"Cherry-picking" Scripture and a hermeneutic of love

Ever once in a while when you follow breadcrumbs they lead you someplace. In this case I arrived at a specific biblical hermeneutic.

A few years ago I was asked by a seminary journal editor to write the lead article that would include respondents, all of us discussing the ways in which Christians should respond to new religious movements (or “cults” in more popular evangelical terminology). I enjoyed reading through the responses to my essay as they all brought different but complimentary perspectives to the topic. All except one, that is. One of the respondents took issue with how I framed the Christian response by way of the biblical text. I won’t mention the name of the journal or the respondent because I don’t want to make this a personal issue, but I’ve continued to reflect on the area of disagreement for a while because it’s an important one. My colleague accused me of “cherry-picking the Bible,” his words, and that I needed to consider the entirety of the scriptural text in addressing the topic at hand. Let me unpack my response to this critique.

Two main elements comprise my response. First, I take issue with the phrase “cherry-picking.” Cherry-picking usually has a negative connotation, implying that the individual engaged in the practice is only selecting what is best for their purposes, while ignoring other important aspects. An application of that label to my handling of scripture in regards to relating to new religionists, or more broadly to multifaith engagement, is neither accurate nor fair. If you want to accuse me of selectivity in my selection of biblical texts, and my hermeneutical emphasis, then I plead guilty. In fact, my critic had to offer a selective approach to Scripture in his disagreement. The reality is that everyone is selective in how they use the Bible. I was reminded of this in a recent post by Old Testament scholar Pete Enns. This practice is not limited to contemporary evangelicals. You can see it in the pages of Scripture itself,, like in the Old Testament where a narrative was written down, later another version is included in the canon, and then in the New Testament Jesus and Paul likewise handle the Hebrew scriptures selectively and creatively as the tradition was engaged in light of new challenges and questions. So the idea of cherry-picking scripture is a false one, but selectivity in biblical interpretation, of course.

The second part of my response deals with the exception my critic seems to have taken to my suggestions for further areas for Christian reflection. One of those suggestions was to use a Christological hermeneutic. In other words, looking at Christ’s example and to draw upon a grace-shaped approach to understanding and applying the text. To some this may seem helpful and straightforward, but for many evangelicals it’s inappropriate. In their understanding of the Bible the best texts to cite about those in other religions are those that call for defending against false teaching, and building barriers of protection. While I recognize the need to have appropriate faith boundaries and not engage in syncretism or compromise, I think this way of interpreting the text is misguided. And I’ve found several breadcrumbs that lead me to this conclusion since I first wrote the journal article.

One of those breadcrumbs comes from N.T. Wright. He addressed this somewhat in his book The New Testament and the People of God, but expanded it quite a bit in his more recent book on natural theology, History and Eschatology: Jesus and the problem of natural theology. In this book Wright argues that Jesus is the starting point for natural theology, and that love should be an essential part of the Christian way of interpreting and relating to the world. More recently I discovered another writer with a similar emphasis. It came from Jonathan L. Walton in his book A Lens of Love: Reading the Bible in Its World for Our World. In the last paragraph of the final chapter he writes:

“A lens of love, however, challenges such religious duplicity and political chicanery. The method outlined in this book keeps us from cherry-picking texts that condone our selfish desires from using our faith to give cover to corruption while wagging the finger of condemnation toward the most vulnerable. A lens of love recalibrates our focus back to the teaching of the gospel. Jesus’ ministry was one of love and compassion. Jesus’ ministry, like that of the Hebrew prophets who informed him, subverted authority and questioned the status quo. It would only be appropriate, then, for us to interpret the Christian faith in this light. It would only be fitting to interpret Scripture with a lens of love.”

In following these bread crumbs I ended up recently back where I was when I wrote the journal article I mentioned previously. In my view Christians like Wright and Walton are on to something, especially with the extreme polarization and mistrust of our time, whatever the social context. What we need is a selective way of interpreting and living out the biblical message, one centered on a hermeneutic and praxis of love.