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Funeral Oration for Craig Keener

This may sound like a harsh way to start an obituary, but: Craig Keener (d. 1975) was exceptionally greedy, selfish, arrogant, and lustful, not to mention blasphemous. There’s really very little that his critics could say about him today that could be worse than what he really was.

For example, by age 9 he arrogantly declared, as if he wielded great knowledge, that there was no reason to believe in a god. He soon decided that humanity would have to ensure its own survival against all possibilities of disaster by conquering other life forms in the universe. This, he determined, could be achieved only if humanity were united and made efficient. This could be accomplished through genetic engineering (breeding) and the extermination of useless professions such as ministers. (He figured that, once they knew better, most people would abandon useless professions anyway.)

After reading the Iliad (about the Trojan War) at age 12, Keener thought that ending other people’s lives could be heroic. He wrote gory stories and poetry and drew gory artwork depicting the bloody killing of Trojans. He invoked spirits of Greek gods to make him better at killing. Sometimes he even tortured people in his imagination, though I should add that he thought himself quite capable of showing mercy when the occasion allowed. Yet he also tried to learn good strategies and skills to aid in subjecting the world to make it united and efficient.

Finally, at age 13, he began reading Plato and decided that ultimate reality was, as Plato thought, in the realm of ideas, so that one’s physical senses were not trustworthy testaments to ultimate reality. Taking Plato a step further, this self-centered young man decided that, given the unreliability of external senses, he could not be sure of the real existence of anyone except himself. Of course, he continued to accommodate the sensory world just in case, still looking both ways before crossing the street on the way to school.

Keener made fun of Christians, but he was also a little scared, just in case they were even partly right. Obviously the stakes were pretty high: if there was a God, absolutely everything depended on God. We owed our origin and destiny to him, and nothing mattered so much as serving him; moreover, truth mattered, and there could be no higher truth than an infinite God if he existed. But Christianity didn’t seem likely: most people claimed to be Christians, but it didn’t look to him like they were staking everything on that belief. If they didn’t believe in a God worthy of obedience, he reasoned, why should he? He knew of their god only from hearsay.

Yet he could not explain the combination of his own unique identity along with the fact that it had a beginning and, little as he cared to admit it, would have an ending. If there was nothing absolute, his own existence was an infinitesimally random coincidence. How could he explain his existence as a distinct individual, with his unique heredity and experience as a self? Was it truly utterly meaningless? Worse yet, if there was nothing infinite to guarantee more than the present life, in the infinite span of eternity life was infinitesimally short.

Only in an absolute, infinite Being could finite humans find meaning and eternal hope. But if there were such a God, Keener supposed, that God would care to confer such benefits on humans only if he were supremely loving. And if he were loving, Keener reasoned, that God would give those benefits first to those who, like him, were loving.

And thus Keener knew he had a problem. For even if, best of all imaginable possibilities, there were a God who was both infinite and loving, Keener had no way to get this God’s attention. Why would such a God want Keener? Keener himself wasn’t loving; he wanted to know of such a God only to surmount his own mortality, to find a way to live forever. Keener wasn’t good; even a good God, then, wouldn’t likely care about him. “God, if you’re out there, please show me!” he sometimes cried. But he didn’t know if God would hear. After all, Keener hadn’t even publicly admitted that he had become less than certain about his atheism.

One day, however, two genuine Christians stopped him on the street. They explained to Keener that, by Jesus’s death and resurrection, God offers eternal life to anyone who will trust him. Keener raised objections, wondering what evidence these Christians had besides their holy book. But after he rejected what they said and began walking home, he felt himself overwhelmed by a sense he’d never felt before while studying or discussing other religions or philosophies. A Presence refused to leave him alone, until finally, after perhaps an hour of resistance, he dropped to his knees. “God, I don’t understand how Jesus dying and rising restores me to you, but if that’s what you’re saying, I’ll believe it. But I don’t know how to experience this, so if you want to bring me to yourself, you’ll have to do it yourself.”

