These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come.
(1 Cor. 10:11, NIV)
The best way to get a handle on interpreting the Old Testament is to repaint the heroes as villains. The Bible is God’s holy word. It is inspired. But we confuse inspiration with inspirational. Just because God wrote the book doesn’t mean he populated it with good guys. On the contrary, and I think this is one of the most amazing aspects of the Bible as a sacred text, you get to read all the dirt on God’s chosen people. His kings were killers and schemers. His prophets were ragers and whackos. It’s as if God is his own hostile witness, daring you to idolize his chosen ones.
There’s only one good guy in the Bible. God. Everybody else is 100% human and only occasionally divine. And frankly, some of the unflattering depictions of God have more to do with the character of those describing him than himself. Can we be honest and admit that a large part of the Old Testament is nationalistic rather than theological in character? The story of Lot’s daughters is there for one purpose: to show what rotten people the Moabites and Ammonites are. Ethnic hatred. Genocide. Radical religious fundamentalism. It’s all there for your reading enjoyment. Actually, it’s there to show God’s faithfulness in the face of our wretchedness. The great triumph of the Hebrew Scriptures is the ability to transparently reveal the ugly undersurface of man’s quest for pleasure and meaning. Over all of it God hovers, towers even: the rose among thorns, the pearl among swine, the Snow White among dwarves.
God is the only hero of the Bible. Every story, book, chapter and verse places his goodness in high relief by showing the wretchedness of humanity. As Christians we read the Old Testament for good examples: good examples of our villainy. Stop looking for positive examples in the Old Testament. The single most liberating change you can make in your Bible reading is to put the black hat on our head where it belongs. When we look at any Old Testament character we can see ourselves, not as what we could be, but as what we were before Christ redeemed us.
Bad Boy Bible Study answers these questions:
- What does this story show us about human nature?
- What does this story show us about God’s character?
- How does “Christ in us” offer a better alternative to this passage?
In my next post, I’ll show several examples of Bad Boy Bible Study in action. It’s illuminating. And inspiring. It allows you to enjoy the ripping good stories of the Old Testament for what they are: morality plays in which we can’t pay the rent, the train is coming down the track and one of the patriarchs is twirling his moustaches.
Previous posts:
Now this one I don’t like. Sure we can’t make the Catholic mistake of idolizing everyone from Peter to Patrick, but to emphasise the weaknesses in people brings its own set of problems.
You make the mistake of disregarding even the true words of these “sinners.” You know what I mean: things like Paul was a chauvenist so carefully cut out the pages of Corinthians and Timothy that deal with women.
And you make the mistake of disregarding the heroic exploits of God’s spiritual warriors because of the times they fell. Because of the time Elijah fled to Sinai, you paint both that AND the mighty stand-off on Carmel as the work of a coward.
It is good to remember that God’s soldiers were themselves human and forced to fight as much as we are ourselves, taking caution from the cases when they fell and even more so rejoicing when they overcame. The first two points are great, but they come naturally where needed: the Bible makes it quite clear that Uriah’s murder was a BAD and Peter’s denial was a BAD, so a look at human sinfullness and God’s judgement & mercy is almost default.
The trouble comes when you apply it to the other bits: To Paul when he is writing as one who has the Lord’s Spirit to or a prophet to whom the word of the Lord was given. It’s a mistake I made with the Book of Job: disregarding all of it because it is full of human wisdom. But it is full of whole chapters that speak the truth of God’s love, glory, power, justice, or greater purpose. I acknowledge the failings of Job’s three friends and do try my hardest to avoid duplicating them, but to ignore (or worse invert) the rest is like refusing to eat meat lest you ingest some fat. What a waste of a good spiritual lunch!
I’m specifically looking at Old Testament but your point is well taken. Although BBBS doesn’t exclude the possibility of good examples to follow in the Old Testament, it does take as its default that what we’re reading is shadow of the good things to come and not our reality. That in my opinion provides a helpful starting position for spiritual application of the OT.
Wasn’t Daniel a good boy?
Jeff
On the spectrum of OT characters, he’s at the good end.
Still the 1-2-3 can be used in his case.
