Peace

I've posted before about the need for us to stop running so hard after the things that are here, but the thought continues to weigh on my mind. I want to be able to put this into words that make an impact beyond just saying, "Stop running so much after the world." That phrase sounds trite and overused. The fact is that I often hear it spill from the mouth of those that are running harder than anyone else, so it falls very flat. The great power of the book of Ecclesiastes is that it draws it all down to the bottom line:

For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool! (Ecclesiastes 2:16)

For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return. (Ecclesiastes 3:19-20)

The bottom line is very simple: Everybody dies.

That's right, everybody dies. Why are we running so hard after the things of this world when we all die? Of what use is a wonderful career when life is so short? Look, America doesn't help you with this. I'm not trying to be unpatriotic here, but shouldn't we be more concerned with what comes after this life than with what temporary things this life has to offer? That runs against the grain I think. Somehow we have convinced ourselves that good college and a good career is somehow commanded by God as being a "Good steward." The prosperity gospel is actually a few steps behind in this respect, it only promises wealth and honor - too many people are so far gone as to believe that the Bible commands such a thing.

Let's be blunt here, you are dying and the world is running down. If you believe in an afterlife then you ought to be doing whatever you can toward that and forget about the moldy things here. Do we think that Jesus is interested in our careers?

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19-21)

Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (Luke 12:33-34)

Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. (James 5:1-3)

You tell me. I don't know. I'm still looking for the passage where Jesus says, "Make sure you get into a good college and get a good job that you feel fulfilled in for this is important to me." If somebody finds it, please let me know.

Oddly enough, our lives would be so much better if we would stop rooting around in the dumpster and strive after eternal things. We say that we want peace and we believe it is around the next corner. We are running as fast as we can so that we can stop. On every lap God quietly says, "You can stop now if you want to and have peace" and we pant and say, "No, God, not yet, I'm almost there. *pant* *pant* I can stop after I get this next promotion or move to this other place or pay off this thing or ... " and on and on it goes. Thomas à Kempis knew this, he said:

Whensoever a man desireth any thing inordinately, he is forthwith disquieted in himself.  The proud and covetous are never at rest.  The poor and humble in spirit dwell in the multitude of peace.

We can run and run.  We will never find what we are looking for here.  You may disagree with me.  It is quite likely you think that you will find what you are looking for right around that next corner.  I doubt it.  On the next lap you could try listening to Jesus when you pass him by though.  He doesn't speak too loudly, but he does say this:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."  (Matthew 11:28-30)

Confession

Augustine wrote The Confessions to God, not to us, although much of the book touched me like nothing else I've ever read outside of the Bible.  He had a good idea - confession is Biblical after all:

I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD," and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.  (Psalms 32:5)

Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.  (Proverbs 28:13)

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.  (James 5:16)

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.  (1 John 1:8-10)

Most of the passages that refer to confession throughout the Bible refer to confession to God.  James 5 was the only passage that I found directly relating confession of our sins to one another.  In that passage it is so that others can pray for you.  It is notably not so that others can act concerned and tell all of their friends the great tidbit they learned - that would be gossip of course and there are verses about that as well.  I say that latter part because I think that gossip is one of the great unacknowledged evils and I find that some people who want more confession one to another seem to want it for the salacious information rather than to be helpful to each other in prayer.  Any grocery aisle today will attest to the immense human thirst for salacious information on other individuals so denying that this motivation exists is nonsense.  I think that one of the reasons that gossip and slander is so evil is that it destroys confession and therefore it hinders our prayers for each other (because so much that goes on we never know about).  Nobody wants to say anything to anybody because we cannot acknowledge that we have this evil tendency and so we destroy our brothers and sisters with our tongues after we discover some juicy tidbit that was told to us in confidence or which we discovered from some other gossip when what we really ought to be doing is covering their sin and taking it up to God on their behalf.  Acting concerned when you spread it to another person is no substitute for love, either.  Francis of Sales in Introduction to the Devout Life discussed this like so:

Those who slander others with an affectation of good will, or with dishonest pretences of friendliness, are the most spiteful and evil of all. They will profess that they love their victim, and that in many ways he is an excellent man, but all the same, truth must be told, and he was very wrong in such a matter; or that such and such a woman is very virtuous generally, but and so on.  Do you not see through the artifice? He who draws a bow draws the arrow as close as he can to himself, but it is only to let it fly more forcibly; and so such slanderers appear to be withholding their evil-speaking, but it is only to let it fly with surer aim and go deeper into the listeners’ minds.

We have such a problem with this and we try to counteract the destruction of confession in the churches, not by acknowledging and working against slander and gossip, those pests at the root of the tree, but rather by simply pushing everyone harder to confess, confess, confess.  This will do no good.  We have to get love correct and confession will come from it.  That connection is important.  The gossip and slanderer does not love the object of their tales, they love the sin they are committing.  I'll tell you this, I have confessed all of my struggles and sins to my wife - she knows everything about me, all that I struggle with and all of my failures but there is a reason for this: she prays to God for me, of this I am certain, but she does not take my confessions to her friends and I don't take hers to mine, so I trust her in everything.  I have no fear with confessing to her because I know this about her (it is one of the main reasons I fell in love with her).  I tell you this because if we were all like this with each other - that is, if we all went to God with each other's sins rather than each other - we would find confession comes naturally as a result.

The Call of the World

Lately I've been appreciating Ecclesiastes a great deal more than I used to.  The book just confused me for so long.  Consider this passage right at the beginning:

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.  (Ecclesiastes 1:2-4)

I never appreciated that until I started stopping the toiling and running.  That's an awkward sentence, I know.  I'd say that I have "stopped" toiling and running but I haven't so that would be wrong - but even stopping it a little tiny bit has helped.  When you stop running for even a little bit you look around and everyone around you seems very silly with all of their striving after the things in this world that just end so quickly.  I want to be free from that same striving but I admit that I'm not and that frustrates me.

Tomato Soup

I have to start this by saying that I never liked Tomato Soup as a kid. It was a toss up between that and cooked spinach as my least favorite food so when my six year old didn't want to eat hers at lunch it was tough to make her do it. You could really tell that she didn't want that soup but I don't want pickiness encouraged in my kids and I wasn't asking her to eat the whole thing, just some.

