The Silence of Women

Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. [1 Corinthians 14:34-35 (NIV).]

The Apostle Paul’s passage contradicts many people’s ideas of women’s rights and freedoms. To others, it accords with their beliefs; but I suspect that those beliefs originate in this passage and did not arise organically and independently.

Question for thought: "Paul – huh?"

1. An injected passage?

Some scholars think that this passage does not come from Paul. They think that it was injected later by someone else with a smaller soul.

Strong evidence exists that some parts of the Bible were added after-the-fact. For example, Robert Alter is an excellent translator of books of the Old Testament, and he is a professor of comparative literature. He marvels of the excellence of the Hebrew poetry in the Book of Job. Mostly. He is far less impressed with the poetry of the speech that is attributed to Elihu. Also, after Elihu’s speech, the other speakers are referred to, but Elihu is not. Alter concludes that Elihu’s speech was added by a later, lesser poet, and that the final editor of the Book of Job blundered by keeping it in.

Maybe the 1st Corinthians passage was injected after-the-fact, not by Paul. But that conclusion is not frictionless. For one thing, that passage accords with what Paul said elsewhere. So:

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. [1 Timothy 2:11-15 (NIV).]

It’s easier to say that one passage was jammed in after-the-fact; two is harder. You would have to believe that two like-minded persons coincidentally wanted to add to Paul’s letters their ideas about the silence of women. Or you would have to believe that the passages were added by one person, but after the letters had been accumulated together. But the accumulation of the letters from disparate parts of the known world suggests a later stage in the canonization of the Bible. In that case, it seems likely that someone else would then have noticed these additions and would have raised a hue and cry against this gloss on the words of the esteemed apostle.

Also, some argue these passages must be authentic because the Old Testament supports this theology of women’s subjugation. In Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve succumbed to the serpent’s cunning, God speaks to Eve. Eve is presumably a proxy for all women. He says: "Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." (NIV)

2. The happy disunity of scripture.

In another post, I have a very un-troubled discussion of the fact that the Bible un-self-consciously says one thing in one place and another thing in another place. This happens without a doubt. ("Wildness and the Word of God". http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2012/07/wildness-and-word-of-god.html )

There are several valid explanation for these variations. I won’t go over all of those explanations here. But I will highlight one: the Bible is pastoral, and a stated principle might not apply to all persons, at all times, in all places. The Bible says different things in different places to allow the earnest seeker of guidance to discern what principle applies to his or her specific circumstance. What is true for him might not be for someone else; the Bible speaks to them both.

This truth applies to these passages about the silence of women.

3. Women as prophets.

The 1st Corinthians passage quoted above comes in context of Paul’s discussion of the value to the church of prophecy – hearing from God and speaking for God. In context, this 1st Corinthians passage says that women should not prophesy.

But women in the Bible were prophets. For example, shortly after Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph took him into the temple in Jerusalem. There, they encountered the prophet Anna. She prophesied over Jesus (not keeping silent). The gospel of Luke says:

There was . . . a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Penuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. Coming up to [Mary and Joseph and Jesus] at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem. [Luke 2:36-38 (NIV).]

And Philip the evangelist had four daughters who prophesied. (Acts 21:8.)

The Old Testament prophet Isaiah called his wife "the prophetess". (Isaiah 8:3.)

Mirian, Aaron's sister, was a prophet. (Exodus 15.)

Huldah was a woman and a prophet. King Josiah sent a deputation to her to inquire of the Lord. That episode is described in 2 Kings 22.

4. Women as leaders.

The 1st Timothy passage says that women should have no authority over men. But in early times after the founding of Israel, Israel was ruled by "judges". One such judge was Deborah, who had more courage and brains than her male military commander. Her story is told in Judges 4-5. As Israel’s leader, she clearly had authority over men, Paul notwithstanding. She also was a prophet.

5. Women as teachers.

And even though Paul apparently did not want women to teach, a teacher he admired was a woman. Her name was Priscilla. She and her husband encountered a zealous but misinformed evangelist named Apollos. Priscilla and her husband took Apollos into their home and they both improved his understanding. (Acts 18.) Paul describes Priscilla and her husband as his "co-workers". (Romans 16:3.)

