Bible verses taken out of context

One of the evils in ordinary church life – bible verses taken out of context

What looks so completely innocent – giving out bible verses printed on a small piece of paper and laminated with plastic – is not necessarily helping anyone come closer to God. I got one verse when I stepped forward in my congregation having had my birthday the previous Monday, and got the following verse: “For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace” (Romans 8.6). The meaning is of course clear to many: if you make created things or human persons your God, if your desire for such things and persons in your life dominates everything else, then you could be said to be carnally minded unto death. Romans 1.25 makes this clear.

However, such a text, taken out of context, could also be understood in the following way. That which is carnal, i.e. of the flesh or the body, is not having worth in itself, while the spirit is everything. That is to say, worldly things are of less value than spiritual things, which are of heaven. Here we have reached a different type of theology which could be said to deviate from Christian foundations. The carnal is the same word as in ‘incarnation’, meaning that God became man, a human. A main conviction in Christian theology is that God became a human also in a bodily sense. God’s creation, physical as well as spiritual, is good. There may be tendencies even in Paul’s letter towards belittling the bodily aspect, but if that is so, one should spell out a warning. Christian faith is solidly behind the conviction that the creation as a whole is good. There was a fall into sin, now affecting general after generation, but that does not take away the fact that God created that which was and is good.

A misunderstanding is flourishing not least among religious fundamentalists of all shapes, Christian as well as Muslim, that it is necessary to erect a wall against all the worldly pleasures, many of which have a direct bearing on the human body and sexuality. One has to stop people being infatuated by such worldly pleasures. The danger is of course real and many have today fallen victim to worshiping such pleasures rather than God. But the solution is not to look down upon that which is carnal as if that in itself were evil. The solution is rather two fold.

First, one has to recognise that we as God’s creatures are spirit and matter. The manifestation of the spirit is dependent on physical matter and also makes matter come alive. The two go together. The physical creation is thus vital, even central in God’s work and is to be transformed one day, not thrown away on the dust heap or burnt into ashes. Secondly, the evil is not that which is carnal but in how we use it. The same with Bible texts; to take and use a verse out of context is not only risky: it could lead to what is evil in the sense that it could lead well meaning people astray. Rather read the Bible in context and keep John 1.14 in mind which says that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, that is about Jesus Christ, our saviour and liberator. Through him all flesh has become sanctified and part of God’s transformed world.