After much cajoling and telling her that she wouldn't get any cake at the birthday party we are going to this afternoon if she didn't at least make an effort she choked down 3 more spoonfuls and I asked her to do 5 more to finish. She did it and I was proud of her and she didn't try to "cheat" (you know, dribble half the spoonful out the back of the spoon on each bite, things like that). Anyway, the best part came after I told her she was done and you could tell she was so happy and then she started to brag about eating those 8 more spoonfuls as though it was an amazing thing. It was then that we told her that she probably shouldn't boast about it since it was only by our grace that she didn't have to eat the entire bowl. Eight bites wasn't so impressive to me and in fact I felt a little like I had let her get away with something but then to hear her brag about it really made me wonder if we are like that to God when we talk about how good we are or how little sin we commit:

For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it-- the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. (Romans 3:20-28)

Recently I read a Newsweek article talking about Billy Graham. In the article I read this:

A unifying theme of Graham's new thinking is humility. He is sure and certain of his faith in Jesus as the way to salvation. When asked whether he believes heaven will be closed to good Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus or secular people, though, Graham says: "Those are decisions only the Lord will make. It would be foolish for me to speculate on who will be there and who won't ... I don't want to speculate about all that. I believe the love of God is absolute. He said he gave his son for the whole world, and I think he loves everybody regardless of what label they have."

The interesting part of this is not so much what Billy Graham answers but the assumptions in the original question. The question was whether he, "believes heaven will be closed to good Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus or secular people..." The question itself entirely misses the point. There are no good Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, secular people, or Christians. "God alone is good" and our goodness is like filth compared to his standard. We had to have help which is what the Bible is all about. God had to send his Son to die on a cross because none of us was good and we have got to remember that. We ate our eight spoonfuls of Tomato Soup and we are so happy for ourselves so we wonder if we might get cake based on our own actions, but thanks be to God that he didn't make us eat the 8,000 gallons of Tomato Soup that we would need to because we never could have achieved it and our efforts are so very unimpressive. Make no mistake about it, heaven will be closed to all who do not try to get in by the "Way, the Truth and the Life" which is Jesus Christ. It is that simple and thankfully it has so little to do with our "goodness."

The One Talent Guy

I just finished reading The Interior Castle by Teresa of Avila and although it got a little too Roman Catholic for me in the sixth and seventh mansions I was still enriched by the experience. One of the things that I've found very edifying while reading The Interior Castle, The Imitation of Christ, and The Confessions has been the incredible humility that these books enjoin on the reader. Consider the 12th paragraph of the 3rd chapter in the fifth mansions:

Beg our Lord to grant you perfect love for your neighbour, and leave the rest to Him. He will give you more than you know how to desire if you constrain yourselves and strive with all your power to gain it, forcing your will as far as it is possible to comply in all things with your sisters' wishes although you may sometimes forfeit your own rights by so doing.

This is not un-biblical:

Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
(Philippians 2:3)

I've found the repeated exhortations to humility very un-21st-century-American and it refreshes me, and I'm thankful for that.

Another passage in The Interior Castle that I found very useful was this one near the end of the seventh mansions:

I told you elsewhere how the devil frequently fills our thoughts with great schemes, so that instead of putting our hands to what work we can do to serve our Lord, we may rest satisfied with wishing to perform impossibilities.

This is one of those great nuggets of truth. I lived like this for so long - always "satisfying" myself "with wishing to perform impossibilities" so that I did nothing at all for God. It has only been in the past year that I decided that I could do so little but at least I could do that. This is the reason I blog - because it is one of the few things I find within my ability and will to do. In the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30) it encourages me that there is somebody given only one talent (when the other two people in the parable are given 5 and 2 talents). It encourages me even though in the parable the poor fellow just buries his one talent in the ground and is clearly the example of what not to do. But that is just it, isn't it? See, I'm that one talent guy and I'm determined to make the most of it, not bury it in the ground happy with just wishing I was the five talent guy. Let's not rest satisfied with wishing to perform impossibilities but rather put our hands to what work we can do to serve our Lord.

So Little that is New

Lately I've been reading old books.  I started in on The Confessions of Augustine on my last trip and I'm amazed by how similar to me he is.  I suppose that this is a common reaction to The Confessions since it is even mentioned in the Preface of the book but it is amazing how little is new since he lived.  The book was written about 1600 years ago in Italy and although I am unable to fathom that amount of time I find that the book speaks to me as though Augustine just lived around the corner here in town.

I love the way that Augustine puts things sometimes.  Like, for example when he talks about his boyhood and going to school and says:

But whereas the frivolous pursuits of grown-up people are called "business," children are punished for behaving in the same fashion, and no one is sorry for either the children or the adults; so are we to assume that any sound judge of the matter would think it right for me to be beaten because I played ball as a boy, and was hindered by my game from more rapid progress in studies which would only equip me to play an uglier game later?  Moreover, was the master who flogged me any better himself?  If he had been worsted by a fellow-scholar in some pedantic dispute, would he not have been racked by even more bitter jealousy than I was when my opponent in a game of ball got the better of me?

He is absolutely correct!  I just came from taking my oldest daughter to a chess tournament and the adults who are there smile and shake their heads at all of the kids who are so vexed by losing to one of their peers, but yet most adults are only above such behavior not because of their own greater maturity but rather because they simply don't care about that particular game.  In their own games (meetings at work, for example, where I see this on display all of the time) they are just as vexed as those kids are, and maybe more so, by having one of their peers be proven correct about something after some heated discussion (thus: worsted by a fellow-scholar in some pedantic dispute, as Augustine puts it).  It is pitiful, really.  It is more pitiful that Augustine knew this 1600 years ago.  But one of the gifts of reading The Confessions is an enhanced appreciation for Ecclesiastes:

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.  (Ecclesiastes 1:2-8)

The fact that we don't read Augustine in school and the fact that I am shocked at how similar he is to me when I discover him makes me think of just a few verses later in Ecclesiastes:

There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.  (Ecclesiastes 1:11)

Does this mean that there is no hope for humanity to progress out of a constant repetition of past mistakes?  Unfortunately I think that it must be so.  We know that we can progress if we follow the Bible:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil.  (Proverbs 3:5-7)

But Jesus himself tells us to"Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.  (Matthew 7:13-14)"  We require a lamp (Psalm 119:105) and therefore how can we find our way in the darkness without it?  If the majority of the world is to remain in darkness then what hope is there fore the honest spiritual progression of the bulk of mankind?  Across the world there are so many who deny that progression of the soul requires the light of the Bible.  Some say that the light comes from a different book or a different leader and others say that it comes from human knowledge, but this book that I am reading from 1600 years ago speaks of philosophies and ideas we are taught today are new (what Augustine calls the Academics, for example - those who believe that truth cannot be known for certain, and the fact that the Manichees stated that the New Testament writings had "been falsified by unknown persons bent on interpolating the Christian faith with elements of the Jewish law"), and so the Bible which has always reassured me that in such matters humanity does not progress on its own but rather precesses is all the more sweet to me for the truth that it contains.

