Anywhere with Jesus: a Christian View of a Squirmy Subject

Several years ago I had a preacher friend who provided interesting insights into the pulpit life.  During the years of our acquaintance, in spite of normal frustrations with his flock, he could usually count on at least a few encouraging words after each sermon.  Except for the time he preached about the temptations of Christ.  His text was not the famous showdown in the wilderness, but Hebrews 4:15: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who in every way has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”  The sermon emphasized that the text means what it says; in every way means every way.  Including sexual temptation.

That made the pew contingent very uncomfortable.  It wasn’t hard to tell.  As my friend recalled it, “Usually I get a pat on the back when the folks line up to shake my hand at the door.  Like, ‘Good message, brother,’ or, “That one really hit me where I live.’  But for that sermon I got a Hi or a Nice day or something completely irrelevant, like, ‘Uh . . . I like those pants.’”  (Note: this was in the 70s, when pants were more interesting than they are now.)

What does this anecdote have to do with the subject of masturbation?  And why am I writing about masturbation?  To the second question, I’m writing because I was asked about it, and my initial reluctance was overcome as I thought (and read other Christians’ thoughts) about it.Image result for loneliness images

As to the first question: Jesus has everything to do with everything.

The following is written with Christians in mind; I recognize it will make no sense to anyone else.

The Bible, as so many observers point out, has nothing directly to say about masturbation, good or bad.  But of course the Bible speaks to a wide range of issues indirectly and it’s up to us to do the hard work of rightly discerning the word of truth.  Not to mention searching out what pleases the Lord (Eph. 5:10).

One reason the Bible is silent on this issue is that it might not have been a big problem in that time and place.  People tended to marry young, and when they weren’t enjoying marital bliss, or sleep, they were pouring their energies into hard physical labor, religious festivals, or intense partying (think of those week-long wedding celebrations).  And considering the housing options of the time, privacy was not an easy thing to come by.

In the law, sexuality was treated matter-of-factly when it came to physical consequences like monthly periods and male discharges (at least some of which had to be nocturnal emissions).  Leviticus gives detailed instructions for purification after each one.  Why be purified after a natural function that the Lord himself created?  I had some thoughts about that here, but for now it strikes me that these laws concern men and women in isolation from each other.  There are no purification rites for married sex (unless it occurs during a woman’s time of “uncleanness”), because that is exactly what those bodily functions facilitated .  Lawful sexual intercourse is already pure, and it points beyond itself.  It’s about relationship at its most intense, intimate, and productive level, and it reflects something of the intense, intimate, and productive relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit.

Our experience on earth, even in lawful matrimony, often falls well short of this ideal.  And turning from these Gates of Splendor to the squirmy subject of masturbation is a big step down: awkward and fraught with guilt.  We don’t want to go there.  We don’t want the Holy Trinity in our walk-in closets or under our sneaky sheets–and really, can’t we have a little privacy here?  Surely there’s a place we can carve out for ourselves alone.  There must be a place, not just in our homes but in our heads, where we can retreat for a few minutes and relieve a little pressure, purge of those disturbing fantasies, take a quick dip in mindless therapeutic pleasure and emerge clearheaded and ready to take hold of a straight untangled mission.  Just wait here, Lord—I’ll be right back.

But . . . seriously?

We know better.  “Know ye not that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit?”  That he goes where we go?  That we can’t retreat to our inner sanctum and lock him out?

Nobody knew this better than Jesus did.  Nobody was indwelt like he was.  Still . . . he was tempted in all ways as we are.  All ways means all ways.

Don’t we tend to think that it was really kind of easy for him to resist temptation?  Except for that last, of going to the cross—of course that was hard.  And maybe the one about turning stones to bread when he was hungry.  After a 40-day fast, of course he was hungry!  So sure, that was probably a tough one too, but the rest of the temptations he was subject to must not have been that difficult for the man-who-was-God.  Or so we tend to think.

And that’s how we underestimate Satan, to our great disadvantage.  His most potent temptation is this: Take the fast lane.  The lure for Christ was to shortcut the process of “learning obedience through suffering” (Heb. 5:8), to reach across the grand redemption plan, to seize the crown that was rightfully his.  Isn’t that the heart of temptation for us–to forgo process and go straight for satisfaction in whatever form it appears?  Jesus faced this too, in all ways.  He knows our every weakness in the biblical sense of experiencing it, not just mentally acknowledging it, Yet without sin.  No shortcuts.  He took the long hard way of the cross—meaning that, when it was time to claim his rightful crown, he would not be alone.  He would take us with him.