Keener felt something rushing through his body, and jumped up, terrified. He wasn’t sure how to explain what had just happened to him, but he had always believed that if he ever learned that God was real, he would give God everything. Now he had found truth and would commit himself to exploring and following all the way.

That was the day that the old Craig Keener with his selfish goals died, and a new Craig Keener committed to Christ’s eternal kingdom was born. “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3, NIV). “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Cor 5:17, NIV).

Someone who reads only the heading of this post may misunderstand and start a rumor that Craig Keener is physically dead. (To avoid that misunderstanding, we borrowed the ancient label of “funeral oration” for the title, rather than requiem or “in memoriam.”) Even if premature, such a rumor will eventually prove true (as Samuel Clemens [a.k.a. Mark Twain], who quipped that the report of his death was greatly exaggerated, must have eventually learned), unless Christ returns first. But the good news is that the new life in Christ lasts forever. So whether we are physically alive or dead, we are always the Lord’s (Rom 14:8). And that is what matters forever.

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Loyal to the death—John 13:34-35

When Jesus commands us to love one another as he has loved us, why does he call this a “new” commandment (13:34)? Did not God command all believers to love one another already in the Old Testament (Lev 19:18). What makes this commandment a new commandment is the new example set by the Lord Jesus.

The immediate context makes this example clearer. Jesus takes the role of a humble servant by washing his disciples’ feet (13:1-11)—a role normally performed by servants or those adopting their posture. Then Jesus calls on his disciples to imitate his servanthood (13:12-17). In the same context, we understand the degree to which he became a servant for us by noting what he would suffer: Jesus and the narrator keep talking about Jesus’ impending betrayal (13:11, 18-30). Jesus explains that he is being “glorified” (13:31-32), i.e., killed (12:23-24); he is about to leave the disciples (13:33), and Peter is not yet spiritually prepared to follow Jesus in martyrdom (13:36-38).

This is the context of loving one another “as” Jesus loved us. We are called to sacrifice even our lives for one another! As 1 John 3:16 puts it explicitly (my paraphrase), “This is how we recognize love: He laid down his life on our behalf. [In the same way], we also owe it to him to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters in Christ.” The next verse (1 John 3:17) suggests that if we can lay down our lives for one another, certainly we can seek to meet one another’s needs in less demanding ways.

The rest of the Gospel of John illustrates more fully Jesus’ example of love and servanthood, which culminate in the cross.

In many places in the world our brothers and sisters are suffering. Indeed, many even near us may be hurting. What would Jesus do? Now that his Spirit is active within us (John 14:23), what would he have us do?

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Interview with Craig on Asbury’s website

Asbury’s website interviewed Craig here:

http://asburyseminary.edu/academics/faculty/interviews/craig-keener/

Questions included the following:

What’s your favorite scripture and why?

My favorite biblical books (right now) are Acts and Revelation–though I wouldn’t want to do without any of the books of the Bible! In recent years I have been deeper and deeper in Acts, and feel increasingly at home in the mission and the power of the Spirit that Acts depicts. Revelation gives a stark, spiritual view of reality, always summoning us beyond our sufferings to a heavenly perspective on reality, and to worship God and the lamb, who have brought about our salvation.

What’s the most amazing miracle you’ve ever witnessed and where did it happen? …

What 3 books do you think everyone should read? …

What does being Kingdom-focused or Kingdom-minded mean to you? How does that play out in real-life? …
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The Christ of the Gospels lives in us

Paul wrote about Christ living and working in us as believers (e.g., Rom 8:9-10; 2 Cor 13:5; Gal 4:19; Col 1:27; cf. 2 Cor 13:3; Col 1:29). He emphasized whole-hearted dependence on Christ not only for forgiveness but also for being able to live a life that pleases God.

Sometimes I have wondered where Paul got these ideas, since Jesus did not teach much about them during his earthly ministry (though cf. Matt 10:20; 18:20).

