Can We Believe St. Paul Was Divinely Inspired? (December 25, 2005)
Last installment from my son’s letter from college:
"The professor challenged the assumption that Paul's words could be thought of as divine...Now obviously, Paul's word is not absolute, as women don't wear cloth over their heads, but with what seems to us such faulty morality [regarding Paul's words on slavery], why are we to believe that Paul was, in fact, divinely inspired?"
I replied:
There must be an explanation for what turned Paul from a murderer of Christians into a man who spent the last 30 years of his life as a ruthlessly persecuted Christian himself. Maybe he was just a nut - and a very unlucky one at that to have had religious hallucinations that worked so vigorously to his disadvantage. I think it is more reasonable to believe that he was telling the truth, that the risen Christ had appeared to him on the road to Damascus and turned his life around and commissioned him to speak God's word to the Gentiles.
Ultimately it is a matter of faith whether one accepts that Paul (or any other biblical writer) was inspired by God. Can you know it for sure in the same way that you know that two and two are four? Can you prove it like Pythagorean theorem? No. You can simply read Paul's words claiming divine authority ("If anybody thinks he is a prophet or spiritually gifted, let him acknowledge that what I am writing you is
the Lord's command" - 1 Corinthians 14:37), and then either accept it or reject it. Maybe Paul was a mouthpiece of God, or maybe he was an ego-drunk, power hungry, manipulative gas bag. Choose.
Do you remember the scene in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader where the crew came to Ramandu's island and saw a magnificent feast laid out but were afraid to eat it? They thought the food and wine were the cause of a deep sleep that had settled (for years, apparently) over three figures seated at one end of the table. Ramandu's daughter appeared and told the hungry crew to eat. They explained their fears of enchantment, and she told them that the sleepers had never touched the food. When Edmund asked how they could know this for sure, she told them they could not. They could either eat the food or leave it alone. They could trust her and risk that she was deceiving them; they could distrust her and go hungry.
Noble Reepicheep broke the silence that followed by saying, "I will drink to the lady." He partook and suffered no ill effects and the rest joined in.
It is kind of like that with Scripture. The Bible itself says, "Taste and see that the Lord is good" (Psalm 34:8). To press the metaphor of feasting, I would likewise say that we must "eat" the Scriptures - but we must do so wisely. Though everything on the table is good, that does not mean we eat all of it the same way. (We eat teaspoonfuls of pudding, not teaspoonfuls of salt). Some examples might help explain
what I mean.
I take St. Paul's word as inspired and authoritative, but that does not mean that I have got a room ready for him in obedience to his command in Philemon 22: "And one thing more: Prepare a guest room for me..." We all know that that was a temporary, specific command for Philemon and it does not apply directly to us. (Though indirectly we might draw from it a lesson about hospitality.) Likewise, I don't kiss anyone at Faith Bible Church - despite Paul's insistence that Romans and Corinthians "greet one another with a holy kiss." A handshake and a "Good morning!" are what get the job done today.
You mentioned the head coverings for women that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 11. Here it gets interesting. In some Christian fellowships women still wear head coverings in submission to Paul's command. But I think I can safely argue that head coverings carry no more meaning for us than holy kisses do. A womanly hat meant something to the Corinthians but means nothing to us. So then should we simply ignore this admonition? I don't think so - we must re-interpret it in light of today's cultural practice. This is what we do with Jesus' command to wash one another's feet. I think it would be silly to obey that command literally (I'd rather wash my own feet, thank you), but hopefully we obey the principle of humble service that lies behind it.
I think it is reasonable and right to ask what principles lie behind the culturally specific mandates of Scripture. This does not deny the biblical writer's inspiration - rather it affirms that inspiration by seeking to submit to it in the most meaningful ways possible.
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Sunday, December 18, 2005
St. Paul And The Evil Institution Of Slavery (December 18, 2005)
More from my son’s letter from college:
“The professor challenged the assumption that Paul's words could be thought of as divine. Of course, right away he pointed to Philemon, and asked, ‘Is slavery ok then?‘ When I brought up the fact that slavery was a very different practice at the time, as people could sell themselves into slavery of their own free will, or become slaves because of bankruptcy, etc., he vigorously denied my claim, saying slavery was, if anything, worse at the time. He talked about how masters could do anything they wanted with their slaves, including, as was often practiced, sending them to die in the arena. Now obviously, Paul's word is not absolute, as women don't wear cloth over their heads, but with what seems to us such faulty morality as was displayed with Philemon, why are we to believe that Paul was, in fact, divinely inspired?”
I responded:
FAULTY MORALITY AS WAS DISPLAYED WITH PHILEMON??? FAULTY MORALITY as was displayed with PHILEMON??? Einstein was an idiot, Mother Teresa a terrorist, Hitler a nice guy. Black is white, night is day. Education is dead.
Read Philemon.
Now that you have read Philemon, it should be clear that not only was Paul's behavior in this matter worthy of adoration, but that his words to slaveowner Philemon practically dismantle the institution of slavery! Paul orders Philemon to receive back Onesimus, "no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother" (verse 16). Do not pass quickly over those words. Paul insisted that Philemon and Onesimus no longer relate to one another as owner and property but as brother and brother. I challenge the religion professor, or any historian, to find a more enlightened, egalitarian statement concerning slavery in all of ancient literature. Brothers! Abraham Lincoln was not this progressive. Not even the heroic abolitionists of the 19th century unanimously regarded Africans Americans as their brothers.
More from my son’s letter from college:
“The professor challenged the assumption that Paul's words could be thought of as divine. Of course, right away he pointed to Philemon, and asked, ‘Is slavery ok then?‘ When I brought up the fact that slavery was a very different practice at the time, as people could sell themselves into slavery of their own free will, or become slaves because of bankruptcy, etc., he vigorously denied my claim, saying slavery was, if anything, worse at the time. He talked about how masters could do anything they wanted with their slaves, including, as was often practiced, sending them to die in the arena. Now obviously, Paul's word is not absolute, as women don't wear cloth over their heads, but with what seems to us such faulty morality as was displayed with Philemon, why are we to believe that Paul was, in fact, divinely inspired?”
I responded:
FAULTY MORALITY AS WAS DISPLAYED WITH PHILEMON??? FAULTY MORALITY as was displayed with PHILEMON??? Einstein was an idiot, Mother Teresa a terrorist, Hitler a nice guy. Black is white, night is day. Education is dead.
Read Philemon.
Now that you have read Philemon, it should be clear that not only was Paul's behavior in this matter worthy of adoration, but that his words to slaveowner Philemon practically dismantle the institution of slavery! Paul orders Philemon to receive back Onesimus, "no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother" (verse 16). Do not pass quickly over those words. Paul insisted that Philemon and Onesimus no longer relate to one another as owner and property but as brother and brother. I challenge the religion professor, or any historian, to find a more enlightened, egalitarian statement concerning slavery in all of ancient literature. Brothers! Abraham Lincoln was not this progressive. Not even the heroic abolitionists of the 19th century unanimously regarded Africans Americans as their brothers.
But for Paul the fundamental equality among human beings was a given, and he referred to it often. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male not female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28). "Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all." (Colossians 3:11)
There is more. Paul does not simply suggest that Philemon take Onesimus back as a brother - he twists his arm into a pretzel to make him do so! He writes, "I could be bold and order you" (v.8) (but of course I wouldn't dream of doing THAT so) "I appeal to you on the basis of love." He plays the sympathy card, reminding Philemon that he is old (v. 9) and chained up (vs. 10, 13). He "won't even mention the fact" that Philemon owes him his very self (v. 19). He considers Onesimus his son (v. 10), his very heart (v. 12), and is reluctant to let him go (v. 13) - but "if you're my friend" then Philemon must welcome Onesimus as he would welcome Paul himself (v. 17)! And just in case Philemon neglects his obligation to take back Onesimus "as a man and as a brother in the Lord" (v. 16), Paul will be checking in on them to see how things are going: "Prepare a guest room for me" (v.22).
What more could you possibly ask of Paul? He even agrees to pay Onesimus' debts out of his own pocket! "If he has done you any wrong or owes you anything, charge it to me. I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand. I will pay it back." (vs. 18-19).
Anyone who reads Philemon and still regards Paul's actions as anything less than righteous, heroic and phenomenally progressive should grab handfuls of sand and stuff them in his mouth to keep himself from saying any more unbelievably stupid things.
With regard to the meaning of the word "slave", you're right and the professor is wrong about slavery in Paul's day being distinct from American slavery. No African ever willingly walked onto a slave ship and offered his hands to the shackles, but slavery in Biblical times was frequently voluntary: "I offer you my service in exchange for a roof over my head and food in my stomach." Paul actually advised people not to make this particular life choice: "Do not become slaves of men" (1 Corinthians 7:23), and he told those who were currently slaves to take advantage of opportunities to become free: "If you can gain your freedom, do so" (1 Corinthians 7:21).
It is hard to make generalizations about slave treatment, because "slaves" then ran the gamut from what we would call "employees" to "maids and servants" to "serfs" to, yes, "war-booty captive foreigners" who might have to die fighting wild beasts in the arena. The latter was clearly wrong, as was American slavery. But to label a complex social phenomenon with the same term that we apply to the disgraceful American practice of the 17th to 19th centuries is misleading. If the experience of being a slave in the first century was as negative and degrading as that of blacks in the American South, then Paul would certainly not have adopted the metaphor of servitude in calling himself "a slave of Christ" (Romans 1:1).
To suggest, as I think the professor does, that if Paul were truly inspired he would have said "Free the slaves!" is about as realistic as saying that if he was so smart he would have been able to build a rocket ship and go to the moon. Inspired or not, all moral or scientific genius has to accomplish what it reasonably can within the confines of its time and culture.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
“The Word ‘Homosexuality’ Isn’t In The Bible!” And Related Nonsense (December 11, 2005)
More from my son’s letter from college:
"The professor challenged the belief that the Bible condemns homosexuality, saying that that term as we understand it did not even exist in ancient times, and that, though the Greek in the New Testament is unclear and may be referring to male prostitution, it cannot be understood to be referring to the sort of committed,
long-term relationships homosexuals have today. How would you address this?"
I wrote:
1) To say that the term "homosexuality" did not exist in ancient times is a stunningly irrelevant point, even if, for argument's sake, we grant that the word did not exist. So what if Hebrew had no word that precisely parallels our word "homosexuality"? When other words combine to describe (and condemn) homosexual acts, the presence or absence of any particular word is moot. The professor's argument here is a deceptive piece of psycholinguistic sleight-of-hand.
An example may help. Consider the gory details of what Ehud did to Eglon in Judges 3:20-22: "Ehud...drew the sword...and plunged it into the king's belly. Even the handle sank in after the blade, and the fat closed over it." Question: did Ehud stab Eglon? Yes. Did Ehud assassinate Eglon? Yes. Did Ehud disembowel Eglon? You could say he did. But the text never mentions the words "stab", "assassinate", or "disembowel". Maybe Hebrew didn't even have these words. But who cares? Does that mean that the English words stab, assassinate and disembowel do not accurately describe what happened? Of course they do. We've always taken for granted that languages carve the same reality into the distinct semantic shapes of their own particular words. This is so self-evident it hardly qualifies as an insight. But it is a principle that needs to be made explicit whenever a professor (or anyone else) trots out that old stinker of an argument: "They had no word for!" whatever might be the issue at hand.
The texts in Leviticus say that a man should not lie with a man as he would with a woman. I'll be the first to concede that there is no word in that last sentence that even remotely matches the English word "homosexuality." But so what? Only a mentally blind partisan with an ax to grind could fail to find homosexual behavior in words as plain as those.
2) The professor almost has a point when he says "the Greek in the New Testament is unclear and may be referring to male prostitution." He is referring to the difficult Greek of 1 Corinthians 6:9, which says that among those who will not inherit the kingdom of God are (NIV) "male prostitutes" (Greek malakoi) and "homosexual offenders" (Greek arsenokoitai). The first word can literally mean "soft" (and thus metaphorically referred to effeminacy) and almost certainly indicated a male prostitute - a man paid to play the role of a woman. The second word, literally men-bedders, appears in known Greek literature for the first time right here in 1st Corinthians. It has no prior history and for all we know Paul coined the term. What is certain is that both terms refer to homosexual behavior. What is uncertain is whether that behavior here is to be understood mainly in the context of prostitution.
But again, the point is moot for the purposes of the professor's argument. In Romans 1:26-27, the same Paul writes, "Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men..." There is no hint of prostitution here. What is being condemned are simply male-to-male and female-to-female sexual relations. The possibility that only male prostitution is explicitly condemned in 1st Corinthians 6 does not mean that mere homosexual contact is not condemned elsewhere.
3) When the professor says that biblical prohibitions of homosexual behavior "cannot be understood to be referring to the sort of committed, long-term relationships homosexuals have today," his brain is just out to lunch. The matter is really pretty simple. The Bible, Old Testament and New, forbids same-sex sexual contact. To respond that it says nothing about homosexual conduct performed in the context of long-term committed relationships is just desperate pleading. It is like John Dillinger saying, "OK, maybe the Bible condemns stealing, but it never says that there is anything wrong with my long-term, vocational commitment to robbing banks. Where exactly does the Bible say that it is wrong to rob banks for a living? The Bible never envisioned my kind of situation - in fact, the word 'bank' did not even exist in Hebrew!"
Ben, be on your guard against sleight-of-hand arguments. It's amazing what kind of nonsense people can pull out of their sleeves when they are desperate to drum up support for untenable positions. It would be so much more honest of the professor - and those who believe as he does - to say simply, "Yes, the Bible unambiguously condemns homosexual behavior, but I think the Bible is wrong." Fair enough. That's were we disagree. But all this pretending that the Bible doesn't say what it clearly does just makes it difficult to have a frank discussion where honest differences can be aired.
More from my son’s letter from college:
"The professor challenged the belief that the Bible condemns homosexuality, saying that that term as we understand it did not even exist in ancient times, and that, though the Greek in the New Testament is unclear and may be referring to male prostitution, it cannot be understood to be referring to the sort of committed,
long-term relationships homosexuals have today. How would you address this?"
I wrote:
1) To say that the term "homosexuality" did not exist in ancient times is a stunningly irrelevant point, even if, for argument's sake, we grant that the word did not exist. So what if Hebrew had no word that precisely parallels our word "homosexuality"? When other words combine to describe (and condemn) homosexual acts, the presence or absence of any particular word is moot. The professor's argument here is a deceptive piece of psycholinguistic sleight-of-hand.
An example may help. Consider the gory details of what Ehud did to Eglon in Judges 3:20-22: "Ehud...drew the sword...and plunged it into the king's belly. Even the handle sank in after the blade, and the fat closed over it." Question: did Ehud stab Eglon? Yes. Did Ehud assassinate Eglon? Yes. Did Ehud disembowel Eglon? You could say he did. But the text never mentions the words "stab", "assassinate", or "disembowel". Maybe Hebrew didn't even have these words. But who cares? Does that mean that the English words stab, assassinate and disembowel do not accurately describe what happened? Of course they do. We've always taken for granted that languages carve the same reality into the distinct semantic shapes of their own particular words. This is so self-evident it hardly qualifies as an insight. But it is a principle that needs to be made explicit whenever a professor (or anyone else) trots out that old stinker of an argument: "They had no word for!" whatever might be the issue at hand.
The texts in Leviticus say that a man should not lie with a man as he would with a woman. I'll be the first to concede that there is no word in that last sentence that even remotely matches the English word "homosexuality." But so what? Only a mentally blind partisan with an ax to grind could fail to find homosexual behavior in words as plain as those.
2) The professor almost has a point when he says "the Greek in the New Testament is unclear and may be referring to male prostitution." He is referring to the difficult Greek of 1 Corinthians 6:9, which says that among those who will not inherit the kingdom of God are (NIV) "male prostitutes" (Greek malakoi) and "homosexual offenders" (Greek arsenokoitai). The first word can literally mean "soft" (and thus metaphorically referred to effeminacy) and almost certainly indicated a male prostitute - a man paid to play the role of a woman. The second word, literally men-bedders, appears in known Greek literature for the first time right here in 1st Corinthians. It has no prior history and for all we know Paul coined the term. What is certain is that both terms refer to homosexual behavior. What is uncertain is whether that behavior here is to be understood mainly in the context of prostitution.
But again, the point is moot for the purposes of the professor's argument. In Romans 1:26-27, the same Paul writes, "Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men..." There is no hint of prostitution here. What is being condemned are simply male-to-male and female-to-female sexual relations. The possibility that only male prostitution is explicitly condemned in 1st Corinthians 6 does not mean that mere homosexual contact is not condemned elsewhere.
3) When the professor says that biblical prohibitions of homosexual behavior "cannot be understood to be referring to the sort of committed, long-term relationships homosexuals have today," his brain is just out to lunch. The matter is really pretty simple. The Bible, Old Testament and New, forbids same-sex sexual contact. To respond that it says nothing about homosexual conduct performed in the context of long-term committed relationships is just desperate pleading. It is like John Dillinger saying, "OK, maybe the Bible condemns stealing, but it never says that there is anything wrong with my long-term, vocational commitment to robbing banks. Where exactly does the Bible say that it is wrong to rob banks for a living? The Bible never envisioned my kind of situation - in fact, the word 'bank' did not even exist in Hebrew!"
