PITFALLS TO CHURCH TEACHING: PROBLEM STUDENTS

Pitfalls to Church Teaching: Problem Students

As if dealing with logistical issues and problem teachers in a church setting were not enough, there is still the problem caused by difficult class members. I will only mention the types I have personally run across since there are probably as many ways to disrupt a class as there are people in your church. Sometimes I have found ways to deal with such “problem children” successfully, which may prove helpful to any budding Bible teachers in my audience. By the way, quite often these class attenders may actually exhibit a combination of the behaviors described below.

Those with personality disorders

It would take a trained psychologist to adequately deal with any of these people who might find their way into your class. For example, there was one gentleman who attended our Sunday school class with his family for several years. As an amateur psychologist, I would diagnose him as having a bipolar disorder. Most of the time he just sat there staring at the pew ahead of him. However, for a few weeks in a row, he appeared to be quite excitable and was constantly interrupting the teacher by agreeing with him at the top of his voice or volunteering irrelevant information. Our regular teacher at last said to him, “Are you done talking so that I can get on with the lesson?” The man's reply was, “No, I can't tell you I am done talking.”

Well, the next week it was my turn to be a substitute teacher and, sure enough, I would express my opinion on a given verse of Scripture and he would pop up and begin agreeing with what I said in a quite excited manner. I said enthusiastically that I was so glad he agreed, and if he wanted to talk to me more after class we could have a discussion as long as he wished. Surprisingly, that seemed to quiet him down for the rest of the class, and at the end he had forgotten entirely about my offer.

Attention Seekers

There was one poor soul in our class who was not the sharpest mentally and also talked more slowly than anyone else I have even met. He was generally ignored by most of the other class members. He had a habit of interrupting the teacher and droning on and on about nothing much that was pertinent to the subject at hand. I tried an approach on him that seemed to work on similar people later on. I made sure that he was assigned to teach one of the lessons in the series we were conducting at the time. He stumbled through it trying vainly to get even the slightest idea communicated to the class and eventually sat down rather mortified at his own failure. There was hardly a peep out of him in class for over a year afterward, and it was accomplished without having to bawl him out openly or counsel him.

Monomaniacs

The same technique as above was quite successful in dealing with a man in our class who obviously came from a strongly Calvinistic background. If the concept of God's sovereignty was not mentioned at least a few times by the teacher each Sunday, he would interrupt him and point out that all-important doctrine to us each time, no matter what the subject of that week's lesson was. By assigning him to teach one week during the less-attended summer session when he couldn't do much harm, he realized how hard it was to stick to that one subject for a whole hour, especially when the Bible passage of the day did not easily lend itself to discussion of that topic. After barely making it though that one session, it was almost a full year before he mentioned his pet subject in class again.

By contrast, one of the members of our regular teaching team lost patience with this man during another session and bawled him out in front of the whole class. The unfortunate conclusion was that the man was utterly humiliated and he and his wife didn't show up again for almost a month. Also, the teacher who had acted in that maner was looked upon as a bully by many in our class.

Obnoxious Types

This description could fit a number of people I have encountered. One of them attended another church at which I was one of the leaders and was upset when his wife decided to attend ours instead. To address the situation, he tried several underhanded tricks, one of which eventually accomplished his goal:

He invited me to give a short devotional at his church. I prepared a 10-minute talk and showed up only to find out that it was their yearly find-raising dinner and I was the featured speaker at the event. I managed to escape unscathed but it is doubtful whether any of those in attendance felt they had received their money's worth. I am sure he got a good laugh out of it.

He once invited us to conduct our weekly Wednesday evening Bible study at his house, but just as our teacher began speaking, the doorbell rang and two Jehovah Witnesses walked in since they had been invited to show up that very evening by our host. Our teacher took them into another room while I had to substitute for him at the last minute.

Lastly, he convinced the elder in our small church (a friend of his) that his wife had been offended by the way my wife had treated her, which was not even remotely the case. Our elder was not swayed by our story, and we were forced to leave the church without comment to any of our friends there rather than cause a church split. In a much larger church, this sort of obnoxious person would have had a little more difficulty in accomplishing his goal.

Forceful Personalities

After living in the Northeast for years, I became quite accustomed to meeting people who would impress those from the more laid-back portions of our country as extremely rude. But I soon realized that it was just their usual way of expressing their opinions to others, and they were not at all trying to become argumentative. I have run across two of these sort in church settings in which I was a Sunday school teacher.

One such person joined the teaching team I was leading and seemed to want to take over the class entirely. He argued with almost every idea I came up with regarding the way we should deal with the coming semester. Most of the others on our team were afraid of talking back to him because they didn't want to make waves. But I had dealt with such people before so I just replied to this man's ideas in the same forceful manner, and he immediately backed down and meekly accepted my ideas without further comment.

At another church I filled in for two weeks as substitute teacher for a small Sunday school class. One of the class members immediately started peppering me with a series of test questions before I had even begun the lesson of the day. It turned out that he really wasn't interested in learning the answers; he just wanted to see if my answers agreed with his before trusting anything new I might have to say in my prepared lesson. He acted in the same way later by confronting me with a popular Christian book he had just read and gave me a copy for comment. Instead of being enthralled with this author's concepts as he hoped, I proceed with a litany of reasons as to why this author was all wet and gave him a copy of a much more trustworthy book on the same subject. After reading it, he admitted that he now saw the matter a lot more clearly.

Know-It-Alls

You will run into these personalities in practically every congregation. Often they have read one book on a particular subject and were so taken with it that they judge everyone else by whether or not they agree with it. For example, one woman in our class countered a detailed explanation I had just been presenting regarding the problems with a particular brand of eschatology. Her comment to the class was, “Well, that certainly isn't what Mr. X says!” In her mind, that settled the whole question without any further discussion needed.

In the same vein, years earlier I had been browsing in a Bible book store in our town when I overheard a customer talking to the sales clerk. She began telling the clerk all the wonderful truths contained in one of the books in the racks. The clerk gently reminded her that those truths really weren't in the Bible. The customer's reply was, “Well, I don't know much about the Bible, but you really should read what this author has to say.”

And at one congregation, I was in the middle of my lesson when a young visitor to the class stood up and began shouting, “I don't know how anyone who believes that can call himself a Christian!” He proceeded to march out of the class, never to return (thankfully).

At a third church I attended (By the way, I don't make it a habit to jump from one church to another. But over the years I have moved to different towns and have been forced to find a new one in each area.) the associate pastor started a new initiative whereby a mentor would pick one student at a time to instruct more fully on the Bible so that the student could then be capable of teaching independently. There is nothing at all wrong with that concept, but the problem in this particular case was in the man who volunteered to do all the mentoring. It turned out that he didn't even have a college education or really know much about the Bible. Since our pastor wanted me to teach some classes, he asked if I would mind first going though the new required “training” under this man. I dutifully agreed and met at this man's house weekly for about two months. I parroted back all the correct answers to the rather elementary lessons I was given until the final week when I decided to rebel a little bit. Instead of spitting back the expected answers, I told my “mentor” a more correct understanding accepted by most Bible scholars. He was so taken aback that he told our head pastor that I was totally unfit to teach in the church, an opinion which our pastor completely ignored.

