There is no such thing as a truly secular state. Man was made to worship, and if he will not worship the one true God, then he will worship false gods. If he does not worship false gods, then he ends up worshiping himself. But worship he will, one way or another.
The problem with alternatives to the worship of the one true God is that they are all futile.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
If you’ve been watching the numbers over the last few months, it should be evident to even the most Negative Nancy that the COVID-19 rates of infection and death are finally decreasing steadily. We may reasonably discount the weekly cries of the media alarmists about the latest terrifying variant; that’s just what they do when they’re all out of stories about dying polar bears.
Tom: And so we are beginning to hear tentative musings about reopening businesses and getting back to something approaching our pre-March 2020 way of living. As someone who worked in the office throughout the entire song and dance, I was more than a little surprised to read that I am not necessarily in the majority in my desire to see society normalize. Tim Kreider of The Atlantic has decided he’d rather stay in bed, along with untold numbers of others who would rather work from home forever ... or preferably not work at all.
IC, didn’t one of the ‘seven deadlies’ use to be the sin of sloth?
I was chatting with a young man yesterday.
He considers himself a Christian. And maybe he is. I hope he is. But he’s certainly confused about something very basic to salvation; and maybe it will surprise you what it is.
He doesn’t really understand sin.
Now, understanding what it is we are saved from is pretty necessary to salvation, so I’m concerned. I want him to have a correct grasp of how sin relates to the holiness of God. And I’m troubled that his teachers have not taught him this.
So I’m going to try to do a short explanation for you. And I’m going to start with this question:
How bad is sin?
The Latin term vaticinium ex eventu is used by liberal scholars and critics of the Bible to describe a prophecy they believe was made “from the event”, or literally after the fact. For example, German scholar Ferdinand Hitzig objected to prophecies about the king of Egypt made in Jeremiah 44:29-30, calling them vaticinium ex eventu. The argument of men like Hitzig is that later writers forged one or more prophecies in Jeremiah’s name based on events which had already occurred, and grafted them into the existing text of Jeremiah, presumably in order to make his writings appear more credible.
Hitzig died in 1875, by the way, so obviously this is not a new issue. And he’s far from the only expert to make such claims.
“Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, so that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs.”
“Outwitted” is a translation of the Greek pleonekteĊ, which is closely related to another word that English translators consistently render as “covet”. So pleonekteĊ doesn’t really have all that much to do with wits or intelligence at all. Rather, it refers to a situation we may aptly describe with the phrase “zero sum game”.
“Did Ishmael become a great nation?”
The question is in reference to a promise God made to Abraham in Genesis 17 to bless the son he had with his wife’s Egyptian servant, Hagar: “As for Ishmael, I have heard you; behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He shall father twelve princes, and I will make him into a great nation.”
It’s a compound promise with a few clear stipulations to it. Surely it’s worth a few minutes of our time to check and see if God made good on it, right?
“When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”
“He told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.”
So then, which is it: are we to ask, or are we not to ask? How does one reconcile the two apparently contradictory ideas in these verses? Is it really possible to pray too much?
In the Bible, the word lamentation refers to a dirge, song or hymn of mourning.
It is certainly possible to grieve privately and in silence. Often we do. But there are losses we share, and injuries of such scope and magnitude that they call for men and women to join their voices together in unified expression of misery. In 1997, songwriter Bernie Taupin repurposed his 25‑year old elegy for Marilyn Monroe into a tacky, maudlin and singularly appropriate pop culture farewell to Princess Diana that reinvigorated Elton John’s flagging musical career, sold 33 million copies worldwide and remained in Canada’s Top 20 for a full three years.
Some hearts were obviously touched around the world, and they sang along. That’s a lamentation.
When John Milton, the famous 17th century poet and eventual author of the epic Paradise Lost realized in mid-life that he was going totally blind, he felt a rising sense of panic. How could a wordsmith be of any value, to God or anyone else, when he had not even the use of his own two eyes?
When the great night finally descended, he was reduced to dependency and darkness. And understandably, he agonized over why the Lord would allow such a thing. He recorded his struggles in a short poem — perhaps his most-quoted piece of work.
