Prooftexts or the Whole Truth

Prooftexts divorced from the larger context become misleading facts or even dangerous half truths.  We need to be careful that facts are not presented as isolated facts.  Some examples:

1.  The widely used statement that the country of Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere is both true and very misleading.  Or the statement that Haiti's basic problem is corruption.  The fuller truth, seldom mentioned, is that Haiti has been and is the most oppressed nation in the Western Hemisphere, that oppression is the primary cause of poverty.  Spanish genocide and slavery, French slavery and debt slavery, U.S. neocolonialism equal 500 years of devastating oppression.

2.  Another misleading fact:  black on black crime, and a higher murder rate in the ghetto.  Put in its larger context, we must talk about white on black oppression which has caused high abortion rates, high infant mortality rates, high incarceration rates and high separation and divorce rates.

3.  It is widely stated or implied that poor blacks are dysfunctional; their individual, family, community and cultural dysfunction proves that blacks are an inferior people.  The larger truth is that prolonged white systems of oppression such as slavery cause individual, family, community and cultural PTSD.  Oppression damage precedes and causes cultural dysfunction.

Since we are a highly individualistic society, 9 out of 10 white Americans tend to begin with a blaming the victim approach rather than an identifying the oppressor approach.  So we will consciously have to work on putting the identifying the oppressor approach first.  Another reason we begin with a blaming the victim approach is that if we begin with an identifying the oppressor approach, it might implicate us.

Another example of a misleading prooftext:

This might be the most important and most serious misleading prooftext of all time---the John 3:16 text.  John 3:16 contains an important biblical truth---personal salvation through Jesus Christ.  But standing ALONE, it represents only a half truth.


The whole biblical truth about the complete gospel adds Luke 4:18-19, Matthew 6:33 and Romans 14:17 to the mix;  Luke 4:18-9---the Spirit, the poor, the oppressed and Jubilee justice; 6:33---"
Set your mind on God's kingdom and his justice above everything else" NEB; Romans 14:17---"The kingdom of God is justice, shalom and joy in the Holy Spirit." (Noble paraphrase).

Acts 8:12; 28:23, 31 include both the kingdom of God and Jesus Christ as the whole, complete gospel.  Another variation of the same holistic theme:  Ephesian two asserts that both personal reconciliation and social reconciliation are based on the cross.  Yet another variation:  James two declares that faith without works [of justice] is dead.