Blue Cord

While we are on the subject of frivolous lawsuits, I thought I would mention a story that happened down in my home state of Tennessee.

At Lakewind Church in Knoxville, a man claims he was so filled with the Holy Spirit during a service that he fell and hit his head. He is suing the church for $2.5 million for “medical bills, lost income, and pain and suffering.”

This story seems like something you would see at The Onion, but since the story was reported by the AP I am assuming it is reliable. Of course, if The Onion were making this up, they would have said that the man was suing the Holy Spirit.

Let’s think about this theologically for a second. If you believe that the Spirit of God takes over your body and causes you to fall down (something the NT associates more with demon possession), then you have a big question to ask before giving yourself over to such an experience: Do I believe that the Holy Spirit will handle my body responsibly? That is, will the Holy Spirit prevent my head from hitting the pew when causing me to fall? At the very least, will God cause one of the other church members to catch me when God hurls me to the floor?

If your answer is no, then you had better look around you to make sure you have a safe fall zone before this irresponsible God gets a hold of you.

Of course, Paul says that Christians should not take each other to court (1 Cor 6:1-8), but apparently this man was concentrating on esoteric experiences instead of listening to that part of the sermon.

The Grand Rapids Press and and Channel 8 News in Grand Rapids, Michigan, are reporting that a man is suing two publishers, Zondervan and Thomas Nelson, over their publication of Bibles that contain the word “homosexual” in 1 Corinthians 6:9. The Thomas Nelson suit is over the NKJV translation, while the Zondervan suit appears to be connected to the NIV.¹

The plaintiff, Bradley Fowler, says his parents’ pastor used a translation that condemned homosexuality, which caused his parents to oppose homosexuality, which caused them to cause him to endure “emotional duress and mental instability.” He claims that it was “the intent of the publisher was to design a religious, sacred document to reflect an individual opinion or a group’s conclusion to cause ‘me or anyone who is a homosexual to endure verbal abuse, discrimination, episodes of hate, and physical violence . . . including murder’.”²

Setting aside the fact that neither Thomas Nelson nor Zondervan did the translation work and therefore may not be the right defendants, Fowler is going to have a very difficult time proving a causal linkage between the emtional duress he has suffered (which I am sure is quite real) and the particular translation his parents’ pastor used. Given that this is a church that used either the NIV or NKJV, it is probably a conservative church that was been opposed to homosexuality long before either of those two translations came out. Even when they read translations that did not use the word homosexuality, they were led by the Bible (and other factors) to conclude that homosexuality was wrong. The new translations may have given them some extra ammo, but it certainly did not create their opinions. And even if it did cause his parents to oppose homosexuality, it is still up to them to decide how to repond to their son. It is possible to disagree with someone who is gay without causing them emotional distress.³

The case also raises a lot of questions over academic freedom, translator responsibility, and freedom of the press (which includes any publishing activity, not just newspapers). For example, while I disagree with using the word “homosexuals” to translate 1 Corinthians 6:9 because it is inaccurate and somewhat anachronistic, it is a defensible translation. One can hardly claim that the translators (or publisher) were being irresponsible by translating it this way.

I suspect Fowler has one of two motives for bringing his suit. Either he is just trying to get money, in which case he is probably going to be disappointed, or he is attempting to get the publishers to change the translation. If it is the latter, I think arguments from solid scholarship are going to much more effective than a frivolous lawsuit.

1. The news sources do not discuss the translations, but as far as I can tell the NIV is the only translation they carry that uses the word “homosexual” in 1 Corinthians 6:9. The TNIV may also use the word, but I don’t have a copy to check. [back]
2. Only the part in single quotations is a direct quote from Fowler. The first part of the quote is the wording of the news report. [back]
3. I know our culture says that anyone who disagrees with you is automatically judging you, but that isn’t the case. [back]

The New York Times is reporting that a tablet entitled Gabriel’s Revelation, which dates from around the time of the birth of Jesus, contains an account of a three-day resurrection . The story, which has the needlessly sensationalistic title “Was Jesus’ Resurrection a Sequel?”, reports an interpretation by Israel Knohl that suggests the text predicts the resurrection of an individual after being dead for three days. As is always the case, the crux of the reading occurs in a break in the text.

