Working Around Jesus

This article talks about the Obama administration vetting the prayers given at presidential events.  Putting that aside, one quote from the article really got my attention.  One of the pastors who gave a prayer decided to "self-censor" his prayer by removing the word "Jesus" from it.  He gives this as his reason:

"For some strange reason, the word Jesus is like pouring gasoline on fire for some people in this country," he said. "You learn how to work around that."

No, this reaction is not limited to "this country."  The name Jesus will always be "like pouring gasoline on fire for some people" but the Christian is not called to "work around that."  How could you, after all?

Do Not Fear

Sometimes it is difficult to read the Bible and remember that these people had similar hopes and fears to us. It is easy enough to see their humanity but sometimes too easy to condemn there what is obvious to us so far removed and reading about their deeds as breathed out by the Holy Spirit. In Isaiah 7:1-2 we read:

In the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, son of Uzziah, king of Judah, Rezin the king of Syria and Pekah the son of Remaliah the king of Israel came up to Jerusalem to wage war against it, but could not yet mount an attack against it. When the house of David was told, Syria is in league with Ephraim, the heart of Ahaz and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind.

God tells Ahaz through the prophet Isaiah, "Be careful, be quiet, do not fear and do not let your heart be faint" but Ahaz, according to the account in 2 Kings 16 Ahaz did not trust in God and instead sent the silver and gold from the house of the Lord to the king of Assyria and asked for his help, something that is condemned in the Bible but yet is a very human thing to do. Wouldn't it be a frightening thing to have your city besieged by an invading army? Isn't that a sign of a real problem? And yet, in Isaiah 8:11-15 we read:

For the LORD spoke thus to me with his strong hand upon me, and warned me not to walk in the way of this people, saying: Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the LORD of hosts, him you shall regard as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. And he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many shall stumble on it. They shall fall and be broken; they shall be snared and taken.

Consider that in this passage the Lord tells Isaiah, "Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread." This sentiment is applicable to us today but it is easy to believe that we have real problems and they didn't, that we have things to fear whereas they did not. This is odd as there is no invading army waiting to kill us outside our town or city. No, these people had real problems but their very real God wanted their full faith and trust. Their problem was a lack of faith, which is the same problem that we have today when we fear the machinations of men.

There are many things happening now that are making people afraid but the church should let the Lord be its fear and its dread. It should not call conspiracy all that the world calls conspiracy, and it should not fear what the world fears for God is our strength and our sanctuary.

Thoughts on "Your God Is Too Small"

I just finished reading Your God Is Too Small by J. B. Phillips (my cousin's husband - cousin-in-law? - loaned it to me when we were there over Thanksgiving), and I enjoyed it. It is embarrassing that it took a month to read it but you have to slowly digest a book like this (that is my story and I'm sticking to it).

The book is split into two parts, the first is a tearing down of incorrect ideas of God and the second is a building up of a more correct idea of God. In the first half of the book (the "destructive" part) there were times when I was cheering the death of someone else's sacred cow and then there were times when I was saying, "No, no, no!" and it was usually then that I realized my own sacred cow was being killed. That's usually how it is with these sorts of books.

One of the things I liked about the second half of the book is the way that Phillips uses the reality of what we know and what that must imply about the character of God to make God "big enough." This is a concept that I've tried to pass on to the class I'm teaching at church - specifically that we should apply the things we know about the world around us to God and discover if that matches what we know from the Bible, the two things interrelate. For example, the universe is immense and the world is complex beyond our wildest imagining. We have struggled for centuries to understand little bits and pieces of what surrounds us. A God who created all of this must be fantastically powerful and knowledgeable, in fact must be omnipotent and omniscient. The interesting thing is that the God of the Bible is actually big enough to meet these criteria, and the only time that we think this isn't the case is when we have made a smaller God of our own to replace him with (usually reading that God back into the Bible so that we can still feel "Christian").

