Too Hot to Handle: Where Would You Like to be Judged?

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

Not all religions acknowledge coming judgment, but Christianity does.

Tom: As we discussed last week, Immanuel Can, the Bible teaches there is both a general judgment of sinners and a separate, distinct judgment of Christians. That division was not clearly traced in our Old Testaments, and most Jews know next to nothing of it.

But it’s there in our New Testaments, and getting rid of it involves ripping out whole pages of Paul’s epistles.

Immanuel Can: Lay it out for us, Tom: what’s the difference?

I Am the One

“I am the one you warned me of
  I am the one who’d never, never lie.”

— Blue Oyster Cult, 1988

Not my favorite band, for sure — but I do admire their theology.

At least in this instance.

So often we begin by thinking that evil, if it exists at all, is a thing “out there”. It’s in the world somewhere, not inside me. Me, I’m pretty good. Not perfect, maybe. But not so bad that God can’t overlook the difference (that is, if he’s really loving) and accept me as spot-on.

Then we live for a bit.

The Power of the Narrative

Headline this week in the Edmonton Journal:

B.C. glaciers 38 per cent thicker than expected, surprising study finds

And then there’s the sub-headline that follows it:

Some glaciers might last a few years or even a decade longer, but that still won’t save them from climate change

Everybody’s an Idolater

“The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands.”

Everybody’s an idolater. Well, almost everybody.

Christians are exempt. Of course we may struggle with temptation to idolatry of various sorts from time to time, but the characteristic pattern of the Christian life is not idolatrous. We do not continue in it. After all, idolaters will not enter the kingdom of God. Anyone whose life is characterized by idolatry is by definition un-Christian.

Anonymous Asks (122)

“When should life support be stopped?”

If you managed to get through those awful presidential debates this year, you will probably remember that on several occasions Joe Biden accused President Trump of all-but-murdering something like 206,000 U.S. citizens, which was the number alleged to have died of COVID-19 complications at that point in time.

Apparently the Democrats thought this was a sound strategy that would resonate with undecided voters, though I very much doubt the average American imagines any president is really capable of doing very much to slow the rate of transmission of a virus once it is out there in the world.

Did We Betray Jesus?

In a post she calls A Tale of Two Betrayals, Bethany Verrett argues that “though [Peter] did not hand Jesus over to the religious leaders like Judas, it was no less a betrayal.” Over at The Gospel Coalition, Mike McKinley has a few suggestions for Christians about What to Do When You Betray Jesus. And back in 2014, when Franklin Graham addressed a question from a reader about Judas’ betrayal of Jesus, his editor at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association entitled Franklin’s responsive post We, Like Judas, Can Be Deceitful and Betray Christ.

Really? Can we? At the risk of getting overly-technical, I don’t think we can ... at least not in the language of scripture. And sometimes the language of scripture is a bit different from the wording in our English translations. Not every Greek word has a precise one-for-one English equivalent.

Mining the Minors: Jonah (11)

Nineveh was the largest city in the world in its day, but it was also one of the most ancient. The Assyrians who lived there in the time of Jonah did not build it. When they conquered it and drove out the resident Amorites, Nineveh had already been around for more than a millennium, having been built, rebuilt, occupied and re-occupied under different names first by the Hatti, then the Akkadians and Amorites. This constant building and rebuilding was not just necessitated by the endless wars fought for the city over the centuries; the original city was also built on a fault line and was therefore subject to regular damage from earthquakes.

Other great walled cities of the Ancient East may have inspired a measure of overconfidence in their citizens. Nineveh probably did not. When Jonah announced Nineveh’s imminent doom to its people, it is very likely that his prophecy sounded all too plausible.

The reaction of the Ninevites may have been something like “Not again!”

Too Hot to Handle: The Judge of All the Earth

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

On her way to work a few months ago, a Muslim driver urged my friend to reconsider her ways in view of coming judgment. The driver knew nothing at all about his passenger, but he was convinced his god will one day be both her judge and the judge of all mankind.

Tom: Not all religions acknowledge judgment is coming, I suppose, but many do. It is not an exclusively Christian teaching. But there are some things about biblical judgment that make it distinctive, Immanuel Can, and perhaps we can explore some of those today.

Ya Really Oughta Know …

“ ‘History never repeats’,
    I tell myself before I go to sleep.”

— Neil Finn, 1981

Well, that’s reassuring. We’d never want a second Black Plague, a second Holocaust or even a second Hurricane Katrina, would we? But if Finn is right, we should perhaps ask ourselves the obvious question: Why study history?

After all, if it never repeats, then knowledge of the past is useless to guide us for the future. What use is it to think about the South Sea Bubble or the Cold War when we know that the unique circumstances that made each possible will never exist again?

Immediate and Greater Context

Over at Stand to Reason, Alan Shlemon is back on the subject of the importance of reading in context. I too am convinced that context is probably the single most crucial way to accurately determine the intended meaning of any verse in scripture, so as you may imagine, I find myself agreeing with almost everything Alan has to say.

In discussing the Lord’s much-misunderstood promise that begins with the words “For where two or three come together in my name,” Shlemon asserts that “Jesus begins and ends by talking about how to respond to a sinning brother. Therefore, the meaning of verse 20 must be restricted to that context, making it unlikely that it is about God being present among believers.”

“Christianizing” the Psalms

In Sunday School we used to sing, “Every promise in the book is mine: every chapter, every verse, every line.” And of all the books in the Old Testament that we Christians love to apply to ourselves, the book of Psalms is right at the top of the list.

