Heart, Mind, Soul, and Strength

Jesus in the Wilderness: Why the Tempter Left

2012-01-26T19:15:00.003-06:00

These thoughts are in the style of how the ancients pondered over Scripture in the Talmud. After Jesus had been in the wilderness, we read that the tempter left and that the angel of the Lord came.

Why did the tempter leave Jesus?

Because the tempter went in search of someone who would yield to sin, as it is written, "Evil pursues sinners," (that is, not the righteous). Proverbs 13:21.

Because Scripture was in his heart, as it says, "I will keep your words in my heart, that I might not sin against You." (Psalm 119:11)

Because he resisted temptation, as it is written, "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." (James 4:7)

And why did the angels come?

It is written, "The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him." (Psalm 34:7) And again, "Let the angel of the Lord chase them away" -- that is, those who seek after his soul. (Psalm 35:5)

Sinners obsessed with an angry God

2012-01-23T19:53:00.002-06:00

The fear of hell has gained an unBiblical place in some discussions about Jesus. How can we tell if hell has been pushed to the front too far? We can compare it to the place it has in the gospels. Doing a quick verse search of the four gospels (AV), I found the words "hell, condemn, perdition" 25 times in the gospels* -- and the words "heaven, forgive, save" 209 times. So if someone wants a truly Biblical gospel approach, heaven should get far more time than hell -- and Jesus more time than either of those. I'm not saying you have to count words; but I am saying if the focus leans towards hell, then the priorities of the gospels have been turned upside down.

Is 50/50 -- equal time -- unbalanced? Yes, 50/50 is unbalanced when the original source material is closer to 90/10, in the nearest round numbers. Here's an example: do you remember how microscopes and magnifying glasses work? They enlarge things, and they measure how much magnification something gets. To get a 50/50 presentation here, you'd have to place a nearly 5x magnification on hell -- and in the same way you'd have to reduce the place of heaven to get it down to only 50%.

Jesus did not preach, "Repent, or you'll go to hell." He did not preach, "You're going to hell; repent so you go to heaven." He preached, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Then he spent a lot of time teaching what that kingdom of heaven is like. Preaching the good news does not need to be without any mention of hell -- but too many people preach a message where heaven is overshadowed by hell. That approach has it backwards. The gospel is that, in Jesus, the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

* Yes, "perdition" was actually used in that old translation, which is why I searched for it.

"People take different roads" in spirituality

2012-01-22T08:41:00.000-06:00

It's good for anyone to be able to look at what their critics are saying, to weigh whether the criticism has merit, and to explain their thoughts clearly. So as an exercise, I saw this saying this weekend attributed to the Dalai Lama, and thought it would be good to take a look at it:

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness.
Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost. (attributed to the Dalai Lama)

Towards the end of this post I've put more detailed thoughts -- which were written first but are lengthy. Not everyone will care to read that much detail. But here I did want to offer possibilities of how to explain Jesus' way better in ways that are quick and to the point.

Option #1

Different roads lead to different places.
If the path you are on does not lead to reunion with God, then you are lost, and the happiness and fulfillment you find apart from that will not last.

Option #2

If people are not following Jesus, they are not on the road to where Jesus is.
The other spiritual leaders of past ages are in their graves; Jesus rose from the dead.
See for yourself whether all paths lead to the same place.

Option #3

There is no such thing as a great truth that it is good to ignore.
There is no such thing as a great philosophy that avoids great truth.
There is no such thing as a great spirituality that ignores Jesus.

Option #4

If we strive for right speech then we avoid wrong speech.
If we strive for right action then we avoid wrong action.
If we strive for the right road then we avoid the wrong road, and those on the wrong road are lost.

More detailed thoughts are below. For those who stop here: Let me know how you'd respond.

I should mention from the outset that I haven't verified whether the quote actually comes from the Dalai Lama.

The first step in looking at this quote is to see it for what it is, and how it fits in the existing conversation between people of different faiths. The words chosen about "different roads" and "lost" suggest that he's thinking about Christianity and Jesus. Even if he firmly believes that the same applies to all faiths, still the words seem specifically selected to address Christianity first and foremost. In particular, the wording seems to be chosen to disagree with Jesus' call "Follow me", his claim of being "the way, the truth, the light" -- that "nobody comes to the Father but through me", and how he has come to seek and save the "lost". If this is the intended meaning, then the quote is a claim that Jesus' teaching is false or meaningless. The original quote above seems intended as a rebuke to any Christian who would stand by Jesus' claims to uniqueness, and to evaluate Jesus' claims not in terms of truth or goodness, but in terms of whether someone could find a way to be happy somewhere else.

Look at how the goal of life is portrayed in that saying: "seeking fulfillment and happiness." It speaks of fulfillment and happiness as if they are goals in themselves, and that they might be attained in any number of ways. It implies that our own feelings of fulfillment and happiness are the goal of our spiritual path; there is no recognition of God, no recognition that fellowship with God, reunion with God, reconciliation with our neighbors -- that these have a necessary and unmovable part in the kind of "fulfillment and happiness" that is meaningful and lasting.

Look at how the idea of "one true path" is portrayed in that saying. The way of following Jesus is not here portrayed as Jesus himself, but as "your road" -- a private thing, not something belonging to the whole world or all of creation. The saying is meant to claim the equal validity of all paths -- and to characterize those who say there is one path as narrow, arrogant, and prideful. It seems meant to silence those who teach that Jesus really is the Messiah, the world-wide ruler ordained by God the Father to bring peace to the nations. In silencing and ignoring Jesus, it silences and ignores the hope he brings.

I'm sure the reader will have noticed that the original saying does not recognize or acknowledge God's existence, and turns all spirituality into a private matter without basis in reality. The only measure that it recognizes is human emotion, specifically "fulfillment and happiness".

I've mentioned before in some detail ways in which Jesus is unique, from the unmatched power and beauty of his teachings, to his credible knowledge of the end of all things, to his resurrection from the dead. So I will not trouble myself too much right here with explaining again all the ways in which Jesus is unique. It is important for us to know how to answer when people claim that Jesus' uniqueness is a private or personal opinion rather than a demonstrated and beautiful truth. The question here is: Once we have seen Jesus' uniqueness, can we explain it to other people in such a way that their minds will be open to hearing? The appeal to "different paths" often means "my mind is closed to Jesus."

Jesus' greatness is apparent to those who read the accounts of his life. Jesus' greatness is seen as a threat by those who would like a Jesus-free spirituality. But how do you justify avoiding something despite its greatness? It can't be done; it is clearly narrow-minded, shallow, and petty. Still there are some who want a way to ignore Jesus or make him irrelevant. The simplest way to do that is to characterize the people proclaiming his greatness as intrusive meddlers who are themselves the petty and narrow-minded ones.

Can we find a way to explain so that other people will be open to hearing? In some cases that will depend on the hearer; some people, in taking up a saying like that quoted above, intend only to get rid of Jesus from their religion, to stake a claim that a Jesus-free spirituality is just as valid as following Jesus. So the above are my thoughts on how we might explain our thoughts, and how we may correct how our thoughts are mischaracterized by that original saying.

So what would you say in response?

Catch-22 Doctrines

2012-01-18T19:37:00.001-06:00

Over time, a church's teachings grow. I'm not talking about the space of mere years, but the course of centuries. Every once in awhile, though, as the church keeps adding to its teachings, the old doctrines and the newer ones don't blend well.

I'll start by picking on my own group: Lutherans. Originally Lutherans were a plain-spoken people, taking straightforward approaches to Scriptures, and being open about the fact that the early church held some Scriptures in higher regard than others. There were books in the Bible that the early church accepted from the beginning, and others that were only accepted gradually or reluctantly. Lutherans had no problem saying that the books of Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation "had a different reputation" in the early church, in ancient times -- a more uncertain reputation, to be exact, than the well-accepted books such as the gospels, or most of the letters in the New Testament. To this day a well-trained Lutheran theologian will handle some books of the Bible with more caution than others out of respect to the earliest church's different opinions of them.

Over the long years the idea of "attested by the early church" was assumed and was no longer the central focus; "inspiration" started to gain in importance. Is Scripture inspired? Does inspiration have levels? Does "inspiration" allow for treating books differently depending on whether or not the early Christians received them? If all the books are "inspired" in the same way, on the same level, then does that leave any room to say "no doctrines are based on the books that the early church did not receive from the beginning"?

How can a book of the Bible be "inspired" (and possibly inerrant, according to some groups) -- but not suitable for forming doctrines?

I've noticed that some other groups have "Catch 22" scenarios in their teachings, areas where there is tension (to say the least) between different teachings.

If any fellow-Lutherans read the blog -- what do you think?

For the non-Lutherans out there -- have you seen any "Catch-22" doctrines around?

The religion of Jesus, or the one about him?

2012-01-15T19:07:00.000-06:00

Critics of Christianity have a stock saying that they are fine with the religion of Jesus, but not the one about Jesus. There is an implied claim here: a claim that Jesus didn't think he had any special place in the world, that Jesus claimed no special role in our understanding of God or in the kingdom of God (assuming there is such a thing), and that people are distorting the real Jesus if they are teaching about Jesus. (The same can be seen in the "Quest for the Historical Jesus" where the implied claim is plain enough: they claim that the Jesus of the Christians isn't the real one who lived in history.)

Anyone can make a claim; the question is how well a claim holds together when it is examined. Rational people will test claims to decide on their beliefs. So this set of claims about Jesus leads us to look at what we know about Jesus, and see what he taught. There is little argument whether Jesus taught about love, mercy, compassion for the poor, and the kingdom of God. The question is whether he also saw himself as having any special role in all that.

Where do we turn to learn about Jesus? Skeptics of Christianity might be inclined to turn to the alternative gospels outside of the Bible -- but in the alternative writings Jesus can be almost otherworldly maybe not even truly human. In some of the alternative gospels Jesus is no longer even identified as "Jesus" -- he is instead "the Savior". If a skeptic sets out on a quest to find a version of Jesus who fits that secular narrative, someone who was just a spiritual guy that was misunderstood after his death, the alternative gospels will not help him to find that.

Historians often take the view that the closer we are to the source, the better the material. And most scholars of early Christianity consider the Gospel of Mark to be the earliest record we have of Jesus' life. So that will be our source here. Some scholars consider the Gospel of Mark to be earlier than the fall of Jerusalem in the year 70 A.D.; others place it barely later than the fall of Jerusalem. Either way, that is within the lifetimes of many who had known Jesus in person. So the Gospel of Mark is early enough that we should be able to get fairly reliable information from it. If we limit ourselves to the Gospel of Mark as the earliest source, what does Jesus say about himself there?

One of the ongoing conflicts recorded in the Gospel of Mark is the question over Jesus' authority -- that is to say, the question over whether Jesus has any legitimate, identifiable position in religion. It's very much the same question the skeptics ask about him. Here in the Gospel of Mark we find early records of Jesus saying,

The Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins. (Mark 2:9)
The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. (Mark 2:28)
The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Mark 10:45)

The "power to forgive sins" struck the religious authorities as out of bounds; the accusation of "blasphemy" comes up here for the first time in Mark's narrative. ("Blasphemy" was a religious crime which, back then, carried the death penalty.) "Lord of the Sabbath" was probably a surprise to them. The part about giving his life as a ransom again sounds as if he thought he had some sort of special mission.

Some of the material he taught about himself is embedded in parables or prophetic statements.

Jesus tells a parable comparing God to the owner of a vineyard who sent the tenants a series of messengers who were not respected, so last of all he sent his only son and heir. (Mark 12:1-12)
In that same passage, he also quotes a prophecy and applies it to himself: The stone which the builders rejected has become the capstone. (Mark 12:10)

Here are two different sayings where, at face value, they sure look like Jesus is making unique claims for himself -- about how his relation to God is different than any other messenger, and why he is in the world, and his role in building the future.

More than once, we see Jesus himself pressing the issue of who he is, directly bringing that question to the front of the conversation.

Jesus is the one who asked the disciples, "Who do the people say that I am? ... Who do you say that I am?" This concludes with Simon Peter recognizing Jesus as "the Messiah" (also translated "the Christ"), a long-foretold figure with a unique place in all of human history and in the kingdom of God. (Mark 8:27-30)
Jesus is the one who challenged the religious leaders about whether the Christ or the Messiah was merely King David's descendant. Jesus quotes the Psalms speaking about the Messiah, "The LORD said to my Lord, sit at my right hand til I make your enemies your footstool," placing the Messiah as the one sitting at God's right hand. (Mark 12:35-57) He then challenges the religious leaders on how the Messiah could be merely David's descendant, when David spoke of him like that.

In these cases, Jesus is the one raising the question about who he is and what it means to be the Messiah.

Eventually with all the confrontations with the religious authorities, they had Jesus arrested. At the trial, the high priest asked whether he was the Messiah, son of the Blessed One, and Jesus answered:

I am, and you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. (Mark 14:62)

The Gospel of Mark records that this answer was considered blasphemy, and played a direct role in Jesus being sentenced to death.* As has often been mentioned about the "revised Jesus" who was merely misunderstood -- it's difficult to see why anyone would have had him executed.

But let's stop for a moment. Everyone who considers a thing should consider both sides, otherwise they haven't considered it all; they have merely argued a position. I set out also to look through the Gospel of Mark and find sayings of Jesus where he portrays himself as no different than others. Here is one that seems less special than others just considered:

"A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country, and among his own relatives, and in his own house." (Mark 6:4)

Many of the skeptics of Christianity might concede that Jesus was a prophet. The atheists might concede this because they don't believe in God, and a "prophet" is at best a guy who is spiritual. Others could call Jesus a prophet on the grounds that there are plenty of prophets and so someone could call Jesus a "prophet" and still maintain that Jesus has no unique place in our understanding of God.

Jesus also said:

Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother. (Mark 3:35)

Here Jesus claims kinship with anyone who does the right thing -- as Jesus says, the will of God. If Jesus is in the brotherhood of man, surely he's one of us.

However, whether he is one of us is something that both sides agree on. The question is whether he saw himself as having a unique place, such as Messiah.

I don't understand what course of open research would cause a person to consider what Jesus said about "prophet" but not see "Messiah" and "right hand of the LORD" and "authority to forgive sins". I don't understand what course of open research would cause a person to consider Jesus as brother to all who do God's will, but not see him challenging his disciples to think about who he is, and challenging the religious teachers about Messiah's place in the big scheme of things. It seems that someone would have to pick through the Gospel of Mark very selectively to miss the times when Jesus claims a one-of-a-kind role in the history of the world and in our relationship with God.

I know, all the things that Jesus said about himself have come under challenge as to whether they are "authentic" sayings. Even the high priest's declaration of blasphemy and tearing his robes in response has been challenged as to whether it is "authentic." But "authentic" seems to be judged by the criterion of whether it fits with the secular orthodoxy that insists that Jesus couldn't possibly have said that because Jesus must have been misunderstood, or have had his sayings embellished, or anything that would mean he never actually said such a thing. That is to say, the challenge seems to be based on secular dogmas, which raises the question: is the criterion a closed mind that won't give a fair hearing to the alternatives? Or is there some sort of actual historical reason to doubt that Jesus said these things? If Jesus did say these things, it would explain how the religion came to be about Jesus so very early in its history.

And so there, in the earliest gospel, we find Jesus challenging his disciples about who he is -- where we find he sees himself as the Messiah. We find Jesus challenging the religious authorities about whether the Messiah is more than they realized. What we don't see is just a guy who was misunderstood about whether he really thought he was unique.

Here I've made no argument about whether anyone should agree that Jesus is the Messiah, or agree that the Messiah is at God's right hand, or agree that Jesus is unique in all of history. But the earliest records we have say that he claimed it about himself.

* To us, the "clouds of heaven" part might seem overdone. But it's not the only time he referred to himself as coming on the clouds; elsewhere he said that the people would see "the Son of Man coming on the clouds with great power and glory" (Mark 13:26).

Should Christians keep the Sabbath?

2012-01-11T20:18:00.002-06:00

"The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." - Jesus (Mark 2:27)

Most Christians have already heard the basic things the Bible teaches about the Sabbath. The Sabbath was given to Israel as a day of rest. Jesus healed on the Sabbath; some objected that he was a Sabbath-breaker. He explained the good of his actions, showing from their own Jewish tradition how the Sabbath did not stop someone from doing a greater good: they would circumcise a child into the covenant on the eighth day even if it fell on the Sabbath; the priests would serve in the Temple on the Sabbath; someone could rescue an animal that had fallen into a pit on the Sabbath day. He said the Son of Man was Lord of the Sabbath. After Jesus' ascension the early church leaders met to discuss which of the ancient Jewish laws applied in the church among the Gentiles, and the Sabbath was not mentioned. In the New Testament letters, we are told not to let anyone judge us about the Sabbath day. Paul wrote that some people valued all days equally, and some held one day above another -- that each of us should be fully convinced in his own mind, but that we should not judge each other or cause someone to trip up over these things.

So there we have one of the delicate balances about the Sabbath: we are not made to serve it. But still it was made for us:

"The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." - Jesus (Mark 2:27)

If it was made for us, we are permitted to enjoy its blessings, keeping in mind: the Sabbath is not Lord over us us; Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath.

Related notes:

Somewhere I read that in ancient times a pagan had criticized the Jews over the Sabbath, saying they were lazy to keep the Sabbath because a Sabbath would leave the work un-done. The Jewish response was: the command says "In six days you shall do all your work" and on the seventh rest -- so that the whole command was kept not only in the one day of rest, but also in the six days of completing all the work so that it was possible to take a day of rest without neglecting important things.
The Sabbath was given as a memory of God resting from his work, and also as it says in memory of Israel's rescue from slavery. So the Sabbath is a lasting memorial of a rescue from slavery. In our age it can be a reminder not to become enslaved willingly. Some types of people become over-committed, and we risk becoming slaves to ourselves, never having a day of rest.
Once in war-time the staff of an aluminum plant worked seven-day weeks. At the end of the war, when they first scaled back to six-day weeks, the plant produced more per week in the six-day weeks than it had in the seven-day weeks. I have this on the word of one of the plant managers, who was my grandfather.
Again, I read somewhere that while people do produce more if they have a day of rest, that we must not imagine that is the true purpose of keeping a Sabbath: as if the true purpose of man were to be productive workers, and the Sabbath was meant to serve our productivity. Instead, the Sabbath is kept as a blessing in itself, not for the sake of something else.
It's likely that the things I've remembered reading, as mentioned in this post, can be found either in the text or footnotes for A.J. Heschel's The Sabbath. I would give that book mixed reviews, but it was well worth the read.

The temptation of Jesus -- and the temptation of ministry

2012-01-08T07:49:00.000-06:00

At the beginning of Jesus' public ministry, his first action after his baptism was to go to the wilderness for a time of fasting. How did he spend the forty days? Did he spend the time fixing his mind on the things he needed to accomplish? Did he fix his mind on the good he was setting out to achieve? Did he picture the ultimate success of his achievement in the world to come?

We only know this: a tempter came with these temptations: Prove yourself. Use your abilities and powers to serve yourself -- it's not much, and nobody could dispute that you need it. Use God's favor and protection to glorify yourself. Gain the world for yourself.

Jesus said no. We say yes, too often. Those same temptations come to everyone who sets out on any major task. Those temptations come even to people who set out to achieve something good -- maybe especially to people who set out to achieve something good. We think if our goals are good then we have already gotten past the temptations. We're wrong about that. The temptations are right with us: Prove yourself. Make it about your own reputation. Use some of your status for your own benefit. Gain recognition and honor. Gain something for yourself -- after all, you've deserved it, haven't you? Aren't we supposed to be gaining something?

We begin follow Jesus at our baptism -- he is baptized, and we follow him in our own baptism. We can forget to follow him for the next step: rejecting the temptations that came even to him. Those who serve are tempted to make it about themselves. People need to be convinced their leaders are clever, right? The leaders, once they begin to lead, need to prove themselves, don't they? It helps the ministry if we gain recognition, doesn't it? At each turn, there's a wrong way to do things, which leaves the ministry subtly poisoned -- or not so subtly, as time goes on.

I wonder how much every human action meets those same temptations. I wonder how often we recognize them.

"Feed my sheep" -- the prerequisite

2012-01-05T17:01:00.000-06:00

"Simon, Son of Jonah, do you love me?" ... "Feed my sheep." - Jesus

Our seminaries teach people how to read Greek and Hebrew, how to interpret the Bible, how to preach. But none of that can make someone a good pastor. They teach systematic theology, Christian doctrine, church history -- but those don't make a good pastor either.

If a pastor doesn't love Jesus, then whatever he's doing, he's not "feeding the sheep"; they will go home unsatisfied. They may go home educated, or motivated, or impressed; but they will not be spiritually fed.

The gospels teach us to love Jesus. The authors wrote them because they had learned to love Jesus. What makes people want to follow Jesus? It's not being impressed with the pastor's skill in translating, or in skewering his enemies, or in presenting himself as smart. It's not even understanding systematic theology. It's Jesus. When we see and recognize the good in him, we follow him.

Haiku - Nature

2012-01-01T07:01:00.002-06:00

I know that poetry isn't my strong suit, so I limit myself to posting it only rarely. But not too long ago I wanted to write some haiku. It's one of the few types of poem you can complete in just a few minutes, where only one clear thought or image is needed. Syllable sudoku meets crossword puzzle. Poetry for a time-challenged age. So ...

Myriad flowers
Fast-winged bees in the sun
Honey spicy-sweet.

Lightning's crackling spark
Shatters dark and shows the storm
Thundering closer

Quiet foggy dawn
Spiders with their spiral webs
Catch the shining mist

Ok, and now I'm going to spoil the whole effect of all the previous ones with a haiku designed for a first-grader:

Busy buzzy bee
Pick up all the pollen, please
More honey for me!

Yes, I'm aware that haiku is not usually used with other poetic devices. But, really, it's fun to mix and match.