Now . . . all this will likely seem hopelessly abstract to the teenage boy or the frustrated single woman.  Christian counselors and doctors make good-faith efforts to reconcile biological drives with biblical principles, a tension stretched further by an oversexed culture and delayed marriage.  Some grant that masturbation may be a useful therapeutic tool as long as it doesn’t become obsessive, has no pornographic connections, and is divorced as far as possible from erotic thought (like a good deep-tissue massage).  I can’t judge the wisdom of that for any one person.  Just a few contrasts to keep in mind:

  • Sex is intended for relationship. Masturbation is solitary.
  • Relationships take work. Masturbation is easy.
  • We are intended for perfect union with Christ. Masturbation is the last place we want him.
  • This union isn’t sexual, but is better than sex.  Masturbation, while it lasts, whispers that there’s nothing better.

My best attempt at practical application is this.  If you’ve already given in to this temptation, more times than you care to count, remember that Christ was tempted in all respects as we are.  That’s your comfort.  Yet without sin—that’s your salvation.  You won’t be able to pull him down to your level but he will, in time, bring you up to his.  Temptation is a trial but it’s also an opportunity to work on that relationship and begin laying up what will be treasure in heaven: that satisfaction you longed for all your life, fully met and never ending.

Bible Challenge, Week 14: The People – Sacrifice

Leviticus is often called the “graveyard of daily Bible reading plans,” because when you turn the page after Exodus all your good intentions to stay awake fall off a cliff.  Detailed instructions for festivals and holy days, scrubbing your leprous walls, burying your polluted waste, purifying your bodily discharges . . .   What could have less relevance today?

The problem of our inattention just may be with us.  Leviticus is all about that which is holy and unholy, clean and unclean.  Israel is a people set apart, and so are we.  The sacrificial system is obsolete, and we don’t have to worry about sanitation rules so much, but one takeaway remains: to be set apart takes thought and effort. Last week we saw how God intended to remain among His people, and took the steps to make that possible.  It’s worth asking, how does He remain among us today, and what does it take for us to be “set apart”?

Click here for a printable download of this week’s challenge, including scripture readings, questions, and activities:

Bible Challenge Week 14: The People – Sacrifice

(This is a continuation of a series of posts about the “whole story” of the Bible.  I plan to run one every week, on Tuesdays, with a printable PDF.  The printable includes a brief 2-3 paragraph introduction, Bible passages to read, a key verse, 5-7 thought/discussion questions, and 2-3 activities for the kids.  Here’s the Overview of the entire Bible series.)

Previous: Week 13: The People – Tabernacle

Next: Week 15: The People – Blessings and Curses

A New Creation?

About twenty years ago, a close friend learned that her youngest son had Duchenne MD, the worst form of Muscular Dystrophy.  It meant gradual weakening, teen years in a wheelchair, and an early death, perhaps by his mid-twenties.  She told me it changed everything: how she thought, how she planned her day, how she cleaned, how she cooked.  The only hope for that boy, then as now, was gene therapy.

Earlier this year, the scientific world buzzed with news about a method of gene therapy called CRISPR.  Without getting too technical, CRISPR uses an enzyme at the molecular level to cut harmful genes out of a subject’s DNA; “gene editing” is an accurate description.  The effect not only alters the subject, but all of his or her descendants.  CRISPR is not yet approved by the FDA for test purposes in the USA, but that hasn’t stopped scientists in Asia and Europe—or even here in the USA.

A few weeks ago this headline from the New Scientist website grabbed me: Biohackers are using CRISPR on their DNA and we can’t stop it.  It seems that one Josiah Zayner , a kind of science auteur, wowed multitudes on Facebook by injecting himself with the Cas9 enzyme that will theoretically alter his muscle mass.  And you can do it, too!  He’s published a DIY Human CRISPR Guide online and will sell you a kit to get started.

Well—that was fast.

Zayner’s enterprising spirit sounds like the good ol’ American hustle.  More seriously, Brian Hanley of Davis, California, got approval from a UC academic review board to test a self-designed gene therapy.  He didn’t tell them he planned to use it on himself, but . . . too late now.   Just last week, at Benioff Children’s Hospital in San Francisco, a 44-year-old with a rare genetic disease became “The First Man to Have Genes Edited inside His Body” using a procedure similar to CRISPR.