Ben, be on your guard against sleight-of-hand arguments. It's amazing what kind of nonsense people can pull out of their sleeves when they are desperate to drum up support for untenable positions. It would be so much more honest of the professor - and those who believe as he does - to say simply, "Yes, the Bible unambiguously condemns homosexual behavior, but I think the Bible is wrong." Fair enough. That's were we disagree. But all this pretending that the Bible doesn't say what it clearly does just makes it difficult to have a frank discussion where honest differences can be aired.
Sunday, December 4, 2005
Is Rape The Only Kind Of Homosexual Behavior The Bible Forbids? (December 4, 2005)
More from my son’s letter from college:
"The professor challenged the belief that the Bible condemns homosexuality, saying that...the ban against it in Leviticus had more to do with banning homosexual rape..."
I wrote back,
The liberal religious left has been trotting out this nonsense for a while now. It is simple lunacy. My guess is that this professor and others like him are crossing their fingers and hoping you'll just take their word for it, and that you won't go to the trouble of actually looking up the texts in Leviticus and seeing what they say. Here are the texts:
Leviticus 18:22: Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.
Leviticus 20:13: If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death. What they have done is perversion; their blood will be on their own heads.
There is no rape here! The texts forbid "lying with a man" as one would lie with a woman - not "raping a man" as one would rape a woman. The Hebrew word for "rape" is 'anah, which generally means "afflict, oppress, humble, humiliate", but in sexual contexts refers to rape. That word appears in each of the three rapes that the Bible records: Genesis 34:2 (Dinah); 2 Samuel 13:14 (Tamar); and Judges 19:24 (a Levite's concubine). The Levitical texts above do not have that word.
The word that they do have, "lie with" (shakab) is precisely parallel to English "have sex with," a phrase we never use to mean "rape" unless we put it in a non-consensual context or qualify it with a word like "forcibly." In Genesis 39:14, for example, Potiphar's wife accuses Joseph, saying "He came in here to lie with (shakab) me, but I screamed. When he heard me scream for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house." She is saying he tried to rape her, but we don't get the inference of rape from the verb "lie with". We get it from the context of her resisting and screaming for help.
The actual crime of rape is dealt with in Deuteronomy 22:25-27, which reads:
But if out in the country a man happens to meet a girl pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die. Do nothing to the girl; she has committed no sin deserving of death. This case is like that of someone who attacks and murders his neighbor, for the man found the girl out in the country, and though the betrothed girl screamed, there was no one to rescue her.
The Hebrew for "rape" here is literally "lay hold on (or 'force') her and lie with her." The phrase "lie with her" merely indicates sex; rape is inferred from the fact that he "laid hold on her" and that she screamed. Note that the Levitical texts on homosexual contact have no reference to "laying hold" on the part of a perpetrator nor "screaming for help" on the part of a victim. That is because it is consensual. Note also that there is no penalty at all for the girl who is raped (she is no more guilty than a murder victim), but both partners in the homosexual act are to be executed. According to the professor's view, the Bible is invoking the death penalty on someone who has done nothing more than suffer as the unwilling victim of a homosexual rapist!
The prohibition of homosexual behavior in Leviticus 20:13 follows a series of commandments, "If a man lies with his father's wife..." (verse 11); "If a man lies with his daughter-in-law..." (verse 12). (The NIV has "sleeps with" in verses 11 and 12, but it is all the same Hebrew word shakab.) Read these verses and you will see that each act is clearly consensual, as indicated by the dual punishments for both partners rather than the singular punishment for the rapist alone in Deuteronomy 22.
The professor didn't do his homework.
More from my son’s letter from college:
"The professor challenged the belief that the Bible condemns homosexuality, saying that...the ban against it in Leviticus had more to do with banning homosexual rape..."
I wrote back,
The liberal religious left has been trotting out this nonsense for a while now. It is simple lunacy. My guess is that this professor and others like him are crossing their fingers and hoping you'll just take their word for it, and that you won't go to the trouble of actually looking up the texts in Leviticus and seeing what they say. Here are the texts:
Leviticus 18:22: Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.
Leviticus 20:13: If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death. What they have done is perversion; their blood will be on their own heads.
There is no rape here! The texts forbid "lying with a man" as one would lie with a woman - not "raping a man" as one would rape a woman. The Hebrew word for "rape" is 'anah, which generally means "afflict, oppress, humble, humiliate", but in sexual contexts refers to rape. That word appears in each of the three rapes that the Bible records: Genesis 34:2 (Dinah); 2 Samuel 13:14 (Tamar); and Judges 19:24 (a Levite's concubine). The Levitical texts above do not have that word.
The word that they do have, "lie with" (shakab) is precisely parallel to English "have sex with," a phrase we never use to mean "rape" unless we put it in a non-consensual context or qualify it with a word like "forcibly." In Genesis 39:14, for example, Potiphar's wife accuses Joseph, saying "He came in here to lie with (shakab) me, but I screamed. When he heard me scream for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house." She is saying he tried to rape her, but we don't get the inference of rape from the verb "lie with". We get it from the context of her resisting and screaming for help.
The actual crime of rape is dealt with in Deuteronomy 22:25-27, which reads:
But if out in the country a man happens to meet a girl pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die. Do nothing to the girl; she has committed no sin deserving of death. This case is like that of someone who attacks and murders his neighbor, for the man found the girl out in the country, and though the betrothed girl screamed, there was no one to rescue her.
The Hebrew for "rape" here is literally "lay hold on (or 'force') her and lie with her." The phrase "lie with her" merely indicates sex; rape is inferred from the fact that he "laid hold on her" and that she screamed. Note that the Levitical texts on homosexual contact have no reference to "laying hold" on the part of a perpetrator nor "screaming for help" on the part of a victim. That is because it is consensual. Note also that there is no penalty at all for the girl who is raped (she is no more guilty than a murder victim), but both partners in the homosexual act are to be executed. According to the professor's view, the Bible is invoking the death penalty on someone who has done nothing more than suffer as the unwilling victim of a homosexual rapist!
The prohibition of homosexual behavior in Leviticus 20:13 follows a series of commandments, "If a man lies with his father's wife..." (verse 11); "If a man lies with his daughter-in-law..." (verse 12). (The NIV has "sleeps with" in verses 11 and 12, but it is all the same Hebrew word shakab.) Read these verses and you will see that each act is clearly consensual, as indicated by the dual punishments for both partners rather than the singular punishment for the rapist alone in Deuteronomy 22.
The professor didn't do his homework.
Sunday, November 27, 2005
Luke And The Census (November 27, 2005)
More from my son’s letter from college:
"When I brought up the census as one indication that the [Virgin Birth] story was based in fact, he dismissed my claim by saying the facts of the story don't hold up - how, for example, it would have been chaos for everyone to go back to their home town to report. How would you respond to this particular instance?"
I wrote back,
When the professor says "it would have been chaos for everyone to go back to their home town to report," it seems he is simply unaware of the facts on the ground. Chaos or not, that is what they did. Any good scholarly commentary on Luke refers to the census edict issued in neighboring Egypt in A. D. 104, which reads,
Gaius Vibius Maximus, Prefect of Egypt [says]: Seeing that the time has come for the house to house census, it is necessary to compel all those who for any cause whatsoever are residing outside of their provinces to return to their homes, that they may both carry out the regular order of the census and may also attend diligently to the cultivation of their allotments.
The census that Luke records was not unique. They did them every 14 years.
More generally, it is good to be aware that among liberal scholars there is an almost constant elitist condescension toward the writers of the Bible. These scholars have somehow figured out - without evidence, without doing their homework - that the biblical writers were clever con artists who made stuff up and their gullible audiences swallowed it. They pretend to know with omniscient rigor all the historical and cultural nuances of the day and so can declare with absolute authority what could or could not have happened.
I don't mind if a given scholar chooses not to believe a text for whatever personal reason he or she might have. What annoys me is when they couch their disbelief in terms of "the assured results of scholarship" when in fact they are just expressing a doubt as prejudiced against the Bible as the faith of a fundamentalist is in favor of it. The important thing is for everybody to do their homework and let the facts speak no matter what the biases of faith or unbelief dictate.
The homework on Luke as a historian shows that, in areas that we can confirm, he is extraordinarily careful and accurate, which should give us reasonable confidence about his reliability in matters that we can't confirm. He is famously precise, for example, in his terms for government officials ("magistrate," "town clerk," "procounsul" etc.) that varied from place to place throughout the Mediterranean world. Archeological scholarship has confirmed that Luke's terms were inerrant, giving strong evidence that he had actually been to those places. No one making up the story at a desk in Antioch could conceivably have been that accurate.
Making up a phony census with a contrived "return-to-your-home" policy would have been uncharacteristic of Luke, and it does not seem reasonable to expect that he could have slipped it past Theophilus, the recipient of his letters. If your professor's view is correct, Theophilus would have been left scratching his head and wondering, "What in the world is this? Who ever heard of a census where people return to their home towns?" No, Theophilus knew about the practice. Luke was not writing in a cultural vacuum.
More from my son’s letter from college:
"When I brought up the census as one indication that the [Virgin Birth] story was based in fact, he dismissed my claim by saying the facts of the story don't hold up - how, for example, it would have been chaos for everyone to go back to their home town to report. How would you respond to this particular instance?"
I wrote back,
When the professor says "it would have been chaos for everyone to go back to their home town to report," it seems he is simply unaware of the facts on the ground. Chaos or not, that is what they did. Any good scholarly commentary on Luke refers to the census edict issued in neighboring Egypt in A. D. 104, which reads,
Gaius Vibius Maximus, Prefect of Egypt [says]: Seeing that the time has come for the house to house census, it is necessary to compel all those who for any cause whatsoever are residing outside of their provinces to return to their homes, that they may both carry out the regular order of the census and may also attend diligently to the cultivation of their allotments.
The census that Luke records was not unique. They did them every 14 years.
More generally, it is good to be aware that among liberal scholars there is an almost constant elitist condescension toward the writers of the Bible. These scholars have somehow figured out - without evidence, without doing their homework - that the biblical writers were clever con artists who made stuff up and their gullible audiences swallowed it. They pretend to know with omniscient rigor all the historical and cultural nuances of the day and so can declare with absolute authority what could or could not have happened.
I don't mind if a given scholar chooses not to believe a text for whatever personal reason he or she might have. What annoys me is when they couch their disbelief in terms of "the assured results of scholarship" when in fact they are just expressing a doubt as prejudiced against the Bible as the faith of a fundamentalist is in favor of it. The important thing is for everybody to do their homework and let the facts speak no matter what the biases of faith or unbelief dictate.
The homework on Luke as a historian shows that, in areas that we can confirm, he is extraordinarily careful and accurate, which should give us reasonable confidence about his reliability in matters that we can't confirm. He is famously precise, for example, in his terms for government officials ("magistrate," "town clerk," "procounsul" etc.) that varied from place to place throughout the Mediterranean world. Archeological scholarship has confirmed that Luke's terms were inerrant, giving strong evidence that he had actually been to those places. No one making up the story at a desk in Antioch could conceivably have been that accurate.
Making up a phony census with a contrived "return-to-your-home" policy would have been uncharacteristic of Luke, and it does not seem reasonable to expect that he could have slipped it past Theophilus, the recipient of his letters. If your professor's view is correct, Theophilus would have been left scratching his head and wondering, "What in the world is this? Who ever heard of a census where people return to their home towns?" No, Theophilus knew about the practice. Luke was not writing in a cultural vacuum.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Should The Bible Be Taken Literally? (November 20, 2005)
More from my son’s letter from college:
“While many fundamentalists make the mistake of taking the Bible too literally (i.e. Genesis), this professor, from what I could gather, didn't think the Bible should be taken literally at all. He pointed not only to Genesis, but to the virgin birth, which he believes is metaphoric. He pointed to how Paul did not talk about Christ as being born of a virgin, because he wrote before some of the gospel writers, and that story was not yet invented. How would you respond to this particular instance, and also, how would you determine when the Bible should be taken literally or not?”
I wrote:
On the general question of when the Bible should be taken literally, my simple diagnostic is, "What was the author's intent?" For example, when Isaiah says, "Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low," he is not envisioning a sandblaster the size of an Independence Day spaceship that will grind away the earth's surface until it is all uniform altitude. He was speaking metaphorically and expected his audience to understand him that way.
You mentioned Genesis. I think the author there flags a metaphorical element when he says, "there was evening and morning, the first day" etc. - though the sun that makes for evening and morning was not created until the fourth day! Literalist John MacArthur writes, "Such a cycle of light and dark means that the earth was rotating on its axis, so that there was a source of light on one side of the earth, though the sun was not yet created." MacArthur believes that God must have created a temporary sun that he knocked out of the sky and replaced with our real sun three days later. That strikes me as nonsense, an exegetical contortion motivated solely by an overly literal reading of the text. It is no virtue to blind yourself to symbol and metaphor. When Jesus said he was a door, he did not mean that he was made of wood and had hinges. One time he even got angry with his disciples when they took him too literally. He said "Beware the yeast of the Pharisees" and they started talking about bread! (Matthew 16:5-12).
With regard to the virgin birth, ask yourself, "Do Luke and Matthew intend to say that Jesus was literally born of a virgin?" If so, then, though you may disbelieve them, you cannot really say, "This is a metaphor with some deeper meaning." No, if they meant to say that Mary conceived without sex, then it is a question of fact rather than of literary interpretation.
Read the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke, and you can see that no reasonable person can doubt that they intend their accounts to be taken literally. I would go as far as to say that their literal intent is as obvious as Isaiah's metaphorical intent above, and that anyone who could read deliberate metaphor into their narratives is no more qualified to evaluate biblical genre than John MacArthur. One can err on either side - manufacturing propositions out of pictures (MacArthur), or pictures out of propositions (your liberal professor).
Concerning the point that "Paul did not talk about Christ as being born of a virgin, because he wrote before some of the gospel writers, and that story was not yet invented."
Not so. The only gospel writer that Paul definitely wrote before was John, and John did not mention the virgin birth! The theory of a "late developing story" would make a lot more sense if John talked about the virgin birth and Luke did not - but the opposite holds.
The fact that Paul and Luke wrote at the same time can be established by this quick guide to the dating of Luke:
Begin with Luke's second volume, Acts. Acts ends with Paul under house arrest in the early 60s A.D. The fact that Luke stops before Paul's execution (about A. D. 67), before Neronian persecution in Rome (A. D. 64), and even before James' death (A. D. 62 - Josephus) tells us that Acts was completed before those events occurred. The terminal date for Acts is about A.D. 62 (and it took a long time to research and write!). The first volume, the gospel of Luke, was researched and finished before that, which takes us back to the 50s A.D. - the same time that Paul was writing his letters. Luke wrote within living memory of birth witnesses. Read the first two chapters of Luke, and notice how much of it is from Mary's perspective - what she thought in her heart, etc. I think Luke interviewed Mary herself (who would have been in her 70s) and was able to glean information that other gospel and epistle writers simply did not have.
Also, it is important to remember that Paul and Luke knew each other - note the "we" passages of Acts where Luke himself has joined the missionary team (16:10-17; 20:5-21:18; 27:1-28:16). In Colossians 3:14 Paul writes, "Our dear friend Luke, the doctor, and Demas send greetings," and in 2 Timothy 4:11 he says, "Only Luke is with
me."
Since Paul and Luke were colleagues and writing at the same time, it just plain flies in the face of facts to say that the virgin birth story that Luke wrote about developed later than Paul. Paul knew about the virgin birth. He does not mention it (neither do Mark or John, for that matter) for the simple reason that he never says anything at all about Jesus' birth! The topic does not come up. So what? I've written
over a hundred "Pastor's Pages" on a variety of topics - pastoral, biblical, apologetic - more in volume than Paul's letters combined - and I don't think I've mentioned the virgin birth either. Maybe I have, I don't know. The point is, if I haven't, it would be silly to conclude by my silence that I haven't heard of or don't believe in the virgin birth of Christ.
I'm amazed at the assumption on the part of some that every biblical author must be an encyclopedia of information covering every possible topic, and if some topic is not covered, then it has to be a deliberate omission ("He didn't believe that story!") or evidence of ignorance ("He never even heard that story"). That is just a bad argument, a desperate move employed by writers with an axe to grind. (This is one of my beefs with several left-wing evangelicals - their tendency to tease out doctrines from what they perceive to be deliberate silences.) Beware of that maneuver - it is just a trick.
More from my son’s letter from college:
“While many fundamentalists make the mistake of taking the Bible too literally (i.e. Genesis), this professor, from what I could gather, didn't think the Bible should be taken literally at all. He pointed not only to Genesis, but to the virgin birth, which he believes is metaphoric. He pointed to how Paul did not talk about Christ as being born of a virgin, because he wrote before some of the gospel writers, and that story was not yet invented. How would you respond to this particular instance, and also, how would you determine when the Bible should be taken literally or not?”
I wrote:
On the general question of when the Bible should be taken literally, my simple diagnostic is, "What was the author's intent?" For example, when Isaiah says, "Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low," he is not envisioning a sandblaster the size of an Independence Day spaceship that will grind away the earth's surface until it is all uniform altitude. He was speaking metaphorically and expected his audience to understand him that way.
