Finding the Center of God’s Will
When I (Brandon) graduated from high school, I received as gifts a trunkload of ink pens, picture frames, coffee mugs, journals, key chains and other knickknacks all inscribed with the same Bible verse: “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jer 29:11). This promise has become the standard scriptural blessing for young people making the transition to adulthood. The message is clear: you are striking out on your own, but don’t worry; God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. It’s little wonder, then, that every year, I (Randy) have to inform my students that Jeremiah 29:11 is not about their future career plans.
God was speaking to Judeans facing exile. That’s clear from the immediate context. The preceding verse tells us that God is referring to Israel’s time in Babylon. “This is what the Lord says: ‘When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place’” (Jer 29:10). Israelite children were not on their way to the university for the first time. The “plans” God refers to in Jeremiah 29:11 are “the good promise” to return the exiled people to their homeland. “‘I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile’” (Jer 29:14). It’s clear this verse is about ancient Israel and not me. Nevertheless, each of us finds a way to make this verse all about himself or herself.
At one level, our culture’s tendency to hijack this promise for high school grads is a symptom of our tendency to take the Bible out of context. But we can arrive at this interpretation even if we take context into consideration. We might reason the application of Jeremiah 29:11 this way: “As God loved and cared for his people then, so God will also love and take care of me.”
Maybe so. But we think this application reveals a deeper, more dangerous tendency than ignoring context. This misreading lurks deep in the substrata of “what goes without being said.” Western Christians, especially North American Christians, tend to read every scriptural promise, every blessing, as if it necessarily applies to us—to each of us and all of us individually. More to the point, we are confident that us always includes me specifically. And this may not be the case. In this chapter, we are discussing an aspect of the Western worldview that is similar to the individualism versus collectivism trait that we noted earlier. The idea is related but not the same. This misreading of Scripture arises from combining our individualism with a more subtle, deeply hidden and deeply rooted aspect of our Western worldview: we still think the universe centers around us. The assumption is naïve; but worse, it influences the way we read the Bible.
We come by this emphasis on me honestly. Europeans commonly immigrated to America for individual improvement.[1] French immigrant J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur wrote extensively in the eighteenth century about his experience of and motivation for starting a new life in the New World. “I envy no man’s prosperity, and wish no other portion of happiness than that I may live to teach the same philosophy to my children,” he wrote; “and give each of them a farm, show them how to cultivate it, and be like their father, good substantial independent American farmers.”[2] Crèvecoeur’s main objective was establishing an independent way of life and passing it on to his children. He doesn’t talk about establishing a righteous community for the glory of God, like many New England settlers had. In this way, the individualistic and self-absorbed population of America developed by way of a self-selecting process. Those attracted by the rugged frontier and solitary life made the dangerous journey west. Those who weren’t, didn’t.
While every generation likes to critique the previous one, it seems to us that Americans are becoming more self-centered.[3] My (Randy’s) generation was known as the “me generation.” Rather than saving for their children’s education, many spent their money on themselves. They continually remodeled their homes and even themselves. History has something to do with this (as always). This generation was in elementary school during the tumultuous social upheaval of the 1960s. As teens and young adults in the 1970s, many turned away from the activism of the previous decade and became focused on themselves. They wanted to have fun, be fulfilled and self-actualized and enjoy life. This is the generation responsible for the pet rock. Perfect for a self-centered generation, the pet rock didn’t need to be fed, walked or loved. When you lost interest, you could just throw it away (or pass it down to your kids).
When the “me generation” became Christians, we baptized this egocentrism. We now felt guilty for spending all our money on ourselves. So we gave it to the church. Mainly to our own local church. The church growth (megachurch) movement was led by baby boomers and populated with the “me generation.” We built modern cathedrals with children’s ministry spaces that Disney would covet. We still gave (and give) money to missions, but preferably for a trip that includes me. We sing the (beautiful) praise chorus, “It’s all about you, Jesus.” Who are we kidding? It’s all about Jesus—as long as it’s in a service I like, in a building I like, with people I like, with music I like, for a length of time I like. At some point in this generation, “Take up your cross and follow me” changed into, “Come to Jesus and he’ll make your life better.”
