The prison bible study was about to start. But I was hanging back, waiting on the Philosopher.
The Philosopher is new to the study. He's really smart in many ways. Hence the nickname he's been given by his fellow inmates. They call him the Philosopher.
But the Philosopher is also socially challenged. To my eye he as a lot of Asperger-like symptoms. These social skills issues make the Philosopher difficult to deal with in the class. The Philosopher has a tendency to go on long theological, doctrinal or biblical disquisitions that hold the floor for too long. But the Philosopher has trouble reading the non-verbals of the class as well as mine. He doesn't know when to stop so I have to awkwardly interject to get the class moving forward again.
But that's not why I'm hanging back this evening. I don't mind the Philosopher being long-winded. I'm a college professor. I'm an expert in being long-winded. So I get it.
I'm hanging back because last week the Philosopher accosted my co-teacher Herb. He accused Herb of "blasphemy" and asserted that Herb had "blood on his hands."
To be clear, there are lots of disagreements in the bible study. But this was extreme. It's going to be hard to have a good class discussion going forward if accusations of blasphemy are being leveled. So I need to check in with the Philosopher.
Here's the hilarious thing. You might be wondering what Herb was teaching that provoked the charge of blood-soaked blasphemy. It was this: Max Lucado.
That's right. Max Lucado. That damned heretic.
Herb was leading a discussion about Max Lucado's recent video series on grace. And why, you might ask, did the Philosopher find grace to be blasphemous?
Well, the Philosopher is a bit of a legalist. Consequently, the doctrine of grace is a bit scandalous. It's blasphemy. Thus Herb is leading souls to perdition for preaching (via DVD) the doctrine. Hence the "blood soaked hands" accusation.
The Philosopher was the last one to get to the study. He handed in his lay in (the slip of paper given by the chaplain's office granting permission to go the study) to the guards who began to pat him down.
But there's something stuffed in the Philosopher's sock. That's a problem which gets the attention of the guards. Their mood turns grim. You're not supposed to have things stuffed in your socks.
Is it contraband? A weapon?
Turns out it's a bible. One of those tiny, pocket-sized King James Version bibles.
The Philosopher was now asked to stand with this hands against the wall for a more thorough pat down.
The Philosopher has, it is discovered, about five small bibles stuffed all over his person.
One of the guards remarks, "I patted this guy down last week and he had like eight bibles on him."
The pat down concludes. I reflect. I'm about to try to have a biblical conversation about grace and legalism with a guy who carries bibles stuffed in his socks and whose nickname is "the Philosopher."
But I was raised in the Churches of Christ. So I'm pretty fearless when it comes to debating the bible. I don't care if you carry eight bibles on your person. That doesn't intimidate me. I was captain of my Bible Bowl team. I'm a member of the Churches of Christ, where children know more about the bible than N.T. Wright.
But in truth, I really don't want to debate the bible with the Philosopher. All I really want to say is that we don't mind disagreements in the study. Disagree all you want. But we do need to tone down the rhetoric. If you disagree with someone, fine, but you can't call them blasphemers and say that they have blood on their hands.
But here's the problem. The Philosopher feels compelled to say these things because, in his words, "my Father told me to say that." "My Father," of course, is God. The Philosopher is communicating directly with God, sharing God's words with us.
Probing into this, as we talk, the Philosopher reveals to me that he's sort of like the apostle Paul, getting visions directly from God.
I realize as the discussion goes on that this is getting beyond a biblical discussion and that I am now bumping into something more psychiatric. How do you have a disagreement with someone speaking directly for God?
I work to keep the discussion biblical and point out that the apostle Paul, despite the revelations he received from God, once worried that he might have been misinterpreting those visions, that he might have been "running in vain." Consequently, Paul sought out other mature followers of Jesus--Peter, John and James--to check out his gospel with them. I have the Philosopher turn (in one of his five bibles) to Galatians 1 to read about Paul's worry and his actions.
This story is new to the Philosopher. Or, at the very least, this story never registered in this particular way. Paul--the apostolic model for the Philosopher--needed other Christians to check and sign-off on his gospel. Truth required communal discernment.
We can't, I cautioned the Philosopher, be a lone wolf. Not even Paul.