Best of the Blogroll: 2011

2011-12-31T12:31:00.004-06:00

Here to ring out the old year and celebrate another year of excellence in Christian blogging. You all have my heartfelt appreciation as you keep on blogging. It takes a lot of dedication. While I may not comment often, please know that I'm reading along and am enriched by it. Thank you all for blogging! Here are some highlights of the year:

Aardvark Alley - Welcome back to the Aardvark as he once again takes up the valuable service of posting the memorials for saints' days and seasonals throughout the church year.
Ancient Hebrew Poetry - John Hobbins considers what it means to hallow God's name, taking us on a tour of other quotations that echo that phrase in order to deepen and ground our understanding. Along the same lines, his post on The Beauty of Holiness was a highlight for me.
Bede's Journal / Quodlibeta - This group blog (usual fare: science and history) pulls an interesting, in-depth quote on science and determinism from J.R. Lucas.
Blogotional - John Schroeder writes on imagination and expanding our horizons beyond the head-knowledge of facts. (This idea is closely related to the post linked below from Jared at Thinklings.) He also writes about restoration - when the call to "forgive the pastor" is a sleight-of-hand to change the subject from whether a person is fit to retain an office of trust.
CADRE Comments - This group blog usually focuses on Christian apologetics; a good example is The Bible has Philosophical Profundity.
Chrisendom - Chris Tilling helps us by spotting and translating from an insightful sermon on Jesus as the bread of life. More recently, he shares a video of Dr Peter Williams on a subject that's a regular topic on this blog, the objectively measurable differences in quality between the Biblical gospels and the non-biblical gospels, with live presentation and additional examples.
Cross Reference - Jeff Pinyan reviews the old musical Godspell, with insights on what is has and what it lacks compared to its sources.
Culture Watch - Doug Groothuis reviews Rousas John Rushdoony's book, The Cure of Souls. (No, Groothuis is not a Reconstructionist. He reads Rushdoony like we all read most authors: testing everything, holding on to the good.)
The Dawn Treader - The Dawn Treader, while slowing down on his blogging this year, takes up two very important themes for bloggers. He considers Jolly Blogger's comments on the spiritual dangers of blogging (self-promotion), and reflects on humility as the mark of wisdom.
Dr Platypus - Always with the fascinating historical angles, Darrell Pursiful links to video and audio of the oldest written melody in history -- from around 1400 BC. On specifically Christian topics, he highlights an article contending that the quest for relevance makes a church irrelevant.
Faith and Theology - Ben Myers stands up for the goodness of the much-maligned violent fairytale. By way of announcing the winner of a prize for theological writing, he also provides some leads on good theological reading.
Fearsome Pirate - The Pirate vents a frustration that most Christians have felt at some time in their lives, as he points out that technical orthodoxy does not make up for bad preaching.
Hyperekperissou - Welcome back also to Phil Snider, host of the patristics carnival / round-up. He ponders an interesting topic for academics on useful studies as opposed to useless studies.
Incarnatus Est - Paul Gregory Alms passes along a great insight from Leo the Great from an Epiphany sermon.
Kyrie, Eleison - Anastasia posted an intriguing piece on reading the Garden of Eden as an icon painted with words -- a window on the kingdom. The follow up considers specifically the creation of man. For anyone interested in different perspectives on creation -- or on interpreting Scripture, or on being transformed into the image of God -- these are good reading.
Meta's Blog - Metacrock, always on the front lines of witnessing to skeptics, puts together some good arguments on how we know God is not evil.
The Pocket Scroll - This wily and elusive blog moved during the year, so update your bookmarks to keep reading. We welcome him back to the blogroll under the new URL, and join him in celebrating Christ the King Sunday. (The non-liturgical types really miss out on some great stuff in the Christian calendar. If you have no idea what Christ the King Sunday is, please read it with an open mind or better yet a joyful heart.)
Pseudo-Polymath - Mark Olson provides a service with news roundups on selected issues. He is also my link to the Jolly Blogger. While the Jolly Blogger is not actively blogging, he did have an insightful observation about all the people who are Called To Serve God:
I would trade every kid who takes a mission trip to change the world for one who would stay home and clean his room, treat his brother like a human being and help mom around the house without being asked twice. Changing the world is easy, the latter is harder and far more Christlike.
Sun and Shield - Martin LaBar passes along a valuable resource on Bible passages that are helpful in controlling anger.
Thin Places - Pulling a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, we read about the "wayside sacrament" of beauty.
Thinklings - Jared pulls a quote from C.S. Lewis about the rightful place of adoring God, in our Christian writing and teaching. Lewis stands up for the rightness of adoring without apologizing for it or watering it down, in full recognition that adoring is greater than analyzing.
Weedon's Blog - William Weedon's usual fare is a valuable service: a steady stream of uplifting or thoughtful quotes. It is hard to choose one above the other. This patristic quote of Athanasius is well worth a read, as was this quote teaching people to distinguish between error and sin, and St Basil on grace. He also posted on the history of the liturgy, specifically how the liturgy and calendar looked in 1613, about 100 years after the beginning of the protests against Rome. His post on repentance was also particularly helpful and insightful.

Once again thanks to everyone for blogging. A few of the folks on the blogroll have become mostly inactive; hope to see you all soon.

Debater's code of ethics

2011-12-28T19:33:00.002-06:00

I have been thinking that Christians should adopt a higher standard of morals when it comes to debate.

Consider the typical debate. There are carelessly-researched items reported as facts, distortions in how information is presented, selective use of evidence. There are questionable techniques such as character attacks, or conveniently placed displays of anger or shock that may be used tactically. Regardless of how common these things are, should a Christian engage in them?

I think Christians would do well to develop a full-fledged ethics code covering conduct during a debate. It would make debates more productive. It would lead to deepening mutual respect among Christians rather than deepening divisions and hostilities. It would also - let's not forget the big picture - keep us from sinning quite so often. We do want to behave ethically, don't we?

Here is a first shot at a debater's code of ethics.

Debater's Code of Ethics

Preface: The goal of a debate is to firmly establish which position has the most merit. Any conduct that does not live up to Christlike standards weakens the position of Christianity, regardless of which side wins the particular debate in question.

Nothing should be presented as fact unless the debater has personally checked the original source material and verified its accuracy.
The debater should present facts accurately, without stretching or distorting the information.
The debater should never present facts in a way different than how they appear to him, or deny the reality of his own hesitations in order make his position seem stronger than he himself feels it to be.
The debater should honestly review all evidence and arguments, being more willing to change his views, acknowledge a mistake, or even lose a debate than to engage in dishonesty.
The debater should not smear, mock, belittle, or otherwise disparage the character of his opponent, or engage in any form of character attack.
The debater should be familiar with logical fallacies and should completely reject their use, regardless of any tactical advantage that might be gained by them.
The debater should not engage in tactical displays of anger, outrage, shock, or sorrow, or make other theatrical displays intended to play the emotions of the onlookers or distract from the lack of an adequate response.
The debater should assume the honesty, integrity, and good faith of the opponent.
If the opponent makes a mistake of fact or logic, or engages in unethical debating tactics, these are to be answered with honesty and good faith, leaving a clear conscience.
The debater should give a fair hearing to his opponent and should be willing to change his views, not allowing himself to become blinded by partisanship or ego, or prevented from taking the best course by fear of embarrassment.
The debater should develop his skills and knowledge so that he can support his position solidly, state his position clearly, and defend his position honestly.
The debater should always be civil and respectful: in victory, gracious and free of arrogance; in defeat, showing good sportsmanship and holding steadfastly to the truth.

What have I forgotten? Or what changes does that need?

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T22:45:00.002-06:00

Wishing you and yours a Merry Christmas. Jesus is the reason that Christian homes and Christian hearts are marked by faith, hope, and love. God is good.

Jesus, Name above all names: Series index

2011-12-21T13:21:00.000-06:00

Here is the index for the series on Jesus, name above all names

And here is the companion post about how "Jesus, name above all names" is the theme of the evangelists and the epistles, and how our call to evangelize means witnessing to that truth:

Name above all names: The gospels, the epistles, and what it means to evangelize

Name above all names: The gospels, the epistles, and what it means to evangelize

2011-12-21T12:50:00.000-06:00

One underlying message of the gospels and epistles of the New Testament is: Jesus is the name above all names. "Name above all names" is a familiar quote from one of Paul's letters:

So God also has highly exalted him, and given him a name that is above all names: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11)

That sums up one of the main points of the New Testament.

The four biographies of Jesus have nearly every event showing us a way in which Jesus is more excellent than anyone else who has ever walked this earth. The disciples recall their amazement and wondering, "Who is this?" The disciples recall the crowds listening to Jesus and being amazed at him, never having heard anything like it. His miracles are along the same lines. Of all the prophets of old, and all the teachers of religion, no one else healed such steady stream of people suffering from every kind of illness or disability. Never had anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. Each event shows a new facet of Jesus' uniqueness -- even the teachings. The Beatitudes, the sheep and the goats, the prodigal son, the Good Samaritan -- these are all one demonstration after another that there is no one like Christ, no one who has ever taught like this. Even the accounts of his death show the prophets' words fulfilled and his breathtaking kindness to his executioners. He did not merely teach forgiveness, but lived it. We probably could have understood if he had said forgiveness had met its limit when facing death by torture after being convicted on unjust charges. But he didn't abandon forgiveness even then; he was still the merciful one. The more we look at Jesus, the more we understand how unique he is. Jesus' resurrection is a seal to what we already knew: there hasn't been anybody like him.

The epistles focus on Jesus' excellence: Writing to Corinth, Paul explains how he is determined to know nothing else but Christ crucified as he preaches. The letter to the Hebrews spends chapter after chapter explaining how Jesus is greater than Moses, the new covenant greater than the old covenant, the new sacrifice greater than the old sacrifices, the new high priest greater than the old high priest. The letter started by explaining how Jesus is even above the angels. John's first letter puts things in very simple terms: He who has the Son of God has life, and he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.

The good news, then, is Christ.

There are many Christians who feel an obligation to evangelize -- or feel an obligation to justify why they do not evangelize. But what does an evangelist say? To take our thoughts from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John: An evangelist explains how Jesus is the name above all names. An evangelist explains Jesus' excellence, his unsurpassed goodness, his unique authority to speak of the things of God -- and that he can save us from the futile, hopeless, dead-end lives that we have without him. We explain that Jesus can transform us into someone more like him. We explain the blessings that Jesus brings.

Evangelism is simply explaining how Jesus is the name above all names, and how every spiritual blessing is found in Christ. We Christians are faced with people who are tired of the cliches they have heard as evangelism, and tired of evangelism that is more about our scripted talking points than about Jesus. As Christians, here is the question to us as evangelists: Can we explain how Jesus is the name above all names?

Jesus rose from the dead

2011-12-21T12:21:00.002-06:00

We can debate religion all day, and the debate may not clarify anything. But actions speak louder than words. Jesus' resurrection makes things plainer than a debate ever could. Because Jesus rose from the dead, we know that God exists, and that he acts in this world. In raising Jesus, he has singled him out for an honor that no "great teacher" before or since has ever had. Anyone looking for a sign from God about "Which great teacher do I follow?" already has a sign: Look for the one that God raised to life again. God has given faith to all people by raising Christ from the dead.

Reading Jesus' words is a religious experience

2011-12-17T12:17:00.002-06:00

Jesus, more than anyone else in human history, speaks about the things of God with authority, knowledge, and credibility.

Jesus explained what the kingdom of heaven is like at length. He sure sounded like he knew what he was talking about. But that was not the only time when his knowledge was plain to see.

Anyone who speaks to a Jewish crowd, to people who are followers of Moses, and claims to surpass the Law of Moses -- he had better have something good to follow through on that claim. And Jesus did. They believed him and considered that there might be a more excellent way.

Anyone who speaks to people who hope for a resurrection -- or debate the reality of the resurrection -- and claims to know exactly how the Last Day will happen, had better have something good to say. Again, he did. He gave a detailed description of the Last Day that is at the same time believable, just, and desirable. Hearing his teaching doesn't inspire arguments about its justness; its justice is self-evident. What it inspires is awe. The people who first heard him noticed. They were amazed at his teachings, because he spoke as one having authority.

In the beatitudes, some of the blessings Jesus proclaimed were bold promises: the pure in heart shall see God; the meek shall inherit the earth. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied; those who mourn will be comforted. Anyone who claims to know the heart of God, and to know what God will do in the future, better have something good. And Jesus did. The blessings meet and even exceed our sense of rightness, that this is how things should be. God's goodness surpasses our hopes, and restores our confidence enough to hope.

Many people go to religion or spirituality looking for a religious experience; the surest way I know to have a religious experience is to read what Jesus said.

Jesus has the highest and most beautiful morality yet articulated by anyone

2011-12-14T12:14:00.000-06:00

How long does an accomplishment stay in the world's memory as the best the world has ever seen? Most things that were done or said in the ancient past have been surpassed many times since then. As they say, even a midget who stands on the shoulders of giants may see farther than the giants. So even if a modern thinker is not as impressive as someone who came before, still the modern thinker has the advantage: we know already what the ancients discovered, and can start forward from where they finished.

Except that hasn't really happened with Jesus and his moral teachings. He still stands alone, with teachings that have not been surpassed. Many converts to Christianity mention the beauty and power of Jesus' teachings. And those who have tried to surpass him have not been equal to the task.

Jesus has the highest and most beautiful morality yet articulated on this earth. His words are memorable and vivid, simple and clear. They have a depth that has not yet been exhausted over the years. His teachings are pure in calling for what is good. His teachings are timeless, as powerful today as when they were first spoken. While focusing on love, the teachings are not sentimental, but instead require courage. One early Jewish follower called Jesus' priorities "a more excellent way".

For those who have not read his teachings this will seem like too much praise. Those who have loved his teachings will know that much more could be said.

And Jesus' teachings can redeem. Most moral leaders are only speaking to those who already wish to be good. Jesus' teachings were shown to reach the hearts of even traitors, thieves, and prostitutes, creating the desire to leave behind their wasted lives and turn around. Jesus' words give us the hope of redemption. His teachings restore our souls.

Jesus' life is the world's most serious evidence of the supernatural

2011-12-10T12:10:00.002-06:00

There are lots of people who say there is nothing beyond this physical, material world. If there is a supernatural, shouldn't there be some evidence for it?

In my lifetime sometimes I've heard stories of miraculous healings -- but nothing on the level that would be considered proof or demonstration of the supernatural. I hear rumors of things far away -- but for things where we can easily imagine a natural healing, or the witnesses are not brought forward, or the person healed isn't brought forward, or the original illness couldn't be established. Even going back into history, the evidence for miracles is generally weak -- with one notable exception.

There are a series of miracles attributed to Jesus of Nazareth, reported by his contemporaries in detail. Many of Jesus' miracles took place in crowds, where his followers may not have known the people who were healed. But there are others where the disciples passed down more information. Bartimaeus in Jericho was blind and had his sight restored. Lazarus in Bethany had died and was buried, and was raised from the dead. In Capernaum, the daughter of Jairus the synagogue ruler was raised from the dead. Peter's own mother-in-law was healed.

The early Christian church continued to look at these known miracles as showing Jesus' uniqueness. Quadratus, an early Christian, wrote:

Our Savior’s works were always there to see, for they were true – the people who had been cured and those raised from the dead, who had not merely been seen at the moment when they were cured or raised, but were always there to see, not only when the Savior was among us, but for a long time after his departure; in fact some of them survived right up to my own time. (The quote from Quadratus is preserved in Eusebius’ History 4.3).

That's the kind of thing that you look for in order to believe a miracle.

An interesting thing occurred when Jesus' enemies tried to discredit him: they did not try to deny that miracles had occurred. An ancient Jewish writing, the Talmud, speaks of Jesus as a sorcerer. They tried to claim that Jesus' miracles were acts of evil. It would have been much simpler for them to deny the miracles ever happened, if they could.

Even today, in cultures that are more open-minded about what is beyond this physical world, Christians can boldly point to miracles as a way to show that Jesus is unique. You can read the entire Koran without hearing of Mohammed healing anyone, or raising the dead. Likewise Confucius and Lao Tzu and even King Solomon are not exactly known for their miracles. As mentioned before, that's not to say anything against Confucius or King Solomon; just that "one greater than Solomon is here."

But for our culture, we might do better to explain it to a skeptic the other way around: Do you assume there is nothing beyond this world because you have not heard good evidence of a miracle? Jesus' life gives us the world's most serious evidence of miracles. There are details of the conversations that took place, records of the confrontations about whether certain miracles were actually "evil". These things really happened, according to more than just Jesus' followers; also according to those who thought Jesus was out of line to do some of these things. The records of Jesus' life have to be read with an open mind. It is begging the question to bring in pre-conceptions that there is nothing beyond this physical world, before seeing the best evidence for yourself.

But shouldn't our skeptic be able to see evidence of the supernatural in all kinds of places, not just in Jesus? Not necessarily; there is another possibility: that Jesus really is unique.

Jesus comes across as more fully human

2011-12-06T12:06:00.000-06:00

Can you picture Mohammed providing wine for a wedding feast? No, neither can I. How many founders of world religions would pick up children and bless them, insisting that little children are worth his notice and his time? How many "great teachers" are remembered by their followers for how often they had dinner with friends, and were widely sought after not only for their wisdom but also for their companionship?

Jesus is the only person we reckon as a "great teacher" who makes a claim to be Son of God in a unique sense; so it may seem ironic that he comes across as the most fully human. Many religious people -- especially self-consciously religious people -- seem to have character distortions that make them come across as less fully human. The character distortions are not despite their religion -- it is specifically because of their type of religion that they become reclusive, or ascetic, or harsh, or judgmental, or aloof, or detached from those who love them, or consumed with abstractions, or cliquish, or controlling, or obsessive, or partisan, or cold, or continually concerned with particular religious observances. They may only be excessively bookish, to the extent that they neglect human fellowship. They may become meditative to the point where they not only lose the joy of life, but reject that joy as wrong. Their religiosity seems to take away from their humanity, not fulfill it. Jesus makes it plain that he wants his followers to have life, and have it to the full.

Jesus comes across as fully human: when we look at him, we notice what more we could be. Jesus' wisdom did not drive out his warmth, and came with a down-to-earth humility. His righteousness was the type that lifts up others rather than putting them down. He had a love for friends. We see him at a wedding feast celebrating with those who celebrate. In Jesus, we see what a human being can be. It is because of his deep humanity that so many people have longed to be transformed into his image and become more like him.

Jesus' morality has a focus: love

2011-12-03T12:03:00.002-06:00

Some moral codes are sets of laws without a clear focus. Other moral codes have a focus like following the right path or becoming a noble person -- but the direction of the right path may not be well-defined; what makes someone a noble person may again lead to an unfocused list of principles and goals to attain.

With Jesus, the right path is defined in terms of love. Of all the commands his people already had in their moral code, he singled out these as the greatest: Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; and love your neighbor as yourself. He also summed up: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," adding, "This is the law and the prophets" (the whole of the divine commands). As an early Jewish convert said, "Love does no harm to its neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law."

Basing morality on love makes a big difference in how morality is lived. Love cannot be cold or joyless. It forbids us from dehumanizing each other, even in the name of "the greater good" -- especially in the name of the greater good, if that greater good is love. It prevents viewing and treating people as enemies. It leads us towards companionship and fellowship. It causes us to know each other and build ties in common with each other. It is fulfilled in friendship and family, in hospitality and in knowing our neighbors. It is a living, growing source of goodwill.

Jesus keeps us honest about our religious pretensions, and about what God desires

2011-11-30T11:30:00.003-06:00

When it comes to "morality" or "religion" or "spirituality", a lot of people assume that the goal is our own quest for excellence. Jesus challenges that self-centered type of religion by showing how that works out in daily life with the parable of the Good Samaritan: A traveler is attacked by thieves and left for dead by the side of the road. A priest passes by and ignores him. A Levite (another religious type) passes by and ignores him. A Samaritan sees him and has compassion. He bandages his wounds, takes him to safety, arranges for his care, pays his expenses.

The priest and the Levite are wrapped up in their own stories where they're the heroes, no doubt, more spiritual than other people, they may suppose. So they don't see that they’re half-villains in the story of the man they pass by without helping. The quest for personal excellence or religious status might be what stops them from being like the real hero of the piece: the Samaritan who set aside his own personal goals for the moment because he was moved by compassion for someone who needed help. The parable highlights the true nature of personal excellence and religious status.

And so, in his way, Jesus tells us that the story of following him may not be the story of our own quest for excellence, status, or achievement; it may be about how we fit into someone else’s story of their need for compassion and practical help.

Jesus' teachings are vivid and personal

2011-11-26T11:26:00.003-06:00

Remember when Jesus told the story of the Prodigal Son? How about the lost sheep, or the lost coin? How about the Good Samaritan? The Pharisee and the Publican? The sheep and the goats? The king and the wedding banquet? People who have heard Jesus' teachings tend to remember them.

Jesus' teachings are exceptionally vivid. Some of that is from the use of parables -- where morality is more than a set of laws or principles; it is the motive behind every good action. That desire for good, and the character who perseveres in good, is the cause of the good that comes to others in the parables.

Jesus' parables are more than simple figures of speech or comparisons; they are stories. We find ourselves caught up in the action; they light up our imagination. Somebody's life or happiness often hangs in the balance of whether another person is going to be good to them.

Jesus' approach is more realistic than discussing morality as some sort of abstract principle. In daily life, someone's happiness often depends on whether or not other people are going to be just or kind toward them. In Jesus' teachings, we see how much goodness matters to us and to those around us. We see its power to change everyday life.

Jesus knows what the Last Day will be like -- and what justice looks like

2011-11-23T11:23:00.000-06:00

Jesus' teaching of the Last Judgment is something very nearly unforgettable.

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then the King will tell those on his right hand, ‘Come, blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you took me in. I was naked, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came to me.’

Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry, and feed you; or thirsty, and give you a drink? When did we see you as a stranger, and take you in; or naked, and clothe you? When did we see you sick, or in prison, and visit you?’

The King will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, because you did it to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me.’

Then he will say also to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you didn’t give me food to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and you didn’t take me in; naked, and you didn’t clothe me; sick, and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’

Then they will also answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and didn’t help you?’

Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly I tell you, because you didn’t do it to one of the least of these, you didn’t do it to me.’ These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. (Matthew 25:31-46)

The teaching is striking and memorable in several different ways. First, there is the clear, plain rightness of the actions called for. Rarely do you find a teaching that is so plainly and thoroughly good. Here is a teaching that can change the world -- and to the extent that people listen and follow, it does in fact change the world. These are the words that created Mother Theresa of Calcutta and brought thousands of people to help her. The same words have created followers for Jesus in every age.

Next is the profound fairness of the way the groups are separated. Earlier in his teachings Jesus had said, "With the measure you use, it will be measured to you," and "Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy." Each person is shown to choose how the Judge will treat him by how he treats others. Jesus' teaching silences the complaint “God is unfair”. Can a person complain it is unfair for the Lord to treat them in the same way they treat others? ("You can't treat me the way I treat everyone else! It's unfair!" -- That person has just testified against himself, that he treats others badly, treats them in a way he would not want to be treated.) There is an unanswerable justice to it all.

There is the tender kindness shown to "the least of these brothers of mine" -- to show that the Lord sees himself in each of them. There is no room for doubt about whether the judge of all the earth has compassion on everyone, even the least. The only topic on the table is whether we have the same compassion.

The focus of Jesus' teaching is not on the judge, but on justice, on compassion, on mercy, on the least of the brothers -- so it's easy to miss what is not the focus: Jesus portrays himself as the one judging the world. He doesn't make a big deal out of his status; that seems taken for granted and not his main point. But it might explain how he knows so clearly what the Last Day will be like.

Jesus knows what the kingdom of heaven is like

2011-11-21T11:21:00.000-06:00

How many religious teachers are there? When we include those who are self-appointed, and those who are appointed by religious groups as their representatives, there must be a vast number. And out of all those, how many of them have any idea what the kingdom of heaven is like? There are a lot of people who like to talk, and a lot of people who like to teach, but very few of them leave the impression that they know anything at all about the kingdom of heaven.

"The kingdom of heaven is like ..."

Jesus taught about that time after time. I can find eight places in the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus started to teach by saying, "The kingdom of heaven is like ...". He found one way after another to explain it to us. He focused his teaching efforts to make sure we could grasp it. Even if I haven't grasped everything he said, I've grasped this much: Jesus knows what the kingdom of heaven is like. He knew what he was talking about. He didn't come across as someone who guesses or speculates, either. He came across as someone who knew.

The kingdom of heaven is not just the hidden treasure of the parables. The kingdom of heaven is also the point of repentance:

"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near."

The kingdom of heaven is worth changing our lives for. The kingdom of heaven is where we are called to belong. For Jesus, calling us to repent isn't about calling us to be respectable and responsible. Those are good, but Jesus us calls us to something better.

Next series: Name above all names

2011-11-21T08:23:00.002-06:00

I don't know how many people actually follow the long slow arc of what topics are posted here; probably only me, I'd expect. In general, I've been working along on the Controversies series, where those posts take a good long awhile to develop. This fall, one or two posts each month have been background work for that series, where the next topic is controversies on the moral authority of the Bible. Some of the other, faster series have been offshoots or sub-topics there.