My (Brandon’s) generation is perhaps more self-centered, but we too have our excuses. Many Gen Xers were latchkey kids, which meant they were home alone after school in the evenings because both parents worked full time. In many ways, then, they raised themselves, with the help of afterschool specials that taught them they were special and unique and important. Reared on a steady diet of self-esteem and positive reinforcement, at least at school and on television, they are just as likely to consider themselves the center of the universe.
The generation coming up now, often called millennials, are usually the children of Gen Xers; and because the Gen Xers’ parents (Boomers) weren’t very involved in their lives, parents of millennials tend to over-parent. They’ve been labeled helicopter parents, because they hover over their kids and make sure they get everything they need all the time. This constant attention means the millennials have a strong sense of self-esteem (verging on narcissism, some would say), a strong sense of entitlement (because they’ve always gotten what they’ve wanted) and don’t take criticism very well. They, as the generations before them, are obsessed with self-improvement, self-actualization and self-expression.
So for generations now, Americans’ primary concern has been themselves. In his 2005 book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, sociologist Christian Smith coined a now-famous term to describe the religion of most teens in the United States. He called it moralistic therapeutic deism. One aspect of moralistic therapeutic deism is the assumption that the purpose of religious faith is “providing therapeutic benefits to its adherents.” The average teen, according to Smith, doesn’t view humans as existing to do the will of God; rather, they view God as existing to meet human needs. Smith goes on, “What appears to be the actual dominant religion among U.S. teenagers is centrally about feeling good, happy, secure, at peace. It is about attaining subjective well-being, being able to resolve problems, and getting along amiably with other people.”[4] Need a friend? God is there. Looking for direction in life? God has a plan. Want a more fulfilling marriage? God has the answers.
We believe Smith’s observations are true of more than just American teenagers. The prevailing model of ministry in the United States for the past generation has reinforced this cultural value. Much preaching is focused on the felt needs of listeners; this style communicates that the value of the Scriptures, and ultimately the gospel itself, is what it can do for me. This means that while the church has not created the American preoccupation with me, it has certainly reinforced it. If we are encouraged to think about our relationships with God and the church in terms of what’s in it for me, it’s only natural that we approach the Bible the same way. And you guessed it: this tendency can cause us to misread the Bible.
Now, what makes this misreading so tricky is that it is built upon at least two very positive beliefs. First, we assume that the Bible applies to us. One of the important commitments of evangelical Christianity is that the Bible is for us in every age. Every part of the Scriptures, even though they record events that happened in other countries and thousands of years ago, has application for us today. That is to say, we acknowledge that the Bible records history, but it is not only about things in the past. It is also relevant for Christians in the present and, by extension, in the future. A second influential, and accurate, assumption is that God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Because his character does not change, we are confident he will deal with us as he has dealt with his people previously. He was trustworthy then; he is trustworthy now. We then extrapolate that promises that applied to his people in the past continue to apply to his people in the present. If they didn’t, we reason, God would be unpredictable. But he isn’t. We trust him because “his compassions never fail” (Lam 3:22).
We wholeheartedly affirm both of these statements: that the Bible applies to us and that God is not capricious. The problem is that these foundational ideas are tweaked when we view them through the lens of me. The Christian church has always believed that the Scriptures are for us. But our historical location changes what that means. As Eugene Peterson has argued, the original process through which God worked with his people was through speaking-writing-reading (aloud)-listening. That is, until the Reformation, people heard the Scriptures in church—and only in church. That meant the natural question when interpreting the Bible was, “What does this mean to us?” With the double-edged gift of Gutenberg’s printing press, the process is often reduced merely to writing-reading. Now we read the Bible alone in our homes. This allows a communal process to become individualized. Worse, one can own the Word of God (meaning a book), rather than hear the Word of God, which is usually a communal act. The act of carrying around a book gives the individual the perception: I have the Word of God.[5] Now instead of asking, “What does this mean to us?” our instinctive question is, “What does this mean to me?” The shift to individual, reader-centered interpretation was natural, post-Gutenberg. But we must never lose sight of the implications of that shift.