That, at least, was the point I tried to bring home. I wasn't totally successful. But I gave the Philosopher pause. He became more thoughtful. Reflective. You could see the wheels turning.
The great apostle Paul once worried that he might have been wrong.
It's a sobering thought.
But a perfect thought, in my estimation, to start off a bible study.
Especially for Christians who like to carry lots of bibles.
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Richard Beck
Welcome to the blog of Richard Beck, author and professor of psychology at Abilene Christian University (beckr@acu.edu).
The Theology of Faƫrie
The Little Way of St. ThĆ©rĆØse of Lisieux
The William Stringfellow Project (Ongoing)
Autobiographical Posts
- On Discoveries in Used Bookstores
- Two Brothers and Texas Rangers
- Visiting and Evolving in Monkey Town
- Roller Derby Girls
- A Life With Bibles
- Wearing a Crucifix
- Morning Prayer at San Buenaventura Mission
- The Halo of Overalls
- Less
- The Farmer's Market
- Subversion and Shame: I Like the Color Pink
- The Bureaucrat
- Uncle Richard, Vampire Hunter
- Palm Sunday with the Orthodox
- On Maps and Marital Spats
- Get on a Bike...and Go Slow
- Buying a Bible
- Memento Mori
- We Weren't as Good as the Muppets
- Uncle Richard and the Shark
- Growing Up Catholic
- Ghostbusting (Part 1)
- Ghostbusting (Part 2)
- My Eschatological Dog
- Tex Mex and Depression Era Cuisine
- Aliens at Roswell
On the Principalities and Powers
- Christ and the Powers
- Why I Talk about the Devil So Much
- The Preferential Option for the Poor
- The Political Theology of Les MisƩrables
- Good Enough
- On Anarchism and A**holes
- Christian Anarchism
- A Restless Patriotism
- Wink on Exorcism
- Images of God Against Empire
- A Boredom Revolution
- The Medal of St. Benedict
- Exorcisms are about Economics
- "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?"
- "A Home for Demons...and the Merchants Weep"
- Tales of the Demonic
- The Ethic of Death: The Policies and Procedures Manual
- "All That Are Here Are Humans"
- Ears of Stone
- The War Prayer
- Letter from a Birmingham Jail
Experimental Theology
- Eucharistic Identity
- Tzimtzum, Cruciformity and Theodicy
- Holiness Among Depraved Christians: Paul's New Form of Moral Flourishing
- Empathic Open Theism
- The Victim Needs No Conversion
- The Hormonal God
- Covenantal Substitutionary Atonement
- The Satanic Church
- Mousetrap
- Easter Shouldn't Be Good News
- The Gospel According to Lady Gaga
- Your God is Too Big
From the Prison Bible Study
- The Philosopher
- God's Unconditional Love
- There is a Balm in Gilead
- In Prison With Ann Voskamp
- To Make the Love of God Credible
- Piss Christ in Prison
- Advent: A Prison Story
- Faithful in Little Things
- The Prayer of Jabez
- The Prayer of Willy Brown
- Those Old Time Gospel Songs
- I'll Fly Away
- Singing and Resistence
- Where the Gospel Matters
- Monday Night Bible Study (A Poem)
- Living in Babylon: Reading Revelation in Prison
- Reading the Beatitudes in Prision
- John 13: A Story from the Prision Study
- The Word
Series/Essays Based on my Research
The Theology of Calvin and Hobbes
The Theology of Peanuts
The Snake Handling Churches of Appalachia
Eccentric Christianity
- Part 1: A Peculiar People
- Part 2: The Eccentric God, Transcendence and the Prophetic Imagination
- Part 3: Welcoming God in the Stranger
- Part 4: Enchantment, the Porous Self and the Spirit
- Part 5: Doubt, Gratitude and an Eccentric Faith
- Part 6: The Eccentric Economy of Love
- Part 7: The Eccentric Kingdom
The Fuller Integration Lectures
Blogging about the Bible
- Unicorns in the Bible
- "Let My People Go!": On Worship, Work and Laziness
- The True Troubler
- Stumbling At Just One Point
- The Faith of Demons
- The Lord Saw That She Was Not Loved
- The Subversion of the Creator God