Then again, when would Jesus have taught his disciples about this? They did not even understand that their teacher was bringing God’s reign through the cross rather than conquest (Mark 8:29-33); how could they have understood him living inside of them? Such a teaching would not have made sense until after the resurrection, when Jesus talked with them about sending them by the power of the Spirit (Acts 1:4-8; John 20:21-22) or of his presence being with them until they completed the mission (Matt 28:20). Forty days would allow plenty of time for such teaching (Acts 1:3-5). Of course, it could make sense for Jesus to introduce such matters to his disciples also just before his death (John 14:18-23), but even then they would not yet understand (cf. 16:5, 12, 18).

How did Paul learn these lessons? Undoubtedly especially from his experience, read also in light of earlier biblical promises. After the resurrection, the early disciples’ experience of the Spirit would teach them how to depend more deeply on God’s direct working within them. The Spirit would produce the fruit of God’s own moral character in them (John 15:2-8; Gal 5:22-23; cf. Rom 7:4-6; Eph 5:9), as well as the presence of Christ (John 14:23; Rom 8:9-10; 2 Cor 13:5).

As the Messiah, Jesus had begun fulfilling the biblical promise of restoration for God’s people; prophets had promised that at the time of restoration God would place his own Spirit in the hearts of his people, so they would obey him (Ezek 36:27). The Spirit would give new life (Ezek 37:14). As the firstfruits of the future resurrection, Jesus’s resurrection meant that this promised new life in the Spirit had begun for all those who would be raised with him.

Jesus is king in God’s kingdom, and he procured this kingdom through the cross (cf. Mark 1:15; 11:9-10; 15:26, 32). Jesus warned that his true followers must share his cross, sharing his sufferings, so they will be ready for his glory (Mark 8:34-38; Luke 9:23-26). Jesus could describe this such suffering as sharing his cup and his baptism (Mark 10:38-39; cf. 14:23-24, 36). When we commit our lives to Christ as our Lord and Savior, we recognize that our lives belong to him, both to save and to direct as he chooses. Because baptism signifies this commitment, Paul can speak of giving our lives to Christ as being baptized and united with him in his death (Rom 6:3-4). (This does not mean that at that moment we achieve absolute moral sinlessness in practice; indeed, in the context, Romans 6:11-18 probably shows the believers in Rome how they can sin less. But having died with Christ does mean we have a new Lord and direction.)

Those united with Christ in his death are those who will also share his resurrection (Rom 6:4-5; cf. 8:11). Scripture already anticipated a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous at the end of the age (Dan 12:2-3). Jesus’s resurrection is the first piece of that future resurrection, so those united with him will be raised in the future and have already begun to share in resurrection life (Rom 8:10; Eph 2:6; Col 2:12; 3:1; probably Rom 6:4). As Christ now reigns at the Father’s right hand (Mark 12:36; Acts 2:33-36; 1 Cor 15:25; Heb 1:3; 1 Pet 3:22; Rev 3:21), believers are enthroned with him (Eph 1:20-22; 2:6) and will one day reign with him (Rom 5:17; 1 Cor 6:3; 2 Tim 2:12; Rev 5:10; cf. Matt 25:21; Luke 19:17; Rom 8:17). On the premise that Jesus’s resurrection belonged to the promised experience of the resurrection of God’s people (Dan 12:2), the unity of Christ and his people follows.

Both Paul (Acts 9:3-5) and some key disciples (Mark 9:1-3) experienced Jesus’s glory in ways resembling some revelations of God himself in the Old Testament. Seyoon Kim has argued that Paul’s Damascus road encounter, in fact, shaped some of Paul’s basic theology. Jesus warned that those who reject his agents reject him (Matt 10:40; Mark 9:37; Luke 9:48; 10:16); on the road to Damascus, Paul learned that he had been persecuting Christ himself (Acts 9:4-5). Paul also knew that the Spirit who empowered the character of the Messiah was the Spirit of the Lord (Isaiah 11:2); the Spirit of Christ is the Spirit of God (Acts 16:6-7; Rom 8:9). Jesus’s experience of sonship introduced his followers into that same experience and relationship with God the Father (Mark 14:36; Rom 8:15-16; Gal 4:6).

