The Bible Never Said That

I'm going to start in a place that I normally don't start, and I'm going to start with history.

I want you to go back to the Civil War era in the States.

There's a church group called the Baptist.

Has anyone ever heard of the Baptist people?

I'm going to tell you a bit about the Baptists.

The Baptist started off as one group, one group of people who had a certain kind of way of interacting with the Christian tradition.

And it was right around the time when all of America was trying to hand or deal with the issue of what do we do with slavery?

And so Baptists spanned all of the states, but the Southern Baptists were like, yay, slaves.

And the Northerns were like, boo, slaves.

And so the question the church, the Baptist church was trying to wrestle with is should slave owners be allowed to hold key positions in the church?

Now I know it sounds like I'm kind of in nowhere, but let me tell you, when you understand this story, you understand some of the key problems in all of Christianity today.

The North, the Baptists who lived in the north part of the states, they were like, Well, of course you can't have slave owners because we're not a fan of slavery over here.

And the southern guys are saying, of course we want slave owners.

And so they did what all Baptists do.

They said, Well, let's look at what the Bible says.

And so the northern group and the southern group whipped open their Bibles and started to look through it, and they're like flipping through, flipping through.

Well, the southern group found this section of the Bible.

Has anyone ever heard of Noah, uh, Noah and the Ark?

You know, two by two, you know that story?

Well, after Noah saves, air quotes saves the world, he gets rip roaring drunk.

And then, yeah, like fall down drunk, like just hammered.

And certain people see certain things.

We're not sure exactly what all went down, but Noah's very embarrassed, or at least this is how I'm seeing the story.

And he gets mad at his son, and his son's son, his son's son, his name is Canaan.

So Noah is just super mad at Canaan.

And he says, Canaan, I curse you.

I curse you to be servants of servants from this day forward.

You're thinking, what does this have to do with anything?

Well, servants of servant kind of sounds like what?

A slave.

And when we first started to hear this story, when they first did it, Canaan was a person, the son or the grandson of Noah.

But over time, they started to say, well, no, no, no, Canaan is an area in Africa where people had black skin.

So clearly, the Bible says people from Canaan, black people, will be slaves of other people.

So, what does the Bible say?

The Bible says, of course, slave owners can be part of the church.

We're just doing what God wants.

I like the yeah, right.

But again, in their mind, they're going, why?

Because the Bible says.

They were devout, they believed in the Bible, they cared deeply about the Bible.

In their mind, the Bible says, now, the northern group saw something else.

They looked to one of the first bodies of, let's say, call it laws.

One in Exodus, it says this says, anyone who kidnaps or enslaves someone is to be put to death, whether the victim has been sold or still in the kidnapper's possession.

Seems pretty clear.

Slave owners, no, no, no.

Then in uh a later part of the text, around the time of Jesus, there the era is called the Greco-Roman era.

They had this whole thing where they like to make vice lists.

They would list off a bunch of stuff that they thought was bad.

Paul, one of the writers, was a big fan of the vice list.

And at one point, he writes this vice list.

He writes this down.

For those who kill their mother or father for murders, the sexually immoral, men who engage in illicit sex, not women, just men.

I don't know why.

Slave traders, liars, perjures, or whatever else the country it says right there, slave traders.

People who own slaves cannot be part of the church.

The Bible says.

So this group over here, the southern group's like, well, no, no, no.

Owning black people is God's, their conception of God is their conception of God's plan.

The Bible says.

This group says, no, no, of course you can't own people.

The Bible says.

So which is it?

How is it that two groups of people honoring the same book and they do?

They care deeply.

How is it that they can have positions that are diametrically opposed to each other?

And both say, oh no, the Bible says the church split over this.

They became the Northern Baptists and the Southern Baptists.

This is why there's seven seventy thousand different denominations in the Christian tradition.

Because anytime something happens like this, they split.

We still have Northern Baptists.

If you look at the first Baptist church down by Sheldon Schumer, that's a Northern Baptist church.

If you look at what's the other one called?

I think it's Riverview.

No, uh there's another uh Baptist church in the city that is the Southern Baptist.

So they're still split that way, and they're still split based on that idea.

Still based on this idea of but the Bible says.

So let me ask you a question.

Lately, much to my chagrin, what have you heard in popular media espoused?

And the justification is oh, but the Bible says.

What was that?

