How Do You Pick and Choose?

by Charles Poole

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”

He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
—Matthew 22:34-40

When it comes to the Bible, how do you do your picking and choosing? When you’re picking the parts of the Bible by which you will actually live, how do you make those choices? Now, there’s not much point in wasting time protesting that we don’t pick and choose. It’s a nice thought, but it won’t stand up to the hard light of day. It is an inarguable fact that people interpret Scripture. The book of Deuteronomy, for example, is in the Bible. Deuteronomy 21:21 provides for the stoning of stubborn children. We don’t do that, nor should we. The book of Numbers is also in the Bible. Numbers 15:35 says that God instructed Moses to execute a man who was found picking up sticks on the Sabbath. We find that unthinkable, as we should. Even people fond of the phrase “inerrant infallible Bible” don’t assign abiding authority to these Bible verses. “Well, sure but, that’s the Old Testament.”

So, one could say that we Christians pick and choose which Bible verses will govern and guide us on the basis of our preference for the New Testament. But that doesn’t quite resolve the issue. For example, the New Testament book of 1 Timothy says that women should keep silent in the church, but the equally New Testament book of Galatians says that in the church there is neither male nor female. One verse in 1 Corinthians 14 says that women should not lead in worship, but another verse in 1 Corinthians 11 offers a dress code for women worship leaders. Both Corinthian passages are in the New Testament. So, how people decide on the question of the role of women in the church, for example, is obviously based on some sort of picking and choosing that has nothing to do with a New Testament preference over the Old Testament.

We might like to say, “When it comes to the Bible, I would never pick and choose. I live by it all.” But the fact is, we can’t say that and speak the truth. No one can. The question is not, “Do we pick and choose?” The only real question is, “How do we pick and choose?” By what measure do we decide which Scripture will guide our lives, shape our opinions, and govern our actions?

For me, the answer to that question goes something like this: I begin with what I believe to be the most basic, fundamental Christian confession—the life of Jesus is the best revelation of God ever seen by the world. So, if Jesus is our best look at God, then my best hope to know how God wants me to live is to learn as much as I can about Jesus. And where do I go to learn about Jesus? To the place where the words and works of Jesus are recorded; which is, of course, the four Gospels. So, I read the four Gospels over and over again, saturating my mind with the words and works of Jesus, and I then strive to let the spirit of Jesus as revealed in the four Gospels become the standard by which I interpret the rest of the Bible.

Of course, it’s not always that simple. For one thing, there are many matters of which Jesus never spoke, at least as far as we can tell. In those cases, you just have to read the four Gospels over and over again until you develop a feel for the spirit of Christ that you can call on in the face of life’s complex questions and difficult issues. That can be complicated, and sometimes it can become subjective. When it comes to the issues of the day to which Jesus never spoke, we tend to interpret Scripture in the light of our own worldview. We especially want the Bible to support our politics and our economics. It’s hard to read the Bible without that subjective lens, especially when we’re trying to find “the Jesus position” on issues Jesus never mentioned.

But that’s not the worst problem we face when we try to read the Bible with Jesus as our measure of truth. The worst problem is not trying to discern “the Jesus position” on matters Jesus never mentioned. The worst problem is trying to obey the Jesus position on matters Jesus did mention! That’s the truly hard part. The worst problem is not where Jesus left no clear directions. The worst problem is where Jesus left crystal clear instructions. For example, what do we do with the gospel’s most radical words? “Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Give to everyone who begs from you. Loan, expecting nothing in return. If someone takes your coat, give them your shirt.” And then, perhaps hardest of all, there is this: “Be merciful to one another, even as God is merciful to you.” What do we do with such a “radical Jesus” Scripture passage? We can’t just pick and choose our way around it, because what it says is at the heart of the gospel. But how do we know that? If I say this passage is central to the gospel, aren’t I picking and choosing? On what basis do I pick this passage as more central than some other passage?

Well, I go back to the passage that, for me, is the hinge on which the rest of the Bible turns, Matthew 22:34-40, where an inquirer asks Jesus which commandment is the most important of all. Now, obviously, Jesus could have responded by saying that all Bible verses are of equal authority, all Scriptures are of equal significance, and all of God’s commandments are of equal importance. He had his chance to say that. But that is not what Jesus said. Jesus said, “The greatest commandment is this, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ And the second greatest is this, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Now, if you believe, as I do, that the Gospels are a trustworthy record of the life of Jesus, then there’s the last court of appeal for biblical picking and choosing. If Jesus is the central measure of our Christian faith, then the Gospels that record his words are the central measure of all Scripture for Christians. In those Gospels, Jesus said that the central standard of life is this: “Love God with all that is in you and love others as you love yourself.” That’s how I know that when I stumble across a passage that demands radical, life-altering, world-changing love for all other people, I am at the irreducible center of the gospel. If I pick and choose my way around this radical center of the gospel, “Love your enemies. Give to all who beg from you. Be merciful to all as God is merciful to all,” then my picking and choosing, which at other times may be a necessary virtue, becomes a sin against the heart and soul of the gospel of God.

––From The Flute Beneath the Gold by Charles E. Poole