Shame, Guilt, and Fear

Recently a friend of mine commented on the way that the church and American society use shame, guilt and fear to influence behaviour. He suggested that there might be other more positive means of encouraging people to do what is right and avoid what is wrong.

His comments jogged my own thinking to consider more fully the place of shame, honour, and fear in our own culture as well as in the church. I am not a psychologist nor an anthropologist, so I set these thoughts down well aware that I go beyond my own expertise. I am confident that those who know better than I can correct and overstatements or misstatements I make here.

First thought: Shame, honour, and fear have both negative and positive uses. Second thought: Different societies use these forms of social control in different ways. Third thought: Scripture has examples of all three, both in their positive and in their negative manifestation.

Positive and Negative Forms of Shame, Guilt, and Fear

I have heard many discussions of shame that label it as a purely negative process. Brené Brown, for example, has some excellent descriptions of negative shame, and I commend her work for the way that she has given us ways to avoid toxic shame. Her web page contains the statement, “Dr. Brené Brown is a research professor who has spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy.”

At the same time, shame functions positively to help us avoid actions that would be destructive of our own identity or of our family’s honour. Shame and honour correlate: The appeal to honour is in fact a positive form of the use of shame. If we describe someone as shameless, we are not complimenting them. To be shameless is also to be without honour.

In our culture (I write as a North American), we have seen an awareness of guilt as a better quality than shame. A thought experiment: If you found a wad of money lying on the ground – obviously someone has lost it, do we pick it up and keep it or do we look for the owner. Someone with a shame-orientation is more likely to look for the owner if others are watching. Someone with a strong guilt-orientation is more likely to look for the owner if he/she believes that’s the right thing to do.

But guilt is not always a positive force in our lives. People can be wracked with guilt when they have no good reason to be. I know people who have felt guilty for “telling a lie” when in fact they simply gave out the wrong information, believing it to be true. Being wrong is not something we need to feel guilty for; it is an opportunity to learn, not a sin to be confessed.

In our culture, fear is probably held to be worse than either shame or guilt. Fear often goes with superstition: One avoids the number 13, or walking under a ladder, or some other behaviour because it is thought to lead to bad luck. In this respect, fear is a more spiritual orientation, suspecting that bad things outside of our control lurk around the corner.

But fear can be a healthy approach to life. Fear of contracting the coronavirus (as I write these words in April 2020) is rational and helps us to make good choices about our behaviour. Irrational “courage” is a worse basis for behaviour than rational fear.

Shame, Guilt, and Fear in Culture

My field is the study of Christian missions. In my studies, I have found a Christian website on shame and honour to be helpful in understanding guilt, shame, and fear in cultural perspective. This website includes a culture test to help one determine which of these three orientations – shame and honour, guilt and innocence, fear and power – is most active in our lives. When I took the test, I was about 80% guilt and innocence, 10% shame and honour, and 10% fear and power. I am a good North American of my age and background!

I have had a number of South Americans from a German background in my classes. When they take the test, they tend have a significantly higher score on the shame and honour. I have had several people from Southeast Asia and from Africa, who tend to have a higher score on fear and power. Asians in general are more tuned in to shame and honour than North Americans and North Europeans.

All of this is to say that the way these dynamics operate in our lives is largely a function of our cultural background. As I observe this simple truth (a straightforward given for students of culture), I realise some of the strengths and weaknesses that go with each orientation. Those attuned to guilt and innocence are often strongly inner-directed to do what is right; they are also highly individualistic and resist the authority of community. Those attuned to shame and honour value community highly and seek social harmony: the good of all. They are also more likely to act in ways that violate the more individualistic person’s sense of right and wrong. Those attuned to fear and power are sensitive to the spiritual realities of the world around us; they can also be afraid of those realities and use power to benefit their own social group unfairly.

Some cautions. These are all generalizations and prove false if taken too far. Further, everyone has some mixture of all three orientations at work in their lives. Besides, generational changes can shift the balance of orientations in any given society. For example, younger people in North America (those who might say to me, “OK, Boomer”) have a stronger orientation towards shame and honour than people in our society of my age do. Witness the phenomenon of shaming on social media – carried to an extent that children of the 60s simply don’t do.

