No King in Israel (25)

New readers of Old Testament history may occasionally find themselves lost in a sea of names, places and peoples. Ammonites and Amorites both begin with the letter “A”, but seasoned readers know the Ammonites were fellow Hebrews descended from Lot, as Israel was descended from Abraham, whereas the Amorites were descendants of Canaan son of Ham. They founded the Old Babylonian Empire and ruled Mesopotamia, the Levant and parts of Egypt for four centuries prior to and including Israel’s time in Egypt.

In fact, one reason the Lord obliged Israel to spend so long in Egypt was to give the Amorites opportunity to repent. God told Abraham their iniquity was “not yet complete”. He would judge their sin at the appropriate time, and not before.

Too Hot to Handle: Baptized Into What?

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

I’m going to quote a full minute of a recent sermon on the subject of the New Testament teaching about baptism here because I want to fairly represent what this particular pastor was trying to communicate. A punchy line or two out of a message is fun, but may distort the speaker’s intent. In this case, providing the entire context makes that intent quite clear.

“I believe that the commission to baptize all nations was given to the church.

Contemplating Evil

The most popular course in the Religion and Culture department of one Canadian university is a course titled “Evil and Its Symbols”. It’s the one course where there never seems to be enough room to fit all the applicants. One student quipped that the homework assignment was probably “Go home and do evil.”

Maybe not. But people sure are fascinated with the topic. Why evil exists is a challenge for any Christian to explain; perhaps the biggest. Still, two things bear remembering right away: firstly, that to say that it’s a challenge does not mean that the challenge cannot be met, and secondly, that to explain the existence of evil is not a challenge unique to Christians or even to theists more generally — it’s equally necessary for atheists. Not only that, but it’s a lot harder for them.

Let me justify those statements a bit further in a moment; but first, let me set the stage for today’s post.

Next in Line

Having seen conservative evangelical Charlie Kirk sent to his eternal reward last week in Utah with a single sniper shot to the neck, one wonders which media personality the enemies of the current US regime would like to see ended next.

To be clear, I’m not alleging Kirk was killed by a leftist — that remains to be proven in court. That said, both the Canadian and American political left are not shy about voicing their delight all over social media that the fatal bullet hit home.

So then, no speculation required. They are happy to tell us who they hate most. [Linked graphic has language issues.]

Can Christians Be Lucky?

It’s probably fair to say most Christians dislike the word “luck”. I remember being discouraged from using it as a child and being asked to substitute “blessing” or some such. My parents and Sunday School teachers were (not unreasonably) concerned that I learn to discern the hand of God at work in the world. They also wanted me to not talk like a pagan.

There is wisdom in teaching God’s sovereignty and in speaking of his hand in our daily lives as a matter of course. A child who grows up reckoning without the possibility of God’s personal intervention at any moment as he makes his way in the world is dangerously disconnected from reality. The same default worldview that keeps him from superstitious fearfulness also inoculates him from reverent awe toward his Maker. Atheism is a bad way to go, but it persists. So then, the thought is that people who refer to “luck” and “fortune” are in every instance reckoning without God.

But is that true?

Anonymous Asks (371)

“Should we take miracles literally?”

If we are talking about the miracles of scripture, absolutely. Once we have conceded the existence of God, there’s no logical reason not to. Any being sufficiently powerful to create and sustain the laws of nature, as the Bible claims God did, is also sufficiently powerful to suspend those laws at his pleasure.

Moral and Ceremonial

How are Christians supposed to relate to the Law of Moses? Acts 15 gives us a play-by-play of the discussion in Jerusalem on that subject between the apostles and elders of the early church in that city. It ended like this: “It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us,” they wrote to the church in Antioch, “to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well.”

I suppose I have always found their decision settled the matter conclusively for me.

No King in Israel (24)

As in other cases, some judges ruled over specific portions of Israel rather than the entire nation. The action in these next two chapters takes place almost entirely outside Israel proper. Jephthah’s dispute with the Ammonites was over territory acquired in battle three centuries earlier under Moses prior to Israel entering the Promised Land. Often referred to as Gilead, this region now belonged to the tribes of Reuben, Gad and the eastern half of Manasseh.

As we saw in the previous chapter, the Ammonites had previously crossed the Jordan to harass Judah, Benjamin and Ephraim, but Jephthah met and fought their army east of the Jordan.

Too Hot to Handle: The State of Theology

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

David B. was kind enough to forward us this link to a recent survey by Ligonier Ministries and LifeWay Research about what Americans believe about God, Jesus Christ, sin and eternity.

Tom: Apparently they are doing this every couple of years now. Having regular new data sets to browse can be useful in noting trends of one sort or another. We discussed the LifeWay 2016 survey in this space, if I recall correctly … yes, I do. That was the one where, based on the frequency of their heretical answers, my fellow writer Immanuel Can was inspired to refer to some of the respondents as not so much Christian as “ ‘Christian-flavored’, like a really, really bad kind of tofu.”

How’s the tofu this year, IC?

When Life Really Hurts

There’s a woman in my church — a lovely woman, a mother and a wife, and selfless servant of the Lord’s people, one most highly esteemed. She has been a grief and addiction counselor, and has spent her whole life ministering to others in their moments of darkest sorrow. Her husband is also a wonderful person, and his career for several decades has been as chaplain to the elderly, caring for fragile souls on the doorstep of eternity.