Every OT character shared with us in “total depravity”. But, as properly understood and explained in that fount of theological wisdom Wikipedia,
So, like us, they have their good points and their bad ones. Both sides of their character “were written down as warnings for us” (1 Corinthians 10:11, TNIV).
Yes, to TD. Only Christ and his unlimited atonement make a difference in the lives of new covenant people.
The Christian distinctive is Christ. If any OT character could be “good” without Christ, his redemption would be unneeded.
[...] David Ker: The best way to get a handle on interpreting the Old Testament is to repaint the heroes as [...]
You sound like the late Francis A. Schaeffer: “If someone asked us, ‘What is the Bible?’ we probably would not begin our answer by saying, ‘The Bible is a realistic book.’ Yet in the 20th century, this may be the best place to start – to stress the realism of the Bible in contrast to the romanticism which characterizes the 20th century concept of religion.” That’s the opening line to his sermon, the chapter entitled “The Weakness of God’s Servants” in his brilliant little book, “No Little People, No Little Places.” You make the NT sound so wonderful, then, with a “weak” God finally. As that writer of Hebrews (4:15) puts it, ου γαρ εχομεν αρχιερεα μη δυναμενον συμπαθησαι ταις ασθενειαις ημων πεπειρασμενον δε κατα παντα καθ ομοιοτητα χωρις αμαρτιας
Hilary sounds like Edith. Thanks for commenting and giving me an easy verse to gloss.
Edith is cool. Hilary sounds smart too.
Hi David,
I like the direction you are going, but not this:
“When we look at any Old Testament character we can see ourselves, not as what we could be, but as what we were before Christ redeemed us.”
What a bunch of crock.
When we look at any character in the Bible, from the Old OR New Testaments, we see ourselves as we are, saved by grace alone through faith alone lest any man should boast, simul iustus et peccator, that is, saint and sinner at one and the very same time. Always.
There is no before or after, except that once upon a time we may have only been sinners, whereas now we may be, simultaneously, someone God sets apart and uses for his saving purposes (a saint), and a sinner.
Are you idolizing New Testament characters then, as if Peter and Paul, since redemption in Christ, were cured of religious chauvinism, patriarchy, pride, orneriness, what have you, whereas those retarded OT dudes, Moses, David, and Ezekiel, never saw the light of day? I don’t see it.
I’m glad you see flaws in the OT cast, in their persons and their message; perhaps the time will come when, as in Hebrews, you will also see why Jephthah is called a saint, and rightfully so.
I hope someday you will see the flaws in the NT cast, in their persons and their message. Because only then will you have a chance of being aware of the flaws in your own person, and in your message.
Yet God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness.
I’ve been waiting impatiently for one of you OT guys to react.
I agree with almost all of that. God set apart Samson for his purposes but he was not a saint. You must be born again. That is the great distinctive. It has to be so, otherwise devout yet spiritually unregenerate people could somehow serve as models for us to emulate.
They can serve as models, but as models of human effort to serve God rather than spirit-filled, blood-bought, “Christ in us” living.
You’re right that NT persons are far from perfect. Even Jesus isn’t the dashboard saint we try to create. BBBS is more about OT hermeneutics. I think the three questions are a good start for someone exploring meaning and application in the Hebrew Scriptures.
“God set apart Samson for his purposes but he was not a saint.”
Doesn’t this sentence set “saint” apart from “set apart”? And aren’t קדוש in the OT and ἅγιος in the OT and then the NT really set so far apart? Does the phrase, “Δεῖ ὑμᾶς γεννηθῆναι ἄνωθεν,” really make “the great distinctive”? I’m mixing in Jewish language here with our English because it sounds like our English is more separational.
(Granted the Jewish Greek here can seem separational because it’s Greek, and to many the Greek language is one of separation. But I wonder if the LXX and the NT aren’t more Homeric and less Aristotelian. This is a huge difference!)
What if the “NT” is more “OT” than our Western Christian traditions admit? What if the NT characters are just like the OT in their “sanctification” and their “birth from above” and in their “heros as villians”? Why is Samson tacked on to the list of “believing” saints in that Jewish letter to Hebrews (chapter 11)?
What if “Jesus” is another Joshua. Why doesn’t anyone put Joshua on their dashboards?
I’m not convinced it’s necessary to be a believer in order to recognize the fruits of the Spirit, or to bear them.