There are also conundrums that I don’t understand in the way our culture works. Younger people – millennials, if you prefer the term – use shame more than previous generations; they are also more individualistic than previous generations. Perhaps their use of shame and honour is actually a move to reclaim a sense of belonging in community. (See the work of Jean Twenge on the phenomenon of hyper-individualism in our society, for example, in Generation Me.)

These Orientations and Scripture

It is tempting to lift up one of these orientations as better than the others, or to say that only one side of the pairings is good. In fact, Scripture uses all of them and I give only a few examples as illustrations. One can develop a worthwhile Bible study by examining each pairing in turn to see how Scripture has used them.

Fear and Power:

Romans 1:16, I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for all who believe. We might think that Romans stresses guilt and innocence, since many have tended to read the letter through a forensic lens, but we see in the introduction Paul’s awareness that Sin is a power and that God’s power released in the gospel is greater.

1 John 4: 17f, In this way, love has been perfected among us, so that we may have confidence on the day of judgment; for in this world we are just like Him. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. The one who fears has not been perfected in love. Here, John links fear with judgment, and gives God’s love as the greatest power of all.

Shame and Honour:

Romans 1:16, I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for all who believe. We see again that Paul, so far from thinking primarily in terms of guilt and innocence, combined a fear-power orientation with a shame-honour orientation.

The Lord’s Prayer: Your name … Your kingdom … Your will … For the kingdom and the power and the glory are yours … This is profoundly honour-oriented language. The Psalms are full of such language. The Heavens declare the glory of God … Jesus says that at the judgment he will be ashamed of those who in this life are ashamed of him.

Guilt and Innocence:

The first eight chapters of Romans are an extended discussion of every person’s failure to live by God’s standards. For all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory. Yet even here, one notes that the language of glory belongs more fully to shame and honour than to guilt and innocence.

I find that this orientation, which is fully present in Scripture, is less present than we think. The Bible uses all three orientations and thus speaks to people in every culture.

Conclusion

Where am I going with all of this? Partly, I just find it interesting. Partly, I want to encourage us to use all three orientations appropriately where we live. Partly, I want to say that the use of these categories – shame, guilt, and fear – has a proper place in our lives. Their best use is found in the quote above from 1 John 4: “Perfect love casts out fear.” Their best use is to draw us to God’s love, where true life and health is found for every person in every culture.

Cultural Diversity in Reading the Bible

Our theme concerns the benefits of diversity in general. My topic today is the benefit of cultural diversity in reading Scripture.

I asked for two Scriptures to be read:

Genesis 11: 1-9 (The tower of Babel)

Language diversity and cultural diversity appear as a consequence of human rebellion.

Acts 2: 5-11 (Pentecost)

Language diversity and cultural diversity appear as a means of grace conveying the gospel of God’s truth.

A tangential thought: God regularly uses “judgment” to convey grace.

Our Diversity Point: We need our various cultural perspectives to hear God’s truth fully.

This idea assumes that God’s Word Written speaks in every culture through every language. This idea works only if God is truly the Creator of all people and if God seeks to save all people and make them part of one great Family of God.

Two examples, both from Jacob Loewen

1) (In Jacob Loewen, The Bible in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 2000)

Loewen was working with translators in the Congo to translate the book of Genesis. The Congolese translators noted things in the text of chapters 4 and 5 that Loewen had not seen. We read the genealogies as though we are entering data in ancestry.com, while the Congolese translators read the genealogies to act like their own: giving information about the character of the people in them.

2) (Also from Loewen, but I don’t remember the source)

Loewen met with a group of American missionaries and Congolese pastors. He divided them into their national groups and had them read the story of Joseph (Genesis 37-50) and establish the most important theme in it.

The Americans identified this theme: the value of individual strength and purity that Joseph showed in a strange land.

The Congolese identified this theme: the way that Joseph remained fully a part of his family, even when he was carried away from them into a strange land.

Both lessons are there, and we learn from both of them. We look for opportunities to learn from each other here at Providence. Try joining a Bible study with people from other cultures. Often our insights will match each other (Goldschmidt: “People are more alike than cultures are different”). Sometimes an African or Asian or North American perspective will burst into our awareness with new clarity and we will experience a little bit of Revelation 7: 9f.