The next series that I start here has grown out of that -- but is probably more important than the Controversies series. So the next series here is "Jesus, Name above all names".

Why mention this? First, in case someone had been wondering about the Controversies series: yes, it's still coming along, with a pace that reflects that I'd rather do it right than quickly. Second, in case someone had noticed the faster-moving series here and how they tend to relate to my next topic in "Controversies" -- I wanted to make it clear that, to me, this next faster-moving series is the more important topic than the Controversies series.

I've gone ahead and scheduled the first post in that series to publish later today.

Youth worker succeeds beyond wildest dreams

2011-11-17T19:24:00.000-06:00

Do we think of Christian calling too narrowly?

Back in 1891, a worker at the YMCA was given the job of developing an indoor sport that would use plenty of energy and prevent the students from becoming bad-tempered from inactivity during the long months of winter. In a modest way, it would improve the health and quality of life for those who participated. Isn't that a valid calling? The YMCA thought so. The assigned worker, James Naismith, thought so. Naismith had been an athlete in college and was gifted in sports. A valid calling is what makes the best use of our gifts and talents, isn't it?

Most charity groups run on a small budget, so that may have been why he chose the simple soccer ball and peach basket combination for his new indoor sport. The game quickly became very popular. The story has it that someone considered naming the game after its inventor, "Naismith ball", but Naismith wanted something to reflect the game itself: "basket ball".

Naismith probably could not have imagined the place basketball now has, not just in the U.S., but in the world. He lived to see his game included as an Olympic sport. I doubt, when he took his assignment to invent a new game, that he ever envisioned the wizardry of the Harlem Globetrotters or the artistry of Kobe Bryant, or the fact that every city park I have ever seen has basketball hoops.

A mission from God doesn't always mean preaching. If Naismith had tried to do that, he'd have missed his calling.

One Greater than Solomon

2011-11-13T17:13:00.000-06:00

The Queen of the South shall rise at the Judgment with this generation, and will condemn it. For she came from the furthest parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon. And see: one greater than Solomon is here. -- Jesus (Matthew 12:42, see also Luke 11:31)

It's amazing to me that sometimes we are embarrassed to acknowledge Jesus' greatness. American pop culture has spent generations now drilling it into our heads that Christians should be ashamed to think that Jesus is greater than any of the "other great teachers". We have been told time and again that it's nothing but bigotry and bias and narrow-mindedness to say that Jesus is greater than, say, Confucius. For the record, I find Confucius' teachings instructive. Many of them are insightful. But he doesn't hold a candle to Jesus. He isn't in the same league. And please don't imagine that my example is Confucius because of some thought that Confucius doesn't deserve his place among the great teachers; not at all, he has earned his place well. My example could just as easily have been Lao Tzu, or even someone considered great by people within the Christian tradition like Solomon.

Not many people could casually claim to be greater than Solomon and still come across as humble. (In the same conversation, Jesus also laid claim to being greater than Jonah, the prophet who called Nineveh to repent.) People came from distant lands and other cultures to seek the wisdom of Solomon. And one greater than Solomon is here.

I think it is important for us, as Christians, to have read the other people who have a reputation as Great Teachers. Many Christians, I suppose, are comfortable to say they follow Jesus, not Solomon, because Jesus is greater than Solomon. We can say this not only because Jesus said so, but also because we have some writings attributed to Solomon. We know that between Jesus and Solomon, it is Jesus who speaks to us more clearly and beautifully, whose call to follow rings through us. Solomon's ways may be truly good and we still study his words, but Jesus' are even better. Solomon seeks wisdom; in Jesus we see that wisdom personified that Solomon was seeking. So Solomon is not someone we would ever put down; in some ways Solomon walks beside us as we follow Jesus.

In proclaiming Jesus to the people of our day, we have a lot of chances that we don't always recognize. Every time someone says, "All religions are the same", there is an opening in the conversation to say differently. ("Wow, I see a world of difference out there. There are so many different beliefs. The tricky part is picking the good from the bad.") Every time someone tries to shame us into silence about Jesus is actually a chance to point to Jesus' uniqueness. We should not criticize or put down anything that is good; Jesus didn't put down Moses or Jonah or Solomon. Still, someone greater is here. Part of our job is finding the words to explain that to the people of our day.

If I Corinthians 13 were written today

2011-11-10T07:42:00.002-06:00

If I Corinthians 13 were written today, what would Paul have used as his examples? Just imagining:

If I study my Bible every day and have private devotions, but have not love, I am nothing. If I tithe to the church, and support good charities, but have not love, I gain nothing. If I pray day and night, and join the choir, and worship every time the church opens her doors, but have not love, it is nothing. If I teach Sunday school, and serve as a church officer, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind, not jealous or boastful or proud. It is not rude or self-seeking or touchy [easily angered]. It keeps no record of wrongs. It does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It endures all things, believes all things, hopes all things, perseveres through all things.

Love never fails. Where there are Bible studies or sermons, they will cease ... for now we know in part, but then we shall see face to face.

Three things remain: faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love.

Some of the details would change based on church membership. Some might have

If I abstain from drinking, smoking, and dancing, but have not love ...
If I fast twice a week, but have not love ...
If I pray the rosary but have not love ...
If I observe the Sabbath, but have not love ...

Every group has its thing. Why isn't the thing love?

Forgiveness and the art of forgetting

2011-11-08T17:20:00.001-06:00

I recently read someone who was teaching that forgiveness doesn't really involve forgetting. They made a would-be clever argument about how God cannot possibly forget because he is omniscient, and if God forgives without forgetting, then forgetting is not part of forgiving.

There's a lot more to forgiveness than forgetting; the main thing is love. Still, it's wrong -- and spiritually unsafe -- to leave people with the impression that they can hold tight to the memory of wrong and call it forgiveness.

Does God really stop remembering our sins? Actually, yes, he does. It's not a problem with his omniscience, it's a deliberate decision to wash us clean. It's a decision not to recall a memory:

For I will forgive their iniquities,
And remember their sins no more. (Jeremiah 31:34)

Claiming that God must remember is not truly standing up for God's glory. When he stands up for his own name, he proclaims that he will not remember:

It is I, I who -- for My own sake --
Wipe your transgressions away
And remember your sins no more. (Isaiah 43:25)

Then what if we remember a sin of someone we have forgiven? We forgive again; we forget again. If the forgiveness is still firmly decided, then putting the memory out of mind will be easy.

Human memories are not like God's. They are like an old radio signal -- they fade with time and distance. If you do not boost the signal it will be lost, the further away you go. That's why we repeat things we want to remember, or look at them time after time to refresh our memories. Most memories fade with time. The memory of old wrongs could easily be forgotten, if only we would let them.

Our minds are like a sieve. We forget where we left our keys. We forget where we left our watch, or our phone. We forget what we had to eat just a day or two ago. Our minds have a natural tendency to forget. It takes a serious effort on our part to be able to recall all the wrong that someone did us awhile back. Don't we remember because we pay attention to those things, and keep close track of them?

If God -- God the omniscient, God the all-knowing, God the Almighty -- can manage to put away a memory and remember it no more, then how much more should we forgetful little creatures be able to put away a memory and remember it no more.

I have often -- too often -- watched my own mind call up old sins. A person who wronged me will cross my path again. And the old memories will rush into my thoughts. It takes effort to put these things out of mind. I admit that I resort to some silly tricks to chase out the memories. When there are images that I want to remove from my mind, sometimes I picture those images as printed on paper, and then imagine a paper shredder, and shred them. Sometimes when memory brings up images, I picture the memories falling into a video game, and I picture myself using the video controllers to blast the memories out of existence. Sometimes the memories are sounds and words; I picture them as a recording, and I picture myself hitting the "next track" button.

Are these amateurish ways to handle memories of someone's sin? Yes. But I'd rather have these silly tricks in my mind than the bad memories. Ideally, I should be able to replace these memories with other memories of the person being kind or friendly or trustworthy or helpful. One day I hope I can remember things that build love and compassion just as easily as I remember wrongs. Because we really are fighting an uphill battle against our memories of sin, until we learn to love the other person. Forgiveness hasn't reached its goal until there is reconciliation.

Monumental mistakes -- and corrections that open up a new world

2011-11-06T20:18:00.005-06:00

"Then I shall sail for another great island which I strongly believe should be Japan, according to the signs made by the San Salvador Indians with me. They call that island Cuba ..." -- Christopher Columbus, log entry dated October 21, 1492

History has been full of mistaken ideas. People -- even those who made a careful study -- have taken wrong turns. And a wrong turn is not necessarily useless, if (sooner or later) someone realizes what we have actually found, rather than what we expected to find.

Columbus expected to find the westward passage to Japan and then to the realm of the Great Khan. He was on the right track, but he was only a fraction of the way there. He firmly expected to find one thing -- and that expectation was part of the reason he did not recognize that he had found something else entirely.

There is an intrepid crew of scholars who are firmly embarked on a mission to discover that Christianity is false. (It has to be; they are sure of it.) And so they seek out every alternative gospel they can find, and run its banner high, and claim that the early church was wrong to ignore these alternative writings.

And one "lost Scripture" after another shows that the alternative materials are of late date, or have edited out Jesus' Jewishness, or have removed Jesus from any recognizable historical context, or make no effort at recording the events of Jesus' life ... or all of the above.

I think that Biblical studies is on the edge of recognizing something monumental: that what they expected to find, and what they were so earnestly seeking (something to debunk Christianity) is not at all what they have found. I think that the discipline of Biblical studies, if they make a fair and objective assessment of the materials, will soon discover that the best sources on the life of Jesus are the earliest ones, the ones with a Jewish Jesus, the ones where Jesus lived in first-century Roman-occupied territory, the ones where he worshiped at the synagogues, the ones that are saturated with people and places that are recognizable context for his life. So far, no writing has come close to Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John for material on the life of Jesus.

After a long journey, sometimes you end up back where you started. But that's not a waste of time; now you know so much more than you did before. If you keep a good map, you might even be less likely to get lost again.

A righteousness that surpasses

2011-11-02T19:31:00.004-05:00

I say to you: Unless your righteousness surpasses the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. - Jesus (Matthew 5:20)

That must have been something to hear if you were a Pharisee, or a scribe. Those groups prided themselves on their righteousness. They were strict observers of the law. And there they were held up as examples -- of people who weren't good enough.

Jesus puts together an interesting teaching. First, he starts by lining up points in favor of the Law:

He hasn't come to abolish the Law or the Prophets
He has come to fulfill the Law and the Prophets
Not a pen stroke will disappear from the Law, not until heaven and earth disappear, until everything is accomplished
Those who break the law or teach others to do the same will be least in the kingdom of heaven
Those who keep the law and teach others to do the same will be great in the kingdom of heaven

So why is the very next thing out of his mouth that the scribes and Pharisees -- those who teach and keep the law most zealously -- need to be surpassed?

Here again I'll mention that "inerrancy" can distract us from understanding Scripture. Because if the ancient Law of Moses is "inerrant" and what Jesus says is also "inerrant" then aren't they on the same level? And nothing can surpass anything, if "inerrancy" is the highest you can go, and everything in Scripture is at that level. Again we see "inerrancy" fall short of describing what we see in Scripture.

Jesus follows his statements on the greatness of the law with statements on how the law can be surpassed -- or truly fulfilled. His words, repeated time and again throughout his teaching, make a recognizable refrain: "You have heard that it was said (or, it has been said) ... but I say" (Matthew 5:21-22, 5:27-28, 5:31-32, 5:33-34, 5:38-39, 5:43-44). It's easy to see why he started by saying -- several different ways -- that he had not come to abolish the law; otherwise, his statements could easily have been taken as an attack on it. He calls for a pure heart, for surpassing goodness in the face of evil, for surpassing service in the face of our obligations. In the grand finale of those teachings, we see just how far Jesus' teachings of righteousness surpass the Law of Moses, and the Scribes, and the Pharisees:

I tell you: Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He makes the sun rise on the evil and the good, and brings the rain on the just and the unjust. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Don't even tax collectors [traitors and thieves] do that? If you greet only your brothers, what is the excellence of that? Don't even pagans [idol worshipers] do that? Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect. (Matthew 5:43-48)

The goodness that Jesus calls for is something he says we already do some people. What we lack is to do the same for our enemies. What we lack is mercy; we would rather judge. Ultimately, we lack love.

Now it's natural for us to try to turn everything into a set of rules -- a system where we win. But that's not how love works. It's not possible to love someone so that they can be a step on the ladder to getting something else -- whatever that is, it doesn't deserve to be called "love".

That's one way the righteousness of the law is good, but can be surpassed. How many times in the gospel do we see people use the law to tattle on someone, or as an excuse to put them down and look good in comparison? Remember the times Jesus healed someone on the Sabbath, and one person or another got all indignant about working on a day of rest? As if God would allow a miracle if he objected to it. Someone who looks at a miracle and calls it a sin, that has to set a new record in missing the point. And the same kind of mistake happened when Jesus reached out to obvious sinners. The lost is found, the wayward son comes home, there is rejoicing in heaven, God's love overflows in generosity and mercy -- and someone is there to use the law as a scorecard to try to put an obstacle in the way of love. Jesus calls for a righteousness that surpasses that.

Keeping the law is not necessarily petty. It takes determination and dedication. The Pharisees had the dedication, the determination, and the zeal. In their determination to be faultless, they risked becoming heartless. But even if they succeeded in keeping the laws faultlessly, Jesus would still have called them to a righteousness that surpasses that: The kind that turns the other cheek, and goes the extra mile, and loves even the enemy.

Gospel of Philip: Geography and Places

2011-10-29T13:07:00.002-05:00

Disclaimer: The quotes of the Gospel of Philip do not imply any approval of the material's accuracy or helpfulness. The quotes are shown so that readers can judge for themselves about the quality of the material.

The Gospel of Philip presents an interesting puzzle when it comes to geography and place names. What if the author mentions a place name -- something that the readers know is a place name -- but the author speaks of it as something else:

The apostles who were before us had these names for him: "Jesus, the Nazorean, Messiah", that is, "Jesus, the Nazorean, the Christ". The last name is "Christ", the first is "Jesus", that in the middle is "the Nazarene". "Messiah" has two meanings, both "the Christ" and "the measured". "Jesus" in Hebrew is "the redemption". "Nazara" is "the Truth". "The Nazarene" then, is "the Truth". "Christ" [...] has been measured. "The Nazarene" and "Jesus" are they who have been measured. (from the Gospel of Philip)

Nazareth, where Jesus lived in his early years, was a small town. It had no great reputation. From what we see here, it's possible that the author of the Gospel of Philip did not realize that "Nazarene" meant someone from a place called Nazareth.

Or again, what if the author mentions a specific place -- like the Temple in Jerusalem -- but speaks of it as several separate buildings:

There were three buildings specifically for sacrifice in Jerusalem. The one facing the west was called "The Holy". Another, facing south, was called "The Holy of the Holy". The third, facing east, was called "The Holy of the Holies", the place where only the high priest enters. Baptism is "the Holy" building. Redemption is the "Holy of the Holy". "The Holy of the Holies" is the bridal chamber.

The reader may well think that the Gospel of Philip's author had no direct knowledge of the place.

So with those introductory cautions, here are the places mentioned in the Gospel of Philip -- regardless of whether I'm convinced that the author of that gospel was aware that they were places or had correct knowledge about them:

Paradise (as a place where Adam was, not merely in a symbolic sense)
person referred to as Nazarene / Nazorean
person referred to as Magdalene
dye works / workshop of Levi
people referred to as Roman
people referred to as Greek
Jerusalem
three buildings for sacrifice: Holy, Holy of Holy, Holy of Holies
Jordan

Like most of the "alternative gospels", the Gospel of Philip makes no attempt to present a biography of Jesus. Unlike some other Gnostic gospels, the Gospel of Philip does not completely skip geography and the physical world, though location does play a relatively small part. The lack of knowledge of the Second Temple shows us that the author of the Gospel of Philip was probably not a Jew of the Second Temple era, and was probably not getting his information from anyone who was a Jew of the Second Temple era. We may also gather that the author was unfamiliar with Nazareth, or with the history of anyone who had lived in Nazareth.

Follow the link for an English translation of the Gospel of Philip.

Sayings Gospel of Thomas: Geography and Places

2011-10-23T16:09:00.002-05:00

The Gospel of Thomas, an early collection of Jesus' sayings, is more focused on Jesus than the alternative gospels we have recently looked at (Gospel of Mary, Gospel of Truth). Most of the sayings found in the Gospel of Thomas are recognizable from the canonical gospels. I think the most unfortunate thing about this sayings collection is that it does not make any effort to record the settings in which the sayings originally occurred. Without context, the point of a saying is not always clear. And because there is no context -- mostly a series of quotes attributed to Jesus -- there are relatively few references to places or geography. But here, there are at least some.

Here are the references to identifiable places in the Gospel of Thomas:

Samaria
Judea

That's a short list. Both entries on the list come from a single saying; it can be seen here as saying #60 in this translation. Both "Samaria" and "Judea" refer to areas or regions. Here we do not see references to specific cities, villages, towns, peoples' homes, or other specific buildings the way we see in the canonical gospels.

There are a few places where the sayings hinted at their original settings:

"Your brothers and your mother are standing outside." (#99)
"No prophet is accepted in his (own) village." (#31)

Like so many of the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas, modern students of the New Testament will recognize these sayings of Jesus from the Biblical gospels. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus is not completely cut off from the physical and historical world -- but that is not the main interest of whoever collected the sayings. The main interest is the sayings of Jesus. Whatever Jesus' historical setting was, it does not seem to be of any direct interest to the person who collected the sayings.

Gnostic Gospel of Mary: Geography and Places

2011-10-18T18:32:00.002-05:00

We're going to continue our look at some of the alternative gospels; we will next take a look at the Gospel of Mary. Here is the list of all the earthly, physical, geographical places listed in the Gospel of Mary:

(None)

Again: None. There are no earthly, physical, geographical places mentioned in the Gospel of Mary.

With the Gospel of Mary, we only have a fragment of the original: there are pages missing. It is possible that a copy of the full text will be found at some point, possible that the missing pages may be found one day. If we had the full text, it's possible that it might contain references to actual places. As for the text we have, the text which the scholars have studied and commented on, there are no references to actual geographical places.

Some call this the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, but that's really more than we know from reading it. It does mention a Mary, but she is not called Magdalene here. There were several women named Mary in the Biblical gospels. When people call this the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, they are relying on the earlier Biblical gospels as references to help them identify the people who are not fully identified here. And, as mentioned another time when we looked at alternative gospels, the Gospel of Mary does have an additional problem in claiming to be first-hand material on Jesus: the name "Jesus" does not appear in the text that we have.

Gnostic Gospel of Truth: Geography and Places

2011-10-15T23:18:00.002-05:00

Here the point of this series will become plainer. After looking at the four canonical gospels, we will next take a look at the Gospel of Truth, one of the alternative gospels that is mentioned now and then. Here is the list of all the earthly, physical, geographical places listed in the Gospel of Truth:

(None)

That's right: None. There are no earthly, physical, geographical places mentioned in the Gospel of Truth. There is no baptism in the Jordan or anywhere else, no journey to Jerusalem or anywhere else, no Sermon on the Mount or anywhere else, no trial before Pilate or anywhere else. It doesn't record earthly events, and takes little interest in this world. If you'd like to see a copy of the Gospel of Truth, you can take a look at it and see for yourself.

The Gospel of Truth has its value -- as a record of what early Gnostic Christians made of Jesus. You can read the Gospel of Truth and see what the early Gnostic Christians considered to be important. You can see how, in their own way, some schools of Greek philosophers longed for beauty, truth, perfection, and fullness -- even joy -- and found these in Christ. It's a testimony to how Christ fulfilled more hopes than those of the ancient Jews who wrote the New Testament.

What you will not find in the Gospel of Truth is anything like historical information on Jesus. No places are named, and no events are recorded -- though it does assume the reader is familiar with some of Jesus' life and teachings from other sources. The text is mainly a commentary on theology and philosophy, and how true knowledge of God through Christ changes our views of that. If you are looking for historical information on Jesus, you will not find it there.

Gospel of John: Geography and Places

2011-10-13T12:06:00.002-05:00

Here are places you can find referenced in the Gospel of John, as usual in roughly the order in which they are first named:

Jerusalem
Bethabara
Jordan
Galilee
Bethsaida
Nazareth
Israel
Cana
Capernaum
Aenon
Salim
Samaria
Sychar
the parcel of ground that Jacob gave Joseph
Jacob's well
Judea
Bethesda
sea of Galilee (sea of Tiberias)
Tiberias
Bethlehem
Mount of Olives
Pool of Siloam
Bethany
home of Mary, Martha, Lazarus
Cedron (brook)
judgment hall
Gabbatha
Golgotha
sepulcher

The Gospel of John was, in a sense, an early "alternative" gospel. That is, there are events and places recorded in it that are more than we knew from the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. We see some familiar events in familiar places, compared to the earlier gospels. But we also see events that took places at Cana, at Aenon, and in Sychar at Jacob's well. The author(s) expand on our previous knowledge -- but the new information is still grounded in the geography of that immediate area of the world. We still find the new events located in identifiable places that were recognizable to the people of that day.

My thanks for bearing with me this long; in the next post the point will become plain.

Gospel of Luke: Geography and Places

2011-10-11T19:48:00.003-05:00

I promise that it is not my plan to simply try the patience of any readers (or, for material like this, skimmers). But please bear with me while I finish up the canonical gospels here, before I get to the ultimate point.

Here are places you can find referenced in the Gospel of Luke, once again in roughly the order in which they are first named:

Judea
Temple
At the Temple: the right side of altar of incense
Galilee
Nazareth
hill country
Israel
Syria
Bethlehem
Jerusalem
Iturea
Trachonitis
Abilene
Jordan
Capernaum
Sarepta (Zarephath)
Sidon
Simon's house (4:38)
lake of Gennesaret
Levi's house (5:29)
Tyre
Nain
house of Simon the Pharisee (7:36-40)
person referred to as Magdalene
Gadarenes
Sodom (historical reference)
Chorazin
Bethsaida
Jericho
person referred to as Samaritan
home of Martha (Luke 10:38)
people referred to as Ninevites (historical reference)
Nineveh
Siloam (in reference to a tower)
Bethphage
Bethany
house with an upper room
Mount of Olives
high priest's house
person referred to as Cyrenian
person referred to as "of Arimathea"
sepulcher
Emmaus

In Luke's gospel, again we see the author paying attention to the details of where events had taken place. Often we see actions that took place in private -- in the homes of people we know such as Simon Peter, Levi, Martha, or Simon the Pharisee. Sometimes we see a home whose owner is not introduced, such as the home in Jerusalem with an upper room where they ate the Passover.

Luke's gospel, like those of Matthew and Mark, has events that can be placed on a map. Often there is enough information so that someone from that time could have located the house or building -- or even the room within the building -- where something was said or done. In the Gospel of Luke, again we see Jesus spending his time in known places that were identified for the first readers of the gospel.

Gospel of Mark: Geography and Places

2011-10-10T20:17:00.005-05:00

I realize that catalogs of names are not on everybody's list of interests. And the point of all this (yes, there is a point) won't become plain for a few more posts. But for the moment, here are places you can find referenced in the Gospel of Mark, again in roughly the order in which they are first named:

land of Judea
river Jordan
Nazareth of Galilee
Galilee
sea of Galilee
Capernaum
Jerusalem
house of Simon and Andrew
Idumea
Tyre
Sidon
(country of the) Gadarenes
Sodom
Gomorrah
Bethsaida
Gennesaret
person known as Greek
Syrophoenicia (person described as Syrophoenician)
Decapolis
Dalmanutha
Caesarea Philippi
Bethphage
Bethany
mount of Olives
temple
treasury, while at the temple
house of Simon the leper
Gethemane
high priest's "palace"
person known as Cyrenian
Golgotha
person known as "of Arimathaea"
person known as "Magdalene"
sepulcher

Here we see knowledge of Judea in general, Jerusalem in particular, and the Temple area and the holy precincts in some detail. The author also mentions several bodies of water. Some of the locations are very specific: we see "the house of Simon and Andrew" in Mark 1:29.

