By Tom Ehrich

The next time a Christian partisan shouts a Bible verse at you -- as if citing Leviticus 18.22, Exodus 20.13 or 1 Corinthians 7.4 ended all discussion of homosexuality, abortion or women's rights -- you can shout back, "Acts 4.32-35!"

Oops!

Yes, that is the passage that might have inspired Karl Marx: "no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common," and wealth "was distributed to each as any had need."

No free-market capitalism in that Biblical economy. No "prosperity Gospel," either, certainly nothing as lax as a tithe of merely 10%.

Or you could shout "Exodus 22.25!" about not charging interest on loans, or "Deuteronomy 15.1-3!" about forgiving debts every seventh year, or "Leviticus 19.9-10!" about leaving grain in the field for gleaners, or "Luke 19.8-9!" about Zacchaeus giving half of his wealth to the poor.

You'd be shouting alone, of course. Partisans and politicians won't be quoting those Scriptures in the next campaign on so-called "social issues," even though excessive personal indebtedness, unconcern for the poor, and concentration of wealth pose a greater threat to the American way of life than divergent patterns of sexuality and marriage.

Such Scriptures don't apply, modern folks will say. Utopian experiments never work. Without the ability to charge interest, no one would lend money. Sabbath years of debt forgiveness would disrupt banking and real estate. Gleaning is fine for ancient grain, but modern managers must maximize profit.

Maybe so. Maybe those Scriptures don't apply. Maybe early Christians were wrong to try communal living. Maybe a modern economy requires better management than Torah can provide. Maybe Jesus didn't link everyone's salvation to generosity, just Zacchaeus'.

By the same token, maybe Paul's insistence that women be subservient to men applied to one claque of gossipy women in Corinth and otherwise he stood with Jesus in welcoming women as equals. Maybe partisans for "protection of marriage" are right to ignore Paul's counsel that believers not get married at all.

Sound Biblical scholarship, you see, isn't content to find the one verse that proves a point. Sound scholarship considers the whole, the thousand-year trajectory of Scripture, realities of authorship and changing contexts, contradictions, new directions that emerged in the Christian era, changing manuscripts, and evangelists' promise of more revelation to come. Sound Biblical scholarship takes effort and discernment.

Those who claim they are "defending the Biblical faith" by demanding certain doctrine or moral code based on a few convenient Bible passages that prove their point are actually undermining Biblical faith in order to get their way.

It is unlikely that we Christians will abandon our 2,000-year quest for power. Like other people, we tend to believe that power, wealth and right-opinion will make our lives safe and our days long. But let's at least be honest about our addiction to control and stop calling it faith.

As it is, in flinging carefully selected Scripture-bullets at each other, we sound like children playing: "I got you!" "No, you didn't!" To resolve anything, we must reason together. We must listen to each other and to a broken world. No matter how much we loathe each other, we must sit humbly before God, our hearts open to grace and our minds open to God's ongoing revelation.

On Good Friday, we prayed, read Scripture and sang. Then we listened in darkness to the tolling of the church bell. Thirty-three rings -- not for the 33 ways in which we are right, or the 33 best verses for winning an argument, or 33 more votes needed to pass a slyly titled "Marriage Protection Amendment" -- but one ring for each year of Jesus' life.