The third letter of the Hebrew alphabet is gīmel [ג], which means “all”. Gabriele Levy’s Alefbet says gīmel signifies “a dynamic balance between opposing powers … constant transformation, change and motion, and translates literally as camel, an animal we associate with motion and travel between faraway places”.
I think that image may help with these next eight verses of Psalm 119, which, as I read them, are all about sojourning, an obsession with truth and otherworldly priorities.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Rachel Held Evans, who is post-evangelical herself, documents dissatisfaction among those she calls “defenders of the marginalized” in U.S. evangelical churches. In some quarters, it appears, the fact that so many of their fellow pew-occupiers voted for Donald Trump is not going down well.
Brandi Miller tweets, “I drafted my divorce papers with evangelicalism a long time ago. Tonight I serve them.” Glennon Melton asks, “Does a Love Warrior Go? YES. If that’s what her deepest wisdom tells her to do.”
Tom: What do you think, Immanuel Can? Imagine your fellow churchgoers voted for an immoral, bigoted incompetent with no regard for the dignity of women, as Rachel so delicately puts it. Something worth leaving your church over?
This morning a new video appeared on YouTube.
To my surprise, it had arch-atheist Bill Maher in admiring conversation with Dr. Jordan Peterson, the pro-Christian conservative.
This is Bill Maher, who personally coined the insult “religulous” to describe all religions. But here he was, literally stumbling over himself to give a platform to someone who claims that understanding religion, and particularly Christianity, is vital to the survival and future well being of Western culture.
Amazing.
“You lack one thing,” said the Lord Jesus to his wannabe disciple. “Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”
Oops. Remember now, Mark says Jesus loved this fellow. Whatever we might think about the effectiveness of the Lord’s method of qualifying potential followers, we would not accuse him of making it too easy on them. Sorrowful and disheartened, the man went away without accepting the offer. He had “great possessions”, and he returned to them.
Would you have taken the Lord up on that deal if it cost you your lifestyle and status for the rest of your days? I’m not sure what I would have done. I’m glad salvation wasn’t offered me with a price tag on it.
Doug Wilson has a little encouragement over at his blog for Christians worried about the US election next week.
That would not be me. No fussing and fretting in this corner. I can cheer for a particular outcome I believe to be best, pray for it and even get emotionally invested in it without spiraling into depression if in the end it doesn’t go my way.
That’s either the work of the Lord in conforming me to
However it shakes out, we are in for interesting times as we head into the new year.
.jpg)
“What’s the difference between contentment and stoicism?”
I was recently thinking through how believers ought to deal with change. Denial is obviously not a Christian option, though it’s a very natural one. Intransigence is also generally unhelpful; there are situations in which no movement is good movement, but these are rare. Stoicism is a third common reaction to change, even among followers of Christ.
Oh, we wouldn’t call it that. Most of us haven’t read the stoics to know what they believed.
Billy Graham once asked, “Is AIDS a judgment of God?” He then answered, “I could not say for sure, but I think so.” Allegedly, he later apologized and retracted the tentative connection. Big surprise. I’m sure he got major heat for that line.
The wrath of God is a concept usually identified with flood, fire, famine or pestilence on such an epic scale we may attribute them to little else. When fire falls from heaven, for example, it’s difficult to come up with a more convincing explanation than “God’s angry”, especially when a prophet calls it only seconds earlier.
It’s one thing to intellectually acknowledge the benefits of regular Bible reading and meditation. It’s another to actually do it day in and day out. That requires a consistent application of the will. Those who make the word of God their daily companion will reap the benefits of it. Dabblers, dilettantes and occasional readers will not.
On to section 2 of 22 in Psalm 119, where each line begins with the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which looks like this: בּ. It is pronounced “bet” rather than “beth”. Put it together with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and you get “aleph-beth”, from which we get “alphabet”.
The influence of Hebrew on the individual units of the English language is not profound, but its overall impact is considerably greater, as discussed here.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Tertius drew my attention to this three-year-old blog post written by a self-described “twenty-something Christ follower” who says he is same-sex attracted.
That makes him a member of a small but disproportionately influential group. Infogalactic has this survey of the various attempts made to measure the demographics of sexual orientation. The numbers are all over the place, but nowhere do they exceed 5% of the population.
I like to fish.