After being similarly irate at a class taught by a friend of mine, this “mentor” left the church in a huff, as it turned out he was in the habit of doing on a practically yearly basis until he had pretty much run out of churches in the area to attend.

I will give only one more example, this time of a fellow chemist who worked for the same company as I did. He attended a special film series one of the members of our church brought to show on Sunday evenings. One of the episodes poked fun at scientists in a very unfair manner. My friend became so irate that he stopped attending church from that point on even though I tried vainly to explain to him that he shouldn't judge the whole church by one episode of one film series given in the evening to a small group since the church leaders probably had no concept of the content of that series.

When I saw that episode on a later occasion, I must admit that the series was not that well done or thought out and was quite demeaning toward all scientists. But I handled it by calmly pointing out to the discussion group I was in the flaws in its reasoning.

Note that several of the “know-it-alls” described above have a concomitant personality trait – they are easily offended.

Know-Nothings

That used to be the label of an early political group in America, but in this case it applies to those class members who are the exact opposite of the know-it-alls described above. These are people who are not used to thinking for themselves, but are quite willing to agree with whatever a teacher tells them. I encountered two such ladies in our Sunday school class who confronted me one Sunday after I had taught class that morning (It was a team-teaching situation). They told me that I shouldn't confuse them by giving them alternative understandings of a given subject or Bible passage. One of them (who was actually a college graduate) told me, “Don't give us more than one option; just tell us what to believe.” My reply was, “But what if I tell you one thing this week and another one of our teachers tells you something totally different next week?” Her simple reply was, “We will believe you this week and him next week.”

In other words, they had totally co-opted their right to think for themselves and were more than satisfied to follow like sheep.

To some extent this is a generational problem that is thankfully encountered less and less with time since women today tend to be more educated and better integrated into all levels of the work force than their mothers and grandmothers were.

 

PITFALLS TO ADULT EDUCATION IN THE CHUCH: PROBLEM TEACHERS

Almost every congregation which offers adult Sunday school classes will have difficulty finding qualified teachers to conduct them. About the only exception to that rule is a tiny start-up church in which the pastor himself will likely take on that role. For many decades I have either taught such classes in a number of churches or attended adult Sunday school classes taught by others. From such experience, I would like to say that I have personally experienced just about every sort of mistake such teachers can make in conducting these classes, but I am sure that there are plenty of additional horror stories others could tell.

Let me start out describing the variety of such problem teachers (including myself) before going on to possible correctives to the situation.

The “spiritual” teacher We had one such self-appointed leader in our adult class who looked down on the rest of us as being totally beneath him in every way. On occasion he would deign to lower himself to our level and lead our class. But since the only preparation he bothered doing before class was to go into a private room with a like-minded friend and ask for guidance from God, it is no accident that every lesson was centered around his insights into life he received while gardening in his back yard that week. And then after a few weeks of that he decided not to cast his pearls among swine any further and just stopped showing up for class without any comment.

The consensus “teacher” Rightly speaking, such a person is not a teacher at all, but merely a moderator. Such an approach to teaching adults is not bad in itself because it encourages class members to add their own insights into an overall discussion. But discussions in Sunday school need some sort of control over them or they can run amok quickly. Therefore they must always be prefaced by the teacher first setting the scene and clearing up any vital points regarding the Bible passage such as its genre, dating, author, intended audience, translation issues, and setting within the biblical book in question. It is only with that sort of background that any intelligent discussion can start taking place. And certain passages pose so many difficulties that there may be little time left for audience participation.

Against that background, consider one Sunday school class I attended while looking for a church home. In the first place, the sole adult class available met in the large main auditorium but consisted of only six members. That was my first tip-off that something was drastically wrong, and I soon found out what it was.

The “teacher” told us what the passage for the day was, and so all seven of us turned to it in our Bibles. He then read the first verse, out of the King James Version of course, and turned to the first person in our pew asking, “What does that mean to you?” After that person's reply, he asked the same of each one of us in turn, while tabulating the results on a piece of paper. Then he would summarize the results by saying something like “Two of you voted for X as the meaning, three chose Y, and two picked Z.”

At that point, we were free to go on to verse 2 in the passage and repeat the same procedure.

I am afraid that I rebelled against this nonsense at one point by saying that each individual verse meant very little if it was considered alone in the absence of the immediate context, let alone the overall context. The “teacher” patiently explained to me that my approach broke all the rules he had set for his class and that I would have to abide by them. The obvious problems with a consensus approach to the Bible are that it often results in merely polling the ignorant and it results in coming to no conclusion whatsoever as to what the passage meant.

The teacher who thinks on a different plane from the rest of humanity From that title alone, it might seem as if I am again describing the “spiritual” teacher, but what I have in mind is a much rarer specimen. To explain, I co-taught with one man with whom I became good friends. But his thought processes were always quite strange to me; perhaps a psychologist could explain them. Like me of late, he just couldn't turn off his mind at night, and ideas kept whirling around in his head. But the problem was that he couldn't make rational sense out of them in the daytime.

For example, our teaching team usually had about two weeks to divide up teaching responsibilities for the new semester, and I would present them with the verses for each week as well as some notes on possible ways in which to approach each lesson along with appropriate resources to use. But this teacher wasn't at all concerned with any practical issues such as a looming deadline. Instead, he would start bringing up several ill-conceived ideas as to how each lesson should be totally coordinated with each other ahead of time so that we didn't contradict or confuse the class during our presentations. In addition, he wanted each teacher to prepare a detailed outline for each of the classes for which they were responsible along with appropriate discussion questions. These were to be handed in to him and he would compile it all into a small book to be given out at the start of the semester. He somehow expected this to be done in the next two weeks. I gently but firmly pointed out that this might possibly be accomplished in about two months time but all we had was two weeks.

And then when it came his turn to teach, his many quirks continued. In the first place, he rarely stuck to the verses he had been assigned since he always had problems with the previous speakers in our team who hadn't, in his mind, done a thorough enough job with their own assignments. So he would re-teach their class to correct misconceptions he felt needed correcting, leaving no time left for the verses he was supposed to be teaching.

In addition, he would break every rule in the book on how to lead a discussion. When posing a question of the class, he only had two modes. The first one was to play guessing games in which only he had the “correct” answer, which was usually so off-base that we couldn't have guessed the answer he wanted if we had been at it all day. Then when we failed that test, he told the class that it looked like he would have to lower his expectations for us in the future. He would then kick into his second mode – asking questions that were so blatantly obvious that no one wanted to bother answering them for fear of looking like teacher's pet. As one example, he would read a passage such as “God is love,” and then ask the class “What is God?”

One-note teachers Fortunately I never personally ran into this sort of teacher in any classes I co-taught or attended, but I know they are out there. For example, one person at our church was deeply involved in missions, and so he taught a small class for years on that same subject. Another class had as its sole subject the raising of children according to biblical principles. And a third one was designed as a basic introduction for those who had recently become Christians.

Actually, there is nothing at all wrong with any of these teaching concepts, and such classes can be very successful in accomplishing their individual goals. But note that each one of them is designed to instruct class members for a limited amount of time only before those members move on to classes which teach on a variety of necessary subjects. Thus, do you really need to attend a class on raising children for people after their children have grown up and left the nest? And how many years should one devote to the rather limited subject of missions before attending a class that will give you a better foundation in Bible understanding, without which mission and evangelism efforts will be fail?

