Is the Bible a weapon?

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I recently read a post from a young minster asking whether he should officiate the wedding of a believer to an unbeliever. He was genuinely seeking advice.

Some of the responses were brilliant. They asked clarifying questions, they raised  important perspectives, and they bought the issue back to the Gospel. Overwhelmingly the answer (probably rightly) was no.

Other responses however were combative, aggressive, obtuse, and completely impersonal.

One of them read:

‘Hell no, haven’t you read your Bible!?!’

Another said:

‘Um, No! The Bible forbids Christians marrying non-believers.’

And yet another said:

‘Uneven yoke! Uneven yoke! Read it?’

Quite a few proof-texted that 2. Cor. 6:14 (the uneven yoke) verse as if that alone obviously answered the guy’s question. Forgetting for a minute that 2. Cor. 6 doesn’t mention marriage at all, the tone these messages was blunt, combative, and way off.

What came across is that the Bible itself was their justification for being rude and dismissive. Their Bible was their weapon, designed (in their eyes) to be wielded by the righteous to cut down the heretic, and dice up the false teacher.

But hang on, isn’t the Bible a sword?

Yes, but no, but yes, but no, but.

I’m a fan of my Bible! I believe it is the infallible word of God and useful for everything we need (2 Tim. 3:16-17). However, when we call it our ‘sword’, its possible that we’re not saying the same thing that the Bible does when it uses that word.

I remember visiting a youth meeting when the leader told the group to ‘draw swords.’ What followed was a room of young people (some with more indecent enthusiasm than others) pulling out their Bibles and winging them around while making light-sabre noises. It was cute, but was it helpful?

Yes… but no… but

What do we really mean when we say our Bible is a sword? Swords, after all, are weapons designed to kill people. Sometimes, as was the case in the comment section of the example above, the Bible is used in exactly that way: proof-texting passages to score points with the choir and ‘take down the heretic’ on the way to victory.

Is that what the Bible is designed to do? Is that what the Bible itself means us to do when it calls itself a sword?

Like with all things, an extra minute to challenge our baseline assumptions with a second look at the passages themselves will really help!

Eph. 6:17

‘Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God’

Ok, so the Bible is a sword – sure. However, context is key, and v.12 tells us explicitly that our fight is not against people, but against ‘spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.’

This makes sense of the rest of the passage as every piece of armour is defensive and they are all different ways to describe just one thing. It’s all about being clothed in Jesus.

The ‘belt of truth’ gathers our worldview together with Jesus; the breastplate of righteous covers our hearts with the purity that Jesus provides; our feet are covered in the Gospel to guard our steps wherever we go; the shield of faith challenges lies with the truth of Jesus; and the helmet of salvation caps off our assurance in heaven.

You can overinterpret the individual pieces for sure – in fact I think we tend to – but what Paul is actually saying is ‘be clothed in the Gospel’ or ‘be covered in what Jesus has done for you.’ All the pieces of armour (sword included) are ways of telling us to live in the light of who Jesus is and what He has done for us.

There’s nothing about false teaching, heresy, debate, evangelism, correction or rebuke. Nada!

Heb. 4:1

‘For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.’

If it is sharper than, then it is not. The nature of comparison is that if it is compared to then it is not the same as. If I am taller than Bob, then I am not Bob. So this means that the Bible is like a sword in that it is sharp. So the Bible – like a sword – can penetrate and divide, but its direction is inwards.

The sword-like Word of God in this passage is directed at ourselves to convict us of sin and help us be more like Jesus. It’s to lay bare the inner depths of our hearts before God for Him to judge (v.13). It is to make us see the depths of our need for Him, in His grace, to save us (vv.14-15), so we can have confidence in Him and not ourselves (v.16).

The sword-like word of God in this passage, just like in Ephesians, is a mechanism of assurance in the Gospel of Jesus – for us. It is not a weapon to be wielded against false teachers or imperfect, vulnerable, growing people.

What about correcting false teaching

Yes – absolutely! The Bible is a tool of correction and rebuke (2 Tim. 3:16), but this is not for point-scoring or cutting people down. Rebuke of believers happens in love and care, and of unbelievers with clarity, gentleness, and respect (2 Pt. 3:15). It is, after all, the Holy Spirit who convicts the heart (v.16).

Jesus does let the hypocritical Pharisees have it full-on from both barrels (Matt. 23), and Paul wishes that false teachers would be ‘emasculated’ (Gal. 5:12). In both of these examples however, Jesus and Paul were moved by a deep protective love of God’s children to push back against those who should have known better.

When we wield the Bible like a sword, are we primarily moved by genuine, overflowing love and motivated by a responsible sense of protection – or is that simply the justification we give to ‘be right’?

