.jpg)
We evangelicals love to use words long past their best-before date. Perhaps the reading material we share in common influences us to sound alike, or maybe we hear other people using a word and pick it up by osmosis.
Here’s one I’d be very happy never to hear again: winsome. It’s not in any translation of the Bible I’ve ever owned, and I’m pretty sure we don’t need it to be.
Have you ever heard anyone but a Christian say it? I certainly have not.
Proverbs is wisdom literature. As such, we expect it to deal with mostly with practicalities and real-world concerns, and this is exactly what we find: relationship advice, sound strategies for home and workplace, political savvy and oodles of good old common sense.
What we might not expect to find in Proverbs is a plethora of references to God. In fact, the generic “God” [elohim] and the specific, personal “Lord” [YHWH] appear in Proverbs a combined total of 96 times across 31 chapters, the vast majority being the personal name of the Lord.
On reflection, that too makes sense. There is no real wisdom apart from God. He is the source of all genuine understanding about life.
.jpg)
“To what extent are friendships transactional?”
If you peruse secular media and believe what you read, your answer is probably a quick and hearty yes. Perhaps you have come across the expression “toxic friendship”. The line of thinking currently in vogue is that your friends exist to benefit you. When they stop being satisfying and become more trouble than they are worth, it’s time to give your old pals the boot right out of your life. In the words of Marie Kondo, “The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now, not for the person we were in the past. Keep only those things that speak to your heart.” By “things” she means people.
Hmm. Let’s see what the Bible says about that.
I don’t believe in evolution. One reason is that I can do math. Another is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. A third is that evolution requires more faith than Christianity does, based on far less evidence. I have plenty more reasons besides those. Evolution is not my subject today, but its lack of substance is always worth mentioning when the younger generation may be lurking around.
Yet another reason I don’t believe in evolution is that my theology excludes it. You cannot reconcile the teaching of Christ and his apostles with the teaching of Darwin and his acolytes. Not coherently.
.jpg)
We were looking last week at the future, earthly opposition to God and his Messiah described for us in Psalm 2. David tells us that the rulers of the nations in those days will take their stand against both, craving freedom from the moral restraints Christ’s righteous government of our world will impose upon them. The psalmist cautions them from resisting the Lord’s Anointed. But as Isaiah would later write, “Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end.”
A fallen world will not want that, even if it comes packaged with all manner of millennial blessings.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
The website GodIsImaginary is an interesting study.
As you might guess from the title, it’s the work of evangelical atheists attempting to lure gullible Christians into the spiritual equivalent of a Venus flytrap. The bait is a little bit of flattery: “I’m going to assume you are an educated Christian”, “You are a smart person. You know how the world works, and you know how to think critically.”
It’s quite a clever move actually. For once, they’ve dialed back the mockery and abuse atheists can rarely resist in the interest of catching more flies with honey.
I was talking to a close friend last week. He’s serving as an elder in a local congregation of believers. A man of their gathering has raised an issue; he feels very strongly that certain forms of worship are simply out of court for Christians. But the form he most particularly dislikes is one that scripture never even really talks about one way or the other. In fact, if I told you what it was, you’d likely be very surprised; it’s something that Christians have done routinely for a long time now.
My pal was struggling with how to handle this guy.
The objector is pretty strong on his beliefs, and he’s not at all happy that the elders are not jumping to his side instantly. But my friend is more thoughtful and scriptural in his convictions; and I think he senses that the objection is more a matter of personal preference than of principle.
An unsaved friend and former co-worker passed away unexpectedly this week, to my great regret. You always assume you’ll have more time … until you don’t. I will forever appreciate her for the compassion she showed a sister in Christ with mental issues whom she helped find (and we both helped move into) a new home after her husband of forty years abandoned hope for his marriage and left her late in life. My friend was a profane and improbable angel of mercy to that poor lady, and I pray she found some of that mercy when she met the Lord. The judge of all the earth will do right.
That’s not why I’m writing about her, but I’m still having trouble processing the sudden death of an exuberant woman not quite into her fifties and in glowing health. You simply never know.
“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”
Children are largely a product of the parenting they receive. The New Testament writers presumed the basic truth of this statement in instructing the early churches. If they had not, Paul’s repeated directions concerning eldership qualifications would make no sense. (“His children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination.”) The apostle takes for granted that good parenting produces predictable results, and that bad parenting too produces its evidence in time.