I also appreciated the way that Phillips builds everything up from the basics and keeps everything grounded in the basics. Because he does this so well he keeps his eye on the ball, so the speak, when it comes to characterizing God, Christ, this life and the church. It is interesting how silly certain questions become when we keep the basics in view. Keeping the basics in view (and deriving them how he does) makes the following statement naturally follow from the previous part of the book:

Christianity is a revelation of the true way of living, the way to know God, the way to live life of eternal quality, and is not to be regarded as a handy social instrument for reducing juvenile delinquency or the divorce rate.

This conclusion follows from what he has previously written and the way that he juxtaposes Christianity in this statement with two things that are surely important and yet seem so insignificant when compared to the representation here of the eternal, omnipotent, omniscient I AM makes the point a powerful one when you come upon it at the end of the book.

In summary, Phillips seems to be making the very simple and powerful statement that once we understand who God is and place our faith in that God then that faith has to permeate into our understanding of all things (see Eccl. 12, Matt. 6:19-21, 25-33). This seems trite but it is only so because we tend to forget who it is that we worship. Starting at the beginning again is a powerful and useful thing. In this we have to remember who and what the beginning is. The beginning is God, someone we will never truly understand in an exhaustive way so building on that knowledge of God and applying that understanding to our life is, in fact, a lifelong process.

The Story of My Life

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. Romans 7:15-25

Today

The Irish Monthly:

Only from day to day
The life of a wise man runs;
What matter if seasons far away
Have gloom or have double suns?

To climb the unreal path,
We stray from the roadway here;
We swim the rivers of wrath,
And tunnel the hills of fear.

Our feet on the torrent's brink,
Our eyes on the cloud afar,
We fear the things we think,
Instead of the things that are.

Like a tide our work should rise-
Each later wave the best.
"To day is a king in disguise,"
To day is the special test.

Like a sawyer's work is life;
The present makes the flaw,
And the only field for strife
Is the inch before the saw.

- John Boyle O'Reilly

I Hate What I Think You Are

This political season has really brought home the fact that most of us dress the opposing side up in clothes we hate and then we hate them for what they are wearing. We need to realize that we are only hating what we think the other side is, in fact what we have ascribed to them, not what they actually are.

God's Government

It may come as a shock to learn that God has no known preference for any particular kind of government or 'theory' of sovereignty for rulers.

Robert Duncan Culver, Systematic Theology

Great Site for Free Audiobooks

Librivox is a great site for free audiobooks (volunteers do the reading from books in the public domain so it really is free). One of the best things about it is that you can download so much of The Bible and listen to it. I recommend putting it on CD or your iPod and listening when you are in the car. I don't think you can replace your reading this way, but you augment it since it is coming in through another source. There are many times when I hear something and it sparks my study in other ways.

Politics

All counselors praise the counsel they give, but some give counsel in their own interest. Be wary of a counselor, and learn first what is his interest, for he will take thought for himself. (Sirach 37:7-8)

This is a good rule to apply to politicians. They are trying, after all, to sell us something. They will always, "Praise the counsel they give" and we would do well to be wary of what we are told, to check what the interest is of those who are running for they will take thought for themselves. And what is it that they want? They want the power of the position they are running for and they will tell us whatever they need to in order to obtain that. Between the two parties we will be told slightly different things because of the base constituencies of the two parties (each constituency must be told what they want to hear) but the message will be tailored to the hearers and does not necessarily represent the reality of what they will do after they are in office and no longer require our input to get there (or at least do not require it for another few years).

When I buy a car I expect to be told many wonderful things about the car I am looking at by the dealer for that car. Do I trust those things? I'd have to be a fool to do so without question. Likewise with these politicians. But it seems that we don't actually apply this rule very often, except to whatever side it is that we disagree with. If we disagree with a politician we will be likely to guess that he/she is just spinning and become cynical and distrusting but if we agree with a politician we suddenly become artless and naive and buy into whatever it says on their web site (copying and pasting it freely to our friends on the other side in the hopes that they, too, will be as trusting of our candidate as we are). We would do well to remember that our own side is selling something as surely as the other side is and doubt accordingly.

