What do we do with all of this?
One of the things I learned on my journey was the idea of
binding and loosing. We see this in the gospel of Matthew. In these passages,
Jesus tells his disciples that whatever they bind on earth will be bound in
Heaven, and whatever they loose on earth will be loosed in Heaven. You won’t be
surprised to hear that there are several different interpretations on binding
and loosing, but the one I want to focus on is to do with how we interpret scripture,
and that what we bind and loose in our biblical interpretations will be
honoured by God. This is the understanding of binding and loosing that seems
most logical to me, but it is also the understanding which I have struggled
with the most.
Binding and loosing is a rabbinic term which means to
forbid and permit, and was used when there were disputes concerning Jewish Law.
For example, in the first century there were two rabbinic schools, the school
of Shammai which was known to bind, and the school of Hillel which was known to
loose. These two schools would debate and argue about what the Law meant, and
what was to be bound and what was to be loosed. When Jesus spoke to his
disciples about this, he was giving them the authority to make decisions of
interpretation, and that those decisions would be honoured by God. This
understanding of binding and loosing seems to be the most appropriate and
correct, given the context of this passage.
When I first heard this teaching about binding and loosing,
I thought it was exciting because it meant that there was perhaps some hope in
swaying God when it came to how we interpreted the Bible. We could interpret
things a certain way, and God would accept those understandings and recognise
them. It was God’s invitation to us to partake in his kingdom work, which was
empowering and thrilling. For instance, if a church decided that they would
allow women to be leaders, or that they would bless gay marriages, then God
would honour those decisions. I thought it was amazing that we got to work with
God in this way, and it depicted a much more relational and compassionate God,
a God who heard what was on our hearts and was willing to do something about
it, and not just a crusty old deity, judging humanity whilst sat on a dusty old
throne.
However, my amazement was quickly replaced with confusion.
What if one set of Christians bound or loosed one thing, and another group
bound or loosed another opposing thing, how would God honour both
interpretations? If it came to something binary like Hell, and one group
decided that all unbelievers would suffer eternal conscious torment, but
another group decided that it was God’s intention to bring salvation to all,
then what would God do? Would it ultimately become a numbers game, a heavenly
referendum where God would end up doing the thing that was most popular? If so
then when would that happen, or was it happening already? Where there fixed
points throughout history where God bound and loosed things according to church
doctrine at that time, with people being subject to the consequences of those
theological interpretations, or would there be a final tallying up moment,
where God would review all the bindings and loosings conducted throughout human
history, then act according to the numbers? Did the authority to bind and loose
even apply to Christians living beyond the first century? Some people say that
Jesus’s words in Matthew were a promise that was specifically for the twelve
disciples who were appointed as apostles of the early church. If it was only
meant for the apostles, then what were the implications of the hundreds of
interpretative decisions of the Bible, that have been made by churches over the
past two thousand years? Do those later interpretations amount to heresy? If
so, then should we revert to all the biblical teachings found in the early
church, including things like the advocation of slavery?
You can probably see now how I came to have this anxiety
around biblical interpretation. How could I trust anything I knew to be true
about God?
I couldn’t get my head around it and I asked around people
I trusted, who I thought had stronger and better faith than me, to see what
they thought, but none of them really had a clear answer. They said things
like, “We just have to trust God’s judgment” or “We believe that God is good
and whatever God does is right”, which are fair comments I suppose, but not
really of any help. They were the kind of none answers that Christians gave
when they didn’t know what they believed, or they didn’t want to think about
what they believed. If what they said was true then why did Jesus bother
mentioning binding and loosing, if it basically didn’t mean anything, and in
the end, God just did what God wanted, and that would be the right thing. If
we’re meant to be in relationship with God, then what kind of relationship is
that?
It’s probably like being in The Smashing Pumpkins, a band I
love, but whose lead singer, Billy Corgan, has the reputation of being a
control freak. You would be part of the band technically, but you wouldn’t be
allowed to have any significant creative input, and when it came to recording
an album, Billy would just play all the guitar, bass and keyboard parts,
because he wanted them played a certain way, and he was a better musician than
you.
I continued to wrestle with this idea as I began writing
this book a couple of years ago, but slowly I came to some realisations. I
realised that the understanding I had about binding and loosing might be back
to front, and when I flipped it around, it made a lot more sense. I’d thought
that it was about us influencing God, but I realised that it was more to do
with God allowing us to make decisions and interpretations, based on where we
were at in our own journeys of faith. It was God’s way of inviting us to come
as we were, to engage with the divine mystery within our own understanding and
capacity for knowledge, and to wrestle with ideas and form different
interpretations about God, so we might gain fresh revelations and grow in our
understanding. God honoured the interpretations and conclusions that we
reached, but not so he would be changed, God honoured them so that we might be
changed. If we bound or loosed something then it was bound and loosed by God
for our benefit, for wherever we were in our understanding of God. This means
that we can all have different understandings of God throughout our lives, and
can be in different places from other people, all at the same time, and yet we
can discover truth about God from those differing places. The truths that we
reach about God are permitted to be true for us, because that is who we
understand and need God to be, at that time and place.
Let’s take the example of the atonement. If someone
understands the atonement as God needing to punish Jesus in order for divine
justice to be satisfied, then God allows this to be true for that person. That
person is where they are meant to be in their thinking, and God allows that belief
to be true in order for them to have faith and to grow in their relationship
with God. If someone can’t agree with that view of God, and they see the
atonement as Jesus’s death and resurrection putting an end to sin and death,
then God allows that to be true also. It is true for that person where they are
in their thinking, and God permits that understanding to be true, in order for
that person to have faith and to grow in their relationship with God.
That isn’t to say that we make God in our own image, based
on our viewpoint, conscience, and experience, but it means that God meets us
where we are, he finds us in our incomplete understandings, and engages with us
through those ideas. It means that God is big enough for both understandings to
be true. The views are all right because they are exactly true for who we are
in our present life situations. In time we may change our views, we may begin
to see the atonement in a new or different way. This doesn’t mean that our
previous view was wrong, it was a view and understanding that was true for us
then, but we have now come into a different realisation of God which has led us
to rethink how we see the atonement. It doesn’t mean that God has changed, but
it does mean that we have changed, and we will continue change.
This is human nature, we are continually growing, aging and
maturing because we are human creatures and not divine entities. God takes our
humanity into account and allows this to happen because he knows that none of
our interpretations and beliefs are the final say. God is way vaster than our
finite knowledge but is big enough and loving enough to meet us in our
understandings of him. We will never reach a full understanding of God but by
approaching binding and loosing in this way, we move closer to a greater and
wider understanding of God.
Text taken from “Unanswerable:
Exploring the Complexities of the Christian Faith and Biblical Truth”, which is
available from Amazon, and from all good book shops. An audiobook is also
available at https://mindmole.bandcamp.com/music
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