This is the sort of post that demands lots of footnotes and nuances, but I offer none of it. It’s not because of my inherent idleness, but because I don’t want to which may be linked to my idleness.
My late father had a saying which I never understood until much later in life. He said, “Son, you’re gettin’ a spankin’.”
No.
It wasn’t that one.
It was the one about the dynamics of a well-studied position later in life. Yeah, I really can’t make it into a pithy saying.
The essence of what he said was that trying to change the mind of older saints, especially those who have poured into their conviction bucket for a long time is a difficult task. We should try, he said, but we should reach a point where shaping the hermeneutic is a more important process. As Al Gore once said, “It’s the hermeneutic, stupid!” It’s the process of interpreting facts and how you get there that matters.
So, without further ado, and without apologies, I love the Reformation! I love Luther’s wit, Calvin’s technical debates with Anabaptists, Bucer’s concern for a well-ordered liturgy, and the reformation of song that sprung from a Lutheran dungeon and arrived at a reformation church in Pensacola, Fl.
I didn’t grow up in such an environment, which means it was somewhere between 19-20 that I was exposed to reformational thinking. Not the one shot of espresso kind, I was exposed to the three fingers of scotch kind. Mind you, when I first read Gary North, R.J. Rushdoony, David Chilton and Greg Bahnsen, I hated their agenda. But like the neighborhood kid you despised growing up, you began to look more favorably towards their faults and then you realized that their faults were more in the personality department than in the department of thought. One can always say that if it were not for their weird footnotes, they would be more mainstream. But again, look at what the mainstream produces. Can I get an corporate yuck?
It was later that R.C. Sproul and MacArthur and John Piper and Doug Wilson (one is not like the others) came into my theological salad. These all shaped my thinking in various ways, but it was that snarky and oft-cranky brother, James B. Jordan, with whom I shared probably hundreds of meals together that changed my hermeneutic for good. Now, here’s a story for all you kids that I may not have told. And it goes like this…
There was once a little boy who was enamored by other traditions with pointy hats. Though it wasn’t for very long, it was long enough and my inner commitment to Dutch flowers was being compromised at some level. But as I perused a fancy library one day, I came across a book about creation written by that cranky fella I mentioned above. There was a chapter in there amidst all the hurrahs on creation methodology that was titled something, something, Gnosticism. I still read that chapter once a year to pay homage to my brother who is now elderly and no longer able to display his sharpness to the world.
It was my hermeneutic that changed. I began to walk differently, kicking colored rocks instead of the plain ones. I wasn’t adding an additional year of Greek or Hebrew to my resume, I was adding a way of looking at the world that made me love Jesus more and my Jesus-shaped Bible as well. At that moment, I stopped looking at Rome or Constantinople with so much admiration, and started looking to Geneva’s ecclesiology with great respect. It’s the hermeneutic, stupid! Look at the world around you with consistent eyes and ask, WWZD? What would Zechariah do? And then ask, what would Zephaniah do? And then ask, what would Zaphnath-Paaneah do?
We do need a better orientation on how we look at the world. This is a Christ-shaped world filled with common grace and joy, and the Bible is a welcoming playground for those who have new eyes to see. So, dear friends, a happy season! May your candy be tattooed with graces and sugared with spices from Katie’s kitchen and may you cuss at the right wrongs and not the wrong rights. As Luther used to say, “You may sin boldly, but let your trust in Christ be bolder still!”