- Hell On Earth: The Church as the Baptism of Fire and the Holy Spirit
- The Things That Make for Peace
- The Lord of the Flies
- On Preterism, the Second Coming and Hell
- Commitment and Violence: A Reading of the Akedah
- Gain Versus Gift in Ecclesiastes
- Redemption and the Goel
- The Psalms as Liberation Theology
- Control Your Vessel
- Circumcised Ears
- Forgive Us Our Trespasses
- Doing Beautiful Things
- The Most Remarkable Sequence in the Bible
- Targeting the Dove Sellers
- Christus Victor in Galatians
- Devoted to Destruction: Reading Cherem Non-Violently
- The Triumph of the Cross
- The Threshing Floor of Araunah
- Hold Others Above Yourself
- Blessed are the Tricksters
- Adam's First Wife
- I Am a Worm
- Christus Victor in the Lord's Prayer
- Let Them Both Grow Together
- Repent
- Here I Am
- Becoming the Jubilee
- Sermon on the Mount: Study Guide
- Treat Them as a Pagan or Tax Collector
- Going Outside the Camp
- Welcoming Children
- The Song of Lamech and the Song of the Lamb
- The Nephilim
- Shaming Jesus
- Pseudepigrapha and the Christian Witness
- The Exclusion and Inclusion of Eunuchs
- The Second Moses
- The New Manna
- Salvation in the First Sermons of the Church
- "A Bloody Husband"
- Song of the Vineyard
Bonhoeffer's Letters from Prision
Civil Rights History and Race Relations
- The Gospel According to Ta-Nehisi Coates (Six Part Series)
- Bus Ride to Justice: Toward Racial Reconciliation in the Churches of Christ
- Black Heroism and White Sympathy: A Reflection on the Charleston Shooting
- Selma 50th Anniversary
- More Than Three Minutes
- The Passion of White America
- Remembering James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman
- Will Campbell
- Sitting in the Pews of Ebeneser Baptist Church
- MLK Bedtime Prayer
- Freedom Rider
- Mountiantop
- Freedom Summer
- Civil Rights Family Trip 1: Memphis
- Civil Rights Family Trip 2: Atlanta
- Civil Rights Family Trip 3: Birmingham
- Civil Rights Family Trip 4: Selma
- Civil Rights Family Trip 5: Montgomery
Hip Christianity
The Charism of the Charismatics
Would Jesus Break a Window?: The Hermeneutics of the Temple Action
Being Church
- Instead of a Coffee Shop How About a Laundromat?
- A Million Boring Little Things
- A Prayer for ISIS
- "The People At Our Church Die A Lot"
- The Angel of Freedom
- Washing Dishes at Freedom Fellowship
- Where David Plays the Tambourine
- On Interruptibility
- Mattering
- This Ritual of Hallowing
- Faith as Honoring
- The Beautiful
- The Sensory Boundary
- The Missional and Apostolic Nature of Holiness
- Open Commuion: Warning!
- The Impurity of Love
- A Community Called Forgiveness
- Love is the Allocation of Our Dying
- Freedom Fellowship
- Wednesday Night Church
- The Hands of Christ
- Barbara, Stanley and Andrea: Thoughts on Love, Training and Social Psychology
- Gerald's Gift
- Wiping the Blood Away
- This Morning Jesus Put On Dark Sunglasses
- The Only Way I Know How to Save the World
- Renunciation
- The Reason We Gather
- Anointing With Oil
- Incarnations of God's Mercy
Exploring Preterism
Scripture and Discernment
- Owning Your Protestantism: We Follow Our Conscience, Not the Bible
- Emotional Intelligence and Sola Scriptura
- Songbooks vs. the Psalms
- Biblical as Sociological Stress Test
- Cookie Cutting the Bible: A Case Study
- Pawn to King 4
- Allowing God to Rage
- Poetry of a Murderer
- On Christian Communion: Killing vs. Sexuality
- Heretics and Disagreement
- Atonement: A Primer
- "The Bible says..."
- The "Yes, but..." Church
- Human Experience and the Bible
- Discernment, Part 1
- Discernment, Part 2
- Rabbinic Hedges
- Fuzzy Logic
Interacting with Good Books
- Christian Political Witness
- The Road
- Powers and Submissions
- City of God
- Playing God
- Torture and Eucharist
- How Much is Enough?