If our motivation is to fix people or pull people down then we too would benefit from reading the whole Bible in its given tone and context. Let’s end by looking at how correction should be done.

Biblical correction – as a pastor

In 2 Tim. 2, Paul gives very clear instruction on how to deal with false teachers as a pastor.

v.14 says to warn people against quarrelling over words as it holds no value and ‘ruins’ those who listen.

v.15 tells us to teach clear honest truth, demonstrated by handling the word correctly. This is to give a clear and solid alternative to false teaching. It doesn’t even need to target the false teacher – in fact it’s often more powerful if it doesn’t.

v.16 avoid gossip… yup!

vv.17-18 Paul does name and shame two false teachers, but that’s in the context of what God is able to accomplish in spite of them. Paul spends no more than half a sentence on these false teachers before reassuring Timothy of God’s ability to confirm His own word and protect His own people (v.19)

vv.22-23 going full circle, we should flee the ‘evil desires of youth’ and not get caught up in ‘stupid arguments’. I’m assuming the structure here means he is equating both together. It’s often a sign of inexperience and immaturity to want to score points and be right all the time. I’ve met quite a few – usually young Bible college students – who get a kick from being confrontational and controversial without any pastoral flock to protect, and without any evidence of being moved by love. Franky I’ve been there myself and it’s all too easy to slip into.

v.24 ‘the Lord’s servant’ must not be quarrelsome (especially not for quarrelling’s sake) but be kind to everyone. There is no exception made here for false teachers. As Jesus loves his enemies so we should always be moved by love. If you can’t love the one you correct – keep your mouth shut until you can… especially if you can’t point to a flock that God has put under your care to protect.

v.25 opponents must be ‘gently instructed’. It doesn’t say defeated, beaten, destroyed or owned. The hope is that they’ll repent and escape the devil (v.26). This is again moved by compassion and driven by the great commission to make disciples.

Biblical correction – as a brother or sister

If you’re not a pastor, then you too are called to be part of people’s journey of faith through gentle correction (Tit. 3:1-2). Your talk should be wholesome, and motivated by the desire to build up and not tear down (Eph. 4:29). Our speech should be gracious, especially in disagreements (Col. 4:6). We should treat our words with great prudence and care (Prov. 10:19; 17:9, 27-28; 21:23), and this is particularly true of gossip (Prov. 26:20).

Matt. 18 tells us that when a fellow Christian needs some measure of correction, we should go to them personally first (in the tone of the paragraph above) (v.15). Then we should bring another to be part of the conversation (v.16), then we should pass it over to the church (which should be to those with spiritual leadership over the person) (v.17). It’s then the job of the church – really the pastor – to handle it as in 2 Tim. 2 above.

So is the Bible a weapon?

When the Bible calls the word a sword, is it directed either at the evil one or ourselves. It is wielded by God, not us, and is used as a tool of precision, not an indiscriminate weapon of destruction. If we used a surgeon’s tool like we sometimes used the Bible, then we wouldn’t have many surviving patients!

We’re not called to score points, we’re called to love and protect. We’re also not called to be God, He can do that without us!

With false teaching, correction using the Bible should happen, but in gentleness and moved by love. Any other way is a distortion of the charge given to us in the Bible itself.

A gentle final poke to fellow controversy addicts…

Why do you want the Bible to be a weapon? Why do you want to justify rude, blunt, confrontational, quarrelsome, disagreements among brothers and sisters?

Do you get the buzz of addiction?

I’ve been on debate teams before and I was taught first by a Bible College deeply saturated in the Western traditions of analytical philosophy. I know how to ‘win’. I also know – really I do – what a buzz it is to feel right and win an argument. It’s a rush – and with it comes both a physiological release of dopamine, and an existential sense of worth and value.

It feels good – and it makes us feel good about us!

This is probably the same thing that makes us want to pull people down rather than build them up. It’s the thing that makes us reach for controversy over edification. It’s what makes us look for the problems with everywhere we go and every talk we hear. I know exactly what it feels like to ’emerge supreme’ from a debate.

It’s addictive, and as such it can replace ‘normal’ or ‘healthy’ human behavior – and surround us with a self-delusional air of justification.

Some of us – me included – love to poke holes in a position while building a watertight alternative. And there is some goodness in that when surrendered to God to be used in its right place. However, if that is not motivated by the great commission, moved foremost and uppermost by love for Jesus and people, and delivered in gentleness and prudence, then it counts for squat. It’s worse than nothing – it’s idolatry, making yourself the thing to be valued and praised.

If your overwhelming passion – if you’re totally honest – is to be ‘right’, then it might be that you need to take a personal inventory and rediscover your first love for Jesus. Or it might just be that this Christianity thing isn’t what you were looking for.

