Andy Crouch commands respect: he is “editorial director for The Christian Vision Project at Christianity Today International . . . a member of the editorial board of Books & Culture, and a senior fellow of the International Justice Mission’s IJM Institute.” As for training, he “studied classics at Cornell University and received an M.Div. summa cum laude from Boston University School of Theology.” When Crouch speaks, people listen.
Not quite one year ago, Crouch published his views in an article entitled “Learning from Fools,” (Christianity Today, February 2006, vol. 50, no. 2, p. 92); it was recently republished at Culture Makers. In this article he attempts to present his novel understanding of a pair of parables that he believes are “two of Jesus’ most misinterpreted parables.” (HT: Milton Stanley, Transforming Sermons).
I will not attempt to single-handedly refute Crouch on this matter: he has the approval of people on his side (understandably) and I am not a person who carries much weight; nevertheless, I will indulge in an observation or two. I will allow others, however, to provide the rebuttal: Brad H. Young, Norval Geldenhuys, Darrell Bock, and Walter L. Liefeld.1 Crouch’s interpetation can be compared and contrasted with these biblical scholars.
These parables, of a man considering the construction of a tower and a king assessing a possible war, are found in Luke 14.28-33; three preceding verses are included since they provide the context for the stories.
25 Now large crowds were going along with Him; and He turned and said to them,
26 ‘If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.
27 ‘Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.
28 ‘For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it?
29 ‘Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him,
30 ’saying, “This man began to build and was not able to finish.”
31 ‘Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down and consider whether he is strong enough with ten thousand men to encounter the one coming against him with twenty thousand?
32 ‘Or else, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.
33 ‘So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.’” - (NASB)
This passage has historically been understood to be a challenge by Jesus to his followers to consider carefully what they are about to do and the price that one must pay to be a disciple. Crouch, in parting with previous interpretations, sees it as a message about the opposite: “these stories are not about disciples, but fools”; Jesus is telling his followers that they need to “count the cost—not of discipleship, but of non-discipleship.”
Young writes,
The twin parables of the Tower Builder and the King Going to War (Luke 14.28-33) focus on the self-examination necessary to make a decision for surrendering to the call of Jesus . . .
“Jesus stresses the similarities between the word-picture of a king planning for war and the reality of an individual deciding to follow Jesus’ teachings. Would-be followers must enter the kingdom with open eyes, being fully aware of the demands.
“The focus of these two parables is the cost of discipleship. No one who begins the job and quits is worthy.”
Geldenhuys agrees while putting the parables in context:
The Saviour’s activities and words in Trans-Jordan had made Him amazingly popular with the masses, and great multitudes who had begun to look upon Him as the possible Messiah followed Him while He was on His way to Jerusalem. However, He desires to check this light-hearted manner of following Him, and so He turns to the multitudes and in a determined tone lays down His absolute demands for everyone who wishes to be His disciple and follower.”
Bock adds,
Jesus’ attention turns here to his followers, asking them to assess what discipleship requires. He wants them to be aware of what is required to walk the full route with him. His main point is that successful discipleship requires Jesus to be a priority in life. We must therefore count the cost of following him if we are going to finish the walk.”
Liefeld:
Jesus uses two different circumstances to illustrate his basic point: discipleship requires a conscious advance commitment, made with a realistic estimate of the ultimate personal cost. The practical nature of the circumstances Jesus so vividly pictures underlines the fact that Christian discipleship is not some theoretical abstract ideal but hard reality.”
Regarding the point of the parables being about the cost of discipleship, Crouch maintains that “Jesus’ first hearers would have known that label was exactly backwards.” He continues:
Make no mistake. The tower builder and the king are not models of discipleship. When does Jesus ever speak of discipleship as if it were a construction project, carefully calculated and accounted for, or a war, in which we marshal our own forces and find them adequate for the battle?
Jesus speaks of discipleship in building terms at the end of the Sermon on Mount, where he likens his followers to two men who construct houses, one on rock and one on sand. Even if he did not use a building metaphor elsewhere, this does not rule out his use of it here. After all, Jesus only once likened himself to light, water, the way, or a vine. Young says,
In the parable of the Wise and Foolish Builders, the first man constructed his home on the rock and the second used sand as a foundation . . . Mark, Matthew, and the church fathers attest to the tradition that by trade Jesus was a τεκτων, which is usually translated ‘carpenter’ . . .
