I particularly like the foregoing quote, because I think it puts into perspective a text of scripture that has been badly misunderstood over the years. And I refer to Romans 8:28: "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose."

I quoted the passage from the King James Version because that’s the form that most of us who are 50 or older learned. And those who are younger than 50 have no doubt been influenced to some degree by those of us who aren’t—so they’ve still been influenced by the KJV’s rendition.
The words "we know that all things work together for good to them that love God" are the sticking point. First of all, the text seems to imply that everything that happens—no matter how grim or terrible—is going to work out well in the end.

It’s almost as if I can brush aside the reality of anything negative because it’s all going to become peachy-creamy, hunky-dory. Of course, if I can brush aside my problem, whatever the magnitude, I can brush aside your problem, whatever the magnitude. And if you don’t do the same, I can get quite judgmental with you for not dealing with adversity the way I do.

The other implication is that God is tailor-making my experience—be it good or bad. So if He’s orchestrating it, then clearly it’s for my own good, and I should be happy that He cares enough about me to slap me into line by meting out such horrible adversity.

I think the writer of The Shack has a clearer picture of how it works.

Jesus says He’ll never leave us or forsake us. He’ll always be with us, whatever our situation, be it great joy or extreme pain. Much of what we face is the result of misused human freewill. And because God so values our prerogative to choose, He can’t step in and negate the natural results of our choices. And bad choices inevitably result in someone’s adversity.

Yet in every situation, God is there, working to salvage whatever He can. It’s almost like "junkyard art." With His skilled eye He sees possibilities even for the pieces of broken lives. Always. But He doesn’t break us into pieces in order to create such masterpieces. He merely takes what’s already broken and looks for ways to make it as beautiful as possible.

I particularly like the New International Version’s rendering of the passage: "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

I’m not a prophet or the son of a prophet. So I don’t have visions. But I have had a few nightmares. And they’re usually pretty vivid. They certainly scare me, at least. But what really gets to me are my dreams. One recurring dream in particular.

It goes like this: I’m always in a situation that involves some need to get higher. About half the time it’s on a basketball court. But by no means always. I could need to get onto a rooftop or up a tree or even across a river.

So I jump. But two things are different in my "dream" jumps. First, gravity is only about one fifth as strong as I perceive it to be when I’m awake. So in my dreams my vertical leap is . . . let’s just say . . . phenomenal!

In fact, I’ve actually thought during my dream––this is for real––that if Michael Jordan had discovered my jumping technique, he could have really made a name for himself in basketball!

In addition to a dramatically lowered downward pull of gravity, the role of mind over matter is huge. And, in my dreams, my mind truly reigns supreme. So much so that when I reach the upper limit of my jump, I can maintain that height for long periods simply by concentrating.

And when I say concentrating, I mean really, really, really, REALLY concentrating. My forehead wrinkles. Every muscle in my body tenses. It’s like I can feel power being forced out through the very pores of my cranium. It’s hard work, let me tell you.

The only limiting factor in how long I can stay suspended in midair is my ability to concentrate. As my focus ebbs, which it inevitably does, I slowly sink back to terra firma. No matter how hard I try, I just can’t produce sufficient mental energy to keep me aloft indefinitely.

Then I wake up.

Now I’ve never been one to place a lot of stock in the belief that dreams have deep meaning. A lot of people might disagree. And not all of them are soothsayers or fortunetellers or horoscope readers. But even for a skeptic like me, having had variations of the same dream well over a hundred times and over several decades, I start to get a little fascinated by it.

Do I have some kind of complex that forces me to want to always do things in a dramatic way? Has my subconscious discovered something that could make me rich and famous if I could just somehow transport the formula back to my waking moments? Unfortunately, I don’t expect to find the answer. But it’s kind of fun to think about.

Maybe my dream bears some truth even if I can’t divine its meaning. And that truth may be this: Life’s "gravity"––that which prevents us from soaring to the heights we’d like to attain––may not be as powerful as we’ve assumed. Further, concentration may play a larger role in success than many have recognized. But there’s clearly still something missing. And when I discover it, it may be tough to ever get me back down to earth again!

Jim Coffin, Senior Pastor

Thoughts on Biblical Interpretation--1

Not to be critical or anything, but most Christians are rather random in how they interpret the Bible. And, let me hasten to add, Adventists are no exception. Nor am I.

To the uninitiated, it must be rather perplexing. I mean, right in the same chapter we’ll say that one Old Testament command still applies in ironclad fashion but we brush aside the very next command as no longer of consequence.

For example, Seventh-day Adventists make a big deal about the perpetual claims of the fourth commandment, which supports the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath. By contrast, committed Christians of many other denominations say the seventh-day part of the command is outdated, even though the other nine commandments are still valid exactly as written.

Of course, Adventists also do their fair share of dismissing "outdated" scriptures. For example, we seek to honor the distinction between clean and unclean meat provided in Leviticus. But we ignore the command not to eat meat that has blood in it. Why?

And commands aren’t the only place where we have problems with passages from the Bible. A good many statements that don’t mesh with our understanding of either human reality or divine reality are ignored or explained away in some fashion or other. A classic example for me is Malachi 1:2, 3, which is repeated in a shorter form in Romans 9:13: "Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated."

Now, if this weren’t God talking, I wouldn’t have a problem. But I happen to subscribe to a view of God that says He loves everyone—"God is love" (1 John 4:8). In fact, I go so far as to say that God never ceases to love. He loves the lost just as much as He loves the saved. God may hate sin, but He always loves the sinner. There’s nothing I can do to make Him love me more, and there’s nothing I can do to make Him love me less (though my relationship to Him has consequences that can lead either to eternal life or to destruction). God simply loves.