You mentioned Genesis. I think the author there flags a metaphorical element when he says, "there was evening and morning, the first day" etc. - though the sun that makes for evening and morning was not created until the fourth day! Literalist John MacArthur writes, "Such a cycle of light and dark means that the earth was rotating on its axis, so that there was a source of light on one side of the earth, though the sun was not yet created." MacArthur believes that God must have created a temporary sun that he knocked out of the sky and replaced with our real sun three days later. That strikes me as nonsense, an exegetical contortion motivated solely by an overly literal reading of the text. It is no virtue to blind yourself to symbol and metaphor. When Jesus said he was a door, he did not mean that he was made of wood and had hinges. One time he even got angry with his disciples when they took him too literally. He said "Beware the yeast of the Pharisees" and they started talking about bread! (Matthew 16:5-12).
With regard to the virgin birth, ask yourself, "Do Luke and Matthew intend to say that Jesus was literally born of a virgin?" If so, then, though you may disbelieve them, you cannot really say, "This is a metaphor with some deeper meaning." No, if they meant to say that Mary conceived without sex, then it is a question of fact rather than of literary interpretation.
Read the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke, and you can see that no reasonable person can doubt that they intend their accounts to be taken literally. I would go as far as to say that their literal intent is as obvious as Isaiah's metaphorical intent above, and that anyone who could read deliberate metaphor into their narratives is no more qualified to evaluate biblical genre than John MacArthur. One can err on either side - manufacturing propositions out of pictures (MacArthur), or pictures out of propositions (your liberal professor).
Concerning the point that "Paul did not talk about Christ as being born of a virgin, because he wrote before some of the gospel writers, and that story was not yet invented."
Not so. The only gospel writer that Paul definitely wrote before was John, and John did not mention the virgin birth! The theory of a "late developing story" would make a lot more sense if John talked about the virgin birth and Luke did not - but the opposite holds.
The fact that Paul and Luke wrote at the same time can be established by this quick guide to the dating of Luke:
Begin with Luke's second volume, Acts. Acts ends with Paul under house arrest in the early 60s A.D. The fact that Luke stops before Paul's execution (about A. D. 67), before Neronian persecution in Rome (A. D. 64), and even before James' death (A. D. 62 - Josephus) tells us that Acts was completed before those events occurred. The terminal date for Acts is about A.D. 62 (and it took a long time to research and write!). The first volume, the gospel of Luke, was researched and finished before that, which takes us back to the 50s A.D. - the same time that Paul was writing his letters. Luke wrote within living memory of birth witnesses. Read the first two chapters of Luke, and notice how much of it is from Mary's perspective - what she thought in her heart, etc. I think Luke interviewed Mary herself (who would have been in her 70s) and was able to glean information that other gospel and epistle writers simply did not have.
Also, it is important to remember that Paul and Luke knew each other - note the "we" passages of Acts where Luke himself has joined the missionary team (16:10-17; 20:5-21:18; 27:1-28:16). In Colossians 3:14 Paul writes, "Our dear friend Luke, the doctor, and Demas send greetings," and in 2 Timothy 4:11 he says, "Only Luke is with
me."
Since Paul and Luke were colleagues and writing at the same time, it just plain flies in the face of facts to say that the virgin birth story that Luke wrote about developed later than Paul. Paul knew about the virgin birth. He does not mention it (neither do Mark or John, for that matter) for the simple reason that he never says anything at all about Jesus' birth! The topic does not come up. So what? I've written
over a hundred "Pastor's Pages" on a variety of topics - pastoral, biblical, apologetic - more in volume than Paul's letters combined - and I don't think I've mentioned the virgin birth either. Maybe I have, I don't know. The point is, if I haven't, it would be silly to conclude by my silence that I haven't heard of or don't believe in the virgin birth of Christ.
I'm amazed at the assumption on the part of some that every biblical author must be an encyclopedia of information covering every possible topic, and if some topic is not covered, then it has to be a deliberate omission ("He didn't believe that story!") or evidence of ignorance ("He never even heard that story"). That is just a bad argument, a desperate move employed by writers with an axe to grind. (This is one of my beefs with several left-wing evangelicals - their tendency to tease out doctrines from what they perceive to be deliberate silences.) Beware of that maneuver - it is just a trick.
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Are Commandments Against Fornication Directed At Pedophilia? (November 13, 2005)
More from my son’s letter from college:
"The professor challenged many traditional Christian beliefs about sex. For instance, he said that the restriction against fornication was not strictly applicable because, at the time, women were married as soon as they hit puberty, and thus a restriction against fornication was really a restriction against pedophilia. If you could illuminate the truth on why a Biblical ban on fornication is not merely a ban on pedophilia that would be helpful."
I responded:
This is an easy one!
The Greek word translated "fornication" (now more commonly "sexual immorality"), porneia, has never meant "pedophilia." Instead it is a general term for any kind of sexual impurity. That would presumably include pedophilia, but my search has not yielded a single instance where pedophilia is implied, and many instances where it clearly cannot mean that.
Look at the following passages.
Matthew 19:9: I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness (porneia), and marries another woman commits adultery.
Jesus did not mean that a man could divorce his wife only if she was messing around with an underage boy.
John 8:41: “We are not illegitimate children," they protested. (Literally, "We were not born of fornication (porneia).”
What a nail in the coffin of the "fornication=pedophilia" theory this is! All the Jewish leaders were saying was that they were not bastards - they were not born out of wedlock. They weren't claiming not to be the products of men mating with pre-pubescent children, which clearly could not produce babies at all.
1 Corinthians 5:1: It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality (porneia) among you, and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans. A man has his father's wife.
This cannot be a case of pedophilia. The reason that this "man" (Greek is indefinite about his age) is clearly not a boy sleeping with his step-mom is because in the next few verses Paul regards him as the guilty party and insists that the church discipline him and all such evildoers. Read verses 2-13 and you will see it is obvious that Paul is not talking about a minor. Nor is the woman a minor - she is his
father's wife!
1 Corinthians 7:2: But since there is so much immorality (porneia), each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.
Paul is not recommending marriage because men are chasing little girls and women are chasing little boys. The problem that marriage addresses is promiscuity, not pedophilia.
Revelation 17:2: With her the kings of the earth committed adultery (porneia) and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries (porneia).
The whore of Babylon was not underage, nor were her regal consorts.
Summary:
"Fornication" (porneia) is the general word for sexual immorality and includes such things as adultery (Matthew 19:9), out-of-wedlock sex (John 8:41), incest (1 Corinthians 5:1) and flagrant promiscuity (Revelation 17:2). When you see a commandment condemning fornication (e.g. Colossians 3:5: Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: fornication [porneia]…) it is not speaking about pedophilia except in that pedophilia is a subset of immorality in general.
The professor who equated fornication with pedophilia does not know Greek, has not read the Bible, and has not spent five minutes investigating this ridiculous claim.
Postscript: my son responded, "I think I didn't quite word my question correctly in this regard. The professor wasn't calling all porneia pedophilia - merely fornication. Thus, he would argue that adultery and incest do not fall under the heading of what he deems excusable by Biblical standards - only that fornication had a different definition since women were not single past menstruation. Still, the passage in John answers that objection."
I answered,
Now I'm confused. You say that the professor wasn't calling all porneia pedophilia - merely fornication. But the whole point here is that "fornication" is an English word used to translate Greek porneia. In order to understand precisely what the Bible does or does not condemn, it is pointless to plumb the meaning of an English word and base any conclusions off that.
In English, the Bible says, "Don't fornicate." Now if someone (a professor, say) comes along and declares, "When it says, 'Don't fornicate,' what that really means in our terms is, 'Don't have sex with the underaged,' then it is legitimate to respond, "But strictly speaking the Bible doesn't say 'Don't fornicate'; it says 'Don't porneia.'" The question really is, "What exactly does porneia mean?" And we find very quickly that it refers to a variety of things, among them, clearly, sex out of wedlock regardless of the age of the participants.
It may be that the professor was referring to some other Greek or Hebrew word, or some particular passage that he felt could be construed as a ban against pedophilia. Even if that is the case - and, for argument's sake, I will grant that point in its entirety - it is irrelevant to the question of whether the Bible forbids non-marital
sex even when that sex is neither adulterous, incestuous nor pedophilic. The answer to that question is, "Of course it does. It forbids it every time it says 'Don't porneia.'"
More from my son’s letter from college:
"The professor challenged many traditional Christian beliefs about sex. For instance, he said that the restriction against fornication was not strictly applicable because, at the time, women were married as soon as they hit puberty, and thus a restriction against fornication was really a restriction against pedophilia. If you could illuminate the truth on why a Biblical ban on fornication is not merely a ban on pedophilia that would be helpful."
I responded:
This is an easy one!
The Greek word translated "fornication" (now more commonly "sexual immorality"), porneia, has never meant "pedophilia." Instead it is a general term for any kind of sexual impurity. That would presumably include pedophilia, but my search has not yielded a single instance where pedophilia is implied, and many instances where it clearly cannot mean that.
Look at the following passages.
Matthew 19:9: I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness (porneia), and marries another woman commits adultery.
Jesus did not mean that a man could divorce his wife only if she was messing around with an underage boy.
John 8:41: “We are not illegitimate children," they protested. (Literally, "We were not born of fornication (porneia).”
What a nail in the coffin of the "fornication=pedophilia" theory this is! All the Jewish leaders were saying was that they were not bastards - they were not born out of wedlock. They weren't claiming not to be the products of men mating with pre-pubescent children, which clearly could not produce babies at all.
1 Corinthians 5:1: It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality (porneia) among you, and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans. A man has his father's wife.
This cannot be a case of pedophilia. The reason that this "man" (Greek is indefinite about his age) is clearly not a boy sleeping with his step-mom is because in the next few verses Paul regards him as the guilty party and insists that the church discipline him and all such evildoers. Read verses 2-13 and you will see it is obvious that Paul is not talking about a minor. Nor is the woman a minor - she is his
father's wife!
1 Corinthians 7:2: But since there is so much immorality (porneia), each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.
Paul is not recommending marriage because men are chasing little girls and women are chasing little boys. The problem that marriage addresses is promiscuity, not pedophilia.
Revelation 17:2: With her the kings of the earth committed adultery (porneia) and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries (porneia).
The whore of Babylon was not underage, nor were her regal consorts.
Summary:
"Fornication" (porneia) is the general word for sexual immorality and includes such things as adultery (Matthew 19:9), out-of-wedlock sex (John 8:41), incest (1 Corinthians 5:1) and flagrant promiscuity (Revelation 17:2). When you see a commandment condemning fornication (e.g. Colossians 3:5: Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: fornication [porneia]…) it is not speaking about pedophilia except in that pedophilia is a subset of immorality in general.
The professor who equated fornication with pedophilia does not know Greek, has not read the Bible, and has not spent five minutes investigating this ridiculous claim.
Postscript: my son responded, "I think I didn't quite word my question correctly in this regard. The professor wasn't calling all porneia pedophilia - merely fornication. Thus, he would argue that adultery and incest do not fall under the heading of what he deems excusable by Biblical standards - only that fornication had a different definition since women were not single past menstruation. Still, the passage in John answers that objection."
I answered,
Now I'm confused. You say that the professor wasn't calling all porneia pedophilia - merely fornication. But the whole point here is that "fornication" is an English word used to translate Greek porneia. In order to understand precisely what the Bible does or does not condemn, it is pointless to plumb the meaning of an English word and base any conclusions off that.
In English, the Bible says, "Don't fornicate." Now if someone (a professor, say) comes along and declares, "When it says, 'Don't fornicate,' what that really means in our terms is, 'Don't have sex with the underaged,' then it is legitimate to respond, "But strictly speaking the Bible doesn't say 'Don't fornicate'; it says 'Don't porneia.'" The question really is, "What exactly does porneia mean?" And we find very quickly that it refers to a variety of things, among them, clearly, sex out of wedlock regardless of the age of the participants.
It may be that the professor was referring to some other Greek or Hebrew word, or some particular passage that he felt could be construed as a ban against pedophilia. Even if that is the case - and, for argument's sake, I will grant that point in its entirety - it is irrelevant to the question of whether the Bible forbids non-marital
sex even when that sex is neither adulterous, incestuous nor pedophilic. The answer to that question is, "Of course it does. It forbids it every time it says 'Don't porneia.'"
Monday, November 7, 2005
Does Apostolic Suffering Have Apologetic Value? (November 7, 2005)
For the next several weeks I'll be dealing with some defense-of-the-faith issues brought up in an email my son wrote me from college. He wrote, "Hey Dad, I went to an interesting lecture/discussion earlier this week by a religion professor. Of course, he was ridiculously liberal, and I ended up challenging him on a lot of his stances, but the discussion was nonetheless intellectually stimulating, so I was wondering how you would respond to some of his views...
"This is a question I had on my own. Often times, I've heard used as proof of the resurrection the willingness of the apostles to die for their belief. My question is: how is this different from cult members who drink poison kool-aid because they honestly believe a space-ship is coming to abduct them? I don't mean to sound sacrilegious at all with this question, I'm just honestly asking for the sake of argument. After all, just as the apostles, those cult members must have really believed their outrageous claim to be willing to die for it. What separates the apostles? (In the intellectual form of the question, rather than just the obvious 'because their claim was true').
Thanks, Ben"
My response:
People have always been willing to die for outrageously kooky beliefs that they held sincerely. On that criterion alone, nothing distinguishes the apostles of Christ from the Jim Jones Kool-Aid drinkers or the Marshall Applewhite self-castrated spaceship riders. But willingness to die for an amazing belief really isn't the issue. The issue is whether a group of people would choose to suffer and die (and not in an afternoon, but through decades) over something they all knew to be false! As you point out, the cult members "must have really believed their outrageous claim to be able to die for it." That is true, they did. They weren't snickering to themselves in private, "Boy what a bunch of baloney this is." They were true believers. But on the theory that Jesus did not rise from the dead - the disciples stole the body, disposed of it somehow, made up these stories about seeing him alive - then the disciples weren't true believers at all; they were knowingly perpetrating a scam. On that assumption, why in the world did they all go to their deaths (after multiple beatings, imprisonments, etc.) for something they themselves knew they had just made up?
I seem to recall that Lee Strobel addresses this issue in The Case For Christ. (Yes, here it is):
Strobel: "'They were willing to die for their beliefs. But so have Muslims and Mormons and followers of Jim Jones and David Koresh. This may show that they were fanatical, but let's face it: it doesn't prove that what they believed is true.'"
J. P. Moreland: "'[T]hink carefully about the difference. Muslims might be willing to die for their belief that Allah revealed himself to Muhammad, but this revelation was not done in a publicly observable way. So they could be wrong about it. They may sincerely think it's true, but they can't know for a fact, because they didn't witness it themselves.
"'However, the apostles were willing to die for something they had seen with their own eyes and touched with their own hands. They were in a unique position not just to believe Jesus rose from the dead but to know for sure. And when you've got eleven credible people with no ulterior motives, with nothing to gain and a lot to lose, who all agree they observed something with their own eyes - now you've got some difficulty explaining that away.'"
Strobel: "I smiled because I had been playing devil's advocate by raising my objection. Actually, I knew he was right. In fact, this critical distinction was pivotal in my own spiritual journey. It had been put to me this way: People will die for their religious beliefs if they sincerely believe they're true, but people won't die for their religious beliefs if they know their beliefs are false." (The Case For Christ, (page 247).
For the next several weeks I'll be dealing with some defense-of-the-faith issues brought up in an email my son wrote me from college. He wrote, "Hey Dad, I went to an interesting lecture/discussion earlier this week by a religion professor. Of course, he was ridiculously liberal, and I ended up challenging him on a lot of his stances, but the discussion was nonetheless intellectually stimulating, so I was wondering how you would respond to some of his views...
"This is a question I had on my own. Often times, I've heard used as proof of the resurrection the willingness of the apostles to die for their belief. My question is: how is this different from cult members who drink poison kool-aid because they honestly believe a space-ship is coming to abduct them? I don't mean to sound sacrilegious at all with this question, I'm just honestly asking for the sake of argument. After all, just as the apostles, those cult members must have really believed their outrageous claim to be willing to die for it. What separates the apostles? (In the intellectual form of the question, rather than just the obvious 'because their claim was true').
Thanks, Ben"
My response:
People have always been willing to die for outrageously kooky beliefs that they held sincerely. On that criterion alone, nothing distinguishes the apostles of Christ from the Jim Jones Kool-Aid drinkers or the Marshall Applewhite self-castrated spaceship riders. But willingness to die for an amazing belief really isn't the issue. The issue is whether a group of people would choose to suffer and die (and not in an afternoon, but through decades) over something they all knew to be false! As you point out, the cult members "must have really believed their outrageous claim to be able to die for it." That is true, they did. They weren't snickering to themselves in private, "Boy what a bunch of baloney this is." They were true believers. But on the theory that Jesus did not rise from the dead - the disciples stole the body, disposed of it somehow, made up these stories about seeing him alive - then the disciples weren't true believers at all; they were knowingly perpetrating a scam. On that assumption, why in the world did they all go to their deaths (after multiple beatings, imprisonments, etc.) for something they themselves knew they had just made up?
