Bite-size Bible: WHEN IGNORING THE BIBLE IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO

Bite-size Bible: WHEN IGNORING THE BIBLE IS THE RIGHT THING
Week beginning Sunday 7 September 2025
Church Sunday: Year C, Proper 18
Readings: Deuteronomy 30.15-end; Philemon 1-21; Luke 14.25-33

The Gospel offers us the stark choice of giving our life to Christ to win life everlasting, or losing our life by trying to keep it for ourselves. And, as St Luke warns us, if we do decide to follow Christ, we must budget in advance for embracing the Cross, hating our family, and giving up all our possessions. It’s an alarming set of Ts & Cs, and we should be clear what they mean, and about how to read the Bible generally, especially when there are contradictions.

Take slavery. In Paul’s Letter to Philemon, he instructs him to grant freedom to his (Christian) slave Onesimus, who will be a far greater blessing as co-worker and brother than as mere possession. Paul’s radical call for freedom is a pleasant surprise, given the Bible’s other pro-slavery sentiments, which were quoted freely by Wilberforce’s opponents in the abolition campaign, including several Bishops in the House of Lords.

Very different instructions on slavery are given in the authentic letters of Paul (e.g. Philemon); in more disputed letters (e.g. Ephesians and Colossians); and in later letters like Timothy and Titus, which most scholars agree are definitely not by Paul. As the years passed and Roman attitudes infiltrated the Church, the Biblical texts became less radical and much more socially conservative. So, while Philemon is told to release his slave, Colossians and Ephesians permit slavery, provided slaves and their masters behave fairly and well towards each other. But even this reciprocity finally disappears in the Letter to Titus (not by Paul), where slaves are bluntly told to be submissive, honest and hard-working. Masters may do as they please.

Reliance on texts like Titus enables some Christians to bypass the Bible’s broader themes, like liberation and human dignity, as we constantly see in debates on homosexuality and equal marriage. But using snippets of Scripture like grenades is no substitute for patient engagement with huge questions.

How then must we proceed? First, we must identify the cultural presuppositions of a Biblical text. Jesus and Paul expect God’s Kingdom to come very soon. For them, giving everything away and following a band of end-of-the-world preachers makes sense. We who expect things to go on for a few millennia more, have a very different perspective on that and much else.

Thus, despite St Luke’s clarity, we are surely right not to give up all our possessions. Like it or not, we inhabit an economically complex world, and have no real choice but to remain in it. We have roofs to keep over our heads, and families to support. And if we do not own two coats (which Luke 14 forbids), we cannot give one of them to our needy neighbour (which Luke 3 requires).

The solution here, I suggest, is to live as if we had no possessions, and as if we desired none. Instead, we must desire and rely on God alone, motivated not by gain but by love of God and neighbour. And there can be no masking of dissatisfaction or insulating against insecurity with that compulsive ‘desire-and-acquire’ reflex of retail therapy.

We must also learn afresh that God is the source of all things. Even if I believe that I have ‘pulled myself up by my own bootstraps’ like a Victorian mill-owner, I must recall that the bootstraps themselves were provided by God, as was the strength and character needed for the pulling.

And if God is the source of all things, the purifying of heart and mind will need to go further, for nothing of what I have is actually mine. I have the use of it; I may even have helped it on its way into the world. But I am not the author of it, just as I am not the author of myself! So although we must continue to operate in the economic sphere – to spend our pocket-money, as it were – we must nevertheless rid ourselves of any focus on wealth, or love of material goods. Such purification of heart and mind will be hard; may indeed prove harder than the more straightforward material privation which this gospel reading requires, but which we have decided to ignore.