Why Don't You Just Tell Me What You Want Me to Know?!
One of the things about narrative, the stories we find in Scripture, is that they don't always come right out and say why they're there. We don't get nice, neat lists of the seven things we need to grow in to live more faithfully (as in 2Peter 1:5-7). We get stories of people messing up, arguing with and complaining to God, wiping out entire towns, calling down fire from heaven, and sometimes seemingly just going about their lives.Just Say "No" to Moralism
One approach to these stories is to reduce them all to moral lessons. So David and Daniel become model moral heroes, standing against the Goliaths of temptation, or against persecution for faithfulness. And it's not that we shouldn't be ready to kill the giants of temptation, or remain faithful no matter what, but as we read the stories, the point isn't to be more moral, the point is: God is at work among His people and that He is on the side of those who act in faithfulness in response to His faithfulness.The moralism approach is such a temptation, especially for teaching children, because we want them to behave. We feel the same about the spiritually immature. If we can just get them to behave, we'll all feel better about things. And the meta-message of that approach is: Christianity is basically a religion of morality, and if we're moral, God will love us more (or at least other Christians will).
However, the message of the Gospel is not a series of lessons in morality designed to earn us God's favor. In the Gospel, while we were still sinners Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).
This isn't to say that there aren't moral lessons in Scripture. There certainly are! What I'm saying (and I'm not alone) is that when they come, they do not come as conditions for a relationship with God. They come as lessons in how to respond to God's faithful relationship He has already established with us.
A further consideration here is that many (though not all) of the moral heroes are also portrayed in Scripture as deeply flawed. David commits adultery and covers it up with murder. Abraham takes God's promise into his own hands and sleeps with his wife's servant (granted it was his wife's suggestion), and lies about being married to his wife Sarah--twice. And how in the world could Samson be anyone's moral hero (though being really, really strong is really, really cool)? Samson is so morally flawed, our theology of Divine empowerment--specifically whom God chooses to empower--needs to be adjusted to account for it! And Esther? She denies her Jewish identity in order to sleep with the king in some bizarre solution to the king's previous bad decision. Yes, she has her moment (a highly commendable and admirable moment!), but until that moment she is no moral hero and seems more of a moral coward (hey, I didn't write the book).
And yet, this approach is the primary approach to Scripture for many preachers, and a whole stack of children's Sunday School material. Appalling! This is not the Christian message!
Problems with the Christocentric Approach
One approach that is very appealing among Reformed (and some other) students of Scripture would seek to find foreshadows or "types" of Christ in every portion of Scripture. People who use this approach are very committed believers and often excellent preachers or teachers. I do not mean to impugn their character or commitment to God or His Word in any way. However, there's a problem: while Christ is the ultimate fulfillment of all the Old Testament points to, He is not the direct or even indirect object of every passage of Scripture. Sometimes the point is that without God, things go from bad to worse (which is my summary of the book of Judges).I don't mean to say that we can't preach Christ every time we preach any Old Testament passage. I'm not disputing the importance of Christocentric preaching. I'm fully in favor of that!
What I'm talking about is making a Biblical character (for example) into a "type" of Christ, but then ignoring all the ways they're not. For example, Joseph is often depicted as a type of Christ, for the way that he rescues the people of God from certain doom. In that sense, he is, but in other important senses he is definitely not. Jesus does not test our loyalty withholding His true identity until He is satisfied we can be trusted (Genesis 42-44). Jesus does not enslave entire nations, nor participate in their exploitation by the rich and powerful (Genesis 47:13-25). Jesus, unlike Joseph, was in constant contact with His Father, while Joseph, even when he was second most powerful in Egypt, didn't even write home.
We can talk about "types" of Christ in the Old Testament, and we should, but not at the expense of ignoring how they fell far short of the Christ we know as Jesus. When we miss, or overlook the flaws, and the ways these "types" are sometimes "anti-types" of Christ, we dishonor both the Scriptures and the Christ they point to.
And characters aren't the only way folks try to find "types" of Christ in the Old Testament. Such "types" are found in laws and regulations, in the tabernacle/temple, in the feasts etc. I prefer to see these things not as "types" of Christ at all but prefer the way the book of Hebrews talks about them: "shadows." At their best, all of these rituals, festivals and practices are two-dimensional, substance-less substitutions for the real thing. They only tell us when we look at them, that we're not looking at the light that casts such a shadow. All of the interpretational analogies in the world that show the connection between the Old Testament temple practices and the Jesus of the New, in my experience fail beyond the point of being merely "very interesting." It's only if such errands help us understand Jesus better, that they are worth the effort. Like end-time charts they can be intricate in design and research and yet be no more transformative than watching reruns of Gilligan's Island.
Hopefully, I'm just preaching to the choir here.
Allegorical Oopses
Oddly, many of the early church fathers and certain parts of Pentecostalism both engage in a form of Scripture interpretation called "Allegorical." What is meant by that, is what we find in Tommy Tenny's book and film about Esther "One Night with the King" [sorry I'm not in the mood to find a link to either]. I'm not saying that the book, nor the movie are bad, nor that what they try to teach isn't right somehow. It's just not what the story of Esther is actually about.The same could be said of the David and Goliath story. As an allegory it tells us how to confront our giants, or how Jesus defeated satan, or how the church must stand against the world. While it's true that we need to confront our "giants" and that Jesus did defeat satan (not with a sling, but with a cross), and that the church must stand against the world, the story of David and Goliath isn't about those things.