Lastly, a class designed to give the basics of belief to a new believer is only helpful if it is in preparation for the members to take their place in a more general Sunday school class where they can participate along with the others on a more or less equal basis.

The teachers in these examples are obviously well intended; the failure lies in failing to recognize that once a group of church members bond together over a common concern, they become extremely reluctant to “leave the nest” and go out into the broader world.

Teachers who are bullies This is perhaps the worst possible type of Sunday school teacher. I have fortunately only encountered a few of them in my life. It often occurs when that teacher is also one of the pastors of the church since in that scenario he can act just about as obnoxiously as he wants without serious consequences to himself. For example, my wife and I visited a small country church which also doubled during the week as a “seminary” run by the pastor, who in addition taught the only adult Bible class on Sunday. One of his students asked a rather innocent question regarding a Bible passage only to be screamed at by the teacher-pastor who said, “You've been reading Catholic literature, haven't you!!!” The poor teenager hung his head in shame after weakly denying the accusation, and no one else dare ask another question. Sometimes, it must be admitted, there are problem members of a class who need occasional correcting, but that will be the subject of the third and last post of this series.

Cult leaders I have known of two occasions at the same church in which a particular Sunday school class went rogue due to its teacher and began to form a church-within-the-church. One such extreme example before I joined that congregation was led by a teacher who felt that the church needed to get back to all the Old Testament teachings and practice Jewish rituals. Then later when I had belonged to that congregation for some time, a Sunday school class for men only was begun by a man who was a management coach. He convinced the young married man in his class that they should take over leadership now and not wait until they got any older. That class caused absolute havoc in our congregation when our senior pastor turned in his resignation to pastor another church.

There are several other notable types of problem teachers, but that should give you a taste of what I mean. The real problem comes in when trying to eliminate such class “leaders,” or preferably avoiding the situation in the first place. That can be done by simply vetting potential teachers in advance. Thus, at one congregation I began as one of several teachers along with others who had been in the church longer than I had. Apparently I passed the test since I soon taught a class on my own.

At another church, I volunteered to teach a limited series of lessons in the evening on a particular subject. That time it was the pastor himself who attended the whole series before deciding that I didn't need a babysitter any longer. And later on two different occasions that same pastor asked me to be the one to check out church members who wanted to begin teaching a new class under the guise of possibly team-teaching with them. My opinion was a firm NO both times since one potential teacher had quite obvious heretical beliefs and the other one was only planning to use the class as an excuse to check out some half-baked sociological theories of his.

But on occasion one is stuck with a problem teacher and it is hard to get rid of him gracefully. That is why I strongly recommend whenever possible having multiple teachers for each class. It is a lot easier to gently shove a poor teacher aside by adding new people to the teaching team while assigning that person fewer and fewer sessions to teach. The use of team teaching is also an excellent way to test out potential new teachers by giving them one or two sessions to teach during the summer. Depending on how they do, they either can or won't be asked to rotate teaching assignments during the more populated sessions of the year.

PITFALLS TO ADULT EDUCATION IN THE CHURCH: LOGISTICAL PROBLEMS

Years ago I posted three short essays on the general subject of the various venues for teaching adults in the church. These may be found on this site under the titles “How to Lead Bible Discussions” and “Advice to Sunday School / Bible Study Teachers, Parts 1 and 2.” I would like to revisit this subject (and repeat a few of those observations and recommendations) in another short series of posts. I won't say that I am the world's expert on this subject, but I have learned a lot about what does and doesn't work after attending and teaching in a number of congregations over the years.

Back in the dark ages when I was first attending church with my parents, it was the general norm for a the opportunities for adult education at church to take the following pattern:

    One hour of Sunday school for both children and adults, with the adults divided by sex into two classes, one taught by the pastor and the other by the pastor's wife.

    One hour of worship containing a 20-minute sermon by the pastor, generally along topical lines.

    A two-hour Sunday evening service with a sermon taught by the pastor.

    A Wednesday night service led by the pastor which contained more teaching than preaching, with the Scripture passages read by volunteers in the audience.

You may see a certain trend here in that the pastor and his wife were the only ones felt to be competent to interpret the Bible for adults. And in practice, it turned out that all of the teaching opportunities above consisted more of preaching than actual Bible exposition.

Moving ahead in time a few decades, we now come to the point where most congregations have realized that new church buildings must be constructed with more space specifically designated for adult teaching. But as time went by, available land for construction became pricier and pricier, and so for many new congregations they just could not afford to purchase enough space for future growth and found themselves land-locked with little or no room for expansion.

That is partly why many modern church buildings today have been constructed with a large stage to put on special musical and dramatic events; separate rooms to accommodate a nursery and Sunday school classes for children through youth; and probably a separate kitchen to prepare, store, and serve food for social occasions. Generally, last on the list in terms of priorities are separate spaces in which adult classes can meet. I feel that it is this scenario which poses the greatest barrier to providing churches with the sort of Christian education which is sorely missing in many cases (although there are certainly others which I will address in subsequent posts).

There are many ways, enumerated below, in which congregations who have such limited space can deal with such a situation and still provide adults more opportunities for adequate training in the Scriptures.

    1. One common solution is to utilize the church auditorium itself for teaching space. I even attended on church for years who placed a high premium on adult teaching but who got by until they were able to expand their campus by putting up portable barriers to divide the auditorium into three different Sunday school classes. I taught in one of those situations and it worked out reasonably well except for the fact that those seated right next to a barrier could almost hear the neighboring class talking as well as their own teacher. And another problem was that those barriers had to be put up and taken down and the seats rearranged after every hour in order to allow for worship services to proceed.

    2. A second approach is to camp temporary air-conditioned and heated buildings or trailers on church property and use them for classes. One problem with such a makeshift solution is that such buildings are seldom designed for teaching purposes in mind, which makes it awkward to arrange chairs so that a speaker can face all the audience and the seating won't block the sole entrance and exit to the trailer. Another difficulty is that depending on the size of the church property, some of these off-buildings may be closer to the main auditorium and parking than others and cause disputes as to who gets the “best” ones. At one church I regularly attended and taught, our own teaching venue was periodically moved from one end of the campus to the other in order to give all of the adult classes an equal chance for a choice location. This caused endless confusion for the attenders of those classes who might go on vacation for two weeks and come back having no idea where their class had been moved.

    3. One additional solution is to build one giant building equipped with built-in movable floor-to-ceiling dividers which can be easily opened and closed to yield anything from one large teaching venue for special occasions to four separate classes all meeting at the same time. Such dividers do provide more sound barriers from class to class unless one class happens to be rather noisy. I remember conducting our own class in such a setting and beginning with a rather solemn and quiet time of prayer just the teacher in the neighboring class decided to tell a series of jokes to his class. It didn't do us any good in trying to set the proper mood.

Another bone of contention came in when we realized that the whole building had only a limited number of AC vents and one temperature controller located in our particular quarter of that building. Thus, as I was teaching one day, a member of the neighboring class opened the portable barrier separating us and went over to the controller in order to adjust the temperature so that it would be more comfortable for them, although not at all for us.

