Your beliefs probably aren’t accurate. That’s ok. Judge them by this instead.
“To be human is to change; to be perfect is to have changed many times.” — Richard Rohr
When I was in college I liked to argue. I enjoyed testing all kinds of ideas out on my friends. Sometimes I even picked fights just for the fun of it. Most people went along with it and maybe some of them enjoyed it too. For the most part though I look back and I suspect I was actually bit of a jerk.
I savored the moment when one of my opponents…er…friends made an inaccurate statement. When an opening was there I took to it with great relish. I enjoyed proving I was right but usually in the worst way possible.
Over time I have mellowed and hopefully have gotten a little more self-awareness. I realize that sometimes winning an argument comes at the cost of understanding the other person. That isn’t winning at all.
Since I was a religion major many of these debates revolved around the Bible and how to accurately interpret it. One thing you realize pretty quickly when you get into the weeds of biblical interpretation is that you can get the Bible to say just about anything you want it to. I can make a biblically accurate argument for the keeping of slaves, the subjugation of women, the practice of polygamy, and all kinds of evil.
So how do we know what is right? We do what Jesus encouraged us to do, we judge a belief based on the results it produces not on its accuracy.
With a source as ancient and complex as the Bible accuracy is a bit of a trick. It is easily faked and manipulated. Get enough people to agree with your interpretation and all of a sudden it is claimed to be “accurate” and even “traditional.”
Biblical accuracy is something that we can pride ourselves in. Look how accurate I am! I got it right and all of you have it wrong. It makes us feel good to be a part of the group that is right even if we are terrible in the process. Jesus’ teachings are an antidote to this madness.
Jesus’ main opponents were a group called the Pharisees. In their minds they were the most biblically accurate group in town. They were right and because their interpretation dominated they could prove it too. They took the Bible very seriously, probably more seriously than you or I do, but also missed its larger point.
Jesus’ opponents prove that you can have the most literal and traditional interpretation of the scriptures and still be wrong.
Jesus confronts them on several occasions and in one set of teachings says this:
“Beware of false prophets who come disguised as harmless sheep but are really vicious wolves. You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act. Can you pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit. So every tree that does not produce good fruit is chopped down and thrown into the fire. Yes, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.” Matthew 7:15–20
The Apostle Paul encourages a similar tactic in when he says, “test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good.” 1 Thessalonians 5:21
We are called to test and evaluate every teaching to see if it produces good fruit. A good set of beliefs produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control. Bad ones will produce the opposite.
I was once in a conversation with a Super Accurate Church Leader about how we judge beliefs by their fruit not by their accuracy and he fired back at me stating, “Who are you to judge!” I was a little bit taken aback and thought to myself, “Who am I to not judge?” We are commanded to judge.
This whole thing falls apart if we stop judging.
We judged the fruit of slavery as morally incompatible with the kind of life Jesus was calling us to live. We deemphasized the numerous proslavery portions of the Bible and highlighted the ones that emphasized liberty. We changed our minds.
We judged the fruit of teaching that women were “weaker vessels” was a gross mischaracterization of half the world’s population. We saw that women were capable of so much more than we had given them credit for and what did we do? Most of us changed our minds.
Using the Bible as a guide we learn how to be like Jesus but we cannot just read it and do what it says. No one does this; not even Super Accurate Church Leaders. We read the Bible and we interpret it. We judge our interpretation by the fruit it produces.
This is the way of Jesus. Study, Interpret, Evaluate, Change, Repeat.
So what happens when we live by accuracy alone? We usually end up crushing people with unbearable religious demands and then pat ourselves on the back for doing the right thing. We cheer for our own perceived goodness and then miss the point entirely.
When Donald Trump quips about jailing mothers who have had abortions we cheer.
When a denomination crafts yet another “strong” statement about homosexuality we cheer.
When police officers kill unarmed black men and then go safely home to their families we cheer.
When we strengthen our borders to keep “those people” out we cheer.
In our adulation of our own accuracy we miss those we have failed to love.
We miss the woman quietly walking out the back door.
We miss the LGBT person who has lost yet another place where they hoped to belong.
We miss the truth than our history is built on a foundation of black bodies.
We miss the opportunity to be kind to the stranger and foreigner in our midst.
American Christians have done plenty of things in Jesus name yet in our quest for accuracy have forgotten what is most important. We have forgotten justice, mercy, faith, and the greatest of all love. We have traded them away for cheap political power, a massive persecution complex, and increasing irrelevance.
Call to Action:
The solution starts with you. Judge your beliefs not only by their perceived accuracy but also by what they produce in the world around you. If they lay burdens on the backs of others can they be considered good? Evaluate your deeply held beliefs by what the Bible says is most important, love. Let everything flow from that.
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