6. The first witness to the resurrection.

According to the tradition of the Gospels, the first witness to the empty tomb of Jesus was Mary Magdalene. She also was the first to see him, after he rose from the dead. Jesus instructed her to bear news of his resurrection to the others. (John 20:11-18.) This was a turning point in history, and Jesus gave the honor of being the herald of that turning point to a woman.

7. The apparent uniqueness of the silence of women.

So it is clear that the Bible is not single-minded in its counsel about the silence of women.

So the passages about the silence of women fit with the Biblical habit of saying one thing in one place and another thing in another place. But passages about the silence of women are also somehow different. This is true because Paul’s teaching about the silence of women seems, to the modern mind, singularly discriminatory. The discrimination is obvious. It is singular in the sense that, after the resurrection of Jesus, the grace of God exploded outward from the Jews to all peoples and nations in addition to the Jews. This is a great theme of the Book of Act and a preoccupation of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. The passages about the silence of women seem perversely contrary to this explosive spread of the grace of God.

8. The meaning of the silence of women.

Or are they?

I suggest that they are actually a token of freedom for women.

These passages must be considered in light of the other passages about women as prophets, women as leaders, women as teachers, women as heralds. These passages about the silence of women say what they say, but they can’t un-say the other passages that contradict them.

So a woman who is rudely shushed in church, literally or figuratively, can point to Deborah, can point to Miriam, can point to Isaiah's wife, can point to Huldah, can point to Anna, can point to Mary, can point to Priscilla, can point to the daughters of Phillip. And based on these she can shush back.

But here’s the thing: because of Paul’s passages, if she doesn’t want to, she doesn’t have to.

In my mid-teens, I absorbed from my career-driven mother a condescension toward stay-at-home moms. For a long time, I had a sense that women who did not work outside the home were old-fashioned. In my youthful mind, they were weaker and less valued than their liberated sisters. I think that many people today retain that condescension.

Paul corrects us. If a woman chooses to come under the protection and guidance and support of a man (who hopefully proves worthy of her trust), then Paul tells us that nobody may hold that against her. Nor is that woman compelled to hold that decision against herself.

Some women may prefer that psychologically restful role. I take this to be the implication of the unexpected popularity among women of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. I haven’t read those books, and I don’t endorse them. I only hold them up as credible token of resistance to the Helen Gurley Brown measure of feminine success. If it’s a poor example, forgive me.

9. Scripture is hard.

Sometimes scripture is plain and easy. Sometimes it is hard. I think the subject of this essay is middling hard. I also think that this essay does not begin to exhaust the importance of these controversial passages from Paul. Infinite is the variety of the human condition. Therefore infinite are the possible applications of various parts of the Bible to the human condition. That includes these controversial passages.

10. Freedom in restraint.

But for now I choose to interpret these passages in tandem with clearly contrary passages in the same Bible. I choose to see them as permission to women to choose the old ways. I choose to see them as freedom of choice for women who might not find to their liking a driven, world-beating lifestyle.

In the sixties, women became liberated from dependence on men. But if a woman’s only real choice were that form of liberation, it would be only half-liberation. These passages, in tandem with contrary passages, make it clear that women’s freedom to choose is not partial but complete.

Obama and Strange Fire

Jesus said to his disciples: "Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. [Luke 17:1 (NIV).]

I hope I am not a rock of stumbling. This isn’t for my friends only; it’s for me, too.

1. Obama-hating.

I believe that some people hate Barack Obama more than they love America. When the economy ticks up, they’re not glad. They see America’s climb from this slump through the crystal of Obama’s re-election chances. So good news is, to them, bad news.

Likewise, a friend of mine heard early in the Obama administration that Defense Secretary Robert Gates was going to resign. My friend couldn’t conceal his percolating glee. He didn’t regret America’s loss of a competent leader; he rejoiced in potential disruption of the Obama administration.

2. More Obama-hating.

But it’s more than a willingness for America to sink as long as Obama sinks with it. Recently, partisans have been exploiting Obama’s verbal hiccup in his you-didn’t-build-that speech. In context, it’s clear that Obama knows that people build businesses by their initiative and hard work; his point was that America helps. His point was that the help that America gives includes help from our government. Government supplies (for example) roads, educated workers through free public education, fire protection, and police protection (so that you don’t need an armed posse to keep your business relatively safe). Non-partisan fact-checkers have shown that the partisan attacks on this speech are untruthful.