Prohibition on divorce.

Prohibition on divorce, yeah.

What's the other one?

Anti-gay.

Anti-gay.

Right?

And we have this whole thing, is they're saying these big statements like, no, no, this is the right answer.

The Bible says it's always fun when you have the northern and southern, they're both, you know, using the same Bible, opposite points.

What do we do with this?

When someone, you know, when I'm on social media and I see a clip come up and the they start off with, well, the Bible's clear.

I'm always like, oh, geez, this is gonna be gross.

What do we do with this?

Or more importantly, why is this happening?

Uh, friend, can you throw up the relational um journey slide?

I didn't ask for it, but I'm just gonna see if you can find it for me and throw it up.

We talk about this a lot.

At the bottom is this I against them category.

How much of our world right now is I against them?

One group fighting another group, one group saying, no, no, no, the Bible says, the other group's saying, no, no, the Bible says, right?

The Bible says gay people are going to hell.

Again, a bunch of assumptions there, but let's just, I'm gonna quote them.

Another group saying, no, the Bible says we love each other.

And instead of having a dialogue, instead of being together, it's no, we're right, you're wrong.

No, no, no.

We're gonna we're gonna put power into this to make sure that you can't do it the way you want to do it.

Have you felt that in our world lately?

It scares me, honestly.

It's scary how much of our world is pushing us down to I against them.

This idea of we of being together and maybe disagreeing, that's just like, whoa, whoa, what who came with that crazy idea?

Today I want to plot a path up this model where we can find connection, even in disagreement.

I didn't understand how different groups, thanks, friend, different groups could use the same book to talk about completely different things and justify them.

And it got even worse because sometimes my education is in biblical studies.

What now and again we go to different churches or go visit my dad.

He's like, Come to church with me.

I'm like, okay, dad, I'll come to church with you.

Halfway through the sermon, the preacher quotes some text from the Bible, and I'm like, wait, that's not what that says.

I whip out my phone and my Bible, and I'm like, with my wife, like, not what it says.

Look at the verse before, look at the verse after.

It doesn't even translate it right.

I'm sure it's great to sit next to me in a traditional church service, huh?

How do we do this?

But in understanding how we do this, I'm gonna show you how we move back up that model.

I first, when I was going to school, I didn't understand how this could work this way.

I went to study the Bible and I had all these courses that kept bringing in these different points that didn't seem to come from the Bible, and I didn't understand them until I was sitting in a lecture by a scholar named Tremper Longman III.

Who names their kid that?

That said, when he writes his name on the bottom of a book, Tremper Longman III, it's like sounds pretty sweet, huh?

He's lecturing on the book Song of Songs.

Does anyone know the Song of Songs?

Yeah.

The Song of Songs, let me just say it this way.

He was lecturing on a book called The Song of Songs.

That if you don't know the Bible, my best guess is this is erotic love poetry.

Underline erotic.

If your brain grew up in a very traditional church, you have never read this part of the Bible.

The school that he was lecturing was the school that I went to that literally said, they made us actually sign a covenant.

We would not have sex with anyone that we're not married to, regardless of how enthusiastic they consent to having sex with us.

No sex.

Zero.

And their view of sex was broad.

So Tremper Longman III, Dr.

Tremper Longman III, is lecturing about what looks like an erotic love poem at a school that says that can't be.

Now, just to hammer my point home a little harder, I'm gonna play you guys a little presentation, giving you bits of Song of Songs.

These are direct quotes from the Bible.

The pieces that I add are only commentary on the bottom.

I want you to make the decision of what you think the song of songs is.

Take a look.

Quotes from the Bible.

Probably makes us feel a little uncomfortable, even.

If you grew up in a traditional church, nothing prepared you for that book.

And it's there.

And Dr.

Tremper Longman III, a fantastic scholar, writes commentaries, very, very fluent in original languages, reads this in Hebrew, lecturing to a school that is adamant that that is a married couple, because we need them to be a married couple.

And he says the line that finally shifted something in my brain.

I finally understood what we are all doing.

He says this.

But our tradition says they're married.

So they're married.

Nothing in the text says this couple is married, but our tradition says they're married.

So they're married.

And I realized in that moment that the tradition trumps the Bible.

Tradition trumps the Bible.

I spent years being angry about that.

I spent a lot of money to get an education so I could read, not at Trumper Longman's level.