When it comes to Mark and geography, there is some difference in manuscripts. From what I've been able to gather, there is one family of manuscripts that says (Mark 7:31) that a journey was taken "from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon" to the Sea of Galilee (which makes sense, geographically) while another manuscript family says "from the borders of Tyre through Sidon" to the Sea of Galilee (which has been questioned, to say the least). I won't belabor the point here; those who have a particular interest in that controversy can feel free to pursue it. For the current topic, it is enough to mention: given that there are different families of ancient manuscripts, of course the one that makes sense is going to be assumed to be closer to the events in question, and the one that makes less sense is going to be assumed to be further from the events in question. That's fairly standard procedure, when there is a difference in quality, to stick with the better one.

One other point deserves mention: in the holy precincts of Jerusalem, Mark's Gospel contains detail down to mentioning events at the treasury at the Temple, as related about a widow's offering, recorded in Mark but not in Matthew. This might suggest an author who was familiar with the Temple area in some detail.

Gospel of Matthew: Geography and places

2011-10-09T18:55:00.002-05:00

One interesting thing you can discover, studying the canonical gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) and the non-canonical gospels is the very different way in which they handle places. That is to say, Where did the events take place?

I'll introduce this question first by going over the canonical gospels, starting in this post with Matthew's Gospel. Here are some geographical places mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew, roughly in the order in which they are first mentioned:

Babylon
Bethlehem
Judea
Jerusalem
Judah
Israel
Egypt
Ramah
Galilee
Nazareth
Jordan
Capernaum
Zebulum
Naphtali
Syria
Decapolis
Peter's house
Gergesenes
(awareness of nearby land of the Samaritans)
Sodom
Gomorrah
Chorazin
Bethsaida
Tyre
Sidon
Gennesaret
Canaan
Magdala
Caesarea Philippi
Jericho
Bethphage
Mount of Olives
Zion
Bethany
Simon the leper's house
Gethsemane
high priest's "palace"
the temple
potter's field
awareness of: Cyrene
Golgotha
Jesus' tomb

The places range from nations and regions to fields and houses. Jesus' movements and the disciples' movements can be plotted on a map. If you wanted to place the events on a map, sometimes you would need a wide-angle view of the map, and sometimes you'd need nearly a street view of the cities and towns at that point in history.

The point, for the moment, is this: the Gospel of Matthew is a very down-to-earth book. The events described are very much rooted in first-century Judea and the surrounding areas.

Praying when afraid

2011-10-05T20:59:00.004-05:00

Many people seem to have a sense of a big problem looming. With that in mind ...

Great is your faithfulness, Lord,
And great is your kindness to your people.
Heaven and earth may pass away,
But your word remains forever.

When earthly kingdoms fail,
Your kingdom remains.
When treasures on earth are lost,
When thieves break in and steal
Or moths and rust destroy,
Treasures in heaven remain.

Your blessing rests on the poor
Your favor on those who revere you
And comfort is promised to those who mourn.
Great is your faithfulness, Lord,
And great is your kindness to your people.

Worship - expanding our horizons

2011-10-02T20:30:00.000-05:00

A good few years ago, it was a Jewish fellow who first explained to me that the word we see translated as "worship" is usually a word that means to bow or prostrate. It's the posture of a servant, acknowledging the greatness of the one to whom we bow. It offers submission. Sometimes also the word for "service" (the work of a servant) is translated as "worship". Literal bowing and physical prostration is still a part of worship for many people in the world.

When God forbade idolatry, he forbade service to an idol, or bowing to an idol (Exodus 20:5, 23:24). He did not, then, command bowing to himself. He did command service (Exodus 23:25). But what kind of service does he command?

As a side note on "bowing" or "worship", when we keep the commandments we bow to God in a spiritual sense. When we tell the truth even when a lie would benefit us, we bow to God. When we notice our neighbor's spouse and make up our minds to look the other way, we bow to God. When we decline to discuss another person behind their backs, we bow to God. The kind of "worship" that God requests of us is that we love our neighbors as ourselves.

I think the best way to make my point about what God asks is this: In the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), the Jews studied carefully and counted each distinct commandment. There are different versions of the list; one can be found here for reference. This list finds 613 distinct commandments, which is a number you will hear often for lists of this type. The list is organized into topics by what the law is most directly about. Here is a summary of how many commands were counted under each topic:

God: 10
Torah: 6
Signs and symbols of the covenant: 5
Prayer and blessings: 4
Love and brotherhood: 14
The poor and unfortunate: 13
Treatment of Gentiles: 6
Marriage, divorce, and family: 23
Forbidden sexual relations: 25
Times and seasons: 36
Dietary laws: 27
Business practices: 14
Employees, servants, and slaves: 19
Vows, oaths, and swearing: 7
Sabbatical and Jubilee Years: 17
The court and judicial procedures: 36
Injuries and damages: 4
Property and property rights: 11
Criminal laws: 7
Punishment and restitution: 24
Prophecy: 3
Idolatry, idolaters, idolatrous practices: 46
Agriculture and animal husbandry: 7
Clothing: 3
The firstborn: 4
Priests and Levites: 30
Offerings, tithes, and taxes: 24
The Temple, the sanctuary, and sacred objects: 33
Sacrifices and offerings: 102
Ritual purity and impurity: 16
Lepers and leprosy: 4
The king: 7
Nazarites: 10
Wars: 16

A few different sections could apply to worship in the way we normally think of it -- though when you look at the individual commands, you are likely to find a command like "Don't offer an animal with a blemish."

But here's the thing: while not every section applies to "worship" as we narrowly define it, every section applies to service. Fair business practices fall under "service to God"; fair treatment of employees likewise. Farming practices fall under "service to God". So does family. So does having a just court system. When we treat our co-workers well, we bow to God just as surely as someone on a prayer mat.

The laws of the Torah are not binding on Christians in the sense that we are not under the Old Covenant from Sinai, but under the New Covenant. Still, we see the writers of the New Testament talking about treatment of family and treatment of servants right along with generosity towards the poor and traditional "worship", all as part of the same topic of how we live as God's people.

When we think of religion in terms of singing hymns and praying and reading Scriptures one day a week, many of us sense that this is completely inadequate. But often, the answer given is to sing hymns and pray and read Scriptures two days a week, or seven days a week. And a great many Christians do read Scriptures and pray seven days a week. While I would not want to discourage anybody from singing, praying, studying, meditating, or any of the good and healthy things we do, it still remains to be said: that is a small part of what God asks of us. That kind of worship is only one topic among many in how we live our Christian lives. No matter how well we fulfill that one thing, it will always leave us with a sense of things undone because it still remains one topic among many that God asks of us.

What kind of worship pleases God -- or displeases him?

2011-10-01T10:01:00.000-05:00

Worshiping God is a natural thing; cultures all over the world, and across all times in history, have developed ways to worship. But does God appreciate all the things that we think of as worship?

Here are some worship practices that the Bible speaks against:

(Against) Assuming that God calls for sacrifice out of his own need

If I were hungry, I would not tell you. For the whole world is mine, and all the fullness thereof. (Psalm 50:12)

(Against) Claiming protection under his covenant while despising his instruction

Who are you to recite my laws and mouth the terms of my covenant, seeing that you spurn my discipline and brush my words aside? (Psalm 50:16, JPS)

(Against) Doing good things in order to get favorable publicity

So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, to be honored by men. ... But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. (from Matthew 6:2-4)

Note - but still for doing the good things.

(Against) Worship done for appearance or human praise

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have already received their reward. (Matthew 6:5)

(Against) Thinking words alone are useful worship, or traditions of men are useful worship

This people draws near me with their mouth and honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. (Matthew 15:8-9)

And again, things that the Bible commands or encourages:

(For) Remembering the good that God has done

And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD your God brought you out o there through a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. (Deuteronomy 5:15)

(For) Justice and compassion

Is it such a fast that I have chosen? A day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD?

Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke?

Is it not to deal your bread to the hungry, and that you bring the poor that are cast out to your house? When you see the naked, that you cover him; and not to hide yourself from your own relatives? (Isaiah 58:5-7)

(For) Repentance

I say to you that there shall be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous who had no need of repentance. (Luke 15:7)

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Psalm 51:17)

(For) Prayer that trusts in God's love

When you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. ... Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. This, then, is how you should pray:
Our Father ...
(Matthew 6:6,8-9)

(For) Worship in spirit and in truth

The hour is coming, and has now come, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeks such to worship him. (John 4:23)

(For) Turning to God for help, and honoring him for the good he has done

Call upon me in time of trouble and I will rescue you, and you shall honor me. (Psalm 50:15)

A prophet's summary of what God requires

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8, translation mostly following JPS)

What about our usual ways of worship? What about prayer and praise? What about songs and sermons? What about Bible studies?

The Bible says good things about prayer and praise as we've seen above. It contains an entire book of songs -- along with urging for us to sing new songs, which is warrant enough for us to sing and keep singing. And the Bible commands us to learn and to teach what God has said.

Worship, as we think of it, is a good thing. The problem discussed before was when people accuse that God *needs* it to assure his insecurity -- that he wants it in the way that a vain or needy woman wants flattery -- as if the immortal one would seek the praise of mortals, or the holy one would seek the praise of sinners. The problem discussed in the next post is when we limit our religious life to this type of worship that we generally think of, in songs and Bible studies and the like.

Interest in worship

2011-09-29T20:33:00.002-05:00

My previous post on worship was written in response to watching an episode of The Simpsons. That post was mainly geared toward answering a popular piece of anti-Christian propaganda that had been promoted on the show. But worship does deserve treatment in its own right, not just in responding to caricatures from the critics. So I'm planning two follow-ups at this point:

How holy living fits into the picture of worship
Worship and religion called for in the Bible

It just leaves such an incomplete picture, to talk about a skeptical argument and leave it there.

A mother's prayer for teenagers: Use of talents

2011-09-28T20:44:00.003-05:00

Lord, thank you for (name). Thank you for the talents and gifts you have given him. May he recognize them and build them. May he know the satisfaction of dedication, of mastering a skill, and the satisfaction of excellence. As you saw in the beginning that what you had made was good, may he also know the delight of recognizing that what he has accomplished is good. May his work serve you and bless others. May he remember humility, and give you the glory. May he love and follow you all his days.

Does God want our worship?

2011-09-25T21:26:00.000-05:00

In the often anti-Christian show The Simpsons, there is an episode in which Homer Simpson is tricked into becoming a missionary (Episode "Missionary: Impossible" from Season 11.) The illiterate primitive people at the mission know more about religion than Homer does, in some ways. The show's writers have someone ask Homer a question that many Christians have heard from skeptics, and instead of having Homer give a Christian reply, they have Homer give the standard mockers' reply, with a little Hollywood flair added:

Native: "If the Lord is all-powerful, why does he care whether we worship him or not?"

Homer: "It's because God is powerful, but also insecure. Like Barbra Streisand before James Brolin."

If you were to search the commands in the books of Moses, you would not find a command where God asks for flattery. In the commands of the books of Moses, God shows remarkably little interest in receiving praise. In the Ten Commandments, the well-known command forbidding idol-worship is not, after all, followed by a command insisting on praising God. The Sabbath command does not contain a command to conduct worship services; it contains a command to rest from work. The kind of "worship" which God asks of his people as they live their daily lives is to be ethical: to be morally good. He requires of his people that they live good lives: not lying, not stealing, not murdering, not taking each others' wives and husbands. He asks his people to be holy as God himself is holy. He asks us to follow him in his ways.

The Simpsons doesn't exist to be fair; they exist to entertain. But if they had given a decent answer, it might have gone something like this:

Native: "If the Lord is all-powerful, why does he care whether we worship him or not?"

Could have said: "He cares whether we live good lives. It wouldn't be such a bad idea if we cared about our lives as much as He does."

And even that is before we begin to understand what a blessing it is to know God, and to be his people.

Is "inerrancy" a high view of Scripture?

2011-09-19T21:13:00.003-05:00

The problem with "inerrancy" is that it leaves you nowhere to go. If the Old Testament is inerrant and if inerrancy is enough, then why do we need the New Testament? Either the New Testament is superfluous -- or inerrancy is not enough. And if inerrancy is not enough for the Old Testament to be sufficient, why should inerrancy be enough for the New Testament? Either way, if "inerrancy" is the goal, there's a problem for the New Testament. When we talk about "inerrancy", we define the good in terms of avoiding error -- and once error has been avoided, what else do you need?

There is a hazard in debating secondary issues: we can mistake them for primary ones. If the Bible did not reveal God to us, it would not be enough, even if the whole world agreed it was error-free. If the Bible does reveal God to us, then it is nothing but shenanigans to avoid hearing it on the pretext that there may be mistakes in the lengths of the reigns in the kings' lists or a pro-Israeli bias in the point of view of some ancient battles.

The question of inerrancy loses sight of knowing God. The glory of the Bible is not "inerrancy" -- it is the face of God, looking on us with favor and giving us peace. In pursuing inerrancy, there is one thing we lack: following Jesus.

Apocryphal gospels as "fan fiction"

2011-09-17T20:46:00.000-05:00

I enjoy fan fiction -- you know, those fan-written stories for things that ended too soon. I've read fan fiction for book series like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, and for the occasional TV show too.

What is the appeal of fan fiction? In a word: More. You get to the end of something good, and you want more. Seven Harry Potter books seems like a lot -- unless you really came to enjoy the characters. And then you didn't want it to end.

Most Fan fiction has fairly predictable subject matter. Here are some common things that happen in fan fiction:

Events may be told from a different character's point of view.
A different person may be the central character, or a minor character may become a major character.
They may narrate events that were not described in the original work. Sometimes there are entirely new scenes, but more often they provide "deleted scene" information or untold back story to the original work.
They may try a slightly different personality for a character, and see what kind of impact that would have on events. What if Bella Swan (Twilight) hadn't been so insecure and needy? What if Edward hadn't been such a gentleman? What if Dumbledore (Harry Potter) had actually been evil?
Often they explore different relationships. For example, what if Hermione Granger had become interested in someone besides Ron Weasley? Or what if a character without a romantic history, such as Neville Longbottom, had been given that chance?

There are other types of material for fan fiction, but these are among the most common.

What does it have to do with the apocryphal gospels?

As best I can tell, the right literary category for many of the apocryphal gospels is "fan fiction". Fan fiction has some rules: the main characters are taken from another work or group of works. You can tell the characters are borrowed because they're not really introduced; they're assumed to be known to the reader already.

Many of us have, at some point in our lives, experienced a sense of disappointment that we cannot read a whole world filled with books about what people remembered of Jesus, as the fourth gospel suggests could have been done. What we want, in a word, is more. As far as the usual types of fan fiction, we see them represented among the apocryphal gospels:

Events are told from another point-of-view, such as one of the Mary's.
"Missing scenes" gospels create tales of Jesus' childhood, or of Mary and Joseph's back story.
Minor characters come to the foreground in the Gospel of Judas or of Mary.
Alternative relationships develop, such as between Jesus and Mary.

Not all of the apocryphal gospels are fan fiction; some are sayings collections, or meditations on theology. But for some of them, it looks like they were written from a simple desire to have more material on Jesus.

Technology: Innovation Wishlist 2011

2011-09-12T20:07:00.002-05:00

It has been awhile since I've posted a wishlist for new inventions. So here's a short list of technological advances that I would welcome. I've been sick lately (just a cold), so a lot of these are health-related:

A little ear-scope with a micro-camera where you could put the scope in your ear and get an image on-screen on your computer, see what you're dealing with there.
A little microscope with a computer hook-up where you could put in a drop of blood, have it analyze all the images that it finds at the cellular level, match it with images of known germs in a database, and tell you what exactly you've got -- a real diagnosis instead of a best-guess from the symptoms.
Ok, I really want a home-computer compatible little medical diagnostic lab. Then you could get decent recommendations for treatment from a home computer for non-serious things. Who wants to be around a lot of other sick people in a medical office when your computer can make house calls?
Moving away from the medical end, how about a forensic application: give the computer a DNA sample from a suspect or unidentified person, have it create an image of the person's face. Maybe it could also give probable ranges for height and weight.

Dreaming ...

On the 10th anniversary of 9/11

2011-09-11T08:01:00.002-05:00

Lord, have mercy.

2996 crosses

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A mother's prayer for teenagers: worship

2011-09-08T21:00:00.002-05:00

Lord, thank you for (name). May he know joy in worship; may he desire to praise you and know the gladness of rejoicing in your goodness. May he know the satisfaction of finding wisdom and insight in your word. May he desire always to find or build a fellowship of believers throughout his life, wherever he may go. May he seek your word and seek your people, and be at home there. May he love and follow you all his days.

Torah: Ahead of its time?

2011-09-03T19:23:00.000-05:00

The Torah has had its critics since ancient times. But there are still some provisions in the Torah that were ahead of its time. Sometimes it was only ahead of some other cultures of its day; in other places the Torah has laws that are arguably more practical and just than even those we have today. In the past I've mentioned laws on stealing and laws on economic sustainability. Here are some other areas where the Torah seems ahead of its time:

Environmental laws: The Torah provided for sustainable farming by establishing regular Sabbath years where farmland could lie fallow and regain its fertility. (Leviticus 25:2-5)
Welfare/workfare laws: striking a balance between responsibility and compassion, the poor and destitute were given the opportunity to work and provide for themselves by gleaning from another field, so that they could sustain themselves even without "employment" or land, and without losing the obligation to be responsible for themselves. (Leviticus 19:9-10, 23:22; Deuteronomy 24:21)
Infection control: The Torah established ways to recognize and prevent the spread of infectious diseases. It had procedures for inspecting and evaluating infections, for quarantine of suspected infection, and washing / cleansing. It called for the destruction of contaminated cloth. (Leviticus 13; the other hygiene and washing provisions in the Torah could also be included here)
A day of rest: On the bumper stickers, labor unions like to claim credit for weekends. But the Torah had regular weekly rest built into the laws thousands of years earlier. A day of rest is a humane and sensible provision, one that many people still see fit to observe today. It is one of the few provisions of the Biblical law that even many atheists willingly adopt. (Exodus 20:8)
Humane treatment of animals: The law makes provision for an animal to enjoy plenty of food, and to share a day of rest just like the people. (Deuteronomy 25:4; Exodus 20:10)

St Augustine, the Torah, and the critics of Christ

2011-09-01T19:00:00.003-05:00

Our age likes to congratulate itself on our supposed superiority to other times. We like to imagine that we alone have raised questions -- such bold and daring questions that no one in ages past dared to ask. We might be more open-minded if we read some older books.

Christians have a long history of mixed reactions to the Old Testament in general, and to the Torah in particular. Here we see St Augustine, before his conversion, puzzling over questions leveled by critics of Christianity. The question is roughly about whether it was healthy to regard the Old Testament patriarchs as role models:

Are they to be esteemed righteous who had many wives at once, and did kill men, and sacrifice living creatures? (Confessions III:VII)

His objections were, perhaps, never answered in any historical or literal sense. As Augustine listened to one of the renowned Christian scholars of his day, St Ambrose, he found himself listening particularly to answers for questions like these. He gradually came to accept the practice of dealing with such passages figuratively ("in a figure"):

For first, these things also had now begun to appear to me capable of defence; and the Catholic faith, for which I had thought nothing could be said against the Manichees' objections, I now thought might be maintained without shamelessness; especially after I had heard one or two places of the Old Testament resolved, and ofttimes "in a figure," which when I understood literally, I was slain spiritually. Very many places then of those books having been explained, I now blamed my despair, in believing that no answer could be given to such as hated and scoffed at the Law and the Prophets. (Confessions V:XIV)

When Augustine says of the Old Testament that when he understood it literally he was slain spiritually, it comes down to this: the plain sense of the Old Testament was a deal-breaker for him.

And so Augustine found, as many Christians have found, that the most adamant critics of Christianity spend much of their time arguing about the Torah or the earliest history of Israel. For my own part, I suspect this is because they cannot justly say much against Christ, and so try to turn people away from him by other means.

I hope it does not leave the wrong impression to leave it here; the next post is closely related. I'm trying to keep the posts to reasonable lengths.

Jubilee: Financial "reset" in the Torah

2011-08-28T21:15:00.002-05:00

How often have we heard critics say that the Torah contains an antiquated and barbaric legal system? And yet it has some features that are more just than our own. The ancient system provided that the people should have family lands that were enough to support themselves. It also foresaw that some would prove better managers than others, and made provisions so that the misfortune -- or even bad judgment -- of the parents would not doom generations of their descendants to poverty. Every fifty years* there was a "Jubilee" -- a great financial "reset" -- where property was returned to the original owner or his family. So again every family had lands that were enough to support themselves. If the family land was lost through the carelessness of one generation, it was returned within the lifetime of the next. Debts, too, were canceled, and those who were in forced labor to pay off their bankruptcy were set free again.

Our system is very different today. There is no long-term thought given to each family having both the means and the responsibility to provide for themselves. There is no serious expectation that a debt should be repaid even if someone has to be compelled to do the honest thing and work to repay it; neither is it built into our laws that there should be a limit to the length of time that a debt can be held over the head of someone who has honestly and for years done everything in their power to repay it. There is no provision that the misfortune (or bad judgment) of one generation should be righted at some point for the sake of future generations.

Any nation's set of laws is, in some sense, the set of rules to an economic game. Our system provides a good number of honest ways to succeed, and a few dishonest ones. But it has no "reset". This is not the fault of those who have succeeded honestly. All the same, the long-term effect is to create a growing underclass who do not start life with the means to support themselves (particularly since many middle-skill jobs have left our shores), and a shrinking upper class with more and more dependents. Neither group really likes the arrangement. Some in each group are more gracious about the arrangement than others, but graciousness should not be confused with the question of whether the rules are workable.

So the question remains: Can a system work in the long term unless each family has both the means and the responsibility to provide for themselves? And if we want -- or need -- a system in which each family has both the means and the responsibility to provide for themselves, that does mean there has to be a "reset" now and then. Unless the "reset" is to mean "chaos and revolution", then we might want to give thought to having laws that take a long-term view and provide a peaceful and orderly way to reset.

* Some say the Jubilee was every forty-nine years, rather than every fifty.

Paul's challenge to our complacency

2011-08-24T22:09:00.003-05:00

St Paul, as a writer, knew how to make a point. Writing to Jesus' followers in Ephesus, he gave instructions on how we should live as new creations. Watch how he draws attention to some pairs of opposite things, to make the difference plainer to us. Pardon the extra numbers added into the text here; it helps separate out his points:

And put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore each of you must:
put off falsehood ... and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body.
In your anger do not sin ... do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.
He who has been stealing must steal no longer ... but work, doing something with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need.
Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths ... but only what is helpful for building up others according to their own needs, that it may benefit those who listen.
(Ephesians 4:24-29)

Paul challenges me there. Sure, it's easy to feel good about not stealing and having one command easily accomplished. But then Paul puts stealing as part of a spectrum, a continuum, where on the low end we have stealing, in the middle ground we have self-supporting, and in the higher goals we have helping the needy. All the sudden "not stealing" is the lowest bar, not the highest.