Congealed Despair

I didn't grow up thinking too much about Easter beyond candy and hiding eggs since we didn't celebrate the liturgical calendar beyond the usual American cultural observances, but for some reason this year I find myself thinking a lot about the time that Jesus was gone from the earth prior to his resurrection.

As I try to think about what it must have been like for the disciples I can only draw upon the inadequate personal experience that we almost all have of losing someone dear to us. I say that this is inadequate, though, because since Jesus is the Son of God his impact on the lives of those around him was that much more intense. Oddly enough, although he warned them repeatedly that he came to die and be raised again (Matt. 16:21; Mark 9:31) they did not understand (Mark 9:32) and so it came as a shock to them when he did die and they were confused by his resurrection (Luke 24:5-8). To have been so near to the Son of God and then to have seen him brutally killed; to have helped in his burial and to have known what all humans know, that even though there may be a life to come after this one death means never seeing that person here again must have brought about a feeling of such utter despair like we have whenever we lose anyone, but amplified an untold amount by the fact that Jesus was not just anyone. As the Son of God he had demanded a permanent change in their lives, and they had complied (Luke 5:11). Now, then, how do they go back to what was before? Now that they have seen him die, what do they do with the lives that they had given to him? On the day of the crucifixion they were clearly worried most about their own safety (Matt. 26:56) and perhaps they didn't even sleep that first night (I mean, could you?) but when they finally did sleep and wake up the next day and he was still gone, what then? Where do you go when your despair starts to congeal and the sense of loss hardens into the certainty that all you thought was right was proven wrong in front of your very eyes by the most irreversible of all the events known to us in this world? The bottom, of course, was the day before he rose again. How could it not be?  I have always believed with all of my heart that the Christian religion would have died there with that man on the cross if he had died there and stayed dead. If he was just another liar with an agenda to bilk his disciples of all their hard-earned cash then where would it have gone once he was gone?

But of course it didn't end there. Christianity became an indestructible religion powered by peasants that confused the great powers of the day by persisting even to the point of death in their strange belief about a man rising again after being nailed to a cross. And why would they do this? Because they saw him. They knew the day when their despair was turned to victory because they saw him and believed.

The Way, The Truth and The Life

I finished Thomas à Kempis' The Imitation of Christ and I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. The fourth book was a little too much on transubstantiation and the uniqueness of priests for me (I'm completely Protestant in that regard) but there was still a lot to learn from even this about the right frame of mind to take when partaking of the Lord's Supper. Several of the phrases in the book are still running through my mind and especially the passage in Chapter 56 of Book 3 about John 14:6 where Jesus says, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." À Kempis says about this passage, "Without the Way, there is no going; without the Truth, there is no knowing; without the Life, there is no living."

I read a few years ago a letter in the local paper that was attacking what the author thought was a false view of Christianity.  In it the author said, "Some of you Christians act like Jesus said , 'It's my way or the highway.'"  And I remember thinking, "No, he said, 'I am the way, and there is no other.'"  Without the Way, there is no going.

There are so many in the world today who deny that Jesus is the only way.  They want to make many different ways to the Father with Jesus being not the way but simply a way.  Some do this out of malice but many out of ignorance by studying books they believe to be new revelations and understanding the one true revelation to be corrupted, for without the Truth, there is no knowing.

A holiday is coming up when people will celebrate the resurrection of this same Jesus who is both the Way and the Truth.  Without his resurrection, according to the apostle Paul, "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins." (1 Corinthians 15:17)  So without his resurrection he is nothing to us, we are still in our sins and our faith is useless.  With his resurrection we have hope for resurrection as well, we have hope against the sting of death, which is sin.  Without his resurrection not only do we have no hope for a life after death but in fact then we are "of all people most to be pitied" (1 Corinthians 15:19), for without the Life, there is no living.

Vigilance (Part 2)

Last time I mentioned the following passages from the Bible that exhort us to vigilance in our lives:

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.  (1 Peter 5:8-9)

"But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap.  (Luke 21:34)

Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.  (Romans 13:11-14)

These are just a sample.  One of the themes of the New Testament is endurance in the resistance of our sins but it has been one of the most troubling themes for me to deal with throughout my life because I feel so inadequate to resist the devil.  I will freely admit that I fall repeatedly.  When I was little I remember watching bigger kids push smaller ones in the dirt and then pushing them down every time they tried to get up.  It didn't require a lot of effort on the part of someone so much stronger, and I often feel like I'm the little kid and the devil is the big kid.  I think I must be so easy to make stumble that rather than God pointing me out as a shining example like he did Job, the devil must go to God and say, "Have you seen your servant Justin lately?  I pushed him in the dirt a few more times when I was down there on earth yesterday."

My weakness in the face of temptation is one of the reasons that I mentioned that we have a helper.  I think that the personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit is a teaching of the Bible.  What do I think the Spirit does?  Well, I can tell you that I don't think that the Spirit leads Christians into truths that aren't in the Bible.  What I do think is that the Spirit helps us to resist temptation and aids us in our fight against the devil.  I think that this view is clearly upheld by verses like Romans 8:13:

For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

Notice that this verse clearly says that, "if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live."  This says to me that I cannot by myself put to death the deeds of the body but rather I require the Spirit's help to do so.  A similar thought is found in Galatians:

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.  (Galatians 5:16)

Now, I used to read this to be saying that if I control myself to walk according to what the Spirit tells me in the Bible then I will not gratify the desires of the flesh.  This would make the verse into a tautology.  I no longer believe that this is what the verse is saying.  The remainder of the passage is this:

For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.  (Galatians 5:17-25)

The passage tells me that if I am led by the Spirit then I am not under the law.  How is one led by the Spirit if it is simply a new law unto me?  That is, if being led by the Spirit merely means following the words of the Bible then that means that I have the choice of the words of the whole Bible to follow versus the words of just the Old Law.  These are the opposing forces in verse 18 - Spirit and law.  I have a hard time believing that God has simply given me a new law to follow that is similar in many respects to the Old Law but somehow I am to try harder than all of my forebears, none of which could follow the Old Law (Acts 15:10).  That is simply setting me up for failure.  I cannot do it.  I cannot follow the Bible without the aid of God any more than the Jews could follow the Old Law without the aid of God.

