PLGRM

I teach and preach the Bible all the time. It’s the most important part of my job.

Helping people see how the words of a very ancient book applies to their very modern life takes some doing. Part of what makes it hard is the human tendency to think everyone in all places and at all times thinks the way we do. I can’t tell you the number of people I’ve talked to over the years who’ve had some beef with this or that in the Bible. I have to remind them it was written a long time ago.

Our biggest hang-up when we read the Bible is applying our modern understandings to it.

Some of my colleagues just ignore those parts (How many sermons have you heard on Sodom and Gomorrah?) or even dismiss them (Paul telling women to obey their husbands? No thank you. Next!).

I try to take a different tack, and it’s an idea I learned from Rob Bell:

There is the thing, and then there is the thing behind the thing.

What I like about this idea is it acknowledges that there is much more going on in the Bible than simply the words on the page. It simultaneously acknowledges the problems we’ve come to see with some of our forbearers of the faith AND learn valuable lessons from them all the same.

So, that “wives obey your husbands” thing?

It’s obvious this was a version of a common “household code.” Roman household codes dictated the relationship of family members and they often had the weight of law. Paul is riffing on this.

A plain reading of the text has led generations of people to believe husbands are the boss of the house and that wives must submit to the husband in all things.

This passage has been used by generations to subjugate women and deny the inherent rights and gifts of women. And as we read further into the book of Ephesians, we see a text that has been used to abuse and neglect children and subjugate (particularly) Black Americans by citing Paul’s admonition that slaves ought to “obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling.”

No wonder people hate Paul. No wonder people don’t want to read Ephesians. I don’t blame anyone for that.

So, what might be the “Thing Behind the Thing”? Is there any hope of redeeming this passage? I think there is.

Paul begins the section by instructing the Ephesians to “be subject to one another.” Paul is challenging the Ephesians to ask themselves: “Given your understanding of the way the world works, how do you take a step toward increased mutuality?”

Never before, in the history of the world, did a household code even think of addressing wives, children, or slaves.

Paul does not talk about wives. He talks to wives. He doesn’t talk about children. He talks to them. He doesn’t talk about slaves. He talks to them and treats them with dignity and respect as full children of God.

If we were to read this passage of scripture and take from it that we should order our lives as they did in Ephesus in the year 60, we have massively missed the point. This is one of those times where we need to be very careful and very wise.

We have to interpret what the scripture passage says through the lens of what it does. And what is does is this: Everyone is treated as a subject. No one is an object.

That feels applicable to life today, doesn’t it?

Everyone is a subject. No one is an object.

We do not talk about each other. We talk to each other. We recognize that each one of us are worthy of dignity and respect as full children of God.

As a practical matter: We should never make decisions about a group of people. We should make decisions with them (especially if working with a vulnerable population).

This is the benefit of “The Thing behind the Thing.” If we write off Paul’s words to the Ephesians, we don’t get the benefit of seeing an example of how to take a massive step forward in morality and ethics.

Next time you’re reading the Bible and find yourself getting hung up on a passage like this (we all do; you’re not alone in this) remember that asking what a passage does may help us more than what is says and that the thing behind the thing can open up possibilities for us.