I’m very fortunate. In the town where I live, a river runs nearby. It starts above the town, and it meanders its way through, coming out at the far end and continuing for some distance. I live in the upstream end, very near the river. In a few moments I can be out fishing on any summer’s day; and the fishing is pretty good. The river’s clean, flowing and healthy.
The obsession with unlimited freedom of choice that we considered in yesterday’s post is nothing new. Mankind has always desired to dine from a menu of infinite possibilities. The apostle Peter even writes about false teachers who invaded the church of the first century, defied spiritual authority, and drew off followers after themselves. What was the attraction of such men? “They promise them freedom.”
Ooh, look, more options!
Some people reject the Christian faith without ever giving it a proper hearing. The distractions of the world keep them from ever getting around to it. Some reject the faith because the way it is presented to them makes it unappealing. Others understand what they are hearing, and even see the appeal, but refuse to give up a besetting sin to which they are in thrall and so come to Christ.
These are reasons I understand, though I don’t agree with them.
.jpg)
“Is it a bad sign when lots of people leave a church in a short period?”
You cannot judge the value of a cause by its worst day in the public square, and you cannot judge the spiritual state of a church by the number of people spilling out its doorways, never to return. A great deal more information is required to pass judgment intelligently than simply “people are leaving”. We need to understand why they are leaving, or else our conclusions will be mistaken.
Departures may be an indicator something is wrong with the shrinking church. Equally, departures may indicate serious spiritual deficiencies in those making their way to the exits.
“I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is … a reviler …”
To say churches these days are full of unhappy people would be saying way too much: some are, some are not. To say most churches have their resident sourpuss, however, is no exaggeration. Spend a year anywhere and you will almost surely meet at least one man who disagrees with everything his elders are doing and can’t wait to tell you all about it. The question is this: When does a man’s personal unhappiness with his local church reach the point where his congregation is better off without him?
That one’s a little harder.
Hebrew proverbs frequently involve line pairs, with the second line being some kind of restatement of the idea expressed in the first, or else providing a contrast, clarification or correction to it. In an extended series of these, such as we find in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, context is generally irrelevant, though there are occasional exceptions. The subject may change twenty times in the course of a chapter.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
The Autumn 2016 edition of City Journal is home to a lengthy but remarkably even-handed piece entitled “The Real War on Science”, in which author John Tierney points out that it’s actually Progressives rather than right-wingers who are holding science back.
Tierney reveals that academia has become what he calls a “monoculture”, much like the media, that is in danger of losing public trust because so many scientists insist on mixing politics with their jobs.
Tom: We’ve documented this trend here a number of times, Immanuel Can. [Way too many times to link to, in fact; click “science” in the topic sidebar on our main page to view all our articles on the subject.]
My friend WiC has been after me for some time to publish a list of the things Christians have achieved for modern, Western society and for the world in general. I think he has the idea that it would be handy for many of us to have easy access to such a list. And I have stalled as long as I can. Lest he wear me out with his insistent asking, I am now capitulating to his request. I trust his conviction that many of you will find it helpful will prove true.
Billy Graham founded Christianity Today in 1956. For years, the monthly magazine was a living room staple in my parents’ home, pretty much the gold standard of popular evangelical credibility.
Andy Stanley heads a 23,000 person megachurch in Atlanta and is credited with making Christianity relevant and comprehensible to a new generation. I have friends who watch him … er … religiously.
Rick Warren wrote a bestseller that led many to the Lord.
Beth Moore has sold millions of books and is quoted more often than any other Christian woman these days.
Russell Moore? Well, Russell seemed to ooze grift since I first heard his name, so I can’t speak to his purported accomplishments in the evangelical world. Maybe he’s the outlier.
Learning to live biblically requires we cultivate the practice of maintaining complementary truths in balance with one another. It is insufficient to establish rules for life from a single proof text while ignoring other relevant passages that may modify, limit or otherwise contextualize it. We need to ensure we have considered the whole counsel of God on a given subject, rather than simply grabbing an outlying verse that appears to give us clear direction only when taken in isolation.
So what about multi-generational households? Is this allegedly-biblical practice something Christians should consider?
.jpg)
“Why should we restore a brother caught in a transgression in a ‘spirit of gentleness’?”
A gentle spirit is appropriate to restoration. Paul gives us one reason right in these first few verses of Galatians 6: Because you or I could so easily make the same error. “Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted,” the apostle writes. He adds, “For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.”
“That would never have happened to me” is dangerous thinking, and it makes you useless at the job of helping a fallen brother learn to stand again.
