Apparently, the idea that Christians should quote scripture is controversial among Christians. I received quite a few critical replies when I posted the statement, “Do not trust Christians that rarely quote the Bible.” I’m going to spend a couple of days responding to these criticisms.
RESPONSE 1: “Too many “christians” quote scripture with the intent of bullying people in to submission, it’s humiliating.”
Unless you specifically ask me, “What is motivating you to quote scripture?” I don’t think you should speculate about my intent. However, I’m eager to address your concern so I’ll use your language and admit that I’m quoting the Bible to “bully people into submission.”
Fortunately for me, there are quite a few scriptures available to assist me in my bullying efforts. I won’t list ALL of them but I’ll give you one of my favorites.
(Luke 22:26) “… Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.”
That quote came from Jesus. He was brow-beating the apostles with a message of servitude and submission. Those poor fishermen were brainwashed into believing that they should put others ahead of themselves. Then, in the ultimate act of manipulation, Jesus was crucified as a lowly criminal.
Sometimes, quoting this scripture successfully bullies people into repenting and giving their lives over to God; but not always. The strong willed people are able to resist. They cannot be bullied. They don’t submit to anyone.
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You forgot about the third group. Sometimes quoting scripture successfully bullies vulnerable undesirables into committing suicide because of the truth, specifically the truth about how much God hates them for things they central to their being which they cannot control (and which God will not help them control), such as aberrant sexual inclinations.
Scripture also teaches us to bully them by depriving them of brotherhood and fellowship is they are unable to overcome this particular strain of flesh, making the bullying by biblical quotation all the sharper to cleave their bodies from their souls…
You forgot about the 4th group. These are adults who teach children that sexuality is central to their being and they have no control over those inclinations. Instead, the kids are told aberrant sexual behavior has no consequence and by the time experience teaches them the truth, they don’t believe the scripture that says redemption is possible. In despair, they take their own lives and anonymous posters spew lies into the internet that they killed themselves because some Christian quoted the Bible.
Well, no, most of them weren’t told that it’s part of what they are, and they don’t need to be taught so by seculars: Christianity already teaches that sinful inclinations already are a natural part of what we all are, and redemption does not destroy the sinful flesh, because we are created sinners in sinful flesh, and the law enflames its desires.
Imagine if gluttony were treated the same way as faggotry. It’s not just the candy that is a pointless and sinful indulgence of the flesh, but having the sweet tooth itself that is sinful, and the fleshly tremor and weakness from that low-blood-sugar feeling. We bully fat kids into killing themselves without scripture at all because fatness is manifest. But faggotry, at least in where I live, can only be bullied through scripture, because its consequences are identical to non-sinful marriage.
Christianity teaches that we are no long slaves to our sinful inclinations. That is the redemption. Gluttony and faggotry (your term) are not central to our being. Anyone who says there is no way an old creature can be made new, is a liar.
Amen, John
Just because you are not a slave doesn’t mean you’re no longer a serf, or no longer living paycheck-to-paycheck under my thumb. I don’t need to enslave you in order to oppress you. Further, being reeslaved to Christ does not mean you actually obey your new slaver (Romans 7). You will never be fully free so long as you are still embodied in the weak, mortal, sinful flesh you were created as, despite being pre-imputed a new creation and told to mortify the deformities of being human.
Is this the hope filled message you proclaim to keep people from committing suicide?
It is not my message. It is yours. It is the Gospel when applied. The way is narrow and was never widened. See Romans 9:17-23. Gospel truth stands against hope of many.
So where does your hope come from?
In Jesus
Perhaps whence any Christian gets their hope: the hope of being right, as we are saved by being right alone, apart from loving our neighbors. We are saved by believing the right things, apart from doing good things. That is faith apart from works.
This is the hope that the gospel we know is right.
Or perhaps I get my hope somewhence else, perhaps I hope in God’s love against the hope of the gospel. There is so much talk of love and mercy dispersed among the crushing grinding gears of the New Testament’s message of unquenchable fire, undying worm, and universal pre-condemnation. Perhaps I get hope in weighing the former to deny the latter, knowing that the two (the lip-service to benevolent love and the gospel’s cold mechanics) are diametrically opposed both in nature and in fruit.
This is the hope that the gospel we know is wrong.
To be honest, I still don’t know which I hope in.
But the point is that I am telling you, the gospel doesn’t just bully people into salvation. It also bullies people into despair. Do not blame the wall for being there when you are bashing someone’s head against it. Do not blame the vulnerable teen faggot’s learning that he can’t pray the gay away for causing him to kill himself (and the secular message that describes this) instead of blaming how the gospel has struck them. The gospel is telling them that God has still given them the “uncleanness, through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their bodies,” “unto vile affections,” making them still burn “in their lust” with their “reprobate mind,” which their converting to the faith hasn’t fixed. The gospel, not the secular, tells them because of their bad tastes that they are seen in God’s eyes to be also ‘wicked, covetuous, malicious, envious, murderous, deceitful, malignant, gossiping, backbiting, God-hating, spiteful, proud, boastful, creatively evil, bad to parents, ignorant, oathbreaking, psychopathic, implacable, merciless… and worthy of death.’ (Romans 1:29-32) Such things actually are, in God’s opinion, “central to their being and they have no control over those inclinations.” because God is in control of their urges, not them. The secular and the gospel both agree on it being beyond their control. That’s what my point is. The gospel is an amazing weapon for bullying and killing, and we the believer don’t need secular help bully and kill. Some of us do it inadvertantly; some of us do it by omission… some of us do it for fun… to see some hardened and others softened by the truth-in-love and truth-to-power, especially to see the hardened vessels of wrath being shattered, having been fitted for destruction. Those are the third group. Therefore I am telling you that you are absolutely wrong in saying,
“Sometimes, quoting this scripture successfully bullies people into repenting and giving their lives over to God; but not always. The strong willed people are able to resist. They cannot be bullied. They don’t submit to anyone.”
You see, some of them can be bullied, but not to repentance, and I’ve only scratched the surface on just how deliciously good at destroying people quoting scripture can be when repeated, internalized, and rightly divided according to circumstance. There is so , so much more pain to be found in the double-edged scriptures than what I’ve mentioned here, and so many hopes and promises to be held just out of reach.