Additionally, what goes without being said is that it’s all about me. We believe the Bible endorses our preoccupation with ourselves. We infer from Scripture that God has made us unique, has a special plan for each of us and therefore must have something to say to us specifically in the pages of Scripture. God said to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart” (Jer 1:5). Likewise, Isaiah and Paul spoke of being called by name (Is 49:1) or set apart (Gal 1:15) in their mother’s wombs. As a Westerner, I find myself thinking: if God chose them in their mother’s womb, then he must have chosen me, too. I may even cite Psalm 139:13 as proof. But the reasoning is circular; we assume that’s what it means because our culture tells us we are special and unique. The point the Bible is making seems to be quite the opposite. Jeremiah, Isaiah and Paul were apparently making the point that they were an exception. Unlike everyone else, they were set apart for a special word and a special task from the Lord. But in the way we read it, Jeremiah is “special,” just like everyone else.
These assumptions have serious consequences for the way we read Scripture. To begin with, our focus on me in our Bible reading affects if we read the Bible before it ever affects how we read it. What we mean is this: our preoccupation with what the Bible says to me leads us to prioritize certain parts of the Bible and ignore others. Do you have a favorite verse or book of the Bible? What makes it your favorite? It is likely that it means something special to you, challenges you, encourages you. The fact is, I am quite naturally concerned only with what pertains to me or has application for me. We call this a concern for relevance. And that means we, not God, determine what is relevant. If we want answers about how to share the gospel with unbelievers, we’re likely to find the book of Acts relevant. But what do we do with Judges? Let’s be honest. When we don’t immediately recognize the relevance of a passage—if it’s not immediately clear what I can get out of it—we are less likely to read it. This leaves us basing our Christian life on less than the full counsel of God.
Our preoccupation with me also leads us to confuse application with meaning. We attend lots of Bible studies. After a verse is read, participants are frequently asked for comments. People often begin their replies with, “What this verse means to me is . . .” Technically, the verse means what it means. What the participant actually means is, “How this verse applies to me is . . .” which is a wonderfully appropriate point to make. We affirm that God’s Word has application for his people. But when we confuse application with meaning, we can ignore the actual meaning of the text altogether. This American worldview trait, particularly among Christians, can lead us to believe that we (meaning I) have a privileged status in God’s salvation history. I may not be sure what God’s plans are, but I am confident that at the center will be me. We read a verse and say this verse is about me or my country or my time in history. God’s “plan” is centered around me.
Compounded by other cultural tendencies, such as our assumption that rules must apply 100 percent of the time to 100 percent of people, our emphasis on me can lead us to have unrealistic expectations of God which, when shattered, can cause us to doubt the truth of Scripture and the promises of God. Consider Psalm 37:25: “I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.” Taking this verse alone and at face value, couldn’t it lead you to believe that if you are a Christian, you will never be hungry? What happens, then, when you find yourself unable to make the rent or buy groceries? Do you assume that God has failed to keep his promises? We wonder, If this verse is not true for me, can it be true at all? We will touch on these issues at greater length below as we walk through three well-known Bible passages from Jeremiah 29, Romans 8 and Matthew 24.