If we care about what the apostles taught, we will disqualify any candidate for church leadership who has been unsuccessful in convincing his own children to follow his ways.
.jpg)
“How should the church deal with gossip?”
Words can be a deadly poison. The gossip presents himself in public as a friend, then stabs you in the back when you’re not expecting it. He betrays confidences, reveals secrets and causes endless unnecessary heartache. Jeremiah said that tale-bearing is characteristic of the “stubbornly rebellious”. That’s not a inscription I’d want on my tombstone.
Let’s not kid ourselves. Gossip happens among Christians too.
“When a man’s folly brings his way to ruin, his heart rages against the Lord.”
When the NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers eliminated the Pittsburgh Penguins from Stanley Cup contention in six games last week, fans of the Penguins complained online about an NHL rule that prevented their team from changing the color of its home jerseys mid-series. The thought was, apparently, that if only the Pens had been wearing their cool black jerseys instead of the repulsive yellow gear in which they took to the ice to start the series, their luck might have changed.
People are superstitious. I know that’s not exactly news. My own take was that scoring a few more goals might have been more effective for Pittsburgh than any mid-series jersey swap.
.jpg)
Some day soon a Jew is going to rule this world, and he’s going to do it from the throne of David, making beleaguered Jerusalem the capital city of our planet.
There may be notions more offensive to modern sensibilities, but I can’t think of any at the moment. Let’s just say the nation of Israel is not currently in vogue. But that’s what the Bible teaches. It’s called the Second Coming of Christ, the hope of Israel, and the literal fulfillment of the Davidic Covenant. It’s an idea so audacious that it even riles up a significant segment of Christendom.
Guess what? The Gentile nations of that coming day will not be thrilled about it either.
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?
“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.
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.
“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.
.jpg)
“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.
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.
.jpg)
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?
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
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
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 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.
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.
.jpg)
“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.
“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?
.jpg)
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.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Kristin Howerton thinks evangelicals need to rethink our response to the gay marriage issue. “Is the debate over gay marriage what we want to be known for?” she asks:
“Do these squabbles speak love? Does the loud and passionate protestation about same-sex marriage draw others to Christ?”
Tom: Good questions, Immanuel Can. Is there any easy answer? Or is this a debate where both sides may have legitimate concerns?
Alison writes:
“Something [has] been bothering me for a really long time. Everybody says, ‘Read the book of Job for comfort, blah blah blah’, but look at Job 1:8.
‘Have you considered my servant Job?’ The speaker is God.
OMG did you get that?!?! It was YHVH who pointed Job out to the Adversary in the first place! He might as well have said, ‘Sic him, Satan!’ ”
[Throws hands in the air and wonders what it’s all about anyway]
That’s a big question, Alison. And though your wording may jar some readers, I think that at the end of the day, it’s actually quite a fair one.
A single line from Doug Wilson’s most recent fake letter to a Jewish man grappling with the Christian faith leapt off the screen at me this morning. It was this: “Jesus did not rise from the dead because Sandi is beautiful, and He did not remain in the grave to keep your parents from having to grieve.”
That’s not going to make a whole lot of sense to you if you haven’t read the post. It doesn’t really need to. Doug’s point was that people have all kinds of personal issues, problems, conflicts, needs and desires that Jesus Christ can address and satisfy. But Christians are unwise to present him to the world as merely a “fix” for their personal issue of the week, month or even lifetime.
That’s not first and foremost who he is or why we preach the gospel.
“Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.”
The situation is as follows, and you have probably seen it many times. I have.
A married man comes to faith in Christ. His wife is not quite there yet in her thinking, and she may never be. How should that new believer look at his existing domestic arrangements? What does the Bible have to say about that?
The situation could just as easily be reversed, and often is. I have seen more wives than husbands saved first over the years. Perhaps women are easier to engage in conversation.
.jpg)
“Is it wrong to be pessimistic?”
The New Testament epistles have much to say about Christian joy. Paul mentions it six times in each of 2 Corinthians and Philippians, and five times in 1 Thessalonians. Our joy is one of the ways the world know we are different. Peter, John, Jude, the writer to the Hebrews and even grumpy old James mention joy too. By my count, that’s every NT letter. Joy should characterize the Christian life.