John the Baptist promised that Jesus would baptize in the Spirit (Mark 1:8); Jesus himself illustrated the Spirit-baptized life when he received the Spirit at his baptism (1:9-10) and then faced and overcame testing (1:12-13). This promised experience of the Spirit would shape the course of Jesus’s early movement. From this continuing experience with the risen Christ through the Spirit that Jesus sent, Paul and other disciples would understand key elements of Jesus’s continuing ministry that his proverbs and parables during his earthly ministry could at most hint at.

The apostolic movement of Jesus’s early followers believed that the same person we read about in the Gospels is the risen Lord proclaimed in the epistles. They affirmed that the Jesus they worshiped and experienced was also the Jesus who came in the flesh. God had inaugurated his promised kingdom, or reign, in a special way, and we submit to his reign, belonging to his people, by serving Jesus as Lord.

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The discouraged prophet—Matthew 11:2-6

Have you ever faced discouragement in doing God’s work? John the Baptist had reason to feel dejected (Matt 11:2-3; see also Luke 7:18-20). Jesus had just warned his disciples about coming persecution for their mission (10:16-39), yet promised that whoever received them would receive Jesus (10:40-42). John, however, had already been rejected by those with power.

Now imprisoned, John recognized that he might never again see freedom. What would become of his calling? Was he not called to prepare the way for the coming one (3:3, 11)? He had recognized Jesus as the promised one, who would baptize in the Spirit and in fire (3:11); he even wanted Jesus to baptize him, presumably in the Spirit (3:14). (In the context of John’s announcement, baptism in fire plainly referred to judgment—3:10-12.) But now he was hearing reports about Jesus (11:2), and there was no evident baptism in the Spirit and certainly no fire.

John now had doubts. Was Jesus the coming one or another forerunner? Either way, John trusted Jesus to tell him the truth. Jesus was a true prophet; John was only unsure whether he was the baptizer in the Spirit and fire that John himself had announced. So John sends some of his disciples to ask Jesus openly.

At this point in Jesus’s ministry, it remained more discreet for Jesus not to specify his full identity publicly; nevertheless, he manages to communicate the idea indirectly for John. After the messengers have witnessed Jesus’s works, he sends them back with a summary of the works. The first noted works are the blind receiving sight and the disabled walking (11:5).

These first two works probably echo Isaiah 35:5-6, which belongs to promises of God’s future kingdom. Jesus’s works thus are demonstrations of God’s kingdom, or reign. The context of these signs in Isaiah includes the restoration of creation (Isa 35:1-2). Jesus’s present healings, although not universal, foreshadow a day when the Lord will renew creation, providing full healing for us and for the physical earth. Likewise, as we honor Jesus by carrying on his works, caring for people and even for the natural world, these works foreshadow the fuller deliverance to come.

Whether it was Jesus doing the works or us doing the works in his name, the works announce Jesus’s identity. Jesus is the one who inaugurated these works of the kingdom. Isaiah spoke of these works happening when God would come (Isa 35:4), just as John had announced that the one whose way he was preparing was divine—since only God could pour out God’s Spirit (Matt 3:11).

In the last line of Matthew 11:5, Jesus also echoes Isaiah 61:1, referring to the mission of God’s servant to bring good news to the poor. Caring for the poor, like caring for the blind and disabled just mentioned, was not the way people in Galilee, Judea, or elsewhere in the Roman Empire sought power. The ambitious gathered wealth and cultivated the favor of members of the elite; in Judea Jesus could have appealed to Pharisees, scribes, and especially Sadducees. Instead Jesus follows only the Father’s mission, depending on the Father’s power. Jesus embraces the lowly and the outsiders, those who are willing to receive the kingdom with the same attitude of dependence as children (Matt 18:3-4). It is the meek who will inherit the earth (5:5), and Jesus himself is meek (11:29).

