Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes

by E. Randolph Richards

  Your authors are 100 percent certain that God had plans and he accomplished them, just as he intended. The passage itself reminds the reader, “Surely these things happened to Judah according to the Lord’s command” (2 Kings 24:3). But we think that this verse is commonly misread in three ways.

  First, Western readers tend to ignore the context. The city of Jerusalem was captured, looted and burned. The king, Zedekiah, didn’t fare better. “They killed the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes. Then they put out his eyes, bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon” (2 Kings 25:7). It may be that we ignore the context because it doesn’t apply to us. We noted above that we are prone to ignore passages we consider irrelevant to us. What could be less relevant than the fate of Zedekiah and his sons? Surely we shouldn’t expect a similar fate. The general context of exile, too, seems irrelevant. To us, the context of Jeremiah 29:11 feels like little more than a plot detail or filler to highlight the main point, which is a direct promise to us. And this promise is indeed most relevant. For what is it that we want? We want direction: wisdom in choosing a career or finding a spouse or handling an unruly child or an uncooperative colleague. I (Randy) bought a house just months before the housing collapse. My wife and I prayed about it. Surely, God has a plan to prosper us and our (underwater) house.

  Herein lies the second way Western readers misread the passage: we unconsciously turn the us into me. We understand the object of the sentence, you, to mean “each one of you individually.” We then read Jeremiah 29:11 as, “I know the plans I have for you, Brandon.” But remember that Israel was a collectivist culture. They understood the object of the sentence, you, to mean “my people, Israel, as a whole.”[6] If God meant each Israelite individually, then the promise is nonsense before the words are fully out of God’s mouth. We must teach every new student that the “plans to prosper you” involved the killing and enslavement of thousands of individual Israelites (2 Kings 24-25), who might dispute the promise “not to harm you.” Moreover, Jeremiah 29:4-7 indicates that God’s blessing extended to Israel’s enemies, the nations in which the Israelites were living as exiles. Yet through all this, God prospered Israel. He didn’t spare them from exile. He prospered them in spite of their condition of exile. Certainly many individuals languished without prospering, without the prospect of a bright future. Enslavement and suffering were their plight. The promise may not apply to me, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t apply to us.

  Third, we Westerners tend to microwave this verse. That is, we fast-forward the outcome. God does indeed prosper his people. About seventy years later, they are returned to the land with blessing. Most Western Christians who quote this verse would not be happy to acknowledge that the plans God has for his people may not be clear for two generations. Worse, the two intervening generations may endure all manner of hardship. To acknowledge this is to admit that the payoff doesn’t include me and renders the text irrelevant to me. It also offends our sensibility, discussed in a previous chapter, that promises (rules) must apply to everyone equally all the time.

  To avoid misapplication, we should determine what the text meant then before we try to apply it to ourselves now. We suggest a better interpretation of Jeremiah 29 runs something like this: even though Israel is in the condition of exile, God will prosper them by prospering those who enslave them (Jer 29:7). Someday he will deliver them from exile, but that will happen well in the future. Until then, Israel is to rest assured that God is at work for their deliverance, even when he does not appear to be.

  The application of this interpretation is broader and profounder than our typical misreading. Remember that the New Testament describes Christians as living in a state of exile.[7] We are “foreigners and exiles” (1 Pet 2:11), members of “the twelve tribes scattered among the nations” (Jas 1:1), whose “citizenship is in heaven” (Phil 3:20). Like the Israelites in Jeremiah 29, the church is “God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout” the world (1 Pet 1:1). A more likely application of Jeremiah 29:11, then, is that God is working to prosper his church. Though at times it appears the church cannot resist its enemies—whether hostile governments or worldviews or the unfaithfulness of its own people—God is committed to making it grow, like the mustard seed. He has promised the total consummation of his church. But until that day, we labor faithfully, knowing that God is working his purposes for his church, of which each of us is a part but not the focus.

  God Has a Plan for My Mess

  Another passage we regularly misread because of our assumption that us means me is Romans 8:28: “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.” If Jeremiah 29:11 is a popular verse to quote to graduates, then many people consider Romans 8:28 a helpful word for those dealing with grief or disappointment. Early in my (Randy’s) missionary career, I was summoned to a village to preach at the funeral of a two-year-old who had fallen out a window. Since many Indonesian houses are on stilts, this type of death is, unfortunately, not uncommon. Many well-intended Indonesian pastors (trained in Western theology) sought to comfort the grieving parents by asserting this accident was actually a divine good in disguise (my words). Several years later, my wife and I received twin girls at birth for foster care. Both were medically needy. The smaller one died before age one. Again, well-meaning Christian friends assured us that this was for the best. Whether it is the death of a loved one, the end of a career or a missed opportunity, sincere Christians are inclined to quote Romans 8:28 to assure the sufferer that God is still working with them and for them. Their use of this verse implies that the current tragedy may seem like a setback, but in fact it is part of God’s plan to accomplish something greater, something that will be clear in retrospect.

