![\"\"](\"https:\/\/theamericanjesus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/multiple-choice.jpg\" "\\"Filling")
<\/a><\/p>\nWhen I was a teenager in my church\u2019s youth group, going on a mission trip meant we had a lot of time to pass on the bus ride over to wherever it was we were going.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s only so many movies you can watch or songs you can sing along to before you get bored. When that would happen we often turned to riddles to pass the time.<\/p>\n
We weren\u2019t very creative. We usually came back to the same handful of riddles on every trip. Fortunately, the time in between those trips allowed us to forget the answers to most of those riddles and enjoy the challenge of solving them once more.<\/p>\n
One of the first riddles that always came up was one I\u2019m sure most of you are probably familiar with.<\/p>\n
It involves a son and his father. The two of them are involved in a horrific car accident. The father is killed and the son is rushed to the emergency room. Once there, the surgeon refuses to work on him saying, \u201cI can\u2019t operate on this boy \u2013 he\u2019s my son!\u201d<\/p>\n
The question then becomes, if the father is dead who could the surgeon possibly be?<\/p>\n
The answer, of course, is his mother.<\/p>\n
The reason this riddle \u201cworks\u201d is twofold. One the one hand, it plays to our latent misogyny. Whether we want to admit it or not, many of us (including some women) think that there are some jobs women just shouldn\u2019t or couldn\u2019t do.<\/p>\n
The other reason this riddle \u201cworks\u201d is that we tend to think of things in bifurcated terms. Something is either this or that, right or wrong, black or white, yes or no, \u201cA\u201d or \u201cB\u201d.<\/p>\n
It is our bifurcated thinking that allows a video with the absurd premise \u201cWhy I hate religion, but love Jesus\u201d to go viral. It is this same mentality that\u00a0\u00a0fuels the partisan politics that so often bring our government to a\u00a0screeching\u00a0halt. And of course, it is bifurcated thinking that feeds many of the ruthless and relentless theological battles in the church.<\/p>\n
As Christians, we have become a people obsessed with having all the \u201cright\u201d answers and an exclusive claim on truth. Since at least the rise of fundamentalism some 200 years ago, the driving focus of so many of us in the church seems to be drawing lines in the sand to determine who is right and who is wrong. We want to be able to tell the \u201creal\u201d Christians from the \u201cwolves\u201d out to\u00a0deceive\u00a0the sheep through \u201cfalse teaching.\u201d<\/p>\n
No doubt there are teachers and preachers out there leading people astray. But I\u2019m not sure they are as abundant as celebrity preachers, books, Christian television, and discernment ministries would have us believe.<\/p>\n
Rather, I think the bigger problem we face is that sometimes, many even a lot of the time, the answers to the questions we ask aren\u2019t as simple as choosing being option A or option B. Sometimes, I think a lot of times, the \u201canswer\u201d is actually A, B, and<\/strong><\/em> C.<\/p>\n Take, for example, the aforementioned riddle. If we ask \u201cwho is the surgeon\u201d the answer isn\u2019t quite as straight forward as it might seem. Yes she is the boy\u2019s mother, but she\u2019s also a wife, a daughter, perhaps a sister, she\u2019s an employee, maybe a homeowner, perhaps she\u2019s a Christian or maybe an atheist. Choosing to answer that question with any one of those answers is not \u201cwrong\u201d because the question can be answered \u201ccorrectly\u201d with a variety of responses.<\/p>\n Likewise, ask a\u00a0kindergartner\u00a0what color the sky is and they\u2019re likely to answer \u201cblue.\u201d But if they said red, orange, purple, yellow, pink, or black they wouldn\u2019t be wrong either. At sunset the sky explodes with color and at night it goes as dark as pitch.<\/p>\n We often think of medical treatment simply being the practice of matching the right drug to the right ailment. In reality, there are any number of treatments for a single disease. A doctor must account for dozens of factors in deciding which drug to prescribe and even then there are multiple \u201ccorrect\u201d drugs which the doctor can choose from.<\/p>\n If you were to ignore the talking political heads on television and instead attend a freshmen level course in global politics, you would realize very quickly how many different \u201canswers\u201d and solutions are needed for each of the world\u2019s problems.<\/p>\n And of course there is the ultimate question, who is God? We can call God Father, Son, and Spirit. We can talk about God being love or justice or grace. We can say that God is eternal. We can list a bunch of words that begin with \u201comni\u201d. All of these are correct and, in fact, to answer with just one of them would actually be more \u201cwrong\u201d than \u201cright.\u201d<\/p>\n Not\u00a0surprisingly\u00a0then, the Bible is full of multiple\u00a0answers to many of the questions we ask.<\/p>\n How did God create everything?<\/em> Genesis gives us 2 different accounts.<\/p>\n What happened on Easter morning?<\/em> Each gospel writer gives us a slightly different version of the story.<\/p>\n How are we saved?<\/em> In the Old Testament a sacrifice was required for atonement. In the New Testament, Jesus atones for our sins, but did he accomplish that by paying a ransom or was it as a penal substitution or by being a new Adam or perhaps it was simply his willingness to empty himself of the\u00a0fundamental\u00a0human condition: putting ourselves in the place of God?