So after all of this what do I think the Spirit does?  I remember hearing somebody say once, "What do you want the Spirit to do for you?  Do you want him to lead you into truth not found in the Bible?"  In response I thought in my head, "No, I want him to help me follow the truth that is in the Bible."  I find that I cannot do right if I only draw upon myself to do it.  But I find that if I admit my own inability then I can do right by drawing upon the power of God rather than my own power.  This is what I think the Spirit does for me.  The Christian, we know, has the Spirit:

And Peter said to them, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.  (Acts 2:38)

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.  (Romans 8:11)

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba! Father!"  (Romans 8:15)

In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
(Ephesians 1:13-14)

And the Spirit is our help in many ways, both to our prayers (Romans 8:26) and also to our will so that we can bear, not our own fruit and not the fruit of our flesh, but the fruit of the Spirit:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.  (Galatians 5:22-23)

The Foolishness of the Gospel

There is an article in the most recent edition of Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR) titled Losing Faith: How Scholarship Affects Scholars, 2 Who Did and 2 Who Didn't which is both illuminating and sad at the same time.  As you can imagine, the article is about the effects of becoming a biblical scholar on an individual's faith.  The article is essentially an interview between the editor of BAR, Hershel Shanks, and four eminent scholars: Bart Ehrman, James Strange, Lawrence Schiffman and William G. Dever.  The article is interesting because Mr. Shanks never pulls any punches when he has interviews like these, so the questions are right to the point (example: "Does this God of yours have any attributes?").  Unfortunately, the sadness comes in when you realize that the "Christian" scholar who claimed not to have lost his faith (Dr. James F. Strange) has a "faith" which most would wonder really exists at all.  Consider, for example, this exchange:

SHANKS: What historical claims?

EHRMAN: For example, that [Jesus] was raised from the dead.  That's a historical claim.  I mean either he was raised from the dead or he rotted in his grave.  The kind of Christianity I was in believed in an active physical resurrection of Jesus.  That was part of what it meant to be Christian.  You had to believe that.

SHANKS: Do you believe it, Jim? [to Dr. James F. Strange]

STRANGE: I don't believe that, but, yeah, I believe in something that means that Christ is alive, and our explanation of that is that there was a resurrection.  I think I'm more or less untouched by the sort of literalist interpretation [Bart is talking about]; resurrection is sort of a metaphor.

The italics are in the original, which is important.  Dr. Strange says, in reply to a question about whether he believes that Jesus was actually raised from the dead in the way that we read about in the Bible (more on that in a minute) and he says, "I don't believe that..." as though it is a silly thing.  A foolish thing.

And here is where, yet again, the Bible is always ahead of us all:

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart." Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  (1 Corinthians 1:18-24)

The cross is foolishness to those who seek the wisdom of the world.  Notice how none of the "scholars" believe in the resurrection because it is just silly to believe in such a thing.  Ehrman puts it like so, "...I got to a point where the historical claims about Jesus seemed implausible, especially the resurrection.  Not the crucifixion - I think Jesus was crucified like a lot of other people were crucified, and I think that, like a lot of other people, he stayed dead."  You might think that this doesn't go with the verses above which talk about the crucifixion being foolishness to the Gentiles, not the resurrection, but the foolishness of the crucifixion is tied together with the historicity of the resurrection and the resurrection was a point of mocking contention for the Gentiles who valued "scholarship" and "wisdom."  Notice this fact in Acts 17 when Paul is done talking with the Athenians:

Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, "We will hear you again about this."  (Acts 17:32)

The resurrection that the apostles preached was a physical resurrection of the man Jesus.  It is not possible to get anything else from the teaching of the Bible:

So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe." Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!"  (John 20:25-28)

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, "Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise."  (Luke 24:1-7)

Jesus said to them, "Bring some of the fish that you have just caught." So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, 153 of them. And although there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, "Come and have breakfast." Now none of the disciples dared ask him, "Who are you?" They knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and so with the fish. This was now the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.  (John 21:10-14)

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you--unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.  (1 Corinthians 15:1-7)

The truth of the bodily resurrection of Jesus is absolutely central to the Christian faith.  It is so central that in fact it is not possible (or worthwhile) to even be a Christian without believing in the bodily resurrection of Jesus:

Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.  (1 Corinthians 15:12-14)

For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.  (1 Corinthians 15:16-17)

This is not a metaphorical thing but a real historical event.  It is sad that so many biblical "scholars" are so steeped in modernism that they want to believe in a God who cannot create a universe or animals or even raise somebody from the dead.  Such a God is pathetic and is very much not the God of the Bible.  The God of the Bible is the God who created everything that is and is the God who saw that we were lost in our sins and completely without hope and who sent his eternally begotten Son to die as a convicted felon (a disgrace in any society and in any time) and be raised up again so that we, too, could conquer death and live forever.  This is the gospel.  It is the same as it ever has been.  It is old and therefore foolishness to modern biblical "scholarship" that is disgusted with the old and seeks ever for the new (so much like the Athenians - Acts 17:21 - nothing changes).  It is trust in this foolishness that comes to us in such simple trappings that is the only saving power for us today (Romans 1:16).  Without it we have no hope, as the poor biblical scholars in the BAR article have no hope.  This is clear from a part of the exchange in the article between the two who lost their faith:

EHRMAN: I have a different view.  I would actually like to be a believer.

DEVER: I would too.  I wish it were true.  I really do.

And so it is good news, even to these biblical scholars, when the Apostle Paul proclaims:

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.  (1 Corinthians 15:20-22)

Vigilance (Part 1)

As I've been reading The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis I've begun to run across passages that very much reflect the pre-Reformation era that the book was written in. There are large sections on the goodness of monasticism. For example, Book 1, Chapter 20 says the following:

He therefore that intendeth to attain to the more inward and spiritual things of religion, must with Jesus depart from the multitude.

and again:

The greatest Saints avoided, when they could, the society of men, and did rather choose to live to God, in secret.

Okay, so I'll admit that there is some appeal in these statements to me because I'm a big introvert and I would almost always rather be by myself than with a crowd and I would definitely always rather be by myself than with people I don't know; but I see that as a weakness rather than, as à Kempis would see it, a strength, since it greatly hinders any capability I have to obey the New Testament's clear call to evangelism.  Honestly, what kind of evangelist can you be when you are by yourself all the time?