The Times then states:

This, in turn, undermines one of the strongest literary arguments employed by Christians over centuries to support the historicity of the Resurrection (in which they believe on faith): the specificity and novelty of the idea that the Messiah would die on a Friday and rise on a Sunday.

Such a statement over-reaches the evidence by quite a bit. Even if Knohl’s reading is correct — and that is far from certain — all it shows is that someone else thought that a resurrection would occur after three days. It is not news that resurrection was a pre-Christian idea, and the fact that someone would connect it with a three day period is hardly surprising. Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days, and if the author of Matthew could make that connection (Matt 12:40) I am sure others could too.

Despite what the title of the article might suggest, the text in question does not report that a resurrection happened. It is merely predicted in the text. Although Knohl connects the text with Simon (a Jewish rebel known from Josephus), he doesn’t claim that the author of the text thought that Simon actually did rise from the dead. And the followers of Simon were certainly not willing to proclaim that message and change the world the way the followers of Christ did.

Obviously, the Times is follow the age old dictum: “If it sheds blood for your sins, it leads” (it rhymes in the original Greek). And of course they point to the Talpiot tomb and other ideas that they suggest challenge the truth claims of Christianity. But while the text sounds interesting (they don’t provide the full text) and certainly will add to our ideas about the thought-world in which Christianity emerged, it certainly doesn’t drive the final nail into Jesus’ coffin. (And even if it did, he could still get out.)

No, this is not a post about Scriptural underwear.

I am pleased to announce that a small booklet I wrote for the Bible Briefs series is out today. The series, which is published by Forward Movement Publications in partnership with Virginia Theological Seminary, is intended to provide short introductions to books of the Bible. My contribution to the series is Leviticus. The booklet is available free of charge as a PDF file at the Virginia Theological Seminary website. I am also scheduled to write the “volume” on  Numbers.

Steve Cook of Biblische Ausbildung is the editor for the series. Here are his gracious comments on the new booklet:

Recent scholarship is revitalizing interest in priestly literature of the Hebrew Bible such as Leviticus, rediscovering it as life-giving tradition that informed and complimented the prophetic word. To read Dr. Wilson’s new introduction to Leviticus is to appreciate anew God’s gifts of holiness, ritual, and wholeness. Wilson’s booklet gives the church an easy entree into scholars’ new regard for the Bible’s priestly theologies.

Just think – in one small booklet that takes about ten minutes to read you will learn more than most people ever want to know about Leviticus.

The New York Times has an article today entitled “Churches Retool Mission Trips”. It discusses the rise in popularity of short-term mission trips as well as some of the problems with such trips. It is well worth a read, especially if you are a member of a church that sponsors trips like these.

I have often wondered about the effectiveness of these trips, especially those that involve building projects. It costs a great deal to reach some of these destinations, and often we are flying in unskilled labor. The article addresses both of these issues. On the one hand, it notes that sometimes missionaries have paid as much as $30,000 to fly a team to Mexico to build a house that could have been built by locals for $2,000. On the other hand, some structures have had to be torn down after the missionaries left because they were of substandard construction. In one case, a missionary-built building collapsed in a storm, killing two children. The article also raised the question of how culturally sensitive missionaries are being when show up in poor villages with lots of expensive digital cameras. If we want to help people, perhaps it would be better to send the $30,000 to the village to pay for them to build their own churches and houses. They would get better buildings and the influx of money would help the economy. We wouldn’t get the first-hand cultural experience, but it seems to me that missions work is supposed to be about enriching the lives of others, not about our own personal growth.

In the interest of full disclosure, I participated in one of these trip twenty years ago. I went to Jamaica for ten days to run Vacation Bible Schools in inner city Kingston. I enjoyed the trip, but I wonder how much any of the Jamaicans got out of it. I have always felt that the Spring Break trip I took to help clean up Charleston, SC, after Hurricane Hugo was a much better use of resources. Since serving in Lithuania for 2.5 years as a missionary, my ideas of what missions work is all about have changed quite a bit.

Update: Adam Couturier linked to this post and pointed to an entry on his own blog entitled “The Problem of Missions and Monetary Contributions in the Missions Field” from last month. It is well worth reading. Adam is a student at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. I presume he found my blog through my friend Calvin Park at Random Bloggings, who is also at Gordon Conwell.