Too Much or Too Little

aaahyToo Much or Too Little

I am wrestling presently with an idea about proper gospel interpretation.  I suppose I should be honest with myself and admit that what I mean about "proper gospel interpretation" has to do with how I might think of the gospels as being true in the context of how I conceive of anything as being true.  I cannot claim, first, to have any expertise about the philosophy and literature of ancient religion and I cannot claim, second, to be approaching the whole matter independently of my long-held disposition to believe the gospels to be true.

Or to address the matter more directly: I am interested in how the gospels might make sense to me, and I have a vested emotional and intellectual interest in being able to claim that the interpretations I prefer are those prescribed by Jesus.  Actually, my desires run deeper still--I hope not merely to arrive at the interpretations Jesus would prefer, but concomitantly to have arrived at those interpretations by such methodologies as he would recommend.

(I know one thing about where this is going.  The notion that the Bible ought to be read as the Bible says it ought to be read is not, as some hard-liners would have it, the best argument for any interpretive methodology.  It is, as any conscientious individual should assert, potentially the worst.)

I will proceed anyway.  I have wondered of late if a certain construction of purportedly responsible interpretation is not, first, intrinsically flawed and, second, at variance with the very teachings of Jesus.  This is the construction of Bible interpretation that holds that definitive interpretations are both possible and necessary, and holds as well that it is incumbent on interpreters to reckon that they are only human and therefore possibly mistaken.  From this outlook, ostensibly, interpreters--particularly when possessing authority over others--are supposed to be careful, sensitive, and merciful when delivering pronouncements about scriptural interpretation.

I will leave it to readers--and particularly any with interest in the history of the churches and of Christendom--to judge whether precisely such humble- and humane-sounding admissions have not fallen from the lips of Bible interpreters who displayed themselves capable of the most ghastly intolerance, violence, and brutal presumption.

But is the interpretive philosophy I described--ostensible precision adorned ostensibly with humility--the philosophy of scriptural interpretation espoused by Jesus?  Jesus asked people to employ their life experiences to their religious and spiritual lives.  I am inclined to offer an experience I shared with my family--an experience many people have faced.  It is about deciding when to have the dog put down.  Many people agonize over when is precisely the right time to do it.

I have shared in the experience of the decision.  There is never a right time to do it.  Conceptually, there may be such time, but the "life experience" attendant upon the putting-the-dog-down scenario mocks our best attempts to light upon the perfect time.  We're either going to do it too soon, or too late.  That is the choice.  I will choose "too soon."  The reader can imagine (though I would not recommend it) experiences I have known when it is "too late" and the veterinarian's staff are not handy.

Jesus, I contend, tells us not to try to understand our spiritual lives with assiduous precision--comforting ourselves, and ostensibly comforting others, with assertions that we realize that we might on occasion be mistaken.  Rather, Jesus tells us that we will always be mistaken.  We can read too much into a scripture, or we can read too little.  There is no other possible eventuality.  We can care too much about a matter, or too little.  We can love too much, or too little.

I do not mean this simply in the abstract.  I would present the gospel story about the Sheep and the Goats, in which Jesus represents himself at the last congratulating the Sheep for having fed him and clothed him and comforted him.  The Sheep, as the story goes, ask when they did those things for their Lord, and they are told the incidents in question happened when they did such things for the least of Jesus' brethren.  (And of course the opposite judgment awaits the Goats.)

The irony to the story of the Sheep and the Goats (as I have indulged in describing elsewhere) is the fact that the story cannot really happen once it is told.  The audience knows the upshot beforehand, and therefore who at the end is to ask the Lord the questions ("When did we . . . ")?

The irony I have described, however, dissipates if but a single consideration is added to the mix.  Perhaps Jesus was not making a theological or moral point--at least in isolation.  Perhaps Jesus was talking about our attentions (or our inattentions), our efforts (or our failures to exert ourselves), our judgments (or our misjudgments).  Admittedly, any story about the last judgment will have to allow for the plot mechanism in which the participants are suddenly granted total recall (or instantaneous recourse to record books.)  Still--while bearing this all in mind--there can still be substance to the "bewilderment" aspect of the participants if the questions ("When did we . . . ?") have to do, not with doing wrong, but with being wrong.

We humans say we can be wrong sometimes.  That is incorrect.  We are wrong all of the time.  It is only our insistence moment-to-moment on interpreting our thoughts, words, or actions in one vein (or a few) that allows us to say we were right or wrong about this or that.  Life does not consist of this-or-that happening now, and this-or-that happening at some other time.  It happens (as I constantly refrain, in the "roused, readied, reaped" fashion) on innumerable, overlapping, and varied levels all the time.

Only such realizations can make intelligible the stories that Jesus tells.  He returns often to the stories "in the beginning."  There is Adam and Eve in the Garden.  In the conventional view, there is the Fall.  Also in the conventional view, there is Cain's murder of Abel.  Nothing rivals those two events.

Examined more closely, however, there are more particular considerations, such as, "Where was Adam when Eve was dallying with the snake?"  (In the conventional view, this question is usually not more than dallied with itself, lest it be pointed out that "sin" did not in fact crop up with the apple.)  Where, indeed, was Adam, when Eve was in the first, agonizing labor--an experience she describes as "With the help of the Lord . . . "?  Where was Adam--the forerunner of the priest-king-fathers ("patriarchs") of the Old Testament, when Cain and Abel were lighting on what they were going to offer?

Where was Adam--the forerunner of Old Testament fathers and therefore the effectual employer of his sons--when the two young men were experiencing their alienation?  Why, indeed, was Adam not asking Cain, "Why is your face downcast?"

The conventional Christian view--perhaps influenced by the patriarchal incentive to defer to father-led households--is that everything was going along OK with the first family other than the Fall and the Murder.  This, of course, is patently ridiculous, and--there being virtually no points of reference available--it is entirely possible that Adam was one of the most horrible people who ever lived.  Certainly the Bible does not assert that frequent, unmistakable communication with God tends inevitably to temper human misdeeds--one might even argue quite the opposite.

And so what would be the most logical, and humanly understandable, approach to the stories that Jesus tells or refers to?  In the case of the Garden of Eden, just to take one example, there is the threat of death that--arguably--does not materialize, and there is the sordid story of Adam and Eve and their children.  God, in terms of the expectations of the narrative, is better than he ought to be.  Adam is worse than he ought to be.  If Adam is all of us, then none of this is any surprise.

In our life--if we are honest about it, everything is approximate, everything is a guess, everything is wrong, everything is flawed.  More importantly, everything is in motion.  I know that I will have to work on the point expressed in this post, but I think it is worth following up.  We want to have stable and quiet vantage points from which to view life and existence, and yet not only is none of that guaranteed, there is also no reason to imagine that it should be.

Only in light of our ever-present limitations can we hope gain the impetus that true life requires of us.  Or to present a bit of scripture, and to wonder about its application:

"Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes , and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest" (John 4:35, KJV).