“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’” (Jer 29:11). As we noted above, this is a popular “theme verse” for many of our students. The context of the passage is undisputed. The inhabitants of Jerusalem were on the brink of disaster. The Babylonians were knocking at the door. Death and slavery were best-case scenarios. God had miraculously delivered Jerusalem from the Assyrians about a hundred years earlier: “That night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning—there were all the dead bodies!” (2 Kings 19:35). Some self-proclaimed prophets were predicting God would do this sort of thing again. God sent Jeremiah to set the nation straight, to break the bad news. There would be no miraculous rescue this time. Even so, God did add that he had plans to ultimately prosper and not to harm his people. That is usually as far as our students get.
Your authors are 100 percent certain that God had plans and he accomplished them, just as he intended. The passage itself reminds the reader, “Surely these things happened to Judah according to the Lord’s command” (2 Kings 24:3). But we think that this verse is commonly misread in three ways.
First, Western readers tend to ignore the context. The city of Jerusalem was captured, looted and burned. The king, Zedekiah, didn’t fare better. “They killed the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes. Then they put out his eyes, bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon” (2 Kings 25:7). It may be that we ignore the context because it doesn’t apply to us. We noted above that we are prone to ignore passages we consider irrelevant to us. What could be less relevant than the fate of Zedekiah and his sons? Surely we shouldn’t expect a similar fate. The general context of exile, too, seems irrelevant. To us, the context of Jeremiah 29:11 feels like little more than a plot detail or filler to highlight the main point, which is a direct promise to us. And this promise is indeed most relevant. For what is it that we want? We want direction: wisdom in choosing a career or finding a spouse or handling an unruly child or an uncooperative colleague. I (Randy) bought a house just months before the housing collapse. My wife and I prayed about it. Surely, God has a plan to prosper us and our (underwater) house.
Herein lies the second way Western readers misread the passage: we unconsciously turn the us into me. We understand the object of the sentence, you, to mean “each one of you individually.” We then read Jeremiah 29:11 as, “I know the plans I have for you, Brandon.” But remember that Israel was a collectivist culture. They understood the object of the sentence, you, to mean “my people, Israel, as a whole.”[6] If God meant each Israelite individually, then the promise is nonsense before the words are fully out of God’s mouth. We must teach every new student that the “plans to prosper you” involved the killing and enslavement of thousands of individual Israelites (2 Kings 24-25), who might dispute the promise “not to harm you.” Moreover, Jeremiah 29:4-7 indicates that God’s blessing extended to Israel’s enemies, the nations in which the Israelites were living as exiles. Yet through all this, God prospered Israel. He didn’t spare them from exile. He prospered them in spite of their condition of exile. Certainly many individuals languished without prospering, without the prospect of a bright future. Enslavement and suffering were their plight. The promise may not apply to me, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t apply to us.
Third, we Westerners tend to microwave this verse. That is, we fast-forward the outcome. God does indeed prosper his people. About seventy years later, they are returned to the land with blessing. Most Western Christians who quote this verse would not be happy to acknowledge that the plans God has for his people may not be clear for two generations. Worse, the two intervening generations may endure all manner of hardship. To acknowledge this is to admit that the payoff doesn’t include me and renders the text irrelevant to me. It also offends our sensibility, discussed in a previous chapter, that promises (rules) must apply to everyone equally all the time.
To avoid misapplication, we should determine what the text meant then before we try to apply it to ourselves now. We suggest a better interpretation of Jeremiah 29 runs something like this: even though Israel is in the condition of exile, God will prosper them by prospering those who enslave them (Jer 29:7). Someday he will deliver them from exile, but that will happen well in the future. Until then, Israel is to rest assured that God is at work for their deliverance, even when he does not appear to be.
The application of this interpretation is broader and profounder than our typical misreading. Remember that the New Testament describes Christians as living in a state of exile.[7] We are “foreigners and exiles” (1 Pet 2:11), members of “the twelve tribes scattered among the nations” (Jas 1:1), whose “citizenship is in heaven” (Phil 3:20). Like the Israelites in Jeremiah 29, the church is “God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout” the world (1 Pet 1:1). A more likely application of Jeremiah 29:11, then, is that God is working to prosper his church. Though at times it appears the church cannot resist its enemies—whether hostile governments or worldviews or the unfaithfulness of its own people—God is committed to making it grow, like the mustard seed. He has promised the total consummation of his church. But until that day, we labor faithfully, knowing that God is working his purposes for his church, of which each of us is a part but not the focus.
