Some of you may not know that I moderate and contribute at Boarsheadtavern.com, one of the longest running group blogs in the blogosphere. Often, we will have a question addressed to the group as a “Question of the Day.” Yesterday, one of the “fellows” asked a question about how a Christian married couple could resolve what seemed to be an irreconcilable difference regarding how many children they should have.

It’s not a question I’ve ever experienced, but I’ve faced similar issues in counseling, so I jumped in with some comments, as did several other contributors, but upon reflection later, I posted again. Here’s that post.

In the cause of honesty, let’s go back to that original question.

What is the Christian response/attitude/healthy plan of action when spouses earnestly disagree about the number of children they should have/can care for adequately?

I should be more forthcoming. I don’t think there is a “Christian answer” or a “Biblical answer.” I don’t believe the Bible addresses this level of life questions in authoritative terms. Magic book and all that.

I think you have Christians, following Jesus as Lord and teacher, answering tough questions. It’s like when the Doctor looked at me and said we were going to lifeflight my dying mom to UK for all these measures I knew my mom didn’t want. I had my relationship with mom, my relationship with God, and what I believed was right at the time. I’m sure plenty of Christians would have condemned me for saying No to that Lifeflight and asking for a doctor that would sign off on no treatment. I’m sure there are long essays, complete with verses, justifying why my mom should be blind, ravaged by a stroke and on various machines right now. I took the road less traveled, at least in my case.

I’m living in Christ and trying to work things out. I don’t know the answers for my marriage. I just know this ongoing journey of learning to love my wife. I don’t have the answers for a family crisis we faced several weeks ago. I just have Jesus and my desire to follow him and love my children. I don’™t have the answers for all kinds of things that other Christians have answers to.

All I could do is seek a place where two people who love one another, Jesus and their children could keep on doing that. I’d probably err for the other person, because I haven’t found a way to experience grace and always get my way.

Just being honest. I don’t have answers and that’s the essence of the advice I’d share.

One of the aspects of “popular” Christianity that I really struggle with is the belief that the Bible has an authoritative pronouncement on everything. I simply do not believe that. In fact, the pursuit of that assumption has, in my opinion, some particularly bad consequences.

I don’t blame anyone for asking older, wiser, more experienced Christians for their input on such a difficult question, but I do have problems with a posse of grinning, Bible-waving, know it alls constructing a house-of-verses answer to every question, and then defending their answer as if it were a recording of Jesus accompanied by a signed note from God.

I’ve written elsewhere that the belief the Bible is a collection of verses to be raided, rearranged and republished to answer every question is a misuse of the Bible.

That’s not to say the Bible doesn’t answer questions or that good answers can’t be derived from the Bible, but it’s important to say this: every one of the Bible’s specific answers to our questions must be preceded, surrounded and supported by the Bible’s most important messages: the Gospel, grace, the love of God and so forth. A book like Proverbs doesn’t provide answers for the Christian until Jesus takes us back into the Proverbs and every statement is seen in the light of God’s “final Word” in his Son. The Bible isn’t a grocery store full of whatever we need at the moment, but it is more of a recipe, whose many different parts give us one message: Jesus.

What discourages me most is the way those who believe the Bible answers every question then approach the Christian life. They really believe the Bible removes all the questions and all the uncertainty. With the Bible — and their interpretations, of course — you can calmly endure and experience anything with complete certainty that the answers you find in the Bible are the complete and final answers. The resulting arrogance in approach and manner is one of the most difficult obstacles to being part of evangelicalism.

I believe the Bible gives us complete and final answers, but I believe those answers are not designed to remove the experiences of grief, faith, doubt, risk, questioning or uncertainty, but to give us the ultimate answers from God to our entire dilemma.

Years ago, two boys drowned in a community where I was on church staff. It was an unspeakable tragedy, and no one knew what to say. The minister at the funeral sought to comfort the family with his discovery that “God needed two angels, and he chose these boys.”

Such an answer can be faulted many different ways, but what interests me the most is that the minister believed he MUST say something certain, so he came up with this piece of popular mythology.

In fact, such tragedies are horrible features of a fallen world. They are part of our creaturely dilemma. Accidents happen because of many things that come together, most of them out of our control. We can rail at God for not stopping things, but we could just as easily rail at God for not making us all fish or for giving us lungs or for causing us to feel love.

Our “answer” is the Bible’s message of the human dilemma, the cross and resurrection, and the promise of the Gospel that God is restoring and resurrecting this world as a new heaven and a new earth where death is defeated.

In the meantime, we weep, grieve and lament. Not like those with no hope in Christ, but as those who do.

My BHT post was picked up at another blog, where the author made some good comments:

I think the examples in the post I cited are good examples of places where people can get legitimately stuck because the Bible doesn’t really give us a list, right? There’s a difference between a feeding tube and a ventilator or a heart machine; there’s a difference between despising children and having a few rather than many. And in those cracks it might be a little reasonable to be a little less certain about what we think we know.

Shouldn’t it? If not, what’s it mean to be “teachable”?…

There are hard pastoral questions which we all have to answer, but I think the first one turns out to be, “what if the answer is that it is actually up to God and not me?” That is, what if I can do only so much and God will have to do what He does sovereignty and perfectly?

Indeed.

Luther taught that God has two books. The first is the book of his secret will, his sovereignty over all things. We know this book exists, but we do not have it, and if the last chapters of Job are any indication, we wouldn’t do so hot if we did.

The other book is the book of what is revealed in the Bible. Not every question. Not every answer. Not every situation. But the answers, truths and situations we need for life and faith.

We can read the Bible and speculate. We can construct arguments. But we should do it with humility and the realization that we are, always, learners. As the commenter above said, there is much that is up to God and not up to us at all. I’d add that there are other things that God’s way of dealing with it is to allow us to make our own choices with less than perfect information, but with the goal of complete trust.

The best teachers aren’t always lecturers dispensing answers. Some great teachers teach, but also let the students think for themselves and answer for themselves. A less than perfect answer doesn’t demolish what that teacher is doing, but provides a new opportunity to teach.