After hinting about his identity to John through these biblical allusions, Jesus offers a blessing for whoever does not stumble on account of him (11:6). The stumbling block of Jesus’s limited ministry prefigured the fuller stumbling block of the cross (cf. 1 Cor 1:23; Gal 5:11). Humility, servanthood and sacrificial death are not what the world honors or what makes sense to the world, but God’s servants are not ashamed of the cross (Romans 1:16).

We may be tempted to condemn John’s doubts and struggles, but Jesus affirmed John. After the messengers left, Jesus began to praise him behind his back (Matt 11:7-10). Prophets such as Elijah and Jeremiah struggled with their callings (1 Kgs 19:4; Jer 20:14-18); David nearly snapped under pressure (2 Sam 25:33-34), and in his ministry Paul experienced fear and anguish (2 Cor 7:5; 11:28-29). Later in this Gospel, Jesus himself expressed feelings of despair: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Matt 27:46). Of course, Jesus knew that the words he was praying were from a psalm that ended on a note of victory (Ps 22), but that does not diminish the agony he experienced at that moment.

If you have ever experienced discouragement in doing God’s work, this was also true of God’s servants before you. God was faithful to them, however, and God will be faithful to you. Be faithful to what you are called to do, and God will see to it that what you are really called to do is fulfilled. We each have our part to play, and the Lord may praise our work afterward, as he did with John (cf. Matt 25:21, 23). But the kingdom is not about us–it is about Jesus. We can have courage, because Jesus the kingdom-bringer has already inaugurated his victory. Unlike John, we know how that story ends.

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MacArthur’s Strange Fire

[Note: As a rule, Dr. Keener does not review books on this site (even his own). The site also does not usually address the sorts of issues addressed here. Nevertheless, Dr Keener is making a single exception in this case due to the very public nature of the challenge.]

While offering some very needed points, John MacArthur’s Strange Fire unfortunately extrapolates from those points to an entire “movement.” As I note below, I also believe that MacArthur suppresses some biblical truth on the basis of a postbiblical doctrine, the very offense with which he charges others.

Nevertheless, there is much to be learned from his criticisms; he has brought again to our attention some serious errors that charismatic churches must be on their guard against. I start with some agreeable points in the book and then move to points where I believe MacArthur has clearly overstepped the bounds of reason and Christian civility; there my tone cannot be as conciliatory. (All pagination in this review refers to the uncorrected page proofs that I received shortly before the book’s publication.)

Read the rest of the review at:
http://pneumareview.com/john-macarthurs-strange-fire-reviewed-by-craig-s-keener/

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Miracles around the world (podcast)

In May Craig was interviewed by Bill Campbell, host of the Vital Connection broadcast. You can download this 52-minute podcast here.

Vital Connection describes the interview as such:

Are the miracles described in the New Testament trustworthy accounts of God’s activity in the world, or are they mere relics of superstition, left on the pages of the Bible as shadows of a religion built on empty hopes? Seminary professor and best-selling author Dr. Craig Keener, who has written the most comprehensive and well-researched study on this topic, shares his insights.

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A personal perspective on intolerance

When I first converted from atheism to Christianity, some people did not mind, but some others ridiculed my newfound faith. In my early excitement, I was as eager to share what I had discovered as they were to criticize it; some merely loudly denounced me as “weird,” but one peer pulled a knife on me.

The third time I was beaten for expressing my faith was actually in the Bible Belt. The only provocation I offered (which some today might consider sufficient) was that I told the man, “Jesus loves you.” Although I intended those three words to encourage him, I was not yet socially adept enough to recognize that he might resent them. (Nevertheless, critics who would suggest that I deserved the ensuing beating might wish to consider whether their suggestion illustrates my general point. Those who believe that abuse is inappropriate only if people keep to themselves, their views — whether Christian, atheistic or other — in essence consent to abuse rather than supporting freedom of speech and of religion.)