“When I consider how my light is spent …” he began. With half a life left to give, what point would there be in him losing the one great talent he had? It would remain, he worried, “lodg’d within me useless”, and yet his “soul [was] more bent to serve therewith [his] Maker”. How could he give an account to the Lord if he could no longer serve, and in fact, could no longer even see?
So I’m browsing through old emails, and I find this one from JR, naturally received in the middle of the night. He was up, I was up, and I guess these are the sorts of things we think about when we can’t sleep:
“Hey ... I’m just reading a book where the author is discussing Mt 16:19. He says that since the verse is talking about the kingdom of heaven, it is referring not to the church age but to the coming kingdom and that the verse is therefore referring to the church’s role in that kingdom (reigning with Christ). Keys speak of authority, etc. He further points out that if we interpret it in that context, the weird ideas that many have drawn from that verse evaporate.
I’ll have to give this some thought.”
Okay. Interesting.
Quite some time ago, I wrote a post on the subject of the order of the books of the New Testament, which, as most of our readers are probably aware, is anything but chronological. I noted that I had decided to start reading the NT in the order it was written (as far as we are able to determine) on my next daily pass through the Bible “just to see how it goes”.
Time flies, and more than five years have passed since I wrote those words. I am just starting my eighth straight trip through the NT in chronological order, which seems as good a time as any to report on the experience.
I’m going to give it a big thumbs-up.
“What does Romans 14:5 mean?”
The verse in question comes in the middle of a passage in which the apostle Paul is seeking to discourage Christians from quarreling over opinions.
That makes it fairly important to understand what Paul means by “opinions”.
“… a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.”
“Among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women …”
“… that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.”
Weakness of will. Instability. Confusion. None of these qualities have been traditionally considered admirable in Christian circles, and with good reason. Indecisive people make poor signposts. Our role models rarely include those who fail to exhibit self-control. Erratic individuals are not likely to have your back in times of crisis.
In his book The Riches of Divine Wisdom, David Gooding notes that the writers of the New Testament had a distinct advantage over the Old Testament prophets in that they now looked back on the prophecies and histories of the Old Testament from the vantage point of having witnessed their fulfillment in Christ. Gooding writes:
“In that light it was inevitable that they should perceive that the intended meaning and scope of God’s Old Testament prophecies were often far greater than many people realized at that time.”
Makes sense. The more light you have, the more you can see.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
English philosophy professor James Tartaglia has co-authored a 70-page study provocatively entitled “A Defence of Nihilism” which argues two main points: (1) that life is meaningless, and (2) we shouldn’t sweat it.
Somehow we are supposed to find this encouraging.
Tom: Canada’s CBC Radio recently gave Tartaglia and his Australian co-author Tracy Llanera the opportunity to air their views on its Ideas program. You can find a summary of that here.
IC, how on earth does one come to the conclusion that widespread belief in a meaningless existence “poses no significant problems or threats”?
“Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”
A few years ago, I remember hearing about an evangelist who claimed he’d managed to conquer sin absolutely, and eliminate it from his life. In fact, he said he hadn’t committed one in twelve years.
His wife, apparently, backed him up on that.
Now, if you’re a woman that has lived with a man for any period of time longer than fifteen minutes, you probably suspect the wife has gotten into the cooking sherry. It’s just not reality. Sinless perfection just isn’t possible on this earth. And if you meet someone who says he’s achieved it, he probably needs to take a second look — if at nothing else, at the sin of pride.
But I don’t need to tell you that. You know from your own experience. As I do, from mine.
At work a few weeks ago, the old phrase “one flesh” came up in conversation. I can’t remember how exactly, but I think it had something to do with the low priority modern married couples often place on the husband-wife relationship in comparison to the parent-child relationship. Sadly, we all know people whose emotional attachment to their children or parents greatly exceeds their loyalty and commitment to their own partner.
In our highly atomized age, the concept of two individuals becoming mystically united seems exotic, even unrealistic, to many. So what does it mean? Does “one flesh” merely refer to the sex act itself? Does it refer to the cooperative production of the fruit of marriage, children? Can two people really function as one person?
“For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.”
What does it mean to “go on sinning deliberately”? That’s a very important question. Our sense of security in Christ and our enjoyment of the experience of following him in this world depend on how we answer it.
“Is it okay to take communion at home?”
As is the case with many questions about the Christian faith, the answer to this one very much depends on the motive.
