The Bible and the Gospels

Excerpts from www.powells.com/review/2008_01_21.html

Taking the Gospels Seriously, A Review by Bill McKibben

This review covers two books:

unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity...and Why It Matters, by David Kinnaman

The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good about the Good News? by Peter J. Gomes


The gospels have always been a difficult foundation on which to build a movement, in that they call on Christians to do things they might rather not - voluntarily right the balance between rich and poor, or turn the other cheek.

For Christians, what we call the Bible is only the means to a deepened understanding of what Jesus called the gospel, or glad tidings. In our zeal to crown Jesus as the content of our preaching, we have failed to give due deference to the content of his preaching.

That preaching has several important dimensions. First, it is a doctrine of reversal - of the poor lifted up and the rich laid low. It's not just that the meek will inherit the earth, a sweet enough sentiment, but that the powerful will lose it.

In Jesus' words: "How terrible for you who are rich now, you have had your easy life. How terrible for you who are full now, you will go hungry." Jesus takes sides, and usually he is found on the side of the oppressed and unlucky.

It is easy to understand why the church, once it became an important social force, chose to deemphasize this core idea. It is no accident that although Jesus came preaching a disturbing and redistributive gospel, we do not preach what Jesus preached. Instead, we preach Jesus.

The gospel is radical in other ways as well, particularly in the constantly repeated call to love your neighbor as yourself. Usually, we take "neighbor" to mean somebody very much like ourselves, bound by the same experiences and expectations, and living in proximity. Jesus, however, clearly had something different in mind.

Challenged by a lawyer to define "neighbor," Jesus answers with the story of the Good Samaritan, who was not a neighbor by any conventional definition, religious or ethnic. Jesus makes a new and transforming definition of neighbor. Proximity and kinship no longer sufficiently define who the neighbor is, and thus they no longer define those to whom obligations are due. The neighbor is the one who has opportunity to do good to one in need.

There is, if one takes any of this seriously, an obvious political message. As a nation, we have been starving for words that move and inspire us - instill hope, not fear - and suggest the highest purposes for the common good.

40% of Americans aged between 16 and 29 are have an overwhelmingly negative perception of Christianity. 87% find it judgmental, while 85% say it's hypocritical.

This shouldn't be a great surprise. So much of the modern evangelical phenomenon lacks real content. To judge by many of its books and star preachers, the faith is mostly about bringing people to Christ and then, when they've arrived, making them feel good about the decision, with a consumerist faith that bears little resemblance to the gospels. 75% of American Christians believe that the phrase "God helps those who help themselves" is found in the Bible, even though it's pretty much the opposite of "love your neighbor as yourself."

It's not clear what you're supposed to do once you've heeded the altar call, other than tithe and evangelize. What substance there is has often come in the form of opposition to "immorality" - and it's this ceaseless judgmentalism that young people in particular are noticing and disliking.

Its most admirable practitioners have begun to sense this, and to move, sometimes tentatively, in new directions. Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, has turned his suburban ministry more and more toward confronting the problems of the very poor. "My dream is that thirty years from now, the church will be known more by what it is for than what it is against. For some time now, the hands and feet of the body of Christ have been amputated, and he's been pretty much reduced to a big mouth. We talk far more than we do. It's time to reattach the limbs."

It turns out that the antipathy of the evangelical churches toward homosexuals is the single biggest reason that young people are starting to turn away from them. Because of their opposition to homosexuals, outsiders cannot picture the church as the loving community of believers Jesus envisioned. It's hard for outsiders - and even many insiders - to see it as anything other than hateful.

The Bible texts usually adduced to show that gay sex was sinful were in fact commentaries on sexual violence and prostitution. They came against a backdrop of biblical prohibitions on everything from hair-cutting to shrimp-eating, and in general had nothing to do with what people of that era couldn't easily have conceived of - committed, caring relationships between people of the same sex.

Those who attempt to use biblical standards to read gays out of full participation in the church make the Bible a tool of oppression, the church an exclusive fellowship of shared prejudice, and the glad tidings - the gospel that Jesus came to proclaim - a mockery. The gospels don't mention homosexuality. It seems to have been a topic of little interest to Jesus.