.jpg)
Greg Koukl at Stand to Reason is trying to clear up confusion on the subject of humility in a recent post.
He’s responding to a preacher’s comment that “Humility is the one virtue that if you think you have it, you don’t.” He thinks that’s a mistaken notion, in that it’s both disheartening and textually inaccurate.
Let’s see if Greg’s reasoning stands up …
Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible by any metric you might choose.
In English, it’s 176 verses and approximately 2,445 words long (depending on your translation). The English verse divisions reflect a highly regular underlying structure based on the Hebrew alphabet, with each of its 22 sections made up of eight pairs of ideas. All eight verses in each section begin with the same Hebrew letter, and the letters are in order.
It is probably the most carefully crafted chapter in the entire Bible.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
According to Shane Morris of The Federalist, a LifeWay Research survey of 3,000 people found that significant numbers of Americans who identify as Christian actually embrace ancient heresies.
Tom: The survey results confirm my own prejudices, Immanuel Can. I’ve been reading for years that upwards of 80% of Americans claim to be Christian, and I’ve never been able to buy it. You can’t convince me Roe v. Wade has been law for the last forty-plus years because of 20% of the U.S. population.
Do you find the general public level of knowledge about Christianity surprising?
Ah, liberal Christians.
How they do let their Maginations run wild sometimes.
You’ll see what I mean in a minute.
First, a little history ...
The Maginot Line was a massive French fortification that ran 943 miles between the Alps and the English Channel. The brainchild of Minister of War André Maginot, it was designed to repel attacks from Germany. The horrors of the trench warfare in the first “War to End All Wars” had persuaded the French of the need for better national defenses. The Maginot Line had everything going for it: super thick concrete, steel-wedge gun turrets that were impervious to bombardment, large, air-conditioned living areas for troops, supply storehouses, its own railway …
.jpg)
On at least six occasions, both Peter and Paul encourage Christians to be sober.
I use the word “encourage”, but they actually command it; we should not view sober Christianity as optional. Nevertheless, there is no high-handedness about the instruction: in Paul’s case at least, it’s “Let us be sober.” All believers from apostles to babes in Christ need to adopt this attitude, whatever it might involve. Paul too was striving to achieve that which he commanded.
Of course, to be sober we need to have a scriptural idea what sobriety involves.
.jpg)
Worldwide, 50 million people live in slavery. Yes, in 2024.
India has 11 million slaves, China almost six million. In fact, 86% of the world’s 195 countries still have some form of modern slavery, including the US. 22 million of our world’s slaves are in forced marriages, 40% of these being children (defined as below the age of eighteen).
It gets worse.
.jpg)
“What should be the focus of a Christian funeral?”
I always remember attending a Roman Catholic funeral at which a sobbing relative hurled herself on the casket, her howls of grief painfully and embarrassingly audible in an almost-empty room with high ceilings and a lot of stained glass. She probably lay there for less than a minute, but it seemed like forever.
I’ve never seen that sort of thing at an evangelical memorial, but you can never rule it out.
Once there was a facet who aspired to be world’s biggest diamond.
Once there was a telescope lens who thought he should be the object of the astronomer’s eye.
Once there was a cog who thought he was a factory.
And once there was a created being who said, “I will make myself like the Most High.” When he fell, he took the whole world with him.
So then, 212 posts. I almost hate to see the end of it. This series might be the most fun I’ve ever had writing about the word of God for free in my spare time (of which I currently have way, WAY too much). I’m not sure how many of our readers benefited from it, but nobody benefited from it more than I did.
I started with the idea that Andy Stanley is wrong about the Old Testament’s irrelevance to the Christian message. I’m more convinced than ever of that. The gospel is anchored to an Old Covenant narrative and worldview, and the Christian “case in the marketplace”, as Stanley refers to it, depends on respecting and making use of the entire story God has told the world concerning his Son.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Larry Taunton has a link up to this Washington Post story about divorce and its effects on the next generation. The Public Religion Research Institute says children of divorced parents are significantly (12%) more likely to become non-religious adults.
Tom: You’ve taught thousands of teens in your thirty-ish years in the education system, IC. What do you think: does that sound plausible?
Immanuel Can: Absolutely. I believe I’ve seen it in the changes in behavior of the average student, but more tellingly, in their personal reporting of their feelings and attitudes.
Tom: In your experience, how would that show itself?