“A rabbinic parable attributed to R. Jose the Galilean also uses the motif of the construction of a tower in an orchard. Clearly the building of a tower in a field was common.”
Jesus’ parable of a king considering war was particularly timely. The crowds wanted to make him king by force and Jesus may have been calling them to consider who it was that they would be up against: the full force of the Roman Empire.
Young also disagrees with Crouch’s dismissal of the builder and king as illustrations of disciples, saying,
One must carefully weigh the demands of discipleship in the same way that one plans a construction project based on a realistic estimation of the cost of labor and materials.”
Bock echoes Young’s words, arguing that Jesus uses these two parables to make his point about the cost of discipleship.
One is of a man who builds a watchtower over his land or over a city. Such an undertaking is expensive, and he must be sure such a project is affordable. Thus, it is best to estimate the cost before starting to build. How sad to start construction and not have the money to finish. All of us probably know building projects that started but did not get finished for lack of funds. What a waste to have half a building! Jesus drives the point home by picturing passers-by ridiculing the lack of closure on the project. In other words, moving toward successful discipleship takes reflection; it is not an automatic exercise. There is no positive testimony in a walk with God that is abandoned because the cost has not been properly assessed. Rather, it is tragic.”
Crouch’s perhaps views the passage in this manner in order to make a point that is seemingly important to him:
Biblical faith is the abandonment of our tower building, the surrender of our ambitions to foolishly fight our way to security.
“So Jesus invites the crowds following him to sit down and count the cost - not of discipleship, but of non-discipleship. Non-discipleship means believing that we will be able to complete our insane Babel of self-provision; non-discipleship means blindly rushing into battle as enemies of God, having vastly overestimated our ability to prevail. All this makes sense of the devastating words that immediately follow: ‘Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.’”
The problem is not that this exhortation is untrue or unnecessary; the problem is that these two parables do not teach this and if we impose a different understanding upon them we lose what they actually teach. To make this point Crouch might have turned to the twin parables of The Treasure Hidden in a Field and The Pearl of Great Price: both teach the meassage of abandonment and forfeiture that he imposes on these two parables in Luke. It is, as I said, a biblical message: right message, wrong passage.
But the message Jesus sought to convey here in Luke was clearly understood by those who heard such demands on other occasions (cf. John 6.60-66, when the multitudes walked away from his demands) and understood him to be saying the same here. The conclusions of Young, Geldenhuys, Bock, and Liefeld are convincing:
They teach human responsibility. For Jesus, the disciples must consider the all-encompassing demands of his call . . .” (Young)
“It means that [a disciple] must give Christ full control over his whole life with everything that he is and all that he possesses, and that under His guidance and in His service he should deal with his possessions in the manner that is best. . . . The important thing is that whosoever desires to follow Him must be inwardly free from worldly-mindedness, covetousness and selfishness and wholly devoted to Him.” (Geldenhuys)
“Jesus’ attention turns here to his followers, asking them to assess what discipleship requires. He wants them to be aware of what is required to walk the full route with him. His main point is that successful discipleship requires Jesus to be a priority in life. We must therefore count the cost of following him if we are going to finish the walk. His will and the direction he leads are the lodestones of our lives. We must present our lives to him and reflect values that honor God.” (Bock)
“The practical nature of the circumstances Jesus so vividly pictures underlines the fact that Christian discipleship is not some theoretical abstract ideal but hard reality.” (Liefeld)
Jn 19.22
Sometimes I think I must mentally edit Scripture as I read it: there are some verses and passages of which I have absolutely no recollection. Were I more mystical or charismatic, I might suspect that revelation is still being given and that, in my case, the Holy Spirit is publishing it in my Bible at night. I know this isn’t true, for when I return to the same passage after a little time has passed it’s as though the troubling verses were never there. Whew!