And I kept under why why do I look at the text and then I hear what people say about it and they're not matching?

Until I realized, no, no, no, our tradition, what our tradition, what we grew up.

If you're Baptists, they have a tradition.

The tradition tells you what the Bible says, not the Bible itself.

That's when everything shifted for me.

Oh, that's how it works.

Remember last week I talked about the story, the stories we hold.

I talked about Cain and Abel.

Cain has this story that says, The character God will do something good for me if I give the character God a gift.

So him and his brother both bring gifts to the character God.

He brings grain because he's a grain farmer.

His brother brings meat because he's a sheep farmer.

The story reads that the character god comes down, looks at their two gifts, says, Abel, nice work.

I like it.

Cain.

And Cain's story goes, No, no, no, but uh if I give you a gift, you're supposed to make my life better.

And I gave you a gift.

This is unfair.

This is unjust.

And that's the basis, I believe, for why he kills his brother, to right a wrong that's based solely in a story that he holds unconsciously.

And I said, Beware the stories that we hold unconsciously.

After seeing Tremper Longman the Third, I realized traditions, spiritual traditions, Baptists, Lutherans, I grew up alliance, alliance.

The traditions hold stories.

Entire stories.

And they they use that story to communicate what they think the Bible says.

It's not what the Bible says, it's what the story says the Bible says.

I was uh out for a guy's trip with uh a bunch of guys.

We're in um Hawaii on a surf trip.

One of the guys there was from a very different tradition than mine, different than Friends Church.

And it was the whole group knew what was gonna happen.

In fact, they sat us together deliberately, and then they were all quiet, and they're like, What's gonna happen?

And within minutes, the guy's coming at me, and I'm trying to be like, Hey, hey, you know, I'm here for surfing, not a big deal, whatever.

And the guy's like, No, no, no, this is what the truth is, and this is what the Bible says, and this, and so finally I'm like, Okay, let's I'll try and be nice here and engage with him.

Meanwhile, the guys at the front are like literally eating popcorn, waiting for this to go down.

So the guy would say like these big statements.

I'm like, Can you just show me where in the Bible it says that?

Like, we have phones, whip out the Bible.

Well, I don't know, but it's it's in there.

That's what it says.

Okay, fair.

Just show it to me.

One thing after another.

And I realized very quickly, this guy has never read the Bible.

But he's very, very well versed in the stories of his tradition.

What it says the Bible says.

He's never done the study of the Bible.

It's his tradition says it's what the Bible says.

And finally, he gets the thing.

I'm getting a little bit annoyed right now.

I'm like, I'm on holidays.

What am I doing here?

The guy says, and again, if this is your story, it's okay.

Hold this story.

It's when you think a story is fact that it becomes a problem.

He says to me, The Bible says Jesus is God.

And again, I'm not trying to undermine your story.

What the guy, you know, let me just the Bible says Jesus is God.

So I'm like, okay, show me a reference.

And he happens to quote John 1 1.

Now just remember, folks, we value each person's unique spiritual journey.

In the language of this series, we value you having spiritual stories.

But we say, hold them as stories.

Don't mistake them for facts.

We're very clear.

I'll say I have a story.

This isn't fact.

This is a story.

Stories will change anything.

People will martyr themselves for a story.

They have incredible power.

But that doesn't make them fact.

His comment was the Bible factually says Jesus is named as God.

And then he quoted John 1-1.

What he didn't realize is I did half my master's degree on that one verse.

I was like, dude, I've tried to be nice here.

Like I did everything I can.

Whatever.

I'm taking you down now.

Now, for those of you who are not super Bible geeks, let me show you John 1.1.

Can you throw it up for me, friend, when you have a second?

It says, In the beginning was the word.

Now, the word later in the text, the word says it dwells among us, and then it references Jesus.

So let me just give him that word and Jesus are the same thing.

So in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.

He goes, see?

It's clear.

Well, there's this little thing called a preverbal anarthris predicate nominative.

Say it with me, folks.

Preverbal, anarthris, predicate nominative.

Preverbal in Greek means that they put part of the section in the front.

It's not an ordered language.

They can put the word in any order they want, and the word order changes how you understand it.

Anarthris means without an article, right?

So it's not a the predicate nominative.

When you have an equative verb, the second part, what we'd call the object, is the predicate nominative.

I was like, dude, I'm sorry.