I seem to recall that Lee Strobel addresses this issue in The Case For Christ. (Yes, here it is):
Strobel: "'They were willing to die for their beliefs. But so have Muslims and Mormons and followers of Jim Jones and David Koresh. This may show that they were fanatical, but let's face it: it doesn't prove that what they believed is true.'"
J. P. Moreland: "'[T]hink carefully about the difference. Muslims might be willing to die for their belief that Allah revealed himself to Muhammad, but this revelation was not done in a publicly observable way. So they could be wrong about it. They may sincerely think it's true, but they can't know for a fact, because they didn't witness it themselves.
"'However, the apostles were willing to die for something they had seen with their own eyes and touched with their own hands. They were in a unique position not just to believe Jesus rose from the dead but to know for sure. And when you've got eleven credible people with no ulterior motives, with nothing to gain and a lot to lose, who all agree they observed something with their own eyes - now you've got some difficulty explaining that away.'"
Strobel: "I smiled because I had been playing devil's advocate by raising my objection. Actually, I knew he was right. In fact, this critical distinction was pivotal in my own spiritual journey. It had been put to me this way: People will die for their religious beliefs if they sincerely believe they're true, but people won't die for their religious beliefs if they know their beliefs are false." (The Case For Christ, (page 247).
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Aiding The Abused (October 30, 2005)
I remember hearing years ago that if you mistreat a man, you will come to despise him. It is a psychological quirk we resort to in order to spare ourselves the pangs of conscience. We cannot stand to think that we have simply been unjust. So if I hurt you, you must have had it coming. I sure hope you had it coming. Please, somebody tell me that this person I just hurt is evil and I did the right thing. Thank you, I thought so.
Mistreated people don't have a lot of options. If they defend themselves and hit back, they encourage the bullies to be even more brutal. If they cry they seem whiny, and who wants to be around that? If they do nothing, it's hard to tell if they have laudably turned the other cheek or stupidly allowed evil to flourish. It is hard to be a victim.
Which is why I was much encouraged to hear from a friend about the strong stand his church has taken against a particular form of victimization, namely spouse abuse. A recent bulletin insert listed eight sadistic behaviors (wisely non-gender specific), and assured the wounded that "the pastoral staff and elders are committed to stand in the gap for you. You are not alone."
I hope they meant it and are prepared to follow through. I happen to know as I write this that they are being informed of an outrageous case of spouse abuse in their midst. The time to act is upon them.
A month or so ago I informed our church board of my resolve to confront hate-filled abusers. Reading aloud a case study, I said, "If any of you ever do this to your spouse, I will come after you. If any of your spouses do this to you, I will come after them." Abusers must not go unchallenged, and victims must not be left to fend for themselves.
If you ever go to the aid of the wounded, don't be surprised to find them a little disoriented. They have been subjected both to harm that fed hatred and hatred that fed harm. They have listened to James Dobson and Gary Chapman and Dennis Rainey and other "family experts" and found their counsel spectacularly unhelpful. They can't begin to communicate their daily nightmare to those who say, "Why don't you just buy her some flowers?" or, "If you paid him a compliment he would brag about you to everyone." They have tried. It does not work. They don't know what to do any more.
I remember hearing years ago that if you mistreat a man, you will come to despise him. It is a psychological quirk we resort to in order to spare ourselves the pangs of conscience. We cannot stand to think that we have simply been unjust. So if I hurt you, you must have had it coming. I sure hope you had it coming. Please, somebody tell me that this person I just hurt is evil and I did the right thing. Thank you, I thought so.
Mistreated people don't have a lot of options. If they defend themselves and hit back, they encourage the bullies to be even more brutal. If they cry they seem whiny, and who wants to be around that? If they do nothing, it's hard to tell if they have laudably turned the other cheek or stupidly allowed evil to flourish. It is hard to be a victim.
Which is why I was much encouraged to hear from a friend about the strong stand his church has taken against a particular form of victimization, namely spouse abuse. A recent bulletin insert listed eight sadistic behaviors (wisely non-gender specific), and assured the wounded that "the pastoral staff and elders are committed to stand in the gap for you. You are not alone."
I hope they meant it and are prepared to follow through. I happen to know as I write this that they are being informed of an outrageous case of spouse abuse in their midst. The time to act is upon them.
A month or so ago I informed our church board of my resolve to confront hate-filled abusers. Reading aloud a case study, I said, "If any of you ever do this to your spouse, I will come after you. If any of your spouses do this to you, I will come after them." Abusers must not go unchallenged, and victims must not be left to fend for themselves.
If you ever go to the aid of the wounded, don't be surprised to find them a little disoriented. They have been subjected both to harm that fed hatred and hatred that fed harm. They have listened to James Dobson and Gary Chapman and Dennis Rainey and other "family experts" and found their counsel spectacularly unhelpful. They can't begin to communicate their daily nightmare to those who say, "Why don't you just buy her some flowers?" or, "If you paid him a compliment he would brag about you to everyone." They have tried. It does not work. They don't know what to do any more.
Sunday, October 23, 2005
The Myth Of The Christian Divorce Rate (October 23, 2005)
From time to time I hear that the divorce rate among Christians is about the same as it is for the population in general. This statistic is presented as fact, a lamentable and ugly thing that requires soul-searching and repentance on the part of the church. But it seems to me that a couple basic things are not being taken into account when it comes to determining this "Christian divorce rate."
First of all, the matter of consent is always ignored. If I were asked, for example, "What is the rape rate among Christians?" I would want to know exactly what that question meant. Does it mean, "What percentage of Christian believers commit rape?" I think the right answer is zero. Christians don't do that. By committing such an act a man would prove that he was not a Christian at all. "But suppose he says he's a Christian and he goes to church all the time?" Well, so what? A man can put on a red suit and say "Ho ho ho" but that does not make him Santa Claus. I think there are cases (unless I just saw it in a movie) where criminals have donned masks of former U.S. presidents and then robbed banks. Does that make us fret about armed robbery committed by ex-presidents? Of course not. Just as no real ex-president has ever robbed a bank, so no real Christian has ever raped - though no doubt many rapists have donned the mask of a Christian façade.
But if the question about the rate of rape among Christians means, "What percentage of Christians have been raped?" I would say I don't know. But whether the right answer is 0 or 100, it is irrelevant to the point of what sins that Christian, or the church as a whole, needs to repent of. It is not a sin to be raped.
If the questioner wanted to erase the distinction, saying, "Raping, being raped - whatever, it's all the same. I just want to know what the rape rate is," then I would answer, "You are so evil that I don't want to talk to you." To lump together perpetrator and victim in a single statistical category and say, "They were involved in a bad thing," is despicable. We don't say that Jews and Nazis had a high
genocide rate. We say that Nazis killed Jews.
In the same way, to speak meaningfully of a divorce rate we really have to know who is divorcing whom and who is consenting to what. Of course, there are plenty of divorces by mutual consent, and there are plenty of bad people who deserve to be divorced by their longsuffering spouses. But there are also good people who are divorced without their consent and against their will by spouses who have handed themselves over to the devil. I deny that there is any insight to be gained by artificially grouping together these disparate categories. Labeling it all "divorce" distorts and artificially inflates the problem, and insidiously reduces the blame that is due perpetrators by stretching it out to cover victims as well. Imagine if the list of registered sex offenders were expanded to include the people they had abused. The total number would be astounding, but not enlightening. And the victims would be fully justified in taking offense and saying, "Our names should not be on the same list as those who hurt us."
In divorce there are victims and perpetrators. Until we can sort that out, it remains as invalid to speak of a "divorce rate" as it is to speak of a generalized rape, abuse or genocide rate.
The other problem I have with the notion of a "Christian divorce rate" is that I never see it specified as to whether one or both parties are Christians. This makes all the difference in the world. If an unbeliever divorces his believing spouse, does that count toward being included in the overall Christian divorce rate? I don't think it should. When Christians are mistreated by unbelievers, we lament and sympathize with them, but we do not rend our clothes and say, "What is the matter with us Christians? We really need to do better." In this case it is the unbelievers who need to do better. The problem here is not with those who embrace the faith but with those who reject it!
I know lots and lots of divorced and divorcing people. But I do not know a single instance, not even one, of two Christians who have divorced each other. I'd be curious to know if anyone who reads this page knows of even one such case. What I have seen are apostates - those who deserted their faith along with their spouses, and frauds - those who claimed to be Christians but whose infidelities or other sins made it clear that they really weren't believers at all. What I have never known is a case where I could say, "These are two real Christian believers who just could not get along, and one divorced the other."
Until I am otherwise convinced, I do not believe that the real "Christian divorce rate," meaningfully defined, is 30, 40, or 50 percent. I think it is zero.
From time to time I hear that the divorce rate among Christians is about the same as it is for the population in general. This statistic is presented as fact, a lamentable and ugly thing that requires soul-searching and repentance on the part of the church. But it seems to me that a couple basic things are not being taken into account when it comes to determining this "Christian divorce rate."
First of all, the matter of consent is always ignored. If I were asked, for example, "What is the rape rate among Christians?" I would want to know exactly what that question meant. Does it mean, "What percentage of Christian believers commit rape?" I think the right answer is zero. Christians don't do that. By committing such an act a man would prove that he was not a Christian at all. "But suppose he says he's a Christian and he goes to church all the time?" Well, so what? A man can put on a red suit and say "Ho ho ho" but that does not make him Santa Claus. I think there are cases (unless I just saw it in a movie) where criminals have donned masks of former U.S. presidents and then robbed banks. Does that make us fret about armed robbery committed by ex-presidents? Of course not. Just as no real ex-president has ever robbed a bank, so no real Christian has ever raped - though no doubt many rapists have donned the mask of a Christian façade.
But if the question about the rate of rape among Christians means, "What percentage of Christians have been raped?" I would say I don't know. But whether the right answer is 0 or 100, it is irrelevant to the point of what sins that Christian, or the church as a whole, needs to repent of. It is not a sin to be raped.
If the questioner wanted to erase the distinction, saying, "Raping, being raped - whatever, it's all the same. I just want to know what the rape rate is," then I would answer, "You are so evil that I don't want to talk to you." To lump together perpetrator and victim in a single statistical category and say, "They were involved in a bad thing," is despicable. We don't say that Jews and Nazis had a high
genocide rate. We say that Nazis killed Jews.
In the same way, to speak meaningfully of a divorce rate we really have to know who is divorcing whom and who is consenting to what. Of course, there are plenty of divorces by mutual consent, and there are plenty of bad people who deserve to be divorced by their longsuffering spouses. But there are also good people who are divorced without their consent and against their will by spouses who have handed themselves over to the devil. I deny that there is any insight to be gained by artificially grouping together these disparate categories. Labeling it all "divorce" distorts and artificially inflates the problem, and insidiously reduces the blame that is due perpetrators by stretching it out to cover victims as well. Imagine if the list of registered sex offenders were expanded to include the people they had abused. The total number would be astounding, but not enlightening. And the victims would be fully justified in taking offense and saying, "Our names should not be on the same list as those who hurt us."
In divorce there are victims and perpetrators. Until we can sort that out, it remains as invalid to speak of a "divorce rate" as it is to speak of a generalized rape, abuse or genocide rate.
The other problem I have with the notion of a "Christian divorce rate" is that I never see it specified as to whether one or both parties are Christians. This makes all the difference in the world. If an unbeliever divorces his believing spouse, does that count toward being included in the overall Christian divorce rate? I don't think it should. When Christians are mistreated by unbelievers, we lament and sympathize with them, but we do not rend our clothes and say, "What is the matter with us Christians? We really need to do better." In this case it is the unbelievers who need to do better. The problem here is not with those who embrace the faith but with those who reject it!
I know lots and lots of divorced and divorcing people. But I do not know a single instance, not even one, of two Christians who have divorced each other. I'd be curious to know if anyone who reads this page knows of even one such case. What I have seen are apostates - those who deserted their faith along with their spouses, and frauds - those who claimed to be Christians but whose infidelities or other sins made it clear that they really weren't believers at all. What I have never known is a case where I could say, "These are two real Christian believers who just could not get along, and one divorced the other."
Until I am otherwise convinced, I do not believe that the real "Christian divorce rate," meaningfully defined, is 30, 40, or 50 percent. I think it is zero.
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Buffoonery In The Pulpit (October 16, 2005)
I hope you all had a better experience at church on Sunday than I did.
On my Sunday off I took the boys to a large evangelical church. I gave them a brief lecture as we pulled into the parking lot. "We are here to worship God," I said, "not critique every little thing that goes on." My sons have highly developed bull detectors, and get irritated when sermon and song are showy and insincere. (They’ve inherited my genes - or maybe in this area I've trained them a little too well.) I didn't want their native cynicism (or mine!) to interfere with the experience of gathering with God's people to worship him.
Then the sermon started and I nearly walked out.
The title was "The DNA of Relationships: Part 3 - How To Create A Safe Environment." It opened with a film clip of some Warner Brothers cartoon character careening about, and the pastor said, "That doesn't have anything to do with the sermon, I just thought it was fun."
Actually, he said, it did have something to do with the sermon: sometimes in our relationships we're just like that cartoon character. Then he told a long folksy story about vacationing with his family and how he was responsible for several mishaps. He made himself out to be an earnest-yet-incompetent Chevy Chase, and the congregation provided the laugh track. Then as the sermon progressed he airmailed in a few Scriptures verses into a 5-point structure plucked from who knows where (not the Bible). Dr. Phil without the reverence.
I didn't storm out, but after the service I did leave depressed, knowing that the same cotton-candy fluff is being served at megachurches all over. Just the other day a member of a Willow Creek clone told me that the sermon series at her church is based on "Desperate Housewives." Pop culture references ("Survivor," "American Idol," "The Apprentice") create the template for what is taught there month to month.
Is it too much to ask that our ministers just preach the Word? What is so hard about this? As far as I’m concerned, a preacher’s message does not have to be entertaining, exciting, funny, captivating, inspiring, or even all that compelling. Not every minister has the ability to give a great talk. We know that and we can live with that. But we can't live without the Word - not spiritually, anyway. "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4).
My own goal as a preacher is modest: to plow through some text of Scripture, explain it the best I can, and quit before too many people eye the clock or fall asleep. I hope God gives me the grace to keep doing that every (non-vacation) Sunday till he calls me home. But should there come a time when I must sit in a pew rather than stand in a pulpit, I hope it won't be hard to find a church where the Word is
preached. Then I can worship, then I can give thanks, then my spirit can be nourished and my heart can rejoice in the Lord.
I hope you all had a better experience at church on Sunday than I did.
On my Sunday off I took the boys to a large evangelical church. I gave them a brief lecture as we pulled into the parking lot. "We are here to worship God," I said, "not critique every little thing that goes on." My sons have highly developed bull detectors, and get irritated when sermon and song are showy and insincere. (They’ve inherited my genes - or maybe in this area I've trained them a little too well.) I didn't want their native cynicism (or mine!) to interfere with the experience of gathering with God's people to worship him.
Then the sermon started and I nearly walked out.
The title was "The DNA of Relationships: Part 3 - How To Create A Safe Environment." It opened with a film clip of some Warner Brothers cartoon character careening about, and the pastor said, "That doesn't have anything to do with the sermon, I just thought it was fun."
Actually, he said, it did have something to do with the sermon: sometimes in our relationships we're just like that cartoon character. Then he told a long folksy story about vacationing with his family and how he was responsible for several mishaps. He made himself out to be an earnest-yet-incompetent Chevy Chase, and the congregation provided the laugh track. Then as the sermon progressed he airmailed in a few Scriptures verses into a 5-point structure plucked from who knows where (not the Bible). Dr. Phil without the reverence.
I didn't storm out, but after the service I did leave depressed, knowing that the same cotton-candy fluff is being served at megachurches all over. Just the other day a member of a Willow Creek clone told me that the sermon series at her church is based on "Desperate Housewives." Pop culture references ("Survivor," "American Idol," "The Apprentice") create the template for what is taught there month to month.
Is it too much to ask that our ministers just preach the Word? What is so hard about this? As far as I’m concerned, a preacher’s message does not have to be entertaining, exciting, funny, captivating, inspiring, or even all that compelling. Not every minister has the ability to give a great talk. We know that and we can live with that. But we can't live without the Word - not spiritually, anyway. "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4).
My own goal as a preacher is modest: to plow through some text of Scripture, explain it the best I can, and quit before too many people eye the clock or fall asleep. I hope God gives me the grace to keep doing that every (non-vacation) Sunday till he calls me home. But should there come a time when I must sit in a pew rather than stand in a pulpit, I hope it won't be hard to find a church where the Word is
preached. Then I can worship, then I can give thanks, then my spirit can be nourished and my heart can rejoice in the Lord.
Sunday, October 2, 2005
Worry: Sinful Or Necessary? (October 2, 2005)
Is it wrong to worry?
I've always had a hard time figuring out a simple answer to that question. On the one hand, Jesus said, "Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear...Which of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?...Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself," etc. (Matthew 6:25-34).
