We've spent the last few months going through the Sermon on the Mount, and I've noticed that there's much more there than a lot of people like to admit. It's one of the longest orations by Jesus to be recorded, which probably means that it has some value to us.
I've noticed that progressive christians, atheist christians, and those who don't actually claim to be christians, tend to really like the Sermon on the Mount. Or at least, they really like parts of the Sermon on the Mount. " Blessed are the peacemakers.", love that. "Blessed are the poor.", love that too. Although of you add "in spirit" behind "poor", the love goes away. They'll cling tightly to "Don't judge others.", even as they ignore the following verses that talk about how we are to judge.
Yet it's the same folx who claim that "The Bible isn't a rulebook", or similar things. How then do we ignore the fact that there are more that 60 commandments (rules) in the SOTM? How do we reconcile "All roads lead to God" with "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." For that matter how do we reconcile "leads to destruction" with those who embrace a universal salvation?
I've asked people how does one parse out a passage that is obviously one coherent narrative and cherry pick out only the parts that align with the worldview of the picker? I've never gotten a good answer.
For example, why would the text demand that the word "poor" be exclusively translated to mean only the materially poor? Why should any other reasonable translation be automatically excluded? By the same token why would you assign a meaning to "destruction" that means something less than destruction?
Personally, I've learned quite a bit and I hope others dig deeper as well.
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2 comments:
Just here to help. How do people end up cherry-picking just what they like? I just learned this term. It's called "confirmation bias." It's that component that most of us has that believes X and then proceeds to find X everywhere while rejecting Not-X no matter how much it shows up. It determines who we will believe when this guy says, "It means X" and that guy says, "It means Y." It is a dangerous mental shortcut that precludes us from 1) examining our beliefs and 2) correcting them with truth.
See, when you start throwing out those sorts of high falutin’ technical jargon, I get a little confused.
But I think I see your point.
Seriously, I think that confirmation bias is more of a subconscious thing. Just like the fact that my aunt is constantly seeing KW signs ever since I started with KW. Whereas I think what we see in a lot of cases is a conscious, intentional choice to ignore, or downplay what we don’t like (myth, legend, error, erc), while focusing only on what we do like.
The problem is that the SOTM is all of a piece, you can’t pull things out of the context without invalidating the whole thing.
One thing I heard today is that the SOTM isn’t as much about what is said, as it is about who said it.
I’m not sure I totally buy that, but it’s an interesting perspective.
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