Stop Wasting Time!

The subject line is to myself. I can't believe how much time I waste. There are so many things to be doing that are worthwhile and so much I do that isn't. I think I begin to realize this late every year as it closes in on Christmas and I remember the things I wanted to accomplish during the year that went so speedily by. I'm 36 now and maybe the mid-life feelings are coming on and making this problem worse. I don't want to buy a cherry red Corvette but I would like to feel like I'm doing worthwhile things with my time. I would like to feel like I am obeying this passage:

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. (Ephesians 5:15-16)

Sowing and Reaping

In a lesson today at Woodward Park Church of Christ Jim Gardner said this:

The pain of the harvest of sin is not worth the pleasure of the sowing.

So true.

Blog Comment Wisdom

I just ran across this in the book of Sirach:

Do not argue about a matter that does not concern you, and do not sit with sinners when they judge a case. (Sirach 11:9)

This should be helpful when dealing with whether or not to comment on blog posts, I think.

I'm Not Okay, You're Not Okay

One of the worst developments within our culture in the past fifty years must surely be the notion that we are mostly pretty good. The entire crux of the Bible is that man has a sin problem that separates him from God and he desperately needs a cure and that cure was provided on the cross by the death and resurrection of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. There are three basic elements to this: 1) man has a sin problem (the sickness), 2) he cannot cure it (the need), and 3) the cure was provided by the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ (the cure). Attacking these truths from any angle attacks the gospel. Disparaging the truth of the resurrection, for example, leaves mankind without a cure for his sickness. The cultural notion that we have of "I'm okay, you're okay" attacks the first element, which is man's sickness. If man does not realize he is sick, he will not seek a doctor and if he does not seek a doctor then he will not realize the desperation of his situation and he will not find the cure.

I'm sitting in a Starbucks at LAX right now and I'm watching the people ordering their drinks and pastries and they all seem so similar. In fact they are all similar, but not in the way that they appear. They appear to be so similar in that they appear to all be so good. We have the notion that if someone is normal (by our cultural standards) then they are good. We feel so sorry for the poor soul that suddenly appears abnormal. The slightly unstable person who is not as good at hiding as the rest of us are and who ends up doing something culturally unacceptable such as yelling in public. That person then becomes somebody who "Needs help." What kind of help do they need? If we are atheists then we might think that they need a visit to a psychiatrist, but if we are Christian we might believe that they need the Lord. But the problem here is that our need for the Lord is not measured in terms of our normalcy. We all require the Lord and fooling ourselves into any other belief creates an extremely perilous situation where we are deathly ill but without any knowledge of it. Consider this passage:

And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? But when he heard it, he said, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, I desire mercy, and not sacrifice. For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. (Matthew 9:10-13)

This is one of the greatest warnings in the Bible but it is also a little disguised so it becomes easy to pass by and therefore it is one of the most dangerous passages in the Bible. Consider what Jesus tells the Pharisees. It is apparent from other passages that everyone needs Jesus:

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)

So the great warning of Matthew 9 is that those who believe they are well will not seek Jesus. The cure becomes worthless to those who believe they are well because they will not seek for it, not because they do not need it. And now we are working so hard in our culture to convince everyone that they are "okay." In other words we are working so hard to convince everyone who is culturally normal that they are well, that is, righteous. And if they are convinced that they are well then they are not called by Jesus because they will not seek for a cure for a sickness they do not realize that they have.

The victim here is evangelism. Even Jesus himself pointed out that evangelism was less effective for those who think themselves righteous (see Matthew 9 quote above). Within this thought is the answer to the problem but I confess that I think it troubles "middle class Christians." The answer is that Christians must reach out to those who are not "normal" by society's definitions. We must evangelize to the "sick" and the "sick" in a "Christian nation" such as ours are those who the society labels unacceptable. These realize their sickness much more readily and are willing to reach out to a cure so it is to them that we should go.

