My friend and great scholar Ben Witherington loves to say “A text without its context is a pretext for a prooftext.” We read the Bible slowly – and go slowly enough to pay attention to who lives next door to the passage you’re reading slowly.
Genesis 3:16 says quite plainly that “the husband shall rule over the wife,” and manly dumbclucks have cited this for centuries to sanction men lording it over their wives. But context! Adam and Eve have just squandered paradise by violating God’s one and only simple rule, and God is explaining that, when you sin, there are dreadful consequences – like husbands trying to lord it over their wives.
Deuteronomy 15:11 sounds cynical: “The poor you will always have with you,” justifying the stingy in doing nothing for and even blaming the poor. But the very next words in Deuteronomy 15 are “So open wide your hand to them.” The whole chapter is a stirring summons to lavish care on the poor. No wonder Jesus quoted this in John 12:8 and Mark 14:7.
Romans 13 gets a lot of airtime nowadays, as people whose political party is in power trumpet its words: “Everyone must be subject to the governing authorities, so do not resist the government.” Theologian and Bible scholar N.T. Wright points out that this indeed is how God wants the world to be; God wants his world to be wisely ordered. Context? Paul’s writing from jail, unjustly put there by cruel Nero.
Simply using your brain can help with a text like this. All governments are what God wants? What about the totalitarian regimes that have quoted Romans 13 to justify the violent subjugation of Christians? What about evil empires trampling on small countries, or genocide, or even a foolhardy government that treats the vulnerable as inhuman? God shudders, weeps, and will in the end judge such powermongers.
In Paul’s world (context!), to stand up to the Romans was futile. A few dared little guerilla attacks, and wound up getting themselves and their families executed. And back then, Christians weren’t in cahoots with the Romans, nor did they vote for or support them – like those Christians today who quote Romans 13!
The broadest possible context is the whole Bible itself. You can find thoughts like Psalm 37:25: “I have never seen the righteous forsaken or begging bread,” but then Psalm 73:13: “In vain have I kept my heart pure; all day long I’ve been afflicted.” Or Psalm 16:11: “You fill me with joy and pleasures” vs. Ecclesiastes’s repeated refrain, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” Psalm 139’s “You knit me together in my mother’s womb” vs Jeremiah 20:14, “Cursed be the day I was born.” Proverbs 18:22: “He who finds a good wife obtains favor from the Lord” vs 1 Corinthians 7:7: “It is better for a man to remain single.” Jesus said “Whatever you ask in prayer you will receive” (Mark 11:24), but then he asked “Let this cup pass from me” (Matthew 26:39) – and when it did not pass he prayed “Why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46), although he knew Deuteronomy 31:8: “God will never leave you or forsake you.”
God has bequeathed to us a large, diverse, complex neighborhood of ideas, moods, and beliefs about God and the life of faith. It’s like a beautiful Persian rug. No one little section is very lovely. It’s the intertwining of light, dark, curves, shapes, and color, deftly woven together to create a work of art.
The Bible and our life with God is such a work of art. It’s not just giddy happiness or dreadful misery or cynicism or joy. You can’t lift one verse of thought and think you’ve figured things out any more than you can unravel the magenta or fuchsia thread from a rug without ruining it. The context is the whole thing. There’s no mood, no circumstance, no trouble or delight you cannot find in Scripture, no emotion left unexpressed. A simplistic Bible would be as dull as a solid gray bath mat – and not as helpful.
How good of God to lavish such marvels in context with one another. No pretexts or prooftexts are needed. Read wisely and well, and you will become wise and all will ultimately be well.