On the other hand, there seems to be a lot of worry in the Bible that is positively commended. Job worried that his children might have sinned, so he offered sacrifices on their behalf just in case (Job 1:5). St. Paul worried constantly about his congregations: "I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?" (2 Corinthians 11:28-29). He fretted that the Thessalonians might have apostatized: "When I could stand it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith. I was afraid to find that in some way the tempter might have tempted you and our efforts might have been useless" (1 Thessalonians 3:5). Was he disobedient to Christ's command
not to worry when he "struggled" (Greek "agonized") over the Colossian church (Colossians 2:1)? He did not seem to think so.
Even Jesus commanded worry (so it seems to me) in Luke 14:31-32 when he talked about the folly of a king going to battle at a 2-to-1 disadvantage. A foolish king "doesn't worry about it"; a wise king thinks ahead and sues for peace. And Jesus sure looks worried to me on the eve of his crucifixion. Matthew recalls him saying, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death" (Matthew 26:38), and
Luke writes that he was in anguish, and his sweat fell like drops of blood to the ground (Luke 22:44).
I've tried to come up with a definition of worry that is precise enough to isolate just the sinfully frettish part of it while leaving space for permissible (even commendable) fear and anguish and concern and planning. If I could produce such a definition, then I could condemn "worry" while making it clear that that is not at all what Job and Jesus and Paul were doing. But I have failed - every time I think I've nailed down criteria for distinguishing sinful worry from "legitimate concern," the thing falls apart in my hands as all these biblical exceptions come to mind.
The best I can up with for now are some general principles. They aren't exceptionless, but they may provide some guidelines.
(1) Worry about others, not yourself. Job worried about his children; Paul worried about the churches. Philippians 2:4 says, "Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others." It is better to worry about bad things that might happen to other people than bad things that might happen to yourself.
(2) Worry about spiritual matters, not physical. Jesus said not to worry about things like food, water, shelter, clothes and safety. Instead we should worry about the welfare of our souls and the advance of the kingdom of God. "Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well" (Matthew 6:33). "Fear not those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul" (Matthew
10:28).
(3) Worry about things you can change, not things you can't. If worry provokes you to actions and prayer that will help prevent future misfortune, then that is a good thing. But if there is nothing you can do that would make any difference, and you have already prayed, then you are best off forgetting about the problem and thinking of other things.
By these criteria I suppose the best thing to worry about would be spiritual peril looming in the life of another that you can actually do something about. In that case, cry, fret, pray and intervene. "Whoever turns a sinner back from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins" (James 5:20). But if you're worried about a material, physical, social or economic problem that is facing mainly you and nothing but God's grace can change it, then relax. Trust that God will take care of you.
One more thing. When something you feared does not materialize, don't forget to rejoice and give thanks to God. Do that quickly and vigorously before falling back to the same old miserable pattern of worrying about the next big problem.
Is it wrong to worry?
I've always had a hard time figuring out a simple answer to that question. On the one hand, Jesus said, "Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear...Which of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?...Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself," etc. (Matthew 6:25-34).
On the other hand, there seems to be a lot of worry in the Bible that is positively commended. Job worried that his children might have sinned, so he offered sacrifices on their behalf just in case (Job 1:5). St. Paul worried constantly about his congregations: "I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?" (2 Corinthians 11:28-29). He fretted that the Thessalonians might have apostatized: "When I could stand it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith. I was afraid to find that in some way the tempter might have tempted you and our efforts might have been useless" (1 Thessalonians 3:5). Was he disobedient to Christ's command
not to worry when he "struggled" (Greek "agonized") over the Colossian church (Colossians 2:1)? He did not seem to think so.
Even Jesus commanded worry (so it seems to me) in Luke 14:31-32 when he talked about the folly of a king going to battle at a 2-to-1 disadvantage. A foolish king "doesn't worry about it"; a wise king thinks ahead and sues for peace. And Jesus sure looks worried to me on the eve of his crucifixion. Matthew recalls him saying, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death" (Matthew 26:38), and
Luke writes that he was in anguish, and his sweat fell like drops of blood to the ground (Luke 22:44).
I've tried to come up with a definition of worry that is precise enough to isolate just the sinfully frettish part of it while leaving space for permissible (even commendable) fear and anguish and concern and planning. If I could produce such a definition, then I could condemn "worry" while making it clear that that is not at all what Job and Jesus and Paul were doing. But I have failed - every time I think I've nailed down criteria for distinguishing sinful worry from "legitimate concern," the thing falls apart in my hands as all these biblical exceptions come to mind.
The best I can up with for now are some general principles. They aren't exceptionless, but they may provide some guidelines.
(1) Worry about others, not yourself. Job worried about his children; Paul worried about the churches. Philippians 2:4 says, "Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others." It is better to worry about bad things that might happen to other people than bad things that might happen to yourself.
(2) Worry about spiritual matters, not physical. Jesus said not to worry about things like food, water, shelter, clothes and safety. Instead we should worry about the welfare of our souls and the advance of the kingdom of God. "Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well" (Matthew 6:33). "Fear not those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul" (Matthew
10:28).
(3) Worry about things you can change, not things you can't. If worry provokes you to actions and prayer that will help prevent future misfortune, then that is a good thing. But if there is nothing you can do that would make any difference, and you have already prayed, then you are best off forgetting about the problem and thinking of other things.
By these criteria I suppose the best thing to worry about would be spiritual peril looming in the life of another that you can actually do something about. In that case, cry, fret, pray and intervene. "Whoever turns a sinner back from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins" (James 5:20). But if you're worried about a material, physical, social or economic problem that is facing mainly you and nothing but God's grace can change it, then relax. Trust that God will take care of you.
One more thing. When something you feared does not materialize, don't forget to rejoice and give thanks to God. Do that quickly and vigorously before falling back to the same old miserable pattern of worrying about the next big problem.
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Mom’s Well-Worn Bible (September 25, 2005)
Quite by accident today I spotted my mother's Bible on one of my bookshelves. I thought I had lost it. I looked for it months ago when I wanted to use it in a sermon illustration, but somehow I must have scanned right past it. Maybe I missed it then so that God could spring it on me today when I was most in need of a token of his grace.
Mom's Bible is well-worn and full of marginal notes, and leafing through it reveals a thousand insights into a life spent pursuing the wisdom of God. Here are some notes from a single opened page:
- Proverbs 18:12: Haughtiness comes before disaster, and humility before honor. Mom noted, "Hindu word for humility is 'the dust' - Their proverb - 'You can walk on the dust forever, and it never answers back.'"
- 19:6: Many will entreat the favor of the liberal man, and every man is a friend to him who gives gifts. Mom quoted from Harry Ironside, former pastor of Moody Church: "How different the Spirit of Him who was charged with receiving sinners and eating with them, who sought not the smiles of the great nor feared their frown!"
- 19:11: Good sense makes a man restrain his anger, and it is his glory to overlook a transgression or an offense. Mom personalized this verse, crossing out "a man" and "his" and replacing them with "me" and "my."
- 19:13: A self-confident and foolish son is the multiplied calamity of his father, and the contentions of a wife are as a continual dropping of water through a chink in the roof. Mom wrote, "A foolish son and a contentious wife are very likely to be together - wife dismissing her husband's authority and taking sides with children in opposition to his proper discipline. Children will despise father's authority and defy mother's correction when she does attempt it."
- 19:17 He who has pity on the poor lends to the Lord, and that which he has given He will repay to them. Next to this Mom wrote "Jehovah - patron of the poor. Fred and Gloria - R & G $100." I'm pretty sure she was remembering a charitable gift from her friends Fred and Gloria to my sister and brother-in-law.
- 19:25: Strike a scoffer, and the simple will learn prudence; reprove a man of understanding, and he will increase in knowledge. Mom commented, "The truth itself is of greater value in the eyes of him who has understanding than his own dignity."
- 20:3: It is an honor for a man to cease from strife and keep aloof from it. Mom jotted down "2 Chron. 35 Josiah's slip" - a reference to good King Josiah's ill-advised foray into King Neco's war.
So it is on page after page as Mom took the Scriptures to heart by commenting on them, posing questions, quoting from literature and sermons, cross-referencing other verses, rebuking herself(!) and matching Scriptural wisdom to current experience. How many people have had the privilege of being raised by a parent with such a godly
devotion to the Word?
I know that Mom wrote those notes for herself, not for me. But by his mercy God used those notes to help me recover today from a mostly sleepless night and a morning steeped in melancholy. I find that grief still hovers about me, and threatens to render me forgetful of grace and contemptuous of duty. But God nudges me with reminders of the goodness I have known, the holiness I have seen, the spiritual
benefits I have tasted. May he do the same for you, and gladden your heart with glimpses of goodness on days that loom dark.
Quite by accident today I spotted my mother's Bible on one of my bookshelves. I thought I had lost it. I looked for it months ago when I wanted to use it in a sermon illustration, but somehow I must have scanned right past it. Maybe I missed it then so that God could spring it on me today when I was most in need of a token of his grace.
Mom's Bible is well-worn and full of marginal notes, and leafing through it reveals a thousand insights into a life spent pursuing the wisdom of God. Here are some notes from a single opened page:
- Proverbs 18:12: Haughtiness comes before disaster, and humility before honor. Mom noted, "Hindu word for humility is 'the dust' - Their proverb - 'You can walk on the dust forever, and it never answers back.'"
- 19:6: Many will entreat the favor of the liberal man, and every man is a friend to him who gives gifts. Mom quoted from Harry Ironside, former pastor of Moody Church: "How different the Spirit of Him who was charged with receiving sinners and eating with them, who sought not the smiles of the great nor feared their frown!"
- 19:11: Good sense makes a man restrain his anger, and it is his glory to overlook a transgression or an offense. Mom personalized this verse, crossing out "a man" and "his" and replacing them with "me" and "my."
- 19:13: A self-confident and foolish son is the multiplied calamity of his father, and the contentions of a wife are as a continual dropping of water through a chink in the roof. Mom wrote, "A foolish son and a contentious wife are very likely to be together - wife dismissing her husband's authority and taking sides with children in opposition to his proper discipline. Children will despise father's authority and defy mother's correction when she does attempt it."
- 19:17 He who has pity on the poor lends to the Lord, and that which he has given He will repay to them. Next to this Mom wrote "Jehovah - patron of the poor. Fred and Gloria - R & G $100." I'm pretty sure she was remembering a charitable gift from her friends Fred and Gloria to my sister and brother-in-law.
- 19:25: Strike a scoffer, and the simple will learn prudence; reprove a man of understanding, and he will increase in knowledge. Mom commented, "The truth itself is of greater value in the eyes of him who has understanding than his own dignity."
- 20:3: It is an honor for a man to cease from strife and keep aloof from it. Mom jotted down "2 Chron. 35 Josiah's slip" - a reference to good King Josiah's ill-advised foray into King Neco's war.
So it is on page after page as Mom took the Scriptures to heart by commenting on them, posing questions, quoting from literature and sermons, cross-referencing other verses, rebuking herself(!) and matching Scriptural wisdom to current experience. How many people have had the privilege of being raised by a parent with such a godly
devotion to the Word?
I know that Mom wrote those notes for herself, not for me. But by his mercy God used those notes to help me recover today from a mostly sleepless night and a morning steeped in melancholy. I find that grief still hovers about me, and threatens to render me forgetful of grace and contemptuous of duty. But God nudges me with reminders of the goodness I have known, the holiness I have seen, the spiritual
benefits I have tasted. May he do the same for you, and gladden your heart with glimpses of goodness on days that loom dark.
Sunday, September 18, 2005
“You Fill My Cup” (September 18, 2005)
My sister Grace held a Bible study in her home last week with about a dozen women from her church. They all had to bring a mug that meant something to them, and the theme had to do with the filling of our spiritual cups. At one point Grace (whose name, like Jacob or Nabal in the Bible, is providentially matched to her character) told each of the women present how they filled her cup.
Mary does it by talking to Lilliet, Grace's adopted Down Syndrome daughter. Grace said to Mary, "I know that Lilliet is not easy to talk to, but every Sunday at church you go up to her and greet her and ask her how her week was. That fills my cup."
Beth does it by making sure Grace is not alone on a day of grief, like Annie's birthday. Annie was Grace's other retarded adopted daughter who died a year ago of heart failure. "Beth, you visited me on Annie's birthday. That fills my cup."
Jane, Ruth and Nancy do it just by coming to church! Jane has a 6-month old and a 2-year-old, and Grace knows from experience how hard it is to get little ones ready for Sunday worship. Ruth has scoliosis and lives in constant pain, but somehow that does not keep her from church. And Nancy has been hit so hard by life's woes that it is a wonder she can stand at all. She is 23, was raised by foster parents, and has three children - the oldest of which is 4. Seven months ago Nancy's step-father-in-law murdered three people before taking his own life. Three months ago Nancy's husband also committed suicide, and so she moved back in with her foster parents. Grace said, "When you walk into church on Sunday mornings, that fills my cup."
A characteristic that I share with my sister is that I too draw spiritual sustenance from those who persevere in the Lord despite grave sorrow and setback. Like my friend Hosea (not his real name). Some time ago I emailed him the following quote from C. S. Lewis:
"The husband is the head of the wife just in so far as he is to her what Christ is to the Church. He is to love her as Christ loved the Church...and give his life for her (Ephesians 5:25, emphasis original). This headship, then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife receives most and gives least, is most unworthy of him, is - in her own mere nature - least lovable."
What I didn't know at the time was that Hosea's own marriage was "most like a crucifixion." His wife has run up $74,000 of credit card debt, she curses him and the children with unspeakably foul and hostile language, she has threatened to kill him, she has alienated their mutual friends. And yet Hosea continues to serve the Lord, honors his vows, seeks to do what is right, has ministered frequently to me with words of wisdom and grace in the midst of my own pain. That fills my cup.
A few days ago I turned off a local Christian radio station in disgust as some idiot (forgive me) bragged about the methods he used "to make my good marriage a GREAT marriage." Yeah, right. Look, moron, how hard is it to have a great marriage when your wife is pleasant and godly and loves the Lord? You don't have anything to say to me, and you sure don't fill my cup. Hosea does.
My sister Grace held a Bible study in her home last week with about a dozen women from her church. They all had to bring a mug that meant something to them, and the theme had to do with the filling of our spiritual cups. At one point Grace (whose name, like Jacob or Nabal in the Bible, is providentially matched to her character) told each of the women present how they filled her cup.
Mary does it by talking to Lilliet, Grace's adopted Down Syndrome daughter. Grace said to Mary, "I know that Lilliet is not easy to talk to, but every Sunday at church you go up to her and greet her and ask her how her week was. That fills my cup."
Beth does it by making sure Grace is not alone on a day of grief, like Annie's birthday. Annie was Grace's other retarded adopted daughter who died a year ago of heart failure. "Beth, you visited me on Annie's birthday. That fills my cup."
Jane, Ruth and Nancy do it just by coming to church! Jane has a 6-month old and a 2-year-old, and Grace knows from experience how hard it is to get little ones ready for Sunday worship. Ruth has scoliosis and lives in constant pain, but somehow that does not keep her from church. And Nancy has been hit so hard by life's woes that it is a wonder she can stand at all. She is 23, was raised by foster parents, and has three children - the oldest of which is 4. Seven months ago Nancy's step-father-in-law murdered three people before taking his own life. Three months ago Nancy's husband also committed suicide, and so she moved back in with her foster parents. Grace said, "When you walk into church on Sunday mornings, that fills my cup."
A characteristic that I share with my sister is that I too draw spiritual sustenance from those who persevere in the Lord despite grave sorrow and setback. Like my friend Hosea (not his real name). Some time ago I emailed him the following quote from C. S. Lewis:
"The husband is the head of the wife just in so far as he is to her what Christ is to the Church. He is to love her as Christ loved the Church...and give his life for her (Ephesians 5:25, emphasis original). This headship, then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife receives most and gives least, is most unworthy of him, is - in her own mere nature - least lovable."
What I didn't know at the time was that Hosea's own marriage was "most like a crucifixion." His wife has run up $74,000 of credit card debt, she curses him and the children with unspeakably foul and hostile language, she has threatened to kill him, she has alienated their mutual friends. And yet Hosea continues to serve the Lord, honors his vows, seeks to do what is right, has ministered frequently to me with words of wisdom and grace in the midst of my own pain. That fills my cup.
A few days ago I turned off a local Christian radio station in disgust as some idiot (forgive me) bragged about the methods he used "to make my good marriage a GREAT marriage." Yeah, right. Look, moron, how hard is it to have a great marriage when your wife is pleasant and godly and loves the Lord? You don't have anything to say to me, and you sure don't fill my cup. Hosea does.
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Suicide And Hell (September 11, 2005)
Do people who commit suicide go to hell?
I was asked that twice last week, so I thought I'd use a Pastor's Page to respond. My short answer is "Not necessarily." My long answer is more complicated.
Suicide is sin because it is murder, a violation of the commandment "Thou shalt not kill." The Bible does not specifically condemn self-murder, but that should not surprise us because the Bible often connects its rules with penalties for their infractions. Suicide renders those responses moot. You can execute a man who has killed someone else, but there is not much you can do to penalize the corpse of a suicide.