A glimpse of Heaven!

16 Oct 2019

PUC/PTS Community Chapel

Rethinking Evangelicalism

In “Rethinking Life” I intentionally did not discuss my understanding of being an Evangelical. Here is a brief effort to remedy that omission. In response to one of the Facebook responses to “Rethinking Life”, I noted the National Association of Evangelicals’ web page, in which the NAE uses Bebbington’s summary of Evangelical distinctives:

·         Conversionism: the belief that lives need to be transformed through a “born-again” experience and a life long process of following Jesus.

·         Activism: the expression and demonstration of the gospel in missionary and social reform efforts.

·         Biblicism: a high regard for and obedience to the Bible as the ultimate authority.

·         Crucicentrism: a stress on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross as making possible the redemption of humanity.

I like this shortlist, although one can debate its adequacy. I see two basic streams to the Evangelical movement. One is represented by the Gospel Coalition and such figures as John Piper and Don Carson. On the web the first sentence of their “foundation documents” reads: “We are a fellowship of evangelical churches in the Reformed tradition deeply committed to renewing our faith in the gospel of Christ and to reforming our ministry practices to conform fully to the Scriptures.”

One sees in their self-definition a sense that to be Evangelical is to be Reformed. One sees also the immediate reference to Scripture, with a strong commitment to “conform fully” to Scripture. My own sense is that the Reformed stream emphasizes doctrine over experience. The testimony of someone like Millard Erickson (a prominent theologian within the Reformed Evangelical stream) reinforces my impression. There is much good in this stream. The pastoral work of Tim Keller in New York City shows how good it can be, as does John Piper’s ministry in Minneapolis-Saint Paul.

The second stream comes from the Wesleyan-Holiness movement, and prioritizes the personal experience of God’s presence. We can see this priority in the way that the Methodist movement grew in the United States in the latter part of the 19^th Century, and in the way that the great Pentecostal Revival of 1906 spread from Azusa Street, Los Angeles.

The Wesleyan stream is less organized than the Reformed stream. The Brethren in Christ (my church family) has been part of the Christian Holiness Association, which was an expression of this stream, but the association appears to be dormant. Wesleyanism is best represented by organizations such as Asbury Theological Seminary (where I did my mission studies).

I can summarize the difference between the two streams by using Bebbington’s four markers. Wesleyans emphasize the first two: conversion (that is, experience) and activism (that is, living out one’s faith in concrete ways). Reformed Evangelicals emphasize the latter two: Biblicism (a strong commitment to the authority of Scripture) and crucicentrism (the centrality of the cross).

One can easily overstate the difference. Wesleyans embrace the cross and rely fully on Scripture; the Reformed movement believes in conversion and discipleship. One should think, then, of a difference in emphasis, not of two visions in conflict. The difference in emphasis is, however, important. Reformed Evangelicals are more likely to insist on stating things the right way. Wesleyan Evangelicals are more likely to start with a personal testimony. I am a Wesleyan!

Experience and Doctrine: Subjective and Objective

One of those who commented on “Rethinking life” made an important point that holds both sides together, He said, “While I think that ‘stressing relationship with God over doctrine about God’ sounds good... unless we have a good understanding of who this God is (doctrine about God) we may all end up having a relationship with different gods. Just to say that both are rather important to the Christian mindset.”

He is, of course, right. In response I add that the danger of a subjective perception that misidentifies God exists for both streams. The God defined by those who focus on doctrine can be as subjective as the God defined by those who say, “The Spirit told me.” We interpret Scripture from our socially constructed lives, which leads to what missiologists call “local theologies”. Everyone constructs there theology like this. Africans responding to the fear of witchcraft construct a local theology; Americans worrying about the influence of secularism construct a local theology. We have to do the hard work of hearing the Scripture speak for itself in order to hear God’s supracultural gospel (to use Charles Kraft’s phrase).

Similarly, people who have a spiritual experience may think that God is at work, when in fact the source of the experience is not God. I remember a Pentecostal friend in Zimbabwe who critiqued the Toronto Airport Church for me. He said, “You Americans are funny. You see someone roar like a lion or engage in holy laughter, and you think it must be the Spirit of God. We have seen these things in Zimbabwe too, and we know that it is not always God’s Spirit.” What protects us from our own subjective experience is the objective reality of God. When one gives oneself fully to the “God who is there”, God takes care of bringing objective reality into our experience.