I have debated what Obama said with my friends. I have pointed out what the fact-checkers say. And I have pointed out other parts in his speech where he pays tribute to the initiative and hard work that business owners dedicate to their businesses.

What amazes me is this: some of my friends now think that context doesn’t matter. If somebody says something that sounds crazy, these friends now don’t think it’s necessary to look carefully at what that person said to make sure that they really meant that crazy thing. It’s legitimate, apparently, to lift a statement out of context, and impose on the speaker a belief that he doesn’t hold, and to judge him harshly if that belief happens to be crazy.

In other words, my friends hate Obama so much that they are willing to abandon logic, reason, and truth in the service of their hatred.

3. Defining evil and good by what Obama is and is not.

I lived in China for two years. A Chinese man compared America unfavorably to China. He said that America is young, implying that it is immature compared to China, who’s civilization goes back thousands of years. When I pointed out that the United States is older than the Republic of China, he missed a beat. Then he rejoined that China is "young and vigorous". In other words, whatever China is, that is good. Whatever America is, that is bad.

I find hatred of Obama is like this. Just like good or bad is defined to this Chinese man by China in comparison to America, so also, to Obama-haters, bad and good are defined by what Obama does or does not do.

No act by Obama is too trivial to overlook in the gathering of scorn. Do Obama and his wife tap their knuckles in exuberance and joy? That becomes a "terrorist fist-bump". Does Obama drink a Budweiser? Budweiser is foreign-owned!

Some hatred is directed at actions not so trivial. Obama kept America’s economy from sinking by bailing out American car companies. This saved jobs not only at those companies, but also at the American companies that supply parts to those companies. Almost all of that bail-out money has come back to the treasury now that those American car companies have regained their footing. Was this a worthy policy? Not to hear some say. To them, it was "socialism".

Recently, Obama expressed solidarity with families of victims in Aurora, Colorado. His said that his daughters like to go to movies; he expressed what it would be like for him if they were harmed in a movie theater. Naturally, this mourning with those who mourn (Romans 12:15) was a bad thing. According to Rush Limbaugh, it was "egomania" because it showed that to Obama the tragedy in Aurora was supposedly all about himself. Limbaugh is widely followed; I assume that that means that his words find many listening ears.

3. Obama-hating as a rock of stumbling.

It dis-eases me a little bit to tease out the implications of all of this. One of those dis-easing implications is this: if my friends hate Obama more than they love truth, then I worry that they hate Obama more than they love the one who is truth personified, namely God.

This is truly a dreadful thought. But it is not shocking.

We love God with our lips, if not with our hearts. Jesus knew this. "But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people." (John 2:24 (NIV).) One evidence of this is our preference for our own comfort. When we cherish our comfort instead of helping our needy brothers and sisters in Christ, we show where our loyalty lies. (1 John 3:17.) I don’t exclude myself from this judgment.

Barack Obama is a Christian. He is a flawed Christian like the rest of us, but a Christian nonetheless. He attended a Chicago church with his family. He professes Christianity. Recently, he recited very appropriate scripture when speaking words of comfort about the tragedy in Aurora, Colorado.

My brothers and sisters stumble over Obama. If we trembled before the word of God, and we don’t, we would tremble before this:

Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. [1 John 4:20 (NIV).]

If these words don't stir the waters by themselves, consider them with these words:

Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.  Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching.  [John 14:23-24 (NIV).] 

4. Furnaces of hatred.

Jesus said to his disciples: "Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come." Luke 17:1 (NIV)

We spend an hour or two in church; more time in front of the television. Some media companies are in American society great furnaces of hatred. Fox News might as well call itself the 24/7 hate-Obama network. And Keith Olbermann used to hate deeply on MSNBC. (I’ve watched almost no MSNBC lately, so I don’t know any current haters.)

This is the problem: we become what we behold. That’s why we are urged to keep our eyes on Jesus. (Hebrews 12:1-2.) Keeping our eye on the media haters, their strange fire touches us like a profane Pentecost, and we ourselves become little furnaces of hatred.

6. Hatred separates us from God.

As we hate, hatred marbles itself into our psyches. It becomes increasingly ingrained in our thoughts.

Jesus knew the danger of hating. That’s why he warned us not to oppose evil people, but to yield to them rather than to struggle against them. (Matthew 5:39-41.) (Yes, I know it’s hypocritical for a litigator to point this out.)