Paul challenges again on "unwholesome talk" -- if I leave off slander and gossip, and skip character assassination and arrogant talk, and reject the use of insults and put-downs, and shun all cussing, that is now the low end. Saying things according to my needs instead of the other person's needs is challenged next; some self-promotion is (possibly) not as offensive as gossip or slander or character assassination, but self-promotion and even self-centered talk are challenged because it does nothing to build up the other person.

That whole section of Ephesians continues in the same way for awhile. Paul shows that it is one thing to avoid being bad, but after that we still have a long way to go where we can pursue being good, for the sake of others and to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

"Not with words of human wisdom"

2011-08-21T22:10:00.002-05:00

For Christ sent me not to baptize but to proclaim good news, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of power. (Paul, to the Corinthians, I Cor 1:17)

I think there is a risk in blogging or teaching that is much like the risk of preaching: a temptation, really, to try to gain a reputation for ourselves. Paul saw the risk plainly: if he were to seek a reputation for himself, it would come at the expense of the reputation of Christ. As soon as he had a following for himself, it would be a division among those who followed Christ. If he took any admiration for himself, it would come at the expense of whether his own followers were keeping their eyes on Jesus. It was bad enough that some followed Paul, and some followed Peter, and some followed Apollos; it would have been far worse if those leaders of the early church had actually wanted their own followers, and their own reputations. It was a great help that the early church leaders were united in their conviction that it was Jesus, and not themselves, who should be taught and studied and followed. They wanted his reputation to be proclaimed so that his goodness could be a hope to people.

We have a lot, in our age, that we could learn from the early church. This is not the least of them.

Jesus in context: "Follow me"

2011-08-18T21:30:00.000-05:00

Jesus' sayings may carry more meaning than we recognize. We catch the plain meaning, but miss the references that would have been familiar to the people who first heard him.

Here, for instance, is one of the "touchstone texts" of ancient Judaism:

You shall walk after the LORD your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him. (Deuteronomy 13:4)

That same idea of walking after the LORD is quoted time and again in the Old Testament:

... made a covenant before the LORD, to walk after the LORD and to keep his commandments (2 Kinds 23:3)

... made a covenant before the LORD, to walk after the LORD and to keep his commandments (2 Chronicles 34:31)

... They shall walk after the LORD. (Hoseah 11:10)

There are more instances phrased the other way too, about not walking after other gods, or not walking after our own ways, or not walking after our evil imaginations.

The picture of walking after God was firmly ingrained in the Jewish mind down through the centuries. It continued into the days of the New Testament as the routine way that the people spoke, both among Jesus' disciples and his critics:

And this is love, that we walk after his commandments. (2 John 1:6)

... walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. (Romans 8:1)

... them that walk after the flesh. (2 Peter 2:10)

Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders? (Mark 7:5)

In some translations we see "walk after" or something along those lines; in others we see it translated as "follow": To follow the LORD, and not to follow our flesh, or our imaginations, or other gods. So the idea is well-established: the people talked about true religion or false religion in terms of who or what they followed.

"Follow me." - Jesus

One of the things Jesus says most often is, "Follow me."

On being like God: Hospitality

2011-08-14T22:49:00.001-05:00

God does not call us to be isolated followers; he calls us to fellowship. God is love, and he asks his followers to live in love. How can that be done in isolation? The New Testament instructs us to show hospitality to one another. But in many ways we have forgotten this teaching.

Peter, a leader among the apostles, writes:

And above all things, have fervent love among yourselves, for love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. (I Peter 4:8-9)

Peter writes as though the natural expression of love is hospitality. And still we are slow to open our homes to each other.

Peter wrote to all the members of the church: that we should offer hospitality to each other. If hospitality is required of the members, then how much more for the leaders. Paul lists it among the qualifications of a church leader:

An overseer must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach. (1 Timothy 3:2)

For church leaders, hospitality was given priority even over the ability to teach. I don't mean to neglect being blameless and all that; it tops off Paul's list. But the other things that Paul names are things we generally still expect of our church leaders. Why don't we expect leaders who are given to hospitality?

I have sometimes heard church leaders congratulate themselves on how they've finally stood up to their parishioners, who have asked: Shouldn't their parishioners be hospitable to them? Why then do the parishioners have any right to complain that their pastor never visits them or invites them over, if they have never taken the initiative and invited their pastor?

But the church leaders are called to lead -- and to lead by example. The thing about leading by example is that we're always setting an example, just maybe not a good one. If the church leaders do not invite their people and do not visit their people, they are leading all the same: they are showing by example that hospitality is not important here.

God calls us to be his people in the world. We become a people when we know and love each other. So the leader builds that group together by showing hospitality, and fellowship grows where people are welcomed.

God's hospitality

2011-08-11T22:35:00.000-05:00

The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. (Matthew 22:2)

God is not what we would expect. Where we expect an Almighty Being to be remote and aloof, instead we see him warm and welcoming -- and specifically, warm and welcoming toward people, real ordinary people.

Jesus claimed that, in looking at him, we have a unique insight to God: "He who has seen me has seen the Father." So what do we see?

Some of the great sages of world religions -- particularly the "Eastern" religions -- have been solitary figures. When a painting or sculpture portrays them and their lives, we typically see them alone. Not so with Jesus. Sure, he had times of solitude and prayer. He observed a lengthy fast after his baptism. But for much of his ministry, we see him in company -- and enjoying the company.

Many of Jesus' conversations, passed down to us, took place when he was a guest at someone's home. There was the time when the woman broke the jar of perfume. And the time that Martha was getting all frustrated with Mary. There was the scandal he caused going to Matthew's home, and his answer about who it is that needs a doctor. There was another round of shock when he went to Zacchaeus' home. And of course there was the Last Supper in the upper room. Though we call that the Last Supper, he did meet them there again a few days later, after he had risen from the dead -- again, at dinner. Of all the times Jesus came to his disciples after the resurrection, I'm combing my memory here -- did all of them involve gathering with them at dinner or a meal? And he asked us to remember him by coming together for bread and wine, in his name.

Sometimes even the miracles took place in someone's home. He healed Simon Peter's mother-in-law after he had already been welcomed into their home.

And while Jesus was often the guest in someone else's home, he never seemed like he wanted to get back home; instead, he seemed to carry that welcome feeling of "home" with him, so that wherever he was, not only did he feel at home, but so did everyone else. Whenever I read the accounts of him in someone else's home, I get the feeling that these were the kinds of days where nobody wanted to leave at the end, where they were wishing it could last. "Home" was wherever Jesus was, and "family" could be anyone. (That's probably the point behind his telling his disciples they would have a hundred homes -- and as many sets of relatives.) Birds have nests and wild beasts have dens, and the Son of Man had no place to lay his head -- but those who traveled with him didn't seem to mind that so much, so long as he was there.

The miracles of feeding the multitudes were also acts of hospitality. And the first miracle -- the very first -- was an act of hospitality in Cana, to bring the wine to a wedding feast. And in the world to come, the gift of following Jesus is fellowship; it is the feast of salvation.

And he said to me: "Write, 'Blessed are they who are called to the wedding feast of the Lamb.'" And he said to me, "These are the true sayings of God." (Revelation 19:9).

There are some things about God that we do not consider as often as we should. God is a warm and generous God, a welcoming host.

Why the "pedophile priests" scandal won't go away -- yet

2011-08-07T22:06:00.000-05:00

During that time when I was too busy to post, I read a post over at InternetMonk (Michael Spencer's old blog) by a Roman Catholic apologist who goes by the name Martha of Ireland. Starting with the recent pedophile priest scandal in Ireland, she posted about what she called The Scandal of Forgiveness. There she argues at length that the secrecy of the confessional, as the church's law (and, she contends, the law of God) ought to trump the law of man. She seeks to answer criticism against what many people see as the church's fairly obvious wrongdoing; she does this by focusing clearly and exclusively on the redemption of the sinner.

I have never heard any Christian dispute the fact that it is the church's job to work for the redemption of the evildoer. The objection comes when protecting the evildoer from the law is given priority over protecting his victims from criminal abuse. The scandal in all this is not the church's forgiveness, it's the church's complicity. The abused are accorded barely a recognition, and their safety is not spared a single thought.

Is the law of God higher than the law of man? Of course; and protecting the innocent is most definitely the law of God. So it is not entirely honest to frame the church's silence as a case of the law of God against the law of man. One of the things that has lost the most credibility for the church is that, this time, it is the secular government upholding the law of God in the case of the abused children, while the church turns a blind eye to that particular law of God, and to the children being abused. How can anyone accept that, much less justify it?

Is keeping the silence of the confessional a law of God, or a law of man? I'll answer for either view a reader might hold. If this secrecy is a man-made law -- then the church is upholding the law of man, while the secular government upholds the law of God. Lots of people hold this view, and are disgusted with the church. But if this secrecy is a law of God, it does not follow that it is the highest law. Protecting the innocent is also the law of God. As Jesus taught, there are times when a lesser law (like resting on the Sabbath) must be broken for a greater law (like rescuing a creature in danger). At times like that, keeping the greater law makes a person innocent, even if he breaks the lesser law. But breaking the greater law for the sake of keeping the lesser law is wrong in the eyes of God.

In Ireland, there is at least talk of an Irish law to insist that priests who hear confessions should report actual crimes to the government authorities. I think Ireland is justified to make such a law; still it is questionable whether the Catholic Church would submit itself to an ordinance of man even for the Lord's sake, to those who are appointed for the punishment of evildoers. That is why I would hope to see a similar law come from the church hierarchy. What other law would the priests respect? In some cases, the church is accustomed to — and theologically prepared to – defy the law of the land. But every once in awhile the law of the land may hold true to the law of God, and they do wrong to go against it at a time like that. The priest could easily insist that, if the person’s repentance is genuine, then their act of penance — or restitution — will be to turn himself over to the authorities and confess also to them. If the priest were quite serious about protecting the people being wronged, or even respecting the laws of the land (especially ones that coincide with the laws of God), I’d think that would be a given.

Martha's article also frames the problem as if the real difficulty people have with the priests is that they might hear a man from their parish who confesses to abusing a child. We spend the length of her article looking at the priest through Martha's eyes as a noble man in a difficult situation because of the privacy of the confessional. But back in the real-world scandal, the problem with the priests has not been so much that they might have heard a terrible confession -- it has been that the priests themselves were the criminals. So, in one sense, the whole article is a diversion from the real issue of the ongoing sexual abuse scandal among the priests. Their superiors could have insisted the criminal priests should turn themselves in. I expect that the priests are under vows of obedience to the church. If the church commanded them to turn themselves in and they did not, I suspect that they could be legitimately defrocked for disobedience. Is this a desirable outcome? Yes. Let's not outsmart ourselves.

The article I'm responding to is written in defense of a policy of silence that was questionable even with an offender from the members of the parish; but silence becomes even more questionable when we remember that the offenders in the original scandal are, themselves, priests. When it comes to the question of priests who themselves are pedophiles, the situation is worse: then we have an institution with an official policy of silence to protect known criminals within its own membership and leadership. That is generally regarded as corrupt, and no number of fine words will change peoples' recognition of something wrong with that picture.

As a side note, I admit to being puzzled by one of Martha's arguments: that once a sin is forgiven in the eyes of God, that's the end of the story on whether the sin can be mentioned again. A group like Rome teaches, on the one hand, that the confessional and forgiveness are not the end of the story on a sin -- that purgatory still follows. It seems that if forgiveness was not a full answer in God's eyes, and God gives the sinner a second round of medicine -- purification -- then the church has already recognized in principle that forgiveness is one thing and the stain of sin is another, that the sin may need some follow-up work even if it is forgiven. By the same token it is perfectly legitimate for the government and its laws to do their job even on a forgiven sin -- for the safety of the people.

Why won't the pedophile priests scandal go away -- yet? It will not go away until Rome recognizes that protecting victims from harm is also the law of God -- and a higher law than protecting the offender. Rome must also recognize that it is one question whether a sinner is forgiven in God's eyes, and a different question whether he is safe to his neighbors. When the day comes that we hear the Roman Catholic apologists arguing at length about defending the weak and upholding their cause before God, then the day may be closer when we can leave the scandal behind. But so long as the apologists make arguments about how the status quo is fine and the policy of silence is good, why should anything change?

Short thoughts: On downgrading from AAA

2011-08-06T08:06:00.000-05:00

I assume nobody is shocked that the U.S. credit rating was downgraded from AAA. Speaking of our government: We do not have a triple-A commitment to balanced budgets. We do not have a triple-A commitment to living within our means. We do not have a triple-A commitment to financial responsibility.

The ratings are simply reflecting what has long been a reality.

If someone considers that prized credit-rating worth obtaining again, we have to develop triple-A seriousness about putting our finances in order.

Overtime season

2011-08-02T07:39:00.002-05:00

Where I work, it's our annual overtime season again. I'm hoping to be able to resume posting again this weekend.

Take care & God bless

If Iron Sharpens Iron ...

2011-07-28T22:52:00.000-05:00

As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the wit of his friend. (Proverbs 27:17, JPS)

This verse is usually quoted to point out the value of friendly debate, sharpening our wits and our knowledge. So why aren't we all that sharp?

If the verse is about debate, then our wits could be sharper if we took the time to debate each other as with a friend. With a friend, we are patient. We would never assume bad faith or stupidity or moral failing on their part, just because we had not succeeded in communicating our point or convinced them we were right. But those things are common in disagreements with strangers.

Sometimes we talk about controversies when no one who disagrees is present. Whether we intend it or not, this works out to discussing the other group behind their backs, and only when we are safe from contradiction.

Sometimes we simply avoid arguments. It's too easy for disagreements to become hostile. And so begins the separation into different groups who distrust each other, who avoid each other.

Within the Christian faith, denominations are sometimes in this type of situation. Each group quietly avoids the other, or criticizes in private where no one will contradict. And typically no one checks the accuracy of what is said about the other group; the "facts" being discussed probably become less accurate as time goes by without any dissenting voice to keep people honest. Isolation is bad for perspective. And if "iron sharpens iron," then denominations should not avoid each other as we do.

One thing the proverb makes clear: Our failure to talk to each other is our own loss, even if we're right. I'll say it again: even if we really are right, and the people who disagree really are wrong, still we lose something for not talking to other people -- because both sides gain from talking to the other, as iron sharpens iron. If we skip a conversation because we think we have nothing to gain by it, we've expressed contempt for the other person. If we are so dismissive of others that we assume that we have nothing to learn from talking to them, then we are wrong about that, regardless of whether we are "right" about the point of disagreement.

Euthyphro's dilemma: An ancient debate and the greatest commandment

2011-07-24T07:24:00.001-05:00

There is an ancient dilemma that goes back to the days of Plato, possibly even the days of Socrates. Back in those days the ancient Greeks spoke of many gods, but asked some of the same questions that people still ask today. Here is a question on their minds, the dilemma from Plato's ancient work, Euthyphro:

Is something loved by the gods because it is pious, or is something pious because it is loved by the gods?

I'll switch over to monotheistic language for the discussion here.

Sounds like an innocent question or an interesting but academic debate, doesn't it? What makes a thing or an action good in the eyes of God? Like many good questions, there's more to it than you see at first. If you take door #1 where God loves something because that thing is good in itself, then God has recognized a standard for "good" that is separate from himself. Is God bound to recognize another standard? Who sets that standard? But if you take door #2 where the love of God causes something to be good, then what is good is arbitrary and could have been otherwise; it's not intrinsically good or right.

The usual Christian response has been that this is a false dilemma: that good traces back beyond God's approval and God's will, and has its roots deeper, in the very nature of God. There is no separation between what is good and the nature of God; they are the same thing. So there is no separate standard of good that God himself must acknowledge, and there is no other path of good that God might have decided.

While this answer has been generally accepted among Christians, it has been put forward, at times, without solid Biblical support. Does the Bible teach that right and wrong are rooted in the nature of God, or is that just a thing for the philosophers?

I'd like to offer two passages of the Bible -- already considered key passages by many Christians -- to show that this answer is deeply Biblical.

Consider this statement that is already considered key to understanding the nature of God:

God is love. (1 John 4:8)

Consider this statement where Jesus speaks of the nature of right and wrong:

Then one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him and saying, "Master, which is the great commandment in the law?"
Jesus said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like to it, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." These two commandments are the basis for all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:35-40)

So according to Jesus, all the laws -- and so all that is good and pleasing to God -- depends on love of God and neighbor. And love itself is the nature of God. That is to say, what is good and pleasing to God is based on who God is: God is love.

Or to put it in a short and simple form:
1. The character of God is love.
2. The foundation of morality is love.
3. Therefore, there is no separation between the character of God and the foundation of morality.

A mother's prayer for teenagers: Fellowship and friendship

2011-07-23T20:35:00.003-05:00

Lord, thank you for (name). May he grow in love and friendship; may he excel in kindness and fellowship. May he lead the way in hospitality. May he be blessed with deep and enduring friends who join in him in following you.

On the fate of non-Israelites before Christ

2011-07-20T22:44:00.000-05:00

One question that Christians debate is what happens to the people who died without knowing Jesus. There were entire nations and continents and eras of human history where nobody had ever heard the name Jesus. If salvation comes through Jesus, then how could they receive God's mercy? But if God is just, how can someone be cut off from the love of God because of where and when they were born?

Without going into all the layers of questions at once, I'd like to look at one closely-related subject: What, if anything, did the authors of the New Testament say about this topic? Did they talk as though they thought the people of other nations and earlier times were condemned?

I'm only aware of a few passages of the New Testament that specifically discuss this type of question about people who lived and died in the years before Christ. The first is Paul's sermon in Athens, addressing idol-worshipers:

From one man, God made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. "For in him we live and move and have our being." As some of your own poets have said, "We are his offspring."

Therefore, since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone -- an image made by man's design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. And he has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead. (Acts 17:26-31, NIV, emphasis added on the parts that apply most directly).

Here Paul is speaking to idol-worshipers and talks about the whole sweep of human history up to his own day. Almost all of the people discussed are in groups that some people would assume are condemned; they lived before Christ's birth in lands that worshiped idols. But not once does Paul sound as if he thought they were automatically condemned. Paul could easily have said -- as some have said -- "God set some people to live in times and places before Christ's birth, because he knew he had not elected them to salvation, and there was no way they would reach out or find him." But Paul said nearly the opposite: that God did it so that people would seek him and perhaps reach out and find him, since he is not far from any of us. Paul might have said -- as some have said -- "They were guilty of idol-worship, a sin worthy of death, a sin against the law that is written on the human heart, so there is no injustice in condemning them even if they had never been given a law." But again, Paul said nothing of the sort; he said in the past God had overlooked such ignorance. We are accustomed to a system of laws where "ignorance is no excuse"; but according to Paul, God has a more merciful standard. Paul seems to assume that God overlooks sins caused by their ignorance.

Paul makes a point to say that God arranged history and nations so that people would seek him -- and Paul leaves open the possibility that they might find him. Paul said that no one was ever all that far from God.

There is one other passage in the New Testament that seems to talk about sin and salvation for people who lived in the times before Jesus' birth. Paul's letter to the Romans contains an extended section on the topic. This is a short excerpt:

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned -- for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come. (Romans 5:12-14, though the surrounding material is also worth reviewing for a more in-depth discussion)

In Romans, much of the letter has something to say on the topic; this is just an example. In the earlier chapters Paul shows how thoroughly the whole world was caught up with sin and subject to death. Here we see again a group of people that was ignorant of the law, and ignorant of sin -- and still died. Paul again touches on the subject of ignorance: that sin is not taken into account when there is no law. But that did not stop death.

Paul does not end with talk of sin and death. His real point is about Christ:

Consequently, just as the result of the one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:18-19)

Paul spends some time discussing condemnation and salvation, discussing the people who lived before Christ; he never sounds as though he assumes they were lost. And -- strangely to our ears -- he never sounds as though he assumes Christ has nothing to do with them because of where and when they lived.

That leaves a lot of questions unanswered for the moment. Sometimes a question left unanswered may be better than a question answered incorrectly.

I'd be interested in other passages of the Bible that other people think about in connection with this topic.

I do have some more on this topic, but it comes from a completely different angle and will wait for another post.

J K Rowling and the Resurrection

2011-07-15T12:28:00.001-05:00

If you don't enjoy the Harry Potter books, you may want to skip this post because it may not make much sense without the background of J K Rowling's books.

If you do enjoy the Harry Potter books, you'll know the Christian themes of forgiveness and resurrection are worked into the plot of the books. Here is something I intend as fan fiction, a deleted scene if you will, where a Muggle targeted by the death eaters knows he is about to die. Professor Snape has warned him of his fate, but the fellow is facing his death with faith. Which is mostly a way to see some of the Christian themes she's worked into the books.

Snape took a deep breath and cleared his mind. He could not allow his heart to pound, his mind to race. He had taken considerable risk to warn the man of his upcoming death; the fellow's calm was unnerving. "Perhaps I have not made myself clear," Snape said in a tone usually reserved for students who were not paying attention. "They fully intend to kill you tonight." Still, there was no change in the man's untroubled demeanor.

The man looked up at the stars, blinking briefly. "It's not like it's the end. I'm a religious chap, you know. God will see me through."

"You're about to die," Snape enunciated each word carefully. He wondered briefly if fear had robbed the fellow of his senses. If that was the case, he had done all he could.

The man's smile was tinged with sadness as he replied, "Oh, I understood you just fine. I just don't see a way out of it. Not for me." The man fingered a crucifix that he wore on a chain around his neck -- Jesus on the cross, dying. As he showed it to Snape, the potions teacher greeted him with a sneer, but the man persisted.

"Nevermind, for the moment, who you think this is. I have a question for you: Do you know who I say this is?"

"I believe it's something about the fullness of God in bodily form. Nonsense, of course; why exactly would God take bodily form? He did as all 'bodily forms' ultimately do: he died," Snape said, with the impatient air of explaining a simple concept to a thick-skulled student. "Clearly, he was not the Immortal One."

The man continued with a patient smile, overlooking Snape's taunts. "And, when I go to services -- particularly when I take the Supper -- again, nevermind for the moment what you think is happening. Do you know what I think is happening?"

"You believe you are drinking the veritable blood of your savior."

"Exactly!" he exclaimed in delight, undeterred by Snape's exasperated look.

It was too much for Snape, who was accustomed to seeing his overbearingly cynical outlook put the brakes on even the most enthusiastic. "I fail to see how exactly that causes you good cheer. You go to drink a toast to the death of your 'God'?"

"Of course!" he smiled. "Though -- you all say you're wizards. Magic. I had a great aunt who went to Hogwarts, all hush-hush. She told me a thing or two. So -- you do recognize the ritual, right?"

"Naturally," Snape replied with smoldering anger. "A blood-bonding ceremony. Whoever drinks is blood-bonded to the one who has shed their blood. Afterward, their lives are inseparably linked."

"Right you are! But not just their lives -- also their fates." Snape raised an eyebrow, but refused to ask the question. The man again looked at the crucifix. "You do know what we believe happened next, don't you? On the third day?"

"Something about a resurrection, I believe -- which not even the Dark Lord can achieve."

"Well, meaning no disrespect, but your 'Dark Lord' is not exactly the most powerful force in the universe, is he?" The scowl on Snape's face was now truly frightening. "But allow yourself to at least think about it. Imagine the possibility that it did, in fact, happen. That should clear up the part that was puzzling you before." Snape made to interrupt, visibly gathering himself to launch a verbal strike after being accused of being puzzled -- but the man continued, cutting across him, "When you asked why, exactly, God would take bodily form." Snape's eyes narrowed as his boredom and exasperation gathered steam. He had little patience for being questioned about elementary matters of the supernatural by a Muggle -- least of all, by someone who imagined himself possessed of some sort of rare insight.