<\/p>\n What happens after we die?<\/em> We might go straight to heaven. We might go straight to hell. Then again, we might be asleep until Judgement Day. Or if we\u2019re lucky we\u2019ll just get \u201craptured\u201d and not have to worry about that messy business.<\/p>\n Why does God allow evil?<\/em> You can get a different answer for that one in just about every book of the Bible.<\/p>\n Theses questions are obviously just the tip of the\u00a0iceberg. However, the notion that every question has a yes or no, \u201cA\u201d or \u201cB\u201d answer is the basis for a dangerous, unhealthy, and not particularly Christian version of\u00a0Christianity\u00a0called fundamentalism. Even though the fundamentalist will claim that their focus is the gospel and winning people to Jesus, that gospel is the \u201cgood news\u201d of believing the right things and the winning of souls happens when the \u201clost\u201d finally accept the right answers.<\/p>\n Now, lest the fundamentalist defender of the \u201ctrue\u201d faith convince otherwise, the options here are not \u201cobjective truth\u201d and \u201ceverything is relative.\u201d Having multiple answers for a single questions doesn\u2019t mean that there are not some things which can only be understood one way or another. For example, as Paul pointed out, if the resurrection of Jesus wasn\u2019t a literal, physical, bodily resurrection, then we are the biggest of fools. We can have both<\/em><\/strong> single answer questions and<\/strong><\/em> multiple answer questions. However, when appropriate (which is more often than not), allowing for different theological interpretations gives us a healthier way to discuss\u00a0unnecessarily\u00a0divisive issues like evolution and creation or the role of women in the church.<\/p>\n So, why is any of this important?<\/p>\n At the most basic level, the existence of a multiplicity\u00a0of answers to a given question, particularly a question of faith, should be a caution to all of us about being too dogmatic. If the gospels\u2019 accounts of Jesus ministry agree about anything, it\u2019s that Jesus was constantly pushing back, if not altogether rejecting, the dogmatism that the Pharisees and Sadducees were constantly trying to force him to affirm. Too often we play the role of modern day\u00a0Pharisees\u00a0and\u00a0Sadducees\u00a0by mix up the gospel message of the kingdom of God being established on earth as it is in heaven, with a call to make sure we\u2019re \u201cright\u201d about everything and everyone else is proven wrong. The gospel is good news to the poor, not the misinformed.<\/p>\n If instead of\u00a0turning the Bible into a question and answer book, we can learn to make space in our theology to allow for more than one answer to the questions we ask, we may just find ourselves being more authentically \u201cChristian\u201d. In doing so, we will actually be more in line with the Biblical narrative as well as the history of the Church which speaks with a multiplicity of voices and opinions on nearly every subject. Additionally, and perhaps most importantly for our global generation, embracing the Bible\u2019s approach of multiple answers will allow us to address an ever increasingly connected and complex world with much needed intellectual integrity, honesty, and compassion.<\/p>\n Ultimately, of course, this should make us less arrogant by reminding us that we don\u2019t have everything figured out. There is nothing more destructive to the body of Christ then when one member tells the rest of the body \u201cWe\u2019re the only true Christians here. Join with us or go to hell.\u201d It was this very thing that Paul warned the church about when he said that one part of the body cannot say to another part \u201cI don\u2019t need you.\u201d For, without the rest of the body, that part would die.<\/p>\n If we could instead find a way to celebrate our diversity and allow the Spirit to be the tie that binds us rather than theological conformity, then perhaps we could learn how to become more humble, and in the process, more Christ-like.<\/p>\n If Matthew 25 teaches us anything, it\u2019s that at the end of the day Christianity isn\u2019t about having all the right answers. It\u2019s about being in relationship with our Creator and embodying that loving relationship to the world. The fact that each of us are different combined with the incredible diversity of the encounters we will have as we incarnate the love of God to the world means that the faith is not as nice as neat as we would like to pretend that it is. If we could learn to embrace this fact, rather than pretending it doesn\u2019t exist and subsequently drawing artificial lines in the sand, then perhaps we wouldn\u2019t \u201cneed\u201d so many different denominations and churches.<\/p>\n If that could happen, then perhaps we could actually become the people<\/strong><\/em> of God, rather than a bunch of isolated individuals who just happen to worship the same carpenter from Nazareth.<\/p>\n What if?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Grace and peace,<\/p>\n Zack Hunt<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u00a0 When I was a teenager in my church\u2019s youth group, going on a mission trip meant we had a lot of time to pass on the bus ride over to wherever it was we were going. There\u2019s only so many movies you can watch or songs you can sing along to before you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3437,"featured_media":6332,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n