- From Willow Creek to Sacred Heart
- The Catonsville Nine
- Daring Greatly
- On Job (GutiƩrrez)
- The Selfless Way of Christ
- World Upside Down
- Are Christians Hate-Filled Hypocrites?
- Christ and Horrors
- The King Jesus Gospel
- Insurrection
- The Bible Made Impossible
- The Deliverance of God
- To Change the World
- Sexuality and the Christian Body
- I Told Me So
- The Teaching of the Twelve
- Evolving in Monkey Town
- Saved from Sacrifice: A Series
- Darwin's Sacred Cause
- Outliers
- A Secular Age
- The God Who Risks
Moral Psychology
- The Dark Spell the Devil Casts: Refugees and Our Slavery to the Fear of Death
- Philia Over Phobia
- Elizabeth Smart and the Psychology of the Christian Purity Culture
- On Love and the Yuck Factor
- Ethnocentrism and Politics
- Flies, Attention and Morality
- The Banality of Evil
- The Ovens at Buchenwald
- Violence and Traffic Lights
- Defending Individualism
- Guilt and Atonement
- The Varieties of Love and Hate
- The Wicked
- Moral Foundations
- Primum non nocere
- The Moral Emotions
- The Moral Circle, Part 1
- The Moral Circle, Part 2
- Taboo Psychology
- The Morality of Mentality
- Moral Conviction
- Infrahumanization
- Holiness and Moral Grammars
The Purity Psychology of Progressive Christianity
The Theology of Everyday Life
- Self-Esteem Through Shaming
- Let Us Be the Heart Of the Church Rather Than the Amygdala
- Online Debates and Stages of Change
- The Devil on a Wiffle Ball Field
- Incarnational Theology and Mental Illness
- Social Media as Sacrament
- The Impossibility of Calvinistic Psychotherapy
- Hating Pixels
- Dress, Divinity and Dumbfounding
- The Kingdom of God Will Not Be Tweeted
- Tattoos
- The Ethics of :-)
- On Snobbery
- Jokes
- Hypocrisy
- Everything I learned about life I learned coaching tee-ball
- Gossip, Part 1: The Food of the Brain
- Gossip, Part 2: Evolutionary Stable Strategies
- Gossip, Part 3: The Pay it Forward World
- Human Nature
- Welcome
- On Humility
Jesus, You're Making Me Tired: Scarcity and Spiritual Formation
A Progressive Vision of the Benedict Option
George MacDonald
Jesus & the Jolly Roger: The Kingdom of God is Like a Pirate
Alone, Suburban & Sorted
The Theology of Monsters
The Theology of Ugly
Orthodox Iconography
Musings On Faith, Belief, and Doubt
- The Meanings Only Faith Can Reveal
- Pragmatism and Progressive Christianity
- Doubt and Cognitive Rumination
- A/theism and the Transcendent
- Kingdom A/theism
- The Ontological Argument
- Cheap Praise and Costly Praise
- god
- Wired to Suffer
- A New Apologetics
- Orthodox Alexithymia
- High and Low: The Psalms and Suffering
- The Buddhist Phase
- Skilled Christianity
- The Two Families of God
- The Bait and Switch of Contemporary Christianity
- Theodicy and No Country for Old Men
- Doubt: A Diagnosis
- Faith and Modernity
- Faith after "The Cognitive Turn"
- Salvation
- The Gifts of Doubt
- A Beautiful Life
- Is Santa Claus Real?