So when I read about God hating Esau, it definitely doesn’t mesh with my idea (which is based heavily on an array of other scriptures) that God always loves. So immediately I set about to explain away the actual words.

I might do it by talking about certain idioms used in the Hebrew or Greek. Or I might talk about how even the Bible writers tend to anthropomorphize God, depicting Him as having human emotions that, when looked at more analytically, don’t seem fitting for the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. But whatever logical or linguistic gymnastics I go through, my goal is to assure others that the Bible doesn’t mean what the words actually say.

Now, I’m not faulting or condemning anyone. I’m just saying we all do this—from the greatest theologian to the humblest person in the pew. So maybe it would be good for us to see if we can approach the Bible in a manner that has just a little more consistency and coherence. But we’ll have to wait for that until next week.

Jim Coffin, Senior Pastor

Thoughts on Biblical Interpretation--2

Last week we talked about the randomness we employ in deciding which passages of scripture to take literally and which to explain away. We have a variety of ways to get out from under "problem" texts. But honesty should force us to admit what we’re doing and just how inconsistent and subjective our sifting process is. Let me share a few more examples.

Much as we may abhor adultery, I doubt that many people living in the 21st century would feel comfortable enforcing Leviticus 20:10 as it’s written: "If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death."

Likewise, I believe most of us would find the punishment prescribed in Deuteronomy 22:23, 24 to be far too severe––especially since it’s dealing with someone who could actually be a rape victim and not a willing participant in illicit behavior. The text reads: "If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death—the girl because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife."

Not only is the punishment harsh, but the criteria for determining the woman’s guilt or innocence seems totally inadequate. Doesn’t the writer of this law understand that a woman might well be prevented from screaming? And notice that the perpetrator’s punishment isn’t based on what he has done to the woman. It’s based only on the sin he has committed against another man––by defiling the other man’s fiancée.

No doubt most of us would think that in Deuteronomy 22: 28, 29 the perpetrator gets off the hook far too easily while the victim is subjected to a life sentence of being forced to live with someone she may actually hate because of what he has done to her: "If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives." Now that’s a great life for an already-victimized woman to look forward to, isn’t it?

Keep in mind, however, that the foregoing provision applies only if "they are discovered." If the rape isn’t discovered, and the victim keeps quiet because she doesn’t want to be forced to marry a man she hates, she knows she runs the risk of execution if, when she does finally marry someone else, her virginity is called into question and her family can’t produce the requisite blood-stained sheet to prove her virtue (see Deuteronomy 22:13-21.) I think few people living today would find this model adequate in any way.

So what undergirding principles might we employ that will help us determine more systematically which biblical commands are eternal in their application and which were merely for a certain time and place? We’ll pursue that next week.

Jim Coffin, Senior Pastor

Thoughts on Biblical Interpretation--3

In the past two Fine Prints we talked about the Bible and our human proclivity to apply some of its commands literally while totally ignoring other equally clear commands. Today I’d like to suggest a few points that I find helpful—though, I admit, still leave me making some rather arbitrary decisions about how to decipher comments made millennia ago.

First, it’s my belief that the Bible is no ordinary book. We call it the "Word of God" because it claims that its writings are God-inspired (God-breathed). That places it in a unique category and forces me to take its content seriously.

Second, the Bible, though God-inspired, isn’t God-dictated. As Seventh-day Adventists, we’ve never subscribed to belief in "verbal inspiration" or "mechanical inspiration." In creating the Bible, humans wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. We refer to the process as "thought inspiration." The thoughts were inspired by God, but the Spirit didn’t dictate each word. Adventists don’t subscribe to the concept of biblical "inerrancy" held by many other conservative Christians.

Third, each writer wrote from the perspective of his own personality, his own experience, his own language and his own culture, to cite but a few of the human influences that affect the style of each writer’s contribution. So, for example, a highly educated person like the Apostle Paul might use complex argumentation, long sentences and allusions to his wide reading of both spiritual and secular material. Another writer might be far less sophisticated or far less polished in his style.

Fourth, the messages of the Bible were given to people within a particular cultural milieu. The Bible isn’t an eternally applicable rule book in which every statement is applicable to all people in every segment of earth’s history. Thus, we need to look for underlying principles and the general trajectory as opposed to just focusing on the specific words.

Jesus made this clear in some of his reinterpretation of the writings of Moses. But Jesus didn’t negate the writings of Moses. He simply helped His listeners get beyond the actual words to the principles that Moses was trying to establish. And we need to do the same today.

Obviously, even when we seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit in this task, there’s still a considerable amount of subjectivity. For example, when scripture says we shouldn’t wear clothing made of a blend of fabrics, is that applicable in our current context?

Was that command given because of some underlying scientific benefit from avoiding blended fabrics? Was it just a daily spiritual object lesson about not adulterating what should be kept separate and pure? Just why was the command given?

Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to discern answers. Which brings us to another crucial component of biblical interpretation: humility and tolerance. We need to realize just how much we don’t actually know. And that should lead to tolerance of those who interpret things differently.

Far too often we act as if "the clear teaching of the Bible" is thus and so—when, in fact, the Bible may be far from clear. However, the more we study, the more things fall into place. And the greater the insights we discover.

Jim Coffin, Senior Pastor