Also, as you might guess, each of the adjacent classes had to adhere to a strict schedule of starting and stopping at the same time to avoid interrupting each other's class at an inopportune time. And you can also imagine the chaos caused by those class members who inevitably came in late every week and had to walk through one class in order to get to the one they wanted.

    4. A fourth option is to devote Sunday morning to worship service only and provide adult teaching during another time-slot. There are an number of ways in which this can be done successfully. One is to devote Sunday evenings or mid-week to adult classes. A major problem with either possibility is what to do with any children since nursery services or separate classes for them must be also provided. This is of course doable but it is generally hard enough finding volunteers to do such duties on Sunday morning alone.

    5. A similar set of problems ensues when a related solution is employed, namely to only conduct special educational series on irregular occasions in the evening at the church so that if people want to attend they can make their own arrangements for babysitters in advance. Alternatively, providing paid babysitting at the church at such widely spaced intervals would be no great burden on a church's budget. And if money is no object to the congregation, then such evening classes can be conducted on a regular basis. At one church I attended, we went on for years offering three or four teaching options at the same time. The problem there is that generally there is a dearth of teaching talent within a given congregation (to be dealt with in a subsequent post).

    6. Continuing with options for providing adequate opportunities for Christian training within the church, one solution has been adopted by a number of congregations – home Bible studies. I have attended and taught in several of these over the years. The plus sides are many: it is a setting in which people tend to be much freer to ask the sort of questions that are really on their mind than in a more formal church setting; you get to become much closer to others in your congregation; it is sometimes easier to invite friends and neighbors to such a meeting than to a an actual church service; and you can pray more intelligently for one another's problems.

But the downsides are just as numerous. These include: it is generally harder to get people with busy schedules to commit to such extra time during the week; it only takes one “problem child” in the group to destroy it completely; it is hard to dig up adequate teachers for such regularly scheduled events; and often such groups devolve into mere gripe and gossip sessions without strong leadership to keep them to task.

    7. Lastly, by a process of elimination, some churches have resorted to the easiest solution of all. Instead of 20-minute sermons each concentrated on a particular subject perhaps correcting or heading off particular problem areas in the congregation or giving evangelistic appeals to the audience, an approach to the Sunday morning sermon giving has often been adopted which is not subject-orientated but concentrates on a verse-by-verse exposition of a discrete chunk of Scripture such as part or all of a given chapter. Such sermons are usually as part of a long series lasting anywhere from several months to a few years and covering a complete book of the Bible.

Such an expository approach has the advantages of continuity, much more complete coverage of all that is in the Bible rather than a piece-meal treatment of only selected passages, and it meets the needs of Bible knowledge training than a subject-oriented sermon does.

The disadvantages are just as great, however. The first is that the pastor must have enough time to present a careful interpretation of the meaning of each passage as well as finding an appropriate application lesson in it as well. Both goals can rarely be accomplished in less than an hour or 90 minutes. And if a pastor is going through, for example, the book of Romans, that means that his congregation will not get specific teaching regarding any other part of the Bible for several years at a time.

For those reasons, some churches have taken a combination approach in which either (a) the expository series can be interrupted for shorter subject-orientated sermons at important times in the church calendar appear (such as Christmas and Easter) or (b) the pastor does not feel compelled to cover all of a particular book of the Bible at one time, but can be somewhat selective as to which passages in it will be of most use to the congregation.

Other Logistical Problems

In addition to the above limitations of space and time, there a myriad of other more specific issues which can pose barriers to a teacher being able to adequately present what he or she wishes to convey during Sunday class time. I have personally encountered so many of them over my years of teaching that it was not unusual for me to have a variation of the nightmare well recognized by psychologists and called the Examination Dream. In that sort of dream, one shows up for a final exam only to search in vain for the right room in which the exam is being held; he realizes that he has misread the time of the exam and it is almost over; the exam is written in a foreign language; it covers material that was never part of the class curriculum; he forgot to put on clothes when leaving the class; etc. etc.

I had the same sort of nightmare only applied to the teacher instead of the class members, and often such nightmares came true in reality. For that reason, I always arrived quite early to church and made sure that any required audio-visual equipment was working well, I had a lectern large enough to accommodate my notes and my Bible, I came equipped with a hard copy of any lecture notes as well as overheads on a drive to plug into the projector, and had an extra battery in case the one on my pointer was dead. I found out through experience that every one of these precautions was necessary at one time or another.

Who knows what other problems one might unexpectedly encounter in trying to teach in a church setting? In one small church I attended, we rented our building on Sundays from the local Masons. But once a month that same building was rented by a Scandinavian social group on Saturday night for one of their periodic dinners. When we would arrive Sunday morning to set up chairs downstairs for Sunday school, it was not uncommon for us to have to air out the fishy smell of the room, clean up the glasses on the tables containing stale beer, and try to kill as many flies in the room as we could.

And it turns out that logistical problems are actually much easier to deal with than the other situations one might encounter in a teaching situation at church. They will be the subject of the next two posts.

LESSONS FROM DANIEL 9:1-27

For most Christians, the latter half of the Book of Daniel is of sole interest to those obsessed with predicting future events. So I thought it might be instructive to see if there are any practical and overall theological lessons we can gain from these particular verses.

Prophetic Element

Since from v. 24 on, the emphasis appears to be concerned with specific details of timing for events in the future, we certainly can't totally ignore that aspect of the chapter's contents. But to instill a little humility in those today who seem to see fulfillment of OT prophecy in the front pages of every day's newspaper, just look at how even several inspired biblical writers disagree among themselves as to what Jeremiah's specific prophecy meant just as their modern-day interpreters do:

Jeremiah 25:11

    a. 70 years stands for the lifetime of a person, three generations, or a time of “complete” punishment.

    b. The time between Babylon's capture of Nineveh in 612 and the fall of Babylon in 539 = 73 years

    c. The time between Jeremiah's original writing (606/5 BC) and the fall of Babylon in 539 = 67 years.

Zechariah 1:12 identifies it as the time between the destruction of the Temple in 587-6 and its rebuilding in 520-515 = 62-72 years.

II Chronicles 36:20-22

    a. This passage refers to the period between destruction of the temple in 587/6 and Cyrus' edict in 538, which is only 49 years.

    b. But if 70 sabbath years are in mind, then that totals 490 years. This is almost exactly the time of the Monarchy during which the special sabbaths for the land were ignored. Thus, there were 70 years during which the land lay fallow during the exile, which made up for the sabbaths missed. It is this latter interpretation that Daniel takes up.

Daniel 9 interprets it as 70 weeks of years = 490 years. This may be 490 additional years, or may include the 70 years of exile. If the latter, then look at the further breakdown of time in Daniel 9:25-27 according to some prophecy experts:

    a. Seven weeks = 49 years. From the beginning of Jeremiah's prophecy until first return under Cyrus (the anointed prince is either Cyrus or the high priest Joshua).

    b. 62 weeks = 434 years. From the beginning of exile until the death of the pious high priest Onias III (an anointed one) in 171/2 BC under the reign of Antiochus IV (the prince).

    c. One week = 7 years. Events under Antiochus IV. The temple worship abolishing was predicted to last 3 ½ years. In fact, it was a little over 3 years (164 BC).

