Tag Archives: Hard Sayings

Commentary

Does Jesus use hyperbole to make a point?

4 Comments

From Hank Hanegraaf’s Christian Research Institute web site.

Excerpt:

I want to pay particular attention to Jesus’ statement in Luke 14:26: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”

One way to misinterpret this verse is to take it literally. Cults often operate on the premise that the statement is literally true — that it pits loyalty to the group against love for family. In doing so, they attempt to distance followers from family members who might make them fall away.

Critics of Christianity in turn point to the verse in order to denigrate the Christian faith. An atheist, for example, quotes the verse as “a perfect illustration of how a cult operates. Sort of makes you wonder about all those conservative religionists that preach ‘traditional family values!’”

[…]It is obvious that a literal interpretation of Jesus’ statement leads to disastrous results; but what is the alternative to interpreting it literally? The only viable option is to regard the statement as being a hyperbole — a conscious exaggeration that expresses truth in a nonliteral manner.

It apparently is not easy for people to label a statement as being a hyperbole. On the surface, it may seem to signal a lack of faith when we do not take the great promises of Scripture at face value. After all, “all things are possible with God” (Mark 10:27). Interpreting hyperbolic statements literally, however, lands us in much greater difficulties than interpreting them figuratively does.

[…]Elton Trueblood shows in his book The Humor of Christ that the most distinctive feature of Jesus’ discourses is their use of exaggeration — the preposterous overstatement in the mode of “our conventional Texas story, which no one believes literally, but which everyone remembers.” G. K. Chesterton notes that “Christ had even a literary style of his own.…The diction used by Christ is quite curiously gigantesque; it is full of camels leaping through needles and mountains hurled into the sea.”

This is, in fact, accurate; for example: “When you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing” (Matt. 6:3); “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God” (Matt. 19:24); The kingdom of God “is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches” (Luke 13:19).

The rest of the article is worth reading – the author talks about how hyperbole works in the Bible and how to recognize it.

I thought this was important to highlight since I love to exaggerate for effect, and now we know that it’s ok that I do. It’s a teaching tool that is useful for emphasizing a point.

Commentary

Is the Jesus of the Bible meek and mild, or harsh and judgmental?

8 Comments

Stan from Bird of the Air explains.

Excerpt:

Here, test yourself. Is your view of Jesus “meek and mild”, perhaps a “laughing Jesus”, a quiet, soft-spoken guy? Is He the compassionate one who never said a harsh word? Well, then, I suggest that you are correcting Jesus, because that’s not the biblical image. Consider the following.

Jesus wasn’t some “nice guy” when He instructed His disciples on their traveling mission:

Whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, go into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near.’ I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town. Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it will be more bearable in the judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades. The one who hears you hears Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me, and the one who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me” (Luke 10:10-16).

Oh, my, that’s pretty harsh language. Even more so when you understand that the biblical “woe” isn’t our standard “woe is me”, but a curse pronounced against a sinful person or group. I mean, seriously, how is a Jew of His day supposed to take it when He says “it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom”? That can’t be considered “warm” or “sensitive”. It is certainly not “inclusive”. Wasn’t Jesus supposed to be the lover of all sinners? What’s all this?

His diatribe in Matthew 23 is much worse. At least seven times He describes the local religious rulers as “hypocrites”. He has “friendly” (not very) descriptions like “white-washed tombs”, “vipers”, and “blind fools”. He accuses them of making converts and then “you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.” Oh, it’s big, and its an entire chapter. Seriously, Jesus, describing them as “a child of hell”? That’s not friendly at all. It doesn’t coincide with our “nice guy” image of Jesus. The image of Christ in the Temple with whip in hand doesn’t really fit well with the soft-spoken, laughing Jesus we like so well. His repeated references to people who will “be thrown into the fire” (Matt 7:19; 13:40; 18:8-9; 25:41; John 15:6) don’t come across as humble or kind. Jesus, in fact, has the most definitive descriptions of eternal judgment in terms of “where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched”.

We have a lot of compassionate readers who are always disapproving of me for being mean. Well… how do you like those verses? Jesus isn’t always Mr. Nice Guy, which is fine because I really like mean Jesus. Matthew 10:34-38 is one of my favorite passages – I like to bug my mother with it. She’s not a Christian, so it’s pretty fun.

News

Is Christianity about doing nice things or upholding God’s reputation?

8 Comments

This comment seemed to get a lot of response on Facebook. It’s short, so I am posting it to see if anyone has any opinions about it.

I have been thinking about how people can be raised as Christians and yet become non-Christians. I am beginning to think that the problem is twofold. Early-raised Christians may get the idea from the typical Christian life that Christianity is like what goes on in church. Happiness, singing, families and games, and mostly well-off people dressed in their Sunday best. When they see the suffering and poverty in the real world, they get annoyed with God for not making people happy and healthy and wealthy, and they then turn to government to meet those needs and create happiness and freedom from poverty here on Earth.

I think we need to tell people early on that Christianity is about knowing God and suffering like Jesus suffered. They have to get used to the idea that other people in other religions are not “bad” but they are WRONG and they aren’t doing their homework. (My Hindu friends, for example, take it as a point of pride that they don’t update their religious beliefs for facts, but just believe what is their national and family religion – it’s about nationalism and culture, not truth) And they have to get the idea that Jesus is not championing the elimination of suffering through wealth redistribution, but private charity.

I think this idea that Christianity is about making people feel good and getting along and being liked is pernicious. A relationship with God doesn’t mean projecting YOUR needs onto him, and having a fit if he has different goals and priorities. A relationship with God means caring about what he wants, and suffering with him when things happen that grieve him. I do believe God is sovereign and allows these things to happen.

A previous post from last week had my preliminary thoughts on this, and my friends and I are talking it over. Mariangela has a lot to say about this topic for sure, if she wants to comment.

But not all the news is bad… I was in church on Sunday and I was thinking about this more. Our sermon had a mix of good works and defending God’s existence and character, but it was more the latter than the former. A solid focus on defending God’s reputation and moral standards, and then doing good was mentioned as well at the very end. But this is an exceptional church I was at. They have apologetics book studies featuring Lee Strobel books, and they have hosted Greg Koukl as a speaker. I think in churches where they DON’T have that focus, people will just stop going since they can be good and do nice things without having to go to church.

What do you think?

Friend me on Facebook here. Follow me on Twitter here.