Binding, Loosing, and the Human Experience

Last week I talked a lot about how we make sin-judgments. Much of that discussion focused on what people provide as theological REASONS for making sin attributions. But, in my last post I spoke about how moral dumbfounding research calls all that into question. Perhaps our moral feelings come first and are primary. Perhaps theological arguments are ad hoc and peripheral. I'd like to comment some more on this interplay of theology and emotion.

If we look at the moral development of the church in America, we see her making moral strides as she becomes more and more sensitized to the human experience. For example, as the experience of slavery began to dawn on the church (via books like Uncle Tom's Cabin) and the church's sympathies were expanded to include the plight of slaves, slavery began to be seen as a heinous crime against humanity. Thus, the sympathies of the church changed and only later did her theology of slavery change. Experience came first. The Abolitionists, prior to the Civil War, had an uphill battle, Biblically speaking. That is, although slave-holding Christians might not have gone so far to say that slave-holding was a "moral ideal," it was definitely not incompatible with being a Christian. And a strict reading of the Bible supported that conclusion. Today we feel differently. And that is the point. We FEEL differently. And because we feel differently, we read the Bible differently.

A similar thing happened with the Jews. Prior to WW II, the Christian church was notoriously anti-Semitic. And this anti-Semitism was justified by Biblical texts (recall the call of the Jews at the trial of Jesus in the gospel of John who welcomed the blood of Jesus on both themselves and their children). Thus it seemed perfectly legitimate, Biblically speaking, for Jews to be marginalized and persecuted by Christians. That is until Auschwitz. Auschwitz (to select just one example, and it's the photo you see) educated the church about the human experience. Only this time it wasn't the slave, but the Jew. And, after the church's sympathies were again expanded, she could not claim that is was possible to be both holy and anti-Semeitic. The smoke of Auschwitz changed how we read the Bible.

We have also seen a similar development regarding the experience of women. Women could not vote in America until 1920. They were considered too immature, unintelligent, and unreliable. But again, as our experiences changed in the country, as we began to learn that women are as intelligent as men and are in many ways more reliable and competent than men, how we read Biblical passages regarding women began to change as well.

In each of these cases, we see the following movement:

1. The Church's heart is exposed to the pain of the human condition.
2. The Church's sympathies expand, she "feels" the pain of the Other and realizes her current reading of Scripture is "unjust."
3. The Church begins to rethink her prior theological commitments in light of human experience (e.g., the Jew in Auschwitz, the woman with no vote, the slave being whipped) and wrestles to find NEW THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES TO ALLOW FOR A MORAL READING OF SCRIPTURE.

My point is that, in each time and place, the goal of the church is to achieve a moral reading of Scripture. We should not simply READ scripture. We must, rather, aim for a CERTAIN KIND OF READING, a MORAL reading in light of the human experience of suffering and pain.

And I believe Jesus justifies this attempt. In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus gives the Keys of the Kingdom to the church, to humanity, to "bind and loose." That is, the church must discern, in unique times and places, what is moral and what is not. In light of human experience, the church must "bind" currently permitted behavior that is now experienced as "unjust." Further, she must "loosen" old restrictions deemed to be unjust. We have seen this "binding and loosing" already. The church now "binds" slavery and has begun to "loose" women. And what is critical is that these bindings and loosings on Earth are bound and loosed "in Heaven."

In short, the traffic of "divine commands" is not a One-Way street: From Heaven to Earth. Jesus clearly states that the traffic is Two-Way. That commands on Earth will be obeyed in Heaven as well.

To conclude, Heaven and Earth are in a most profound conversation about what is just and good.

And sometimes it is Heaven that changes.



Matthew 16:19
"I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."