Many Paths?

There was a story on the Life page of USA Today titled, "Believers OK with Many Paths" that talked about a new survey in which 70 percent of the respondents said that "Many religions can lead to eternal life."

Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." John 14:6

The Legislation of Morality

I'm struggling in my mind with the notion of the legislation of morality. It seems that the answer is that morality of some source is always legislated and that it is only the source of that morality which is the question. Doesn't any society create laws based on what it perceives to be "right" and "wrong"? For example, if we create laws because of Global Warming then are we doing that because we consider there is some "right" and "wrong" choice that we can make as regards Global Warming? If the concern between right and wrong is a concern with morality then making legislation about Global Warming is legislating morality. At some level nobody is adverse to legislating morality but everyone is adverse to legislating a morality that is not their own. Consider the recent legalization of gay marriage by the courts in California. Is such a legalization a legislation of morality? Some would argue that it is the opposite of the legislation of morality because the legislation of morality enforces the morality of the individual on society at large and the legalization of gay marriage in fact enforces the civil rights of free individuals on the society. So in this view legislation of morality decreases personal freedom and "correct" legislation (legislation not of morality) either does not affect or increases personal freedom. The problem with this is that the idea that personal freedom should be increased is, in itself, a system of morality. So the source of the legalization of gay marriage is a particular system of ethics and that legalization is in fact a legislation of morality. The problem that many would seem to have with that is that there is some notion that the legislation of morality is somehow inherently wrong. It is a little like admitting that some viewpoint is not objective. The problem is that no matter what the viewpoint is, once it is admitted that it is not an objective viewpoint it seems that it must somehow be wrong, or at least it can be relegated to being "Just your opinion" and therefore ignored. So it is with admitting that some action is a legislation of morality. If the proponents of some law admit that they are trying to legislate morality then it is simple to turn public opinion against them. The alternative is to find some political wording that implies that the goal is not the legislation of morality but some other goal. It would be possible to say some other higher goal, but that is also "moral" language. The legalization of gay marriage is the legislation of a view of "civil rights." That is, marriage is a civil right and that civil right should be extended to everyone because all civil rights must be extended to everyone. But this view of marriage as a civil right and the view that all civil rights must be extended to everyone are views of a "right" and a "wrong" and are moral views, so the enforcement of them are the enforcement of morality on society.