Snape had always taken a sort of delight in eloquent rudeness, and was preparing to demonstrate. "Your claim that the Lord Almighty would become human precisely so he could die, to join his fate with mortals, is nonsense. Though I should count on someone like you to have a God who is also an utter fool," he said by way of introduction, contentedly preparing remarks aimed at the satisfaction of watching the smile wither from the man's face.

"It's just this: that the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom."

"For some of us, perhaps," Snape muttered under his breath.

"But don't you see what he's done? When we take the cup, we are blood-bonded to the Immortal One. Because he lives, we are forever anchored to life. Foolish and weak to become human and die? -- I'll grant you that. But far wiser than man's wisdom, and far stronger than man's strength."

As with all fan fiction, no profit is being made and all the recognizable parts of the story are the property of the author of the original series. J.K. Rowling owns all things Harry Potter.

A mother's prayer for teenagers: A mature faith

2011-07-13T22:15:00.002-05:00

Lord, thank you for (name). May he develop a mature and adult understanding of the faith that seeks and finds answers to its questions. May those hostile to you not succeed in taking advantage of his youth's inexperience and elementary understanding to persuade him that following you is a childish faith to be scorned by adults. May he seek you and find you, and follow you all of his days.

A familiar verse, a different way to interpret it

2011-07-11T19:11:00.000-05:00

God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." -- Genesis 1:28

Reading the Talmud and overhearing the ancient sages interpret Scripture is fascinating to me. It is completely common to see a single verse discussed at length from one angle after another. What would happen if we interpreted this familiar Scripture above in that way?

I could picture a conversation on this verse much like the following. I hope I can be forgiven my poor attempts at dialog and imitating the general flavor of the conversations in the Talmud. Here is how I would picture a conversation on this verse, in the general style of the conversations in the Talmud:

First Student: "Did God bless them, or did God command them?"
Older student: "It is a command. He said two things, for it is written, 'God blessed them and said to them, etc".
Other student: "It is a blessing, for it is written, 'God blessed them.'"
First Teacher: "If you say the blessing and the command are two different things, if you say 'Be fruitful' is the command, then what is the blessing?"
Second Teacher: "The ancients have taught that this is a command for us. If you say 'be fruitful' is the blessing, then what is the command?"
First Teacher: "The blessing is fulfilled in living the command."

Third Teacher: "The ancients taught, 'God's Word here is part of the Words of Creation.' As God said 'Let there be light' and 'Let the earth produce life,' so the Holy One also said, 'Be fruitful.'"
Student: "But -- 'be fruitful' -- is it not the first command of the Torah?"
Third Teacher: "The first command of the Torah is part of the Words of Creation."
Second Teacher: "Are all the commands of the Torah part of the Words of Creation?"

First teacher: "He spoke from paradise. What blessing was needed in paradise?"
Third teacher: "The whole world was not paradise, as it says, 'And God planted a garden in the East.' Therefore the Holy One says, 'Fill the earth.'"

And so ends my flawed attempts to give you all an idea of the way a verse might look when it is discussed in the Talmud.

I mostly wanted to give you all an idea how "context" comes up in ways we might not expect. When a blessing and command are mentioned in the same verse, it raises the question whether there is a difference between a blessing and a command. When a saying of God occurs in the context of creation, it may be part of creation. And if the very first command of the Bible could be viewed as a blessing and as part of creation, it raises the same questions of all later commands.

Richness of Scripture: Some ancient methods of interpretation (not allegory)

2011-07-10T19:58:00.003-05:00

The author of The Pocket Scroll has recently posted on typology as a way forward in Bible reading. I wanted to continue the conversation here.

I've broken this out into "How we got into this situation" and "Some approaches from the Talmud", so that if someone is only looking for the new approaches they can skip to that part. If someone wants an explanation for why I'd be looking there, you may also be interested into the part about how we got into this situation.

1) How we got into this situation

If anyone reads commentaries on the Bible written in the Middle Ages or before, sooner or later (usually sooner) you find that some of the Biblical interpretation was a little bit fanciful and far-fetched. Our first reaction to reading a certain interpretation may be, "Wow, that's kind of a stretch." There is also a long history of finding "spiritual" meaning for certain Old Testament texts (such as dietary laws) because their literal meaning was difficult to find inspiring; I remember this coming up even in the Confessions of St Augustine, so it predates the Middle Ages by a long way. There were almost no limits to what could be claimed as the meaning of a text -- which is to say, the meaning of the text was not always relevant to its interpretation. If the meaning of a text is not directly relevant to its interpretation, that's not a good sign.

The reaction to this has been, in some ways, just as unfortunate, as some have insisted there is "one right meaning" of a text. This was probably a welcome antidote to the "anything goes" method of interpretation. But in practice, it denies the richness of Scripture. When you have a book containing parables, prophecies, and poetry -- in addition to historical acts and rituals meant to be symbolic -- the "one right meaning" might (possibly) be the right place for the journey to start, but not to end.

For comparison, consider a selection from one of the most hauntingly beautiful songs to come out of the last century:

There's a sign on the wall, but she wants to be sure.
Because you know sometimes words have two meanings.
In a tree by the brook, there's a songbird who sings
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven.
(Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven)

Some will be offended that here I bring up a song with distinct pagan overtones. I want to be clear why I bring it up: are we really willing to say that a rock song has more depth, beauty, and layers of meaning than the Bible? Or is it just possible that "one right meaning" is far too rigid a way to read something that's rich in symbolism?

2) Some approaches from the Talmud

The Talmud is an ancient Jewish set of discussions of Scripture and religion that's nearly an encyclopedia unto itself. I've been fascinated with it for a long time now, for its glimpse into an ancient world, for its insights into Scripture -- and for a fresh set of ideas about how to read and understand the Bible. (I know some will smile that something as ancient as the Talmud can be called "fresh" -- but it really depends on how long the ideas have been left to rest, doesn't it?) Here are some of the general assumptions that are made.

Assumption #1: Scripture has layers of meaning. They believed that the Bible itself teaches that Scripture has layers of meaning, so that limiting Scripture to just one meaning was to mistreat the Bible.

Assumption #2: All prophecy relates to the Messiah and the Messianic age, even those that might have already had another fulfillment in its first context.

Assumption #3: If two passages of Scripture both speak of the same thing -- if they contain the same words or images -- then they shed light on each other.

Example: The teaching that wisdom is a "tree of life" (Proverbs 3:18) applies back to the "tree of life" in Genesis. So it's a legitimate conclusion that wisdom is the tree that gives life, in contrast to the tree of knowledge (without wisdom) that gives death.

Assumption #4: If two teachings of Scripture are next to each other -- placed consecutively in the text -- then it is reasoned that they are related and part of the same train of thought and shed light on each other. We might be tempted to consider this as too obvious, simply the meaning of "reading in context". But "context" is often understood as "background"; this approach instead moves the neighboring verse into the foreground as part of the same picture. It makes a direct application of the one verse or passage to its neighbor.

Example: "The peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:7) is often quoted by itself. But it can be seen as the conclusion to the immediately-preceding invitation to pray and commend all our troubles to God. In this way of understanding, the "peace that passes understanding" is tied inseparably to the act of prayer described immediately beforehand.

I could spend a lifetime studying the Talmud, as vast as it is, and still not have understood everything in it. I admire that these interpretive principles not only open up news ways of seeing things, but that they do so without resorting to an "anything goes" mentality where the interpreters could claim anything they wish. There are careful limits to what is legitimate, and how you can know it. Even for symbolic interpretation, it is necessary to show a Biblical reason why that symbolic interpretation is right, or legitimate to consider. There are sane and reasonable limits to what can be taught, a middle ground between the potentially shallow "one meaning only" reading and the potentially baseless "anything goes" reading.

I will mention one more of those sane and reasonable limits, and let that be enough for tonight. It was considered legitimate to take one verse and derive more than one teaching, but it was not considered legitimate to take multiple verses to piece together a single teaching. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to note which "teachings of Scripture" are never exactly taught in Scripture, but are pieced together from multiple verses.

It's a question that has always been some part of Christian discussion: Is it legitimate to claim that the Bible teaches something when there isn't a passage anywhere that actually says so?

Crown of Creation: Passion or Chore?

2011-07-07T20:29:00.002-05:00

God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." -- Genesis 1:28

Whenever I see the Blue Angels -- the precision aircraft flying team -- I think of what amazing things we can do, if we set ourselves to it. That kind of achievement inspires wonder, awe, excitement. To make it happen, it took vision and passion. (There had to be enough passion to survive a hundred committees.)

For every crowning achievement, there are hundreds of good ideas that never become accomplishments. And there are hundreds of mediocre ideas that take their place, not as good but easier to achieve.

When we think about ruling over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and all the living creatures that move over the face of the earth, we can see the beauty and the possibilities of a vibrant world. When we set out instead to think of environmental responsibility, you can nearly feel the joy drying up like the morning dew, vanished before the passionless presentation of a morally obligatory chore.

We weren't called to only avoid doing harm, to achieve an adequate balance, or to create a merely sustainable environment -- to watch our step (or our carbon footprint) and hope that our passing leaves no mark. Our call has its roots in a paradise; being asked to settle for less -- to aspire for less -- leaves us apathetic. We may see it as a duty, as a chore. But our hopes are higher than that. We do not want that kind of moralizing -- the call to be adequate that is a dumbed-down version of the call for excellence. People resent that type of moralizing precisely because it is dumbed-down, where they would welcome an actual call for excellence.^* 'Hope that our passing leaves no mark" -- where's the good in that? We are told to envision a paradise where there are rivers flowing down the streets of the city and an orchard lining its banks (Revelation 22:2).

I have an idea that every Bible verse, sooner or later, is lived out by someone. So to read a Bible verse, or to quote it, is to plant a seed and hope it grows.

There is a river, the streams of which make glad the city of God. (Psalm 46:4)

* There is something demoralizing about finding that someone's expectations of you (or your neighbor) are so cynical. And so, in its own way, I suspect that kind of moralizing has a demoralizing effect.

Crown of Creation

2011-07-02T10:18:00.003-05:00

Mankind is unique among all the creatures in this world. But is there really anything we do that other creatures don't do? We can fly -- but the geese were there in the skies, flying in formation, long before us. Expert climbers can rappel down a cliff on a slender rope -- but the spiders were doing that on their slender threads long ago. We can dive into the ocean -- and we come to a place where the fishes and other creatures of the deep have been for ages.

What exactly is unique about us? One is our quest for knowledge. Another is our quest for accomplishment. But at a basic level we have the ability to look at any creature in all the world and see possibilities. Birds do not look at fish or spiders and see the possibilities of SCUBA gear or rappelling. They may see dinner (depending on the type of bird), but they do not see a way to transcend their own limitations.

As the ancients said, we are in the "image of God" -- God who saw the possibilities and created.

Note: I know it is traditional, at this point, to launch into hand-wringing over the evils done by mankind. But I'm going somewhere else with this ... a little patience, please.

Restoration: Jesus' death and resurrection

2011-06-30T22:30:00.000-05:00

When God brings us to new life, it is the word of God that is the seed growing in us; yet that is closely related to Jesus in his death and resurrection (some would say it is the same thing). Consider first that the apostles speak of Jesus as actually being the Word of God:

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. (John 1:1)

Jesus is the living word of God, being made man to live among us.

Jesus also speaks of himself as a seed that is planted, as he speaks about his upcoming death:

The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. Truly, truly I say to you: Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains but a single seed. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit. (John 12:24)

So the renewal of the world began with Jesus. Our rebirth, our renewal, is tied to Jesus' death and resurrection.

The apostles taught that we participate in Jesus' death and resurrection -- particularly in our baptism:

So we are buried with him by baptism into death ... (Romans 6:4)

Can you drink the cup that I drink, and be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized? (Mark 10:38) (which Jesus spoken in reference to his upcoming execution.)

Likewise baptism does also now save us -- not by removing dirt from the body but the answer of a good conscience toward God by the resurrection of Christ. (1 Peter 3:21)

The Scriptures speak of new life as part of what it means to be Christ's people. We are taught that we must be "born again" (or "born anew", for those who would rather avoid the connotations of the American "born again" movement). The theme of new birth runs steadily throughout Scripture: "flesh gives birth to flesh, spirit gives birth to spirit", or (with ties to baptism again) "the washing of regeneration" (where "regeneration" means new birth). Peter and Paul both refer to new Christians as "spiritual infants", having started the new life but needing to grow into maturity.

The idea of growing to maturity and bearing fruit is also a steady theme running through the pages of Scripture, with teachings that "By their fruit you will know them", "Does a good tree bear bad fruit?", and "The fruit of the spirit is love, peace, patience, kindness" (etc).

We are even said to be "branches that were grafted into the tree" (Paul, to the Romans), drawing on the ancient theme of the Tree of Life -- and of the shoot springing forth from the stump of Jesse.

The point? Our atonement involves more than just the canceling of a debt. It is a transformation, the beginning of a literally new life. Throughout Scripture, we are given pictures of a new life that is lush and thriving.

One reason that some avoid talking about the new life is that this subject has often been used the wrong way. It is too easy to lose the focus on the lush and thriving new life given by God. Too often we look away from God's overflowing generosity towards us. We want to measure our progress -- or, worse, someone volunteers to measure it for us. There comes a temptation of faking spirituality by trying to perform our way into the favor of God. Some are tempted to do "good" works for public show, to earn praise and recognition -- or, worse, the right to boast. And some who volunteer to judge other peoples' spirituality are possessed by cold, narrow, or arrogant natures.

Here St Paul set a great example of spiritual leadership by boasting about how awful he had been, to put the best light on the mercy of God rather than on himself. We are most Christlike when we join him in accepting humility (or worse) for ourselves, for the sake of proclaiming God's goodness to others.

A mother's prayer for teenagers: Love of God and neighbor

2011-06-26T19:46:00.002-05:00

Lord, thank you for (names). Let them love the Lord their God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength. May they desire that love and fan the flames. May they diligently tend it and encourage it to grow, along with love for their neighbors. May they seek and follow you all of their lives.

What Bible verse are you?

2011-06-23T18:23:00.000-05:00

"I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat ..." - Mother Theresa of Calcutta.

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied." - MLK

"Consider the lilies of the field." - Francis of Assissi

"Sing to the LORD a new song." - Charles Wesley, Amy Grant ...

I suspect that everybody has a verse, or a collection of verses, that really speak to them. The saints among us are those who follow that call of the Word of God.

If you think that being "born of again of the Word of God" is just a figure of speech, ask yourself this: Was Mother Theresa just an unusually good person, or was she an incarnation of the parable of the sheep and the goats? I believe that her spirit was born again when she heard the verses that called to her, and the word of God took root in her and lived.

I think most of us know the call of those verses that speak to us.

So I'm not kidding when I ask, "What Bible verse are you?"

God restores us: Atonement and new birth (part 3)

2011-06-22T18:22:00.000-05:00

Salvation runs far deeper than settling accounts with God. In addition to God's forgiveness, we are given new life. If our problem were only a debt, that could be settled by accounting. But our hearts and minds become corrupted and need to be re-created. God gives us new life that is a re-creation as the persons God intended us to be.

Some speak as if the "new life" comes mainly through the Holy Spirit. But Jesus is also part of how we receive new life.

I have come that they might have life, and have it abundantly. (John 10:10)

This idea of new life is part of Jesus' teaching to us about the kingdom of God. Over and over as he explained what the kingdom of God is like, he often started by speaking of a seed, a new life that grows:

The kingdom of heaven is like a man who cast seed on the ground. (Mark 4:26)

It is like a grain of mustard seed. (Mark 4:31)

A sower went out to sow his seed (Luke 8:5)

Christ gives us the picture of growing things -- things started by seed and maturing to bring fruit -- as a way to understand how the new life leads to growth and maturity:

Other seed fell into good ground and brought forth fruit. (Matthew 13:8)

Every good tree brings forth good fruit. (Matthew 7:17)

Jesus and his followers speak of the last judgment using the same "seed" theme, speaking of a harvest of the good that the earth has grown:

When the fruit comes forth, then he gathers with the sickle because the harvest has come. (Mark 4:29)

Thrust in your sickle and reap, for the harvest time has come; the harvest of the earth is ripe. (Revelation 14:14)

If Jesus says new life comes as a seed, where does it start? What is the seed?

Now the parable is this: the seed is the word of God. (Luke 8:11)

Being born again, not of perishable seed but imperishable, by the Word of God, which lives and remains forever. (1 Peter 1:23)

Peter's proof that our new life is imperishable is this: the new life comes from the Word of God, and the Word of God is imperishable, therefore the new life is imperishable. It is more than a figure of speech to Peter when he says that we have new life by being born again from the seed of the Word of God. He pictures the word of God as living and active -- able to bring us to new life and cause us to be born again.

To be continued ...

A mother's prayer for teenagers: Choosing right

2011-06-17T18:17:00.000-05:00

Lord, thank you for (name). Give him an understanding of the right, so that he sees the goodness of what is right and desires what is right. May he understand the wisdom of the right path, and see the blessing of the right path. May he love and pursue what is right, and reject what is wrong. May he willingly and deliberately set out to build his life on a strong foundation of what is good. And may he follow you all his days.

The image of God and Losing face

2011-06-15T18:15:00.001-05:00

In some Eastern cultures, a more natural way to speak of ideas like sin and guilt and shame is with the language of "losing face." The moral character, dignity, or integrity of a person, their image, is one way to speak about how a person's good character is related to their acceptance.

We use similar ideas here when someone loses their reputation: we say their image is tarnished. "Image" and "face" are closely related in meaning. The Bible speaks in terms of "image" fairly often; I expect the better Bible translations into Chinese may take some of these passages about "image" and speak of "losing face" and related ideas about it being granted, saved, or restored.

There is a work that Jesus does particularly for those who have lost face. The prophet Isaiah speaks of Jesus himself becoming like a person who is avoided, where people hide their faces from him -- someone considered evil and immoral. The prophecy spoke of Jesus as "disfigured", his face marred (Isaiah 52:13), being despised and rejected (Isaiah 53:3), a man of sorrows who was acquainted with grief. But it was our sorrow, our grief, our shame that he carried, so that he might reach out to those who had lost acceptance, even through their own fault.

Here again we see how Paul explained what Jesus has done for us, for all the times when we have lost that character which God had intended for us:

You have taken off the old man with his acts and have put on the new, being renewed in knowledge after the image of him who created him. (Col 3:10)

Paul explains that this image of God comes to us, first of all, through Christ, whom he calls

the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him were all things created, whether in heaven or on earth, visible and invisible. (Col 1:15)

Paul speaks of our renewal as a kind of reprise of creation, comparing Christ, the "heavenly man", to the first man or "earthly man":

As we have borne the image of the earthly man, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man. (I Cor 15:49)

God is all about restoration, making things whole, and pure, and new again. No loss is beyond his power to restore.

God restores us: Atonement and new birth (part 2)

2011-06-14T18:14:00.002-05:00

If we see our main problem as our guilt before God, then we look to Christ first of all for forgiveness. If we see our main problem as our defeat by sin and death, then the good news of Christ is that he conquers sin and death. But we have other problems that Christ addresses, and other needs that Christ fulfills. If our problem is that our souls have been vandalized by sin -- sometimes with our own willing help in destroying our own heart, mind, and soul -- then the good news of Christ is that he restores our souls.

Often when we speak about atonement, we separate the work of God so that the work of Christ is said to be limited to paying our debt and suffering our punishment -- that, and being a great teacher. We often speak as though the work of restoration and new life belongs to the Holy Spirit apart from Christ.

But in the writings of the apostles we see that Christ does more than fix a balance sheet between us and God; he also makes us new creations and draws us into fellowship with God. He renews the original work of creation, what we were originally designed to be. He works to make our souls whole again and restores us to the image of God.

This is not a exactly a new perspective on our redemption. The writers of the Bible spoke this way, focusing on our renewal as part of our redemption. Here, in this post, I'd like to show how the earliest Christians saw Christ as being a vital part of our renewal. I will not set out to make a complete catalog of something that a reader could search out easily enough in a Bible; this is meant more as a survey of the kinds of things the writers of the Bible said on the topic:

That our redemption involves our being restored in the image of God:

You have taken off the old man with his acts and have put on the new, being renewed in knowledge after the image of him who created him. (Col 3:10)

That this image of God comes to us, first of all, through Christ:

Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him were all things created, whether in heaven or on earth, visible and invisible. (Col 1:15)

That our renewal is a kind of reprise of creation, as Paul compares Christ, the "heavenly man", to the first man or "earthly man":

As we have borne the image of the earthly man, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man. (I Cor 15:49)

(Next in this series: how speaking in terms of the image of God can help us explain Christ's work to people from other cultures.)

A mother's prayer for teenagers: Following Jesus

2011-06-10T18:10:00.000-05:00

Lord, thank you for (name). May he look at Jesus and see with his own eyes: may he recognize the good and desire to follow you. May he set out willingly and deliberately to live his life following you for the love of the good that is in you.

God restores us: Atonement and new birth (Part 1)

2011-06-08T18:57:00.004-05:00

There are different ways to understand what Christ has done for us. Among those who teach in the seminaries and train our pastors, there are theories to explain what Jesus did and how it relates to us. They often wonder why the people in the pews show so little interest in what they have to say. On the other hand, there are those who sit in the pews in church and go out into our daily lives to follow Jesus as best we can. We sometimes wonder how the other group gets so far removed from daily life.

So among the academics, a long-running debate just keeps on going: What is the right way to understand what Jesus has done for us? What is the best way to think about it and explain it? Some favor the "penal substitution" theory of atonement, focusing on how Jesus takes our place as sinner to receive punishment and fulfill justice. Others favor the "Christus Victor" theory of atonement, exalting Jesus for having won the victory over sin, death, and hell. There has been debate -- sometimes heated argument -- about how it all works, about what each theory explains better and what the other leaves out. Some would say there is some distortion of God's character if the wrong understanding is accepted. Others say that these two theories can both be true, and can both explain part of the picture.

But while we're on the subject of things that are left out by these different views of atonement, it bears mentioning that both of them leave out how God restores us, and how we come to lead new lives. These are seen as a different topic. Some questions aren't really addressed, questions like:

What does baptism have to do with the forgiveness of sins?
How do we come to new life?
What does it mean to be children of God?

These questions are on the sideline, not part of the main discussion when we focus on Christ as our substitute or Christ as our champion.

If one or the other of these theories -- or even the pair together -- is taken as the whole of what the Bible says about our being reconciled to God, then certain parts of the Bible do not fit comfortably. If the whole picture of judgment is that Christ is our substitute, then there is not really much point to Jesus having told the parable of the sheep and the goats as a picture of the last judgment. If the whole picture of forgiveness is a matter of trading places, then how best can we explain the apostles' call, "Repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins"?

Many are drawn to speak of Christ as victor and Christ as substitute because these keep the focus on Christ. Help comes from God, not from ourselves. Goodness comes from him, and we depend on his mercy. The risk of focusing only on God is that we can lose sight of what it has to do with us; but the risk goes both ways. As soon as we look at ourselves and how we fit into the picture, we start sounding as though it depended on us, our efforts, our goodness. We easily lose sight of God. Some people, focusing on the human side, have entirely lost sight of God's forgiveness.

At this point I hope I've explained why I think there's room for more to be said about atonement, about the questions left open or left on the sidelines. There are topics that are treated as if they don't belong in a discussion of the atonement, when clearly they're part of the picture of forgiveness and reconciliation with God. And the Bible as a whole has some prominent "leftover parts" when viewed only through those lenses. In my next post (not counting the "prayer" series) I hope to introduce a "restoration" perspective on atonement.

