Anonymous Asks (416)

“What’s the difference between faith and belief?”

As far as the Bible is concerned, there is absolutely no difference between these two concepts. The same Greek word (pistis and members of its family) is translated both “faith” and “believe”. You may be surprised to find that the word “faith” does not appear in most English translations of John’s gospel. Yet he writes, “To all who did receive [the Word], who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”

That is unquestionably saving faith John is talking about, and he’s using the word “believed”. As far as salvation is concerned in scripture, the two words mean the same thing.

Too Light a Thing

“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

The Father is speaking to his Son. When that happens, we all need to prick up our ears. It’s bound to be important.

There are some stunning examples of this in scripture, all regularly quoted in worship services around the world.

Somebody Else’s Mail (15)

Sometimes God gets angry. When his servants sin egregiously, even they may become the objects of his righteous and thoroughly justifiable anger:

“The Lord was angry with me because of you.”

“The Lord was so angry with Aaron that he was ready to destroy him.”

“The Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the Lord.”

“He has cut down in fierce anger all the might of Israel; he has burned like a flaming fire in Jacob, consuming all around.”

But the consequences of God’s anger (not to mention its duration) are not always precisely the same.

Too Hot to Handle: ‘Good News’ Nihilism

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

English philosophy professor James Tartaglia has co-authored a 70-page study provocatively entitled “A Defence of Nihilism” which argues two main points: (1) that life is meaningless, and (2) we shouldn’t sweat it.

Somehow we are supposed to find this encouraging.

Tom: Canada’s CBC Radio recently gave Tartaglia and his Australian co-author Tracy Llanera the opportunity to air their views on its Ideas program. You can find a summary of that here.

IC, how on earth does one come to the conclusion that widespread belief in a meaningless existence “poses no significant problems or threats”?

Who’s Minding the Store?

I’m seeing more and more of those “self-checkout” units at the local stores. They always creep me out a bit. There just seems to be something really weird about the idea of walking up to a mechanical box, shuffling around my own transaction, and then leaving, going out of a store without passing by a person.

I feel as if I owe somebody some kind of explanation, like “Here’s my purchase, and here’s my money, and they match up; so don’t call the cops.” And then this person is supposed to give me the nod, like, “Okay, you’re alright this time; but when you come back, we’ll need to see each other again.”

The Fury and the Joy

“We desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.”

I was reminded this week that languages evolve. A fellow believer embarrassed himself online with a rant that included a line to the effect that a Jew is a person from the tribe of Judah. To be fair, I hear this all the time. He just picked up a talking point from somebody and ran with it. But it’s not so, and it hasn’t been so for at least a couple of millennia. If you doubt that, compare the first four words of Acts 22:3 with Philippians 3:5.

True and Useful

“God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” Ba-dum-bum!

I don’t recall hearing that line of argument against same-sex marriage from evangelicals much prior to the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling in 2015. However, Google’s Ngram viewer shows the phrase “Adam and Steve” appeared in popular culture for the first time around 1978 and peaked in 2011, with a strong tail into 2020.

So then, the line has been around nearly fifty years. It’s an old argument. It’s definitely a true argument. But whenever I hear it I ask myself, “Is it a useful argument?”

Anonymous Asks (415)

“What does it mean that Christ died for our sins ‘in accordance with the scriptures’?”

The phrase “in accordance with the scriptures” comes from two verses in 1 Corinthians, a letter Paul wrote to a church he established during his second missionary journey. The year was probably AD55, making it likely the fifth book of our New Testament chronologically. When he wrote it, the word “scriptures” meant what we now call the Old Testament, no more. None of the gospels existed, so Paul certainly didn’t mean them.

Later, “the scriptures” would come to include the four gospels, many of Paul’s letters and a number from other pillars of the early church, as it does today.

The Balancing Act

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife.”

“Honor your father and your mother.”

God never contradicts himself, and any two of his commands, rightly understood, are never opposed to one another. If it looks to us like they are, it’s because we are not interpreting one or both correctly.

Still, many young couples have difficulty reconciling the command to “leave and cleave” to one another in marriage with their ongoing biblical obligations to parents that continue until they die. For no small number of Christian newlyweds, especially those with demanding parents, it’s a tough balancing act.

Let’s try to balance it by looking at the whole counsel of God on the subject.

Somebody Else’s Mail (14)

The apostle Paul once wrote about his desire to know Christ and share in his sufferings, becoming like him. In doing so, he was responding to God’s own desire that those closest to him understand his heart. In both Old and New Testaments, we find the Lord putting his most faithful servants through hard experiences to teach them how God thought and felt.

Accordingly, we find the Lord testing Abraham in order than he might understand what it is like to give up a beloved son, testing Ezekiel in order that he might know what it’s like to lose one’s beloved, or testing Jeremiah so he would know the cost of telling the truth. I believe such trials were never arbitrary, and never inflicted on anyone who couldn’t handle them. They were expressions of trust and intimacy from friend to friend. Perhaps you have been through similar trials and come out with a better understanding of our heavenly Father and his beloved Son.

Too Hot to Handle: Rethinking Sunday School

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Tom: I have a confession for you, IC. I was a terrible kid in Sunday School. I made everybody’s lives miserable, from the guy tasked with leading the singing to my individual Sunday School teachers. I really didn’t like it much.

The odd thing is that I had nothing against church particularly, or the Bible. I even believed it was true. But I was a total cut-up.

How about you?

Immanuel Can: Yep. Dead with boredom, and ready to make trouble.

Getting to the Truth

“I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.”

— English Common Law
Oath of Testimony

The fight outside a club was broken up by police; but a man was stabbed. Inspector Thomas has been assigned to find the assailant.

When the perp fled, the crowd scattered, but four witnesses remain: a bouncer, the girlfriend, the bar manager and a local cabbie. Inspector Thomas knows procedure; that each must be interviewed separately in order to get a complete picture.

On the Losing End

Hagar. Leah. Peninnah. Michal. What do these four Bible women have in common?

If your answer is something like “They came out on the losing end of a bigamous or polygamous relationship”, congratulations. I don’t have any great reward for you, but if you’ve learned the practical lesson these women’s stories teach us, you will be disinclined to pit family members against one another with your attention and love as the prize. Being flattered and chased is fun, but it’s neither kind nor fair to those forced to compete.

Even the “winners” in these oddball relationships lost something in the bargain.

Things Ovine and Caprine

Schindler’s List was a very successful 1990s movie about a German businessman and member of the Nazi party who saved the lives of hundreds of Jewish refugees during WWII. While the screenplay certainly received the Hollywood treatment and has been criticized for a taking a variety of storytelling liberties, one of which was being overly sentimental, the story upon which it is based is said to be substantially true.

So there is a real-world precedent for the scenario I am about to lay out for you.