After he finished pummeling me and I managed to stumble away onto a side street, he shouted that he would kill me if he ever saw me again. Then again, had he seen me the next day, with my two swollen black eyes, he might not have recognized me! Happily, apart from the eyes, some lost blood, and a few days with a sore head, I survived fairly well.

Much more common in this country is probably simple prejudice or discrimination. When I was applying for jobs at fast-food restaurants, a manager, learning that I was a ministerial student, terminated the interview. “I’ve had problems with people like you,” he explained. That was a rare experience, but my point is that whatever one’s views, one will find some people who dislike them, sometimes strongly, and express that prejudice in concrete ways. Such treatment is certainly underreported. During the times was beaten, I simply expected that experiencing hostility was par for the course. I suspect that much religious discrimination or opposition goes unreported, especially among groups whose theology explains such experiences as the norm.

Years later, as I was nearly ready to finish my doctoral program, one professor suggested that I might not be permitted to graduate because I was too “openly religious.” Other professors dismissed such a remark and treated me fairly, but the comment did raise my anxiety level. In more recent years, a minority of people have dismissed what I thought were my fairly neutral scholarly arguments by making claims about my personal faith. Some of these critics associated all religious people — Christians, evangelicals, Pentecostals and so forth — with popular stereotypes of televangelists, apparently unaware that most scholars from these groups would share their disdain of televangelists. These particular critics showed no cognizance of the scholarly study of American religion or the actual diversity within the groups they were stereotyping or about which they were pontificating. (Some also assigned me to the wrong group.) Some generalized based on bad experiences that they had had with some members of these groups in ways that they would never think to do with members of some other sorts of groups (such as, for example, their own).

Nevertheless, stereotypes, insensitivity and outright hostility obviously do not apply only to variations of religious faith. It was around 1986 when I first began to understand this point. I had temporarily ended up on a politically conservative Christian mailing list, which incited fear about secularists taking over the United States and persecuting Christians. At about the same time, my French professor, a very courteous and kind agnostic, pulled me aside after class one afternoon with an expression of terror on his face. Knowing that I was a Christian, he needed to ask me an important question. “Craig – -can you tell me if it is really true that Christians plan to take over the United States and persecute secular humanists?” My unfortunate professor was on someone else’s mailing list. Both organizations stereotyped “the enemy” to mobilize constituencies and raise funds.

Mistreatment is not, of course, limited to religious issues. One gay friend, for example, shared with me how he as a boy was stoned by classmates because of his sexual orientation.

Stereotypes flourish pervasively. One attorney I knew, lamenting a recent news story about a crooked lawyer, complained, “Everyone thinks we’re unethical! The media report only the scandals!” I fidgeted uncomfortably; I had shared that stereotype. Of course, it is the media’s job to report what is unusual, and at least in most professions and circles, scandals are what are exceptional. But when we form stereotypes based on those worst examples instead of engaging others as individuals, we are prone to evaluate them based on the alleged category. And when civility fails, we ridicule or fear each other instead of communicating and understanding one another’s concerns.

If all of us who have experienced others’ insensitivity to our beliefs could sympathize with those marginalized for beliefs different from our own, we could make the world a more tolerant place. Substantive points of disagreement with one another notwithstanding, we can learn to disagree respectfully and graciously. A number of us, in fact, follow faiths that should demand no less of us.

(Note: this post is a condensed version of an article originally published as part of Craig’s ongoing blogging on the Huffington Post website. See more of his articles here.)

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A personal perspective on immigration

Debates about immigration policy are back in the news. At such times, it’s helpful to remember the other side of policy: hundreds of thousands of individual stories. Immigration has always involved hardship, but unfortunately I never fully came to grips with that reality until it became part of my own reality. Ours was supposed to be an open-and-shut case: a fiancée visa. Our timing, however, was admittedly unhelpful: right after 9/11.