There are several suicides in the Bible, and they tend to involve privileged men who went bad. Samson was the original suicide bomber (or rather, suicide building-collapser - Judges 16:28-31). King Saul fell on his own sword to keep from being slain by Philistines (1 Samuel 31:1-6). Ahithophel took his life when Absalom would not take his advice (probably assuming that Absalom’s rebellion against David was doomed to fail - 2 Samuel 17:23). Zimri burned his house down around him (1 Kings 16:18). Judas hung himself after betraying Christ (Matthew 27:3-10). In all these cases the Bible just tells what these men did without telling us whether it was wrong. Of course, they all did wrong things that led to their suicides.
Though suicide is a kind of murder, I think it is the least bad kind. In fact, I actually recommend it to hell-bent fiends who would otherwise kill the innocent - like mothers who smother, drown, or stab their kids (Marilyn Lemak, Susan Smith and Tonya Vasilev, respectively). In such cases I wonder, "Why couldn't you just kill yourself, you demon freak?" Think how many lives could be saved if sick murderers and murderesses would just direct all their lethal hostilities inward.
Does suicide damn the soul? Not by itself, I would say - though suicide is the kind of thing that damned souls do. We are saved by faith in Christ, and no sin but apostasy can take that away. Some believe that suicides go to hell because they die with unconfessed sin (unless, I suppose, they die slow and confess before losing consciousness), but that argument never convinced me. We all have unconfessed sin, all the time, and will die with a million of those on our record. I've already sinned today by not loving the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength, and it's only 9 o'clock in morning.
I imagine there are good and faithful servants of Christ, who, in moments of weakness, or suffering from brain chemicals gone haywire, take their own lives. I see no reason why God, who knows the end from the beginning and who takes all things into account, might not have mercy on their souls and receive them into his presence. A friend of mine, a Korean War vet who suffers from tinnitus, told me that one time the ringing in his ears suddenly blasted louder than a freight train for several seconds before dissipating back to its normal level. He said that if that ever happened again, and the noise did not stop, he would definitely kill himself. I thanked him for telling me. If I ever have to conduct his tragic funeral I can tell people what probably transpired. But whatever happens, I know my friend is a believer whose name is written in the Book of Life.
I was once asked the suicide-and-hell question by someone who (I did not know at the time) was suicidal. That is where the question is really dangerous. The last thing I want to do is encourage a depressed person to think, "If I kill myself I get to go to heaven." Heaven forbid. Though it is true that even murderers and adulterers can get to heaven - King David did - we still don't want to encourage murder and adultery. I don't ever want to be guilty of tempting a depressed person with the promise of a happy hereafter. If you are suicidal, (A) Don't do it, and (B) Get help. Take that as an order from God.
Do people who commit suicide go to hell?
I was asked that twice last week, so I thought I'd use a Pastor's Page to respond. My short answer is "Not necessarily." My long answer is more complicated.
Suicide is sin because it is murder, a violation of the commandment "Thou shalt not kill." The Bible does not specifically condemn self-murder, but that should not surprise us because the Bible often connects its rules with penalties for their infractions. Suicide renders those responses moot. You can execute a man who has killed someone else, but there is not much you can do to penalize the corpse of a suicide.
There are several suicides in the Bible, and they tend to involve privileged men who went bad. Samson was the original suicide bomber (or rather, suicide building-collapser - Judges 16:28-31). King Saul fell on his own sword to keep from being slain by Philistines (1 Samuel 31:1-6). Ahithophel took his life when Absalom would not take his advice (probably assuming that Absalom’s rebellion against David was doomed to fail - 2 Samuel 17:23). Zimri burned his house down around him (1 Kings 16:18). Judas hung himself after betraying Christ (Matthew 27:3-10). In all these cases the Bible just tells what these men did without telling us whether it was wrong. Of course, they all did wrong things that led to their suicides.
Though suicide is a kind of murder, I think it is the least bad kind. In fact, I actually recommend it to hell-bent fiends who would otherwise kill the innocent - like mothers who smother, drown, or stab their kids (Marilyn Lemak, Susan Smith and Tonya Vasilev, respectively). In such cases I wonder, "Why couldn't you just kill yourself, you demon freak?" Think how many lives could be saved if sick murderers and murderesses would just direct all their lethal hostilities inward.
Does suicide damn the soul? Not by itself, I would say - though suicide is the kind of thing that damned souls do. We are saved by faith in Christ, and no sin but apostasy can take that away. Some believe that suicides go to hell because they die with unconfessed sin (unless, I suppose, they die slow and confess before losing consciousness), but that argument never convinced me. We all have unconfessed sin, all the time, and will die with a million of those on our record. I've already sinned today by not loving the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength, and it's only 9 o'clock in morning.
I imagine there are good and faithful servants of Christ, who, in moments of weakness, or suffering from brain chemicals gone haywire, take their own lives. I see no reason why God, who knows the end from the beginning and who takes all things into account, might not have mercy on their souls and receive them into his presence. A friend of mine, a Korean War vet who suffers from tinnitus, told me that one time the ringing in his ears suddenly blasted louder than a freight train for several seconds before dissipating back to its normal level. He said that if that ever happened again, and the noise did not stop, he would definitely kill himself. I thanked him for telling me. If I ever have to conduct his tragic funeral I can tell people what probably transpired. But whatever happens, I know my friend is a believer whose name is written in the Book of Life.
I was once asked the suicide-and-hell question by someone who (I did not know at the time) was suicidal. That is where the question is really dangerous. The last thing I want to do is encourage a depressed person to think, "If I kill myself I get to go to heaven." Heaven forbid. Though it is true that even murderers and adulterers can get to heaven - King David did - we still don't want to encourage murder and adultery. I don't ever want to be guilty of tempting a depressed person with the promise of a happy hereafter. If you are suicidal, (A) Don't do it, and (B) Get help. Take that as an order from God.
Sunday, August 28, 2005
Forgiving A Drunk Driver (August 28, 2005)
Two weeks ago a drunk driver careened down the street where I live, knocking down two curbside mailboxes (including mine) before plowing across my lawn and into the attached garage of my next-door neighbor. Then she backed up and sped off. Thankfully another neighbor gave chase and got her license plate number, and the police caught her shortly afterward. This happened about 5 in the afternoon.
My initial reaction was that I wanted her to spend a good long time in jail. Not because I lost a mailbox but because I really, really hate drunk drivers. They kill and paralyze and leave human vegetables in their wake. (I'm sure everyone reading this page knows at least a "friend of a friend" who is now dead or disabled due to some idiot's drunkenness.) I can sympathize with a wretched soul who just wants to drown his sorrows in booze for a bit (Proverbs 31:6: "Give wine...to those who are deep distress"), but if a guy drinks and then beats his wife, or drinks and then turns his vehicle into a deadly weapon, well then he can just rot in sewage-filled dungeon for all I care. Serves him right.
But I am a Christian and I am supposed to forgive, so after I settled down and thought about it I wrote the lady a letter saying I'd forgive her for destroying my mailbox, and pay for it myself, as long as she wrote me a letter of apology and promised to go to a church on Sunday. "What you did was dangerous and if there were any kids playing on that sidewalk you could have killed them," I wrote. "It is important for you to confess to God and stop drinking and get your life together." And I told her my prayers were with her and that I had many good friends who had stopped drinking and turned their lives around and found God.
Thank God she wrote back and sincerely apologized for her actions, and said she would go to (I think it's a Catholic) church that she and her family attend every Sunday. I wrote back saying the mailbox was all forgotten and I wished her and her family well, and that I'd keep praying for them.
We preachers like to draw lessons from everything (it's a habit, as well as a calling and a duty), so here are a few from my mailbox incident.
(1) We're supposed to forgive, but full forgiveness is conditional upon confession and repentance. If the mailbox mauler had not apologized, I would have filed the insurance claim and offered no more grace. Though our forgiveness should be immediate and aggressive and bounteous, it comes attached with a string of accountability that insists on penitence. My sister, for example, graciously forgave the young man who murdered her son (he wept in court and apologized in
person), but she has not forgiven the foul adulterous son of hell who abandoned her after 25 years of marriage, and who remains the world's biggest jerk. Her attitude is exactly as it should be.
(2) We can only forgive that over which we have jurisdiction. I can't forgive that lady for taking out my neighbor's mailbox or for damaging my other neighbor's garage. And she is still answerable to the law for multiple infractions. But I can forgive her for the small part of sin concerning which I was a victim. If I went beyond that (as Jesus did when he forgave people the sins they had committed against others), I'd be claiming to be God. See Mark 2:5-7. I think about this whenever I am asked to "forgive" someone who has done wrong but who has not really wronged me. The answer is, "I can't. It would not be right. I’m not God.”
(3) Finally, and trivially, try not to run over a pastor's mailbox. You might get forgiven, but you'll probably wind up as fodder for his sermon illustrations and "Pastor's Page" columns. That could be embarrassing.
Two weeks ago a drunk driver careened down the street where I live, knocking down two curbside mailboxes (including mine) before plowing across my lawn and into the attached garage of my next-door neighbor. Then she backed up and sped off. Thankfully another neighbor gave chase and got her license plate number, and the police caught her shortly afterward. This happened about 5 in the afternoon.
My initial reaction was that I wanted her to spend a good long time in jail. Not because I lost a mailbox but because I really, really hate drunk drivers. They kill and paralyze and leave human vegetables in their wake. (I'm sure everyone reading this page knows at least a "friend of a friend" who is now dead or disabled due to some idiot's drunkenness.) I can sympathize with a wretched soul who just wants to drown his sorrows in booze for a bit (Proverbs 31:6: "Give wine...to those who are deep distress"), but if a guy drinks and then beats his wife, or drinks and then turns his vehicle into a deadly weapon, well then he can just rot in sewage-filled dungeon for all I care. Serves him right.
But I am a Christian and I am supposed to forgive, so after I settled down and thought about it I wrote the lady a letter saying I'd forgive her for destroying my mailbox, and pay for it myself, as long as she wrote me a letter of apology and promised to go to a church on Sunday. "What you did was dangerous and if there were any kids playing on that sidewalk you could have killed them," I wrote. "It is important for you to confess to God and stop drinking and get your life together." And I told her my prayers were with her and that I had many good friends who had stopped drinking and turned their lives around and found God.
Thank God she wrote back and sincerely apologized for her actions, and said she would go to (I think it's a Catholic) church that she and her family attend every Sunday. I wrote back saying the mailbox was all forgotten and I wished her and her family well, and that I'd keep praying for them.
We preachers like to draw lessons from everything (it's a habit, as well as a calling and a duty), so here are a few from my mailbox incident.
(1) We're supposed to forgive, but full forgiveness is conditional upon confession and repentance. If the mailbox mauler had not apologized, I would have filed the insurance claim and offered no more grace. Though our forgiveness should be immediate and aggressive and bounteous, it comes attached with a string of accountability that insists on penitence. My sister, for example, graciously forgave the young man who murdered her son (he wept in court and apologized in
person), but she has not forgiven the foul adulterous son of hell who abandoned her after 25 years of marriage, and who remains the world's biggest jerk. Her attitude is exactly as it should be.
(2) We can only forgive that over which we have jurisdiction. I can't forgive that lady for taking out my neighbor's mailbox or for damaging my other neighbor's garage. And she is still answerable to the law for multiple infractions. But I can forgive her for the small part of sin concerning which I was a victim. If I went beyond that (as Jesus did when he forgave people the sins they had committed against others), I'd be claiming to be God. See Mark 2:5-7. I think about this whenever I am asked to "forgive" someone who has done wrong but who has not really wronged me. The answer is, "I can't. It would not be right. I’m not God.”
(3) Finally, and trivially, try not to run over a pastor's mailbox. You might get forgiven, but you'll probably wind up as fodder for his sermon illustrations and "Pastor's Page" columns. That could be embarrassing.
Sunday, August 21, 2005
When To Give Up (August 21, 2005)
When does the virtue of steadfast perseverance become the vice of fatal stubbornness?
Perseverance is a virtue, generally. God has put it in our hearts to admire those who stick it out in the face of adversity and refuse to give up. We cheer Winston Churchill's exhortation to students at the Harrow School in 1941: "Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
Never?
Jesus recommended yielding to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy when he said that if you've got 10,000 men and your opponent has 20,000, seek peace (Luke 14:31-32). That's conditional surrender.
He commanded his disciples to give up preaching the gospel when they encountered hostility: "When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another" (Matthew 10:23).
He commanded his followers to give up on people who continually rejected the grace of church discipline: "Treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector" (Matthew 18:17).
And the Apostle Paul commanded giving up on a marriage when an unbeliever abandons the Christian partner: "If the unbeliever leaves, let him do so" - 1 Corinthians 7:15 (The Greek verb is imperative - it is literally a command to let go.)
So not all perseverance is good - not even perseverance in a self-denying cause. Perseverance that results in disobedience to God's Word is simple stubbornness, and must not be allowed to flaunt itself as virtue.
But perseverance that is neither disobedient nor foolish remains a worthy goal. I have been asked once or twice if, because of grave family sorrow, I would like to take a leave of absence from (temporarily give up on?) the ministry. It is a fair question, but my answer (which I hope springs from perseverance rather than stubbornness) is, "Absolutely not." I am commissioned by God to peach the Word "in season and out of season" (2 Timothy 4:2) - and though now the season is one of hurricanes, my house should be able to stand if it is built on the rock and made of stone. How dare I flee inland now? What kind of testimony would that be? If ever there were an hour to stand my ground, this is it.
At the same time, I acknowledge that "standing one's ground" is only good when God commands it. May God give all of us the grace to persevere in that to which he calls us - and the wisdom to know when we are merely behaving like stubborn fools.
When does the virtue of steadfast perseverance become the vice of fatal stubbornness?
Perseverance is a virtue, generally. God has put it in our hearts to admire those who stick it out in the face of adversity and refuse to give up. We cheer Winston Churchill's exhortation to students at the Harrow School in 1941: "Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
Never?
Jesus recommended yielding to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy when he said that if you've got 10,000 men and your opponent has 20,000, seek peace (Luke 14:31-32). That's conditional surrender.
He commanded his disciples to give up preaching the gospel when they encountered hostility: "When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another" (Matthew 10:23).
He commanded his followers to give up on people who continually rejected the grace of church discipline: "Treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector" (Matthew 18:17).
And the Apostle Paul commanded giving up on a marriage when an unbeliever abandons the Christian partner: "If the unbeliever leaves, let him do so" - 1 Corinthians 7:15 (The Greek verb is imperative - it is literally a command to let go.)
So not all perseverance is good - not even perseverance in a self-denying cause. Perseverance that results in disobedience to God's Word is simple stubbornness, and must not be allowed to flaunt itself as virtue.
But perseverance that is neither disobedient nor foolish remains a worthy goal. I have been asked once or twice if, because of grave family sorrow, I would like to take a leave of absence from (temporarily give up on?) the ministry. It is a fair question, but my answer (which I hope springs from perseverance rather than stubbornness) is, "Absolutely not." I am commissioned by God to peach the Word "in season and out of season" (2 Timothy 4:2) - and though now the season is one of hurricanes, my house should be able to stand if it is built on the rock and made of stone. How dare I flee inland now? What kind of testimony would that be? If ever there were an hour to stand my ground, this is it.
At the same time, I acknowledge that "standing one's ground" is only good when God commands it. May God give all of us the grace to persevere in that to which he calls us - and the wisdom to know when we are merely behaving like stubborn fools.
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Do We Always Benefit From Suffering? (August 14, 2005)
Do all bad circumstances work out for our personal good?
Some Bible verses lead Christians to believe so. St. James writes, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything" (James 1:2-4). So trials help us to persevere and be mature. St. Paul writes, "We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28). My mother always insisted, rightly, that "the good" of Romans 8:28 is defined in the next verse, "being conformed to the likeness of his Son." So in all circumstances, even bad ones, God does the good work of making those who love him to be more like Jesus.
I believe this. One qualification I would like to make explicit, however, is that it is not always our personal good that our trials and woes are bringing about. Maybe our bad circumstances are chiefly benefiting someone else.
After Joseph was nearly killed by his brothers, sold into slavery in Egypt, falsely accused of attempted rape and thrown into prison, he met up years later with these same brothers who had tried to ruin his life. By then Joseph had recovered, and, working as Pharaoh's right-hand man, administered a government food program during years of drought. He spoke graciously to his bad brothers, saying, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives" (Genesis 50:20). It is fitting that Joseph did not say, "God intended it for my good - now I'm rich and powerful because of what you did to me." That part seemed incidental. The main thing was that through the injustice he had experienced, starvation of the masses had been prevented.
Someday you may go through something profoundly unpleasant and it will be hard to conceive how it could ever be good for you - even in some ultimate, eternal sense. Let me encourage you to remember then that the good things that God is accomplishing in the world are not all about you. Your woes may leave you devastated, but still benefit other people in ways you could never imagine.
Missionaries Jim and Angela Beise are raising a severely handicapped child, Michael, along with their three "normal" children. But their three other children are not normal at all - they're exceptional. Angela writes, "My children are among the most unselfish people I have ever known. Brian, 19, Melissa, 17, and Rachel, 13, have made
sacrifices, too many and too big to count, for their disabled sibling. One would think that this would have made them bitter and discontented. Amazingly, it has done exactly the opposite. They are thankful, giving, and tolerant to difficult and unlovely people."
