So there was this quote making its rounds on the internet from a book called “Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith” written by Rob Bell. (I say ‘making its rounds’ because the internet is a series of tubes… in case you didn’t know. Listen to the whole thing – it’s worth it) Bell sets up a metaphor where faith is a trampoline, and the springs “aren’t God…aren’t Jesus… [they] are statements and beliefs about our faith that help give words to the depths that we are experiencing in our jumping. I would call these the doctrines of our faith.”
The quote that’s been drawing fire goes like this:
What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry, and archaeologist find Larry’s tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was really just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in to appeal to the followers of the Mithra and Dionysian religious cults that were hugely popular at the time of Jesus, whose gods had virgin births?
Questions. Big questions, right?
Was Jesus born of a virgin?
What if…?
But what if, as you study the origin of the word “virgin” you discover that the word “virgin” in the gospel of Matthew actually comes from the book of Isaiah, and then you find out that in the Hebrew language at that time, the word “virgin” could mean several things. And what if you discover that in the first century being “born of a virgin” also referred to a child whose mother became pregnant the first time she had intercourse?
What if that spring were seriously questioned? Could a person keep on jumping? Could a person still love God? Could you still be a Christian? Is the way of Jesus still the best possible way to live? Or does the whole thing fall apart?
If the whole faith falls apart when we reexamine and rethink one spring then it wasn’t that strong in the first place, was it?
What if… Mary wasn’t a virgin in the way we understand it? The way you handle this question determines how you read this book.
Questions and Metaphors
All metaphors have their limits of course. They are much like cars – they all eventually break down. In my own limited metaphor, the string of reason and doctrine tethers the kite of faith and consequent action. Lose the kite and the string falls limp; lose the string and the tension and restraint that allows the kite to fly is gone. Freed from its tether, the kite may initially surge upwards, but it eventually returns to the ground, no longer capable of flight.
Reading the book brought to mind a few questions of my own, and I will try to be kind and careful in asking them. Bible scholar Ben Witherington has set the bar with his balanced critique of Rob’s book in his post “Velvet Elvis and the King’– Has he Left the Building?” I want to follow his lead here but I have to admit that I am more disturbed by the content of this book than he is.
Buy the book here and read it for yourself.
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This is Part 1 of 5 in the series Smashing Brickworld. Go to Part 2.
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