- The Feeling of Knowing
- Practicing Christianity
- In Praise of Doubt
- Skepticism and Conviction
- Pragmatic Belief
- N-Order Complaint and Need for Cognition
Holiday Musings
- Everything I Learned about Christmas I Learned from TV
- Advent: Learning to Wait
- A Christmas Carol as Resistance Literature: Part 1
- A Christmas Carol as Resistance Literature: Part 2
- It's Still Christmas
- Easter Shouldn't Be Good News
- The Deeper Magic: A Good Friday Meditation
- Palm Sunday with the Orthodox
- Growing Up Catholic: A Lenten Meditation
- The Liturgical Year for Dummies
- "Watching Their Flocks at Night": An Advent Meditation
- Pentecost and Babel
- Epiphany
- Ambivalence about Lent
- On Easter and Astronomy
- Sex Sandals and Advent
- Freud and Valentine's Day
- Existentialism and Halloween
- Halloween Redux: Talking with the Dead
The Offbeat
- Batman and the Joker
- The Theology of Ugly Dolls
- Jesus Would Be a Hufflepuff
- The Moral Example of Captain Jack Sparrow
- Weddings Real, Imagined and Yet to Come
- Michelangelo and Neuroanatomy
- Believing in Bigfoot
- The Kingdom of God as Improv and Flash Mob
- 2012 and the End of the World
- The Polar Express and the Uncanny Valley
- Why the Anti-Christ Is an Idiot
- On Harry Potter and Vampire Movies
The flip side of the enlightenment and wonder of having the scriptures at our finger tips, is how it can fill us with a "purpose" that is not conducive to a healthy relationship with God and one another. To put it plainly, the Bible has been clutched and wielded as a hammer by those who have felt powerless in all other aspects of their lives. Many who have a minimal education, an average job, and basically no voice in the community find the Bible and their "knowledge" of it as the only power they will ever know.
With that said, the challenge falls on those of us who have fought, scratched, clawed, only to end up bleeding and crawling through such an existence ourselves, to find some way to help them let go of the power treasure they think they find in the Bible without causing them to feel they are losing their sole reason for existence.
Great point regarding the apostle Paul. The human element in the Bible is often missed; even intentionally ignored. But if we can somehow, with patience, get the point across to others that the world of the Bible was just as humanly imperfect as the one we find ourselves in, then maybe most of us will find the humility that will tear down a few walls and help those who do not trust the arrogance of religion take a little time to listen.
I, too, have never read Galatians with that viewpoint. Interesting.
And it dovetails with Paul's instructions to the Corinthians:
HCSB 1 Cor 14:29 Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should evaluate.
I agree that the human element in the bible is amazing!. Its funny this point about paul checking his gospel - when i read that passage it seems paul is doing the checking of the others gospels (not checking his own!!!!!!) - Paul is always very over confident in his tine and often uses the credentials: 'i am hearing straight from God' in his letters - i think its once of his flaws - in Gal 2:4 he lable his opposers as 'false' which is incredible manipulative! Then again when correcting peter - he uses reason- Gal 2: 11-15 Paul was a great guy definate jesus follower - but lets teach from his mistakes rather than listening always to his sometimes great but poorely/humanly executed points! The bible is rich with information about how humans respond both to God and his phrophets and to Jesus's kingdom of God message. That is the ephasis, there is much less information about Jesus and God in the bible than human response to God. Gods message is short and simple as jesus explained ( love god love neighbour)- however humans make a mess of it and have complicated hearts. Anyhow great artilce funny i agree with it all - avoid lone wolfs - and strive for peace - but have the opposite takeaway from pauls way of life!
Richard, what's most beautiful to me about this story is the way your response is grounded in love: "toning down the rhetoric," being aware of psychiatric issues, not needing to be right. That whether or not you wind up "totally successful," you can still give thanks for the presence of doubt. God bless you for your gentleness, your quick mind, your knowledge of Scripture and your open heart.
I have wrestled with my conscience for several years now about what I am hearing in "The Church" that seems to be pushing me out the door. I thought it was possibly "burnout". The article here and your article about "Rethinking unconditional Love" has really brought some clarity to me. In one corner of this "Main Event Match" is the free world Baptist Church" of which I grew up in and have been active in for the last 16 years. In the other corner is the Texas Prison system where I have been a "Religious" volunteer for now on 7 years. I went into the prison to take the Love of Jesus to some poor forgotten souls. What I found very quickly was a "Pristine" Christian taught by the Holy Spirit, void of the "Church Speak", a raw, unbridled passion(even that sounds "Churchy"). I feel like I am left with this Choice: Listening to the canned rehearsed interpretation of the interpretation of the word from a well read, well meaning Theologian or a "Fresh from the Garden" conversation with a brother who doesn't know "mission" from "ministry"?
Wonderful Story. Thank you for sharing this :)
Thank you for sharing this, professor. I appreciate your approach and will adopt it as I encounter the "prophets" around me.