7. Better fire.

Not to finish down, but up:

"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." [John 13:34.]

Also: John 13:35; Romans 12:10; Romans 13:8; Galatians 5:13; Ephesians 4:2; 1 Thessalonians 4:9; 2 Thessalonians 1:3; Hebrews 10:24; 1 Peter 1:22; 1 Peter 3:8; 1 John 3:11; 1 John 3:23; 1 John 4:11; 1 John 4:12; 2 John 1:5 (in case we didn’t get it the first time).

I write this essay as much for myself as for my friends. I will try to regard those I disagree with with sympathy. Maybe this will ripen into kindness, which will ripen into love. By grace.

Pain and Policy

I have lost no loved one to crime.

I doubt that I would know better what to do about crime if I had. I am human. To lose a loved one to a criminal act would rob me of my objectivity. I would want revenge. I would want to see the perpetrator caught, tried, and convicted; and I would want to see the needle go into his vein; and after that I would want to see his ribs stop the rise and fall that keeps him alive.

And I would want some prevention-measure made into law. Maybe I would want that law named after my loved one.

1.  Loss comes.

Speaking objectively, and not as a victim of crime might, I know that in this world, violence and hurt will come. In this world, people will die when they shouldn’t, and lives will be ruined that deserve to prosper.

But sometimes an event will shock so deeply that it spikes the urgent desire to make sure that the shocking event never happens again. It makes us turn against the tide of inevitable pain.

The tragedy in of Aurora, Colorado is such an event. But even that event is an ripple compared to 9/11.

2. The sky will fall, or parts of it.

The will to keep the sky from falling is human. And a piece of the sky has fallen in Aurora, Colorado. And it has fallen on some disproportionately.

But there are a lot of us, and there is a lot of sky. Were we to build a scaffold between us and the sky that was heavy and wide and strong enough forever to preserve the safety of everyone underneath it from the hard fall of pieces of the heavens, we would never again see stars or sunlight.

3. The American habit of overreaction.

The inevitability of pain does not daunt us from taking action, some of it to ill effect. Let’s look at 9/11. Some measures taken after it were right. Among my friends, only one was upset that Osama bin Laden does not walk among the living. And I suspect that his contrariness was more partisan than moral.

But the urge to do something also led us into a costly adventure in Iraq – costly in blood and in treasure and in geopolitical standing. Our sacrifices there seem mainly to have benefitted Iran.

And, domestically, hatred against Muslims has boiled so that many of us are willing to scald our founding document and curtail the freedom of American Muslims to spread and worship in peace.

It’s possible to learn too much from experience.

This is not a new thing. Overreaction is as American as muzzle-loaded muskets. Fans of Hunter S. Thompson know this. There was an alleged sexual assault by a motorcycle gang in – I think it was the late 50s or early 60s. Hunter S. Thompson wrote about it in Hells Angels. Having received no traffic tickets for years, after the supposed sexual assault he started to ride a motorcycle. He wore a sheepskin jacket, which no self-respecting motorcycle gang-member would ever wear. He soon had enough tickets to put his driver’s license in danger.

4. What we can learn.

So it's possible to overreact. But not everything is an overreaction. A pause to reflect on the impermanence of life is never inappropriate. Americans particularly benefit from a reminder that just because we cannot remember ever not living, that does not mean that our lives in this world will go on without end.

And some of my friends have been moved to pray, particularly for the victims of the Aurora shooting and their families. Good.

Aside from that, maybe the best thing to do is nothing. At least for a time.

5. Rapid-response overreaction.

But some take Aurora as an immediate call to action, predictably. I read the New York Times. Two editorials within hours of the tragic event in Colorado called for stronger gun control. This might be an overreaction akin the more retrograde parts of the Patriot Act, enacted in the aftershock of 9/11.

The Patriot Act and the call for sterner gun control grew out of the impulse that, after a true tragedy, something must be done. And both the Patriot Act and the proposed clamp-down on guns are, in fact, "something".

6. The unspoken fallacy that any solution is good.

Sometimes the "something" that needs to be done is not new legislation. Pain is a part of the process of life, and no effort, no law, will eliminate it entirely. And some laws may only fruitlessly burden the freedoms of persons in numbers far greater than those stricken by the tragedy that spawned the law.