I say this as someone who has gotten this wrong far more than he has gotten it right. I’ve decided, however, to follow Jesus – this means I have to want Him to be praised and loved more than I want to be right. It’s a journey – but it’s the right one to walk.

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Is it your responsibility to make the people you love ‘feel’ loved?

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A couple of days ago, a famous pastor in America quoted this:

Although Pastor John Piper has become an increasingly divisive figure in the past decade, there were much stronger responses than I expected. These included:

I was pretty confused by responses, and I hurt by the way they made harsh assumptive judgements on his own parenting and kids. This said, I was still sympathetic with some of their passions. I wonder if a little thought experiment would help?

Is love an emotion?

One of the strongest driving points from these tweets is that love is primarily and essentially a feeling. Five decades of Hollywood romance has taught us this! Although love can be a descriptor for a complicated set of powerful emotions, the word itself is historically a verb.

Love is an action then, it’s something that we do. When we love someone, we don’t simply feel towards them (although that may come with it), but we serve them, we help them, we lift them up, we support them, we stand with them, and we protect them. Sometimes we do things that are best for them that they just won’t like.

Should we be in control of how people ‘feel’?

We do these loving things because we love them, not because we need them to feel loved. Think about the motivation here: Do we do loving things because we love… or do we do loving things to make them feel loved?

If our motivations to do loving things is primarily the latter, then the former is simply not required. You could hate someone’s guts and still do things to make them ‘feel’ loved.

Being motivated by the ability to manipulate their emotional state at best cheapens the experience of love, and at worst is actually abuse. We have to love people and allow them to the room to respond to it out of the freedom of their own experiences and judgements.

One of the key indicators of human maturity is the knowledge that we just cannot control the feelings of those around us, or their interpretations of our actions.

Piper’s tweet uses the words ‘guaranteeing’ that they feel love. Can we ever do this? For anyone? Can you guarantee that the person you love will feel the love they should?

We should love genuinely, passionately, and authentically – motivated by loving someone, not by trying to guarantee their emotions. It’s great when someone feels loved, and of course we hope for that! Devaluing love because you can’t guarantee that it will be felt is just… well, odd, and frankly dangerous.

What about when people just don’t feel loved… even when we are loving?

If people don’t feel loved by our loving actions, would it necessarily mean that we’re loving ‘wrong’, or that our love is in some way defective, broken, or immature? Surely not.

Is it loving to pick a drunk person off the floor and get them into a taxi home? Most likely, but it’s pretty unlikely they’ll remember us. Does this mean they were not properly loved because they didn’t feel loved?

What about making your kids eat their greens, take baths, go to school, do their homework, or turn off their xbox? What about watching out for who they are friends with or grounding them for being misbehaved?

God tells us that he disciplines those he loves. He reminds us of this exactly because they didn’t feel loved (Pr. 3:12; Heb 12:4-12). Is God’s loving discipline somehow defective? Does God need to readdress his understanding of people’s love languages?

We hope that people we love will always feel loved – of course we do! There doesn’t have to be a dichotomy between the two. However, one doesen’t guarantee the other, and in doubt, do the loving thing and don’t hold your own actions captive to someone’s subjective feelings.

 

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Ethics, Critical Thinking, and Youth Ministry

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I remember first reading Mere Christianity by CS Lewis when I was in my late teens. His opening ‘but that’s my orange segment!’ gambit inspired me to think more clearly about morality and ethics in relationship to my faith.

Fast forward a couple of years and I’m sat in my first ethics lecture a bible college hearing Dr. David Field’s three golden rules for ethical thinking. They were:

  1. Life is complicated
  2. The Bible is sufficient
  3. The alternatives are bankrupt

The next three months in these lectures were the most awe-inspiring time in my academic career. Ever since then I’ve been trying to explore one big question in my youth projects: Does Jesus work in real life?

 

Getting the juices going

Today, I find that there is nothing more invigorating for conversation in a youth club than a good ethical dilemma. Facilitated conversations about morality and God’s plan for humanities’ maturity is guaranteed to get even the most apathetic young person engaging with passion they didn’t even know they had.

What new rules would you give to the Internet? Who should be in charge of what you do with your body? Is there any situation where mind control should be allowed?

These kind questions fuel new layers of thinking and – properly handled – can draw a young person deeper into relationship with God and draw a community deeper into relationship with each other.

 

The balance between abstract openness and objective authority

Properly handling these types of issues requires a balance between firm leadership and an openness to grace.