That said, there are still many wonderful things about this book.  A marvelous quote I came across the other day is this one:

The devil sleepeth not, neither is the flesh as yet dead; therefore cease not to prepare thyself to the battle; for on they right hand and on thy left are enemies who never rest.

Yes, temptation and the devil and battle, we don't hear much about those lately, do we?  But of course they are real.  The Bible is full of admonitions to vigilance that we ignore to our own peril:

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.  (1 Peter 5:8-9)

"But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap.  (Luke 21:34)

Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.  (Romans 13:11-14)

The practical applications here have to permeate our entire lives.  That said, I think we have some help, but that is what I want to talk about in Part 2 of this (there is a To Be Continued here because I want to go somewhere else with this but I'm not ready quite yet, not because I'm smart enough to have planned it out this way).

Of Bearing with the Defects of Others

I titled the post the same as Book 1, Chapter 16 of The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis because nothing else seemed quite as relevant.  When I read this passage I was struck deeply by what he says about bearing with each other, and especially by this nugget of wisdom:

If thou canst not make thyself such an one as thou wouldest, how wilt thou be able to have another in all things to thy liking?

This is so amazingly correct!  I'm going to add this to, "What do you have that you did not receive?" as one of my repeat-this-often-to-yourself phrases.

There is a Way that Seems Right...

I continue to be amazed by The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. In the passage I read last night (Book 1, Chapter 14) I came across the following:

We often judge of a thing according as we fancy it; for through private affection we easily lose true judgment.

This is one of the most common problems we have today and yet we don't often acknowledge that the problem exists. At the level of the individual that makes some sense because as individuals we don't usually know that we are doing this. A little later in the same passage à Kempis essentially says as much:

Many secretly seek themselves in what they do, and know it not.

So as he says, we often do this and we don't actually know that we are doing it. Unfortunately this isn't something you hear much today in our essentially hedonistic society. Hedonism in our society masquerades as affirmation of the self so we allow it without thinking. There are very few checks on the self that are levied by our culture and this is done purposefully because modern psychology has convinced itself that self-affirmation is central to personal well-being, but these words really mean that the seeking of pleasure is central to happiness. Of course, the notion that the seeking of pleasure is central to happiness is not new, it dates back at least to the 4th century B.C. What is more insidious about what we have done today, however, lies in our inability to acknowledge that what we are doing is elevating the seeking of our pleasure above all else. We invent fancy words for it in an effort to fool ourselves into not understanding what it is that we are really doing. This blinds us to the existence within ourselves of what à Kempis is talking about in the previous quotes which is our uncanny ability to fool ourselves into actually believing that the seeking of our own ends is really what God wants us to do. People will not believe this of themselves if they are doing it. It is very difficult to see until you are out of it on the other side. Many things in life are this way and we are warned against this effect in Proverbs:

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. (Proverbs 14:12)

Our duty, then, is to examine our life as it stands now and compare it to what we find in the Bible and when something does not match up not to convince ourselves that somehow we are in the right. This comes down to allowing the Bible to convict us. We do not like to be convicted and we naturally resist this, but the Bible seeks to convict us constantly as we measure up to its perfection.  Submission is the key that opens this lock for us, and not self-promotion.  In this way we are swimming upstream but we will be happier if we do:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.  (Galatians 5:22-23)

The Imitation of Christ

I really love bookstores, and the bigger the better. I can get lost for hours in all of the possibilities among the stacks of books. It gets even better when it is somewhere like Barnes and Noble and they have those bargain books up front but it makes it really difficult not to spend a lot of money. A few days ago when I was at a Barnes and Noble I saw a new bargain book that Barnes and Noble had published called Wellsprings of Faith that contained three books: The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis, The Interior Castle by St. Teresa of Avila, and The Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross. Since it was only $20 (and quite thick- therefore full of promise), I bought it.

I started in at the beginning of the first book - The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis the night after buying the book and it is slow going. Part of this is the age of the translation (around 1900) which imbues the text with somewhat archaic wording but a bigger part of it is the density of each section. The Imitation of Christ is split up into small chunks that supposedly would form part of morning or evening devotional readings for the members of The Brethren of the Common Life, which à Kempis was a part of in the fifteenth century.  Even after the first few sections the quotable quotes are numerous:

I had rather feel contrition, than know the definition thereof.

Who hath a harder struggle than he that laboureth to conquer himself?

But because many endeavour rather to know than to live well; therefore they are often deceived, and reap either none, or scanty fruit.

O, if men bestowed as much labour in the rooting out of vices, and planting of virtues, as they do in moving of questions, there would neither be so great evils and scandals in the world, nor so much looseness in religious houses.

Truly, when the day of judgment cometh, we shall not be examined what we have read, but what we have done.

Tell me, where are now all those Masters and Doctors, with whom thou wast well acquainted whilst they lived and flourished in learning?  Now others possess their livings, and perhaps do scarce ever think of them.  In their lifetime they seemed to be somewhat, but now they are not spoken of... O that their life had been answerable to their learning!

We ought not to believe every saying or suggestion, but ought warily and patiently to ponder the matter with reference to God.  But alas! such is our weakness, that we often rather believe and speak evil of others than good.

Enquire willingly, and hear with silence the words of holy men: let not the proverbs of the elders displease thee, for they are not recounted without cause.

Extol not thyself for the height of thy stature, or beauty of thy person, which is disfigured and destroyed by a little sickness.

Continual peace is with the humble; but in the heart of the proud is envy and frequent indignation.

We think sometimes to please others by our company, and we begin rather to displease them with the wickedness which they discover in us.

And that is just a sampling which I cut short because I got tired of holding the book open and typing at the same time.  Almost every line is thought-provoking so I find myself going slowly and reading lines over again and then sometimes stopping and thinking for awhile about whether I agree with him from a Biblical perspective (there are lots of scripture references and I don't always find I agree with the way he used them) and sometimes stopping and thinking about how right I think he is on other counts.  The book is very humbling (you can see that in some of what I've quoted above), which is good.  I find humility gives my heart peace.  When I'm not trying to compete with everyone around me I feel better about everything I do.  I don't find that I feel what I do is more worthy, but rather I care less about what others might think of what I do and more about what effect it might have for God in the world as he uses it.  A friend I met on MySpace recently sent me a message that sums this up:

I don't think it's so much a matter of how we as individuals write, but what we write about that reaches the audience's heart.