For whatever reasons, there are a few rare occasions that I actually do notice these elusive verses. It happened today as I read the following:
Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you - who are you to judge your neighbor?” - Jas 4.11-12 (NIV)
I am telling the truth; I am not lying: in my hundreds of times reading the Book of James, I have never seen these verses before. Or, at least, they never registered before. If you doubt this, read some of my older posts here and elsewhere or track down some comments I have made at various blog slopfests.
Having the right “editing” tools for the biblical text is important in such moments: given the correct resources, I can typically negate the clear teaching of the Bible in order to suit myself, i.e., to excuse what I most deeply want to do: indulge my flesh. Some of my most trusted tools failed me on this one, though. Take the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, for example, on the word translated “slander” above:
katalaleo, speak evil of, rail at, slander; katalalia, evil speech, railing, slander; katalalos, slanderer, railer, defamer.”
Mundle, who authored the article, doesn’t help and actually makes it worse.
In the NT katalaleo is not used of blasphemy against God; but slanderers (katalalous) are among the sinners whom Paul mentions in Rom. 1:30 as typical examples of paganism. It is linked with psithyristas, whisperers, talebearers (v. 29). The cognate nouns psithyrismos, gossip, tale-bearing, and katalalia are again linked in 2 Cor. 12:20 and 1 Clem. 30:3; 35:5. Similarly katalaliai, slanders, are among the sins which Paul fears he will encounter in the rebellious church of Corinth (2 Cor. 12:20): the fellowship of the community is destroyed by this sin. But the Christian churches are themselves the victims of such evil speech: it is the result of the hostile attitude taken up towards them by the heathen world around. Christians ought, therefore, for their part to be so much the more concerned to show by their “good behaviour in Christ” that the slanders against them are groundless (1 Pet. 2:12; 3:16). As “newborn babes”, i.e. those born again, who know the kindness of their Lord, Christians should put away malicious slander along with other sins (1 Pet. 2:1-3). The letter of James, too, with its particular censure of sins of the tongue, emphatically forbids Christians to indulge in evil speaking. It is not only an expression of arrogance and disregard for one’s brother, but also a slight to God’s law and God himself as the one Lawgiver and Judge of all (Jas. 4:11 f.). Thus the apostolic injunctions show us what the outworking of Jesus’ love-commandment should be in the life of the Christian churches.”
Note his words: “Christians should put away malicious slander along with other sins.” Hey, leave us something, will ya’!?!
If you are like me, you will think it outright unkind, unloving, and unfair to suggest that I must demonstrate my eloquence by being silent in the face of blatant and deliberate unwitting and unintentional provocation from another Christian. And I know you are, in fact, like me: I read a lot of other people’s blogs.
James obviously didn’t anticipate the advent of the internet and blogs or he would never have made such a demand of believers. If it were not for the spiritually-discerned criticism and mockery of others, a lot of us wouldn’t be able to blog at all. Think about some of the more popular blogs - I am not talking about Challies or Pyromaniacs - where blasting other Christians is the soup du jour each day and every day (as long as it is called today).
Even this post is a criticism of others. But in my heart (or my “heart of hearts,” since that means I really, really mean it) I give thanks and glory to our Father: “I thank you, God, that I am not like other bloggers . . . ”
We not only frequent these blogs faithfully but we add our comments and (unconsciously) become more like these caustic, abrasive, arrogant - my own personal unholy trinity of self-possessed and meticulously-maintained attitudes - bloggers.
Is it not possible to correct or confront a fellow Christ-follower without demeaning or ridiculing them? Can we not maintain respect for them and treat them with dignity? Can we not love them as Christ has loved us?
Well, that seems to be what James is saying, but we could always fall back on Luther’s opinion of the book. If James is really saying what he appears (on the surface, i.e., to the untrained eye of the rabble) to be saying, then we cannot indulge in such exquisitely-satisfying, orgiastic feeding frenzies. It would take a very learned theologician to circumvent what James is saying and we must honestly ask ourselves the critical question: Is it worth it?
Well, I know what I think: I think I need to get some more tools.
Jn 19.22
When I had been married only a few months, my wife and I left our house to run some errands. We were gone for just over an hour and returned to find that we had been burglarized - or “burgled,” as some might say. Someone had hurled a rock through the back door, gone through our things, and stolen my wife’s jewelry (primarily Navajo and Zuni pieces she bought when she taught on the reservations in New Mexico and Arizona).