I do not know what good things God is doing in the soul of handicapped Michael. But I'll take his mother's word for it that through Michael's limitations God is perfecting his siblings. It works that way sometimes. Trials and sorrows and limitations that seem to do us no good at all might be God's perfect tools to do great good in others. We can thank him for that.
Do all bad circumstances work out for our personal good?
Some Bible verses lead Christians to believe so. St. James writes, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything" (James 1:2-4). So trials help us to persevere and be mature. St. Paul writes, "We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28). My mother always insisted, rightly, that "the good" of Romans 8:28 is defined in the next verse, "being conformed to the likeness of his Son." So in all circumstances, even bad ones, God does the good work of making those who love him to be more like Jesus.
I believe this. One qualification I would like to make explicit, however, is that it is not always our personal good that our trials and woes are bringing about. Maybe our bad circumstances are chiefly benefiting someone else.
After Joseph was nearly killed by his brothers, sold into slavery in Egypt, falsely accused of attempted rape and thrown into prison, he met up years later with these same brothers who had tried to ruin his life. By then Joseph had recovered, and, working as Pharaoh's right-hand man, administered a government food program during years of drought. He spoke graciously to his bad brothers, saying, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives" (Genesis 50:20). It is fitting that Joseph did not say, "God intended it for my good - now I'm rich and powerful because of what you did to me." That part seemed incidental. The main thing was that through the injustice he had experienced, starvation of the masses had been prevented.
Someday you may go through something profoundly unpleasant and it will be hard to conceive how it could ever be good for you - even in some ultimate, eternal sense. Let me encourage you to remember then that the good things that God is accomplishing in the world are not all about you. Your woes may leave you devastated, but still benefit other people in ways you could never imagine.
Missionaries Jim and Angela Beise are raising a severely handicapped child, Michael, along with their three "normal" children. But their three other children are not normal at all - they're exceptional. Angela writes, "My children are among the most unselfish people I have ever known. Brian, 19, Melissa, 17, and Rachel, 13, have made
sacrifices, too many and too big to count, for their disabled sibling. One would think that this would have made them bitter and discontented. Amazingly, it has done exactly the opposite. They are thankful, giving, and tolerant to difficult and unlovely people."
I do not know what good things God is doing in the soul of handicapped Michael. But I'll take his mother's word for it that through Michael's limitations God is perfecting his siblings. It works that way sometimes. Trials and sorrows and limitations that seem to do us no good at all might be God's perfect tools to do great good in others. We can thank him for that.
Sunday, August 7, 2005
“He Probably Deserved It” (August 7, 2005)
Being a Christian involves abandoning what I call the "justice instinct."
The justice instinct is the assumption that life is ultimately, cosmically fair. It is reflected in the speeches of Job's friends, who knew that somehow Job had to be responsible for the horrors visited upon him. It is seen in the question of the disciples concerning a blind man: "Who sinned, this man or his parents?" (John 9:2). It is seen in the attitude of the crowd in Luke 13:2-4 that believed that victims of disaster and slaughter must have been "worse sinners than others." It is seen in the reasoning of Maltese islanders, who briefly thought that the Apostle Paul was a murderer because a snake bit him. (They changed their minds when he lived - Acts 28:3-6.) It is seen in the rapture of Captain and Maria Von Trapp, who in The Sound of Music sing to each other, "Somewhere in my youth, or childhood, I must have done something good." It is touted in the Buddhist doctrine of karma, which extends Newton's third law of motion to the moral realm: "Every (good, bad) action has an equal and opposite (compensatory, punitive) reaction." In Buddhism you get what you deserve. Even the Dalai Lama has credited his personal happiness to the karma he has accumulated through good deeds.
The justice instinct is a terrible mistake and must be renounced, but I think I can see why it has universal appeal. First, because it is just too painful to acknowledge that life is unfair. We feel no grief when a villain dies, but we feel terrible when a good man does. So our minds work hard to reduce the sorrow, and one method of anesthetizing the mental pain is simply to assume that the sufferer got what he deserved.
A second reason the justice instinct appeals to us arises from the moral intuition God has placed in our hearts that we ourselves ought to be fair. We should judge justly, rewarding good and punishing evil. But many make a logical jump and assume that the way we should behave correlates directly to way Nature itself in fact behaves. Such thinking either projects our morality onto Nature, which is silly, or projects Nature's cruelty onto our morals, which is evil. In the former, we dupe ourselves into thinking that Nature is as pleasant and as kind as we ought to be. (It isn't; as Tennyson noted long ago, Nature is "red in tooth and claw.") In the latter, we find Nazis concluding that since Nature rewards the fit and weeds out the feeble, it is our moral duty to give allegiance to powerful tyrants while killing off the retarded and disabled.
However "natural" it might be to expect Nature to mirror our moral sense of fairness, a few moments' careful reflection should be enough to show that it does not. Therefore, for truth's sake alone, we must discard the justice instinct and actively resist it. But let me suggest a few more motives, beyond mere Reason, for getting rid of it.
1) The justice instinct kills compassion. It mutes mercy by permitting the strong to think, "That sufferer must be getting what he deserves (though perhaps I don't know exactly what he did to deserve it). Who am I to oppose the faultless judgment of the cosmos?"
2) The justice instinct creates false guilt. The sufferer compounds his own misery by succumbing to Satan-inspired self-accusation, and perhaps is tempted to lie against the truth by confessing sins he is not guilty of.
3) The justice instinct encourages pride. When a man who has prospered attributes his good fortune not to God's grace but to some cosmic reward for goodness, then he is closer to the gates of hell than he is to the kingdom of heaven.
4) The justice instinct slams the door on the gospel of Jesus Christ. Something that has always made Christianity a "hard sell" is the fact that its hero was executed. If you assume universal fairness, then he must have done something terribly wrong to deserve death. But the Bible insists that he "knew no sin" (2 Corinthians 5:21); that he "committed no sin" (1 Peter 2:22); and that "in him is no sin" (1 John 3:5). Jews and Gentiles alike found the doctrine of crucified Perfection a contradiction in terms. It was a piece of foolishness, a stumbling block - who would ever dream of worshipping a God who gets crucified?
Only one who has disabled his justice instinct could manage to worship a crucified Lord. Those who persist in regarding present reality as "fair" will continue to stumble over the cross, and they will sin by judging people who are merely unlucky even as they praise people who are merely fortunate.
Being a Christian involves abandoning what I call the "justice instinct."
The justice instinct is the assumption that life is ultimately, cosmically fair. It is reflected in the speeches of Job's friends, who knew that somehow Job had to be responsible for the horrors visited upon him. It is seen in the question of the disciples concerning a blind man: "Who sinned, this man or his parents?" (John 9:2). It is seen in the attitude of the crowd in Luke 13:2-4 that believed that victims of disaster and slaughter must have been "worse sinners than others." It is seen in the reasoning of Maltese islanders, who briefly thought that the Apostle Paul was a murderer because a snake bit him. (They changed their minds when he lived - Acts 28:3-6.) It is seen in the rapture of Captain and Maria Von Trapp, who in The Sound of Music sing to each other, "Somewhere in my youth, or childhood, I must have done something good." It is touted in the Buddhist doctrine of karma, which extends Newton's third law of motion to the moral realm: "Every (good, bad) action has an equal and opposite (compensatory, punitive) reaction." In Buddhism you get what you deserve. Even the Dalai Lama has credited his personal happiness to the karma he has accumulated through good deeds.
The justice instinct is a terrible mistake and must be renounced, but I think I can see why it has universal appeal. First, because it is just too painful to acknowledge that life is unfair. We feel no grief when a villain dies, but we feel terrible when a good man does. So our minds work hard to reduce the sorrow, and one method of anesthetizing the mental pain is simply to assume that the sufferer got what he deserved.
A second reason the justice instinct appeals to us arises from the moral intuition God has placed in our hearts that we ourselves ought to be fair. We should judge justly, rewarding good and punishing evil. But many make a logical jump and assume that the way we should behave correlates directly to way Nature itself in fact behaves. Such thinking either projects our morality onto Nature, which is silly, or projects Nature's cruelty onto our morals, which is evil. In the former, we dupe ourselves into thinking that Nature is as pleasant and as kind as we ought to be. (It isn't; as Tennyson noted long ago, Nature is "red in tooth and claw.") In the latter, we find Nazis concluding that since Nature rewards the fit and weeds out the feeble, it is our moral duty to give allegiance to powerful tyrants while killing off the retarded and disabled.
However "natural" it might be to expect Nature to mirror our moral sense of fairness, a few moments' careful reflection should be enough to show that it does not. Therefore, for truth's sake alone, we must discard the justice instinct and actively resist it. But let me suggest a few more motives, beyond mere Reason, for getting rid of it.
1) The justice instinct kills compassion. It mutes mercy by permitting the strong to think, "That sufferer must be getting what he deserves (though perhaps I don't know exactly what he did to deserve it). Who am I to oppose the faultless judgment of the cosmos?"
2) The justice instinct creates false guilt. The sufferer compounds his own misery by succumbing to Satan-inspired self-accusation, and perhaps is tempted to lie against the truth by confessing sins he is not guilty of.
3) The justice instinct encourages pride. When a man who has prospered attributes his good fortune not to God's grace but to some cosmic reward for goodness, then he is closer to the gates of hell than he is to the kingdom of heaven.
4) The justice instinct slams the door on the gospel of Jesus Christ. Something that has always made Christianity a "hard sell" is the fact that its hero was executed. If you assume universal fairness, then he must have done something terribly wrong to deserve death. But the Bible insists that he "knew no sin" (2 Corinthians 5:21); that he "committed no sin" (1 Peter 2:22); and that "in him is no sin" (1 John 3:5). Jews and Gentiles alike found the doctrine of crucified Perfection a contradiction in terms. It was a piece of foolishness, a stumbling block - who would ever dream of worshipping a God who gets crucified?
Only one who has disabled his justice instinct could manage to worship a crucified Lord. Those who persist in regarding present reality as "fair" will continue to stumble over the cross, and they will sin by judging people who are merely unlucky even as they praise people who are merely fortunate.
Sunday, July 31, 2005
The Slow Departure From Christ (July 31, 2005)
"Guard your heart."
I remember that admonition from a message given to a group of us pastors by the president of the Baptist General Conference some years ago. It is from Proverbs 4:23: "Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." I don't remember much else of his sermon, except that he was concerned about Christian leaders who fall away, and he urged each of us to be vigilant about our own walk with Christ.
That phrase "guard your heart" came to mind after I tried to answer a missionary friend who asked me why another missionary had apostatized. I wrote, "I have no idea why she turned her back on God - any more than I know why Judas betrayed Christ, or why Hymenaeus and Alexander made shipwreck of their faith (1 Tim 1:19-20), or why Demas "loved this world" (2 Tim 4:10). I just know that it happens. Billy Graham's friend and fellow evangelist Charles Templeton became an atheist. I don't know why."
In the parable of the sower (Luke 8:5-15), Jesus said that some fall because the devil takes the word from their hearts; others because of trial and testing; and others because they care about life's "worries, riches and pleasures." Beyond that, I'm not sure the "why" question has an answer. Why do some succumb to the devil's attack, or break faith under pressure, or fall into temptation? God knows.
In one of his books C. S. Lewis notes that apostates never seem to reach their state of unbelief by careful reasoning and thought, or with decisive, conscious renunciations that are the reverse image of their conversions. Instead, they just gradually drift into their loss of faith. They find that they have rejected it almost by default, having crept away with slow, imperceptible steps that are inevitably joined to acts of disobedience. I think Lewis was right.
For the love of God, beware of those slow, imperceptible steps. Guard your heart. Read the Scriptures, pray daily, and don't even think about skipping church this Sunday. Do good and shun evil, and trust Jesus. I'm afraid my counsel is no more profound than that.
"Guard your heart."
I remember that admonition from a message given to a group of us pastors by the president of the Baptist General Conference some years ago. It is from Proverbs 4:23: "Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." I don't remember much else of his sermon, except that he was concerned about Christian leaders who fall away, and he urged each of us to be vigilant about our own walk with Christ.
That phrase "guard your heart" came to mind after I tried to answer a missionary friend who asked me why another missionary had apostatized. I wrote, "I have no idea why she turned her back on God - any more than I know why Judas betrayed Christ, or why Hymenaeus and Alexander made shipwreck of their faith (1 Tim 1:19-20), or why Demas "loved this world" (2 Tim 4:10). I just know that it happens. Billy Graham's friend and fellow evangelist Charles Templeton became an atheist. I don't know why."
In the parable of the sower (Luke 8:5-15), Jesus said that some fall because the devil takes the word from their hearts; others because of trial and testing; and others because they care about life's "worries, riches and pleasures." Beyond that, I'm not sure the "why" question has an answer. Why do some succumb to the devil's attack, or break faith under pressure, or fall into temptation? God knows.
In one of his books C. S. Lewis notes that apostates never seem to reach their state of unbelief by careful reasoning and thought, or with decisive, conscious renunciations that are the reverse image of their conversions. Instead, they just gradually drift into their loss of faith. They find that they have rejected it almost by default, having crept away with slow, imperceptible steps that are inevitably joined to acts of disobedience. I think Lewis was right.
For the love of God, beware of those slow, imperceptible steps. Guard your heart. Read the Scriptures, pray daily, and don't even think about skipping church this Sunday. Do good and shun evil, and trust Jesus. I'm afraid my counsel is no more profound than that.
Sunday, July 24, 2005
What Is The Biggest Problem? (July 24, 2005)
The Indian tribe that I worked with in Colombia had all kinds of problems, like alcoholism, chemical dependency, child sex abuse, malnutrition, recruitment into left-wing guerrilla causes and fearful reprisals from right-wing death squads. So it was with some surprise that I heard my 20-year-old Arhuaco friend comment on the issue that he thought to be the most urgent one facing his people. It was jealousy!
I thought he was laughably wrong about that, but it was easy to see why he felt that jealousy was the biggest thing his people had to overcome. It was because he regarded himself as a victim of their envy. He had just graduated from high school and wanted to go to college. Other tribesmen thought that further education would make him insufferably proud, and so they opposed his dream. Jealousy, he concluded, was a cancer eating away at the Arhuaco soul, and it had to be defeated so his people could make progress.
Well, his people had other things to worry about too. But I noticed in my friend a tendency that I've seen often in other people and that no doubt exists in me as well: the conviction that whatever concerns me most should most concern you. My problem is the problem and why aren't more people doing something about it?
A couple years ago I attended a Christian conference where a well-known speaker told us that the biggest evil facing America was racism. Really? Racism? I would have picked abortion. I am sure that the speaker, a black man, endured racial profiling every time he hailed a cab or stepped into an elevator with a white woman. That's a
bad break, I know, but when it comes to a hierarchy of moral outrages in America, the simple fact is that we haven't killed tens of millions of blacks lately - we've killed tens of millions of babies. That's worse.
My favorite answer to the question "What is wrong with the world?" comes from G. K. Chesterton, who responded simply, "I am." "I" is the person whose bad behavior I must labor to find most troubling. The biggest problem in the world today is neither Muslim terrorism nor third world debt nor abortion nor racism nor jealousy, but my sin.
The Bible says, "Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others" (Philippians 2:4). Your issue is not the world's biggest issue. Other people have problems too, and they're as urgent or more urgent than yours. Worry about their problems. And when it comes to yourself, the biggest thing
you really have to worry about is your own sin.
The Indian tribe that I worked with in Colombia had all kinds of problems, like alcoholism, chemical dependency, child sex abuse, malnutrition, recruitment into left-wing guerrilla causes and fearful reprisals from right-wing death squads. So it was with some surprise that I heard my 20-year-old Arhuaco friend comment on the issue that he thought to be the most urgent one facing his people. It was jealousy!
I thought he was laughably wrong about that, but it was easy to see why he felt that jealousy was the biggest thing his people had to overcome. It was because he regarded himself as a victim of their envy. He had just graduated from high school and wanted to go to college. Other tribesmen thought that further education would make him insufferably proud, and so they opposed his dream. Jealousy, he concluded, was a cancer eating away at the Arhuaco soul, and it had to be defeated so his people could make progress.
Well, his people had other things to worry about too. But I noticed in my friend a tendency that I've seen often in other people and that no doubt exists in me as well: the conviction that whatever concerns me most should most concern you. My problem is the problem and why aren't more people doing something about it?
A couple years ago I attended a Christian conference where a well-known speaker told us that the biggest evil facing America was racism. Really? Racism? I would have picked abortion. I am sure that the speaker, a black man, endured racial profiling every time he hailed a cab or stepped into an elevator with a white woman. That's a
bad break, I know, but when it comes to a hierarchy of moral outrages in America, the simple fact is that we haven't killed tens of millions of blacks lately - we've killed tens of millions of babies. That's worse.
My favorite answer to the question "What is wrong with the world?" comes from G. K. Chesterton, who responded simply, "I am." "I" is the person whose bad behavior I must labor to find most troubling. The biggest problem in the world today is neither Muslim terrorism nor third world debt nor abortion nor racism nor jealousy, but my sin.
