The Multicultural Road to Hell

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The Gospel in Context

Ever preached from one of these?

Anybody who has browsed my Bible Study series is familiar with the conviction (not uniquely mine) that context may well be the single most significant tool for determining meaning available to English students of scripture. It has certainly been the most useful to me.

This is not about that. It’s about the importance of a different sort of context: situation and audience.

A few weeks ago Immanuel Can and I had occasion to discuss the subject of the gospel and what it actually is. The four Gospels themselves (of course) record the beginnings of the “good news”, but necessarily cannot fully elaborate on all its implications. It requires the rest of the New Testament to do that, but a very good starting point is a study of how the apostles actually preached it from the very beginning (up to and including Acts 13, at any rate, which is as far as I’ve currently gone in my study).

The Language of the Debate (1)

“Language matters because whoever controls the words controls the conversation, because whoever controls the conversation controls its outcome, because whoever frames the debate has already won it.” So says writer Erica Jong, though we should probably give George Orwell credit for the underlying concept.

Sad to say, debate is very much out of fashion in the world these days. Online or in the streets, we go straight from perceived outrage to mob rule with very little in between other than furious accusation, name-calling and intimidation. The time from the trigger event to the full-blown social media blame-and-shame frenzy may be measured in minutes. One errant tweet on a plane and you may find yourself disemployed by the time you hit customs. Be assured no discussion will be had.

Thankfully, that is not the way Christians do things. Not yet anyway.

Anonymous Asks (102)

“Do miracles still happen today?”

I guess the answer to this depends on one’s definition of a miracle. For example, some people who are enthusiastic about children refer to the “miracle of life”. I suppose if you are using the word in that sense, then the answer would have to be of course.

The more important thing is how the writers of the Bible use the word “miracle”.

Bad Ideas that Refuse to Die

What is it about bad ideas?

I’m not thinking of anything as egregious as false teaching making its way into the church, though that tends to happen on a regular basis too. No, I’m thinking more of the natural preferences and tendencies we have and assumptions we make that can hinder the work of God and drive a wedge in between believers.

The worst part about bad ideas is that, unlike many varieties of false or heretical teaching, they often come from good people, which makes them that much more sensitive to deal with. They are also not demonstrably sinful in most cases, making it more difficult to mount a case against them and disinclining those who harbor them to easily abandon them.

Time and Chance (45)

Governing is tough.

Even in traditional monarchies, governance has always required a team, the rough equivalent of a cabinet or executive; the right people in the right combination. A king needed experienced, mature, educated men to serve as his administrators and advisors; men able to make policy and to accurately estimate the short- and long-term consequences of implementing it.

Finding the right people to put in secondary positions of authority is a critical matter. It has tremendous consequences for a nation. Kingdoms have been lost because a ruler listened to the advice of the wrong man or men, or refused to listen to the advice of the right man.

Generally speaking, slaves don’t make strong candidates for such positions, as the writer of Ecclesiastes is about to tell us.

Too Hot to Handle: Disconnected?

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Not Fade Away

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Mystery Beasts and Inscrutability

The forty-first chapter of the book of Job has thirty-four verses in an English Bible. Thirty-two of those describe a mystery beast you and I have never seen and almost surely never will. The remaining two are about God.

I think those two are probably the point of the chapter, no? At least it’s as good a guess as any.

Quote of the Day (42)

It’s hard to believe how frequently “everything old is new again”, how often “what goes around comes around”, or how reliably “the past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes”.

Having studied the past only just a little, I have still seen enough to grudgingly second the truism that “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” Even its slightly darker kindred observation, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” though wildly overused, has become cliché precisely because we have to acknowledge that people do this all the time.

We really must be nuts.

Anonymous Asks (101)

“If all my sins are forgiven, why do I need to stop sinning?”

The New Testament gives us a fair bit of insight into what forgiven people look and act like. Jesus once told a paralyzed man, “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.” The expression he used means something like “Cheer up!” That might be a little difficult for most paralyzed people.

But it gives us an idea what Jesus saw as the higher priority, and what is most important in life. If we had to choose between our health and being forgiven our sins, we would be immeasurably better off sick and forgiven than to be healthy and remain guilty in the eyes of God.

Forgiveness matters.

Redistributionism and Jubilee

The Great Isaiah Scroll. Wrong chapter,
but you get the general idea ...

Howard Bess is a retired Baptist minister from Alaska whose novel application of the Bible’s teaching about the Jewish Year of Jubilee to issues of social justice in twenty-first century America has attracted a lot of positive attention.

“Thank you — what a beautiful interpretation of that passage,” gushed one reader. “I love the sense of Judaism and Christianity out of which Bess operates. It immediately recommends itself to me as wholesome and authentic,” enthuses another.

But despite the alleged aura of wholesomeness and authenticity, it seems to me that Bess doesn’t so much reinterpret Luke 4 as miss its real meaning as completely as did the citizens of the Lord’s hometown of Nazareth, his original audience.

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

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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.