Of course, joy is not mere optimism. It’s far more than that.
“I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”
I think it’s fair to say God rarely gets a fair shake from any but his own.
If any being in all the cosmos has ever been so second-guessed, given zero benefit of the doubt, or had the worst of all possible motives attributed to him, it is the Creator and Sustainer of our universe. Some of the more vicious attacks on God’s character are merely laughable when closely analyzed. We easily dismiss them as ignorant blathering.
Other critiques feel like they might have more substance. The Christian attempting a defense for his faith finds himself with a difficult task.
.jpg)
Reading somebody else’s mail can be a profitable exercise. We can learn much about the Lord and his ways from truths he has not directly shared with us, just as I can learn a great deal about my natural father’s character by reading his letters to my brother or sister. We can take very personal lessons from things that happened to people from wildly different cultural backgrounds in distant times and places. After all, God is the same God. He never changes his character.
That is not true of his tactics and strategies. Those may vary quite a bit.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
I heard that most young people drop out of church today, either for a short or indefinite time, around age 18-19. I was concerned: after all, if we lose the next generation, what’s going to happen to the church? But then I found this glossy new resource, and it’s really helping me to understand what today’s young adults are going to find relevant by way of spiritual stuff. I’m sharing it with you, Tom, because I know you’ve got young-adult children of your own.
Just in time, eh?
Tom: Uh, thanks, IC, I think. Why is it that some Christians seem to think that being “relevant” actually means “pandering” or “condescending”?
The most extraordinary thought occurred to me today.
I’ve been debating with atheists online again …
Yeah, don’t ask.
Anyway, one of the funny things they do is to call up the alleged records of theist “atrocities”, which of course they then want to attribute to all Christians. Apparently, we’re responsible for everything from the Crusades and Inquisitions to the Holocaust and (according to atheist popularizer Bill Maher) “all the wars”.
If this lack of any historical or theological awareness were not funny enough, a favorite canard of theirs actually involves the Salem Witch Trials.
I was texting a Christian friend yesterday. The poor guy is stuck in the middle of a disagreement with the CRA (Canada’s IRS) over his assessment for a previous year. Everybody he talks to at the tax office tells him a different story about what he owes and why.
Having a little inside knowledge about the way bureaucracies operate, I could assure him this will continue to be the case, and to suggest that he keep talking until he finds an auditor who agrees with him. Enough calls and polite appeals, and there’s a good chance one eventually will. I see it happening all the time. People have a tendency to give up too easily when they are in the right.
The big illusion about both tax law and every other kind of law is that putting instructions in writing with exacting precision leads to greater certainty and a single, predictable outcome. In fact, the more we multiply words, the more interpretations proliferate.
Baruch Davidson notes that the Jubilee year is not observed or commemorated in modern Israel.
Before the Assyrian conquest of the northern portion of the divided kingdom in the sixth century BC, Davidson says, the Jubilee was regularly celebrated. But a dispute over the interpretation of the words “all who live on it” in Leviticus 25:10 has led many Jews to conclude that the festive year of freedom may only be celebrated when all twelve tribes are living in the Promised Land. So until the return of the ten “lost” tribes, the Jubilee is on hold.
That may not seem a big deal today. It would have been a huge deal to an Israelite in the years before the Assyrian captivity.
.jpg)
“Why is finding true love so difficult?”
The list of possible answers to this question is lengthy, so I won’t pretend to get to them all. Perhaps we can start with some of the features of our society that work against us when we are in the process of trying to pair up for life.
First on that list is an affliction sometimes called “oneitis”.
My brother was joking the other day that he might someday preach a message entitled “Ten Things a Bible Teacher Should Never Say from the Platform”. I trust he’s compiling his list as I write. I hope one day he’ll tell me the other nine.
In any case, we both agreed heartily about this one: “I’m not speaking to you, I’m speaking to myself.”
No. No, no, no. Please, no.
“God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness.”
Dear readers, if you will indulge me, let me tell you a parable just a very little bit like the one Nathan told David. I trust you may not have cause to be as stricken as David was when the prophet’s point went home into his soul, but if you need it, you need it, just like David did.
If you are not “the man”, all the better, not just for you but for us all.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
This is an interesting take. The Independent brings us the story of Joseph Atwill, who has written a book entitled Caesar’s Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus.