So both streams need to heed my friend’s warning. We rely on Scripture and we give our lives to Christ. We seek to understand and to experience the cross. We live out our lives fully in light of our commitments to Christ as we meet him in the Bible.

The Centre and Boundaries

A second observation about Bebbington’s four marks of the Evangelical movement. The emphasis on doctrine tends to focus on boundary issues, so those in the Reformed stream are more likely to draw lines that others cannot cross if they wish to stay in the movement. I prefer to emphasize the centre and to use these four marks—experience, activism, Scripture, and the cross—as the common core that Evangelicals share. This emphasis fits better with my Wesleyan orientation.

The problem with drawing lines that others cannot cross is that it moves boundary issues to the centre of the Evangelical paradigm. For example, those in the Reformed stream tend to make complementarian thinking a line one cannot cross: Women cannot serve in church leadership. In the Wesleyan Holiness movement women have been leaders for more than one hundred years. General William Booth’s daughter, for example, became the fourth leader (General) of the Salvation Army in 1934. Wesleyans tend to be egalitarian on the issue of women in ministry. Now using the four marks of Evangelicalism looks like a set of core issues that we can use at the centre of our identity. The role of women in ministry is a boundary issue—more marginal, and not necessary for an Evangelical identity.

Another example: Those in the Reformed stream insist on Penal Substitutionary Atonement as the model Evangelicals must use to understand the saving work of Christ on the Cross. But surely the precise model is a marginal issue. Perhaps it can serve as a fuzzy boundary between two branches of the Christian faith (for example, Roman Catholics, who refer to the Satisfaction Theory [of which PSA is a subset] and the Eastern Orthodox, who I think refer to Regeneration or something like that). But we are saved by Christ’s work on the cross; elevating a theory of how that works to a line that cannot be crossed moves PSA from the margin to the centre. I don’t think it’s a helpful way to move forward.

To be clear, I think that the PSA makes sense and is worth using in our understanding of the atonement, but I don’t think it is nearly as important as is experiencing the presence of Christ in one’s life. A friend of mine has observed that N.T. Wright, the English theologian, has been in significant conflict with the Gospel Coalition over this issue, because they want to make PSA normative for all Evangelicals. I’d rather be a Wesleyan!

Some random wanderings by a decidedly amateur theologian. I beg the forbearance of those who know this whole field better than I do and welcome correction as leading to my own better understanding of what I’m talking about.

Reading the Church’s Bible, 1

Introduction

One of the issues our congregation is dealing with is the basic question: How does the Bible function in our lives? The “Confession of Faith in Mennonite Perspective” gives this summary statement about the Bible:

We believe that all Scripture is inspired by God through the Holy Spirit for instruction in salvation and training in righteousness. We accept the Scriptures as the Word of God and as the fully reliable and trustworthy standard for Christian faith and life. Led by the Holy Spirit in the church, we interpret Scripture in harmony with Jesus Christ.

A clear statement, but we may still wonder what it means. This morning I want to reflect on Paul’s words in 2 Timothy 3 and Jesus’ words in John 5. We could call this a consideration of Scriptural authority, or a reflection on the nature of the Bible. I have chosen to call it, “Reading the Church’s Bible” (after a course title at Providence Seminary).

Jesus

I start with John chapter 5. Jesus had healed an invalid lying beside the pool of Bethesda. This person had been an invalid for 38 years and was lying beside the pool hoping to get in “when the water was stirred” (verse 7). The episode closes with Jesus’ words, “Pick up your mat and walk” (verse 9). Because this healing took place on the Sabbath, some Jewish leaders asked him what he thought he was doing carrying his mat around—an action against the rules for keeping the Sabbath holy (verse 10). The resulting interaction led them to Jesus, and they started to attack him (verse 16).