Médine and I had long been friends and had even discussed marriage. One day, however, I received a letter from her that a relative had carried out of the country. Civil war had come to Congo-Brazzaville, and she didn’t know whether she would live or die. By the time her letter reached me, her town had been abandoned and burned. For the next eighteen, anguished months I could do nothing but pray for her safety. Meanwhile, she was often traveling miles through snake-infested swamps and fields of army ants to get food for her family.

When the war ended and we were able to resume communication, we decided to marry, but were very naïve about international politics and policies. At the time, because of the recent war, her country lacked a functioning U.S. consulate, so she and her 3-year-old son would have to travel to Cameroon. It took awhile in the postwar situation to get all the papers that the U.S. government understandably required. For example, even though she had kept her passport while she was a refugee, the new government required new passports. For another, she had to get documents regarding her marital status. (She had been married briefly in Congo, but the husband had strangled her while she was pregnant and turned out to be a bigamist.)

A week after she finally reached Cameroon my teaching semester ended and I flew there to be with her while seeking the visa. We had been advised that, for some reason, a marriage visa took twice as long as a fiancée visa at that time, so we should wait and then marry in the U.S.

The requirement, though, was for me to return to the U.S. and file. A contact also informed us that one of her needed documents was inadequate, unknown to us, so she had to return to Congo while I fretted further for her safety — and her son cried that she might never come back. When I finally had the documents in hand and my lawyer was preparing to submit them, 9/11 happened — and immigration policy changed virtually overnight. On top of that, the Vermont Service Center was shut down due to an anthrax scare, and petitions became backlogged.

My fiancée had spent 18 months displaced from her home in Congo. Now she spent months displaced in a country not her own, waiting for a visa to my country. Conditions were better and the family hosting her was gracious, but now she was far from family and friends and lonelier than she had been as a refugee. As a professor I had an unusual gift in that I did not need to report for work during summer and winter breaks. Apart from those periods, however, I could not be with her or her son.

Through a senator’s intervention, the fiancée visa was expedited after I returned to Cameroon. We happily took our copy of the form to the consulate, only to discover that the consulate needed the form directly by diplomatic pouch from the United States; our copy of the document was not adequate. The consulate kept expecting the form by diplomatic pouch at any time, but it never arrived.

After more than two months back in Cameroon, I had to return to the U.S. because my next semester was starting. We had already missed our first wedding date. What broke my heart most was the sincere pleas of the boy, David, now 4. “I will come to Philadelphia with you tomorrow,” he kept promising. When I finally had to leave without him he cried. “Who will play with me?” A friend took us all to the airport; afterward Médine found a place alone and sobbed.

“The consulate must have lost the file,” the woman at the immigration service assured me. The consulate, however, insisted that the immigration service must have lost the file. Similar stories from friends suggested that the fault likelier lay with the overworked immigration service, but it didn’t matter. The woman on the phone warned me that whoever lost the file, I would have to start over with a new petition, and that could take six more months. We were devastated, and it could have really been six more months had the consulate not had mercy on us in view of the evidence already provided. (I should mention that once Médine and David were in the United States, immigration officials here were very courteous to them.)

Our experience was painful, but we watched even more painful experiences among friends who did not have such established legal grounds to have family members with them. Of course there are many factors to consider when debating the logistical details of immigration policy. But debates about policy should never lose sight of what immigration involves in the lives of the real people that immigration rules affect. When my wife and I think about immigration, our first thoughts are about the concrete pain of real families separated by international borders.

(Note: this article was originally published as part of Craig’s ongoing blogging on the Huffington Post website. See more of his articles here.)

 

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Why it is important to study the Bible in context

Context is the way God gave us the Bible, one book at a time.  The first readers of Mark could not flip over to Revelation to help them understand Mark; Revelation had not been written yet.  The first readers of Galatians did not have a copy of the letter Paul wrote to Rome to help them understand it.  These first readers did share some common information with the author outside the book they received.

