Anonymous Asks (419)

“How should Christians think about making reparations for slavery?”

Scripture appears to give a qualified nod of approval to efforts to compensate one generation for the losses of another, but I’m not sure it’s the type of compensation any modern, Western government should feel terribly comfortable emulating. I’m thinking of the time the Gibeonite survivors in Israel raised a legitimate claim against Saul’s family for unsuccessfully attempting to exterminate them.

The “reparations” requested and received by the Gibeonites involved hanging seven relatives of Saul for the sins of their family.

Mercenary Motives

I’ve been thinking a little about why we do the things we do: low motives, high motives and every type in between. Sometimes we act for a multiplicity of reasons and with several different objectives in view.

For Christians, the goal is always to operate from the highest motives rather than the lower impulses, though even these may inadvertently produce what God is looking for. I think of Samson as an example of that. The Lord used his lust for a Philistine woman, a wholly inappropriate matchup, as an opportunity to judge Israel’s oppressors not once but twice.

At the top end of the motive spectrum, of course, sits love. When we do all things from a heart full of love, we have really come to know God.

Somebody Else’s Mail (18)

The sovereign God delights in delegating his own infinite power. We find the earliest scriptural instance of such delegation in Genesis 1:16-18 when the Lord makes the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night, then casually throws in the stars as a bonus. The Hebrew word translated “rule” in that passage is elsewhere translated “dominion”, “power” and “government”. The OT writers use it to describe God’s own sovereign power and authority.

Delegated authority is the principle on which God’s creation operates.

Too Hot to Handle: How Do You Read It? (2)

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

We had a good time with this last week, so Immanuel Can and I have agreed to revisit our growing list of commonly misinterpreted Bible verses and discuss three more examples.

Tom: How about this one?

“For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

How do you read that, IC?

Two or Three

Immanuel Can: I think the first question has to be “two or three whats”, or “two or three of whom”?

Mastering the Pastor Disaster

Her voice on the end of the phone was shaky. Clearly she was very, very upset about something. But she couldn’t bring herself to tell me what. Her words came out in a kind of extended groan that seemed to swell up from inside the depths of her heart, but could only leak past her lips. Something very bad had happened.

As our conversation continued, I gently drew more details out of her broken responses, and it became clearer. Not only she, but all her friends and her church, had been betrayed. A leader in their circle, much loved and widely admired, had turned the corner of a disastrous course. The first of the news had just broken; and she had called me less to tell me than to seek some kind of soothing for her aching soul.

Flyover Country: Obadiah

C.S. Lewis called pride “the essential vice, the utmost evil … the complete anti-God state of mind”. Solomon wrote, “Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the Lord; be assured, he will not go unpunished.”

Obadiah is the shortest book in the Hebrew Bible, so it doesn’t take the prophet more than two verses to get to Edom’s problem. Yes, it’s pride. Pride that metastasized into hatred of their brothers. Pride that pulled the wool over their own eyes and made the Edomites believe they were untouchable. Pride that convinced them they could put one over on the God who had decreed “the older will serve the younger”. “Not so,” said Edom.

It was the word of God. Of course they were wrong.

Gradually, Then Suddenly

“I am the Lord; in its time I will hasten it.”

A friend and I were talking recently about societal decline and the speed with which it occurs. One writer at least has used the phrase “gradually, then suddenly” to describe it. It’s rather like years of erosion followed by an earthquake. First comes a long period in which the foundations are quietly destroyed one after another, then, with alarming speed, the entire house collapses at the tiniest temblor.

God sometimes accomplishes his purposes similarly: gradually, then suddenly.

Anonymous Asks (418)

“Is it wrong for a Christian to be an introvert?”

Introversion is one of those terms whose popular usage has become so inconsistent that you really need to agree on a definition before discussing it. I am an introvert by almost any definition, and in my case, it goes well beyond being reserved, quiet and comfortable alone, as some dictionaries have it. I’m also quickly worn down by too much conversation. I have my limits in social situations. I don’t imagine all introverts are socially awkward, but I am often that as well.

Some dictionaries link introversion with being inwardly focused or self-occupied. To me, that’s more a feature of narcissism or solipsism than of introversion.

Semi-Random Musings (51)

Does God’s will ever change in response to the actions of man? Mull that one over for a moment. I can give you at least one incontrovertible example to consider.

Ready? Okay, here we go. A young man wants to know the Lord’s will about the woman he has been dating. He belongs to Christ, while she is unsaved. I can tell him easily what the Lord wants from him, and so can you: “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers.” It is never the Lord’s will that a young Christian man violate that command. We can be sure of that 100% of the time.

So then, he goes ahead and marries her anyway. What’s the Lord’s will for him now?

Somebody Else’s Mail (17)

Long before the Lord Jesus ever used the title “Son of Man” to describe himself, the concept had a history with which devout Jews looking for their Messiah were well acquainted. Ezekiel not only had the title before the Lord Jesus, he had it used to describe him many more times than the Lord Jesus, 93 in total. In fact, God himself chose to address his servant that way, as he did Daniel.

What can we learn from that? Not much, probably, except that the hermeneutical “Law of First Mention” is nowhere near as reliable as the law of gravity.

Too Hot to Handle: How Do You Read It? (1)

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

We’ve done maybe seventy of these exchanges now on various subjects, Immanuel Can. But what we’ve never done is a post on commonly misunderstood scriptures. Everybody does those. I’m feeling left out.

So why don’t we just do it like the Lord Jesus did with the lawyer and ask the questions, “What is written? How do you read it?” That’s a pretty solid precedent to work from.

Tom: I’ll start. Let me lob you a softball here, IC.

The Pastor of Disaster

Andrew sat back and stirred his tea. “What kind of church are you in?” he asked.

“Well,” I said, “I was in a conservative evangelical group, but it seems perhaps I’ve been kind of bumped out.”

“What do you mean?”

“We were in one kind of church, but we had to leave; now we’re sort of in-between, looking for what the Lord would have us do.”

“I will tell you why you left.” His voice was even and certain. He leaned forward. “It was because of … that man.”

It Was Necessary

The Greek language has a word we translate into English as “necessary”. It is anagkē, and Strong’s dictionary says it refers to some obligation “imposed either by the external condition of things, or by the law of duty”. It refers to a thing that had to happen. One example of its scriptural use is in Hebrews, where the writer says, “It was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.”

It was required. It had to happen that way. There was no other.

Pure Milk of the Word

From the Department of Very-Much-Intended Consequences, you may have recently read that AI companies are purchasing massive quantities of rare books, scanning the pages to “train” their algorithms, then shredding the original books. If not, you probably will soon.

If that sounds improbable considering the almost inestimable quantities of training data available to them free via public domain access on the Web, there is indeed a sort of twisted logic behind the ‘scan-and-destroy’ strategy.