Welcome to Douglas Wilson's Blog and May Blog, presented by Canon Press.

You may not be interested in interest, but interest is interested in you, July 24th, 2023.

Introduction.

We like to think of ourselves as biblical absolutists.

Whatever the Bible teaches, we want to accept straight up the middle and with no back

chat.

We want to have any operatory problem passages.

Whatever the Bible teaches, that is what we want to do.

But even though there should be no problem passages, there are some challenging passages.

But we have to be careful here because there are two kinds of challenging passages.

The first is the kind that just challenges our lusts.

To reapply what Mark Twain once said, it was not the parts of the Bible he couldn't

understand, it was the parts that he couldn't understand.

Quote.

But I say unto you that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed

adultery with her already in his heart, Matthew 528.

Jesus sets a high bar here and nobody really misunderstands the nature of how high it is.

There is a conflict certainly, but it is a conflict between what the Lord says and what

we would like to be able to continue doing.

It is the tension between God not leaving us alone and us wanting to be left alone.

But there is a different kind of challenging passage and the prohibitions of things like

usury and debt would follow in this category.

...