Then there are the various theological schools of thought regarding Daniel's words which have been compared side by side in Payne's Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy. This chart demonstrates the great divide in interpretation present between liberals, traditionalists, dispensationalists, and those who take a symbolic approach.

Similarly, Konkel reminds us: “Beckwith (1981) provides a summary of numerous Jewish and Christian interpretations applied to the prophecy of the seventy weeks in Daniel; the contrast between the unprecision of the prophecy and the specificity of the chronological schemes is striking. 'It is as if the prophecy and its interpreters belonged to two different ages or environments.'”

And besides the above “mainstream” possibilities, we should be especially skeptical of those who claim that the Bible predicted, for example, when Jesus would be crucified, when the tribulation will begin, the time of Christ's second coming, or the establishment of the modern state of Israel.

So if is impossible to pin down with any accuracy an exact timeline for the future out of these OT prophecies, what is the use of Daniel 9 anyway if not to to give believers an edge over the rest of the unenlightened world? That at last brings us back to the stated subject of this essay. So let us begin again at the start of the chapter.

Daniel 9:1-2 Daniel is reading a scriptural passage out of Jeremiah and prays to God for enlightenment. This is excellent advice for us to follow when reading any part of the Bible, as long as we keep in mind that each of us has a host of hidden presuppositions and expectations. Therefore it is always best to check our personal interpretations with other trusted sources, either in person or through reading commentaries. And even that is no guarantee that you won't ignore what others have to say and go ahead with your own unique, and probably wrongheaded, interpretation.

At this point Arnold reminds us of something very important regarding prayer: “Prayer in the Bible is relational ('If you abide in me...' [John 15:7]), communal, and based on confession and forgiveness (Jas. 5:15-16), but never manipulative. Whether it is Abraham, Moses, or Daniel (Gen. 18:16-33; Deut. 9:25-29; Dan. 9:2-23), the supplicant's hope is based on prior relationship with God.”

Verhoef echoes this thought when he says, “In a special way the prayers of the Bible elucidate one of its most marked features, viz., an understanding of God as personal..(...Dan 9:9-10,13-14,17). God is not only personal but also accessible.”

Daniel 2:9 “The complete corruption of the people is the basis for this lament, which thus differs from the preceding. Here, instead of sympathy, Jeremiah has nothing but contempt for the lying, deceiving, untrustworthy nation (11:19-23; 12:6; 20:10). A remote stopping place in the desert would be preferable (I Kg. 19.3-4).” (Gold)

Daniel 9:3 At this point in the text we begin a rather long confessional section which continues almost to the end of the chapter. Porter-Young comments: “The ethics of the book of Daniel draws on Israel's sacred traditions, including the Torah of Moses and the prophets (9:6-13). Daniel himself consults the scroll of Jeremiah (9:2); the author identified the wise teachers with Isaiah's suffering servant. Traditional prayers of penitence modeled appropriate confession of sins (9:3-21).”

Daniel 9:4-19 Verhoef says, “The book of Daniel contains a number of prayers...The most outstanding prayer in his book and one of the most significant in all Scripture is the confession in 9:4-19. Among the elements to be noted are the description of God as righteous, merciful, and forgiving; the contrasting description of the petitioner and his people as shamefully sinful; their disobedience to the revealed laws of God; and a concern for the reputation of God, especially in v. 16-19.”

“The recollection of Yahweh's exodus self-revelation forms the basis of Daniel's prayer of confession (Dan 9). He acknowledges God's covenant faithfulness, steadfast love and merciful forgiveness (Dan 9:4, 9), confessing that Israel's transgression of Moses' law has justly led to their being cursed and driven into exile (Dan 9:5, 7, 11, 13-14). But appealing to the 'Lord our God, who brought your people up out of Egypt with a mighty hand,' thereby making his name great (Dan 9:15), Daniel asks on the basis of God's great mercies that he forgive, hear and act to restore his people (Dan 9:18-19).” (Watts)

Hays adds, “Daniel's prayer is perhaps one of the clearest articulations within the prophetic corpus of the consequences of breach of covenant.”

Daniel 9:6,10-11,14 “In postexilic times, the theme of Israel's disobedience and their rejection of the prophets is taken in renewed prophetic appeals for Israel to learn the lessons of the past and to obey God.., and in prayers of confession and supplication for Israel's restoration (Neh 9:16-17,29-30; Dan 9:6,10-11,14).” (Aitken)

Daniel 9:13 “The concern for rehabilitating wrongdoers resonates deeply with biblical teaching on repentance and renewal. God's punishments of Israel frequently are said to be given in order to encourage repentance.., though perhaps tellingly, the strategy does not always work in practice.” (C. Marshall) This verse is one such example.

Daniel 9:14 The Jerusalem Bible notes: “In Jr 1:11-12, cf. 31:28; 44:27, the symbol of the almond tree introduces the oracle of Yahweh who watches for the moment to make his word come true, whether for good or evil.”

Daniel 9:20-23 Verse 23 is interesting. It implies that God started to answer Daniel's request before he even uttered it (God knows what we are asking for before we ask).

Daniel 9:24-25 “Daniel enters the presence of Israel's covenant God, confessing the sin that brought about Jerusalem's disaster and invoking the promises of God. Deliverance of his people will vindicate God's character...The ends to which God is working are stated in v. 24, and the stages in their accomplishment in vv. 25-27...Human rebellion has come full circle. Hope has to be centered in divine intervention because believers are helpless. What matters most is 'to put an end to sin' and 'to bring in everlasting righteousness' (9:24).” (J. Baldwin)

Daniel 9:26-27 Nichole states: “God is also sovereign over future events (Isa 10:22-23; 28:22; Dan 9:26-27; 11:36). The 'future events' combine the outworking of God's plan of judging and of bringing redemption to the earth.”

Summary

The above random citations are typical of many more similar comments I could have included, but it is hoped that they are sufficient to demonstrate that the prophetic writings in the Bible contain much more than mere mathematical puzzles designed to occupy our time and test our reasoning powers.

Towner does an excellent job of concluding this short essay in the following manner: “The theological value of the book of Daniel does not lie in its ability to predict the future....Although our age no longer shares the confidence of an earlier age that it is possible to give a timetable or to write a historylike narrative about God's coming victory, the deep faith remains fundamental to our western theological tradition that history is meaningful. It gains its meaning from the end of history, which is God's triumphant intervention on behalf of God's own goodness. And it gains its meaning in movements along the way in which the saints have opportunities to enact in their own lives of righteousness and obedience the reality of God's coming kingdom.”

JAMES 3:13-18

 First we must first establish whether these particular verses should be treated as a discrete section of the epistle. That can be done in three alternative ways:

1. At several points in the epistle, questions containing the phrase “among you” seem to open new sections. Thus, we have in this case the following similar phrases:

        “Who is wise...among you?” (3:13)

        “What causes wars...among you?” (4:1)

2. These verses constitute a sub-section of a larger chunk of Scripture:

                                Figure 1: The Spiritual Life: Part 1 (James 3:13-5:6)

        A. The Righteous (3:13-4:10)

                1. Peace (3:13-18)

                        2. Humility (4:1-10)

                                B. Judging (4:11-12)

        A'. The Unrighteous (4:13-5:6)

                        2. Arrogance (4:13-17)

                1. Discord (5:1-6)

3. Finally, there is a clear three-part symmetry found within these six verses:

                                                Figure 2: Structure of James 3:13-18

            a. wisdom from above (v. 13)

                        b. wisdom from below (vv. 14-16)

            a'. wisdom from above (vv.17-18)

Helping to define this symmetry are the facts that (a) the word “wisdom” appears once in each of these three sub-sections while (b) “good” is found once each in a and a'.