Like you put it right in the T.

I'm not sure how I'm not gonna hit this sucker.

I wrote, I don't know how many papers on that thing.

And by the way, if you can use that sentence in a in a conversation this next week, I will buy you a steak dinner.

I seriously, you don't even need to prove it.

Just like come to me and say it happened, and I will get you a steak dinner.

I'm looking at you, no worries.

Pre-verbal predicate or not through predicate nominative means that the most obscure translation of that kind of construction is equative.

And the word was God.

It's almost never used that way.

Can it be used that way?

Yes, but it's the most obscure, like no one ever uses it that way.

The way it normally is translated is what's called qualitative.

When they say God is light, it doesn't mean that light and God are the same thing, right?

It's not like, oh, look, God is shining in oh, maybe you can think that way, but that's not how the text is used.

What it means is God has some characteristics that we associate with light, like shining into our lives, bringing Light in darkness.

Using the qualities of light to describe the first.

That's how you translate this most naturally.

The way it should be translated is this in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word shared some qualities with God.

If you look at any translation right now, they won't even have a note.

Even though this is the most natural translation of that phrase.

There's not even a note saying there's another way to translate this.

Why?

Because I believe the story of the tradition is what most people study.

Not the Bible itself.

I seriously tried to be nice, folks.

I do.

I tried, and I was, but I was like, we just spent an hour wasting my time on this.

Could it be the reason all these different denominations have different views, even though the Northern and the Southern Baptists have different views, because their story of their tradition is what they focus on, and they use that to interpret the Bible?

Could it be that they're not even looking at the Bible itself?

Once I saw that, once Trumper Longman showed me that, I realized everything changed.

When my when the guy at the in the car says to me, you know, this, whatever his tradition story was, this is true.

It's in the Bible.

Instead of going, No, it isn't, you dumb, I would say, Oh, tell me about your story.

I didn't say it that way because in his mind, he's like, no, no, it's not a story, it's true, it's factual.

And I go, hmm.

Yeah.

Because our story is actually more powerful than facts.

Remember, I talked about the flat earther?

They have a story that says the earth is flat.

And again, I'm not trying to make fun of them.

We all have stories.

And when the when they did the test and they showed that the earth was curved, and the test that he devised said, no, no, if the laser doesn't land right in the center of the thing, the earth is round.

When it did that, he's like, oh, I must have done something wrong because the earth can't be round.

Story is more powerful.

It's reality, it shapes reality.

You can do it with the people around you.

You have a story about the person sitting next to you.

They're ungrateful, they're lazy, they're busy, they don't care.

Or they're awesome.

That's the other story.

Or if you're not sitting next to anybody, but think about the people in your life.

You have a story about them.

My mom would call and she would ask me some details of my life.

And the story I had was she's trying to control me.

And so I'd always react badly to it.

When all she wanted to do was connect.

Show me why that story matters so much to you.

When I look at somebody in the States and I see them saying, the Bible says to this very conservative idea, I realize that right now in the chaos of the world we're dealing with, certainty feels good.

We're actually seeing a rise in younger kids going back to traditional, very conservative churches.

Our best guess is because they're searching for certainty.

When all the world is chaos, tell me the story that your story is true.

That makes me feel better.

Frank, can you throw up the journey slide or relational journey slide?

Can you see how understanding someone's story allows you not to be I against them?

The Bible says, no, it doesn't.

The Bible says this over here.

No, no, we can say, oh, what's your story of the Bible?

Why do you so desperately want Tremper Longman III to say that that couple is married?

Why are you so desperate for that?

Because that story has shaped the lives and the relationships and the sexuality of generations of people.

And if that's up for grabs, but when we understand the story behind it, we can start moving into this we framing.

Oh, your story goes there, my story's here.

Instead of this fight towards I against them, we can do something different.

We can find connection even with people who disagree with us.

So what do we do now?

How do we even find our story?

Because until I saw Song of Songs, I didn't think I had a story anymore.

Until I saw some of the language in there, I was like, oh, I still got a story in there.

That Conservative Alliance Church was not telling me that that's okay.

Anyone else?

Don't put up your hand.

But anyone else have a reaction to that text.

How do we understand the stories we grew up with, the stories we still hold?

One of the ways I do it is I follow people who don't have the same story as me.

There's a scholar named Dan McClellan.

He's from the Mormon tradition.

