“‘Honey, maybe God didn’t mean a literal flood.  Maybe he meant a flood of knowledge, or emotion, or awareness.’
‘If that’s true, I’m going to be SO pissed.’”
-Evan Almighty

That’s one of two totally awesome lines I remember from an otherwise “meh” film.  If I remember correctly it comes as Evan Baxter and his family are standing on a huge ark that he built amidst much despair and persecution, waiting for a flood that doesn’t seem to be coming.  (Though it eventually does.)  His wife is the one who suggests that maybe the flood that God (played with uncanny resemblance by Morgan Freeman) promised Evan would come was more of a metaphorical one.

Sometimes we find ourselves in similar predicaments when reading Scripture.  For those of us who uphold the Bible as God’s inspired, infallible word to man, some verses just sound awkwardly extravagant.  Acting on the belief that God wouldn’t lie though, we say: “Maybe it’s a metaphor.”  But then we place ourselves in this awkward position: “Well if this is just a metaphor, what else might be?”  If the Bible is God’s word, we can’t just “metaphorize” the passages that make us uncomfortable.

Here’s an example verse:

[Jesus] said to them…’For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.’ (Matthew 17:20) 

What do we do with this?  Is Jesus being literal or metaphorical?  In the past I’ve had an almost ultra-conservative approach to Scripture that might have looked at verses like this and determined that the plain reading of the text must the right one.  If Jesus says that our faith can move mountains, you better believe he means that our faith can move actual, literal mountains.  If he means anything less than that, you’re tampering with God’s word and are thus a jerk.  Any attempt to say that moving mountains refers to moving the mountains of trial in our lives sounded a bit too fluffy for me and was the first step down the liberal theologian road where Scripture means whatever you want it to mean.

It’s worth saying at this point that this entry isn’t really about Matthew 17:20 per se.  Rather, I’m using that verse as an example of how to (and how not to) approach and interpret Scripture.  Today if you were to ask me how I interpret that verse, I’d say that Jesus was being metaphorical.  (“What!!!  Burn the witch!!” -Eight years younger version of me.)  How do I believe this and still maintain my belief in the divine inspiration of Scripture?

You have to remember that nothing in the Bible was written to you. What I mean is that while the Spirit of God moved through humans to write Scripture that is authoritative and instructional for us today, Scripture was written with a specific, then-alive audience in mind.  So when Paul commands believers to “[s]ee to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ”, while he would certainly command every believer for all time to follow the same rule, in the Bible he’s specifically saying this to the Colossians.

This is so important to remember when reading Scripture.  When you realize that books like Colossians were written to a specific first-century audience, you’ll be mindful of the fact that the author will use terms and phrases that were familiar to them, not you.  For example, if you were to read the statement “The man was gay” in a book, how would you interpret it?  Depends on when the book was written, because how that statement is used today is very different from how it would have been used two centuries ago.

When we get to Jesus telling the disciples that their faith can move mountains, he’s saying it to specific people at a specific time in a specific context.  In fact, he’s actually using a Jewish idiom while he’s talking to these first-century Jews.  ”An idiom,” writes Robert Plummer, “is an expression whose nonliteral meanings have become customary in a language.”*  So as D.A. Carson says: “Removal of mountains was proverbial for overcoming great difficulties.”  Relevant verses throughout Scripture include Isaiah 40:4; 49:11; 54:10; Zechariah 14:4; Matthew 21:21-22; Mark 11:23; Luke 17:6; 1 Corinthians 13:2.

Jesus is not preparing his followers to work for coal-mining companies- moving the tops of physical mountains.  Rather, through faith in God, Jesus’ followers will overcome seemingly impossible obstacles.
-Robert Plummer

This is far from being a loose interpretation of Scripture.  It is in fact the most faithful interpretation of what Jesus meant, making it the interpretation we must cling to.  And though the idiom he used was a first-century Jewish one, his message is one that has relevance for believers of all eras as they make their difficult pilgrimage through this world to the gates of heaven.

So be encouraged by the meaning of Matthew 17:20.  But also be encouraged in your study of Scripture to widen the scope of your study when you encounter difficult or unclear passages.  The more I study the Bible, the more convinced I am that one of the best defenses of Christianity is simply understanding it better.  While critics will bring up alleged inconsistencies, I have always found reasonable explanations by widening my search to include contextual evidence.

Homework

For the first time ever on my blog, I’m issuing you, the reader, some homework.  And if you don’t do it, I can’t really do anything about it.  But it would be a good exercise in what I’ve been talking about in this entry.  Here ya go:

Some critics of Christianity say that the Bible never claims that Jesus was God.  How does Philippians 2:9-11 refute this claim?

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*Plummer gives the English example of telling someone to “hit the lights.”  To “hit” them means to turn them off, not to literally strike them. (from 40 Questions About Interpreting the Bible)