With that out of the way, we can get to the meat of the passage as explained by several Bible scholars:

James 3:13

“James now turns to the teachers, for in late Judaism they (Rabbis) were identified with the wise...Wisdom is analogous to faith (cf. 2:18) and must be shown by works. The temptation of teachers is to be purely theoretical (cf. Jn. 7:49). James wants the knowledge to issue in good conduct and not to be roughly hurled at simple souls. They must not be always 'putting people right' nor engaging in controversy with 'rivals' in the work of teaching.” (Ward)

James 3:14

Thistleton asks, “In what sense does selfish ambition lead one to be 'false to the truth' (Jas. 3:14)? James may be referring to a false estimate of one's own capabilities. But it is more likely that he is warning his readers that selfish ambition and arrogance lead one to put considerations about their own status even above those which concern the truth. Often lies stem from a concern to defend, or assert the claims of one's own status in the eyes of others.”

Blue defines some of the terms used here: “'Wise' (sophos; cf. sophias in 1:5) describes one with moral insight and skill in the practical issues of life. 'Understanding' (epistemon) refers to intellectual perception and scientific acumen.”

Carson adds, “The opposite of the meekness of wisdom is 'bitter envy and selfish ambition (14).' Cf. Gal. 5:19-23. If these things characterize us, though we may boast of our wisdom, our whole life is a denial of the truth revealed in Jesus (cf. Eph. 4:21).”

James 3:15

Kistemaker points out that the “New International Version correctly puts the word wisdom in quotation marks to indicate that this wisdom is not genuine...Without faith and prayer a person can never obtain true wisdom. His words spoken out of envy and selfish ambition show a make-believe wisdom that originates with man, not with God.”

“This wisdom...is the negation of the true wisdom, and to mark the contrast James uses the strongest word possible, the almost unique 'devilish.' His vehemence, in our view, is proof that he is condemning not mere possibilities or probabilities but actualities, even perhaps in the Church of Jerusalem itself.” (Adamson)

James 3:16

Johnson says that “antisocial behavior reveals the character of a wisdom rooted in envy as 'earthbound, unspiritual, demonic.' In 1:8 James called the double-minded person 'unstable' (akatastatos) and in 3:8 called the tongue a 'restless (akatasta statos) evil.'”

James 3:17

“In James 3:17 the wisdom that comes from above is said to consist of, among other things, 'mercy and good fruits.' The works that are to accompany faith thus find their ultimate origin in God (see also Jas 4:6: 'he gives more grace'). Thus for both James and Paul the demand for Christian works is predicated upon one's experience of grace.” (Eastman)

Hendricksen comments on Matthew's order of beatitudes (merciful, pure in heart, and peace-makers) when he says that “it is possible that peace-making is mentioned next [after purity of heart] according to the rule stated by James, namely, that 'the wisdom which is from above, is first pure, then peaceable' (3:17).”

James 3:18

“James is insistent that religion must show itself in works. In this he is wholly true to his Master's words 'By their fruits ye shall know them' (Mt. vii. 20)...Calvin...points out that those who exercise the wisdom that is from above...'moderate their zeal with the condiment of peace, for those who wish to be physicians to heal vices ought not to be executioners'!” (Tasker)

THE BIBLE SUB-DIVIDED: PART 2

In the first part of this short series I only got as far as comparing the composition of the Bible with its two Testaments to the existence of a modern city into an older and newer part of town. But this analogy can certainly be extended further.

Genres

The next smaller unit we run across in the Bible is found as one groups together the individual books into similar types. Thus, we have the following general divisions by genre: historical books (Genesis-Nehemiah and The Gospels and Acts), Prophecy and Apocalyptic Literature (Isaiah-Malachi and Revelation), and the Letters (Romans-Jude). Of course, these are only broad generalities since one will, for example, certainly run into prophetic material in both the historical books and the epistles.

Or one could divide all the books of the Bible into those written in prose and those which are better classified as poetry. But the problem with that mode of genre differentiation is that almost all the books are a mixture of the two to some extent or another, and scholars on occasion disagree even on individual verses as to whether they could best be called prose, poetry, or “elevated prose.”

The same sort of a mixture of types is found as one examines the individual smaller neighborhoods found within both the older or newer parts of town. There may be, as in my present town, golf course and retirement communities which have their own restrictive rules regarding the acceptable outer appearance of the individual houses (up to and including the maximum height of the grass in one's lawn, whether or not you are able to park your car on the street, and how long children are allowed to stay in your house) and may require maintenance fees to support the upkeep of the common areas. And in the historic areas of town, there are a number of laws limiting the amount of house modernization one can do.

Applying this analogy to the individual genres in the Bible we see that there are rules of proper interpretation regarding each type of literature. (The classic book How to Read the Bible For All Its Worth is a very valuable resource in this regard.) This consideration runs counter to both the more liberal believer and the fundamentalists. Thus, one will find most liberals who deny that events such as Christ's multiplication of the loaves and fishes or the resurrection of Jesus were ever meant to be taken literally since the authors were only talking symbolically. But at the other extreme, I have personally talked to those who feel that if you don't take every single statement in the Bible as a literal, propositional truth (including the parables), you have no right calling yourself a Christian.

Individual Books

Finally we work our way down to the level of a single book of the Bible, each of which has its own individual character. Fortunately, I now live in a community where practically anything goes in terms of the outward appearance of our properties. So although I may not personally agree with the colors the neighbors in my community chose to paint their houses or be slightly annoyed when someone leaves their unwanted furniture out near the road for anyone who chooses to pick it up. But on the other hand, no one in by neighborhood has ever criticized me for the way I often let my grass get little higher than I should. And of course what I do to my house's interior is strictly up to me.

In the same manner, in interpreting the books of the Bible, one must take each one individually on its own merits, including the particular theological slant of the author, the style he chooses to employ, and the sometimes unique way he has of using his favorite vocabulary to express his ideas. And also you need to always keep in mind the particular historical background against which each author is writing and who his intended audience is.

Chapters

Now that we have limited our analogy down to the confines of a single house, the next logical divisions are found in the rooms within that house. Within a house, one may have individual rooms which are quite serviceable in themselves but do not at all work in their present location. For example, there are some house plans I have seen in which anyone in the guest bedroom has to walk through the master bedroom to get to the bathroom. Then there was another house we looked at before moving to our present location. It had obviously been expanded with time to the point where one needed to transverse two series of stairs and walk through a huge game trophy room in order to get from one end of the house to the other.

So we had to be careful to make sure that the room divisions made sense before we actually bought a house, and that the natural flow from one part of the house to the next was one with which we could live.