On the ‘yes’ side, there is plenty of New Testament precedent for taking communion at home.
A letter to Doug Wilson from an Australian named Ben poses a familiar question:
“Since I, like everyone else (except Adam and Eve), am born into this sinful state, how can God truly be just in judging me for committing sins I was destined to commit?
Our ‘free-will’ is not really free at all. I think our will is like a set of old-fashioned scales, then our scales are definitely not on the level. They are heavily weighed down towards the selfish side, causing most, if not all, of our choices to be made with a selfish heart; a heart I didn’t ask for or have any say in receiving. I was just dumped into this wretched state, into a wretched life, and then at the end destined to be judged by The Most High, for breaking laws I had no chance of keeping.”
Bound to get interesting, wouldn’t you say?
“And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy …”
Peter, quoting scripture at Pentecost to explain why Parthian, Median and Egyptian Jews were hearing Galileans speaking their native languages, preceded these prophetic words with the statement “This is what was uttered through the prophet Joel.”
Hey, if Peter says so, I believe him.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
It’s an oldie but goodie. Much-loved opinion columnist Dave Barry has a few words to share about the Sailor Moon cartoon my own daughter grew up watching:
“Sailor Moon is the blond, ponytailed heroine of a wildly popular Japanese cartoon show. Sailor Moon leads a team of female superheroes who wear miniskirts and go-go boots; according to the AP story, they ‘combat evil and sexism’ using special powers that they get from their ‘magical brooches, scepters and compacts.’
That’s right: These heroines, striking a bold blow against sexism and outdated stereotypes of women, get their power from jewelry and makeup.”
Boom. Mic drop, long before mic drops were a thing.
Have you ever heard of a mondegreen?
That’s the technical word they give it when you listen to something, but you hear something different.
Apparently, people do it all the time when they’re listening to song lyrics, for example. There is some phrase that is sung, but their ear picks up something different, often with irrational results.
Want to see if you’ve ever mondegreened? Okay, if you have even a passing familiarity with popular music, you might be able to guess what famous songs produced the following mondegreens. (I’m guessing most of us are in middle age somewhere, so I’ll keep the examples a bit retro.)
Many years ago now, a man I love and respect opened up the book of Matthew and read us the story of the centurion’s faith. You will recall that the Lord commended this Roman soldier as exceptional because he understood that Jesus possessed the ability to heal from far away as easily as he could heal when immediately present, so he didn’t wish to trouble the Lord unnecessarily by asking him to undertake a journey in order to do him a favor.
The centurion expressed his conviction this way: “I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
“Only say the word ...” Wow. That was indeed great faith, and the Lord responded to it.
We are forever being told we need to keep open minds. Close-minded people tend toward confirmation bias. We wouldn’t want to just see what we expect to see, right?
Hey, an open mind is a wonderful thing. But an open mind needs to be open the same way a baseball glove is open.
“Can the balm of Gilead heal?”
Well, there’s an obscure question for you!
I suppose first we should probably ask what the balm of Gilead is. I don’t imagine most people, even some regular readers of scripture, have the slightest idea.
Genesis 37 makes reference to a “caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead” and bound for Egypt. These men were merchants and traders, and one of the goods they had for sale was balm, salve in the form of wax or resin to be applied topically. They acquired this balm east of the Jordan River in Gilead, later part of Israel. Genesius’ Lexicon says this medicine was secreted by a plant known to grow only in that region, though the actual species is today a matter of dispute among scholars. The plant was extremely rare, its medicine believed to be very effective, and was highly valued and sought after. Once Israel conquered Canaan under Joshua and populated the Transjordan highlands, they effectively cornered the world market on Gilead’s balm.
“Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel ...”
Here is a verse often considered controversial. Obviously it is not truly a matter of controversy; an apostle wrote that the woman is in some sense “weaker” than the man, and the Holy Spirit of God spoke through him when he did. He wasn’t being a misogynist; the very notion is ridiculous. So then, our responsibility as followers of Christ seeking to live for him is to accept what we read whether the notion of inequality of the sexes in any particular area appeals to us or not.
Like most fathers, I disciplined my children when they were young and disobedient.