A mother's prayers for teenagers

2011-06-04T16:56:00.002-05:00

As the mother of two teenagers, I do a lot of praying. They're good kids. Those teenage years are so decisive in forming who these young people are going to be as adults, and I want to have prayed through all of it.

As we get into my busy season at work, I intend for one of my posts each week to be various prayers that I hope people may find helpful if they want to pray for their own children or grandchildren. Sometimes I have really struggled to know what to pray, and I hope that these prayers may help others too.

Since this post is mainly introducing the subject, I'll include a prayer here that is particularly short:

Lord, thank you for (name of child). May he grow in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. May he love you and and follow you throughout his life.

Q & A On Church Advertisements

2011-05-30T22:30:00.002-05:00

This is a "pet peeves" post, done in Q&A format. It applies to certain types of advertisements, and at the kind of evangelism that is more church advertisement than evangelism. After reading, it should be clear enough which types of advertisement are intended.

Q. How can I get my church's name recognized in our community?
A. If you're more interested in how people see your church's name than how they see Jesus' name, it's time to get back to basics.

Q. How can I increase our Summer Bible School's appeal to the children and their parents?
A. What if we take a risk: assume that people ultimately want to know God's holiness and goodness, Jesus' compassion, and the resurrection -- the reason for our hope. In that light, any "super cool" gimmicky pitches work against our real purpose. The greatest blessing is knowing God; build a program on that. Dare to disciple.

Q. Our evangelism team invites people to church, but so few come. What's the problem?
A. If they don't know Jesus, why would they come to church? Did you tell them about Jesus, or did you tell them about your church?

Q. What can I do to make people see our church as relevant?
A. Are you making a difference?

Another similarity between 1 Peter and the letters from Paul

2011-05-29T15:01:00.000-05:00

The letter 1 Peter contains something we consider unsurprising in a letter from an apostle: advice on how following Christ applies for our station in life. For example, there is instruction on how to be good citizens, regardless of the country of citizenship. Peter covers the following general areas for our stations in life:

Citizens (1 Peter 2:13-17)
Servants (1 Peter 2:18-25)
Wives (1 Peter 3:1-6)
Husbands (1 Peter 3:7)
Together, being a good congregation and followers of Christ (1 Peter 3:8-18)

The letter contains other instruction in various places, but here we have a passage where consecutive sets of advice are intended to systematically go through different stations in life and give instruction for each.

We are used to seeing the "station in life" instructions from Paul, as some of his material is repeated in more than one letter. But what many scholars believe to be Paul's earliest letter, that to the Galatians, does not have the list of Paul's instructions for each station in life. The letters that contain it are those to the Ephesians and the Colossians, along with the first letter to Timothy. These are all reckoned to be among the later letters that he wrote, possibly dating to the 60's A.D. towards the end of Paul's life, according to those who have studied them with an eye to working out the timeline of his life and writings.

Ephesians has a specific "station in life" list (5:22 - 6:9), as does Colossians (3:18 - 4:1), both covering the same stations in life in the same order with instructions for:

Wives
Husbands
Children
Parents
Servants
Masters

The advice from 1 Peter on government is not included as a standard matter in Paul's lists, but Paul does give instruction to those in Rome (Romans 13:1-7).

At some point, "station in life" instruction was intended by Paul to become standard teaching in the church. We see Paul telling Timothy -- a man in the next generation of church leaders -- that he should make some of these things a part of not only how he leads a congregation, but also how he chooses future leaders.

These similarities are not meant as proof that Peter or Paul had seen each others' letters. What they do show is that the early church had developed some standard teachings about how people should deal with different roles they might hold in life, and that they had made a conscious effort in developing teachings on how best to fulfill each role. The lists seen in Paul's letters are more developed than the list seen in 1 Peter. That suggests the possibility that 1 Peter may have been written earlier.

Did Peter and Paul read each others' letters?

2011-05-26T21:06:00.003-05:00

Peter and Paul were aware of each others' work in the early church. They met more than once, from what records we have. And the growing Christian community knew both of them. The epistle 2 Peter mentions Paul's letters, though there is a long history of uncertainty of whether 2 Peter was written by Peter. Paul's 2 Corinthians shows familiarity with "Cephas", and in Galatians he speaks of more than one meeting with Peter / Cephas. But in the writings that even many skeptics acknowledge from Peter and Paul, there are similarities.

Consider this passage from 1 Peter:

As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, now that you have tasted that the Lord is gracious. As you come to him, the Living Stone, rejected by men but chosen of God and precious, you also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house ... (1 Peter 2:2-5)

We find the same thoughts together in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, only a few verses separated from each other, in a passage where Peter is mentioned:

I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are you able. (I Cor 3:2)
For we are laborers together with God: you are God's workmanship, you are God's building. According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let every man take heed how he builds. For no man can lay a foundation other than that which has been laid, which is Jesus Christ. (I Cor 3:9-10)
Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? (I Cor 3:16)
... Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours. And you are Christ's, and Christ is God's. (I Cor 3:22-23)

In this same passage, Paul discusses different leaders in the church building on each others' work. By now, that's enough to make me wonder whether Paul had read Peter's first letter ... or whether that was just a common preaching point of Peter's.

I also find it interesting that in 1 Peter, he mentions the name of his scribe: Silvanus (often translated Silas). Silvanus is also mentioned in Paul's letters. He is mentioned in 2 Corinthians to the same people that Paul was addressing earlier with his comments about Peter and about building on each others' teachings. He is also mentioned in both letters to the Thessalonians. Both the church in Corinth and Silvanus in particular were familiar with Peter. So we also have some ways in which Paul might have come across Peter's letter, if Silvanus had kept a copy, or one of the churches had obtained a copy. That doesn't make it certain that Paul had come across a copy; it's still possible that it was passed along through word-of-mouth. But it is enough to raise the possibility that Paul had seen Peter's letter.

Spiritual health check-up?

2011-05-22T07:11:00.002-05:00

I was wondering if it's possible to do a general checkup on spiritual health. What would it look like?

I've seen general check-up questions at a doctor's office:

How often do you exercise?
Do you smoke?
How much do you sleep on the average night?

I've seen general check-up questions at dentists, too.

I know that even going back to the 1500's, the church body to which I belong has encouraged people to use the Ten Commandments as a spiritual checkup, to run down that list and see how we're doing by using the law as a mirror to check ourselves and recognize any trouble.

There are areas of our lives not covered by the Ten Commandments, though -- or covered only in a general sense. How about, "Is your love for any person hindered by resentments, jealousies, or wrongs?" Or, "How peaceful is your life?" Or, "Do you love your neighbors?" and "Do you love God?"

The Beatitudes could easily help us see how we're doing: "Do you show mercy to others? Are you a peacemaker?" But that might be turning the beatitudes to a lesser use, when they are meant as proclamations of blessing, promises of God's goodness and faithfulness.

The Lord's prayer is, in a way, a daily check of our own thoughts and at the same time a way to build and strengthen what is good. It has an advantage over a checklist in that it confronts our sins only by putting us in the forgiving presence of God and insisting that we pray for forgiveness.

For spiritual health, there is a lot of ground to cover. In some ways simpler is better -- otherwise a checklist could easily be the size of the Bible.

The risk of even looking at developing a spiritual checkup tool is that there are Christians who are tempted to try to self-save, and some struggle with guilt over each and every imperfection. They do not turn their mercy towards themselves even though Jesus does. Some even defend this as if it were the right thing, naming a fear of spiritual laziness or indifference to sin (to which people like this are generally not tempted) to ward off the peace of forgiveness. In hands like those, a spiritual check-up of that sort would be just a tool for spiritual abuse.

So it might be worthwhile to have that as part of the checkup:
Does it bother you that you're not perfect?
Is it difficult for you to show mercy to yourself?
Does the idea of mercy ever offend you?

Or it might be worthwhile to have different check-up questions for different sets of needs -- just like a doctor might not ask quite the same questions of a heart patient and an anorexic.

I'd be really glad to hear all of your thoughts on this.

Everything I needed to learn about business, I learned playing Minecraft

2011-05-15T22:08:00.002-05:00

I admit it. I like the game Minecraft. It's an oddly captivating open-ended game. The monsters are nothing special, but you are in a position to build your own homes (or fortresses, or castles, for the ambitious), your own tools, your own weapons ... The appeal of the game is exactly how open-ended it is, where the main limits are your imagination and time investment. (Ok, and CPU speed.)

The are a million possibilities. You just have to imagine them and work to make them happen.
The most valuable thing you will ever have is your workbench. It's so basic you almost don't notice it -- but very little happens until you learn how to use it.
Early in the game you have to make a good set of tools. You can't accomplish what you need without them.
The most important knowledge is how to create things.
The best results go to the one with the best knowledge, skills, and imagination.

Some of the people I have known are disturbingly passive about the world and how it is. They've stopped seeing possibilities, and speak only of what they can't do, what they can't accomplish, what they can't expect. Like the saying goes, "We've tried nothing and we're out of ideas." Minecraft opens up the mind again. Those who play it run the risk of seeing possibilities in their world.

Forgiveness: Recognizing some of the counterfeits

2011-05-10T20:20:00.003-05:00

I don't recall Jesus ever saying to someone, "Don't worry about your sins. It's not really a big deal. Everybody does it." And I don't remember him saying, "Nobody's perfect" when speaking to someone who was conscious of sin. (Though he did challenge, "Who among you is without sin?" when speaking to people who were conscious only of someone else's sins.) With Jesus, forgiveness did not come with excuses or a denial that a thing was significantly wrong; it came with redemption. "Go and sin no more."

And Jesus did not forgive so that the memory of being wronged would stop bothering him -- that is, for reasons that had to do with himself. The memory of being wronged may bother us, and may send us looking for how to get rid of the memory of being wronged. But simply forgetting the wrong is one of those so-called shortcuts that doesn't really work, at least not for a wrong that is big enough to make a difference in our lives, a wrong that insists on being noticed.

Forgiveness works together with love. It is firm in its stand that the wrong should stop. It insists that the damage should be repaired as much as possible -- by the person who did the wrong. It asks some positive action or change from the offender -- something to begin to restore the soul not just of the offended but also of the offender.

Forgiveness works to restore the love and trust that were broken. The call to forgiveness is a call to repentance: it calls on the one who broke that bond to take responsibility for himself and admit wrong instead of fleeing to excuses and the blame of others. So those kinds of "forgiveness" where the wrong is excused, and the wrongdoer's actions are explained away, is more of a justification for evil, something that does not deserve the name of forgiveness. That justification of evil only serves to encourage the person in the habit of wrong and to strengthen his judgment that he is blameless for his own actions.

As for forgetting the wrongs that were done us: if the bonds of love and trust are not restored, and the wrong is not called on to stop, and the person is still around but without love or trust -- or redemption -- then it is an incomplete forgiveness, an imperfect forgiveness that has not obtained its goal.

Confirmation questions - and a liturgy responsive for confirmation

2011-05-08T21:13:00.006-05:00

Today was a big day in my daughter's religious education: along with the rest of her confirmation class, she answered a series of questions on the Bible and the Christian faith to show that she has an understanding of what she has been taught. Next week she will be received into the congregation as an adult member.

But every year at confirmation time, I can't help but wonder: Do we ask the right questions of our youth? They have demonstrated that they know the Bible both in its books and in its main messages. They have shown understanding of the law of God, and about repentance, forgiveness, and eternal life. They have stated their understanding that the most important teaching of the Bible is God's goodness and love. They have shown knowledge of key passages of the Bible that inform the Christian view of the world. They have studied the ancient creeds and how they summarize the Bible. But what would the right confirmation questions be? What would the right "mastery" questions be for understanding, and again what would the right questions be for beginning the walk of adult membership?

Some good material is already covered in the existing confirmation service. The youths who are becoming full adult members are asked, "Do you believe in God the Father?" and respond with the first article of the Nicene Creed. They are asked again about Jesus and the Holy Spirit, responding with the second and third articles of the creed. They are asked to consciously and deliberately reject evil, to pledge to follow the Christian faith, to pledge to participate in a congregation of believers throughout their lives. It's plain that careful thought has been given to how they are received as adults into the congregation.

Still, I like the orders of worship that follow Scripture closely. So if some key questions in Scripture had been reworked into a liturgy, they might go like this:

Q: Tell me today: whom will you serve?
A: As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.

Q: He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you?
A. To do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.

Q: Jesus asks, who do you say that I am?
A: You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.

Q. What is the reason for your hope?
A. Christ is risen from the dead.

As with many of my liturgy projects, this is a beginning. It's more to consider possible directions than a finished piece, at this point.

Overwhelming odds? Odds are 1 in 1,099,511,627,776

2011-05-06T21:10:00.004-05:00

In my circle of friends and family and people I've known over the years, whether in daily life or on-line, I've known quite a few adamantly anti-Christian Jewish people. That is, they are people who take seriously all things Jewish and any thing Jewish precisely because it is Jewish, but who are determined to know nothing about Jesus, to the point of not reading the New Testament, or bragging about having thrown gift Bibles in the trash. I've read a few explanations of the fall of Jerusalem written from this mindset, and the one explanation that is completely off the table is that it had anything to do with rejecting Jesus. Any other explanation is given a fair hearing; that one is not open for discussion. This is written from the perspective of pondering ways to respond to these very adamantly anti-Christian Jews that I have known, particularly when some of them (as some of them have done) attack the faith of Christians.

According to the nearest calculator, 2 to the 40th power is 1,099,511,627,776. So the odds are 1 in 1,099,511,627,776 ... that would be the odds of flipping a coin and coming up "tails" 40 times in a row. It would also be the odds of what was reported in the Talmud about the years before the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in the year 70 A.D.:

Our Rabbis taught: During the last forty years before the destruction of the Temple the lot [‘For the Lord’] did not come up in the right hand (Talmud; Yoma 39b)

The Talmud explains the casting of lots on the Day of Atonement. When the lot "For the Lord" came up in the right hand, it was considered a sign from God that the sacrifice of the Day of Atonement had been accepted by God, and that the sins of the people were atoned for by that sacrifice. This sacrifice dated back to the days of Moses, and was instituted as part of the covenant at Sinai.

So according to the Talmud, there's an overwhelming probability that something vital changed in the relations between God and man, and in the usefulness of the ancient covenant sacrificial system, and in the relevance of the Temple in Jerusalem, forty years before the destruction of the Temple. That would place this pivotal change in the year 30 A.D.

Something so vital must have left a record. What record do we have of something pivotal happening in 30 A.D. that affected Judaism as a whole, making the Temple and its sacrifices no longer recognized by God for atonement? The only candidate I'm aware of is Jesus' death and resurrection. If there's another candidate -- something that major in the history of Judaism in the year 30 A.D. -- there should be a record of it. Are there any other candidates? Because the odds that "nothing of significance happened in God's eyes" in 30 A.D. are 1,099,511,627,776 to 1 against.

Just going by the Talmud alone, the odds are overwhelming that Jesus is a deal-changer in God's eyes, making a shift of the relations between God and man that are on the level of a new covenant.

It is good news. The sacrifice, once for all, has been accepted.

Problems in forgiveness

2011-05-03T19:13:00.001-05:00

Some things are harder to forgive than others. This year for Lent I worked on "keeping no record of wrong". The little accidental daily wrongs that don't leave much track on our lives, those are easy to forget. Here are the kinds of things I struggled with:

They knew it was wrong, and what effect it would have, and did it anyway.
They knew I was having to shoulder extra burdens that should rightfully have been theirs, and they kept on shirking.
They know they are making a mess that they intend for someone else to clean up, and it doesn't trouble them.
(In one case) They knew full well they were managing things so badly that the law was already involved, and show no inclination to change.
(On older wrongs that still come to mind) When an old injury still sometimes causes trouble, it's hard to forget how I got that injury.

The things that are harder to forgive are the things where we don't have to keep a record of wrong -- our lives are marked by that wrong, or our lives are still being shaped by an ongoing wrong. Every day that wrong -- or its after-effect -- is part of our daily routine. The injuries that keep on hurting, or keep being renewed by the wrongdoer, these are the ones that really challenge our love. It's only love that can keep no records of wrong, so I have to think it does not challenge my memory or my determination to forget so much as it challenges my love.

Christ is risen. I have a long, long way to go. But it comforts me that Jesus -- risen indeed! -- still bore nail marks and the mark of a spear wound after his victory over death. Some of the ancient mystics are said to have had the stigmata -- that their union with Christ was so close that the scars of his wounds imprinted on their flesh. I'm not quite sure that I believe that. But it comforts me that Christ himself may bear eternal wounds and yet still loves, and still forgives. He still forgives me.

A different perspective: ethics and arguments

2011-04-28T22:25:00.003-05:00

Have you ever eaten a piece of fruit and looked at the seed, and thought about the possibilities before throwing it away? Have you ever looked at an orange or apple or cherry seed and thought, "If I planted this, and all the seeds that came from it, it could be a grove, an orchard, a forest"? How many trees could be grown with a seed's children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren? I have sometimes looked at a seed in a piece of fruit and imagined a whole countryside planted with its offspring, beautiful and thriving. A seed thrown away has killed a forest that might have been.

I don't think it's possible to understand the Roman Catholic views on birth control without seeing humanity in the same way: good, and thriving, and full of possibility with each new birth.

I'm not here to convince anyone of the Roman Catholic views of birth control. I'm here to say: if we haven't really listened to each other, there are thoughts we might never have. (I sometimes wonder if thoughts are the same way. The seed of an idea, given time, might produce a great many other ideas. But if we don't listen ... if we throw it away ... our hard-heartedness and habitual disrespect might cause us to miss out on a whole forest of ideas. And on a whole forest of friends, while we're on the subject.)

Christ is risen!

2011-04-24T07:36:00.003-05:00

You will not abandon me to the grave, nor let your holy one see decay. (Psalm 16:10)

There is ultimately only one hope for us: that God raises the dead. There is one key event in the history of the world that shows us we are not abandoned, not forsaken.

Today, of all days, we see the reason for the hope that we have.

Christ is risen.

My God, why have you forsaken me?

2011-04-22T21:40:00.003-05:00

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? - Jesus, on the cross

This year it is an especially urgent, focused question for me. This year, one thing weighs heavily on my mind: How do I offer support to someone who is asking that exact question? Someone I have known for a long time, but has always been skittish about church, has told me why: He blames God for his abuse during his early years at the hands of a vicious and sadistic parent. I will not go into details, but I will say: This is Good Friday, the day we look evil and human brokenness in the face. This grown man -- once a helpless child -- only had one question: Why had God forsaken him? If God protects us, why hadn't God protected him?

I know Jesus was much in the same situation: Innocent, but treated like dirt. Had the hatred of the hateful taken out on him, and blamed on him as if he had somehow caused it. Attacked and beaten without apology by those who thought they had right on their side. And not protected from it by God. Though with Jesus, at least, there was a greater good being accomplished, and for that he consented. As for the rest of us -- I have not heard of a greater good being accomplished by our being mistreated.

Of course this man blames the vicious and sadistic parent first of all. But he also blames his father, who didn't protect him as far as he can tell. And he also blames God, who didn't protect him as far as he can tell. Is it because he was "a worm and not a man", not worth protecting? "Worm" is probably kinder than anything his abuser called him.

For my own part, I have been on the receiving end of serious and intentional harm, too. And that's far from the whole of the evil I've received in this world. So I have struggled with similar questions. I expect many of us have struggled with that question: My God, why have you forsaken me?

I never did find an answer to the question, "Why have you forsaken me?" But I did find a willingness to trust Jesus, and then hope through him. It's because of Jesus that I know that suffering is not a sign that God has no love for us. It's because of Jesus that I know there is hope even after suffering injustice, brutality, and evil like that. And this hope is because of God's goodness.

It is God's goodness that makes it even more difficult to understand the evil around us.

May Jesus be blessed for joining the helpless, the despised, and the powerless. Without him, what hope would there be?

The Cross: Challenging how we think about God

2011-04-17T19:10:00.002-05:00

One of my Sunday school classes once told me that God was omnipotent, omniscient, and omnivorous. They were teenagers, and the big words confused the less bookish among them; they meant "omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent" like the philosophers of religion have long said. They were telling me, they thought, what I wanted to hear. But where exactly did they get those ideas about God?

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not the God of the philosophers. - Blaise Pascal

I have heard it taught that if God ever stopped being omniscient, omnipotent, or omnipresent, he would not truly be God. I have heard it said that God is the being such that it is impossible to imagine a greater being. Who knows; that may be true, but the Bible does not say that. The Bible teaches us of a God who creates, a God who adopts a people, a God who acts to save humanity from our own wretchedness. The philosophers are interested in "omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent"; the Bible is not too interested in that. To construct that God, someone had to be looking for those attributes and chase down texts from which they could be deduced. The Bible is interested in God's faithfulness, his mercy, his compassion, and his love. If we're looking at what the Bible teaches about God, those are the plainer things.

This brings us to the cross. This week, Holy Week, we who follow Jesus face the heart of our faith: Jesus' radical challenge to our man-made ideas about God's glory. If God is defined as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent -- and immortal, while we're on the subject -- then that guy dying on the cross can have nothing to do with our ideas about God. And the philosophers who follow Christ often hurry to protect their glorious hypothetical idols from the threat of the reality of Jesus' cross.

What is essential to God's being? What is God's real nature? Is it "omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent" -- or is it his overwhelming love for his people? Which is the real nature of God, and which is just accidental and could have been otherwise? If Jesus' birth did not answer the question clearly enough, his execution does. The cross says that the essential part of being God is not being omnimax -- power without limit, knowledge without limit, presence without limit. The cross says that the essential part of being God is love without limit. Even to the extent of giving up the power, and the immortality, to reach a weak and dying world.

For those who are interested in philosophy: Yes, without getting into technical jargon in the main post, I am questioning whether the essence of God involves his omnimax characteristics, or whether those are what the philosophers would call "accidents" -- non-essential traits that might have been otherwise, that can be lost without really altering the nature of things. Or to be more exact, I think the cross -- the necessary end of the incarnation -- challenges whether the omnimax characteristics are really essential to what it means to be God. If God intends to reveal himself to the world through Jesus, then God means that who he really is can be revealed better in the cross than in another way. And if we look elsewhere for the glory of God, we do it at the expense of what God wanted to show us.

Alternative Explanations for the Resurrection?

2011-04-14T12:14:00.000-05:00

This is the final installment of a response to Michael Martin's article, "Why the Resurrection is Initially Improbable," Philo, 1, no. 1 (Spring-Summer 1998): 63-73.

Mr. Martin argues that it is not necessary for him to provide an alternative explanation for the historical evidence of the resurrection. But during his writing about other explanations, he placed a precise mathematical figure on the probability of alternative explanations. How is it possible to calculate an exact mathematical probability value for another theory without having any specific alternative theory in mind? How can anyone else assess whether that probability figure is valid? As someone I know has jokingly said, "86.7234% of all statistics are made up on the spot." Without any basis for the figures that Martin quotes, his numbers will inevitably seem to be of this sort. The precise mathematical values seem hollow, if not downright misleading, when there are no supporting details given to show their basis.

It is also necessary that those who reject the resurrection at least look at alternative theories for this simple reason: if someone claims that some alternative explanation for the facts is more likely, that claim depends entirely on there being an alternative explanation for the facts in the first place. For some types of miracles such as a mysterious healing, the facts can be explained in various ways: the fact that first someone was sick, and then someone was well, could be explained by natural causes. Even in cases where no cure is known for a disease, it may yet be possible (in theory) that a naturalistic explanation exists but has not yet been discovered.