Jesus said that his authority to heal and to forgive sins came from his Father, that is, from God (verses 17). The Jewish leaders realized that Jesus was claiming equality with God (verse 18), so that they “tried all the more to kill him.” Verses 19 to 47 give Jesus’ responses to their attacks on him. He observed that there were several testimonies to his identity as the Son of God: John the Baptist was one; his miracles of healing and forgiveness were another; the Scriptures themselves were another. In this context then we hear Jesus say, “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”

Some people read this statement to mean that the Scriptures do not give life. I don’t think that is what Jesus is saying. I think he is saying rather: “You’re right—the Scriptures bring you to life; but if you were really studying the Scriptures you would realize that I am Life.” Later in John’s Gospel Jesus says, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6). So the Bible is not our Life, but it brings us to Jesus, who is our Life. Without the Bible we have only our subjective experience of God’s presence, and Scripture shows us a more objective picture of who God is, as revealed in Jesus.

This is an important point, because the conversations we have been having in our church have an impact on our spiritual life with Christ. We pray earnestly, and we want to do God’s will, but we may find ourselves feeling the hurt of all that has been said and done. Our relationship with Jesus may suffer. When we feel the darkness of this world, we turn again to Scripture, not so that we can prove that we are right or that someone else is wrong, but so that Scripture can take us back to God, who comes to us in the person of Jesus Christ. We read the Bible in order to meet Jesus.

Paul

The letters to Timothy were written late in Paul’s life. The verses we read give us almost his last will and testament. (Consider the 4: 6-8, which follows: “For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.”)

Now Paul would not have said that reading the Bible was the centre of the Christian life. He expresses the centre of his own life elsewhere, for example in Romans 1:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

From a more extensive passage (2 Corinthians 5: 11-21), in which Paul describes his passion for the gospel, I note especially the following:

… Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. … All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the [ministry and message] of reconciliation…. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.

The gospel of God, the ministry and message of reconciliation: This is the centre of Paul’s message and of Paul’s life. So then why does he refer to the Scriptures in 2 Timothy 3? For the same reason that Jesus did in John 5. The Scriptures reveal God and God’s will for our lives. The Scriptures describe the gospel of God and give content to the ministry and message of reconciliation.

I want to focus now on the words he writes to Timothy in verses 14-17:

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

Timothy had studied the Scriptures from his childhood. He knew the Bible stories. He knew what we call the Old Testament thoroughly. Paul encourages him to continue such careful study, because the Scriptures make one “wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” (Do you hear the echo of Jesus’ words in John 5?) Then Paul describes the Scriptures more thoroughly.

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

You see, then, what the Bible is for. (Note that we extrapolate from Paul’s description of the Hebrew Scriptures to the Bible as a whole). It is for “teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness”, that is, it is useful for what we might call disciple-making. You remember that the Great Commission does not deal only with conversion (“baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”), but also with nurture (“teaching them to obey everything I [Jesus] have commanded you.” So the Bible is intended to bring us to Jesus, and to teach us how to live as God’s children (as followers of Jesus).

Sometimes we look at the Bible as a manual of instructions for the situations we face in life. I have a manual in the glove compartment of my car. It is useful for a Toyota Corolla, but if you have a Ford Fusion, it won’t help you as much. The problem with manuals is that they work for one specific situation. The Bible is much more than a manual. The Bible describes itself as the Scriptures that introduce us to Jesus and to the good news that in Jesus God has reconciled the world to himself. As we walk with Jesus and read the Bible, we learn more and more about how Jesus wants us to live in this world.

A Simple Point and a Problem

All of this is fairly obvious, I think. Next week I will talk about the different kinds of writing that we find in the Bible—from songs to laws, from love letters to practical letters, from gospels to apocalypses. Today I want to note just one thing about all of this: The Bible is true. That is what Paul means when he says that the Scriptures are “God-breathed”. The Bible says what God wants it to say. This is a simple point, but sometimes it trips us up.

The problem is that we read the Bible as though it speaks with one voice throughout. The Bible brings us the Word of God from a wide variety of human authors. Peter says this about Paul (2 Peter 2: 16): “His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.” Peter and Paul write quite differently, because they are different people. Similarly in the Gospels Luke writes a more educated Greek and John writes a simple Greek. The Scriptures are “God-breathed”, but they speak with human voices. Jesus is God’s Word—fully human and fully divine. So also the Bible is God’s Word—a blend of divine inspiration speaking with human voices.