We can think about discipline in either of two ways: firstly, as punishment for sinning, which it most certainly is. When an evil act is committed, it deserves a penalty. Justice cries out for it, and if justice doesn’t make its voice heard, a child’s siblings generally will. But secondly, most acts of discipline are also designed to encourage repentance. A good father desires that the offender learn his lesson and stop offending, both for his own sake and for the sake of those he offends against.
Both these aspects of the disciplinary process are in play in God’s dealings with Israel in Amos 4.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Tom: I have a confession for you, IC. I was a terrible kid in Sunday School. I made everybody’s lives miserable, from the guy tasked with leading the singing to my individual Sunday School teachers. I really didn’t like it much.
The odd thing is that I had nothing against church particularly, or the Bible. I even
believed it was true. But I was a total
How about you?
Immanuel Can: Yep. Dead with boredom, and ready to make trouble.
Sometimes we’ve just plain got the wrong word in our Bibles.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I know translators are highly skilled people. In almost every case when it was first translated it was the right word. It was clearly understood by its audience. It was the best English equivalent in its generation for a particular Greek or Hebrew expression.
But languages evolve. Meanings morph. Sometimes they even reverse themselves. Words that worked in one generation no longer transmit the intended message without causing confusion, eroding our ability to grasp what the writers of the word of God were trying to tell us. More than a few beloved expressions hang on well past their expiry dates.
My candidate of choice? The word “grace”.
Religious freedom is not a Christian value.
There, I said it.
Now, let’s be real about it: religious freedom is certainly a value held and promoted by many Christians. It is also a benefit that, when conferred on us by the occasional society that looks favorably on the faith (or simply neglects to single it out for special persecution), has made preaching the gospel a whole lot less painful for those who preach it. If I could have religious freedom or not have it, I would certainly prefer to have it.
Nevertheless, these things in themselves do not make religious freedom our inalienable right, and they should not remotely encourage us to seek to spread it around.
“Did God make any promises to Abraham that remain unfulfilled?”
I count 40 separate promises to Abraham made over the course of seven chapters and a period of (very approximately) 40 years.
How about that.
Your mileage will certainly vary, for a number of reasons. For example, promises #3 and 4 could be considered a single compound promise if you like, but since they affect two distinct groups of people and could each stand alone, I am reading them as two separate promises.
Free trade is “a policy followed by some international markets in which countries’ governments do not restrict imports from, or exports to, other countries.” Or so reads the Infogalactic entry on the subject. The history of free trade goes back centuries, at very least to Adam Smith in 1776, but its global application really awaited the decades following WWII. I grew up with the idea, and accepted it unquestioningly as a “good” of sorts, a necessary corollary to freedom, capitalism and economic growth that benefits all.
After all, who wants to be a commie pinko, right?
Why would God extend an invitation to sinners to keep right on sinning? Isn’t that the exact opposite of what he really wants?
It’s not a bad question. Yet the scripture frequently shows us God standing back and allowing the sinner to act out the evil in his heart, from his warning to Cain in Genesis 4 that “sin is crouching at the door” (which went sadly unheeded) to the accumulated sins of Babylon in the book of Revelation, which are “heaped high as heaven”.
This divinely permitted real-world actualizing of the evil desires of the heart often comes at great cost to others. Yet here in Amos, God once again invites the people of Israel to “multiply transgression”.
Nobody likes being told they are wrong. It’s hard on our pride. For this reason, we may behave very badly in the process of being corrected. But if you’ve ever stumbled around in the dark, looking for answers and living with the painful consequences of your own mistakes, then you may have come to appreciate the value of a faithful and true witness; one who risks your anger and hostility to tell you the real story about yourself; one who cares enough to get involved when others would simply keep quiet, go about their business and let you continue in your misery. Faithful and true witnesses are rare and precious.
And if you have ever told the truth in front of hostile men and women who don’t want to hear it, then you know the cost of faithfulness and truth in giving testimony.
In chapter two of Daniel, the Chaldean king Nebuchadnezzar dreams of the end of all this world’s great secular empires ... including his own. A great stone representing an eternal kingdom set up by the God of heaven destroys the image of which Babylon was the golden head.
The weak point of the statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream was its feet, which were a less-than-sturdy composite of iron and clay. Perhaps with this in mind, the king eventually decided to build an image of his own. His version was ninety feet high, with no weaknesses which might be easily targeted by other would-be empire builders. Anyone who observed it saw nothing but gold from head to toe.