The sentimental value of the jewelry was significant but, being resilient and sensible, she only said that we and the cat were safe and that everything else could be replaced. We both were left with a dirty feeling, however: we had been violated. Someone had crossed our boundaries contrary to our wills and taken from us something - perhaps a false sense of safety and inviolability - that could not be replaced.
Almost 27 years later, there are still times when my wife and I come home to an empty house and, in the back of our minds, wonder what we will find. True, we do have two ninety-pound dogs inside but they are of such a nature that they would likely help find things if the thief would give them a dog biscuit first.
I felt a similar - in some ways deeper and more personal - emotion a few days ago after posting a comment on (where else?) a Christian blog. Mine was the second comment and raised some issues and put forth a perspective not mentioned in the post or the other comment. My comment popped up immediately; no other comments were made that day (I know: I am narcissistic enough to go back and check to see if anyone has expressed great appreciation for the obvious wisdom and insight I have displayed).
The following day I did find an additional comment, this one from the owner of the blog. His comment was eerily familiar at some points: he had not only presented my views as though they were his own but had not been courteous enough to at least say that his thoughts were similar (although not triggered by) my own. The feeling of theft, however, came from this: he had clearly written his comment at least twenty-four hours after mine (since it did not appear until the following day) but had changed the time stamp to make it seem that he had left his comment two minutes before I had posted mine. I, too, use WordPress and this is quite easy to do.
The net result is that my comment looks redundant and as though written by someone oblivious to what others have said - which I sometimes am, I suppose, but not in this case. I emailed the individual and asked for my comment to be removed but it has not been. Too much trouble, I guess: it takes two clicks of a mouse to delete a comment in WP.
The (perceived? actual?) theft was of intellectual property; unlike material goods, ideas and thoughts cannot be replaced once stolen. Intellectual property rights are something I find too many Christians too ready to ignore. Perhaps they rationalize that “all truth is God’s truth” and they don’t have to honor another’s original thoughts. Maybe they feel that being “no respecter of persons” is an attribute of God that is particularly applicable to ideas and thoughts. Or maybe they are just thieves with consciences seared as with a branding iron.
I must confess (at least to the possibility) that this offense stung more because this is a young, rising, American Christian-Idol-wannabe, another of the fake-it-til-you-make-it pretty boys that are so popular with the hero-worshiping masses of our subculture. I, on the other had, have all the appeal of an Old Testament prophet. I don’t think it’s the youth that troubles me - I don’t feel this way about other young men (I don’t compete with women in this testosterone-driven fashion) and, in fact, do what I can to help them become more successful. And I don’t think it’s his looks that I resent, either: I’ve never liked smarmy smiles and fatuous faces. He is pretty, though.
No, it is the theft itself that troubles me, and it is a personal (primarily, I confess) and corporate injury that I feel. I have dealt with non-Christians who have done the same but (a) I don’t have the same standard for them, and (b) they don’t act so arrogant and smug about it. It’s as though they have a clearer sense of right and wrong than corresponding Christian thieves.
As alluded to previously, the theft also troubles me because I get the feeling that this individual is trying to achieve a place of prominence in Christian pop culture. He is quite the sycophant when dealing with the recognizable elite of Christendom but doesn’t seem to have a lot of time for the hoi polloi, which includes me.
This is the heart of the corporate injury I feel. I have been a believer for more than thirty adult years and have seen the shame brought upon the name of Christ by people with great form and no substance. “These are the men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam; wandering stars . . .” They will be held responsible for their exploitation of others; we will be accountable for our glorying in them and veritable worship of them.
If I were more given over to bitterness, I would stop putting fresh ideas and things online. It only invites theft, it seems. I’m not so bitter, though, so I’ll continue to put things out there and run the risk. To be honest, my contributions are not that outstanding and no one is going to get rich from my ideas. Hopefully, though, a few will be helped from time to time by my words.
I am, however, just angry enough to stop reading such a thief. Who needs another prick of one’s sensibilities? I have more than enough already.
Jn 19.22