So we need to sit still for a time. We need to mourn with those who mourn in Colorado, and with the thousands of victim of crimes without fame across the country day by day.

And we need to think hard. We need to count the costs of any measure meant to beat back the pain that wants to enter into our lives. And we need to make a cold, hard choice about whether we are willing to live with those costs over the long run. Only time can give us the objectivity not to overreact. So we need to take time before we give serious thought to any new measure.

7. Bearing pain.

And, this sounds hard. But we need to be prepared to bear pain. Great evil is done in the name of staving off pain; and great good can comes from taking it on. For example, the miracle of forgiveness is the boon made possible by a willingness to take hurt and to forego the salve of sending it back to where we suppose it came from.

8.  Action in the right time.

And, maybe, in the right time, we’ll take action. But the right action is likely to come only at the right time. An with considered and dispassionate thoughts.

9. Yes, but.

To say that a pause before acting is sound is not to say that we shouldn't revise some of our laws about guns. Some skittishness toward gun regulation is perverse. It's crazy that someone on the terrorist watch list is not impeded from buying a gun. And I don't like laws that allow guns in places where people go to get drunk. To give a couple of examples.

10.  Still.

My call for a pause, my call for calm, might seem cold-blooded. Fine. It is. But I have seen the reckless harm caused by a surge of passion following an event that makes us afraid or angry (two linked emotions). In hindsight, I see that we were not well served by some actions motivated by outrage.

We as a nation need to learn the difference between Pearl Harbor and a shocking event that can be addressed in calmer times. We as a nation need to shed the notion that after a tragedy something must be done, and that any "something" is a good idea.

I, Libertard.

I remember reading about a Union soldier and a Confederate soldier found dead after a Civil War battle. Each gripped the other, and each had thrust his knife into the other’s side. They lay together in death.

That epitomized the hatred in that conflict, a hatred still un-healed.

So. I was researching on the internet the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (known to its detractors as "ObamaCare"). People have written things like, "This explanation is so simple that even a Republican can understand it." Or, "Send this to your libertard friends and watch their heads explode"– or something like that.

On Facebook, liberals and conservatives often hate on each other.

1. A house divided against itself.

Abraham Lincoln said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." And he was quoting a higher authority. What Lincoln said was true then: hundreds of thousands died in a war to uphold a nation divided against itself.

An what he said is true now. In our hatred, we risk burning our abode. Some people hate the other party, or a particular person, such as Barack Obama, more than they love their country. They'd burn down their own house to kill their "enemy" in it.

For a scientific point of view, study Harvard professor Martin A. Nowak's article in the July 2012 Scientific American, called "Why We Help". Cooperation helps organisms survive.

2. Harming ourselves.

When we call someone a "libertard" or a "tyrant" or a "Republiscam" or a "fool" we muffle our own intelligence.

We could have a chicken-and-egg argument about whether movies and television dramas and popular fiction make us shallow, or whether producers make shallow entertainments because we are shallow. The fact is that it’s the rare movie or television drama that has a villain with any complexity.

Shows with complex characters become iconic. The Sopranos is an example. Tony Soprano was a thug. But he was a complex thug. He loved his family, and he was capable of kindness, for all his wrongful ways.

And that’s why Shakespeare endures. Nobody could read everything that has been written about Shakespeare and his plays, even if he spent a lifetime trying. When I lived in China, I knew a Chinese scholar who studied Shakespeare – not to teach, but to learn.

Shakespeare’s characters were complex, even the villains. Richard III is a rogue, but an interesting one. Macbeth murdered his king, but he is a human character with pathos.

The point is that when we summarize a person into a pejorative, like fool, we overlook richness and complexity in the personality of another human being. We make ourselves shallow when we regard others with small eyes.

And to those who care what God thinks, he is clear: hard judgments are a conduit to condemnation.

But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell. [Matthew 5:22 (NIV).]

3. The first step.

The first step to un-divide our house is not from those who do wrong; it’s from the wronged. It’s forgiveness.

I try. When I first saw it, I was burned by the term libertard. Hated it. I'm fine with it now.

Didn’t Jesus say that his kingdom was made for the simple, not the smart? Didn’t he say that who he was was for the simple to know? "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children." (Matthew 11 (NIV).) Maybe if I'm a libertard, I'm simple enough to see God. So I forgive libertard.