The disagreement then is not actually over the legislation and enforcement of morality by society but rather the source of the morality that society will choose. A secular society by definition attempts to ground its morality on some non-religious source. A few questions arise from this. First is the question of whether or not there is, in fact, a morality that exists outside of a religious source. If there is not, then the laws of a secular nation would necessarily be grounded on something that doesn't really exist. If there is a morality that exists outside of a religious source then is it a desirable morality? It seems like it is possible to come up with some sort of concept of a morality outside of a religious source. Utilitarianism is an example of just such a secularly-sourced morality. Utilitarianism is the notion that the morality of a particular action is determined by how much it maximizes the "good" of the whole. Of course "good" requires a definition in this context. The definition that utilitarianism usually chooses is happiness or pleasure. So the choices that maximize society's happiness or pleasure as a whole are moral choices. If a particular choice leads to happiness for more people and doesn't decrease the happiness of others then that choice is a moral choice. In this light it can be seen that Americans who are for gay marriage are usually taking a utilitarian view of the situation. Looking at the specific instance of gay marriage, if gay people can get married it makes them happy and this does not come at the expense of the happiness of heterosexual people (the happiness of people who are angry about the situation don't really count in this equation, they should just get over it). It is possible to see this argumentation everywhere, of course and most of the arguments for gay marriage essentially reduce to such a view (the Two Consenting Adults In Private Can Do Anything argument, for example, is extremely utilitarian, as is the Your Heterosexual Marriage Isn't Affected By What Gay People Do argument). Therefore, it is possible to create a morality based on utilitarianism (or at least it is possible to create a morality based on the perception of the utility of a particular thing). However, this leads to the second question, which is whether or not a utilitarian source for morality is a desirable thing. The problem in this context is that although the definition of "good" was given previously as "happiness or pleasure" even those two derived terms are problematic. If in any society some action X is morally approved of that causes the most people in that society happiness then couldn't X be anything at all? What would bound X? It seems quite possible to imagine an X that we would quickly find abhorrent but which for a given society would cause them the most happiness and therefore would be moral for that society. Consider a society with a large number of adults and very few children. Now consider that the reason that this society has so few children is because most of the society consists of pedophiles who are completely uninterested in anyone over the age of 6. Consider again that this society is extremely utilitarian in its outlook and understands that it has a large number of people with "special needs" so it creates a system where all the children in the society are placed into special containing institutions so that the pedophiles who constitute such a large majority can have an institutionalized way of meeting their needs. Such a situation is sickening, of course, but the only people being hurt are the children and they are so small in number that their particular concerns are not of interest to the utilitarian calculation. A case could be made that this is different than the gay marriage situation because of the issue of "consent." The children in the society cannot "consent" because they are children. "Consenting adults" can do whatever they want to but they must avoid involving those who cannot "consent" (this is used to rebut the argument that after gays marry soon people will be able to marry their pets, since pets cannot give their "consent"). So now a rule has been created to bound X (although it must be admitted that the rule seems somewhat arbitrary and created to preserve a sense of propriety which could easily change in its specifics based on questions like "What is the age of consent?" and "What constitutes consent?"). Even with this somewhat artificial bounding rule, however, the utilitarian viewpoint is stressed by actual situations like that of the German Internet Cannibal, Armin Meiwes where it was conceded that consent had been given by the victim to Meiwes for his own murder. So Meiwes was put in prison even though the victim had given consent and Germany had no law against cannibalism. Utilitarianism is no help in this situation and is in fact insufficient to establish a consistent moral basis for a secular society.

The alternative to this is to use the Bible as the baseline for a system of ethics. Of course "common knowledge" would dictate that this is a ridiculous idea, but common knowledge is often wrong.

Anatomy of a Misconception

Steve Brown (The Old White Guy Blog) posted a blog a last year that I only read last week as a part of some other person's rant. I don't want to talk about the post, but rather about this particular part of it:

That evening I talked about loving Augustine "but not for the reasons you think." I've often told the story of the incident that happened after Augustine's conversion when he met his former mistress in the streets of the town where he resided. She ran up to him and he ran from her. She shouted, "Augustine, Augustine, it is I."

He shouted back over his shoulder, "Yes, but it is not I."

Cool…or at any rate, it was until I heard the rest of the story, to wit, Augustine's mistress wasn't asking for sex; she was asking for food and acknowledgment of the son who Augustine had fathered. When Augustine gave us his famous Confessions, he mentioned stealing apples when he wasn't hungry…but he never mentioned his son.

I'm not sure why he makes his point with this particular statement, "When Augustine gave us his famous Confessions, he mentioned stealing apples when he wasn't hungry…but he never mentioned his son." I believe that Augustine is speaking directly of his son, Adeodatus, in this passage from Confessions, Book 9, Chapter 6:

We joined with us the boy Adeodatus, born after the flesh, of my sin.

I suppose that there may be some other reason why Steve Brown says this. Maybe I am completely misunderstanding him. However, his intent seems obvious when he says, "Augustine never mentioned his son" and if I am misunderstanding that then it seems an easy thing to misunderstand. I can see other people who have never read the Confessions quoting Steve Brown or passing along this as a nice example of how even the great Augustine wasn't so great. Sermons get preached around neat little nuggets like this one and then the misconception gets passed to the listeners and so it grows. It is unfortunate that Steve Brown picked somebody like Augustine, though, for whom the Confessions are a complete baring of his soul to God. He covers all of his sins, from stealing apples to having a mistress and yes, bearing a son ("after the flesh" and "of [his] sin"). If he did malign Augustine out of ignorance it would have been nice for him to have done his research a little better and if he did it with some other meaning then it would have been nice for him to have written with a little more clarity.

