Time and Chance (44)

Unless we have studied ancient languages, identifying formal Hebrew proverbs in the text of Ecclesiastes is a bit beyond most of us. To make it easier, my edition of the ESV has displayed roughly a quarter of the 221 English verses in the book with hanging indents instead of regular paragraphing, so that the reader can distinguish poetry, proverbs or quotations from the Preacher’s ongoing narrative.

The highly subjective nature of this style treatment becomes evident when we examine the same verses in other translations.

Too Hot to Handle: Unpardon Me

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

Matthew, Mark and Luke all make reference to a sin that will, in Matthew’s words “not be forgiven”. Mark calls it an “eternal sin”.

The reference has been a source of distress down through the centuries to Christians who fear they may have committed it and be irreversibly destined for perdition.

Tom: Personally, Immanuel Can, I’ve always thought the unpardonable sin was lazy exegesis, but I haven’t got much scripture to back me up there.

Immanuel Can: Lazy exegesis? Bad, yes, but probably pardonable if you repent. Now, being a Pittsburgh Steelers fan … that’s a whole different category: expect perdition.

Vision, Inspiration and Leadership

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Quotable Quotes

I’m pretty sure that is (used to be?) a regular feature in Reader’s Digest. Anyway, they won’t mind me nicking their title ...

I had promised about two years ago to update the links page for our semi-regular Quote of the Day feature. It currently links to 41 posts with another on the way shortly. The update was to include the names of each person quoted, which seems a fairly helpful thing to do for anyone who is trying to catch up on these after the fact.

At any rate, that has finally been done. You can find the index page here if you’re interested, or access it any time from the banner on the main page of the blog.

At your service,

Tom

Which Error?

“You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability.”

What is the “error of lawless people” to which the apostle Peter is referring, here at the end of his second letter? When an error threatens to carry us away and make us unstable in our faith, it would seem useful to correctly identify it.

That said, the answer is not necessarily straightforward. The possibilities, I think, are two.

Out in the Woods

Van life proponent and pseudonymic woodsman Foresty Forest comments on some well-known people’s conjectures about the nature of reality, and his own motivation for wandering the mountains and valleys of the more obscure parts of Canada:

“Elon Musk, who thinks that reality is all just a simulation ... what kind of processing power would you need to model all these rocks, texture-map them ... what kind of computer would you need for that? That’s the question.

I started losing interest in gaming, and getting into real life adventures.”

Anonymous Asks (100)

“Can I really do all things through Christ?”

The question is a reference to a familiar Bible verse, Philippians 4:13, which reads, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” It is often quoted by sports celebrities after a win in the big game, or in other situations where someone who has been successful wants to make sure he gives appropriate credit to God for his help along the way.

But is that what the verse is saying: that any Christian can become proficient in any realm whatsoever because God will make it happen? Not really.

Hide and Seek

“You will ... find me, when you seek me with all your heart.”

“I was ready to be found by those who did not seek me.”

Do those two statements sound the tiniest bit contradictory? They aren’t really. They might contradict each other if they were both promises, and both given to exactly the same people under precisely the same circumstances, but they are not. One is a promise; the other is simply an observation, though a singularly important one for those it affects.

Either way, the notion that God is out there to be found — and, even better, willing it to happen — is something about which we ought to rejoice.

Time and Chance (43)

The so-called “golden rule of Bible interpretation” is this: When the plain sense of scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense. I have heard this line attributed to a few different people, so let’s give credit both to whoever came up with it and to those who have helpfully passed it on.

We often find this principle provoking heartfelt agreement among Bible teachers. It is slightly more unusual to find expositors following it with consistency.

Too Hot to Handle: Faith in the Crosshairs

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.

The Mercy of Fire

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Too Big for Its Boots

“For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.”

A “lofty opinion” is a theological argument that is too big for its boots. The Greek word from which we get the expression is hypsōma, which means an elevated structure. Rightly recognizing the apostle is speaking of metaphorical heights, other English translations use the expression “pretension” or “presumption”, “proud obstacle” or “speculation”.

Vessels of Wrath and Vessels of Mercy

We’ve been looking at the question of whether God really prepares some people for destruction and others for glory. How and to what extent is his sovereignty exercised within the human heart?

Romans 9 is much misunderstood where this subject is concerned. In yesterday’s post I made the case that nothing in the first 18 verses of the chapter deals with the subject of individual salvation. Paul’s subject there is God’s election of nations and other groups to strategic roles in human history for his own sovereign purposes.

Anonymous Asks (99)

“What should I do about my ‘privilege’?”

The Lord Jesus once told a story about a man who tested three of his servants by bestowing upon them varying degrees of privilege. To one he gave five talents of money to invest, which a marginal note in my Bible tells me was something in the order of 100 years’ wages for a laborer. That was a huge privilege, not to mention a mammoth responsibility. To another servant he gave two talents, or forty years’ wages. To a third he gave a single talent to manage, which is still more than I make in six years.

All three servants were exceedingly privileged.

Right There in Front of My Face

From the Department of Missing the Obvious, let me present John 3:16, which I have been hearing my entire life without really hearing it.

This happens. Unfortunately it happens quite a bit. Bear with me. Perhaps the three things I am going to share with you today about God’s love are perfectly evident to you, and always have been.

Let’s just say they didn’t jump out at me, even though they were always right there in front of my face.

Time and Chance (42)

Forty-two Saturdays into our study of Ecclesiastes, we come at last to the phrase which we have taken as our theme: “Time and chance happen to them all.”

Why do things happen to us the way they do? Ancient mythology makes reference to three goddesses who were thought to assign individual destinies to mortals at birth. The Greeks called them the Fates. The unsaved talk about “Lady Luck”, usually on their way to the casino, personifying an imagined force to which nobody can really appeal, but which every gambler hopes to have on their side. Even atheists find themselves inexplicably using the phrase “It was meant to be”, as if a random roll of the dice could actually signify intelligent purpose.

But in a world without revelation and with no sure way to know if there is a God or how he operates, we can only blame time and chance for the good and bad things that come our way.

Too Hot to Handle: Bucking or Buckling?

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

I promised last week 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?

The Train to Tribulation and the Road to Hell

Thanks for coming back.

In yesterday’s post we were attempting to understand the massive collectivist “winds” that are blowing across the modern world right now. The purpose was to help Christians see that these are nothing new, nothing unexpected, and nothing untypical of mankind. The language changes, maybe, but the forces at work are always the same.

Let’s Get Together and …

The most recent version of this post is available here.

What Does Your Proof Text Prove? (12)

“If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works.”

Growing up in an evangelical community, it was understood that Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses were not our fellow believers. These groups were commonly referred to as cults, and considered spiritually dangerous. Pairs of these odd-looking “missionaries” would occasionally make their way through our neighborhood from house to house ringing doorbells and soliciting opportunities to talk to people about the tenets of their belief system. On more than one occasion I heard this verse from 2 John applied as a warning about them: “Do not receive them into your house or give them any greeting.”

As a result, when I was home alone and saw through the peephole of our front door two pasty white guys in matching snappy haircuts, bleached shirts, neatly pressed dress slacks and sensible shoes, I promptly made myself scarce for fear of violating John’s instruction. Hey, the word “Hello” might accidentally slip from my lips and cause me to “take part in their wicked works”.

Is that really the sort of thing John had in mind?