Sometimes people in these conversations will give voice to thought that might well stray over the line of heresy. Great – this is something we can work with! In my opinion confusion and shaky foundations are much better out than in where the light of day, the clarity of the Bible, and the love of genuinely tolerant brothers and sisters can sharpen, inform and grow the thinker.

This sharpening, however, needs be done with maturity and great care. Rather than simply carpet bombing your project themes with hot topics like abortion and sexuality, instead create a regular time where many questions are thought about from multiple perspectives.

This isn’t to say you should leave every topic as messy heap of existential and epistemological indecision (it is responsible to draw things together, challenge, rebuke, correct, and speak clearly from the Bible), but you should make a safe space for the process to happen as a process. This means critical thinking, deep discussion, open questions, and sometimes raw confusion.

 

A hardcore example

There is a thin line between ethical discussion and critical thinking. Thinking about anything ethically means asking questions of it. Mathematician Jacob Bronowski famously said, “That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer.” (This may have been more famous for its quote in the original X Files!).

There are lots of easy places to go for an example, but let’s take a more interesting one. Consider this, then, for a line of questioning:

  • Is there a distinction between the person and character of God (who he is), and the revelation and actions of God (what he says and does)?
  • What level of distinction is there?
  • Is it possible to worship what God does or what God says, and not actually be worshipping God?
  • If that is true, is it possible to make idol of what God does and says, and in effect be committing heresy by worshipping it.
  • Is it dangerous or sinful to worship the Bible? Is it at all? Is there a worse alternative?
  • How would you know if you were worshipping Bible instead of God? Could it be possible to worship the Bible as healthy worship of God?
  • Is it possible the two people to go through these same questions and arrive at equally valid answers; distinct yet equally correct because of their level of faith and maturity?
  • Should all people think the same about these issues regardless of where they are at in their faith?

This is an epistemological and yet still ethical line of systematic-theological scrutiny. We’re talking about the character of God, yet we’re also talking about revelation, and we’re talking about both corporate and individual worship. Added to this, we’re asking some interesting questions of our Christian habits and what is actually happening under the surface, and what is driven by our hidden assumptions. Cool eh?

None of the above questions have a simple ‘yes / no’ answer – they are all answered in degrees along a spectrum. Further, each question needs to be re-evaluated in light of the next.

This brings us into a fantastic line of ethical discussion. It relies on community conversation, it needs us to be nuanced and measured, it needs us to engage with both hearts and minds, it needs us to turn to prayer, and it needs us to read our Bibles carefully with a greater dependence on the Holy Spirit. Doesn’t that just sound like maturity?

 

Ok, so what about in a youth club? … Plain English please, Tim.

Of course, I wouldn’t suggest simply copying and pasting that above example set of questions into your youth group, but it should give you an idea of what you’re looking for.

Questions shouldn’t always be closed down, simple, black-and-white, or enslaved to rules of thumb. Life isn’t this simple after-all!

For easier start, simply answer questions with questions for a little while. Don’t dissolve into diverting every question another question but do take a couple of extra minutes to open discussion up bit more, before you close it down and move on.

Remember your golden follow-up and open-up questions:

  • Who?
  • What?
  • When?
  • Where?
  • Why?
  • How?

Let’s let the Bible, and our Christianity speak with the same complexity that real life affords. Let’s dig, get deep, and get applicable. Let’s not muddy the waters where they are clear and let’s not transform our projects into intellectual exercises, but let’s take more care to give exploration the room it deserves.

 

Some caveats

  • It’s important for you to be comfortable and confident in your knowledge of God and His Word.
  • It’s important to make people feel safe by keeping conversations from dissolving into personally targeted debates.
  • It’s important to ask responsible.. not just ‘cool’ ones.
  • It’s important to be aware of triggers in the room (additional needs, mental health etc.).
  • It’s important to make sure your questioning is serving your young people, and not just your intellectual curiosities or (heaven forbid) your god-complex.
  • Remember that God is big enough to handle paradox, disagreement, differences, and even subjectivity. His glory is not dependent on your ability to rationalise it out.
  • That said, objective discussion should always stand firm on the Bible and be led by a keen awareness of the Holy Spirit. Pray for discernment – trust in grace!

 

Some sample questions to get you started

  • Can a person really be anything they want? What are some things they can’t be (logically), and what are some things they should not be (morally)? Who says? Why?
  • Whose happiness is the most important in the world to pursue? What should be allowed to get in the way of someone being happy? Is happiness always the most important thing to be? What else is there? When happiness isn’t available, are you less than human?
  • Can you love someone even if they don’t feel loved by you? Is it important that the person you love actually feels loved?
  • What do you do if someone’s ‘rights’ trample over someone else’s ‘rights’? What ‘rights’ do people really have or should they have?

 

… I might add some more later 😛

Have fun!

 

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