A com­mon mis­take in pop­u­lar rea­son­ing about com­plex issues is to swing from one unhealthy or inac­cu­rate extreme to an equally (or worse) unhealthy or inac­cu­rate extreme in the oppo­site direc­tion. We swing the pen­du­lum from one bad place to another.

Young adults, new to the Chris­t­ian faith, may be espe­cially prone towards this ten­dency. But they’re not alone in their zeal to overcorrect.

Some­times we pit evan­ge­lism against social jus­tice as oppo­sites and say we need to stop doing only ver­bal procla­ma­tion of the good news and start includ­ing good deeds. The impli­ca­tion or, in some cases, the explicit dec­la­ra­tion is that all our pre­vi­ous evan­ge­lis­tic efforts were only through words with no tan­gi­ble dis­play of con­cern for hunger, cloth­ing, med­i­cine, etc. Even a cur­sory review of the his­tory of mis­sions will prove this dichotomy to be false.

Often, peo­ple are try­ing to cor­rect a real imbal­ance. I recently heard some­one want­ing to show how we had under-appreciated the level of suf­fer­ing Jesus expe­ri­enced in the Gar­den of Geth­se­mane. He bemoaned that we skipped this cru­cial moment in redemp­tive his­tory and only (there’s that tell­tale word again) cared about the cross and the res­ur­rec­tion. I appre­ci­ated his con­cern. But then he swung the pen­du­lum too far. He argued that Jesus’ suf­fer­ing in the gar­den was actu­ally greater than what he expe­ri­enced on the cross. Why the need to over­cor­rect? “Greater” than the cross? In the Gar­den, Jesus still con­versed with the Father. On the cross, he was for­saken. We don’t need to over­re­act to make our point.

Even schol­ars are not exempt from the pendulum’s lure. In a recent Mars’ Hill Audio inter­view, Bay­lor pro­fes­sor David Lyle Jef­frey wanted to show a greater appre­ci­a­tion for poetic lit­er­a­ture in the Bible than we ordi­nar­ily expe­ri­ence. But I think he went too far.

Here’s what he said:

“In the trans­mis­sion of wis­dom, it is just not the case that propo­si­tional dis­course is the pre­ferred vehi­cle. Jesus taught, as Matthew tells us in his gospel, every­thing that was impor­tant in para­bles. Much of the scrip­tures is couched in poetic lan­guage and fig­u­ra­tive speech. In fact it can be argued that the most author­i­ta­tive expres­sions that are attrib­uted to the divine voice in the Old Tes­ta­ment (pas­sages like the “com­fort ye my peo­ple” sec­tion in Isa­iah or the whirl­wind speech to Job would be two exam­ples that come to mind) or the fun­da­men­tal mag­is­te­r­ial teach­ings of Jesus is couched in forms of story.”

I under­stand Jefferey’s con­cern that many Chris­tians under­value the poetry in the Bible and seem to spend a dis­pro­por­tion­ate amount of time in the epis­tles. I share his con­cern and have writ­ten about it. But I think he over­states his case. He claims that Matthew tells us that Jesus taught us “every­thing that was impor­tant in para­bles.” What a context-violating way to read the Bible (espe­cially by a lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sor). Matthew does indeed tell us that Jesus “did not say any­thing to them with­out using a para­ble” (Matt 13:34). But surely Matthew must have meant that in that instance, on that par­tic­u­lar occa­sion he only used para­bles. Surely we can find many other places where Jesus spoke with propo­si­tional dis­course, non-parabolic prophecy, and clear-as-can be-denunciation of sin with­out any poetry involved.

Jef­frey is surely right to observe that “much of the scrip­tures is couched in poetic lan­guage and fig­u­ra­tive speech.” But to then swing the pen­du­lum to claim “the most author­i­ta­tive expres­sions that are attrib­uted to the divine voice in the Old Tes­ta­ment” are spo­ken poet­i­cally is to take a hier­ar­chi­cal view of scrip­ture that must be rejected by any­one who believes that “all scrip­ture is inspired by God” and equally authoritative.

Cor­rect­ing imbal­ances is vitally impor­tant. But we need to do so with the bal­anced, com­plex, multi-faceted, highly nuanced Bible in our hands and resist the temp­ta­tion to use a pen­du­lum for the task.

I have long been enam­ored by C.S. Lewis’ dis­cus­sion of joy, his tech­ni­cal term for that long­ing we feel for some­thing more than this life can deliver. In his spir­i­tual auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Sur­prised by Joy, he says it’s the theme of his entire life. In his clas­sic essay, The Weight of Glory, he describes this “life­long nos­tal­gia” as a “long­ing to be reunited with some­thing in the uni­verse from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the out­side” and con­cludes that it is “no mere neu­rotic fancy, but the truest index of our real sit­u­a­tion.” || Read more »

Thought­ful Chris­tians often find them­selves con­fused by mixed sig­nals. A church or orga­ni­za­tion or any struc­ture that involves a group of peo­ple may say they believe one thing but, in prac­tice, they reveal some­thing rather dif­fer­ent. It’s an easy trap to fall into, espe­cially if you value mis­sion or doc­tri­nal state­ments. The prob­lem occurs when you fail to eval­u­ate your actions through the grid of your stated beliefs or pri­or­i­ties. || Read more »