All these experiments may or may not succeed: the record of science is roughly two steps forward, one step back, with casualties strewn along the way to progress.  But it’s still progress, right?  Isn’t it good news that genetic diseases like Duchenne will, in all likelihood, be eliminated?  And if that’s so, why do we feel so nervous about it?

Granted, some people aren’t nervous at all.  The coming age of transhumanism can’t get here fast enough (provided we’re not overtaken by robots first).  But for the rest of us, what exactly is a bridge too far?

On the plain of Shinar, a people long ago proposed to build a tower to the heavens—the first application of technology to human progress (post-flood, anyway).  Observing this, the Lord noted, “This is only the beginning—nothing they propose to do will now be impossible for them.”  He wasn’t ready for that, so he broke up their communication, forcing them into ethnic groups that separated from each other.  That pretty much did it for science, for the next 2000 years—the great strides that began in the Scientific Revolution came as a result of shared information across national boundaries.  That communication continued and shows no signs of slowing down now; in fact, it’s sped up exponentially.  But where will it end?

Back to Babel, and “nothing they propose to do will be impossible for them.”  The Lord seems to have a higher opinion of our abilities than we do, and I guess he should.  He knows what we’re capable of, both the positive and the negative.

It remains to be seen if 21st-century science can change the very nature of humanity, or if unintended consequences will overwhelm any real gains.  But even if we could change the nature of humanity I still wonder if he’ll let us get away with it.  Mankind is his image—will he put up with altering the image?

I don’t think so.  I think he’ll stop it, by somehow confounding our communication, or hoisting us on our own petard of unintended consequences.  Or—he’ll stop everything.

Bible Challenge, Week 13: The People – Tabernacle

After last week’s fiasco, most of us would have ditched our “chosen people.”  The Lord even indicated that that was his inclination, but Moses (speaking in human terms, from a human perspective), “changed his mind.”  Or, as the first paragraph of the download puts it,

After the golden calf incident, God declared that He would let the Israelites go on to the promised land, but He would not go with them.  Moses intervened again: if God would not go with them, it wouldn’t be worth going.  The tabernacle was God’s answer.

Of course the Lord does nothing on the spur of the moment–even the words, “spur of the moment,” mean nothing in regard to a Being who lives outside of time.  So this was the plan all along.  But what was the purpose of the tabernacle?  And what made it even possible?

Click below for the printable download, which includes scripture readings, thought questions, and activities:

Bible Challenge Week 13: The People – Tabernacle

(This is a continuation of a series of posts about the “whole story” of the Bible.  I plan to run one every week, on Tuesdays, with a printable PDF.  The printable includes a brief 2-3 paragraph introduction, Bible passages to read, a key verse, 5-7 thought/discussion questions, and 2-3 activities for the kids.  Here’s the Overview of the entire Bible series.)

Previous: Week 12: The People – Failure!

Next: Week 14: The People – Sacrifice

Why Sex?

Several years ago, after a flurry of news about some outrage I can’t even remember, my best friend asked in frustration, “Why do we even have to have sex?”

One obvious reason: without a drive that powerful and all-consuming, the human species would have died out a long time ago.  Babies are fun and rewarding but they’re also a burden and a commitment—not just for the cute years, the learning years, the carpool years, and the teen years, but for the rest of a parent’s life.  Every child, no matter how delightful, introduces a huge element of risk and worry.  We don’t volunteer for complications without a powerful motivation.  That’s one reason why birth rates always go down in developed countries, and it’s one answer to the “Why sex?” question.

Still, I understand my friend’s vexation.  I’ve felt it myself.  Loaded guns are beneficial when used for self-defense or food procurement, but they are too easily misused.  Why did God make this—the equivalent of a loaded gun—the only means for procreation?  And then why did he place it in the hands of beings who were bound to misuse it, to devastating effect?

It must be about more than us.  everything he does also reveals something about him.

Sex must be about more than us.  Everything God does also reveals something about him.

A man sees a woman—he burns for her.  It may be sheer lust: a desire to possess.  But somewhere in that tangle of impulse and emotion is also (I believe) a desire for surrender.  Sex is an abandonment of self, if only for a second.  A sadist may get a thrill out of exercising control over another human being, but for the ultimate thrill he (or she) has to let go.  Even in casual hookups or manipulative relationships there’s some degree of giving, of providing what the other person wants in order to get what you want.