Difficult Teachings

The concept of divorce and remarriage is an extremely difficult topic and I find it so troubling. The primary problem, though, is that our culture has so much divorce and remarriage that the extremely blunt teaching of Jesus on the topic is difficult to swallow. Thus the teaching is difficult not because it is actually difficult to understand what the Bible is saying but rather because it is so difficult to actually face the clarity when surrounded by a culture that, quite frankly, completely trivializes marriage. According to a recent review of the book Divorce And Remarriage: A Redemptive Theology by Rubel Shelly:

Shelly claims that what unites Christians is a common commitment to God's plan for marriage including the warnings on divorce. These issues are inarguable. The confusion and controversy results from the nature of the penance for those in disobedience to the divine principles. Shelly asserts, "Divorce is not a sin in its own special class that requires a lifelong penance of remaining single, celibate, and companionless. Can we really bring ourselves to believe that the sinner whose offense is divorce has no spiritual option but to live with his failure forever? Can we really be persuaded that Jesus leaves no option to marry again for someone divorced against her will by a mean-spirited soul."

Shelly's primary assertion here is, "Divorce is not a sin in its own special class that requires a lifelong penance of remaining single, celibate and companionless." His remaining questions are built upon this. Unfortunately I feel misled by his assertion in the first place:

[Jesus] said to them, Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery. (Matthew 19:8-9)

The problem with this passage is that it is so plain. There are so many things in the Bible that are difficult to understand on their face, but this teaching appears so simple. Is that misleading? Does Jesus not really mean what he is saying? Is it possible to divorce and remarry (without an unfaithful partner) and not commit adultery? Shelly tries to answer these thorny problems by invoking deeper theology:

He names this theological view, the "radical continuity of the Word of God" and maintains that adhering to this understanding of the continuous connection of the Old and New Testament is essential in order to effectively challenge more traditional discussions of scriptures relating to divorce and remarriage. Shelly concludes that all the scriptures lead to reveal God's redemption plan and are all unmistakably connected by the interwoven thread of Jesus Christ. Using this "continuity" view, Shelly states, "... anything that Jesus or Paul says on the subject must be consistent with the Old Testament material, for Holy Scripture is progressive revelation - from partial to full, but never from error to truth. ...The teachings in our canonical New Testament are to be interpreted with a view toward their continuity with the Old Testament."

So understanding the Old Testament in continuity with the New is the answer here? That is, I must understand Jesus' statement in Matthew 19 in light of the teaching on marriage in the Old Testament. That seems strange, especially given that the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus by invoking the Old Testament and Jesus' answer was in response to this. Look at the entire passage now:

And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? He answered, Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. They said to him, Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away? He said to them, Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery. (Matthew 19:3-9)

So the Pharisees invoke the teaching of Moses on this subject and Jesus responds by telling them what? He responds by violating Shelly's "radical continuity" view. Jesus tells them that Moses "allowed" them to divorce their wives because of their "hardness of heart." That is, the teaching of the Old Testament on marriage is consistent with the New, but only if you go back to the beginning and in the beginning there was only one man and one woman and no divorce, "What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate." How can we deal with divorce and remarriage then, without looking at the teaching of Jesus square in the face? What are we to do with this teaching but look sadly at the world around us and realize how many there are which have put themselves into a situation where they are perpetually committing adultery? Even the disciples of Jesus realized that this was something unique in his teaching because in Matthew 19:10 they said, "If such is the case of a man with his wife it is better not to marry."

