Wilderness Part 2

Yes, I’m still on about the Wilderness and about Luke 4. There was just way too much to put into one blog entry.

There is a lot of Christian-bashing goes on out there in media-land. A lot of people who think that Christians are all crazy and deluded (and some of them probably are). Have a look at any discussion forum where the issue of Christianity is raised or discussed in the press or on YouTube or Facebook – anywhere – and people will be ridiculing it and finding flaw. The Bible gives them lots of material to throw at us in order to ridicule us when taken out of context. They can laugh at Leviticus, poke fun at Paul and rant about Romans. If you take passages out of their context and fling them around, they do sometimes seem quite ridiculous, out of step with modern-day thinking and ideas. Worse, they can seem oppressive and contrary to what we consider to be decent values now.



In Luke 4, the devil quotes the Bible at Jesus. It is when he was leading Jesus around trying to test him after forty days in the wilderness and he says ‘If you are the Son of God...throw yourself down from here for it is written “He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully...”. Now, at that point, that must have been just a little bit tempting. There he is, the devil, goading Jesus and – of course – Jesus could have done anything. Scripture has been quoted at him and it must have been tempting not to think ‘you know what, I am the Son of God and I’ll show you’. Of course, he didn’t. But what he did teach us was a valuable lesson in how to interpret and read scripture. Don't just accept it when someone quotes a passage at you, put it in context.

What Jesus did was put the quote that the devil had hurled at him back into its context: ‘It is said: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test’’. He does not allow the devil to use Scripture that has been selected and used wrongly to tempt him into action.

As a former lawyer, I am – boringly enough – quite interested in interpretation of laws and rules. Jesus looks to the most important principles here in interpreting scripture. Later on, Jesus revealed what the key principles are when he answered the question ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments’.

Well, that bit of advice that Jesus gave tells us a great deal about how to interpret the various rules and guidelines contained in the Bible. The Bible is a huge book, more like a library of books, and you can probably find passages in there to support more or less any argument if you look hard enough. But it is no good taking small passages or groups of words together and quoting them to prove that you have a point. It only works if you apply the key principles first; loving God and loving each other. So, when people are using passages to justify homophobia or sexism or prejudices, perhaps they should ask themselves whether they are applying the commandment on which all the Laws hang. These principles must be the ones that can guide us through the wilderness.