A sexually-healthy marriage is mutual surrender, deepening into love so rich it produces fruit.  Each retains its own but in the process becomes better.  Neither partner gives up individuality, but in community becomes a better individual.  Even, in community, produces more individuals to grow up and figure out who they are and fall in love with a member of the opposite sex and grow the family.  That’s how it’s supposed to work, at its best.  Personal desire—even lust—initiating a vast web of mutual interdependence.

On a spiritual level, God is called our Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named (Eph. 3:15).  Note—God is not the father of each individual, but the Father of family.  Obviously not biological family, or not that alone (heavenly families, as little as we know of them, aren’t biological).  But the One God, who exists in three persons, models a biological family on a spiritual level.  Among those three persons is mutual (ecstatic?) surrender, taking and giving, creating within its great heart a dynamic that produces a universe.

Creation imitates its creator: atoms surrender elections to form molecules; planets submit to gravity to form solar systems.  Every force is dependent on or bound to another force.  There are no rugged individuals in nature.

Autonomy in sex turns pathological, leading to a form of insanity where the drive consumes the driver.

In fact, true autonomy is pathological.  Everybody knows that, though we still like to pretend our souls are ours alone.  That’s how sex goes awry: the essential submission and surrender are crammed into one second instead of spread out in a whole-life commitment.  The rest is Me Alone.  Autonomy in sex turns pathological, leading o a form of insanity where the drive consumes the driver.  And creates countless victims.  As with all human excess, it can’t last long.  We’ll be forced back into mutual dependence somehow because there’s no thwarting nature, or the God who made it.

Bible Challenge, Week 12: The People – Failure!

“All the LORD commands us, we will do.”  I’ve heard people say it’s easy to obey God.  Maybe they don’t realize how easy it is to think they’re obeying God, while they’re really obeying their own insights and personal revelations.

True obedience begins with true worship.  “You shall have no other gods before me” is not just about graven images to some fertility deity, or even a well-meant stand-in for Yahweh when he seems to be occupied elsewhere.   It’s also about bowing down before your own ideas about him; casting him in your image, rather than the reverse.

Aaron’s intentions might actually have been good, or what we would consider “good.”  Maybe he knew better, but was trying to keep the situation from getting out of hand.  But guess what?  The situation got out of hand anyway.  Before judging him too harshly, I need to think about myself.  With all the advantages of insight and knowledge I have (which Aaron and the primitive Israelites did not) how many times have I failed to worship the true God?

Click here for the printable download of this week’s challenge:

Bible Challenge Week 12: The People – Failure!

(This is a continuation of a series of posts about the “whole story” of the Bible.  I plan to run one every week, on Tuesdays, with a printable PDF.  The printable includes a brief 2-3 paragraph introduction, Bible passages to read, a key verse, 5-7 thought/discussion questions, and 2-3 activities for the kids.  Here’s the Overview of the entire Bible series.)

Previous: Week 11: The People – Sinai

Next: Week 13: The People – Tabernacle

 

Bible Challenge, Week 11: The People – Sinai

Two weeks ago we read how Moses first met Yahweh on Mt. Horeb.  This week, Moses has a famous meeting with God on Mt. Sinai.  Did you know it was the same mountain?  Moses has become the mediator of a covenant, and now the people are called to a covenant ceremony similar to Abraham’s in Genesis chapter 15–but bigger.  Much bigger.

Also, last week we learned that Yahweh was far superior to the gods of Egypt in power.  This week we learn his superiority in another aspect, which is so taken for granted these days we forget how utterly striking it was for the time.  It’s connected with the idea of ‘holiness’–a word we’ve encountered but haven’t examined very closely.  Now is the time to do that, with fire on the mountain and the people of God coming face to face with their deliverer and Lord.

For a printable download of this week’s reading challenge, click below:

Bible Challenge Week 11: The People – Sinai

(This is a continuation of a series of posts about the “whole story” of the Bible.  I plan to run one every week, on Tuesdays, with a printable PDF.  The printable includes a brief 2-3 paragraph introduction, Bible passages to read, a key verse, 5-7 thought/discussion questions, and 2-3 activities for the kids.  Here’s the Overview of the entire Bible series.)

Previous: Week 10: The People – Deliverance

Next: Week 12: The People – Failure!