The Bible says, "Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others" (Philippians 2:4). Your issue is not the world's biggest issue. Other people have problems too, and they're as urgent or more urgent than yours. Worry about their problems. And when it comes to yourself, the biggest thing
you really have to worry about is your own sin.
Sunday, July 10, 2005
Strength In Weakness - Devastating Weakness (July 10, 2005)
Two quotes came to mind as I continue glorifying God for the faithful love of the people of Faith Bible Church. One quote is from Osama bin Laden and the other is from the Apostle Paul.
Bin Laden, gloating over his 9/11 triumph, said to a room of supporters, "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse." This is true. Strength - animal or human, physical or abstract - is seductive. We gather around successful people and admire their power and hope to absorb some of it. The Bin Ladens and Hitlers of the world exploit this love of strength by their sheer brutal aggression. If they are strong and strike hard and win, they know that some people will like them and will follow them, and will only turn away if they become weak.
Christians, though, discipline themselves to be pleased with goodness no matter how weak its condition, and to be repelled by badness no matter how strong its form. Holiness, not power (or any other kind of success), must be that which delights and pleases and excites us - even if that holiness never seems to win any battle or finish first in any contest.
The Apostle Paul never would have been mistaken for one of bin Laden's "strong horses". Like Jesus he "had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him" (Isaiah 53:2). What could be appealing about a prison inmate in chains, dependent on others' charity and unable to control his judicial destiny? Who wants to get close to that? Well, a few saints were willing. In 2 Timothy 1:16 Paul writes, "May the Lord show mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, because he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains."
I have a fresh appreciation for those who are not ashamed of a man's “chains.” I know chains - at least metaphorical ones. I feel their weight dragging on me and their links constricting me, and I know how bad they make me look. But on Sunday mornings the iron grip lightens as faithful brothers and sisters in Christ gather with me and worship the Lord.
Thanks be to God for every noble soul who pities a weak horse, who delights to refresh a prisoner in chains. May our good God enrich you all with the rewards of Onesiphorus.
Two quotes came to mind as I continue glorifying God for the faithful love of the people of Faith Bible Church. One quote is from Osama bin Laden and the other is from the Apostle Paul.
Bin Laden, gloating over his 9/11 triumph, said to a room of supporters, "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse." This is true. Strength - animal or human, physical or abstract - is seductive. We gather around successful people and admire their power and hope to absorb some of it. The Bin Ladens and Hitlers of the world exploit this love of strength by their sheer brutal aggression. If they are strong and strike hard and win, they know that some people will like them and will follow them, and will only turn away if they become weak.
Christians, though, discipline themselves to be pleased with goodness no matter how weak its condition, and to be repelled by badness no matter how strong its form. Holiness, not power (or any other kind of success), must be that which delights and pleases and excites us - even if that holiness never seems to win any battle or finish first in any contest.
The Apostle Paul never would have been mistaken for one of bin Laden's "strong horses". Like Jesus he "had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him" (Isaiah 53:2). What could be appealing about a prison inmate in chains, dependent on others' charity and unable to control his judicial destiny? Who wants to get close to that? Well, a few saints were willing. In 2 Timothy 1:16 Paul writes, "May the Lord show mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, because he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains."
I have a fresh appreciation for those who are not ashamed of a man's “chains.” I know chains - at least metaphorical ones. I feel their weight dragging on me and their links constricting me, and I know how bad they make me look. But on Sunday mornings the iron grip lightens as faithful brothers and sisters in Christ gather with me and worship the Lord.
Thanks be to God for every noble soul who pities a weak horse, who delights to refresh a prisoner in chains. May our good God enrich you all with the rewards of Onesiphorus.
Sunday, July 3, 2005
Christ, And Christ Alone (July 3, 2005)
One of my favorite verses is St. Paul's statement to the Corinthians: "For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Cor. 2:2). Though I have always loved those words, I admit that one of them used to strike me as odd. Why did Paul say that he resolved to know nothing but Christ - didn't he really mean preach or proclaim or discuss nothing but Christ? He seemed to suggest that while with the Corinthians he governed not only his words but even his thoughts to exclude anything that wasn't about Jesus. Why was that?
Maybe I understand a little better now. Thoughts bleed into words, and out of the heart the mouth speaks. That which occupies the mind will come forth in one's message, and what a man mentally acknowledges or mentally ignores will carve the channels through which his words flow.
There were many things that Paul could have worried about when he first visited the pagan city of Corinth and tried to plant a church there. Would he be able to preach eloquently? He would not think about it. He wrote, "When I came to you brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom" (1 Corinthians 2:1). Would his emotional and physical health hold out? He would not bother about that either. As a matter of fact, he wasn't able to hold himself together too well: "I came to you in weakness and fear and with much trembling" (1 Corinthians 2:3).
But neither fear of failure nor desire for success nor any other concern - substantial or trivial - would budge Paul from his main thought, which was that "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief" (1 Timothy 1:15). This was the conviction that he wanted to hold before his mind when all other thoughts conspired to exclude it. It was the thought that had to dictate and circumscribe his message to the Corinthian congregation, a church destined to experience a thousand distractions and a thousand temptations to dishonor the Lord.
Many of you who read this page will know about my own recent sorrows, that I too am "in weakness and fear and with much trembling," that the sun that now rises on my day seems cold and black. I embrace as my own Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 1:8: "We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life."
But I don't despair of eternal life. In my heart I know, if I know nothing else, that Jesus Christ was crucified for sinners, that he rose from the dead, and that - unworthy though I am - there is "laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me at that day - and not to me only, but to all who have loved his appearing" (2 Timothy 4:8).
Pray for me. And, for the sake of the gospel that I preach, pray that like my namesake I will, when clouds gather, know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified.
One of my favorite verses is St. Paul's statement to the Corinthians: "For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Cor. 2:2). Though I have always loved those words, I admit that one of them used to strike me as odd. Why did Paul say that he resolved to know nothing but Christ - didn't he really mean preach or proclaim or discuss nothing but Christ? He seemed to suggest that while with the Corinthians he governed not only his words but even his thoughts to exclude anything that wasn't about Jesus. Why was that?
Maybe I understand a little better now. Thoughts bleed into words, and out of the heart the mouth speaks. That which occupies the mind will come forth in one's message, and what a man mentally acknowledges or mentally ignores will carve the channels through which his words flow.
There were many things that Paul could have worried about when he first visited the pagan city of Corinth and tried to plant a church there. Would he be able to preach eloquently? He would not think about it. He wrote, "When I came to you brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom" (1 Corinthians 2:1). Would his emotional and physical health hold out? He would not bother about that either. As a matter of fact, he wasn't able to hold himself together too well: "I came to you in weakness and fear and with much trembling" (1 Corinthians 2:3).
But neither fear of failure nor desire for success nor any other concern - substantial or trivial - would budge Paul from his main thought, which was that "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief" (1 Timothy 1:15). This was the conviction that he wanted to hold before his mind when all other thoughts conspired to exclude it. It was the thought that had to dictate and circumscribe his message to the Corinthian congregation, a church destined to experience a thousand distractions and a thousand temptations to dishonor the Lord.
Many of you who read this page will know about my own recent sorrows, that I too am "in weakness and fear and with much trembling," that the sun that now rises on my day seems cold and black. I embrace as my own Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 1:8: "We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life."
But I don't despair of eternal life. In my heart I know, if I know nothing else, that Jesus Christ was crucified for sinners, that he rose from the dead, and that - unworthy though I am - there is "laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me at that day - and not to me only, but to all who have loved his appearing" (2 Timothy 4:8).
Pray for me. And, for the sake of the gospel that I preach, pray that like my namesake I will, when clouds gather, know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified.
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Should People Have The Power To Shake Your Faith?
(Note: On June 22, 2005, I answered the doorbell and was shocked to be served divorce papers. Neither my wife nor I had ever mentioned the possibility of divorce to the other. Later that day my wife informed me that she was no longer a Christian and that she was going to leave me and divorce me against my will. The next several Pastor's Pages reflect upon the tragedy.)
Should People Have The Power To Shake Your Faith? (June 26, 2005)
I received an email from a friend urging me to say nothing about an apostate former missionary who had embarked on a course of wickedness. In requesting my silence she wrote, "This will be a devastating blow to the faith of many people and will cause them to question themselves and their beliefs."
That may be right. We all have a habit of looking to others and adjusting our behavior in light of their example and our beliefs in light of their doctrine.
I can almost pinpoint the moment when I first began to think about the way that our faith affects other people. I was 15 and meeting with the deacon board of my home church after completing a catechism class with the pastor in preparation for baptism. I was knowledgeable (for my age) about the Bible and earnest in my faith. I had read C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity and Josh McDowell's Evidence That Demands a Verdict, had memorized scores of Bible verses, had gone to church all my life. I had no trouble expressing my faith to the board.
One of the deacons very graciously said that my testimony had strengthened his own faith. It was a humble and kind thing to say to an immature teenager, but I in my foolishness cringed inwardly and thought, "What in the world does your faith have to do with mine? Isn't your faith strong enough on its own? It should be. What I say or don't say, believe or don't believe, should have nothing to do with your personal trust in the Lord or your acknowledgment of the truth." Of course I did not mentally verbalize my feelings with those words at the time, but that is more or less what I felt.
Since then I have seen many times how our example can indeed "strengthen" or "weaken" the faith of others, and I now acknowledge the legitimate power of that influence. If you see a man whom you regard as wise and kind and right and firm and rational and good, then you are inclined to respect his moral philosophy, and maybe even adopt the doctrines that make him what he is. And if you already share his beliefs, then you delight and feel reassured in them.
But a bad example can have the same salutary effect, though by repulsion rather than attraction. You see the evil and say, "Oh no, no - whatever I do I must not become like that." My mother was the daughter of an alcoholic “rare-do-well” who died of cirrhosis; she responded by resolving never to drink at all. Thank God.
Receiving news of a formerly godly person who has turned away from the Lord and gone the way of the world is like getting hit in the face with a baseball bat. It is painful and stunning and awful and nothing else. But a faith-shaker? Why should it be? Just look at the terrible facts and see how cruel, how mean-spirited, how dishonest, how irrational is the one who "having tasted of the heavenly gift" (Hebrews 6:4 ) now spits it out. That example may shake your faith in people's permanency (a faith you were unwise to hold and should have discarded by now), but it should not hurt your faith in God at all. It should do the opposite. It should pound into your soul the eternal urgency of clinging to Jesus, and terrify you lest you take the smallest step away from him.
Should People Have The Power To Shake Your Faith? (June 26, 2005)
I received an email from a friend urging me to say nothing about an apostate former missionary who had embarked on a course of wickedness. In requesting my silence she wrote, "This will be a devastating blow to the faith of many people and will cause them to question themselves and their beliefs."
That may be right. We all have a habit of looking to others and adjusting our behavior in light of their example and our beliefs in light of their doctrine.
I can almost pinpoint the moment when I first began to think about the way that our faith affects other people. I was 15 and meeting with the deacon board of my home church after completing a catechism class with the pastor in preparation for baptism. I was knowledgeable (for my age) about the Bible and earnest in my faith. I had read C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity and Josh McDowell's Evidence That Demands a Verdict, had memorized scores of Bible verses, had gone to church all my life. I had no trouble expressing my faith to the board.
One of the deacons very graciously said that my testimony had strengthened his own faith. It was a humble and kind thing to say to an immature teenager, but I in my foolishness cringed inwardly and thought, "What in the world does your faith have to do with mine? Isn't your faith strong enough on its own? It should be. What I say or don't say, believe or don't believe, should have nothing to do with your personal trust in the Lord or your acknowledgment of the truth." Of course I did not mentally verbalize my feelings with those words at the time, but that is more or less what I felt.
Since then I have seen many times how our example can indeed "strengthen" or "weaken" the faith of others, and I now acknowledge the legitimate power of that influence. If you see a man whom you regard as wise and kind and right and firm and rational and good, then you are inclined to respect his moral philosophy, and maybe even adopt the doctrines that make him what he is. And if you already share his beliefs, then you delight and feel reassured in them.
But a bad example can have the same salutary effect, though by repulsion rather than attraction. You see the evil and say, "Oh no, no - whatever I do I must not become like that." My mother was the daughter of an alcoholic “rare-do-well” who died of cirrhosis; she responded by resolving never to drink at all. Thank God.
Receiving news of a formerly godly person who has turned away from the Lord and gone the way of the world is like getting hit in the face with a baseball bat. It is painful and stunning and awful and nothing else. But a faith-shaker? Why should it be? Just look at the terrible facts and see how cruel, how mean-spirited, how dishonest, how irrational is the one who "having tasted of the heavenly gift" (Hebrews 6:4 ) now spits it out. That example may shake your faith in people's permanency (a faith you were unwise to hold and should have discarded by now), but it should not hurt your faith in God at all. It should do the opposite. It should pound into your soul the eternal urgency of clinging to Jesus, and terrify you lest you take the smallest step away from him.
Sunday, June 19, 2005
Evangelism Isn’t A Niceness Contest (June 19, 2005)
I heard a sermon where the pastor talked about a new member who became a Christian after she met some people from the church who were nice to her. Impressed with their kindness (they even helped her move into a new home), she trusted Christ and was baptized. Their kindness won her over.
Which is a great thing. We can be thankful for sincere believers whose faith is manifested in loving deeds that bring people to Christ. It is a biblical principle that sometimes our good works can have this effect. For example, St. Peter tells women who are married to non-Christians to submit to their husbands so that "they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives" (1 Peter 3:1-2).
Even so, we must be careful about leaning on niceness as our main means of evangelism. Other people can be nice too. If niceness determines the playing field for religious conversion, then Mormons, Buddhists, Wiccans and Zoroastrians can compete like champions and may even beat us. If we have sent the message, "Follow our faith because we're so nice," we risk being overtaken by even nicer atheists.
The other day I picked up a Jehovah's Witness publication and noticed how much that cult is now trumpeting niceness. Years ago JW literature emphasized doctrinal distinctions (Jesus is not divine, the Holy Spirit is an impersonal force, Jesus returned to earth invisibly in 1914 to usher in the last generation, etc.) Now they don't say a word about doctrine. Instead they talk about being kind and good and how this behavior leads others into their group. I’m sure it does. But it leaves me wondering, "Does truth even matter to you guys any more? Do you want it to matter to your converts?" I'm happy to debate every JW belief that differs from orthodox Christianity, but their literature suggests that they no longer have the heart for that kind of confrontation.
But confrontations between truth and error are exactly what Christian evangelizers must seek out and press with rigor. A soul's eternal choices must not be allowed to rest on the pleasant but mushy ground of niceness - they must be moved onto the hard, unyielding ground of truth, and the sooner the better. Otherwise it won't be long before those converted through our niceness are asking themselves, "What if it had been a Hindu who had been nice to me - or a Mormon? Would I have adopted their religion instead? Have I been suckered into a lie by a smiling face and a helping hand?"
Niceness is good and very pleasing to God - but it should never be made to bear the weight of a man's faith. Our faith rests on no other ground than truth. Falsehoods remain falsehoods when taught by the sweetest souls on earth, and the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ remains true even when championed by the meanest bastard on the block.
I heard a sermon where the pastor talked about a new member who became a Christian after she met some people from the church who were nice to her. Impressed with their kindness (they even helped her move into a new home), she trusted Christ and was baptized. Their kindness won her over.
Which is a great thing. We can be thankful for sincere believers whose faith is manifested in loving deeds that bring people to Christ. It is a biblical principle that sometimes our good works can have this effect. For example, St. Peter tells women who are married to non-Christians to submit to their husbands so that "they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives" (1 Peter 3:1-2).
Even so, we must be careful about leaning on niceness as our main means of evangelism. Other people can be nice too. If niceness determines the playing field for religious conversion, then Mormons, Buddhists, Wiccans and Zoroastrians can compete like champions and may even beat us. If we have sent the message, "Follow our faith because we're so nice," we risk being overtaken by even nicer atheists.
The other day I picked up a Jehovah's Witness publication and noticed how much that cult is now trumpeting niceness. Years ago JW literature emphasized doctrinal distinctions (Jesus is not divine, the Holy Spirit is an impersonal force, Jesus returned to earth invisibly in 1914 to usher in the last generation, etc.) Now they don't say a word about doctrine. Instead they talk about being kind and good and how this behavior leads others into their group. I’m sure it does. But it leaves me wondering, "Does truth even matter to you guys any more? Do you want it to matter to your converts?" I'm happy to debate every JW belief that differs from orthodox Christianity, but their literature suggests that they no longer have the heart for that kind of confrontation.
But confrontations between truth and error are exactly what Christian evangelizers must seek out and press with rigor. A soul's eternal choices must not be allowed to rest on the pleasant but mushy ground of niceness - they must be moved onto the hard, unyielding ground of truth, and the sooner the better. Otherwise it won't be long before those converted through our niceness are asking themselves, "What if it had been a Hindu who had been nice to me - or a Mormon? Would I have adopted their religion instead? Have I been suckered into a lie by a smiling face and a helping hand?"
Niceness is good and very pleasing to God - but it should never be made to bear the weight of a man's faith. Our faith rests on no other ground than truth. Falsehoods remain falsehoods when taught by the sweetest souls on earth, and the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ remains true even when championed by the meanest bastard on the block.
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