This article is a short “heads-up” for church leaders and other decision-makers who are currently dealing, or will soon be dealing with issues of race, ethnicity and other so-called “equity” issues in the church. There’s a serious danger here, and you need to be aware of it before it arrives.
Because after it arrives, it’s almost too late.
I find it is all but impossible to exhaust the Lord’s parables. There are always more principles to learn from them and new ways they might legitimately be applied. So don’t mistake the following for an attempt to fully exposit Matthew 18:21-35. I am just nibbling around the edges.
What I do find useful is to work my way through the parable eliminating the obvious. Once that is done, I can give slightly-less-confused consideration to the possibilities that remain.
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“Do Jews and Christians worship the same God?”
There is a sense in which we do, or at least could potentially. YHWH, who revealed himself to the Israelite patriarchs, who brought a slave nation out of Egypt with signs and wonders that astonished the nations, who gave Moses the law, who brought Israel into Canaan, who established the Davidic dynasty, who sent first Israel then Judah into exile among the nations, and who brought Judah and members of the other tribes back to Jerusalem — this is the same God Christians worship today. He has not changed.
Jewish beliefs have changed over the centuries since Christ died though, and here lies the real issue.
All true Christians are believers, but not all believers are Christians.
That is in the Bible. Abraham wasn’t a Christian. Christianity belongs to the time following the ministry of the Lord Jesus, the descent of the Holy Spirit, and the inauguration of the church. That’s when the disciples became Christians. You don’t read the word “Christian” in the Old Testament, nor is a Christian described. What you have is godly or ungodly Israelites; those who believed God and those who didn’t; the wicked and the righteous in Israel — and of course some Gentiles saved as well.
The position from which a godly Jewish believer would look at things and the stance of an equally godly Christian looking at things are quite different.
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The most avid promoters of tolerance on the political left are among the most intolerant people in existence. They will not tolerate intolerance of their pet vices, and those who express any disagreement with their chosen path earn a bitter enmity you almost never see coming from any Christians other than maybe members of the Westboro Baptist Church. But in expressing their intolerance of intolerance, the promoters of tolerance demonstrate that it is impossible to have no strongly held opinions at all. The opinion that one should have no opinions remains an opinion, and the people who tell you not to preach invariably end up preaching.
This was as true two and a half thousand years ago as today.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
I read it in the New York Times. And frankly, you could’ve knocked me over with a feather. The Times distinguishing between fact and opinion in a rational way? The Times pointing out the deficiencies in modern education?
Who’da thunk it?
Tom: As in the wee hours of every Friday, I have with me career educator and teacher of philosophy Immanuel Can. IC, is it your experience that many college-aged students don’t believe in moral facts?
Today’s title? Sorry about that ... it just worked. And yep, that’s right: now you’re going to have Vickie Sue Robinson’s 1976 disco anthem in your brain all day. My bad.
Disco’s not my taste either. In fact, as a leftover child of the New Wave era, I’ve always thought it was the fifth horseman of the Apocalypse. But that’s not going to help you with Vickie today. Like it or not, she’s going to be in your head.
You can thank me later.
From the department of “Let’s actually open our Bibles and read before we start preaching”, here’s Matt Chandler on Adam and Eve:
“What happens is the Serpent deceives Eve with Adam standing right there. Eve takes the apple, believing the lie of the Serpent, takes a bite of the fruit, and then hands it to her passive idiot husband, who also takes a bite.
Do you know who God blames for sin introducing itself into the cosmos? Adam. Because he had the role of spiritual headship, of covering and protection. He didn’t step up. He did the spiritual equivalency of, ‘Go check it out, baby.’ ”
This is so … NOT what actually happened.
The British Humanist Association would like to tell us what we should think about death.
The plummy tones of comedian Stephen Fry introduce the concept, but you really can’t enjoy it in its full glory without the cartoon visuals. This link should maximize your viewing experience:
“One thing we can be sure of is that we will die. Everybody will.”
Tell us something we don’t know, Stephen.
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“Why did God kill Ananias and Sapphira for lying?”
The first eleven verses of Acts 5 tell the story of Ananias and Sapphira, two married professing Christians in the early days of the first church in Jerusalem. As we find out at the end of the previous chapter, these early Christians were in the habit of sharing “all things in common” in the sense that they sold excess possessions and properties and gave the proceeds to God by laying them at the feet of the apostles, who ensured they were distributed to believers in need.
Ananias and Sapphira conspired to enhance their good name among the believers by pretending to do the same. They sold a piece of property, kept back part of the proceeds of sale, and brought the rest to the apostles, representing it as the whole amount. All of this may be inferred from Peter’s rebuke of Ananias: “While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal?” Challenged independently of one another, Ananias and Sapphira stuck to their lie and were stricken in some miraculous way. The text says they fell down and breathed their last.