Another passage we regularly misread because of our assumption that us means me is Romans 8:28: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” If Jeremiah 29:11 is a popular verse to quote to graduates, then many people consider Romans 8:28 a helpful word for those dealing with grief or disappointment. Early in my (Randy’s) missionary career, I was summoned to a village to preach at the funeral of a two-year-old who had fallen out a window. Since many Indonesian houses are on stilts, this type of death is, unfortunately, not uncommon. Many well-intended Indonesian pastors (trained in Western theology) sought to comfort the grieving parents by asserting this accident was actually a divine good in disguise (my words). Several years later, my wife and I received twin girls at birth for foster care. Both were medically needy. The smaller one died before age one. Again, well-meaning Christian friends assured us that this was for the best. Whether it is the death of a loved one, the end of a career or a missed opportunity, sincere Christians are inclined to quote Romans 8:28 to assure the sufferer that God is still working with them and for them. Their use of this verse implies that the current tragedy may seem like a setback, but in fact it is part of God’s plan to accomplish something greater, something that will be clear in retrospect.
We reach this application by misreading in two ways. First, we misunderstand “all things.” Without thinking, we turn “God works all things together for good” into “All things are good.”[8] Clearly, this is not what the passage means. A few verses later, Paul indicates his audience is facing serious trials, including “trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword” (Rom 8:35). In Romans 8:28 he is asserting that all things—good things, bad things, senseless things, the actions of good people or bad people, good governments or bad empires—are all tools in the hands of an active, caring God who is faithful to bring about his purposes. This verse never meant that everything that happens is a good thing. It doesn’t mean that now.
We may still feel good about this verse after that clarification. In fact, we may feel better. We already suspected that to make a bad thing into a good thing was a wrong thing to do. We know bad things happen. The trouble is that we have a hard time understanding why bad things happen. We often hear, “Everything that happens is the will of God!”
We respond, “Do you always do the will of God?”
“No,” someone will grudgingly admit. Correct. One definition of sin is “not doing the will of God.” It is a gross misreading of Scripture to use this verse to try to turn a bad thing into a good thing by suggesting that God causes all things to happen. God may bring good things from the ashes of bad things, but that is not the same thing. Often Job is cited. Someone will remind me that Job was given new sons and daughters (Job 42:13). Meaning no disrespect, it would not make us “even” if God took away my current sons and then later gave me two new ones. I would never, ever want to quote Romans 8:28 to a grieving parent. The point of this verse is not to say, “Hang in there; God’s gonna make it up to you.”
Our second mistake is following the instinct to interpret the verse individually. We naturally assume that good means good for me. It’s important to remember that every Christian martyr has believed Romans 8:28 to be true. And, in worldly terms, things did not work out well for them. Romans 8:28, like Jeremiah 29:11, may well refer to us and not to me. All things work together for the good of God’s people (collectively), even though individual believers may endure all manner of senseless suffering and death. We must be very careful applying a promise intended for the people of God in general to an individual or even a specific group or generation. If there is individual application, it is likely along the lines that John Calvin proposed for this verse. For Calvin, Romans 8:28 was a reminder that, “though the elect and the reprobate are indiscriminately exposed to similar evils, there is yet a great difference; for God trains up the faithful by afflictions, and thereby promotes their salvation.”[9] In other words, this is not a promise that God will protect us from harm or heartache. Rather, it is a promise that through the inevitable harm and heartache that come with being human, God can train us up in godliness. The focus, in this case, is better preparing us (his people) for God’s service, rather than expecting God to work things for our good.