I'll go even further than this and say that I think it comes down to understanding that it isn't me that has any effect at all but only God - this notion gives me peace and it doesn't have the effect that we sometimes think it might have - that of making us lazy.  In fact if anything it has had the opposite effect on me because as I worry less about what others think of me and allow God to "give the increase" instead of trying to make the increase myself (a wasted effort, of course) I find myself actually doing more in the end than I ever did before.  Though here I find I finally understand Galatians 2:20 and the meaning of Paul saying that he no longer lived but that Christ lived through him - I understand that it is not me doing these things and that makes them even easier to do.

Truly His yoke is easy and His burden is light.

The Hollywood Proof of Christianity

This is somewhat repetitive of a previous post but the obvious aspects of the events in recent weeks makes it worth repeating.

I had a roommate in college who was a very liberal rationalist and loved to talk about it.  He would often confront us more conservative types with something he thought was difficult for us to answer.  On one particular occasion he confronted me with the "old-fashioned" view in the Bible that you can be (in fact, must be) happy with one person for the rest of your life.  In response, I asked him about the people who had been married for 50 or 60 years and his answer was that they had obviously cheated on each other and were just okay with that or they hadn't told the other one that they were cheating.  I asked him how long he thought people could stay happy with one person and his answer was, "Three to four years, tops."  (Notably he thought women may be able to go a little longer, as I recall.)

Now, I have been married for 12 years and I am pretty sure my wife has been faithful to me, but my old roommate would just laugh and say that she is lying so I'll use the proof I am sure of which is myself.  I say this in front of God and everyone else and I would challenge anyone to find a skeleton in my closet that disproves it because I know that they do not exist.  So I say that I have not held or kissed, much less had sex with, another woman (or man, to those thinking of Ted Haggard and trying to find holes in my logic) other than my wife for all of these years.  I have not flirted with any person (in real life or on the net or on the phone or by any other communication mechanism that exists) other than my wife and I have not ever discussed flirting with any person other than my wife.  I go on a lot of business trips and in all of them I spend my nights in a hotel alone and it has never been any different in all the years I have traveled places without my wife.

I titled this post The Hollywood Proof of Christianity because our culture believes what my roommate believed, and our culture believes it to be self-evident.  That is, our culture believes it to be self-evident and an absolute truth that beautiful people should have sex with each other and that they should have a lot of money and that this will make them happy.  No other source passes this message along in so pure a form as Hollywood does.  And yet in this past week we have had two proofs straight out of Hollywood itself that this does not bring happiness.  You can say many things about Anna Nicole Smith (and all of them have been said this past week) but you cannot say that she was happy.  You can say many of the same things about Britney Spears, but with her recent head-shaving and tattooing escapade nobody who had to deal with her (at the tattoo parlor they said she was a "nightmare") would say she was happy.  But these are "beautiful" women (I use the Hollywood definition here - in all honesty Anna Nicole Smith did nothing for me and lest anyone think I am not being honest I'll point out that I think Britney is an attractive woman) and they live(d) Hollywood lives.  They had lots of money and went to all the right parties with all the right people.  It is abundantly clear that Anna Nicole Smith had lots of sex with lots of different people but she was quoted by those who were close to her as saying that she felt unloved.  How is such a thing possible?  Both women are following all of the rules as laid down by Hollywood and pop culture in general and yet they are so remarkably unhappy.  Maybe, just maybe, it is time for us to apply a little rationalism of our own and suggest, ever so gently, that Hollywood itself has proven that having lots of money and lots of sex with lots of different people doesn't bring happiness (or love or even feelings of being loved).

I don't say this to give the reader too much information but rather to go along with what we are discussing here.  In the Bible we read:

Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well. Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets? Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.  (Proverbs 5:15-19)

I have to say that I have found this to be absolutely true.  Even as I get older and as our marriage goes on to 3 times the length that my roommate ever thought I could get to without cheating I have found that all aspects of my marriage continue to get better.  This is why I called this post the Hollywood Proof of Christianity, because you will not find the notion that one woman can sexually satisfy a man for 12 years (and more) outside of the Bible.  You will in fact find that people scoff and mock at such a suggestion but in fact the Bible anticipates this, too and the continuation of the passage above is as pure a truth and as good advice today as you will ever find:

Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? For a man's ways are before the eyes of the LORD, and he ponders all his paths. The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he is held fast in the cords of his sin. He dies for lack of discipline, and because of his great folly he is led astray.  (Proverbs 5:20-23)

Remember the sadness and pain in Hollywood as it lives the wisdom of those who think that Bible is full of nonsense and realize that they are in fact living out the words in Proverbs: "The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.  He dies for lack of discipline, and because of his great folly he is led astray."

The Way of Salvation

I'm halfway through The Way of Salvation by K.C. Moser and I have to say that I'm enjoying the book. I'm not sure I agree with everything he says (his concept of faith as expressing itself in obedience only when a command is associated with it is difficult to establish scripturally, I think), but overall the book is an interesting approach to unifying the concepts in scripture that are connected with salvation (faith, repentance, confession, baptism). Note that if you come from a strong Reformed point of view then you will react negatively to that last sentence, but I'm not passing along an opinion. Repentance, confession and baptism are connected in the Word with faith, and faith with salvation, whether or not you decide that you want to read those passages in the way they are written. If you don't then you still have to struggle with forcing them into a different mold:

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel." (Mark 1:14-15) No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. (Luke 13:3) And Peter said to them, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. (Acts 2:38) Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out (Acts 3:19) But what does it say? "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. (Romans 10:8-10) But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. (Galatians 3:25-27)

Now, returning to The Way of Salvation I have to caveat the rest of the post that since I'm only halfway through the book he might change directions on me, invalidating what I mention later, but at the moment this is the way that things stand. So far, the book is proposing that the concepts I mentioned before that are connected in scripture with salvation are merely different facets of faith. Faith in Christ is defined by Moser as being trust in the power of Christ's death, burial and resurrection to save us. Repentance, therefore, is a necessary aspect of faith since faith is turning in trust toward Christ and this implies the other side of the coin: turning away from the things of the flesh (which is what repentance is). Confession is "faith spoken." That is, confession is the vocal expression of the heart that trusts in Christ. I haven't gotten through the section on baptism but he is already heading in the same direction with it as well (showing that it is a natural facet of faith and not merely something tacked on as an afterthought). This seems to me to be an interesting systematizing of salvation in the Word - tying everything to aspects of faith. I don't think I've actually ever heard it stated this way so it is definitely giving me some food for thought. I'll post some more as I get further through the book.