“If Christians are forgiven, and they know they will be forgiven no matter what they do, why should they refrain from doing evil?”
Jesus warned his disciples from the very beginning of his ministry on earth to expect that there would be counterfeits among their number. The apostle John writes about what happened when Jesus began to perform miracles in Jerusalem at the Passover. He says, “Many believed in his name.” Then he adds this: “But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.” Some of these “believers” were not genuine in their desire to associate themselves with him, and would later fall away.
Recently received from Bernie, and well worth sharing:
“ ‘Don’t cross me.’
‘You’re making me cross.’
‘I’m at a crossroad.’
All these common phrases speak to a conflict — and not a minor one at that. “Cross” is the coming together of two (often mutually contradictory) standards. What you are choosing to do is not what I want you to do — and thus I am “cross”, or you are “crossing” me. When I’m at a “crossroad”, I am faced with a choice that is one of two directions that do not go to the same place.
“Cross” is a collision, an intersection, a choosing point.
I am understandably reluctant to compare other men’s wives to cows. Let’s just say the criticism may not be well received.
Amos says some hard things, but they were given to him to say, and he dared not water them down or modify them. These are God’s words, not his. And if God wants to call your wife a cow, you had best listen. More importantly, your wife would be wise to pay attention.
Then again, if she were wise, the Lord wouldn’t be calling her a cow.
The differences between the things that are and the things we perceive are probably too great to enumerate.
In North America many of us live in suburbia alongside what appear to be perfectly pleasant, civil human beings. And by the standards of our day they are. Sure, like everyone they have secrets — desires that they wouldn’t express during a family get-together and things they have done about which nobody is aware — but by and large these are pretty normal, civic-minded, responsible individuals.
Have they sold their souls to Satan? We would say it’s unlikely, even absurd.
Alcoholics Anonymous uses an abridged form of what is called the Serenity Prayer as part of its 12‑step program. There are different versions of the prayer, but the one most people are familiar with goes something like this: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
I generally dislike trite formulations, but there is a certain biblical wisdom to this one, which should not surprise us given that the prayer is attributed to a 1930s theologian named Reinhold Niebuhr.
Also, it begins with the word “God”, always a good starting point.
“How can we redeem the time?”
The word “redeem” in our English Bibles translates the Greek exagorazĊ, meaning to “buy up” or to “buy back”. The instruction to “redeem the time”, which we find in Ephesians 5:16 and Colossians 4:5, acknowledges that much of our time is in someone else’s control, and that if we do not do something active to acquire control of it for ourselves, those moments will slip away from us and be lost forever.
I don’t know about you, but that describes my experience of life these days pretty well. Gone are the lazy afternoons of childhood when my brothers and I might occasionally complain about being bored or having nothing to do. Time has taken wing, and there is never enough of it to do everything that needs doing.
“I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride ...”
Bible students familiar with the books of Exodus and Numbers, in which Israel’s failings during their period of wilderness wandering are thoroughly documented, may be excused if they find these words from Jeremiah unlikely and supremely generous. I suffer a similar bout of cognitive dissonance when I read Peter’s words about Lot: “That righteous man lived among them day after day ... tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard.”
Really? The guy who slept with not one but both his daughters? The guy who voluntarily chose to live among the Sodomites? The guy whose wife was so in love with that corrupt society that she turned back and became a cautionary tale so memorable that “pillar of salt” references still appear in secular literature from time to time almost 3,700 years after it happened?
That Lot?
When I was in my early twenties I had a job at a local gas station. One of the first things I learned was how to tally up cash, cheques and credit card chits (remember those?) at the end of my shift. If it turned out the number of gallons of gas pumped during those eight hours was different than the number of gallons paid for, any shortage came out of my pocket.
Seemed a little rough to me, but it was a lesson in accountability. I’ve found myself up against equivalent practices in every job I’ve held that placed me in a position of trust.
“Should someone start attending a church if he or she doesn’t believe in God?”
I will add a couple more related questions: Should someone read the Bible if they don’t believe it? Should someone pray if they are not sure there is anyone out there to hear them?
And then I will answer them all the same way: Absolutely.