Atwill says Christianity is actually a “system of mind control” developed by the Romans to “produce slaves that believe God actually decreed their slavery”.
Tom: Who knew, Immanuel Can? Our whole faith is nothing more than the product of a first century propaganda campaign. Fortunately someone finally figured that out for us. Or not.
“The unexamined life,” said Socrates, “is not worth living.”
Well, he didn’t actually use those precise words, but that’s
how it’s been quoted since — in books, on coffee mugs and
How seriously ought we to take that? True, he’s called the Father of Philosophy, and he was notoriously smart. But the guy wore bedsheets, and died a long while ago. How seriously can you take a guy dressed in bedsheets?
.jpg)
A developing trend in his local congregation troubles a regular Blog & Mablog reader named Brian. It’s the sisters. His church leaders have started inviting women to read scripture to their fellow believers and to lead the congregation in public prayer. He inquires:
“Is there an exegetically defensible way to interpret 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Corinthians 14 in such a way as to permit women to [read Scripture and then lead in prayer on Sunday morning during public worship services]?”
I don’t think he’s looking for an end-around these scriptures because he goes on to wonder if this trend is sufficient reason to break fellowship and go elsewhere.
Growing up in a Christian home has a tendency to normalize things some people might consider quite unusual. This is especially true with respect to Bible reading. My parents made it a practice to familiarize all their children with God’s word from cover to cover. Every morning before school, we gathered in the living room for a few minutes of Bible reading, discussion and prayer. This went on well into our teens, so we covered a lot of scriptural territory.
Guess what? The abnormal became normal from simple familiarity.
.jpg)
“What is apostasy?”
The word “apostasy” comes from the Greek ἀποστασία, transliterated apostasia. Very few English translations of the Bible use it much. Strong’s defines it as falling away or defection. It’s closely related to the word commonly translated “divorce” in the New Testament. One place we do find it is in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, where it refers to a major future event in which the “man of sin” is revealed to the world.
A reader writes, “Jew does not mean Israelite and not one verse in scripture says so.”
If you search the words “Israel” or “Israelite” in combination with the word “Jew” in a concordance, you will find no single verse of scripture that contains both. In this, I suppose, our reader is correct when he writes, “Not one verse in scripture says so.”
He’s right: Not one single verse says it. I can absolutely do it in two, though.
When did John write the book of Revelation? Have you ever thought about that? It’s actually a matter of some controversy.
Anyone familiar with the various schools of eschatological interpretation will immediately see why dating Revelation matters, and matters quite a bit to those invested in it. Preterists believe most of John’s visions chronicled in chapters 1 through 19 came to pass not long after he wrote, fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple by the Roman army in AD70. Futurists believe little corresponding to most of these events has yet taken place.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
The term “postmodern” is not actually all that modern. John Watkins Chapman used it in the 1880s in relation to art criticism. Umberto Eco has said that postmodernism is less a style or a period than an “attitude”.
The attitude comes out clearly in what is produced by postmodernists in their various fields: postmodern graphic design disdains traditional conventions such as legibility; postmodern music rejects beauty and sometimes structure; postmodern philosophers reject the concepts of subjectivity and objectivity. You get the general idea.
Tom: Immanuel Can, help me nail it down: what is postmodernism?
“Lot raised his eyes and saw all the vicinity of the Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere ... So Lot chose for himself all the vicinity of the Jordan.”
I have a friend.
He and I made our commitment to live for the Lord around the same time. But I stayed in our home area, and he went away to Hollywood to make his fortune.
This post is going to be about Calvinism’s least favorite word.
For those who don’t know, Calvinism is the belief that God is like Fate ... a big, inexorable, controlling force that decides everything in the universe long before you get a chance to, and allows no place for free will. Calvinists talk about “the sovereign decrees of the Almighty”, or just “sovereignty” for short, by which they mean you have no choice. Even your willingness to be saved, they say, has to be irresistibly pressed upon you from above. “Faith”, they say (misreading Ephesians 2:8), is a “gift” — but one like no gift you’ve ever had; it’s crammed down your unwilling throat by an arbitrary God. They even say that regeneration, the new birth, has to be done to you without your agreement, and before salvation — before you can hear and respond to the gospel. God is the puppet master and you’re on the strings.
If I sound lunatic in saying all this, don’t worry; Calvinists stand squarely behind it. Just ask them.