Make room for an Israelite remnant.
I would urge you to do this as you read and think through the scriptures, whether for your own benefit or in planning to teach others.
Allowing for the possibility of a remnant will provide a key to the understanding of prophecy, which occupies such a large part of the Bible. Without doing it, you may fall for Replacement Theology, which teaches no future role for Israel in God’s plans, transferring to the church all references to a bright future for that nation, and leaving all Jews to experience only those parts of scripture that speak of divine displeasure with Israel’s past and her present condition of unbelief.
Precious promises to a believing remnant within that nation are thus understood as finding their fulfilment in the church.
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YHWH instituted the year of Jubilee in Israel for several reasons. One was to ensure that ownership of Israelite land outside the cities never changed hands, because the land belonged to God. If the rich were allowed to coerce the poor into permanently selling their inheritance to pay off debt, ancient Israel would quickly have descended into the abyss of present-day global economics, where the most affluent 10% of the population own 76% of the world’s wealth.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance have a piece up on the subject of cremation vs. burial in which they list all the verses from scripture they can find which they think may be on point, though many of these are merely historical observations and not terribly relevant to the argument either way.
Understandably, they come to no clear conclusion.
No, I’m not going to break into the Talking Heads’ 1983 pop hit.
I’m tempted, but I’m not going to. You really don’t want to hear me do that.
But nothing raises the temperature in a local congregation faster than any suggestion we change the music. Countless battles have been fought, and whole congregations have divided over that sort of thing.
That’s really a pity.
Yesterday we looked at the only miracle found in all four gospels: the feeding of the 5,000. We noted that the synoptic gospel accounts have many common elements, though each writer has tailored his version of the story to fit his overall purposes in writing about the life of the Lord Jesus.
For example, Matthew emphasizes the relationship between the Lord and John the Baptist, only just executed by Herod: “When Jesus heard this [that John had been executed], he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place.” Mark and Luke emphasize the Lord’s care for his disciples, who had just had their first taste of successful solo ministry: “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while,” he invites them.
We often make choices with multiple purposes in view. The Lord Jesus was no exception.
It is established beyond any reasonable doubt that the synoptic gospels — Matthew, Mark and Luke — show evidence of agreement that cannot be completely explained by the fact that they are all thought to have been written within a few years of each other by men who were members of the same religious community and had shared experiences to relate. I am neither a Greek nor a Hebrew scholar, but I can certainly read what the experts have written on the subject and note their positions on the likelihood of a common source document (or documents) for the three synoptics.
My full-time secular job has made me reasonably competent at doing document comparisons in Microsoft Word, so I thought it might be fun to take one of the few accounts common to all the gospels, and compare each gospel to each of the others to see how much of the writing shows indications of common source material.
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“Can I stop tithing temporarily while paying off a debt?”
Tithing is a command first codified in the Law of Moses, though the concept of giving a tenth of everything you receive existed prior to the giving of the law. But Christians are not under law. At best, giving a tenth to God may be viewed as a guideline. What the Lord expected from Israel in times past serves as a useful starting point for Christian giving, though giving a tenth certainly does not exhaust the believer’s opportunity to serve the Lord by way of financial generosity.
It’s probably better not to think of it as “tithing” at all, but rather as an expression of our love for God.
In the scriptures the word “fear” may be used to describe the reaction a person might be expected to have in response to at least three different situations.
If surrounded by enemies fear would be equal to terror. David said, “Fear is on every side ... they scheme to take away my life.” On the other hand Moses commanded respect to be shown to parents by saying, “Every one of you shall fear* his mother and his father”, and Jeremiah was advocating reverence as being rightfully due to the Lord when he exclaimed, “Who would not fear you, O King of the nations? There is none like you, O Lord.”
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A pun is a figure of speech in which similar words or different senses of the same word are associated. In English the intent is usually humorous, though effects vary. My father would drop the occasional pun in his thirties and forties, but abandoned that sort of humor as he aged, recognizing that it didn’t play as well in Canada as in his native England. (We also had a friend who punned so frequently it became excruciating; you never wanted to give him an excuse to get started.)
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
You’re all familiar with this one. It’s a defense for something traditionally considered immoral that usually begins with a variant of “if two consenting adults want to …”
We could call it a “no harm” argument. It’s the idea that if nobody’s demonstrably hurt, nothing wrong happened. But even the New York Times recently poked holes in it.
Tom: Immanuel Can, is it possible to have a sin without a resulting injury?
Immanuel Can: The short answer? No, I don’t think it is.