Photo Courtesy of Greg Weeks
Special to United Methodist Insight | Oct. 1, 2025
Imagine that someone who’d never read the Bible opened it up to Deuteronomy 21-22. They would read instructions such as: “Stone until [dead]” a rebellious child…an adulterous couple…a woman who had sex before marriage. And if a man mistreats his wife, he’s forbidden to divorce her, a rule that ensures a lifetime of misery for her.
Hoping for something a bit more positive and humane, the reader might then flip to Leviticus 20 and discover prohibitions regarding sexuality, including homosexuality. The consequence for some of these transgressions was also execution. A means specified here is being “burned with fire.”
If this was the person’s only interaction with the Bible, what do you think their reaction would be? Such passages don’t show up in church marketing.
Stoning until dead and burning with fire paint an interesting divine portrait. Instead of slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, “He” not only uncorks his fury in the end but wants the sinner to suffer, as a warning to others not to cross him. In an era when kings could order someone’s death as easily as ordering a snack (2 Samuel 1:1-16), it’s not difficult to see God described in a monarch’s image.
It’s also not difficult to see that the Bible reveals the times in which it was written. Writers were inspired but were also products of those eras. The moment they put stylus to parchment, they weren’t suddenly baptized by heavenly light and transformed into pristine, angelic, trans-cultural beings who could describe the Almighty in pure, unadulterated terms. Like all humans, they bore the signs of their times.
The point of all this is just how amazing Jesus is. I began my journey with him by asking forgiveness for my sins. In the many decades since, my awe of him has only increased. Topping it off is how, against a cultural backdrop of Roman cruelty and religious self-righteousness/violence, he clearly and fearlessly presented a breathtaking view of the one he called “Father.”
God is the yearning, forgiving, party-throwing parent of a wayward teenager. And while Jesus also talked about consequences of sin, he included the basis for judgment not being how well you kept purity/cultic laws, but how well you did what that Father really wanted you to do.
Speaking of obeying the laws, he shifted it in terms of inward disposition and resulting outward expression: Love God and love your neighbor. If you have any doubt as to how to love God, read the Sermon on the Mount and forgive enemies, clean up your heart, and pray in a closet. If you have any doubt as to how to love your neighbor, imitate a good Samaritan.
Such teachings, of course, aren’t alien to the Old Testament. Indeed, they reflect the same face of God that shines through when you read all of the Torah, psalms, and prophets. Love God with your whole heart (Deuteronomy 6:5, which is 15 chapters before 21). Prioritize what God wants: do justice, love kindness, be humble. Care for the orphan, widow, immigrant. It’s just that Jesus laser-focused all of this in dynamic, colorful, unforgettable ways. Or, in his words, “Don’t even begin to think that I have come to do away with the Law and the Prophets. I haven’t come to do away with them but to fulfill them.” (Matthew 5:17)
This is why we interpret everything through the eyes of Jesus, as the late theologian Marcus Borg suggested. After all, when Jesus quoted Leviticus, it was from chapter 19, not 20: “You must love your neighbor as yourself.” (verse 18) And through him the biblical witness becomes much sharper and clearer. Such a witness confronts whatever we may find in isolated sections that dot the Bible. It also confronts modern sermons that twist verses to support things Jesus would never condone.