Incredible scholar.

I watch his stuff all the time.

He's somebody who's understood his story deeply.

And he holds it his story.

He holds it profoundly his story.

He teaches, I think he teaches grade school, Sunday school.

He's got PhD and I think three master's degrees in biblical studies.

And he's teaching grade school, Sunday school.

Because he believes the story.

It's valuable for him, not as a fact, as a story.

Who else did I list up there?

Oh, yeah, Bart Urman.

He's the guy.

I actually first read his book, When Jesus Became God, way, way, way back.

Changed my life.

He's a man who grew up fundamentalist and has now left that story behind.

He's an atheist, but he's an incredible scholar.

But instead of seeing showing you the story all the time, he just shows you the text.

The number of times I've opened my eyes after reading something he's written and goes, wow, I didn't even I read it.

But my story kicked in and I just read my story.

Monty is a someone I just started.

She is grew up way more conservative than I did.

Is now on a mission to help people see the text for what it is.

She's also super political.

I don't care about that part.

Find people in your life.

Find people in your world.

Find books, find podcasts of people who see their story so that you can see your story.

It's kind of like going to a counselor.

I go to my counselor knowing I have a story and knowing that I can't see it.

And most of the time, what she does is she's like, hey Vince, is that true or is that a story?

And I'm like, oh yeah, that's my story.

Find your story.

Be conscious of your story.

Unconscious story leads to Cain stuff, justifying horrific things.

But this journey isn't easy.

To let go of a story, to change it from this is fact to no no, this is my belief, and I hold it as such.

That's a big change.

And for many of us, we don't want to do it.

I was preparing for this message.

I was listening to some music.

Alessandra, one of our musicians, she's not here today, she's out of town.

But she wrote a song perfectly aligned for this moment.

And she has this incredible line.

She says, if you don't change, you die.

Can you just play the first bit of that clip?

I think we have a choice right now.

We can see the stories that we have and be willing to change from these are facts to no no.

This is a story.

A story that shapes me, a story that changes me, but it's a story.

It's not just something where we go, no, no, this is fact, and therefore, and therefore, and therefore.

And it happens spiritually, it happens relationally, it happens throughout our whole life.

But if you have the courage to let that go, whatever story you're holding, whatever story you were trained with growing up, whatever story your tradition had, if you let that go and hold it now as a story, suddenly you can go, wait a second, this piece that's not serving me anymore.

Okay.

What else could I put there?

Oh, this piece, this is actually suppressing my spirituality.

I'll let that one go.

Let me find something else to put in there.

This person over here who's like, no, no, my story is true, and you're like, okay, yeah, I don't really need to have that argument.

I can be curious.

Tell me.

What does your story say?

Do you see this shift in how we interact with the world around us when our story becomes a story and not held as fact?

I believe this is the foundation of a world of we.

Where we hold our stories.

They're spiritual, they're profound, they change everything.

You guys came here because of a story.

A story that matters to you, a story that changes you, a story that's guiding your life.

But you hold it as a story.

And therefore you don't have to fight.

It's not I against them.

Look through your life right now.

Who in your life is spiritual, but their story is held as fact?

What's it doing to them?

Can you feel their anxiety and their stress?

When something happens that challenges that story, how they have to lock it down.

No, that's not the case, that can't be.

Today, the thing I want to leave you is have the courage to hold your story as story.

Have the courage to let it evolve and change.

Have the courage to interact with others with it as story.

So you can have a dialogue and not a fight.

May we be a community of deep story.

Each of us holding our unique story.

But as story.

So that we have the ability to change it, evolve it, grow it, and interact with those who hold a different story in love.

I'm gonna leave you with one final quote.

Desmond Tutu, I believe he's a Protestant.

I think he's I can't remember which group he's from, but he's a Protestant.

He wrote a book with the Dalai Lama, somebody not Protestant.

And people came to him and said, How do you interact with somebody who's not even a desified Christian, it's not even part of that tradition?

And this is the quote that he threw up.

He said, We must be ready to learn from one another, not claiming that we alone possess all truth and that somehow we have a corner on God.

May we hold the spirit of Desmond Tutu as we walk through our life.

I wish you a week of peace.

I wish you a week of connection with people who hold different stories than you.

And I wish you a week colored by the stories that matter to you.

Amen.

Have a great week, everyone.

Thanks, everyone.