Reach Them Where They're At

I was going through the book of Acts the other day and skipping between the discourses given by the apostles throughout the book when I noticed some interesting differences between them depending on who their audience was. For example, when Peter is talking to the Jews who were gathered in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost he begins almost immediately with quotations of prophecy from the Old Testament:

But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them: "Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. For these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel: "'And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke; the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.'" (Acts 2:14-21)

He doesn't bother to try telling his audience about believing in one God because, of course, that would be repetitive and useless since they already believe that. He begins right where they are at. Paul does the same thing at the opposite end of the spectrum in Acts 17 when he is talking to the Greeks at the Areopagus:

So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: "Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, 'To the unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for "'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, "'For we are indeed his offspring.' Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead." (Acts 17:22-31)

This is an amazing lesson when you stop and think about it. He starts from absolutely nothing and goes all the way to the resurrection... in 9 verses! Notice how he starts with one God (clearly arriving at this by contrasting God with multiple gods since the Athenians had altars to gods all over the city) who created the world and everything in it. You really can't get any closer to the "beginning" than that. While Paul is doing this he also establishes, almost incidentally, that God is "spirit and must be worshiped in spirit and truth" (John 4:24) when he points out that God, "does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything." He also points to God as Father and uses their own writings to link this to their cultural consciousness when he says, "As even some of your own poets have said, 'For we are indeed his offspring.'" This he uses to counteract the notion that idols have anything to do with the reality of God. After all, since we are God's offspring how can God be "like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man"? Amazingly enough, he saves what we would see as the "Christian message" for the last 2 verses (30-31):

The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. (Acts 17:30-31)

Of course this is the preaching of Jesus, but Paul has had to establish the existence of God, his rule over all, his aspect as spirit and Father and a denial of idolatry to even get to this point. I think that this is especially instructive for us today. I believe that America is becoming increasingly pagan, but it is difficult for us to perceive how pagan it really is because so much of the culture is still using the terminology of Christianity. However, when people say "God" and "Jesus" although we are familiar with the terms the entities they are talking about are no more the God and Jesus of the Bible than Baal or Zeus. This is problematic because it means that we aren't really communicating at the right level. We are going to have to establish some of the basics (like Paul does with the Athenians) before we can really reach most of non-Christian (and even much of so-called "Christian") America with the gospel message.

What do you have that you did not receive?

Today my youngest daughter was playing with her sister and their friends and, as often happens in such cases, came in crying. When I asked her what was wrong I discovered that she was sad because her friends had told her that they didn't like one of her toys. I'm not really sure that they actually told her in such a way, but it wouldn't surprise me in any case because many of her toys are for a kid that is younger than they are (her sister is 3 years older than her and the oldest of the four friends is older still). It struck me as interesting because in their young minds it makes sense that they wouldn't want to play with a little kid's toys, even though, of course, they are all little kids and they all have little kid toys; but since everything is relative and at their particular age they are always right they don't see the weird inconsistency in their thinking. It is because of this that I believe we parents have as our duty to pass on mature ways of thinking. I would say "adult" ways of thinking but many adults in our society haven't learned mature ways of thinking so that would be a misleading label. Most people behave exactly as my kids do, believing their own way of thinking to be absolute truth and uninterested in what absolute truth actually is. In any case, I think that the way that I saw my kids' behavior today is most likely how God sees us humans when we fight and bicker over things that make no sense in the long run and yet we believe ourselves to be right in all circumstances. The passage in 1 Corinthians 4:6-7 is applicable here, I think:

I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another. For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?

I like the question Paul asks in verse 7, "What do you have that you did not receive?" I think it would be a good idea for us to ask ourselves this question often since it really points to God's view of us. What do we have that we did not receive? The answer would be, "Absolutely nothing." Air? Light? Life? Work? Children? Loved ones? No, we received all of that and earned none of it. We have nothing that we have not received, and so Paul follows up the question (since its answer is so obvious he does not have to actually state it) with another marvelous question: "If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?" Yes, absolutely, why do we humans boast about anything as if we did not receive it? Because of course it is in our nature to do so. We believe ourselves to be so important and to have earned so many of blessings. We worked so hard for them and so we are so puffed up as though we did not receive the very air that we breathe. How ridiculous we are. I'm going to try making "What do you have that you did not receive?" my new motto and repeat it to myself constantly to see if it helps to beat down my idiotic boastful pride. I'll let you know how that goes.

It Must Not Be Math

One of the passages used most for justifying the doctrine of Original Sin is Romans 5:12-21:

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned-- for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. If, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 5:12-21)

A key part of this passage that is called out in, for example, Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology is verses 18-19:

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:18-19)

Concerning these verses, Grudem states (Systematic Theology, pgs. 494-495):

Here Paul says explicitly that through the trespass of one man "many were made [Gk. katestathesan, also an aorist indicative indicating completed past action] sinners." When Adam sinned, God thought of all who would descend from Adam as sinners. Though we did not yet exist, God, looking into the future and knowing that we would exist, began thinking of us as those who were guilty like Adam. This is also consistent with Paul's statement that "while we were yet sinners Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8). Of course, some of us did not even exist when Christ died. But God nevertheless regarded us as sinners in need of salvation. The conclusion to be drawn from these verses is that all members of the human race were represented by Adam in the time of testing in the Garden of Eden. As our representative, Adam sinned, and God counted us guilty as well as Adam.