In the case of Jesus’ resurrection, the facts include that first he was dead – having been executed in public – and buried, then three days later he was alive again. Naturalistic explanations may be imagined for healing miracles, but at the point of death, nature no longer works to restore health. There is no natural process that restores the dead to life; that’s why naturalists’ insistence on opposing the resurrection is so strong.

There is only one explanation of the facts that he was dead before, then alive after: he was raised from the dead. All the alternative explanations of the facts are not actually alternative explanations of the facts, but selective denial of the facts. Some alternative explanations deny that Jesus died in the first place, such as the swoon theory. Some alternative explanations deny that he was alive afterwards, such as the stolen body theory, or the theory of mass hallucinations by the disciples.

The evidence that Jesus was seen alive again is strong enough to prompt opponents of Christianity to create theories in which Jesus never died; the skeptical community attests to the strength of the evidence for Jesus being alive whenever they argue for the swoon theory. The evidence that the tomb was empty is strong enough to prompt opponents to create a theory of a stolen body to explain it; the skeptical community attests to the strength of the evidence for the empty tomb whenever they argue for the stolen body theory. The evidence that many people did in fact see Jesus alive is strong enough to prompt opponents to create a theory of extended, shared hallucinations to explain it.

All of these alternative theories have something in common: they resort to altering the facts which they are supposed to explain. As such, they do not fully count as alternative explanations of the facts, besides being unlikely themselves. The swoon theory denies Jesus’ death; the stolen body theory denies the post-resurrection appearances; the mass-hallucination theory may explain Jesus' post-resurrection appearances but denies the reality of the empty tomb, something any of Jesus' highly-motivated opponents could have easily checked.

These are examples of the risk discussed earlier: when someone assumes it is always irrational to believe in a miracle, even granted that miracles are possible, then this anti-miracle view will necessarily lead to denial of facts or distortion of reality in the face of an actual miracle. Martin himself stops short of Hume's "always irrational" view of miracles, and stops short of the far-fetched theories which try to provide alternate explanations for the facts. But he does this at a cost: he has no viable alternative explanation, which is required for his assertion that there is a hypothetical alternative explanation that is far more probable than Jesus' resurrection. In how many arguments could someone claim that they have won because their explanation is more probable, but not have to provide that explanation? It would be like playing a poker game, and a person claims to have the winning hand; would anyone believe it if he refuses to show?

Rather than putting any hypothetical alternative explanation to the test so that someone else could evaluate his claim that it is far more probable, he wants that evaluation to be made simply on the fact that the resurrection is a miracle so something else must be considered more probable even if it happened. He wants his readers to follow his argument to deny the resurrection even if it is true, simply because it is a miracle. Granted it is a miracle; but if it is true, would you really want to deny it?

Is it really possible that everyone who claimed Jesus to be dead was mistaken about it, from those who watched him breathe his last, to the executioner who pierced his side to make sure of his death, to those who pried him off the cross, wrapped him in a cloth and laid him in the tomb? No, it is not; we can be certain of his death when he was buried. Is it really possible that everyone who claimed Jesus to be alive on the third day and after was mistaken about it, from the women outside the tomb to the close friends who gave him dinner the first night, the same who saw him come back again to show his wounds as proof to Thomas, those same close friends who cooked broiled fish with him by the lake, to Jesus’ brother who had been skeptical before but afterwards became a leader in the church? No, it is not; we can be certain of his life. There is only one explanation that explains the facts rather than denies them: Jesus rose from the dead.

Conclusion

I appreciate the job that Mr. Martin has done in setting out a number of different lines of thought that bear on peoples’ perceptions of the reality of Jesus’ resurrection. I believe his most valuable contribution to the discussion is actually choosing a relevant topic: he gets to the heart of the matter when he asks whether it is likely, whether we can really believe it, rather than arguing about endless side issues as is sometimes done. He added much to the conversation by acknowledging the importance of God’s purpose, and by his recognition that miracles can have value as a sign.

The omissions of Mr. Martin’s article are not unique to him, and I would not wish to fault specifically him for them. It is typical that non-Christians, assessing the probability of the resurrection, do not take into account the solidness of evidence for earlier miracle claims associated with Jesus and do not consider that when thinking about the resurrection. It is also typical that non-Christians do not take into account how few people have been founders of major religions when considering the probability of Jesus’ resurrection; it is typically assessed no differently than the probability of my next-door-neighbor’s resurrection. Again, it is typical that non-Christians' grasp of atonement is incomplete, and this mainly because it is a large subject with many aspects, where any one given explanation is almost sure to be incomplete by itself.

However, the historical evidence is solid, and God has clear reasons to raise Jesus from the dead as outlined previously. This puts the resurrection of Jesus on solidly trustworthy ground. While disputes against Jesus' resurrection will no doubt continue, it is largely a dispute waged against the evidence, fueled on the one hand by those who oppose the idea of Jesus’ uniqueness in God’s purposes, and on the other hand by those who have not yet ventured to hope that God would truly do what so many have asked all along: give a clear sign that this world is not all there is, that he has not abandoned us to the grave, and that he will raise us up at the last day. I'm concerned whether an amateur like myself has given a good enough account, but I hope I have shown why Christians hold to the certainty of Jesus' resurrection.

No Trustworthy Accounts of Jesus After the Resurrection?

2011-04-13T12:13:00.000-05:00

This is the next-to-last installment of a response to Michael Martin's article, "Why the Resurrection is Initially Improbable," Philo, 1, no. 1 (Spring-Summer 1998): 63-73.

Martin makes a series of interrelated claims about the New Testament records of Jesus’ resurrection. He claims that there were no contemporary eyewitness reports of seeing Jesus after the resurrection other than Paul and that the other "alleged" eyewitnesses who saw Jesus after the resurrection may not have been reliable and trustworthy. From there he continues to multiply layers, that those who heard the eyewitnesses and passed on their reports may not have been reliable and trustworthy, and that those who recorded the accounts (supposedly third-hand) may not have been reliable and trustworthy. How do Mr. Martin's claims hold up against what we know? We will quickly review the history of the four gospels.

John: Its own value and the added value of the appendix

To begin with, there are not so many layers between the resurrection and our most direct account of it as Mr. Martin suggests. No matter your view of which person is "the disciple whom Jesus loved", the main author of the Gospel According to John, this person still claims to have seen the risen Jesus in person on more than one occasion, each time with a number of Jesus’ other disciples also present. The author claims that he himself had eaten with Jesus and spoken with Jesus on a number of occasions after Jesus was raised from the dead.

There is an interesting claim that certain people make about the Gospel of John, which is that John cannot have written it -- or that it had been "tampered with" -- because there is a separate part at the end, apparently an appendix of sorts, and it includes the comment "we know that his (the author’s) testimony is true." From this, the speculation begins about revisions and late dates. But there is an equally interesting history about the Gospel of John and how it was written. According to an ancient list of authoritative Christian writings, the Muratorian canon or Muratorian fragment, the Gospel of John involved a number of Jesus’ surviving disciples:

The same night it was revealed to Andrew, one of the apostles, that John in his own name should write down everything and that they should all revise it.

While the date of the Muratorian Canon (like everything else involving Jesus) is disputed, the document makes references to events from the mid-100's C.E. as happening "quite recently, in our own time" -- so the most likely date for the Muratorian Canon will remain in the second half of the 100's C.E. The "mystery appendix" to the Gospel of John is actually part of the known history of the document and not an unknown addition. We have separate confirmation of what the document itself tells us, that it was reviewed by other people. In this light, the book’s comment "we know that his testimony is true" (John 21:24) has support for what it claims to be: the confirmation of other eyewitnesses that it happened just as recorded. Contrary to the common skeptical view that the Gospel of John is to be taken less seriously than the other gospels because of its later date and "appendix", instead we have here, even in the latest of the accounts, a strong and direct claim to first-hand material, with support from more than one source that this material had been reviewed and confirmed by other witnesses.

Mark: Traveling companion to Peter, known to other disciples of Jesus

The Gospel of Mark is often lightly dismissed because Mark himself was not a disciple of Jesus. But Mark was a disciple of Simon Peter, the leader among Jesus’ followers and privileged to be with Jesus on certain special occasions when only a few of the disciples were present. Mark was known to have traveled with Simon Peter – see 1 Peter 5:13, where Simon Peter writes a greeting to his readers from Mark. He also here refers to Mark as "son". It was common to call someone "son" if there was a close relationship such as a spiritual mentorship, and this is the usual understanding of the relationship between Peter and Mark. It is against this background, that Peter and Mark were close, and that Mark traveled with Peter, that we can see the implications of our histories of how the Gospel of Mark came to be written.

But was Mark's gospel ever read by those who had known Jesus? Here the early writer Papias quotes what he learned from one of Jesus' disciples, here called the "elder" or "presbyter":

The presbyter used to say, 'Mark, who had been Peter’s interpreter, wrote down carefully, but not in order, all that he remembered of the Lord’s sayings and doings. For he [Mark] had not heard the Lord or been one of His followers, but later, as I said, one of Peter’s. Peter used to adapt his teachings to the occasion without making a systematic arrangement of the Lord’s sayings, so that Mark was quite justified in writing down some things just as he remembered them. For he had one purpose only – to leave out nothing that he had heard and to make no misstatement about it.' -- Papias, quote preserved in Eusebius' History 3:39

Note that this early quote, preserved in Eusebius' History, records one of Jesus' disciples approving Mark's diligence and the contents (if not the sequence) of Mark's writings. So here the person who has written the accounts is not far-removed from true knowledge, but someone who wants to leave an accurate record of what he heard from his mentor, who in this case was Peter, among the best sources of information available regarding Jesus.

Luke: Diligent researcher who met with eyewitnesses

Of other early Christian records, much is made of the possibility of Luke borrowing from Mark. We have good reason to believe that they met and knew each other; consider verse 24 of Philemon, in which Paul mentions both Luke and Mark among his fellow-workers, probably part of the Christian community in early Rome. But we also have good reason to believe that Luke traveled with Paul. There are sections of the Book of Acts in which the author lists himself as part of the action, saying that "we" did this or that, suggesting that the writer was, at that time, traveling with Paul. Luke had been to Jerusalem with Paul and met some of the key figures of ancient Christianity, including some of the eyewitnesses of the resurrection such as Jesus’ brother Jacob ("James").

When we arrived at Jerusalem, the brothers received us warmly. The next day Paul and the rest of us went to see James, and all the elders were present" (Luke, in Acts 21:17-18).

So Luke is known to have personally met some of those who knew Jesus directly. His writings explain how he has made every effort to write an orderly and well-researched account of Jesus’ life. Again, we do not have some supposedly untrustworthy and far-removed source, but a conscientious person who knows the value of being accurate and talking to the original sources, as he says, "Since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught." (Luke 1:3-4)

Matthew: A complex history but a useful source

Probably the most controversial authorship for the records of Jesus’ life is the authorship of the Gospel of Matthew. The early church records are unanimous that it was written by Matthew (also known as Levi), one of Jesus’ twelve closest disciples, and that it was written in "the Hebrew tongue" for the benefit of Jewish Christians. At some point early in church history, the book underwent at least a translation; the traditional text we follow now is in Greek. The authorship question arises because of textual comparisons: certain sections of Mark’s account and certain sections of Matthew’s are nearly identical.

The different sides of the dispute have made claims ranging from that Matthew had never seen any of the material in Mark (which seems unlikely) to that Matthew "slavishly followed" Mark, which is at least a serious overstatement based on the documents we have before us. Whatever relationship there may be between specific accounts, the majority of material in Matthew is not found in Mark, some of the material in Mark is not found in Matthew either, and a number of the accounts found in both documents are in different order or vary in certain details. There are some instances where the accounts preserved in Matthew appear to be older than the corresponding accounts in Mark, and some vice versa where the accounts in Mark appear to be older than those in Matthew. There is plenty of textual material to occupy the scholars for some time.

While the debate is far from over about the exact relationship between the material in Matthew and Mark, the amount of independent material in Matthew is enough to make it a worthwhile source in its own right regardless of the outcome of that discussion. It seems an overreaction to rule out Matthew’s involvement solely on the basis of shared sections between Matthew and Mark, though of course any particular piece of information would not count as coming from two separate sources in cases where those accounts are shown to share a common source.

Closing words on the accounts in the gospels

What is left of Martin’s general claims about the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection? Not much. We have first-hand accounts from people who themselves saw Jesus after his resurrection. For most documents we have a reasonably clear picture of who wrote them and how the authors got their information. The authors showed themselves to be careful and earnest in what they recorded. We have records showing that the documents were written early enough that a number of eyewitnesses were still on the scene commenting, giving information, or even (in the case of the Gospel of John) adding notes vouching for the reliability of the reports.

Beyond that, there are even more basic reasons why many people, reading the gospels, believe them: writers who are basically honest do not make up things like that. Writers who are basically sane are not wrong on that level for that length of time about what they see. The gospels come across as having been written by people who are, like most people, basically sane and honest. It is difficult to believe that all of these authors were entirely wrong about everything important in their writings. Leaving aside questions of "infallibility", if the authors were merely sane, honest, and reasonably careful, then what they have recorded is of monumental importance.

"No Eyewitnesses to the Resurrection"?

2011-04-12T12:12:00.001-05:00

This is a continuation of a response to Michael Martin's article, "Why the Resurrection is Initially Improbable," Philo, 1, no. 1 (Spring-Summer 1998): 63-73.

In recent years, I have heard people make the claim that there were "no eyewitnesses to the resurrection". Mr. Martin also makes that claim. This claim is common enough among skeptics, but it is misleading.

The "no eyewitnesses" claim is, if you think about it, spectacularly wrong. One of the earliest written accounts of the events, recorded by Paul in his first letter to the people of Corinth, mentions that there were over 500 eyewitnesses. Later, more detailed accounts mention appearances where Jesus spoke with people -- some of the conversations are recorded for us -- and even ate with people after rising from the dead. Even the latest written account that appears in the New Testament is written by someone who personally claims to have been an eyewitness of Jesus' resurrection himself, to have talked with Jesus on a number of occasions after he rose from the dead.

So how do skeptics make so bold as to claim that there were no eyewitnesses to the resurrection? It seems to be a bit of a sleight-of-hand: Are we discussing the event of the resurrection - the precise moment when Jesus became alive again inside the tomb - or the enduring fact of the resurrection: that Jesus was alive again? No one else was in the tomb with Jesus when he rose from the dead, but many people saw him alive afterwards. The fact that they were not in the tomb at the moment when Jesus rose to life again does not invalidate their testimony that Jesus had risen from the dead. They remain eyewitnesses to the fact of the resurrection, if not the event of the exact first moment of the resurrection.

To take the example from the other side, if nobody had seen Lincoln assassinated, but many had seen him later dead, it would be nonsense to claim that there were no eyewitnesses to Lincoln’s death and imply that therefore he might be alive. Lincoln’s death was an event, but also an enduring fact; anyone who saw Lincoln dead was a valid eyewitness of the fact of his death, if not the event of his death. They may not be able to say, "I saw him die," but they can say, "I saw him dead." They are witnesses of the fact of his death.

So with Jesus, the many who saw him alive again are eyewitnesses of the fact of his resurrection, if not the event of his return to life inside the tomb. They may not be able to say, "I saw him begin to breathe again, saw him draw the first breath of his new life and take off the funeral shroud," but they can say, "I saw him alive." They may not be able to say, "I saw him rise," but then can say, "I saw him risen." They are witnesses of the fact of his resurrection, and there were many of them.

I would give Mr. Martin the benefit of the doubt as to whether he was misleading deliberately; it could have been accidental ambiguity. Still, the claim that "there were no eyewitnesses of the resurrection" is misleading, bordering on deceptive; in fact many people saw Jesus alive again and were eyewitnesses of the resurrection in a very real and factual sense.

Atonement and Forgiveness

2011-04-11T12:11:00.000-05:00

This is a continuation of a response to Michael Martin's article, "Why the Resurrection is Initially Improbable," Philo, 1, no. 1 (Spring-Summer 1998): 63-73.

Here I would like to quickly review the two complaints Mr. Martin specifically mentioned about various views of atonement: "that they either fail to explain why God sacrificed His Son for the salvation of sinners or else make the sacrifice seem arbitrary."

When we look at our own guilt for various things we have done, we know that our simple regret – as genuine and miserable as it may be – neither works to destroy the evil that is in us nor satisfies those we have wronged. While on the surface the idea seems attractive that God might forgive us without any punishment, if that had been the case then we would have concluded that wrongdoing was not really that serious. And we would have concluded that wrongdoing was not very serious based on what (in that case) would have been fact – that God simply shrugged and forgave. Now, shrugging and forgiving may be fine for a small and accidental thing where no real harm was meant and no real harm was done. But there is a lot worse going on in this world than small and accidental things, and a notable percentage of people are involved at least sometimes in these more destructive and more deliberate wrongs.

Given that God has the power to heal all the harm done and restore peace and cleanness to all the souls (both the wrongdoer and the wronged), it would be arbitrary if God chose a line of badness and said "beyond this, I will not forgive." But what if God opens his power for all people who turn to him, not just those who were not that bad in the first place? (I expect that many who read this may not suspect that there is much wrong within their own souls, so I write as to those who consider "the worst of sinners" to be someone else. Those of us who follow the example of Paul should hesitate to think that the worst of sinners is anyone but ourselves, as Paul said of himself.)

If God only forgave those who were not so bad in the first place, then how could we escape the view that he saved those who were good enough? How could we deny that they owed their forgiveness in part to their own goodness – or worse, to their superiority over those who were lost – as much as to God’s mercy? But if God was willing to redeem anyone, no matter how serious the offense, then how would could we keep any idea of justice, that thing had genuinely been wrong? If God chose to merely overlook a sin, no matter how serious, then what about the harm that had been done and the vileness of some of the actions that were forgiven?

So we begin to look at justice rather than merely overlooking the wrong. What is the worst punishment that justice can ask? There is no crime for which justice may ask a worse punishment than death, especially the slow and painful death of the cross. Jesus’ punishment – the extreme punishment of death, reserved for the worst of crimes – is sufficient to satisfy justice for the most serious of offenses. In this way our atonement has left no doubt that the wrongs being atoned are not a slight matter but are in fact dreadful. In this way our fear is quieted as to whether our particular sin is beyond the price that was paid. In this way our atonement increases the disgust for wrongdoing, rather than decreasing it, in those who understand their forgiveness.

The question implied at one point of Martin’s article is, "Why Jesus? Why the Son of God?" First, it would need to be someone sinless; otherwise we could never be certain that this person did not simply pay for his own crimes. Notice also that the atonement would leave us in the unique debt of the one who atoned for us, as much to that one as to God. It is fitting that the payment should be taken on by God himself. If our debt had not been taken by God himself, then we would have had cause to honor another as much as God, and cause to doubt God’s love of us, if he had created us but left it to someone else to redeem us. In providing for all wrongdoers, our atonement makes plain that we are indebted to God’s goodness rather than our own. It demolishes boasting about our own goodness and restores us to humility; all alike are in need of mercy. And in God’s providing atonement himself, our atonement restores our trust in God rather than sending us to look elsewhere for our redemption.

Atonement Theories; What does atonement do?

2011-04-10T19:07:00.004-05:00

This continues a response to Michael Martin, previously posted at CADRE Comments in spring of 2005.We have already looked at the resurrection's value as a sign; this value alone is enough reason for the resurrection to have occurred. But the matter of our atonement still needs to be discussed because of the resurrection’s role in it. Martin, oddly enough, discusses in detail only Origen’s primitive ransom theory -- a view that Jesus supposedly paid a ransom due to the devil, a theory which is not fully Scriptural. Martin passes over other theories of atonement just by listing a number of them and giving a blanket statement that he finds "all the historically important theories" do not explain some aspect of the atonement to his satisfaction, referencing his book The Case Against Christianity.

This response will not review every theory of atonement or respond to an entire book. For the moment, let us give Martin the benefit of the doubt and suppose that with every given theory of atonement, he has found some major point that is not addressed by that theory. But in his approach of taking each theory of atonement singly as if it could and should stand alone, it seems likely that Mr. Martin does not appreciate that the different theories of atonement are complementary. That is to say, the different theories do not necessarily compete with each other but instead work together to explain different aspects of our atonement.

On a Christian view, the whole of atonement requires a number of things. Here are some things that atonement involves:

satisfying both justice and mercy
causing us to despise evil
humbling us
leading us to trust in God by demonstrating God's trustworthiness
cleansing us from the stain of past sin
cleansing us from corruption and the desire to sin
establishing a covenant (binding agreement) between us and God as the basis for becoming God's people
planting the beginnings of eternal life inside us
making us children of God

On a Christian view, accomplishing all that involves Jesus’ incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and sending of the Holy Spirit.

There is a lot going on with the atonement. It is not a legitimate complaint to take one theory that explains one thing in particular, and dismiss it because it does not explain something else. It was probably never intended to. For example, Martin mentions the Christus Victor theory – that Jesus has won victory over the adversaries of mankind (for example, death). Given the sign value of the resurrection, the resurrection makes it plain that Jesus has won the victory over death; this is most certainly true. That one theory does not address a number of other points that need to be discussed, but that does not make it untrue. It makes it only one part of the whole picture.

Athanasius, a prominent early Christian writer, wrote a great work on atonement that is still studied today, On the Incarnation of the Word of God. In it, he refers to a number of different theories of atonement and different aspects of atonement; he does not confine himself to an either-or view of atonement theories. Mr. Martin's blanket dismissal of all atonement theories rests on a view that one view of atonement should be the whole picture, and is not allowed to be only a part of a bigger picture. My response here is that the only thing required is a simple change of perspective: the atonement accomplishes more than one theory may discuss, and it's appropriate to discuss them separately.

God's Law: The Siege Mentality

2011-04-05T19:30:00.006-05:00

I thought a few days' time might make me willing to pick up my former series; but as it's a favorite old article of mine I've decided that I want an actual post separating it from my usual 4/1 fooling around. The series will continue next post. In the meantime ...

Our ladies' Bible study group recently studied the Song of Solomon, a poem containing a love story between a man and a woman. I noticed a large percentage of the Bible study was spent focusing on whether the man and woman were married at each different point in the story. The poem itself wasn't focused on that; it was mainly focused on how human love is a part of the big picture of the beauty and fertility of creation, and how right it is to celebrate that. But the Bible study didn't focus on that at all. As a Bible study, it was obligated to focus on the question of whether they were married at each stage ... wasn't it? (For the record: I think that Bible study distorted the teachings of the Bible by focusing on something other than the point the author was trying to make.)

Some people look at the Law of God as a fortress against evil, a stronghold against the attacks of the fallen world. I suppose it is that. Some use it to keep out sin, or to recognize sinners. Those who have tossed aside the law have shown us clearly that without the law's support and protection, peoples' lives -- and whole societies -- become trampled and broken. Some use the law to train people in righteousness -- in particular, learning to choose the ethical and refuse the evil.

But what if that law -- as necessary and good as it is -- is not actually the point of righteousness? If the law is meant as a hedge around us, to make our lives safe and to help our souls flourish, if the law is meant to protect our souls as a wall or a fence protects a garden -- then the point of the wall isn't to have a wall; the fence is not there for its own sake. The point of the fence is to have a garden. We can build the biggest, strongest, most prominent walls, we can fortify it and make it strong in every way we can imagine. And if we spend all our time on the wall, and forget to plant and tend the garden, then we have missed the purpose. We may have the most impressive wall or fence, but it may protect a wasteland.

The more we have something growing, something thriving -- love, for example, or compassion -- the more we'll understand the point of the fence.