Somebody Else’s Mail (31)

There is no shortage of hills and mountains in scripture, but it seems to me that the phrase “holy hill” or “holy mountain” [קֹדֶשׁ הַר] applies exclusively to Mount Zion.

Psalm 2 is one of the more blatant examples (“I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill”), but there are others. Psalm 48 connects the holy mountain with “Mount Zion, the city of the great King”, as does Psalm 99. Isaiah writes of the “holy mountain at Jerusalem” and Psalm 43 associates the “holy hill” with the “altar of God”, something that would only be true in the years after the tabernacle moved to Jerusalem.

Too Hot to Handle: The Big Story

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

Tom: Oh no, here we go: Immanuel Can has been getting email again.

Moody Publishers and Justin Buzzard have this to share:

“Everybody in your city has a story. Preaching is your opportunity to share the Bible in a way that engages each one. But how do you do this with both Christians and non-Christians at your service?

Unforgivable Sin

Over the holidays I was browsing a bookshop, and by chance happened to pick up a copy of Søren Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death (1849).

Now, I’m not saying it’s a book everybody’s going to find easy to read. I don’t think it’s one that an unbeliever — no matter how bright — is really going to be able to understand. Nor do I think an average believer will find it straightforward. But if you’ve got the will and the ability, and especially if you are a person of some theological background and an interest in the welfare of Christians generally, I most highly recommend it.

It’s blowing my mind.

Inbox: Description vs. Prescription

In response to the post Is and Ought, Tertius writes:

“Long time Bible readers will make such distinctions, but perhaps not know the way to explain to others why they must be made. You have put a well-packaged set of rules for interpretation and application in their hands and so are helping teachers how to teach; a much needed service to the Church.

An example or two of the common mistake of using the descriptive in the narrative in Acts as though it was prescriptive would be a useful addition.”

I agree. I think we can probably find several.

Is and Ought

The Bible tells it like it is, and most times it tells us what we should do about it. But not always at the same time, and not always in the same place.

Much of the Old Testament record is very dispassionate; very ‘just the facts, Jack’. Sure, from time to time an inspired author offers his editorial comment, but this is a rarity. Most of the time, we are simply getting a record of what happened. Those who need to find an application to their own lives beyond the obvious must in many instances look elsewhere in scripture to do so.

To fail to note the difference between the parts of scripture that are prescriptive and those that are merely descriptive is to invite confusion.

Anonymous Asks (431)

“What does God care about what two people do in private if it’s consensual?”

I remember discussing this question years ago with a Catholic acquaintance. The notion that God might have an interest in what two people do behind closed doors perplexed her mightily. She thought it absurd, and flatly rejected the idea, as many do.

Does mutual consent make a sex act morally neutral? What do the scriptures say?

On Self-Control in the Modern World

An article in The Times of India back in April of this year confirmed a trend in the current generation of young adults moving into the workforce, something I’d noticed earlier but not really been able to nail down. What opened my eyes was a few months of contract work last year in which I found myself training and working alongside teens and twenty-somethings for the first time since the early nineties.

I was astounded by their utter lack of self-discipline, like no group of employees I’d ever seen before.

Somebody Else’s Mail (30)

Jacob Gerber refers to Psalm 14:1 as “one of the most important texts in the Old Testament that informs the Christian doctrine of Total Depravity”.

“Total Depravity” is indeed a doctrine Christians hold, but not all Christians mean the same thing when they use the term. TD is the first point of five-point Calvinism, also called TULIP. Many Christians, myself included, understand it to mean that the fall of man affected every part of him — intellect, will, emotions and biology — the total human package.

The natural person is born into this world morally damaged and separated from God in every possible dimension. Sin taints everything about us.

Too Hot to Handle: Outspoken Faith or Poor Judgment?

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

You may not have heard of him, but Kelvin Cochran was Fire Chief in Atlanta up until last week when he was terminated by the mayor. He was also a Christian. You can read about it here if you’re interested.

There is some disagreement as to precisely why he was fired, but the bottom line is that if he had not published a book entitled Who Told You That You Were Naked?, in which he expressed his understanding of the biblical view of homosexuality, he would still be employed.

Tom: Immanuel Can, former Fire Chief Cochran is not the first and won’t be the last Christian to lose his job as a consequence — whether it’s a remote or a direct consequence — of taking the Bible seriously and saying so publicly. We are both Christians with opinions who still work for a living. What’s your take on this developing trend?

Living Under the Blade

Damocles, R. Westall, 1812

The ancient writer Cicero has an anecdote about a man named Damocles, a boot-licking courtier to the ancient despot Dionysius II. Damocles foolishly thought he’d like to see what it was really like to be a king, and so the king granted his wish.

Damocles quickly settled himself into Dionysius’ luxurious couch and began to enjoy the pleasures of rule — being fanned, having serving maids feed him, issuing commands, and so on. But in order to make the experience truly authentic, Dionysius gave one further order: that above Damocles’ head a shining sword would be suspended by a single horse-hair, so that he might be ever conscious that at any moment it might fall and carve the presumptuous pseudo-king in half.

Of course, Damocles soon begged the king to be allowed to return to his former position.

On the Spirit of Fear

Apart from Romans 13:1, for my money the most frequently cited Bible verse during the COVID years was 2 Timothy 1:7: “For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” Christians who quoted it were usually trying to encourage one another not to overreact to the media propaganda campaign that had so many around us in an absolutely irrational state.

As with so many verses evangelicals quote out of context, they were applying this one to a subject we can safely say never occurred to its author. Paul was not writing about fear of the early 2020s pandemic or any other.

The Commentariat Speaks (39)

Mental Health America says 80% of Americans experience emotional abuse and that 84% of women and 75% of men report having a “toxic friend” at some point. Toxic people, they tell us, are manipulative, self-centered, relentlessly negative, judgmental and passive aggressive. Worst of all, toxic people make us feel bad about ourselves.

Their solution? Eliminate the toxic influence. Cut them off, say sayonara, so long, adios.

Anonymous Asks (430)

“Are all false teachers equally culpable?”

The apostle Paul makes an interesting comment in his second letter to Timothy. He writes, “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.” This is in harmony with his teaching in Romans about the debased mind. If you want to know what going from bad to worse looks like, Romans 1 is the place to find it.

For those who haven’t read it, a debased mind is what you get when God has basically given up on you.

Snowmobiling on Thin Ice

“Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God.”

One of my friends grew up in a small, northern town with a stepfather whose job description included transporting the dead to the local funeral home. Supper-time conversations during the cold winter months frequently concerned which neighbor, acquaintance or school chum he had just delivered to the mortician. An alarming number of the deceased were fished out of the local lake.

Morbid, yes. But the point is that, like faith, the utility of confidence depends entirely on its object. If the ice is too thin, it won’t hold a snowmobile no matter how skilled and experienced its rider may be. Likewise with confidence misplaced.