In 1968 a graduate student at the University of Southern California was in love with a young woman who was also a student at USC. While she enjoyed dating this young man, she also had other relationships in her life. This graduate student was a very troubled young man. He could not understand how her feelings for him were seemingly so casual. He began having psychotic episodes over the fact that the young woman he professed to love deeply did not love him as much as he thought she should.
The troubled graduate student sought counseling with a psychiatrist associated with the university student mental health services. In several of the counseling sessions the graduate student told the psychiatrist that he was so upset with this young woman for not loving him at the level he thought was enough that he was going to kill her.
Even though the psychiatrist had his client hospitalized for intensive therapy and monitoring, later citing doctor/client confidentiality as the reason, no outreach or warning was made to the threatened young woman or her family.
When the graduate student was released from the hospital and after another psychotic episode, he did in fact take the young woman’s life.
The parents of the young woman sued the psychiatrist and the university claiming that their daughter and they themselves should have been warned of the danger to their child. After nearly a decade of legal process and argument, finally in 1976 the California Supreme Court ruled in the parents’ favor establishing that doctor/client privilege ends where the protection of others begins.
Since that landmark ruling all those years ago many states now have legal provisions under state health care law entitled, Duty to Warn and Protect. If a physician has reason to believe that a third party or element of society is in danger from their client, doctor/patient confidentiality is secondary to that of the safety of the third party or persons known to the physician to be at risk. The doctor has a duty to warn a person or persons the physician knows to be at risk from their patient.
I think that in these days when we are all at some level of risk because of religious extremists, when shooting wars are being waged by radical interpreters of misunderstood scripture, when culture wars are being waged in many legislatures by representatives of the religious right, it is absolutely necessary that more and more persons – lay and particularly clergy – who are trained and aware of established and informed biblical interpretation see it as their duty to warn individuals and groups regarding dangerous, twisted, and altogether wrong interpretations of sacred texts.
There are many examples of such misunderstood texts and teachings. But consider this example from Matthew 10:34-38. The text reads:
Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
A surface reading of this text Jesus sounds like the twisted graduate student mentioned above. It seems to reveal a person in need of psychological care. What nonsense if understood literally. Jesus sounds like a David Koresh, Jim Jones, Warren Jeffs, or hundreds of other religious wackos across the ages who have used such texts to justify their painful insanities.
We must warn people of the harm that is done by those justifying all manner of exclusions and false loyalties based on the purposeful misuse of such texts. Indeed, today the “not peace but a sword” text is even being used by evangelical members of the NRA as justification for T-Shirts bearing the message, “Jesus Loves Me and My Guns!”
The reason that Jesus’ words are remembered is because far from demanding a cult-like love, Jesus is instead calling for the end – not of family relationships – but an end to the spirit breaking practices of entrenched roles of power, indentured service, and property rights.
A father of a household had absolute power over his son in terms of the son’s future. The firstborn son inherited power and an unyielding expectation of practicing social stereotypes and common prejudices. The son’s wife was to become the servant of her mother-in-law and an unmarried daughter had no claim to anything or any status.
Jesus was saying in this text written down for the first time 30 years after Jesus’ execution, that discovering value and building upon the liberating spirit Jesus revealed in each person will completely break down entrenched roles of power and privilege! Loving relationships – not roles – always upsets the status quo.
Loving Jesus meant SEEING Jesus in those you love and being set free to love them even more!
Those who are followers of Jesus, – PARTICULARLY IN OUR TIME OF SURGING RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM AND NATIONALISM – are under the obligation to warn and protect each other from those who misuse on purpose ancient texts and claim to be endowed with biblical authority for their perversions or self-righteous personal power efforts, and extremist political points of view.
Followers of Jesus have a duty to warn of the danger inherent in the biblical interpretations of The Patriarch of The Russian Orthodox Church supporting Vladimir Putin and war in Ukraine. Followers of Jesus have a duty to warn of the danger in Franklin Graham and other evangelicals who praise Putin for his opposition to gay and lesbian people masked as upholding “traditional Christian, family values.”
Followers of Jesus have a duty to warn of the danger of the leadership of The Southern Baptist Convention voting to kick out local churches being led by women; kicked out because the denomination’s male dominated doctrine teaches that women cannot be pastors.
Followers of Jesus have a duty to warn of the danger and risk to us all in the Culture War being waged by persons claiming special knowledge of Jesus and banning books, rewriting American History, limiting health care choices for women, preaching white nationalism, and gerrymandering voting districts so only one point of view stays in power.
Followers of Jesus have a duty to warn of the social danger when nearly 300 local East Ohio United Methodist Churches chose to leave the denomination two weeks ago because of their interpretation of eleven scripture passages which they erroneously believe teach that homosexuality is INCONSISTENT with Christian teaching.
So, what are we to do? How do we warn and protect in these dangerously divided times?
When someone quotes scripture ask to hear that person give the context of the text which they have quoted. Ask them to articulate the reason the biblical writer was feeling compelled to write down those words in his or her time.
Know that if biblical texts are being used to justify or advocate for exclusion of persons, those texts are being misused and are grossly misunderstood.
Know that if the ancient texts and the life of Jesus is IN ANY WAY used to advocate for violence against persons of a different race, religion, nation, or sexual orientation, that use is an abominable lie.
Remember that nothing ANY BIBLICAL PERSON taught or said was transcribed in real time. EVERYTHING was remembered and applied and interpreted by people seeking to lift the transforming truth revealed in the personal experience with or memory of the likes of transformative prophets, social visionaries, and spirit-filled, loving, martyrs who saw the living, liberating presence of God in ALL PEOPLE.
And finally, when it comes to those who think about what it means to love Jesus perhaps remembering that the transforming presence of Jesus is IN our spouses, our siblings, and INour relationships.
Understanding Jesus in this way helps us to love our families and relationships even more.