Inbox: Was Christ Actually ‘Good’?

I’m going to share with you a short exchange I had with a couple of philosophers, because it was interesting to me, and helped me think through a few things more carefully. The issue it raises might be something you’ve thought about as well.

A short aside: for the most part, I have reproduced my partners’ conversation mostly verbatim. I’ve only altered a couple of punctuation glitches, and made a couple of small line changes in my response. I’ve also inserted a few lines after-the-fact to help you track and to make it work as an article. But the substance is pretty much exactly as it really happened.

What Does Your Proof Text Prove? (30)

Refunds generated by charitable donations documented on tax returns have always been a source of disagreement between believers. The churches I attended growing up were so determined to do their giving on the sly that they practiced something informally referred to as the “brethren handshake”, in which a little envelope full of cash was passed from hand to hand under cover of the traditional greeting.

It wasn’t as hard to detect as they thought, but you have to give them points for trying.

Law and Perfection

Would you like to live under the Law of Moses? Think about that for a while. A surprising number today would not. Some may even be Christians.

I have great admiration for the Old Testament law, more and more so as the years pass and the defects in the ever-changing modern legal systems under which we live in the West become increasingly apparent. Compared to the long-term effects of any modern or historic system, God’s law always comes out ahead.

Anonymous Asks (304)

“Are some words better than others when describing people who are not Christians?

I recently had a fellow believer give me a thirty-second lecture about my use of the word “unsaved”. He was technically correct in the sense that, of all the English translations currently available, that word appears only in The Amplified Bible. To the extent that I was using an extra-biblical term, he had a point, though I’m not sure his preference was better in all contexts.

But some words are indeed better than others. Let us consider …

Higher Learning

I drove past a local college campus the other day. Out of the blue, the thought hit me that I’m at a point in my life where I will never be obliged to walk the halls of an institution of higher learning again. I was hit with a wave of relief. That was an excellent feeling.

It’s not that I dislike the learning process. Not at all. I’m constantly seeking out information about this, that and the other. I just never liked doing it in a classroom.

Mining the Minors: Zechariah (19)

Israel has a problem today, and it’s not a new one. It’s a leadership problem.

I’m not talking about Mr. Netanyahu specifically, though there are many who object to his policies and those of all his predecessors going back to David Ben-Gurion in 1949, when Israel became a nation again for the first time in 1900 years. All politicians take a certain amount of flak from the critics. That’s normal. Some are objectively better than others, but all have their limitations.

Too Hot to Handle: Get Happy

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

Shocked at the plethora of mental health issues she discovered among her students while eating with them daily, Yale University professor Laurie Santos developed a popular new course about the nature of happiness which Yale now offers free online.

Tom: Santos says it’s not bigger houses or better spouses that make human beings happy. It’s little things like “making a social connection, or taking time for gratitude, or taking time to be in the present moment”. What do you think, IC: might she be on to something there?

Inbox: What’s Right with It?

In response to an earlier post on Christian moral issues in our weekly Too Hot to Handle post, David B. writes:

“I am always reminded of a question from a youth group speaker of years gone by when he said, ‘The question you should be asking isn’t what’s wrong with it, as in how close to the edge can I get, but what’s right with it and does it bring me closer to the Lord.’

Do you feel that’s a fair question, or does it just set you up for someone to say, ‘Well, you could make that argument about anything you choose to do or not’?”

Hmmm. A very good question, Dave.

That Wacky Old Testament (16)

Fewer Western women today are interested in marriage than ever before.

Becoming sexually active between the ages of 15 and 19 is considered “normative”. One UK study fixed the “ideal” number of sexual partners for a woman to have before “settling down” at twelve, usually through high school, university and the early career years. By age 30 or so, many women have lived through enough bad relationships to sour on the idea of long-term commitment. Even among those who still want to be married, few have cultivated the habits of faithfulness necessary for marital success. Many prize autonomy above almost all else.

Among millennial women, interest in marriage is the lowest ever measured.

Deconstructing Romans 9

A recent letter to another Christian blog writer referenced this bleak little video, in which a young woman who formerly professed faith in Christ shares with her audience why she no longer calls herself a believer. In her video, she quotes and attempts to dissect five passages of scripture that she says “caused me to lose my faith”.

“Losing her faith” also inspired her to start her own YouTube channel debunking it, which currently has 76 videos mostly devoted to “deconstructing” scripture. Jezebel Vibes has over 54,000 subscribers. Naturally, this self-styled “Jezebel” has monetized her apostasy. Viewers are invited to buy one of her deconstructionist T-shirts to share their non-faith with the world.

Hey, it’s YouTube. Why wouldn’t you?

Anonymous Asks (303)

“What does it mean to be spiritually dead?”

Let’s start with the fact that scripture doesn’t use the phrase “spiritually dead”. Not once. Spiritual death is a concept we’ve derived from the word of God, but it is not the language of the Bible. First, then, we need to figure out what “spiritually” means as the Bible uses it.

