Jim Coppoc.

In the summer of 2014, I toured the western half of the United States playing bass for singer/songwriter Jen McClung. Several of the venues that hosted us were churches. At one in particular – Hope Unitarian in Tulsa, Oklahoma – the pastor’s office was our “green room.” On the door of this office someone had posted a plain white sign with large black letters, “You could be wrong.”

One key aspect of the Christian tradition that we too often neglect is humility. Jesus talked about humility regularly. Peter, the first leader of the early Church, called us to “clothe” ourselves in it. Paul, who wrote more of the New Testament than anyone else, repeatedly advised us to humble ourselves to serve others.

As Christians, one of the most important ways to practice humility is to remind ourselves constantly that we could be wrong. Scripture is complicated. God’s mind is inscrutable. Our human wisdom is limited in so many ways.

One of my favorite passages in the Christian New Testament comes from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. Speaking of prophecy and knowledge, Paul reminds the church “for now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror… Now I know only in part…” Paul tells us that after things like knowledge and prophecy inevitably fall away, what remains is faith, hope and love, “and the greatest of these is love.”

In today’s Christian church, too many people quote other parts of Paul’s advice without any sort of acknowledgement that he was an admittedly flawed human with an admittedly flawed understanding. He was doing his best in his place and time to serve the church well, but he made it clear in multiple places that he could be wrong. The same goes for Moses, who was punished in scripture for misrepresenting God, but whom too many modern Christians see as the ultimate arbiter of God’s message to us. The same goes for any number of other prophets and poets and chroniclers and kings whose writing made it into the canon of scripture.

When we read the Bible, whether or not we are willing to admit it, we are all making our own rules about how to interpret it. Theologians call these rules “hermeneutics.” Some Christians’ hermeneutic is to cherry-pick individual verses, ignore contradictions, and take what they have found out of context to support preconceived cultural bias. Others’ hermeneutic is to tie themselves into intellectual knots trying endlessly to reconcile all the diverse viewpoints and voices the Bible contains. Others go deep into the rabbit hole of underlying languages and ancient manuscripts. Others apply arcane academic theory.

As for me, my hermeneutic is simple. I believe Jesus’ words carry more weight than Paul’s, or anyone else’s. I believe those who spent time with Jesus are more likely to have heard his message correctly than those who didn’t. believe that concepts that are repeated over and over again are probably more important than concepts that show up only once, especially outside of Gospel.

I also believe that we should take the Bible at its word when it claims that something is a poem, or parable, or dream, or letter to a specific church in a specific time, and not try to make these text anything other than what they are – the honest effort of dozens of inspired men and women to help you and I work through the overarching messages of love, grace, justice and inclusion.

But of course, I could be wrong.

Jim Coppoc serves the Ripley United Church of Christ at 400 S. Main St. in Traer. He lives in Ames and Traer, and also holds a “day job” as Director of Integrated Health Services for Center Associates in Marshalltown and Toledo. Jim can be found online at www.facebook.com/jim.at.ripley.