“I See Jesus”: Culture Wars and Biblical Interpretation

In a 2013 segment on Fox News, anchor Megyn Kelly sparked controversy when she stated, “For all you kids watching at home, Santa just is white. But this person is arguing that maybe we should also have a black Santa. But, you know, Jesus was a white man too. It’s like we have—he was a historical figure, that’s a verifiable fact, as is Santa—I just want the kids watching to know that.”¹

Shortly after Kelly’s inflammatory broadcast, a friend of mine asked me what I thought as a person of faith. I said something like this: “Unfortunately, we as human beings have a tendency of envisioning God as created in our image as opposed to human beings created in the image of God.” 

I think it’s a cautionary tale that if we are going to cite Scripture in such polarized times, we must do so responsibly, with an eye toward the text and its origins—exegesis, after all.

I say this because I am guilty of it too. I insert my own views into the Bible and substitute my own beliefs as if they are a golden calf to be worshipped. At YDS, I learned a lot about exegesis of Scripture, the painstaking discipline of examining and interpreting texts, but I didn’t hear about eisegesis. As I later learned, eisegesis is the inappropriate insertion of oneself and one’s particular views or biases into the text.   

In fact, it wasn’t until my ordination interviews that it was suggested by two of the conservative panel members that my sermon on a pericope from Isaiah was an eisegetical explication of the scripture. I was comparing Isaiah’s prophetic critique of inequality to present-day inequality. I audaciously suggested that, in a world of such great abundance, things like hunger and malnutrition shouldn’t have to exist. To me, it didn’t seem like too much of a stretch to claim common cause with Isaiah here. After all, the writer(s) of Isaiah didn’t approve of a scarcity mentality, in my humble opinion. 

(Mis)reading Romans

In my professional life as an ordained Elder in the United Methodist Church in extension ministry leading an immigration legal services ministry, I do a lot of scriptural cherry-picking. Leviticus 19:33-34, Matthew 25, and Hebrews 13:2 all roll eloquently off my tongue. As you can imagine, they are all about welcoming the foreigner/stranger. In my biased view—which I don’t consider that biased at all—the Hebrew and Christian Testaments are replete with instances where leaders of our faiths migrated to foreign lands and experienced firsthand the ethics of welcome and the cruelty of rejection. Imagine my surprise, then, during the first Trump administration, when then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions (a fellow United Methodist), in his own eisegesis, quoted Romans 13:1-2 to defend tearing children from their parents as a part of immigration policy. 

Make no mistake. I am not about to cede the battlefield of scriptural interpretation to those who would use it to justify cruelty. However, I think it’s a cautionary tale that if we are going to cite Scripture in such polarized times, we must do so responsibly, with an eye toward the text and its origins—exegesis, after all. The two conservative members on my ordination panel were not going to be convinced of anything less, nor should they have been. 

A Lens of Love

I am reminded of the lessons about the proper role of orthodoxy in the exercise of faith as taught by Methodist founder John Wesley, who was known to say, “All knowledge, all orthodoxy, is nothing without love.” I am particularly fond of these words attributed to him, “You may be as orthodox as the devil, and just as wicked.”² Modern Methodists like myself are fond of saying that each interpretation of Scripture ought to always proceed through a lens of love.

In every wedding I’ve ever presided and preached at, the couples ask that 1 Corinthians 13 be their chosen text (how I yearn that some couple would choose “The Wedding Feast at Cana”!). Proper exegesis reminds me that ancient context matters, showing us the momentous stakes of the situation at the time. The Corinthians are lording their spiritual gifts over one another, and it’s tearing apart the Christian community. The Apostle Paul—a former Pharisee and no stranger to strict orthodoxy himself—reminds us all in 1 Corinthians 13 that evaluation of spiritual gifts ought to proceed through a lens of love as well:

1 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant

5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;

6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.

7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.

9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part;

10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.

11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

May we all love well in our exegesis of Scripture.

The Rev. Paul Fleck ’11 M.Div. is Executive Director of Immigration Law & Justice New York. He has a B.A. from Trinity University in San Antonio and a law degree from the University of Texas, and has served as a pastor in two United Methodist congregations in Connecticut. He was a co-founder of the New Sanctuary CT movement that helped provide sanctuary to eight individuals facing deportation.