So I was supervising some young Christians, along with at least one unbeliever. They were viewing an apologetics video. It was one that had been professionally produced — you know, the kind that had enough money put into it to reasonably approximate Hollywood or TED Talk production values. Their local church had made it available, off that Christian video-streaming service that some churches seem to like.
The topic was “Why Does God Allow Suffering and Tragedy?”
What a great topic, I thought. Whether you’re a Christian or an unbeliever, that’s got to be something you’ve asked yourself, because you don’t live long in this world without running into some kind of suffering. If you’re fortunate, it’s small; but it’s astonishing how huge the things some children face can be.
There are many ways to go wrong in this life. Accordingly, the writers of God’s word use a broad spectrum of vocabulary to deal with the concept of sin. Listening to a recent recorded message from the son of a good friend, it occurred to me that it might be useful to start compiling a biblical “sin dictionary” to try to cover all the bases.
That turns out to be a little more difficult than one might think.
As a pastor, Doug Wilson is concerned about an over-reaction to egalitarian feminism that disparages the idea of providing daughters with a “rigorous education”. Later commentary suggests Doug’s idea of rigorous means something like a “general liberal arts education … at the college level” (university in Canada). He feels discouraging one’s daughters from pursuing such an education is “a really bad idea”.
Accordingly, Doug recently banged out seven theses on the subject to make his case.
.jpg)
“Who is the ‘friend who sticks closer than a brother’?”
The line comes from a section of Proverbs attributed to King Solomon. Many Hebrew proverbs state a truism twice in slightly different words. Other times, the two statements contrast. Either way, the first line usually provides a clue to the interpretation of the second, or vice versa. In interpreting proverbs or poetry, I try to let whichever part is easiest to understand guide me through the bit that’s a little tougher.
In this case … hoo boy, good luck.
Some time back, I remember hearing a famous pop singer prating on about being “born this way”. To her, the package with which she entered this world constituted an excuse for anything she might do as an adult that others might consider immoral, perhaps including God himself. To be “born this way” explains and justifies all.
In that respect, she spoke for much of her generation.
.jpeg)
New Testament quotations and allusions to Malachi are
primarily (though not exclusively) related to the role of John the Baptist as
the herald of Messiah who would make ready for the
Lord “a people prepared”, tying together the two halves of our Bibles
and bridging the
Let’s go through these in as close to chronological order as possible.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Not all religions acknowledge coming judgment, but Christianity does.
Tom: As we discussed last week, Immanuel Can, the Bible teaches there is both a general judgment of sinners and a separate, distinct judgment of Christians. That division was not clearly traced in our Old Testaments, and most Jews know next to nothing of it.
But it’s there in our New Testaments, and getting rid of it involves ripping out whole pages of Paul’s epistles.
Immanuel Can: Lay it out for us, Tom: what’s the difference?
“Chaaaaarge!”
A half-dozen knights leap over a hill to attack a rabbit.
Unexpectedly, the little white bunny turns and attacks the knights, killing some and wounding others.
“Run away! Run away!”
Scattering shields and armaments, the terrified knights clamber back over the hillock, and duck in shame.
* * * * *
It’s a famous scene called “The Killer Rabbit” from the 1975 comedy feature film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I’m reminded of it every time I converse with a Calvinist.
“Who are you, O man, to answer back to God?”
In Romans 9, Paul teaches that God has mercy on whomever he wills and hardens whomever he wills. The apostle then notes a potential objection: “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” I’ve quoted the apostle’s response above: “Who are you to answer back to God?” In essence, God made you, and it is his right to do as he pleases with you. As the Gospel Coalition’s Justin Dillehay puts it, Paul “questions the critic’s right to even lodge the objection”.
October 31 is Halloween to some. This year, it’ll also be the 507th anniversary of the day Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany. That’s as good a day as any to celebrate the beginning of Protestantism, though it took another dozen years or so to formally organize the new denomination.
It was not the first major split in church history, nor was it the last, but Catholics and Protestants have been sparring about it verbally (and sometimes physically) ever since.
.jpg)
“I just graduated Bible college without finding a partner. Would taking a pastorate improve my prospects?”
Having only just graduated, and being presumably somewhere in your mid-twenties, if your primary concern is attracting women, I recommend starting a rock band. That’s a sure-fire profession for wannabe chick magnets. A pastorate, not so much.
Of course, if you can’t sing or write music, that’s a bit of a problem. Let’s work with your original suggestion a little.