  We reach this application by misreading in two ways. First, we misunderstand “all things.” Without thinking, we turn “God works all things together for good” into “All things are good.”[8] Clearly, this is not what the passage means. A few verses later, Paul indicates his audience is facing serious trials, including “trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword” (Rom 8:35). In Romans 8:28 he is asserting that all things—good things, bad things, senseless things, the actions of good people or bad people, good governments or bad empires—are all tools in the hands of an active, caring God who is faithful to bring about his purposes. This verse never meant that everything that happens is a good thing. It doesn’t mean that now.

  We may still feel good about this verse after that clarification. In fact, we may feel better. We already suspected that to make a bad thing into a good thing was a wrong thing to do. We know bad things happen. The trouble is that we have a hard time understanding why bad things happen. We often hear, “Everything that happens is the will of God!”

  We respond, “Do you always do the will of God?”

  “No,” someone will grudgingly admit. Correct. One definition of sin is “not doing the will of God.” It is a gross misreading of Scripture to use this verse to try to turn a bad thing into a good thing by suggesting that God causes all things to happen. God may bring good things from the ashes of bad things, but that is not the same thing. Often Job is cited. Someone will remind me that Job was given new sons and daughters (Job 42:13). Meaning no disrespect, it would not make us “even” if God took away my current sons and then later gave me two new ones. I would never, ever want to quote Romans 8:28 to a grieving parent. The point of this verse is not to say, “Hang in there; God’s gonna make it up to you.”

  Our second mistake is following the instinct to interpret the verse individually. We naturally assume that good means good for me. It’s important to remember that every Christian martyr has believed Romans 8:28 to be true. And, in worldly terms, things did not work out well for them. Romans 8:28, like Jeremiah 29:11, may well refer to us and not to me. All things work together for the good of God’s people (collectively), even though individual believers may endure all manner of senseless suf
fering and death. We must be very careful applying a promise intended for the people of God in general to an individual or even a specific group or generation. If there is individual application, it is likely along the lines that John Calvin proposed for this verse. For Calvin, Romans 8:28 was a reminder that, “though the elect and the reprobate are indiscriminately exposed to similar evils, there is yet a great difference; for God trains up the faithful by afflictions, and thereby promotes their salvation.”[9] In other words, this is not a promise that God will protect us from harm or heartache. Rather, it is a promise that through the inevitable harm and heartache that come with being human, God can train us up in godliness. The focus, in this case, is better preparing us (his people) for God’s service, rather than expecting God to work things for our good.

  God’s Planned End Will Happen in My Lifetime

  While we were writing this book, Christian preacher and broadcaster Harold Camping predicted, based on his calculations of dates and figures in biblical prophecy, that the world would end on May 21, 2011. If you’re reading this book, he was mistaken. Camping is just the most recent in a long line of commentators who believed God’s appointed end times would come within their lifetime. The imminence of Christ’s second coming was heralded in the 1990s by the phenomenally popular Left Behind series. I (Brandon) remember Sunday school classes studying the book together and scouring the newspaper for signs of the eschaton (end of all things). The authors of Left Behind capitalized on momentum generated a generation before, when Hal Lindsey created a name (and a fortune) for himself with The Late Great Planet Earth (1970).[10] Lindsey identified apocalyptic symbols, primarily from the book of Daniel, as indications that the end was coming in his day. The King to the North was Russia. The ten-headed beast was the European Economic Community, an ancestor of the current European Union. The scorpions that stung with their tails in Revelation were military helicopters. Admittedly, it all seems a bit silly now, but I (Randy) was ready to drop out of college, because I had become convinced that the end was coming in 1984.

  Why do Westerners seem convinced that Christ will come on our watch? The truth is, we aren’t the first. The Dead Sea Scrolls are copies of Old Testament books discovered near Qumran, the commune of the Essenes on the rim of the Dead Sea. This reclusive group of Jews from Jesus’ day had several peculiarities. One of the lesser known was a method of biblical interpretation that scholars often call pesher. This method of interpretation requires two presuppositions. First, it assumes a verse of Scripture is referring to the end of time, even if it doesn’t originally appear to be. For example:

  For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, That fierce and impetuous people

  Who march throughout the earth To seize dwelling places which are not theirs. (Hab 1:6 nasb)

  Habakkuk refers to the Chaldeans as fierce warriors sweeping away all in their path. Yet God has marked them for judgment (Hab 1:12). This passage seems to be referring to Chaldeans who were threatening God’s people in Habakkuk’s day. The Essenes begged to differ. The pesher exegetes insisted the verse is actually referring to the eschaton.