It gets even worse when we go to the teachings of Paul. In 1 Corinthians 7:10-11 Paul writes:

To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.

This is in a passage where Paul is clearly dividing the parts of his discourse where he is giving his own opinion from those where God is speaking through him. In these verses he clearly states, "not I, but the Lord" and then goes on to say that the wife shouldn't separate from her husband but if she does she should remain unmarried. Now, it is possible to look at this passage as though it were only applicable to that time and was specifically given to the Corinthian church because of the trials they were going to undergo, but you have to work at it and a simple understanding of this passage has it working very well with the teaching of Jesus. Don't they sound awfully similar? Don't 1 Corinthians 7 and Matthew 19 seem to teach some very similar things? If we didn't live in a culture that trivialized marriage and where we all know many people who have divorced and remarried and think nothing of it what would these passages seem to say? Wouldn't they be obvious in that case? Wouldn't we only have a problem and say that they are "difficult" if we found them hard to accept in a culture that so clearly denies what they say (as in fact we do)?

So when Shelly says, "Divorce is not a sin in its own special class that requires a lifelong penance of remaining single, celibate, and companionless" isn't he telling us that the teachings of Paul and Jesus that seem to say the exact opposite of what he wants us to believe? Why would he do this? Does it make sense to believe that Shelly has really discovered some deep and complex theological truth that makes Jesus' teaching much more difficult to understand but which allows us to condone a very obvious cultural weakness? Wouldn't we need to be on guard against the clear bias of our culture in this regard and wouldn't working uphill against quite clear passages in the Bible be an indicator that we were instead allowing that culture to warp our understanding of what God is trying to tell us?

Dust in the Wind

I think humans have an unavoidable obsession with death. That may seem obvious to some people, but I'm not sure it is to everybody. Most people want to keep that in the closet. It doesn't matter, though, because the shortness of our life and the fact that we are surrounded by the dead and dying always brings itself to our attention in one way or another.

Blaise Pascal wrote:

The last act is tragic, however happy all the rest of the play is; at the last a little earth is thrown upon our head, and that is the end for ever.

That seems like a big downer, doesn't it? But that really doesn't matter, because it is the truth. In this country where youth is glorified, not only for its health and beauty but also, ridiculously, for its knowledge, we would do well to remember that there is wisdom in the contemplation of the end of this life because when it comes won't we want to have figured out what we think of it and whether or not we wasted our lives and opportunities when we had them.

Shall We Seek Power?

In the debate over women's roles in the church the terms complementarian and egalitarian have been utilized to describe the different views. Roughly speaking, and as applied to the sphere of the church, the complementarian view is the more traditional one, with men being the only ones allowed to hold positions of leadership in the church and the egalitarian is the opposing view, that women can also hold leadership positions in the church. A recent comment on a blog post stated:

The essential difference between complementarians and egalitarians is the distribution of power. Yes, egalitarians want the same (equal) power. Yes, complementarians believe men should have more power, which is different. But that does not mean that egalitarians believe men and women are the same in every way. Maybe some do (I haven’t read any that do) but I don’t.

I don't know, but I think that this really misses what Christian leadership is supposed to be. Jesus tells us this about his idea of leadership:

And Jesus called them to him and said to them, You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Mark 10:42-45)

He demonstrated this attitude with his life:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5-8)

"Servant", "obedient", "slave" - these don't sound like "power" or even "equality." This sounds like "leadership" in the church isn't about "power" at all but rather about the inversion of what a worldly culture thinks about power. I would go so far as to say that if "power" is what you seek in the church then you should never be a leader of the church, man or woman. I would go so far as to say that anyone who seeks power disqualifies themselves from Christian leadership by definition. They may hold the post of a leader if they have managed to "lord it over" the people and they may "exercise authority" over the church, but to God they are not "great" and they are not leaders.

Bible Study Tonight

I can't wait to go to Bible Study tonight. I am feeling so tired and negative and I know I'll feel better afterwards.