Allegories fail in the details. To allegorize Esther as the Church and King Xerxes (Ahasuerus) as Jesus, requires ignore some significant facts: Xerxes is depicted as a pompous, short-tempered, heavy drinker who is constantly making questionable decisions, and who even after choosing Esther, has nothing to do with her for weeks at a time. Esther, meanwhile, denies her identity to fit in, is characterized by compliance (until the moment of crisis), and uses a careful plan to force the king into a corner where he must act to undermine his previous plan. In other words, you have to leave out some of the most important stuff in the story to make the allegory work!
(I'll get to a better way to look at Esther below.)
Expository Limitations
Of all the approaches to Scripture, the one most championed in Reformed circles is the expository method. Expository interpretation looks to find all the text says without adding anything to it. It uses a method called exegesis (in contrast to eisegesis). Exegesis comes from two Greek words and means to "lead out," that is to begin with the text and lead out, what's already there without leading anything into it (eisegesis means "lead into"). It's a very useful method and one I use more than any other. It keeps me honest--or at least tries.But I've discovered that this method is limited. In fact, it's sometimes so limited it can't tell us what we need to know. This is because the expository method, while it forces us to look at the text, doesn't help us look at the meta-message of the text. That is to say, sometimes the main message is not what's said, but what is implied but left unsaid.
Last week, as I've been preaching through the life of Joseph, I came to Genesis 47:13-31. God is not mentioned at all in that section of Scripture. The details of Joseph managing the famine on behalf of Pharaoh, resulting in the enslavement of an entire nation while Pharaoh gets obscenely wealthy, seems like more information than we need. It almost seems out of place (and a number of commentators believe it actually is!). Looking at the text from an expository point of view alone, I couldn't find the meaning or purpose of this passage. I know and believe that all Scripture is useful for instruction (2Timothy 3:16), but I couldn't find the usefulness of this passage using expository methods alone. The moralistic or allegorical methods came to mind (the Christocentric didn't at all--Jesus doesn't enslave people!), but those didn't help either. I thought a bit about the 20% tax as a forerunner of the 10% tithe, but there were too many problems with that idea, and it was quickly dismissed.
Expository interpretation can tell us what is in the text, but it can't always tell us why. Sometimes it can, but not always. It's very helpful in understanding the Epistles, not so much for narrative or poetic literature (like the Psalms). Sometimes we need more than seeing and understanding what's written. Expository studies give us information well, but don't always give us the transformation God intends for us to receive as we read His Word.
Like the scientific method, the expository method gives us facts, but doesn't always give us Truth.
Sometimes we need prayerful imagination along with exposition.
Prayerful Imagination
Let's take another look at Esther. The book of Esther is known by Bible students for the fact that it does not contain the word "God" in the entire book (nor prayer, worship, or any reference to the temple sacrificial system). This has led some to either reject the book, question its place in the Bible, or to simply refuse to preach on it. (Perhaps this same fact leads some to see the book as an allegory, rather than historical narrative!)However, if we take the fact of the lack of the name of God in the book is a literary device, rather than evidence of the spurious nature of the book, the book begins to open up. What do I mean? I mean this. I believe we are suppose to read Esther asking this question: Where is God in this? As we read each of the many stories that make up the story of Esther, we can ask and should be asking this question. And as we ask it, the book opens up to remind us of one extremely important fact: God is always and everywhere working out His purposes (even if it doesn't look like it at the time).
In other words, our imagination can help us see beyond what's written to the meta-message that we are supposed to hear. The meta-message of Esther is that God is acting, even when it doesn't seem like it. The meta-message of Genesis 47:13-31 is that even while the world willingly enslaves itself to worldly powers in exchange for survival, God graciously rescues, provides for, and protects His people; or while worldly powers treat people like subjects to exploit, God treats them like family. I believe that's what we're supposed to see in that passage: the message that isn't there explicitly is the message we're supposed to hear most clearly.
That passage was locked for me until, through prayer and meditation on it, I began to see that unless God had acted with Joseph the way he had, all of Israel (Jacob) and his children would also have been enslaved to Pharaoh. Then I began to see the conditional 'blessing' of Pharaoh, compared to the gracious blessing of God. The contrast between how Pharaoh (a god to the Egyptians) treated his subjects in need and how God treated His becomes staggeringly obvious--once we see that this is the contrast of vv.13-25 with v.27. There is no mention of God in this text so that we will look to see where He is. In this text He's in Goshen with Israel, as He promised (Genesis 46:3-4).
I'm not recommending imagination for it's own sake, nor imagination apart from careful exegesis, nor imagination apart from yielded prayer. That would be utter foolishness. But I am trying to say that when we read Scripture carefully and honestly (which the expository method is most helpful with, IMHO), we must also use our imagination to contemplate what the unspoken message (if any!) of the passage may be.
Sometimes this is obvious. Sometimes, it takes a week's worth of praying.
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