Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.
- Ephesians 5:22
(The above verse is taken out of context. I am aware of that.)
Over lunch, my eleven year old brother asked me, “why did Jesus write that wives must submit?”
My sister outright disagrees with the statement (even in its full context) – on the grounds that it doesnt have enough weight to count as a ‘commandment’. How she ascertains what counts and what doesn’t, I have no idea.
Interpretation is Everything.
My response was to not answer the question but rather correct a factual inaccuracy (Read: Red Herring), “Jesus didn’t write it. Some later apostle, most people think it’s Paul , if not one of Paul’s followers, who wrote it. In fact, Jesus didn’t write anything….oh yeah, why huh?” Which leads on to my thought of the day: why didn’t Jesus do any of his own writing? Like issue a gospel of Jesus.
The boy then asked, “If Jesus didn’t write it, then why must follow?”
Someone at the table responded something about god-inspired word. (I can’t remember who really. I’m a bad transcriber)
The boy goes on, “But then anyone can say that they’re god inspired and then write whatever right? How do people know whether someone is god inspired or not?”
Brother of Jesus, or so he says
To digress a bit, I’m quite interested in how the typical christian grapples with unpalatable biblical statements. A) They accept the unpalatable statement — which would be…unpalatable. B) They question the veracity of the particular statement — which is inadvertently casts doubt on the entire text. C) Interpret the hell out of it. Use all legal and literary tools of interpretation to make it palatable.
I could go into a lengthy discussion about how the statement could be interpreted to be more palatable in its context, but my brother’s question struck at something more fundamental.
I simply told him, “Boy, don’t ask this kind of heretical questions. Not on sunday at least.“
It was a bit tempting to do the recently fashionable way of not answering questions properly by replying with a “What do you think?”
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June 18, 2012 at 3:16 pm
Celine
D) It’s to read the entire chapter and context without trying to make it palatable
E) It’s also to ask what defines palatable
June 18, 2012 at 3:56 pm
King of Siam
By palatable, I wasn’t referring to fuzzy questions of “what is fair/ethical/just”. I was referring to what a reader/believer personally finds to be disagreeable. It’s a psychological rather than philosophical question.
So in this instance, some of us find the surface level interpretation of the wife submitting to be unpalatable, or disagreeable.
Two other examples:
1) How does a homosexual christian grapple with biblical statements which contradict his belief system?
2) How does someone who finds the idea of Hell unpalatable deal with it?
D certainly applies to the above verse (and the discussion would be damn length), but sometimes context doesn’t make anything more palatable.
June 19, 2012 at 2:24 am
Celine
(E) applies to the psychological too. It’s not about philosophical definitions. It’s personal definition. Like why do you find it psychologically disagreeable, what world view were you using to find it disagreeable, what suppositions did you have? Why is it opposite to what you think about? How did the ‘belief system’ come about? Where did the concepts of Hell and what it should be come about? Context may not make things more palatable. But understanding why your position is and whether that position is (going to bring up a word that you might not agree with) right or wrong according to biblical standards. In other words, maybe you’ll find your belief system about 1 and 2 is inconsistent and wrong, and have to fix it. Or maybe you don’t, and in that case it’s perfectly fine to then reject Christianity and move on to something that works for you – your own definitions of palatable or not.
June 19, 2012 at 3:04 pm
King of Siam
The problem arises when 1) you recognise an inconsistency but 2) you just can’t fix it.
I can see where you’re coming from, (James 2:10, Matt 5:19, Rev 3:16) but let’s consider the example of the gay christian. In practice, I doubt psychoanalytical questioning is that effective in straightening a homosexual. Yet there are gay christians who don’t reject christianity entirely. They attempt to grapple with it.
Given that “fixing” an integral part of himself is easier said than done, my question is: how does the gay christian (who, by the way, exists) deal with this dissonance if he is reluctant to reject religion entirely?