good at all, both from a practical salvation perspective (to which I, I admit, subscribe, and which is a very hard jar to get out of) and from a purely altruistic one (that is, one motivated only by the doing of God's will, and by nothing more, which school I greatly admire, but with which I have a very hard time in practice). Where does that leave us? What can we now do?
I also find it striking that this passage occurs soon under a most Ecumenical passage (sorry, I don't know the Latin for ecumenical), Matthew 7:16-18 & 20, which reads (in the NIV), "By their fruit you will recognise them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bda tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Thus, by their fruit you will recognise them."
Now, this is set up as a metphor of people, and seems to say that what matters about someone is what they produce, be it good fruit (Love, Peace, Kindness.... ya'll get the idea) or bad fruit (which I dare say include Hate, Strife, and Cruelty). Now, I'm going to set my previous politic motivations aside and give an example. One can see that whoever is responsible for the American War Machine (which is not, it should be noted, necessarily George W. Bush - he's got a lot of sneaky sorts in there with him, remember) has produced quite a lot of Strife and Cruelty, and most likely Hate as well. On the other hand, I have a friend, lovely girl, unchurched and un'Christian', who is nothing if not Loving and Kind. This passage emphasises (or for some, proclaims, possibly for the first time) that not all who do the work of God are labeled as such, and not all who are so labeled do such work.
So here, then, we have two passages: one comforting, the other confounding. But how does one really deal with either? Perhaps I err in presenting them seperately. Both deal with telling what is good from what is bad, and both leave one without many good clues for discretising them. Perhaps they cannot be. Perhaps they could not be.
And yet, some people think the Bible is black and white. "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
Me, I'm gonna go now and listen to "The Christians and the Pagans" by Dar Williams. Yeah, I know, Leah told me, I'm a girl. And after that, I'll listen to more Magnetic Fields. In the past day and a half, I've listened to "Reno Dakota" fifteen times. That's ten times a day, which, I grant, is only one minute out of every 144 listening to it. I mean, gross.
If anyone didn't get that, punch yourself. If you did, you should probably punch me. I'll be waiting.
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