This woman has just been diagnosed with aggressive, metastasizing liver cancer. The fatal kind.

Incomplete Obedience

“Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”

If you remember the context of today’s quote, the “right thing” James is writing about means prefacing our public declarations about plans for the future with the words “if the Lord wills”. Anything else is presumption.

“Do the right thing,” he says. “The future is not ours to boast about.”

Outside with Christ

John 9 begins with the healing of a man born blind. The story, like so many others in John, is unique to that gospel. The chapter is not even primarily about the healing itself, which takes up a mere seven verses. Strange as it may seem to a first-time reader to find Jesus making mud with his own saliva and anointing a man’s eyes, it’s no stranger than some of his other healings. John’s account is concerned primarily with the repercussions of the event, which take him almost five times as long to tell as the actual healing.

John gives us 41 verses devoted to a man’s story, but no record of his name. That’s actually fairly common in all the gospels, since their subject is Christ, not us. In a way, the man himself is incidental. In another way, he’s anything but.

Anonymous Asks (370)

“What’s the key to making marriage last?”

Almost anybody with a properly functioning arm and a working pair of eyeballs can hit a dartboard. It’s a lot harder to hit the bullseye. If you asked me “What’s a key to making marriage last?” or “What are some important ways to make a marriage last?”, well, that’s easy. When you ask, “What’s the key?”, that’s much tougher.

Do I really have to pick just one?

Semi-Random Musings (44)

The Powers-That-Be love managing public opinion. They expend millions of dollars and man-hours creating and perpetuating narratives and establishing outer limits for acceptable mainstream discourse (also called the “Overton Window”). These preferred versions of reality are so bewilderingly convincing that the average Christian reader throws up his hands in despair as he seeks to discern what is really going on.

After all, the most effective lies are 90% true.

No King in Israel (23)

After four chapters devoted to the history of and repercussions flowing from the life of a single judge (Gideon), we come to a chapter in which the entire life’s work of two judges (Tola and Jair) and the manner in which they each delivered their nation are summed up in a mere five verses. Thirteen more are devoted to setting up the story of the next judge (Jephthah). Sixty-four years covered in eighteen verses.

We might view the relative brevity of these next two accounts as an imbalance of sorts, especially if we are used to reading secular history.

Too Hot to Handle: Not Playing the Game

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

Immanuel Can: Hey, Tom, what’s all this I’m suddenly hearing about “NPC”?

Tom: Oh my, you sure know how to pick ’em. As you have surely noticed, there’s a big media brouhaha around that term, and Twitter has banned it outright as “hateful”. I’ll let writer Brandon Morse explain it:

“If you’ve ever picked up a video game that features other characters that are controlled by the computer, then you’ve run into non-player characters or NPC’s.”

When you call someone an “NPC”, what you are saying is that they are programmed with preset behavioral patterns decided for them by somebody else, be they professors, activist groups or the media. You are telling them they are unable to think for themselves.

Who Reads Anymore?

I’ve heard that Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time may be the most famous book people have never read.

That’s right: Never.

People sure do talk about it. It’s sold ten million or so copies. Lots of people cite the title of the book, laud it, and claim to have found their opinions confirmed by it — but few of these have actually ever read it.

In a way, maybe that’s understandable. It is, after all, a fairly challenging book. For a mathematician, it’s a good read, perhaps; for the average person it’s a quick road to Slumberland. Even though it’s pretty short it only takes a few pages to render most folks unconscious.

Simple Answers to Vexed Questions

Simple answers to vexed questions are lovely things. They are also exceedingly rare.

Last week at the island, IC and I asked why so many young men we read about and know personally have “gone Reformed” or are thinking seriously about it. As someone who’s very satisfied with the scriptural faithfulness, consistency and durability of the teaching handed down to me by previous generations in my own tradition, I’m deeply curious what is drawing our youth toward a theological alternative characterized by determinism, allegory, abrogated promises and, yes, on the younger end, an increasingly undeniable tendency towards unabashed antisemitism.

The Laying On of Hands

In Sunday’s post, we noted the first century baptism of the Holy Spirit in Samaria took place when Peter and John first prayed, then laid hands on believing Samaritans. That’s in Acts 8. We also noted the Holy Spirit did not deem this step necessary when he baptized Jews in Jerusalem in Acts 2 or Gentiles in Caesarea in Acts 10. These simply believed and were filled with the Spirit, glorifying God in other languages.

The experience of Acts 8 prompts a few questions about this “laying on of hands”. Where did it come from? What does it signify? How did the early church practice it? Did miracles always accompany it? We’re going to try to answer these questions today.

Anonymous Asks (369)

“Is it possible for fallen angels to repent?”

In C.S. Lewis’s Narnia stories, Aslan never tells anyone any story but their own. When he walks with Edmund after his restoration, Lewis comments, “There is no need to tell you (and no one ever heard) what Aslan was saying.”

I’ve always thought those lines insightful. Scripture is silent about many things that inspire our curiosity, the status of spirit beings who “left their proper dwelling” among them.