On the Obsessive Impulse to Correct Others

Call it rhetoric, hyperbole, sloppiness or slang. Call it figurative language or a poorly-chosen idiom. Call it whatever you like, but imprecise language is a normal feature of human interaction. Christians who do not learn to accept and accommodate looseness of expression from others — intentional or otherwise — are going to struggle in their relationships with the world and with their fellow believers.

Even the most popular communicators affect imprecision when it serves their purposes. Ain’t Too Proud to Beg is a decent song title, I Am Not Too Proud to Beg considerably less so.

Killing the Soul

The Lord Jesus taught that nothing men are capable of doing to one another in this life compares to eternal punishment. Not on their worst day with all the weapons at their disposal. “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul,” he told his disciples. “Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

Interestingly, scientists confirm that our nervous systems have a built-in upper limit to the agonies they may allow us to experience. They refer to the phenomenon as Conditional Pain Modulation or CPM. Pain inhibits pain. In this life, you can only hurt so much.

Anonymous Asks (427)

“What is the Sermon on the Plain?”

Everyone who has spent any time at all in the Bible knows the Sermon on the Mount. The fifth through seventh chapters of Matthew describe the Lord Jesus taking to an impromptu “pulpit” on a mountain in Galilee, leading to three full chapters of teaching that began with his disciples and expanded to the crowds that followed him. Most Christians are well acquainted with it, and most Bibles with chapter headings commence Matthew 5 with the title “The Sermon on the Mount”.

What else would you call it? If there’s a better idea, nobody seems to have come up with it.

Dilettantes and Dominos

The consequences of sinful acts are rarely limited to the life of the sinner. A series of sinful acts can issue in ongoing repercussions. Like dominos.

Many of the circumstances we face in our lives are the product of choices made by our ancestors, by government, neighbors and even our fellow Christians. Much less obviously, in a democracy they are increasingly the result of decisions made by unelected administrative functionaries, more or less by fiat. To dominos it is not apparent what starts the chain reaction that causes their fall.

Somebody Else’s Mail (26)

Much has been written concerning the circumstances that inspired Psalm 11. Some readers assign it to the period of roughly eight years when David was on the run from Saul, others to the time when David’s son Absalom seized the kingdom and briefly threatened his father’s life. Either way, the theme they derive from the psalm is that when faced with the threat of evil, godly people ought to stand firm. It is critical, they say, that God-honoring authority not be lost.

Once again, to nobody’s surprise, I have to disagree. I will be asking the same question that has informed our interpretation of several psalms to date, which is “About whom does the prophet say this?” In Psalm 11 at least, I don’t believe the answer is “About himself.”

Too Hot to Handle: What Doesn’t Kell You...

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

Modern attention spans are what they are. We try to keep these posts to roughly 2,000 words; conventional internet wisdom has it the average person begins to tune out around then. But there were at least three points we didn’t get around to last week in our discussion of the accusation raised by Tim Keller that the traditional evangelical fundraising model is systemically racist.

Tom: IC, I wanted to start out with this thought: Tim Keller is using woke language and making typical social justice assumptions about his fellow believers, but I don’t want to leave the subject without pointing out that there is nothing wrong with self-examination on the part of Christians, churches, and parachurch organizations.

The Force Farce

Last week we were talking about the charge made by so many non-Christians today that we are guilty of forcing our views on them.

At first blush, the charge seemed ridiculous. After all, Christians represent absolutely no threat of physical or political violence: even to imagine that is just paranoid, and completely misunderstands the fundamental necessity of faith. Moreover, Christians may sometimes choose to absent themselves from participating in or approving of worldly values, activities or lifestyles because of conscience, but that represents no threat of force: it’s simply a matter of personal conscience — the very thing that world is at pains to affirm.

So where does the charge of “force” come from?

Not You Who Speak

Yesterday we revisited a 2020 post in which the Lord commissions his twelve closest disciples as his representatives to the nation of Israel. Matthew 10 is one of many examples in the gospels where alert Bible students feel compelled to ask the question “To whom is the Lord speaking here?”

Obviously, he was speaking to the Twelve, but that doesn’t answer the real question. Those disciples played multiple roles in the plans and purposes of God. We might better state the question as “In what capacity is the Lord addressing his disciples?”

Prophetic Trajectories in Matthew

Matthew 10 recounts the commission of the twelve disciples to take the good news of the kingdom to all the cities of Israel.

There is a specifically ethnic character to this set of instructions: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” instructs the Lord.

At this time and for this specific purpose, the Lord equips his servants with a tool kit you and I do not possess in taking the message of gospel to the world today: he “gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction”.

Anonymous Asks (426)

“Are black people mentioned in the Bible?”

Today, we often hear words like “Canadian” or “American” applied to people who manifestly were not born in those nations and have no ancestral history there. The media deliberately conflates legal citizenship or mere residence with ethnic identity, so that it’s not uncommon to see headlines like “Canadian man arrested in France” written about people whose “Canadian identity” is summed up entirely in their possession of a passport and access to our health care system, and who actually spend most of their time abroad. It is a matter of convenience rather than allegiance or shared history.

One hopes a few of these folks also pay taxes, but even that is not always the case.

The Last Recorded Prophecy

“This shall be the sign to you, declares the Lord …”

Bible students are familiar with the difficulties raised by comparing one or two of Jeremiah’s later prophecies to secular historical narratives covering the same periods, particularly those concerning Nebuchadnezzar and his conquest of Egypt.

Having spent a fair bit of time studying other accounts written by secular historians, these tempests in a teapot trouble me not a bit.

Somebody Else’s Mail (25)

God is spirit. I think we can confidently affirm that spirits do not have physical features like we do.

So what’s this David is saying about God’s eyelids in Psalm 11 then? Seems a strange expression:

“The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord’s throne is in heaven; his eyes see, his eyelids test the children of man. The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.”

Hmm. Let’s give this idea some thought before we get into the psalm verse by verse.

Too Hot to Handle: A Time to Kell

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

Tim Keller has been under fire around here lately. In mid-February we fisked a Daily Wire column by Megan Basham that listed Keller among thought leaders credibly accused of enabling Francis Collins to flog COVID propaganda to evangelicals by introducing him as a “friend” during a joint interview for BioLogos.

Collins is a man of the Left, a self-described ally and advocate of the gay and trans lobbies, has facilitated and funded experimental transgender research on minors, and has publicly defended experimentation on fetuses obtained from abortion. It’s one thing to engage personally and privately with such an individual in the name of Christ. It’s quite another to represent him to believers as fellow member of the flock and a trustworthy expert on science.

A Disturbance in the Force

“Stop forcing your beliefs on me!”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that cry when debating with unbelievers. In fact, I’ve heard it so much that I’ve begun to think there might be something behind it. After all, when many kinds of people from many kinds of backgrounds and situations seem to be arriving at the same kind of sentiment, there must be some cause for it, right?

But for a long time I haven’t been able to figure out exactly what it is. The problem is the wording: “You’re forcing …”

Am I? Really? How is that?