Blessings are unequal. Love is unequal. Reward and punishment are unequal. Even trials and tribulations in this life are — you guessed it — unequal. (Perhaps we should be grateful for that last one.)
To some, God’s economy looks a tad irregular, perhaps even unjust — at least, by the measure of man. Others rationalize the plain wording of scripture away, or deny it by hypothesizing that God actually does treat everyone equally, but just in neat, invisible ways we can’t observe or quantify, a theory for which neither life nor the Bible provides any evidence. Still others don’t read their Bibles enough to notice the issue.
.jpeg)
A word of thanks to any of our readers who have made it through even a portion of our massive Mining the Minors project as we begin winding down the series. To date, we have posted a grand total of 210 straight Saturdays, or over four years, on the messages of the twelve Minor Prophets, a task I felt many questions about attempting back in September of 2020.
At the time, I wondered if such a lengthy series might not be cut short by the Lord’s return. I expect that’s still possible, and if not this series, perhaps the next.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
On her way to work a few months ago, a Muslim driver urged my friend to reconsider her ways in view of coming judgment. The driver knew nothing at all about his passenger, but he was convinced his god will one day be both her judge and the judge of all mankind.
Tom: Not all religions acknowledge judgment is coming, I suppose, but many do. It is not an exclusively Christian teaching. But there are some things about biblical judgment that make it distinctive, Immanuel Can, and perhaps we can explore some of those today.
“My sheep listen to my voice, and I know them …”
“I know them.”
It’s funny … wouldn’t you expect the Lord to have said, “My sheep listen to my voice and they know me”?
That would be parallelism. That would be equivalent. That would speak of our recognition of the Good Shepherd, just as the first part of the verse emphasizes it. We know his voice, and we know him.
But it’s not that.
.jpg)
An anonymous Christian man recently produced this wall of text looking for advice about his marriage, appropriately entitled “A Broken Situation”. To cut a long story very much shorter, it’s a fifteen-year marriage during which the husband indulged a porn habit for many years, before finally confessing to his wife and two Christian men, all of whom are now keeping him accountable with the aid of a software package they monitor regularly. For the last three years, he’s also been part of a weekly men’s prayer-and-confession session, which he feels has been a help in keeping spiritually on track.
So here’s the catch: the porn habit ended six years ago. The monitoring and weekly confessing continues, probably until the Lord returns.
The quest to control the input into our own consciousness is probably thousands of years old. We all have our ways of trying to backburner the unpleasantries of life while maximizing the good bits. My brother and I shared a coffee on his deck last week, and we talked about a friend whose way of dealing with things he doesn’t like, even in adulthood, is simply to refuse to acknowledge them. “I don’t think about that,” he’ll say.
If you have no distracting technology to aid you, I suppose affected stoicism or denial are the best available refuges from truth, if a tad primitive.
.jpg)
“Is hell a literal lake of fire?”
For the average reader with limited Bible exposure, it’s probably useful to distinguish between hades, which is a holding place for the human dead prior to the final judgment, and hell [γέεννα, sometimes pronounced gehenna], also called the lake of fire, the final destination of the wicked dead, the place of permanent separation from God. Hell was not created for mankind at all, but for the devil and his angels. After man’s final judgment, death and hades will be thrown into the lake of fire for all eternity. This is called the “second death”.
As the patriarch Jacob came to the end of his 147 years on this earth, we may be excused for wondering if he was slipping in and out of reality, as many very ancient folks tend to do. When we read the final chapters of Genesis, it may seem like Jacob was sending mixed messages to the world about his lifetime of up-close and personal dealings with God.
Hey, at Jacob’s age, a little emotional incontinence was perfectly understandable. How we assess our experiences often depends on the day.
.jpeg)
God’s fifth complaint through the prophet Malachi in the late fifth century BC completes his critique of the nation. Israel has questioned him five times to date and the Lord has answered all their queries, sincere or otherwise. He will answer three more today. Malachi will make several further comments, both encouraging and challenging, but YHWH has fully laid out his case by verse 15 of chapter 3.
Following these final comments comes four hundred years in which Heaven was effectively silent. Old Testament revelation ended with Malachi. First time Bible readers moving chronologically may find themselves wondering, “Did Israel respond?”
I suppose the answer to that is, “The Israel that mattered responded.” We will see the seeds of a faithful nation-within-a-nation shortly.