While we were writing this book, Christian preacher and broadcaster Harold Camping predicted, based on his calculations of dates and figures in biblical prophecy, that the world would end on May 21, 2011. If you’re reading this book, he was mistaken. Camping is just the most recent in a long line of commentators who believed God’s appointed end times would come within their lifetime. The imminence of Christ’s second coming was heralded in the 1990s by the phenomenally popular Left Behind series. I (Brandon) remember Sunday school classes studying the book together and scouring the newspaper for signs of the eschaton (end of all things). The authors of Left Behind capitalized on momentum generated a generation before, when Hal Lindsey created a name (and a fortune) for himself with The Late Great Planet Earth (1970).[10] Lindsey identified apocalyptic symbols, primarily from the book of Daniel, as indications that the end was coming in his day. The King to the North was Russia. The ten-headed beast was the European Economic Community, an ancestor of the current European Union. The scorpions that stung with their tails in Revelation were military helicopters. Admittedly, it all seems a bit silly now, but I (Randy) was ready to drop out of college, because I had become convinced that the end was coming in 1984.
Why do Westerners seem convinced that Christ will come on our watch? The truth is, we aren’t the first. The Dead Sea Scrolls are copies of Old Testament books discovered near Qumran, the commune of the Essenes on the rim of the Dead Sea. This reclusive group of Jews from Jesus’ day had several peculiarities. One of the lesser known was a method of biblical interpretation that scholars often call pesher. This method of interpretation requires two presuppositions. First, it assumes a verse of Scripture is referring to the end of time, even if it doesn’t originally appear to be. For example:
For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, That fierce and impetuous people
Who march throughout the earth To seize dwelling places which are not theirs. (Hab 1:6 nasb)
Habakkuk refers to the Chaldeans as fierce warriors sweeping away all in their path. Yet God has marked them for judgment (Hab 1:12). This passage seems to be referring to Chaldeans who were threatening God’s people in Habakkuk’s day. The Essenes begged to differ. The pesher exegetes insisted the verse is actually referring to the eschaton.
Second—and this is the most important ingredient—the pesher exegete interprets his or her current time as the eschaton. Thus, step one is assuming a given passage is actually about the end of time; step two is assuming that time is now. The folks at Qumran interpreted the passage above this way; they believed Habakkuk was actually talking about the end of time, whether he knew it or not. Trouble is, the Chaldean threat is long gone. But pesher exegetes are nothing if not determined. The Essenes reasoned that the term Chaldeans was really code for Chittim, who had the famed warships made from pine trees on Cyprus. They then expanded the meaning of Chittim (Cyprus) to include all of Greece (and eventually Rome). God’s people were warned that the ships of Chittim would come to attack (“And ships shall come from the coast of Chittim,” Num 24:24 kjv). Therefore, God’s people needed to take notice when Roman warships landed to attack. Fear not! For Habakkuk has foretold that God would smite the Romans and give victory to his people (the folks at Qumran). Wow, it took a minute to get there, and required substituting one name for another and pulling in references from other books of the Bible. But in the end, Habakkuk 1:6 was interpreted as a promise to the Essenes at Qumran to deliver them from the Romans in the end times, which is now.