Similarly, when one burrows down to the next smaller convenient unit in the Bible into which the books are divided, we come to the chapters. These are certainly chunks of material that generally lend themselves well to serving as the subjects for individual sermons or Sunday school lessons. But some people go even further and take these divisions as sacrosanct, feeling that they must be considered part of the original text. The fact is that the first attempt to divide up the biblical text into chapters did not actually happen until 1227 AD when Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton came up with our present chapter divisions. Although the Archbishop did an admirable job, to call these divisions inspired is a drastic overstatement. As a matter of actual fact, our present divisions are sometimes quite misleading, including both those occasions when a given chapter should more properly have been a little shorter and those in which they should have been extended to include more verses.

Getting back to our house analogy, when we brought our present house we felt quite free to both shorten some wall openings between rooms to create a more open access between them and to create a brand new room by subdividing one room which was too large for our needs. In the same manner, one should take the present chapter divisions as only rough guidelines as to where the author wished to begin a new thought or present a different event.

Verses

The same situation which applies to the chapters in the Bible also must be taken into account in regard to our present verse divisions, which were by no means found in any of the early manuscripts of the Bible. In fact, the Old Testament was divided into verses for the first time by a Jewish rabbi by the name of Nathan in A.D. 1448. And Robert Estienne, also known as Stephanus, was the first to divide the New Testament into standard numbered verses, in 1555. Stephanus essentially used Nathan’s verse divisions for the Old Testament. Since that time, beginning with the Geneva Bible, the verse divisions employed by Stephanus have been accepted into nearly all the Bible versions.

The problem comes in when we try to elevate those individual verse designations as the only sure guide to what the authors intended in the first place. As an example I have shared before, I visited a Sunday school class once where the teacher would absolutely not allow anyone to refer to a previous or subsequent verse for clarification when discussing an individual verse. By “atomizing” the text in that manner, it was treated as a series of unrelated verses which had to each stand on their own. This is an especially ridiculous way in which to approach the Bible since, for example, some of Paul's individual introductory sentences in Greek encompass ten or more verses in our English versions.

Again, even at this smallest level, there is applicability to the spatial analogy I have been developing. To explain, the verses in a chapter can be considered as the furniture and decorations within each individual room. And just as one wouldn't bunch all the furniture in one corner, leaving the rest of the room bare, so there should be both an aesthetically pleasing and practical arrangement of furnishings in a room.

Applying that principle to the verses in the Bible, we now come to the subject that is near and dear to my heart, the literary symmetry found within every level of the Bible. Since it has been the subject of many of my past posts, I will not belabor the issue except to point out that same sort of recurring pattern appears when the walls of a room are decorated by matching elements. For example, pairs of sconces or pictures which are of similar subjects, size, style, and/or color are quite often hung on the wall on either side of a central feature such as a fireplace or TV. This is closely analogous to the chiastic arrangement of words, events, or paragraphs within a biblical chapter and taking the form ABA', in which A and A' match in vocabulary or theme and B is the center point of emphasis.

Of course, there are other equally aesthetically pleasing ways both to decorate a room and to construct an orderly chapter-size segment of Scripture, but I think you will get the general idea from the example above.

THE BI8LE SUBDIVIDED: PART 1

 I chose the word “subdivide” on purpose since one way of viewing the various borders in the Bible separating one section from another is perhaps by using an extended analogy with the way physical space is divided up. As a typical example of divided space I will start with the medium-size town in which I now live.

Two Testaments

If my town is compared to the Bible, then the first thing to note is it can be seen to have an older community located on one side of the interstate highway and actually called “Old Town” in our particular case. But more recent explosive growth has expanded greatly the geographical boundaries of the town in a ring circling “Old Town” and dwarfing it in combined area and population. A quite similar situation occurs in the Bible wherein the Old Testament, at least for Christians, has been supplemented and overshadowed to a great extent by the addition of the New Testament to the Canon of Scripture.

And in both cases, this expansion is accompanied not only by a quantitative change but by a qualitative one as well. To explain what I mean, the older part of town contained all of its administrative offices, courts, DMV, library, firehouses, etc. So when expansion took place further and further away from this center, the newer occupied areas still had to rely on these vital offices for a number of needed facilities even if it became harder and harder to reach them. Instead the newer developments predominantly consisted of housing developments supplemented with a few large grocery stores, fast food venues, and medical offices. In other words, all the modern amenities most people might require on a fairly frequent basis.

In the same manner, the composition of the books in the Old Testament such as those devoted to laws, history, and prophecy tends to be quite different from that found in the New Testament. It is true that both testaments contain a large amount of historical material, But the NT has much less emphasis on prophecy and very little on laws per se. Instead we find a large number of communications addressed to particular fledgling congregations attempting to give them practical ad hoc advice regarding some specific problems they are experiencing as well as counsel to new church leaders concerning how to deal with various church problems they have been having or will be likely to encounter in the course of their pastoral duties.

Returning to the city: Although most of its inhabitants accept all of the present boundaries of the city as valid, their heart may really belong to only one half of it. So we get those living in the older portion of town moaning and groaning about how much better it was in the good old years before the rampant growth took place while those in the suburbs tend to feel that the old-timers are resisting the inevitable future. And there is the same divide among those who accept both the Old and New Testament as inspired by God. On the one hand, there are the majority of church groups who call themselves “New Testament Christians,” who may only reluctantly agree that the teachings and events in the Old Testament were a necessary preparation for the eventual appearance of Jesus Christ who fulfilled those teachings in every way. And I have met extreme examples of congregations in which the study of Old Testament books is unofficially forbidden on Sunday morning.

But on the other hand, there are the Bible churches which actually teach that the New Testament era in which we now live is a “mere parenthesis” in the overall plan God has for the Jewish people. I know from experience that some of those in that general group even start their own sub-groups within a congregation in which the participants have their own services during church time patterned after the Jewish rituals. And I visited one small congregation in which the men who were leaders felt that they needed to grow their beards long in order to obey OT practices. This particular sub-group has its roots going all the way back to the early church where they were known as the Judaizers and roundly condemned by Paul.

The Canon of Scripture

The inevitable growth taking place in an area like ours which still has available land for development adjacent to the city boundaries gives rise to two opposite trends. One the one hand are those politicians who see any sort of growth good since it adds to their power base. They are constantly proposing that the city annex new property whether or not we have the infrastructure and resources to support it. But on the other hand, some of the larger communities on the outskirts of the city boundaries feel that they are being inadequately served by the existing government centered far away from where they are living. Thus, they are always threatening to secede unless their demands are met, and are catered to since they represent a very powerful and unified voting bloc.

Those same sorts of opposing trends can be seen in church history. The official canon of God-inspired writings developed by a sort of consensus among individual Christian communities over the first centuries AD. Eventually the New Testament canon was agreed upon. But there was some controversy regarding the number of acceptable OT books. Since most of the early church leaders at the time were fluent in Greek but knew little or no Hebrew or Aramaic, they tended to rely on the early Greek translation known as the Septuagint for guidance. However, that collection contained a number of additional writings which we know as the Apocrypha.