Grudem calls this "inherited guilt" rather than using the terminology for Original Sin, but he means the same thing (Systematic Theology, pg. 494, note 8). You can see from the quote above that this comes directly from the very clear statements in Romans 5:18, "Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men..." and 19, "For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners..." Too often we can be lulled into the sense that such statements are like math equations, where x+1=5 then x always equals 4. Sucking the verses out of context is not possible if they are like equations because the equation x+1=5 cannot be taken out of context, it stands alone. Likewise it appears that if we read "one trespass led to condemnation for all men" and "by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners" then we have equations that always lead to the doctrine of Original Sin (where at the very moment we are conceived the guilt from the Sin of Adam is attached to us). The problem comes in when we take into consideration the remainder of the verses. If "one trespass led to condemnation for all men" means that the trespass of Adam is automatically conferred upon each and every one of us then the rest of that verse, which reads, "so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men" means that everyone is saved. Do you see how this works if we read these like equations, that is, as though we are reading a math book? The original equation is "one trespass equals condemnation for all men" but the follow up equation is "one act of righteousness equals justification and life for all men." They negate each other! The same is true for Romans 5:19, which if we read it like a math book states, "one man's [Adam's] disobedience equals many sinners." The second half of the verse, in math book form is, "one man's [Christ's] obedience equals many righteous." Do you see the problem here? If we proof-text Original Sin by making syllogisms out of sub-pieces of sentences in individual verses then Universalism (the idea that everyone is saved) immediately follows. You can't get Original sin out of Romans 5:18-19 without also getting Universalism and since Universalism violates so many parts of the Bible (large swaths of the Old Testament and most of the New Testament) Original Sin is not an acceptable exegesis of Romans 5:18-19.

When it comes to Romans 5, then, the interpretation must be other than Original Sin. That is, the point of the passage is not to prove Original Sin. I think the problem most people have is not understanding what Adam's sin led to. We can understand this if we go back to what God told Adam in the Garden of Eden:

And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." (Genesis 2:16-17)

The "Surety of Death" was the punishment that came to Adam as a result of his sin. This Surety of Death is passed down through all generations and we inherit it even today, for we know that we will "surely die" unless Jesus comes before our death. Even if it were possible for us to live a perfect life then we would still "surely die" so we have inherited the punishment that Adam received for his sin. This is different from inheriting sin that we did not commit, which would violate passages like Ezekiel 18 (yeah, the whole chapter, which teaches quite clearly that we are responsible for our own actions). Humanity "surely dies" and so that punishment is still with us, even today, but we are responsible for our own actions and do not inherit some sin from our forefathers that we did not commit ourselves.

I AM

I find the choices that Bible translators make interesting sometimes. For example, in the well-known passage in John 8:58 where Jesus tells the Jews that he pre-existed Abraham almost all translations render the Greek there as "I AM" in a clear reference to Exodus 3:14

Then Moses said to God, "If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say to them?" God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." And he said, "Say this to the people of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'" (Exodus 3:13-14)

The Greek in John 8:58 is:

εἶπεν αὐτοῖς ᾿Ιησοῦς· ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, πρὶν ᾿Αβραὰμ γενέσθαι ἐγὼ εἰμί.

Which says, "Jesus said to them, 'Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.'" The part in question here is specifically the ἐγὼ εἰμί which is an emphasized "I am" since εἰμί by itself means "I am." The Jews clearly understood what he was saying because in John 8:59 we read:

So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. (John 8:59)

They intended to stone him because they knew he was saying he was God.

John 8:58 is fairly straightforward, but what I find interesting are the other passages where Jesus uses ἐγὼ εἰμί and yet most translations don't use the "I AM." A good example (where I think the "I AM" would help) is John 18:4-6:

Then Jesus, knowing all that would happen to him, came forward and said to them, "Whom do you seek?" They answered him, "Jesus of Nazareth." Jesus said to them, "I am he." Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them. When Jesus said to them, "I am he," they drew back and fell to the ground. (John 18:4-6)

It is not clear why those coming to arrest Jesus draw back and fall to the ground. But I think if you look at the Greek here and translate it differently, then the passage suddenly comes into a new light (I've bolded the use of ἐγὼ εἰμί in the passage):

᾿Ιησοῦς οὖν εἰδὼς πάντα τὰ ἐρχόμενα ἐπ᾿ αὐτὸν, ἐξελθὼν εἶπεν αὐτοῖς· τίνα ζητεῖτε; ἀπεκρίθησαν αὐτῷ· ᾿Ιησοῦν τὸν Ναζωραῖον. λέγει αὐτοῖς ὁ ᾿Ιησοῦς· ἐγώ εἰμι. εἱστήκει δὲ καὶ ᾿Ιούδας ὁ παραδιδοὺς αὐτὸν μετ᾿ αὐτῶν. ὡς οὖν εἶπεν αὐτοῖς ὅτι εγώ εἰμι, ἀπῆλθον εἰς τὰ ὀπίσω καὶ ἔπεσον χαμαί.

Then Jesus, knowing all that would happen to him, came forward and saidto them, "Whom do you seek?" They answered him, "Jesus of Nazareth."Jesus said to them, "I AM." Judas, who betrayed him, was standingwith them. When Jesus said to them, "I AM," they drew back and fellto the ground.

In this case it appears that they draw back and fall to the ground because of the pronouncement of I AM on the part of Christ. (Notice how John even calls attention to this by pointing out that, "When Jesus said to them 'I AM,' they drew back and fell to the ground.")

Another interesting place that Christ uses ἐγὼ εἰμί is in Matthew 14:27 when he is walking on water and the disciples are afraid of him. To comfort them he says, "Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid." At least, in the ESV that is what he says. The Greek here reads like so:

εὐθέως δὲ ἐλάλησεν αὐτοῖς ὁ ᾿Ιησοῦς λέγων· θαρσεῖτε, ἐγώ εἰμί· μὴ φοβεῖσθε.

Notice that Jesus says this, "Take heart; I AM. Do not be afraid." This certainly has a different ring to it. Here is the Son of Almighty God walking on water and to calm his disciples who fear what on earth could be walking across the storm-driven sea he tells them to take courage. Why? I AM. Why be afraid? He is the I AM.

A third interesting passage, if looked at in this way, is Mark 14:61-63:

But he remained silent and made no answer. Again the high priest asked him, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" And Jesus said, "I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven." And the high priest tore his garments and said, "What further witnesses do we need? (Mark 14:61-63)

In the Greek, Jesus' answer looks like this:

ἐγώ εἰμι· καὶ ὄψεσθε τὸν Υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐκ δεξιῶν καθήμενον τῆς δυνάμεως καὶ ἐρχόμενον μετὰ τῶν νεφελῶν τοῦ οὐρανοῦ.

So imagine the High Priest asking Jesus if he is the Christ, the Son of the Blessed and the first words out of Christ's mouth are ἐγώ εἰμί - I AM. No wonder he tears his garments. It isn't only Jesus' later statement but the fact that he starts with his claim of divinity - blasphemy to the High Priest who does not believe his claim.

There are a few other instances of this, but these were the most interesting in my opinion since they seemed to actually change the tenor of the passage.