The Bible uses the language and cultural forms of the human authors and their audience. If you have ever moved from one country to another, you have probably been surprised by something that does not mean what you expect it to mean. That also happens in the Bible. Here is a simple example, told to me by a friend from the Middle East. You remember the story of Lot in Sodom in Genesis 19. Because of Sodom’s wickedness, God sent two angels to Sodom to warn Lot to get out of town before judgment. Lot took them in as his guests and gave them supper. After they ate, the men of Sodom came to the house and tried to abduct these men (not recognizing them as angels). Then we read these words:

Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him and said, “Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”

We read this story and wonder how Lot could consider giving his daughters to these terrible men. But my friend said something like this: “You think it means that he was willing to give them his daughters. But this is just how we talk in the Middle East. What it really means is that the law of hospitality is so strong that he could no more give his guests to these men than he could give his daughters to them.” In fact, we have a similar form of speech in our own culture; it is called sarcasm.

This change does not affect how we understand the whole story, but such misunderstandings can occur anywhere in the Scriptures if we read too quickly and don’t listen carefully. How do we avoid this problem? By reading carefully and repeatedly. I have a friend who did his Master’s thesis at Providence on the Gospel of Mark. The first step he took before trying to write the thesis was to read the gospel through in one sitting. Three times in a week. For ten weeks.

When we read over and over, we focus less on individual verses that we might take out of context, and we begin to hear the whole Gospel. We will still get some individual passages wrong, but we will get the whole message right. You see, alongside the many voices of Scripture, we hear always God’s Spirit speaking through the authors. It is one of miracles of inspiration that the whole Bible does tell one coherent story, speaking through so many different people. If you want to know that story and learn to live by that story, you have to read the whole Bible and listen to the whole Bible.

I think of my grandparents’ generation in the Brethren in Christ. Many people had only book: the Bible. For some their formal education stopped with Grade Eight, but they read the Bible. I have studied more than they—going on to seminary, but they read the Bible constantly and thoroughly. I suspect that they often read more clearly than I do.

A Concluding Thought

As we read the Bible together, we will sometimes disagree about what it says. We also disagree about how we can read the Bible. Some say that the Bible is plain and needs no interpretation. Others say that the Bible is complicated and we cannot understand it. Both are right. In its overall message the Bible is clear—even if we have some disagreements. In many places the Bible is complicated—but in fact those places are fewer than we might think.

We do sometimes disagree about what the Bible says. I have worked most of my professional life as a seminary teacher among people with whom I disagree. I am convinced that Jesus’ call to peace is integral to the message of the gospel. Reconciliation with God includes reconciliation with people. Most of my colleagues, however, see peace as a goal to work towards rather than a life to live now. They are not pacifists; I am. Yet we continue to work together. We live and work together as brothers and sisters of Jesus, children of God, saved by the blood of Jesus on the cross, gather around the communion table, reading the same Bible, willing to follow all that Jesus commands us to do.

The first thing that the Bible is meant to do, then, is bring us to Jesus. Then it teaches us how to live—using stories and examples from history. Precise lessons may be complex and we may disagree, but they always fit into the whole story of God’s reconciling ways. In our own struggles here and now, let the Bible call you back to Jesus, to walk with him until he returns.

Steinbach Mennonite Church

18 September 2016

Texts

2 Timothy 3: 10-17

A Final Charge to Timothy

¹⁰ You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, ¹¹ persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. ¹² In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, ¹³ while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. ¹⁴ But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, ¹⁵ and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. ¹⁶ All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, ¹⁷ so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

John 5: 31-47

Testimonies About Jesus

³¹ “If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. ³² There is another who testifies in my favor, and I know that his testimony about me is true. ³³ “You have sent to John and he has testified to the truth. ³⁴ Not that I accept human testimony; but I mention it that you may be saved. ³⁵ John was a lamp that burned and gave light, and you chose for a time to enjoy his light.

³⁶ “I have testimony weightier than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to finish—the very works that I am doing—testify that the Father has sent me. ³⁷ And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, ³⁸ nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. ³⁹ You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, ⁴⁰ yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

⁴¹ “I do not accept glory from human beings, ⁴² but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts. ⁴³ I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. ⁴⁴ How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?

⁴⁵ “But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. ⁴⁶ If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. ⁴⁷ But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?”