  Second—and this is the most important ingredient—the pesher exegete interprets his or her current time as the eschaton. Thus, step one is assuming a given passage is actually about the end of time; step two is assuming that time is now. The folks at Qumran interpreted the passage above this way; they believed Habakkuk was actually talking about the end of time, whether he knew it or not. Trouble is, the Chaldean threat is long gone. But pesher exegetes are nothing if not determined. The Essenes reasoned that the term Chaldeans was really code for Chittim, who had the famed warships made from pine trees on Cyprus. They then expanded the meaning of Chittim (Cyprus) to include all of Greece (and eventually Rome). God’s people were warned that the ships of Chittim would come to attack (“And ships shall come from the coast of Chittim,” Num 24:24 kjv). Therefore, God’s people needed to take notice when Roman warships landed to attack. Fear not! For Habakkuk has foretold that God would smite the Romans and give victory to his people (the folks at Qumran). Wow, it took a minute to get there, and required substituting one name for another and pulling in references from other books of the Bible. But in the end, Habakkuk 1:6 was interpreted as a promise to the Essenes at Qumran to deliver them from the Romans in the end times, which is now.

  Does this method sound familiar? It’s the one Hal Lindsey used to bring communism into God’s plan for the end times. And it remains a popular way for Christians to read the Bible, especially books like Daniel and Revelation and passages like Matthew 24:3-8, when Jesus speaks of the “end of the age.” Its persistence in the West may well be due to our focus on me. For pesher to work, the interpreter has to feel that his or her times are the end times. As we have argued, North American Christians are predisposed to this element in our worldview that emphasizes me. God’s Word is a message for me. These apocalyptic texts would be irrelevant—would have no meaning for me—if the events they describe were not planned to occur in my lifetime. Perhaps the sensibility runs even deeper. Do we think, Of course, I would be on stage when the world ends. How could God do such a dramatic event without me? We don’t say it so bluntly, but the subconscious reasoning often runs this way: Of course the world couldn’t end before I got here, but now that I’m here, there isn’t any reason for God to wait any longer. When we state it so blatantly, we immediately see it as absurd; however, we should not dismiss that it was driving our (mis)reading. It is the part of the iceberg under the water that sinks the ships. It leads us, unconsciously, to read Jesus’ words—“You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. . . . Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places” (Mt 24:6-7)—and apply them immediately to our contemporary situation. Aren’t all these things happening right now? Indeed they are. Doesn’t that mean the end is coming in my lifetime? Not necessarily. Such things have been happening for the two thousand years since Jesus uttered this prophecy. And seizing on these things specifically makes us miss his command. “See to it that you are not alarmed,” he says. “Such things must happen,” but “all these are the beginning of birth pains,” not sure signs of the end (Mt 24:6, 8).

  The servant who was ready when his master showed up was blessed: makarios (Lk 12:37-38). When his disciples asked about the end, Jesus told three parables in a row (Mt 24:3). The first warned that the master could come at any time, “So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him” (Mt 24:44). The second parable warned it could be sooner than we think (Mt 24:50). The third parable warned it could be later than we think (Mt 25:5). Jesus’ point seems clear. Jesus has covered all the bases: could be sooner, could be later. The first parable carried the main point: Jesus “will come at an hour when you do not expect him.” Yet we never seem to weary of guessing.

  Conclusion

  This cultural assumption about the supremacy of me is the one to which we Westerners are perhaps blindest. We rightly search for the center of God’s will, but with the unspoken assumption that once we find it, the seat will have my individual name on it. We have hundreds of years of cultural reinforcement driving us to read the Bible with ourselves at the center. There are those who are striving to correct the tendency in certain areas of our theology. Some theologians have been encouraging us to recognize that when the Bible talks about atonement, it has more than just personal, individual salvation in mind. It refers, too, to the restoration of creation which “has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” and longs for the day when “the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God” (Rom 8:22, 21). They have an uphill battle to fight. Regardless of whether you think these theologians are right or wrong, it seems evident to us that some of the objections to their proposals have less to do with systematic theology or exegesis than with our deeply seated cultural conviction that
me is important. The idea that we are only a part of God’s redemptive plan is hard to swallow for Christians raised to believe that if I had been the only sinner ever born, Jesus would still have gone to the cross for me.

  When we realize that each passage of Scripture is not about me, we begin gradually to see that the true subject matter of the Bible, what the book is really about, is God’s redeeming work in Christ. God is restoring all of creation (including me), but I am not the center of God’s kingdom work. This is a much greater thing to be absorbed with than ourselves. Here are a couple of tips for making that happen.

  First, beware of thinking of the Bible in terms of “what this means to me.” Remember, the Bible means what it means. When we’re talking about the relevance of the Bible in our personal lives, we should ask, “How does this apply to me?” Remember, too, that you should try to answer the question “What did this passage mean to the original audience?” before asking, “How does this passage apply to me?”