Bible Challenge Week 10: The People – Deliverance

The stage is set for a great contest between the God of Israel and the many gods of Egypt.  Almost all cultures at that time worshipped many gods, and each deity was limited to control of a particular land, city, or natural phenomenon–not one of them was in control of everything.  But the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was about to draw a line in the sand, so to speak, and challenge the “gods” of Egypt to come out and fight.

Pharaoh thinks he is in control–he owns Egypt, doesn’t he?  He’s put his mark on the people of Israel, and they belong to him.  But God will override Pharaoh’s claim with an indelible mark of His own, ensuring that these people will never be erased from His mind, or from history.

An 80-year-old shepherd is on his way to Egypt with a thundering message . . . .

Click here for the printable download of this week’s Bible Reading Challenge:

Bible Challenge Week 10: The People – Deliverance

(This is a continuation of a series of posts about the “whole story” of the Bible.  I plan to run one every week, on Tuesdays, with a printable PDF.  The printable includes a brief 2-3 paragraph introduction, Bible passages to read, a key verse, 5-7 thought/discussion questions, and 2-3 activities for the kids.  Here’s the Overview of the entire Bible series.)

Previous: Week 9: The People – Moses

Next: Week 11: The People – Sinai

 

Air-Tasting

We hear the best things in life are free–how many of us actually believe it?  But it’s true that the most vital things in life are free, such as blood, oxygen, and grace.  The five senses are free, too: how often do you pause to appreciate them?  Especially at the turn of the seasons, when the air can be as rich as wine . . .

The best time comes at dusk.  That’s when the essence of day rises to the top, to be poured off over the cusp of nightfall.  That’s the time to open a window or grab a chair on the porch: clear your head, close your mouth, and breathe.

Each season has its particular character, tone, and finish.

In spite of its reputation for softness and its penchant for pastel colors, I find the Spring vintages to be least subtle.  Spring has a full-bodied, even rowdy character, given drama and depth by rising sap and the mellow dollops of spring peeper.  The damp, earthy tones of spring can overbalance the concert—an embarrassment of riches that may cloy.  It’s an immature vintage, but at least it’s lively.

Summer is more complex than any other season and, in its way, more insinuating.  It owes much of its appeal to the uprush of coolness after a hot day: the sort of dramatic, built-in contrast that could make even cream soda taste riveting.  But even without the drama,  summer has enough singular virtues to shine: the fresh-cut grass varieties are ravishing; the post-rains deeply satisfying.  The dew-at-nightfall labels can be a tad overdone, except for those who enjoy sweet.  Of course, those sticky, clinging vintages that don’t lighten up at the end of the day should be outlawed.  Fortunately, those are few (at least where I live).  More than any other season, summer air links us to childhood–common to all varieties is the lingering aftertaste of chasing fireflies in the field.  This reminiscence  is the virtue that covers a multitude of sins.

Autumn is smoke and frost and nostalgia: a sudden chill that links youth with age, new beginnings with old melancholy.  It’s far more suggestive than the other seasons, yet after all these years I find it a bit of a tease; a complex blend that may appear to mean more than it actually does.  The dusty finish can be a bit too dry, for those of us who have many more autumns behind them than ahead.

But to my taste, the finest and purest vintages are the Winters.  Remarkably consistent, yet never repetitive, best enjoyed through a window raised a couple of inches in a slightly overheated room.  The draft created by a well-stoked wood stove draws it in like a steely stream.  Like the summer varieties, winter owes some of its appeal to contrast.  After the palate has been stifled in wood and artificial heat all day, winter air sweeps in fresher than fresh, cleaner than clean, an exaggerated, sparkly essence with no hypocrisy whatsoever.  Here at the end of the yearly cycle, the master of the banquet gases through the glass and murmurs in awe, “Truly, you have saved the best until last.”

Love surrounds us, not only in objects but in spaces.  Air: what could be cheaper or more abundant than fresh air?  We’d find out if it were ever cut off; then there would be nothing so dear.  But even poured out lavishly from the storehouse of heaven, how rich it is, how sweet, and how divine.

The Sixth “Sola” that Cripples the Church

The lively debate Martin Luther was hoping to generate with his 95 Theses quickly got out of hand and changed the world forever.  Obviously the time was right: when events are primed to happen, they happen.  Within decades the Reformation was firmly established on the “Five Solas” developed over the next half-century of Reformation teaching, namely

Scripture Alone

declaring the gospel of

Christ Alone,

effecting salvation by

Grace Alone,

apprehended in the believer by

Faith Alone,

for the

Glory of God Alone.