The importance of fogiveness is a core christian  belief. "And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins." (Mark 11.) This is a big idea that appears many places in the New Testament.

But to ground this piece in science, I'll refer again to Why We Help. That article discusses five distinct patterns of cooperation that favor an individual or group in evolution. One is called "direct reciprocity". On its basic level, it's tit-for-tat. One monkey grooms another so that the other monkey will groom him.

The author described the use of complex computer simulations to show how this kind of cooperation could evolve. Describing these computer-simulation results, he said:

What made our early computer simulations even more interesting was the revelation that there are different kinds of direct reciprocity. Within 20 generations the initial tit-for-tat strategy had given way to a more generous strategy in which players might still cooperate even if their rival defected. We had in essence, witnesses the evolution of forgiveness -- a direct-reciprocity strategy that allowed players to overlook the occasional mistake.

The last form of cooperation that the author described, which applies to "all manner of organisms, from amoebas to zebras", is the performance of "selfless acts for the greater good, as opposed to abetting a single peer."  No doubt forgiveness can be such an form of cooperation. It enhances group cohesion.

A happy confluence of science and religion exhaults forgiveness.

4. The second step.

The second step is to forebear from harsh words against people we disagree with. It divides the house against itself.

I say this fully aware of my own blog posts, such as "When Christians are Assholes." http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/08/when-christians-are-assholes.html I also remember blog posts that take down certain republican candidates. E.g.: http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2012/02/mitt-romney-up-tree.html And I have been happy to share on Facebook non-partisan fact-checker analysis that calls persons out for pants-on-fire political statements.

So you can call me hypocrite. I prefer complex.

Please remember that I have also called for prayers for Mitt Romney. http://www.justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2012/05/prayers-for-mitt-romney.html  And I wrote a post call Ten Things I Admire about Conservatives. Among others. http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2012/02/ten-things-i-admire-about-conservatives.html

5. The third step.

The third step is to pray for each other. Pray for blessings on people we oppose. Who knows? Maybe we will find it harder to find fault after that. Maybe that will be because God will change them. Or maybe God will change us.

Wildness and the Word of God

Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be just like him. [Proverbs 26:4 (NIV).]

Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes. [Proverbs 26:5 (NIV).]

I accept that all of scripture is "God breathed." (2 Timothy 3:16.) So I wrestle with what it means that the Bible says one thing in one place, but another thing in another place.

1. Apology.

Let me be clear: I’m fine with anyone who takes the Bible as historically accurate in all its parts, and without contrast from one part to another. I respect that person. I crave that person’s prayers. I am not superior to that person; I know that, and God bless him or her. I know persons who know the Bible better than I do, and they accept it as literal, perfect history and completely consistent throughout. That’s fine.

Arguments over Biblical literalness and consistency might be like the "foolish controversies" condemned by Paul. (Titus 3:9.) I have no wish to press against anybody a "foolish controversy".

This is written for people who read the Bible, like me, and who find contrasts among its parts. This is for people who wonder: what does this mean?

2. Historical contradictions.

These are examples of what I’m talking about. History in the Bible varies from one part to another.

Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 differently describe the creation of the world. For example, in chapter 1, animals were created before man, and man was created to have dominion over them. In chapter 2, man was created first, and the animals were then created to be companions to him. Also, note that in chapter 1 God separated the light from the darkness twice.

David met Saul under two circumstances. A mighty warrior, he was called to sooth King Saul’s tormented spirit with music. (1 Samuel 16.) This is the first description of their meeting. But in 1 Samuel 17, David came to Saul because, as a lad, he slew Goliath.

In Matthew 27, Judas the betrayer hanged himself. In Acts 1, he pitched forward in a field, and his intestines spilled out.

3. Doctrinal differences.

Biblical doctrine also varies from one part to another.

a. Prayer.

Different Gospels say different things about prayer. This is Matthew chapter 6, which encourages short prayers:

And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. [NIV.]

And yet, Luke chapter 18 has the parable of the persistent widow. An unjust judge gave her justice because she gave him no rest from her petitions. Jesus compared her to believers who come before God with prayer:

And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. [NIV]

b. God’s treatment of the righteous and the wicked.