A Game of Determinist Chess

“How can a loving God allow [fill in the blank]?”

There may be questions Christians are more likely to hear from unbelievers than the various permutations of the above, but I can’t think of one at the moment. The query may be a defiant attack on the character of God or the honest expression of perplexity by a genuine seeker. Either way, the answers that satisfy you or me rarely settle the matter for those who do not know Christ.

Mining the Minors: Zechariah (18)

Earlier this week, I quoted from Israel’s rather bloodthirsty-sounding Finance Minister, who gave a much-panned speech calling for the total annihilation of the Palestinian cities of the Gaza Strip, in which he also referred to aspiring to destroy Hezbollah “with God’s help” and send a message to the enemies of Israel.

Those of us who have read the prophetic scriptures know Israel cannot count on God’s help apart from first coming to genuine national repentance for their rejection of Messiah, so Mr. Smotrich may be presuming just a little. Terrible things must happen both in Israel and to Israel to bring them to the point of desperation and cause them to cry out to the Messiah they crucified.

Too Hot to Handle: A Methodist to Their Madness

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

The Cottage Grove location of Minnesota’s Grove United Methodist Church, 30 years old this year, is closing for renovations. But it’s not the building that’s being renovated ... it’s the congregation.

Small, initially financially unstable and told by their denomination that they did not warrant a pastor’s salary, the church first merged with a larger Woodbury church in 2008, then switched to lay ministry a few years ago, and has settled in to a comfortable routine with somewhere between 25 and 35 regular worshipers. That’s not good enough for the Woodbury leadership, who have hired a church-starting specialist with $250,000 from the Methodist’s regional Annual Conference, and are planning to “reset” the Cottage Grove location to appeal to a younger audience — in the name of Christ, of course — and preferably without the thirty members currently meeting there.

Merged into the Mob

It’s kind of breathtaking watching the news these days, isn’t it? So much mass craziness in such a little time!

Of course, there’s the hysteria surrounding COVID-19. First, we were told it was all a racist plot, then that it was an international pandemic, then that we were all going to die, then that we all had to wear masks ... or not ... and then go back to work and school ... then not ... that there will be a cure ... then that all cures are poisons ... that the economy is collapsing ... then that it must collapse, so we can all stay safe.

Who do you believe? Which side do you choose? What do you support? What do you do?

Break Out the Dynamite

In a post last November, I agreed with Australian pastor Matt Littlefield that Israel currently has no divine mandate for the reconquest of Gaza, much as many evangelicals would like them to. We disagree, however, about whether God is at work in the current situation. Matt calls the IDF’s efforts to root Hamas out of Gaza “a work of the flesh seeking to fulfil the things of God, rather than a work of God to fulfil prophecy”. In response, I went back to the Old Testament to demonstrate that those statements are not mutually exclusive.

Even the actions of exceptionally wicked men may be both at the same time.

Going Home

I had a dream this morning. I was walking down a small-town sidewalk when a middle-aged man carrying a big, well-thumbed soft-cover Bible passed me by. He stopped suddenly and spoke to me, and I turned around to hear what he might have to say. He had a twinkle in his eye and an appealing manner about him, and my usual instinctive reluctance to engage in such situations instantly fled. He asked me a question I can’t completely recall, but it was something about the Father’s house. He wanted to know what I thought about it. I began to try to put my ideas into words, and realized nothing coherent was coming out of my mouth.

I started and stopped three different times, then gave up.

Anonymous Asks (302)

“How should parents who are divorcing/separating deal with child custody issues?”

How does one do a bad thing in the best possible way? This the dilemma for divorcing Christians. Finding the will of God in one area of your life when you are already rejecting the revealed will of God in another area is always going to be a losing battle. The Lord never intended Christians to divorce, and his word does not provide a great deal of direct guidance to those in the process of demonstrating they don’t want it.

The best we can do is derive some general principles from scripture about behavior patterns that are always good, and leave it at that.

Of Foals and Fools

As I noted in yesterday’s Mining the Minors instalment, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John each penned an account of the triumphal entry. As usual with gospel accounts of the same events, these are complementary, not contradictory, much as any honest eyewitness accounts invariably reflect the personality, preoccupations, purposes and intended audience of the storyteller.

Bart Ehrman, Bible scholar and self-acknowledged unbeliever, would desperately like the accounts to contradict even if they don’t.

Mining the Minors: Zechariah (17)

Sometimes, apart from supernatural intervention, prophetic fulfillment is inexplicable; things happen that couldn’t possibly have happened without the hand of God. Other prophecies attain fulfillment by simple acts of human will.

Take, for example, a virgin conceiving and bearing a son. The Holy Spirit came upon Mary and the power of the Most High overshadowed her. God did what was otherwise impossible. That was a supernatural fulfillment of Isaiah.