Observation leads me to believe that the Spirit blows where it will.
If only Christians demonstrated by their attitudes and actions to be children of the Most High. It doesn’t happen nearly enough for non-Christians to come to Christ based on observation of Christians on anything like a regular basis.
I think Isa 65:1-2 sums up God’s approach to Christians and Christianity today no less than it summed up God’s approach to those who were supposed to be believers in Isaiah’s day.
I would love to be a dispensationalist and believe that the saints of today are better than the saints of old. It would be especially nice to believe that we will be raptured out of tribulation, though I don’t know of any good reason why we should be spared trials other generations have faced.
I’m afraid I see a lot of self-indulgence and self-righteousness at work in the sense of superiority contemporary Christians often have when they compare themselves to the saints of old, whether the saints of old in question be those of one generation ago, five generations ago, Luther and Calvin, Ambrose and Augustine, the retrograde author of Ephesians 5 and 1 Timothy, the author of Psalm 137, etc.
We think we’re so smart, that we’ve found the answers that previous generations didn’t have or were too obtuse to take up.
We are obtuse in our own ways, as much as, and perhaps more than, past generations.
Kurk,
And what if contemporary culture is best compared to the dust of death?
If only it had more of the heroic culture of Homer and David in its veins. If only it had more of the blessed rage for order of Plato and Aristotle, Paul and Peter, in its veins.
Instead, we have the culture of George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, Lady Diana, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi. Very nice people, don’t get me wrong. Jet setters one and all, eye candy, finding time for Africa, permissive and tolerant: model human beings, not a mean Republican among them. But is it progress? Is it evidence of an outpouring of the Holy Spirit? I thoroughly doubt it.
John,
Now you are sounding like Francis Schaeffer (”Death in the City”) to me. Or like Larry Norman (who used to sing, “Nothing really changes… If people then could live today, I wonder what they’d be… Would Aristotle be an acid head?”).
I do agree with you in your doubt some – but I also think the parable we call “Wheat and Tares” leaves a lot of room to doubt a lot of our labels for other people. And then again, I don’t see Joshua (aka Jesus) or the Holy Spirit as Republicans of any kind.
I’m not saying that modern Christians claim a superiority over saints of old but that Christ in us is superior to the previous option which was something along the lines of “the spirit comes upon you once in a while so you can kill a lot of heathen and the rest of the time you kill goats to get close to God.” The Good News is incomparably preferable because of Christ not Christians.
Modern Christians prefer to kill their enemies by means of unmanned drones and high altitude bombers and through the amenities of bunker busters, cluster bombs, cruise missiles, atomic and nuclear weapons (or the threat thereof). “Just drop the bomb.” Remember that song?
Such means are a bit indiscriminate, and are known to kill non-combatants in droves, but they beat slingshots, spears, and swords – the latter
do not kill fast enough, and are not very hygienic.
The really important thing, as everyone knows, is to have no blood on your hands. That’s the magic trick.
Nor do modern Christians wait for the Holy Spirit to fall upon them in order to kill. The wait is too long. It’s too hit-and-miss. They just press a button from some place in Florida 2000 miles away from the target, all the while chatting up their girlfriend or playing a videogame.
We do our killing, and we live and let die, without “Christ in us.”
This you call progress.
Hi Kurk,
You say:
“I don’t see Joshua (aka Jesus) or the Holy Spirit as Republicans of any kind.”
Great comeback. I couldn’t agree more. Last time I checked, neither J nor HS had joined the Democrat Party either.
It’s Os Guinness who wrote a book entitled “The Dust of Death.” An Obama supporter, I believe, but that’s besides the point.
No matter who you support in politics, you sin greatly. It’s the nature of the enterprise.
Last time I checked, nor had Lady Diana joined the Democrat Party.
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David, I love what you said in the first paragraph:
“The best way to get a handle on interpreting the Old Testament is to repaint the heroes as villains. ”
I think by bringing our heroes ‘back down to earth’, the law becomes more apparent so that God can use the preached word of the gospel to do its work. The whitewashing of the text prevents us from seeing ourselves as we really are, that is, as sinners.
I’ve looked at some of the heros in Judges but now I’d put them in the ‘bad boys’ category. Thanks for this series of bible studies.
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