We’ll call this shared information “background”: some knowledge of the culture, earlier biblical history, and so on.  But they had, most importantly, the individual book of the Bible that was in front of them.  Therefore we can be confident that the writers of the Bible included enough within each book of the Bible to help the readers understand that book of the Bible without referring to information they lacked.  For that reason, context is the most important academic key to Bible interpretation.

Often popular ministers today quote various isolated verses they have memorized, even though this means that they will usually leave 99% of the Bible’s verses unpreached.  One seemingly well-educated person told a Bible teacher that she thought the purpose of having a Bible was to look up the verses the minister quoted in church!  But the Bible is not a collection of people’s favorite verses with a lot of blank space in between.  Using verses out of context one could “prove” almost anything about God or justify almost any kind of behavior–as history testifies.  But in the Bible God revealed Himself in His acts in history, through the inspired records of those acts and the inspired wisdom of His servants addressing specific situations.

People in my culture value everything “instant”: “instant” mashed potatoes; fast food; and so forth.  Similarly, we too often take short-cuts to understanding the Bible by quoting random verses or assuming that others who taught us have understood them correctly.  When we do so, we fail to be diligent in seeking God’s Word (Proverbs 2:2-5; 4:7; 8:17; 2 Timothy 2:15).

One prominent minister in the U.S., Jim Bakker, was so busy with his ministry to millions of people that he did not have time to study Scripture carefully in context.  He trusted that his friends whose teachings he helped promote surely had done so.  Later, when his ministry collapsed, he spent many hours honestly searching the Scriptures and realized to his horror that on some points Jesus’ teachings, understood in context, meant the exact opposite of what he and his friends had been teaching!  It is never safe to simply depend on what someone else claims that God says (1 Kings 13:15-26).

I discovered this for myself when, as a young Christian, I began reading 40 chapters of the Bible a day (enough to finish the New Testament every week or the Bible every month).  I was shocked to discover how much Scripture I had essentially ignored between the verses I had memorized, and how carefully the intervening text connected those verses.  I had been missing so much, simply using the Bible to defend what I already believed!  After one begins reading the Bible a book at a time, one quickly recognizes that verses isolated from their context nearly always mean something different when read in context.

We cannot, in fact, even pretend to make sense of most verses without reading their context.  Isolating verses from their context disrespects the authority of Scripture because this method of interpretation cannot be consistently applied to the whole of Scripture.  It picks verses that seem to make sense on their own, but most of the rest of the Bible is left over when it is done, incapable of being used the same way.  Preaching and teaching the Bible the way it invites us to interpret it—in its original context–both explains the Bible accurately and provides our hearers a good example how they can learn the Bible better for themselves.

If we read any other book, we would not simply take an isolated statement in the middle of the book and ignore the surrounding statements that help us understand the reason for that statement.  If we hand a storybook to a child already learning how to read, the child would probably start reading at the beginning.  That people so often read the Bible out of context is not because it comes naturally to us, but because we have been taught the wrong way by frequent example.  Without disrespecting those who have done the best they could without understanding the principle of context, we must now avail ourselves of the chance to begin teaching the next generation the right way to interpret the Bible.

Many contradictions some readers claim to find in the Bible arise simply from ignoring the context of the passages they cite, jumping from one text to another without taking the time to first understand each text on its own terms.  To develop an example offered above, when Paul says that a person is justified by faith without works (Romans 3:28), his context makes it clear that he defines faith as something more than passive assent to a viewpoint; he defines it as a conviction that Christ is our salvation, a conviction on which one actively stakes one’s life (Romans 1:5).  James declares that one cannot be justified by faith without works (James 2:14)—because he uses the word “faith” to mean mere assent that something is true (2:19), he demands that such assent be actively demonstrated by obedience to show that it is genuine (2:18).  In other words, James and Paul use the word “faith” differently, but do not contradict one another on the level of meaning.  If we ignore context and merely connect different verses on the basis of similar wording, we will come up with contradictions in the Bible that the original writers would never have imagined.