Too Hot to Handle: Bucking or Buckling?

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

I promised quite a while back now that we’d talk about this subject some Friday in the future, and there’s no time like the present.

Tom: IC, we opened a can of worms on the subject of authority and just how the Christian ought to respond to it. That’s not something evangelicals have had to worry about too much in the West for many years, but it’s a topic that’s becoming increasingly relevant as governments begin to encroach on the freedoms we currently enjoy in the interest of a “just society”.

So how about it? Got any grenades to lob on this subject?

Choking On Our Empathy

“I know exactly how you feel.”

How many times have your heard that line, or a line like it, when you were expressing some personal sorrow or woe to another?

And was there ever a doubt in your mind that when the person said it to you, they were wrong?

They had never been you. They had not faced your situation. If they meant well, they were imagining themselves in your place, maybe; more likely, they were transferring some experience of their own and placing it upon you, pushing your real experiences aside in favor of remembering their own. They were feeling empathetic with themselves, not with you.

And in some cases, they were not meaning well at all.

Towers and Cities

Most Hebrew proverbs take the form of stand-alone couplets. The second line amplifies, compares, contrasts with or restates the first line in order to provide additional insight. Then it’s on to the next subject. Some chapters of Proverbs must cover fifteen or twenty different areas of life in thirty verses or fewer.

Then there are proverbs that sit side by side for good reason.

Weights and Measures

“A just balance and scales are the Lord’s; all the weights in the bag are his work.”

Sometimes a proverb you’ve read dozens of times just hits you a different way. Perhaps Solomon is saying something like this: Every transaction fairly concluded has its governing principles derived from the character of God. If you got what you were looking for, it’s not because you were lucky, clever or deserving. It’s because the Lord sets and enforces the standards by which the world treats us and by which we are to treat others.

This is true whether we are talking about selling beef, meting out justice in the courts, or paying a day’s wage for a day’s work.

Anonymous Asks (404)

“Is God opposed to pleasure?”

The Bible paints a consistent picture of a God who both experiences pleasure and designed his creatures to experience it too. The same is true of delight, if there is any difference between the two concepts. (Personally, I think delight is a little more intense, but I won’t insist on it as an article of faith.) A simple concordance search for either term turns up numerous references to things that give God delight and things that don’t. Likewise, scripture contains many references to things in which humans take pleasure, whether or not we should.

It would be strange indeed to find God comprehensively opposed to something he not only created, but which originates in him.

Livestock and Loved Ones

There are still a few wonderful things in this increasingly weird world. A good number of them are covered in fur, and occasionally wool.

You do not find many pets in the Bible. Life thousands of years ago was generally harder, and people were poorer, hungrier and more pragmatic. Most verses that mention animals have to do with wildlife and livestock, not domesticated creatures living indoors.

Somebody Else’s Mail (3)

Before we dive further into our sequential exposition of the Psalms, it’s probably a good time to set out what my objective is in devoting every Saturday for more than the next three years, Lord willing, to one of the longest books in the Bible.

An aside: You may be surprised to realize Psalms is not the lengthiest by any standard other than total chapters and verses. I was. It’s actually third-longest. By Hebrew word count, both Jeremiah and Genesis exceed Psalms by a fair margin. (Translating Hebrew poetry into English apparently requires more words than does prose. The original is quite succinct.)

In any case, it’s a very long book and a major project. Why invest the time?

Too Hot to Handle: Empty-Somethings

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

The Telegraph reports an Italian court has ordered a divorced father to pay child support for his 28-year-old son, who has already meandered through one degree in literature and has now enrolled in a post-graduate course in experimental cinema.

Tom: I bring this up, Immanuel Can, because this is not an isolated case. Most parents have not been nailed for child support, but many all over the world have their adult sons and daughters living in their homes well into their thirties and beyond.

The phenomenon has a name in Italy. They call it bamboccioni, which essentially means “chubby children”. You had what I thought was a better idea, IC. How about “empty-somethings”?

Who’s Running This Place Anyway?

Churches today need leaders — badly. And biblically speaking, that means they need elders.

“Elder” doesn’t necessarily mean ancient but it does mean spiritually mature, so some age and experience are required, of course.

Unfortunately, spiritually mature people are in short supply these days. I fear that the majority of my generation, the currently middle-aged, didn’t spend much of their youth reading the Bible or seeking spiritual growth opportunities. Consequently, those now in the best age group to be selected as elders to lead the churches are not quite up to the task.

But churches still need leadership.

The Rod Revisited

The writer of a recent article in Canada’s National Post is troubled by a report that about 20% of parents aged 18 through 42 still spank their children. “Is that even legal?” asks Sharon Kirkey. Thankfully, I’m well past the age where I have to wonder if that insistent knocking on my door is Children’s Aid making a friendly visit, but research shows corporal punishment was not just an acceptable option in my generation. It remains acceptable today, especially among those who were themselves spanked as children.

Now, that’s interesting. It strongly suggests those who have actually experienced spanking believe it has its merits.

The End of All Argument

Is Jesus Christ a created being? Orthodoxy says no, the heretics say yes, and the argument has been going on for centuries. Even today, Jehovah’s Witnesses will plainly tell you, “God created Jesus before creating Adam.” One of the most common texts employed to attempt to demonstrate Christ’s ‘createdness’ is John 3:16, along with other verses in the New Testament that use the word monogenēs [“only begotten” in the familiar language of the KJV]. John uses the term four times.

The reasoning is that if Jesus was “begotten”, then there had to be a point before which he did not exist.

Anonymous Asks (403)

“How should a Christian respond to unreciprocated romantic interest?”

Christians are called to love one another, but it’s a very specific kind of love. “Just as I have loved you,” the Lord Jesus told his disciples, “you are to love one another.” That was the “new commandment” he gave them, and one of its purposes was to identify Christ’s followers to the world. “By this all people will know that you are my disciples.”

If the love the Lord commanded and commended is like his own, it should be obvious there is no element of romance in it.

What Constitutes Biblical Evidence?

“The Bible gives clear, direct guidance on many topics of morality, but not on birth control. Thus, any inferences from the Bible are opinions and not Biblical evidence.”

Where the subject of the morality of birth control is concerned, this quote from the Christian Bible Reference Site is probably as good a place as any to start.

The question it raises in my mind may be framed different ways. One way: Are direct commands from God our only real source of unambiguous moral guidance? Another way: Do inferences drawn from established biblical principles really constitute such an ephemeral and debatable source of spiritual direction that God may as well have given us nothing at all to go on?

In short, what exactly constitutes legitimate biblical evidence?

Somebody Else’s Mail (2)

I have a second introductory post coming next week, but I’m eager to get going, so let’s just jump in.

The author of Psalm 1 is unknown. Naturally, most scholars attribute these first six verses to David. For me, that’s a bit like the answers you get from ten-year-olds in Sunday School to questions about who did this or that in the Bible: they always guess either “God” or “Jesus”. Kids are not stupid. Those odds are usually better than 50/50; that’s just how Sunday Schools roll. Hopefully, they think, there’s something better at stake than yet another pencil. Maybe so do the scholars.