Who Writes Your Theology?

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. - Luke 2:1-5

It’s often said that history is written by the victors - those who won the wars, who rose to power, who ran the show. When we think of how the beginnings of Jesus’s story unfolds, we see the ‘victors’ controlling history yet again - this time in the form of a census that moved ‘little people’ like Joseph and Mary like pawns on a chessboard.

The victors also tend to write the church’s theology - and the victors in this case tend to be educated males. So it’s no wonder, for example, that the entire translation staff for the original NIV Bible translation (which we use at City Church) was made up of white males. So there are occasions when you may be reading the word choice in a particular passage and wonder if a woman, a person of color, an LGBT person, or a person experiencing poverty might have translated a word or phrase differently.

Theology is what it is only because centralized churches have such power. If the poor, the women and the dispossessed sat at the tables where theological decisions are made, there would be a different set of sins.

- Sister Joan Chittister

For example, the famous “wives submit to your husbands” verse in Ephesians 5:22 actually lacks the word “submit” in the original Greek. Instead, it’s a carryover verb from the preceding sentence - “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph 5:21). And to make it worse, the original 1984 version added the title “The Christian Household” to the text BETWEEN verse 21 and verse 22, literally separating the sentence in half and obscuring the fact that “wives to your husbands” is simply one example of the mutual submission in verse 21. (In subsequent translations this ‘oversight’ about the placement of the title was corrected).

So how does this fit into a devotional, you ask? Maybe when you’re reading scripture or thinking about what church leaders tell you, you may want to keep keenly aware of what the Spirit is saying in your heart and through your experience in case there’s a new lens through which to perceive what God is up to in your life. And when you’re noticing a certain group of people being left out or pushed around like pawns on a chessboard (or the Holy family in a census), maybe it’s time to ask some questions about where God’s really at work in the situation. Talk with God about these things today.