(That’s not the usual order, but you get the idea.)

This is all good news, and the Five Solas are a concise way of defining the aims of the Reformation as they shook out.  A concise definition would be sorely needed, for within Martin Luther’s own lifetime the Protestant movement became dozens of Protestant movements, energizing Europe in ways that weren’t always positive.  It was like releasing one of those mattresses that come packed under pressure: once out of the box, you’ll never get it back in, as it expands far beyond its original bounds.  A quasi-communist peasants’ revolt, numerous pietistic communes, a state church headed by the monarch, proliferating Bible translations and commentaries, a series of wars, the seeds of the Enlightenment, the eventual establishment of the United States of America: all these and more can trace their ancestry to the Protestant Reformation.  So can the sixth, unstated Sola:

by My Interpretation Alone

Once Luther realized his concerns about the Catholic Church had gone beyond an academic debate, and way beyond the original issue of indulgence-peddling, he went on to develop his ideas of where the Church had gone wrong.  One problem was the priesthood, which created a superfluous intermediary between the believer and God.  The Lutheran phrase, “priesthood of all believers,” meant that every follower of Christ had free access to God through Jesus, our only mediator.  We don’t need a priest to hear our confession and assign penance; we can work that out with God on our own.

“Every man a priest” was never meant to imply that every man had the right to make up his own mind about what the Bible said.  But it didn’t take long for the narrow interpretation of that phrase to stretch.  If Luther and Zwingli disagree about a point of scripture, who’s right?  If the Anabaptists are preaching a radical pietism, should they be stopped?  Aren’t they’re reading the scriptures for themselves, as we’re all supposed to?  Peeling off from Luther and Zwingli, in very short order, were Calvin and Muntzer, followed by Wesley and Fox, Alexander Campbell and Joseph Smith, Charles Finney and William Miller, Ann Lee, Ellen G. White, Charles Taze Russell, Mary Baker Eddy, William J. Seymour . . . and literally thousands more, founders of Protestant mainline denominations, offshoots, micro-movements, and cults.

The multitude of denominations is not entirely bad.  We all have different personalities, inclinations, and backgrounds; it’s possible that some will thrive in a particular Christian tradition where others would suffocate.  And while “organized religion” is dying all over the Western world, fewer churches are on life-support in the state-churchless USA.  But it’s hard to say whether their relative health is because of the Sixth Sola, or in spite of it.

 

What gives some people—mostly men, but plenty of women, too—the assurance that, not only can they interpret scripture for themselves, but their interpretation is right?  As in, “The rest of you are wrong.”  Damnably wrong, even.  Having grown up in one one-true-church and, much later in life, been declared apostate by another (much smaller) one, I’ve seen how the sixth-sola pattern emerges:

  • Reformer displays an early aptitude for religion.
  • Reformer involves himself in established church, where he may experience disappointment or disillusionment.
  • Reformer endures a period of intense self-examination and study, from which
  • Reformer emerges with a unique spiritual insight.
  • Reformer enthusiastically preaches his special insight, meets resistance from “establishment.”
  • Reformer collects a band of converts, may undergo real or perceived persecution.
  • Reformer, now the leader of a movement, receives affirmation from his followers.
  • Reformer decides his opposition is a) wrong, b) going to hell, or c) spawn of Satan.
  • All of which means that the Reformer is a) right, and b) well, just right.  Because.

Don’t get me wrong: the church is always in need of reform, and God is always reforming it.  But not usually through movement men (and women).  Luther was an exception, and there are others, but I’ve known and heard of many mini-Luthers who have it all figured out according to the Sixth Sola.  Some may be false prophets, but most are sincere believers (at least to start with) who let that special insight go to their heads.

A little humility would do wonders for them; a little charity and patience with those who aren’t where they are, and may never be.  “My interpretation” must be tested and debated and measured against established teaching—and perhaps discarded, if it doesn’t measure up.  But even if it’s a sound scriptural principle, the soundest secondary principles become shaky when they’re elevated to primary ones: right up there beside “Jesus is Lord.”

Jesus is Lord of our minds, our study, our interpretation.  As he submitted himself to his Father (and even, temporarily, to men), so should we.  It’s not for us to build little empires around a Sixth Sola; far better to live it out in the wider church, and let the Spirit be our interpreter.