The feeling among the majority of leaders in the church when the canon was slowly being formulated was that these particular books must have been part and parcel of the official Jewish canon (which they actually weren't) and therefore must be accepted (annexed) into the Christian canon. It wasn't until much later during the the time of the Reformation that Christian scholars came to recognize that there was no hard evidence that any but maybe one of two of the writings in the Apocrypha were actually written in Hebrew to begin with. Therefore, especially as the Reformation Movement proceeded to grow in strength, the new Protestant groups began to treat the Apocryphal books with growing suspicion and either discarded (de-annexed) them from the Canon or grouped them in a separate portion of the printed Bibles with an explanation that these writings contained instructive material but should not be used to establish any official church doctrines. Such a note was necessary since the Medieval church teachings regarding purgatory and the practice of selling indulgences had their “Scriptural” basis only in the Apocrypha. Of course, with time even the Roman Catholic Church relented somewhat and relegated some of the Apocryphal books to the status of “deuterocanonical.”

Unfortunately, that didn't stop the process of annexing and de-annexing biblical material. Thus, we have the Mormons who have basically replaced the whole Bible with their own “inspired” writings; the Christian Scientists who have re-interpreting the Bible out of all semblance to its original meaning; and the Jehovah Witnesses with their faulty Bible translation designed to get rid of the whole concept of the Trinity. And that doesn't include the vast number of tiny cult offshoots which continue to pop up all the time.

EZEKIEL 11 AND 24 -- THE CITY AND THE POT

I have run into a number of Christians over the years who brag that their method of looking at the Bible is superior to any other because they take it all as the literal truth. However, once you try them out on a specific example, they are likely to readily back-pedal and redefine “literal” as meaning the most natural reading, which could by the way could be either literal or figurative.

So what do we do about the statements in these chapters regarding the people in Jerusalem who were experiencing a series of incursions into Israel by the Babylonians who were taking away much of the populace as captives? Since they are referred to three times in chapter 11 alone as pieces of meat in a pot (see Figure 1), that is obviously not to be taken as literal in any real sense of the word unless the Babylonians happened to be cannibals who intended to make stew meat out of them.

                                      Figure 1: Repeated Vocabulary in Ezekiel 11:1-15

    A. I saw Pelatiah son of Benaiah (1)

        B. mortal (2)

            C. This city is the pot, and we are the meat (3)

                D. prophesy (2x) (4a)

        B'. mortal (4b)

            C'. The slain are the meat, and this city is the pot (7)

                    E. I will judge you at the border of Israel (10a)

                        F. You shall know I am the LORD (10b)

                    E'. I will judge you at the border of Israel (10c)

            C''. This city shall not be your the pot and you not the meat (11)

                        F'. You shall know I am the LORD (12)

                D'. prophesying (13a)

    A'. Pelatiah son of Benaiah died (13b)

        B''. mortal (15)

When running into metaphors or similes in the Bible, one need first to consider the context in which these the figurative statements take place. I have already alluded to that above. But the next step is a bit trickier since one subsequently needs to decide what sort of literal and/or historical reality might lie behind each figurative image. And here I not unfrequently find myself jumping to the wrong conclusion.

Ezekiel 11:3

This first time this image appears is a prime example. To explain, I happen to enjoy cooking. Thus, when reading about a pot of meat, probably simmering on the open fire with some vegetables and savory spices, the interpretation I naturally came up with for this image was as follows: Those living in Jerusalem had been witnessing raids on the surrounding small towns and countryside in which the inhabitants were being readily gobbled up by the Babylonians as a sort of salad or appetizer. However, the main course they were really looking forward to was Jerusalem itself with its riches and influential inhabitants. Therefore the statement by the Jerusalemites in Ezekiel 11:3 indicated that they were shaking in their boots waiting for the inevitable attack on their city to begin. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any reputable Bible scholars who saw things the way I did.

Hulst says, “Two different lines of interpretation are possible in this verse. The DNV and RSV translations explain the text as meaning that the people who give wicked counsel feel themselves safe. No one needs to be concerned about the possibility of the city's destruction so that houses will need to be built. That time is not near. The other possible sense is to take the text as an interrogative sentence...The idea, then, is that those who remain in Jerusalem after the first deportation of 597 B.C., reject the prophetic warning of impeding judgment. They feel that they are so safe that they can unmolested proceed to build their houses.”

Note that neither of Hulst's possibilities is remotely similar to the one I had come up with. And it is not just Hulst who takes this general line of interpretation. To quote one other example from the scholarly literature on the subject, Cook states, “Having a false confidence in Zion's ironclad invulnerability (the pot), they assure the populace of the city's security.”

Ezekiel 11:7

The plot (if not the pot) thickens in this next occurrence of the same image. Whereas it was the leaders in the Jerusalem community who utilized it in verse 3, in this case it is God himself who speaks, and he does so in order to contradict those leaders. We now find out that from God's viewpoint the chosen “meat” are not at all the present inhabitants of the city of Jerusalem, but again there is some ambiguity as to who they really are.

Thus, Bruce admits that “it is uncertain whether the bodies should be understood as the victims of these leaders' ruthlessness or as those doomed to be slain by the sword at the capture of Jerusalem.”

Ezekiel 11:11 

This verse basically repeats the thought of v. 7. 

Ezekiel 24:1-14

Just about the time we think Ezekiel has exhausted all the meaning he can get out of the pot and meat analogy, it pops up again at the end of Ezekiel 24. Its position there is not exactly a random one. It turns out that the major divisions of the long book of Ezekiel are almost universally recognized as consisting of chapters 1-3, 4-7, 8-11, 12-24, 25-32, 33-37, 38-39, and 40-48 (See the posts titled “Ezekiel: Introduction to the Literary Structure” and “How is the Book of Ezekiel Organized?” for more information.) Note that the two places the image occurs serve to conclude two adjacent divisions of the book.

In Chapter 24 the imagery becomes a little more detailed to the point where it can rightly be called an allegory (v. 3) rather than a simple metaphor. All the steps to prepare a stew are given in the first verses.

As to the meaning of this passage, Beasley-Murray suggests the following scenario: “Perhaps Ezekiel was actually preparing a meal in a cauldron when the word of God came to him, declaring it to be symbolic of the judgment of Jerusalem. The use of the figure is wholly opposite to that in 11:3.” At last we come to the meaning of the image which I had mistakenly felt applied to that earlier passage!

Greenberg summarizes the opening of the passage with the following words: “Here the cook is imaginary and the cooking process is particularized in order to call vividly to mind the care that went into it [i.e. preparation of the stew] so as to heighten the shock of the sequel.”

Then Wakely walks us through the meaning of that sequel: “In Ezek 11:3 the complacent, undiscerning and arrogant survivors of the 597 BC deportation boasted that they were safely hidden in Jerusalem...However in Ezek 24:10, the place of protection has become the place of danger. Yahweh commands that logs be piled under the cauldron (Jerusalem) and the fire kindled...After the flesh (of the city's inhabitants) has been well boiled, the broth is to be emptied out and the bones burned up. Some have sought to give an interpretation to each detail in the allegory...but others...have argued that Ezekiel was not interested in such individual details, but only in the ultimate result after the cauldron had been subjected to the intense heat. The stain of spiritual impurity and social corruption with which Jerusalem was so radically contaminated could be removed only by a blazing inferno of destruction.”

Problems of exact interpretation continue to plague those trying to understand the pot and meat imagery to any detail. Thus, although the general thrust of this passage is fairly clear, there are still controversies which continue to be debated in the literature concerning, for example, whether verses 3-5 originally constituted a popular work song (see the discussion in Block's massive commentary on Ezekiel).