I suspect this is because despite being mostly composed between 4,000 and 2,500 years ago by Hebrews living in a very different cultural setting, the psalms contain statements of great universality which we may reasonably apply to believers in every era of God’s dealings with mankind, up to and including ourselves.

Anonymous Asks (121)

“Is cremation biblical?”

When Israel’s first king and three of his sons were killed in battle with the Philistines, the men of Jabesh-gilead took their bodies back home, cremated them as best they could, then buried their bones. The writer of 1 Samuel does not comment on the morality of cremation, but gives credit to the men who treated the bodies of royalty with dignity at risk to their own lives.

When Jacob the patriarch died, his son Joseph had him embalmed over a forty day period in the manner of Egyptian royalty. The writer of Genesis likewise makes no comment on the morality of embalming a body.

Looking for a Word

“The crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God ...”

How did these four words become so commonplace among Christians? How did we come to take them so completely for granted?

It’s Sunday morning, so the family piles into the aging Camry five minutes late, maybe ten. Dad is distracted by problems at the office and the condition of the lawn, which he meant to get to Saturday afternoon but didn’t. Mom is simmering about Junior, whose hair is its usual mess, and who didn’t wear the freshly pressed shirt she put out for him last night, but there wasn’t time to make him change before meeting. Junior is rhapsodizing about a blonde in his math class, while Sis obsesses over the number of calories in the cream cheese bagel Mom guilted her into eating for breakfast, half of which she smuggled into the garbage in a napkin. Meanwhile, the baby just spat her soother under the car seat again. Everyone is used to the waves of ambient unhappiness she emits most of her waking life, but this morning she’s cranked the volume up to eleven.

We’re off to hear God’s word.

Mining the Minors: Jonah (10)

If you are in the habit of praying regularly, especially in the privacy of your own heart, you will surely have noticed that some of your prayers are more coherent and composed than others, depending on circumstances, distractions and the level of distress you are experiencing at the time.

This is fairly normal, I think, and gives us cause to be thankful for the Spirit of God, who helps us in our weakness.

Too Hot to Handle: The Great Reset

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

The only substantive difference between the Great Reset and other conspiracies is that the Great Reset is right out there in the open, more or less declaring itself for what it is in hope that the generation has finally come along who will take up its ideas and make them successful. The movement has its own websites, branding and literally trillions of dollars in backing. If you haven’t come across it yet, you probably will shortly.

Tom: The Great Reset idea is the product of eighty-something German engineer and economist Klaus Schwab, whose detractors refer to him as “the new Karl Marx”, and an organization he founded called the World Economic Forum. Schwab has been pushing his utopian vision since the early ’70s, but the outbreak of COVID-19 across the world this year is the latest pretense for finally implementing it. IC, maybe you can give us a quick executive summary of the concept.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

“So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

Eating and drinking to the glory of God?

What a strange idea. I get the “eating” part, and I get the idea of “glorifying God”. But what does our action of eating have to do with God’s glory?

That’s going to take some explaining.

A Meal and Love

I have a friend who has the gift of hospitality. Watching him for many years has totally convinced me of the incredible power of that gift. More than anyone I’ve ever met, he has a knack for making his home a place where people feel welcomed, warmed, loved and fed.

Flyover Country: Ruth

David Jeremiah writes, “Perhaps the greatest romance in all of scripture is found in the book of Ruth.” Ray Stedman calls Ruth “a beautiful story of a romance”. Bible.com’s reading plan for Ruth actually refers to the book as an “OG chick-flick”.

Okay, that last one is a little hard to stomach. If you had never read the book of Ruth and heard only those sorts of comments about it, you might be forgiven for expecting the book to be a little on the trivial side, or for not reading it at all.

On the Construction Site

Raising children is hard. Doing it right is harder.

Psalm 127 was written by Solomon, and contains several oft-quoted lines about parents and children. To the extent we know much about any of Solomon’s own children, it appears they had limited success in this world. Solomon’s son Rehoboam started his reign with twelve tribes calling him king and ended it with 2-1/2 ... not exactly what we would call an outstanding job performance.

That doesn’t mean Rehoboam’s father knew nothing useful about governance, but whatever Solomon did know, he passed on to his son imperfectly, as is so often the case.

Anonymous Asks (120)

“Does your past play a role when you become a Christian?”

This is another one of those questions whose meaning is a little hard to nail down, but the answer is the same either way we read it: No.

A good past, even a past chock full of good works and moral excellence — if any of us could truly claim one — cannot qualify us for a relationship with God. Likewise, even a past rife with the most wretched sin and excess cannot disqualify us from getting right with God and seeking to live a life that pleases him. There is nothing impressive in our past that we can bring to God for his pleasure: “All our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.” But there is also nothing in our past which will drive us from God’s presence forever if we truly repent: “Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people.”

What matters is whether your past is really your present. Let me explain that a bit.

The Dried-Up Brook

“After a while the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land.”

There is a video out there circulating in which a Joe Biden supporter (lawn sign and all) has an unexpected and unpleasant interaction with some of those “mostly peaceful” protesters we are always hearing about. Let’s just say it doesn’t go well for him. He is absolutely flabbergasted to discover that the color of his skin and his gender are of more significance to an angry mob than his professed political affiliation. They do not want his support, and they are quite happy to tear up his property and threaten his person as enthusiastically as they would any Republican’s.

Secularists and leftists make such errors in judgment because they do not know who they are, and do not understand the times in which they are living. Christians should not make the same mistake.