David Cloud’s Lackluster Leaven Lesson

In the lat­est edi­tion of the Fri­day Church News Notes, David Cloud men­tions a Catholic news­pa­per called The Leav­en, call­ing it out because accord­ing to Cloud, “To name a church paper ‘the leav­en’ [sic] one would doubt­less have to be igno­rant of the fact that the Bible always uses the term leav­en to describe sin and error.”

Note that last part, in which Cloud makes the absolute claim (he even calls it a fact) that the word “leav­en” is always likened unto sin and error when men­tioned in the Bible.

Pri­or to point­ing that out, he says that the news­pa­per title “reminds me that Roman Catholics sim­ply don’t
know the Bible.” In light of Cloud’s “fact” about leav­en, I can­not help but won­der how well he knows the Bible.

So I offer this hand­ful of vers­es which do not por­tray leav­en as sym­bol­ic of sin & error. He can call “excep­tion” if he wants, but he’s the one who stat­ed that the sym­bol­ism was “always” sin & error.

If you read any of them, make sure at least one of them is one of the New Tes­ta­ment references.

• Leviti­cus 7:13
• Leviti­cus 23:17
• Amos 4:5
• Matthew 13:33
• Luke 13:21

Frankly, if leav­en is sym­bol­ic of the King­dom of God, then The Leav­en is a great church news­pa­per title. (Though I’m most hes­i­tant of stat­ing it would be an apt title for a Roman Catholic news­pa­per… Okay, I would­n’t say that at all.)

And before any­one points it out: Yes, I do real­ize I’m not exact­ly using “lack­lus­ter” in the right con­text in this post’s title; I sim­ply could­n’t pass up the allit­er­a­tion it pro­vides (though even it ain’t too clever)!