Does this method sound familiar? It’s the one Hal Lindsey used to bring communism into God’s plan for the end times. And it remains a popular way for Christians to read the Bible, especially books like Daniel and Revelation and passages like Matthew 24:3-8, when Jesus speaks of the “end of the age.” Its persistence in the West may well be due to our focus on me. For pesher to work, the interpreter has to feel that his or her times are the end times. As we have argued, North American Christians are predisposed to this element in our worldview that emphasizes me. God’s Word is a message for me. These apocalyptic texts would be irrelevant—would have no meaning for me—if the events they describe were not planned to occur in my lifetime. Perhaps the sensibility runs even deeper. Do we think, Of course, I would be on stage when the world ends. How could God do such a dramatic event without me? We don’t say it so bluntly, but the subconscious reasoning often runs this way: Of course the world couldn’t end before I got here, but now that I’m here, there isn’t any reason for God to wait any longer. When we state it so blatantly, we immediately see it as absurd; however, we should not dismiss that it was driving our (mis)reading. It is the part of the iceberg under the water that sinks the ships. It leads us, unconsciously, to read Jesus’ words—“You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. . . . Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places” (Mt 24:6-7)—and apply them immediately to our contemporary situation. Aren’t all these things happening right now? Indeed they are. Doesn’t that mean the end is coming in my lifetime? Not necessarily. Such things have been happening for the two thousand years since Jesus uttered this prophecy. And seizing on these things specifically makes us miss his command. “See to it that you are not alarmed,” he says. “Such things must happen,” but “all these are the beginning of birth pains,” not sure signs of the end (Mt 24:6, 8).
The servant who was ready when his master showed up was blessed: makarios (Lk 12:37-38). When his disciples asked about the end, Jesus told three parables in a row (Mt 24:3). The first warned that the master could come at any time, “So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him” (Mt 24:44). The second parable warned it could be sooner than we think (Mt 24:50). The third parable warned it could be later than we think (Mt 25:5). Jesus’ point seems clear. Jesus has covered all the bases: could be sooner, could be later. The first parable carried the main point: Jesus “will come at an hour when you do not expect him.” Yet we never seem to weary of guessing.
This cultural assumption about the supremacy of me is the one to which we Westerners are perhaps blindest. We rightly search for the center of God’s will, but with the unspoken assumption that once we find it, the seat will have my individual name on it. We have hundreds of years of cultural reinforcement driving us to read the Bible with ourselves at the center. There are those who are striving to correct the tendency in certain areas of our theology. Some theologians have been encouraging us to recognize that when the Bible talks about atonement, it has more than just personal, individual salvation in mind. It refers, too, to the restoration of creation which “has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” and longs for the day when “the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God” (Rom 8:22, 21). They have an uphill battle to fight. Regardless of whether you think these theologians are right or wrong, it seems evident to us that some of the objections to their proposals have less to do with systematic theology or exegesis than with our deeply seated cultural conviction that me is important. The idea that we are only a part of God’s redemptive plan is hard to swallow for Christians raised to believe that if I had been the only sinner ever born, Jesus would still have gone to the cross for me.
When we realize that each passage of Scripture is not about me, we begin gradually to see that the true subject matter of the Bible, what the book is really about, is God’s redeeming work in Christ. God is restoring all of creation (including me), but I am not the center of God’s kingdom work. This is a much greater thing to be absorbed with than ourselves. Here are a couple of tips for making that happen.
First, beware of thinking of the Bible in terms of “what this means to me.” Remember, the Bible means what it means. When we’re talking about the relevance of the Bible in our personal lives, we should ask, “How does this apply to me?” Remember, too, that you should try to answer the question “What did this passage mean to the original audience?” before asking, “How does this passage apply to me?”
Second, to avoid deriving a strictly individual interpretation of a biblical passage, ask yourself how you might apply the passage differently if you interpret it in corporate terms, rather than in individual terms. Practice asking, “How does this passage apply to God’s people?” Proverbs 22:6 reminds us: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (kjv). It likely that some readers have trained up their children properly in the Christian path, and yet that their children have departed from it. When this verse is read individually (and with the Western value that promises must apply to everyone 100 percent of the time), then we have to conclude that you must have failed to train your child properly. If we understand this verse corporately, then perhaps the better application is: if God’s people (corporately) train their children in the Christian path, then there will be a next generation of Christians to follow after them.
You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day,
nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday.
A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.
Is this verse relevant for me? Before you rush to claim it, bear in mind that Jesus didn’t. Satan tried to get Jesus to claim the promises of this psalm, especially verses 11-12, and Jesus refused (Lk 4:9-11). How would we determine the appropriate application of these verses? Who does “you” refer to?