The speeches of Job’s accusers aren’t wrong. Scripture does say that God punishes the wicked and blesses the righteous. Compare Psalm 34 to Job 36 (speech of Elihu). Compare Psalm 112 to Job 8 (speech of Bildad the Shuhite). Compare Proverbs 12:21 to Job 22 (speech of Elipaz the Temanite). Yet Job was righteous, and Job was afflicted. This was true despite these scriptures and the words of Job's accusers. That’s the point of the Book of Job.

c. The Laws of Moses.

Then there is the controversy over what parts of the Law of Moses survive in the New Testament era. Here’s Matthew chapter 5, where the Law is preserved intact and in its entirety:

For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.[NIV.]

Contrast the letter of the Apostles and Elders to believers in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, about whether those believers should accept circumcision and follow the Law of Moses (from Acts 15). This is a pocket-ready version of the Law:

It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. [NIV.]

d. Faith or faith and works?

And then there is the question: is salvation by faith, or by faith and works? Romans 3:28 says:"For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law." (NASB.) James 2:24 says: "You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone." (NASB).

Martin Luther believed that these passages could not be reconciled; he wondered if James belonged in the Bible. Attempts to reconcile James and Romans spew like sparks from a fountain-style firework. (Go ahead, Google it.)

As to faith and works and James and Romans, I don’t know if this part of Matthew ties the twain, or if it makes a middle ground:

Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. [Matthew 7:24-27 (NIV).]

But reconciliation might not be needed.

4. Plausible explanations?

There are plausible explanations for these differences.

a. Scope to the writers.

All scripture is God-breathed. (2 Timothy 3:16.) But that doesn’t mean scripture is God-dictated. God gave scope to the writers for their own personalities and opinions and traditions to enter into what they wrote. And because their personalities and opinions and traditions differed, the writings differed.

b. The Bible is pastoral.

Also, the Bible is pastoral; it leads people to God and salvation. Contrasts could be explained in that vein.

So differences among writers in the Bible might reflect differences among believers or circumstances. It might be important for some believers to pray persistently and at length, like the widow who sought justice from the unjust judge. But God might want to assure other believers that he will not neglect their prayers only because their prayers are brief.

Smug believers might need to hear that God will judge them by what they do or by what they don’t do. Struggling believers who labor and strive and become disheartened by their perpetual failure might need to hear the word of grace.

c. Tethering to the Holy Spirit.

God might not want us to be solely tethered to a book, even the Bible.

The Bible is very, very important to a believer. A believer who doesn't travel deeply into the Bible neglects a resource that can draw him upward to God.

But God might not intend for us to rely upon the Bible to the neglect of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate. The mysteries of scripture bring us to God in prayer, and certainly it is a mystery why the Bible says one thing in one place and another thing in another. When we come to God in prayer, that invites the Helper to guide us. And that help might be so important that anything that brings us to it is a boon and not a detriment as some see it.

5. The vitality of the word.

Here’s a thought: maybe the whole issue of consistency and inconsistency needs to be hissed at.

The Bible is a book apart. The Word of God has a unique brilliance. In its brilliance there is something wild and unmanageable.

In The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis said of his Christ-figure, the lion Aslan, that he was "not a tame lion." Maybe if we worry about contrasts in the Word of God, we err by trying to impose on it a buttoned-down quality, a tameness.

So in judging the Word of God like we might judge a witness in a theft trial or a mere philosophical essay, we fail to see its wildness and its vitality. This is a vitality that no mortal mind can contain. It stops us from judging the Bible as we might judge lesser literature.

6. The writers weren’t troubled.

The holy persons who wrote scripture fully knew of the contrasts among its parts. The two proverbs at the beginning of this piece, about answering a fool, appear literally side-by-side. Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are sequential chapters. The two ways that David met Saul are only one chapter apart.

If making the Bible less mysterious were the first goal of the writers of scripture, the solution would have been easy. They simply could have deleted one version or the other.

But that wasn’t done. And that tells me that the writers of the Bible were not unduly troubled by what might trouble a modern believer or by what might excite an unbeliever looking for a reason to un-believe.

The writers of the Bible saw and believed. Believers today can read and likewise believe.

7. The final word is God’s.

Perhaps it’s right to think of the Bible, at times, as a debate about God and about God and history. In a way, this debate is like the debate among Job and Eliphaz and Bildad and Zophar and Elihu. None of them were per se wrong. But the winning word, as in the book of Job, will be God’s.