Category: Bible

To Obey Is Better Than Sacrifice

What is the obedience God desires from us?

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I became a follower of Jesus in 1979, though I was a wild, untamed stallion when I was first confronted with the Lordship of Christ and verbally submitted to him. I wandered down my own paths in the year that followed, leading me to a breaking point and more complete surrender. (A cycle I have unfortunately repeated more than once.)

Over the following two years, I was about as surrendered to God as I have been my whole life. I was all in – or as all in as I was capable of being at that time, perhaps. During that time, I became a big fan of Keith Green. I even saw him in concert in Des Moines Iowa in 1981 or 1982. He died in a place crash within a year or two after that, and his impact and memory has faded.

When I saw him in concert, though, his radical Christian commitment had been a huge impact on me, and that impact carried with me beyond his death. Thus, my daily reading today recalls to my mind these lyrics by Keith Green: 

To obey is better than sacrifice
I want more than Sundays and Wednesday nights
If you can't come to me every day 
Then don't bother coming at all

Keith Green was a musical child prodigy who was radically saved by Jesus. He used his great musical talent and platform to become a prophet of sorts to young Christians at the time who wanted an authentic faith.

I was very drawn to a monastic, cloistered life at that age that Keith Green represented, like a modern Essene. The truth is that I had long been drawn to that kind of thing going back to the book, My Side of the Mountain, that I read in grade school (about a boy who leaves his parents to hollow out a summer home in the trunk of dead tree in the Catskills).

That book seeded in me a longing for something authentic and pure. The idea took root in me that I could not find “it” in the bustle of the world. I needed to escape to solitude, self-reflection, and devotion to a simple life.

In a poignant moment in my senior year in college, I faced up to that longing and desire that ran deep in me, and I made a conscious decision to follow Jesus into the messy clamor of human society. Jesus often escaped to the mountains and the wilderness to be alone with God, but he always returned to the highways, and byways, and the public squares where people live.

Still, the Keith Green spirit of uncompromised obedience to Christ and Christ alone left an imprint on me. His prophetic insistence on radical commitment carried me forward in those early years of my journey with Christ.

Now, I find myself some 40+ years down a road that has taken many twists and turns. That road has taken me through long and winding wilderness areas that were darker than I care to dwell on. It has taken me to the other side of those dark times into the light of a new day, more weary and (hopefully) wiser for the experience. I am still following Jesus as best as I can, but I have a slightly different view of Keith Green’s words today. I hope I can give this the nuance it deserves.

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What Does the Word of God Say about How Rulers Should Rule?

God’s approved rulers do what is right and just.

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Let’s lay politics aside for a moment, and just consider the Word of God. Politics, of course, is the backdrop to this article. A person cannot be completely apolitical, no matter how hard one tries, but political positions shift, evolve and change, while the Word of God is eternal. Therefore, we should put the Word of God first over our political inclinations.

The Word of God existed before God made the universe, and all of creation was made by the Word. (John 1:1-3) God spoke the entire universe into existence (Genesis 1) and made all things by that are seen from what cannot be seen His command. (Hebrews 11:3)

Of course if you are a Christian, you believe that the Word of God became flesh (John 1:14) in Jesus: God with us; God incarnate; God who became man. He proved himself by what he said, by the miracles he did, and by rising from the dead after he was tortured, crucified, and buried.

The Word of God (at least some of it) is preserved in writing for us as it was spoken to and through people who heard God’s voice and responded in faith by preserving it. Jesus, Himself, quoted extensively from the books of what we call the Old Testament as authority for what he said and did. (Interestingly, he never quoted from apocryphal texts.) Jesus, who we believe was God who became man and who rose from the dead, treated those Old Testament writings with great deference – as the word of God.

Jesus quoted Scripture often from Genesis to the Prophets. When Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness, he quoted scripture, including Deuteronomy 8:3: “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” When Jesus began his ministry, his first public statement and the description of his ministry came from the prophet, Isaiah:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
     to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Luke 4:18-19 (which Jesus told the listeners was fulfilled by him that day in their hearing)

After Jesus rose from the dead, he explained how the Scriptures from Genesis through the Prophets were about him. (Luke 24:27) Jesus was both the Word of God through whom God made the universe, and he honored the word of God preserved in the Bible – calling it his daily bread. It defined his purpose; and it informed who he was.

With that set up, my theme today is the Prophets and what they said about how God’s people should act in the world, especially rulers who wield governmental influence and power. Our political views, how we conduct ourselves in politics, and who we champion as our rulers should be informed and driven by God’s Word.

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Vengeance is Mine, Sayeth Donald Trump?

“‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.'”

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I try not to be too political, and I try pretty hard to stay out of the public political fray. I am convinced that Christians should be very circumspect about politics. We are citizens of the kingdom of God, first and foremost, and we owe our ultimate personal allegiance only to the King of all Kings.

I am also mindful of the tradition of the prophets. They stood as God’s mouthpieces to God’s people and to the priests and kings who lead them. While they didn’t hold back in pronouncing God’s judgments and warnings on surrounding nations, they directed most of their attention to God’s people, the nations of Israel and Judah.

I also have to note that the nations of Israel and Judah are unique in the history of God and man. The United States of America is not a nation of God’s chosen people like the nations of Israel and Judah were.

(The current state of Israel isn’t either! See the responses of Hank Hanegraaff, the Bible Answer Man, to a pointed questions put to him about the status of nation of Israel today in the postscript to this blog article.)

There is much I could say about these things, but I want to get to my topic today. God’s prophetic voice is most prominently focused on His own people, wherever they are situated. Thus, Jesus often confronted the religious leaders of his day – the Pharisees and Sadducees – though he hardly said a word about the Romans who were the governing authorities in Judea.

Similarly, I believe God’s attention is on the church in America, and I am focused on Donald Trump only because many American Christians have claimed him as their champion. Biden, and Clinton, and Obama didn’t claim to be aligned with the church, but Trump does.

Therefore, when I read the following headline in the New York Times recently, For Those Deemed Trump’s Enemies, a Time of Anxiety and Fear, I took notice. The statement that Donald Trump has vowed to exact vengeance caught my attention.

Trump’s public warnings to those who opposed him, searched his home, prosecuted him, etc. are have weight behind them because they are characteristic of the man. People have taken them deadly seriously, including Joe Biden who pardoned a record number of people in his last days of office, including preemptive pardons of his own family members and people on Trump’s hit list.

I could say a lot about these pardons, also, but I won’t do that right now. I will only say that the threats Trump has made are not empty, and conducting himself in that way has repercussions for both parties and the health and future of politics in America. “What goes around comes around,” as the saying goes.

My focus, though, is on what this means for the church and how we live out being salt and light, making disciples to the ends of the world, and living consistent with the kingdom of heaven on earth. Do we not have some responsibility to God, the Father, the Maker of heaven and earth, to speak prophetically about the state of the church and of its complicity in the rise to power of Donald Trump?

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Myth, Seasons, and the Resurrection of Jesus

Should the claim that Christianity is similar to prior, pagan mythology concern us?

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The god of the sea and oceans Neptune (Poseidon).

Popular trends arise in culturally contingent ways, and those trends often dominate the public mind for a season. Thus, the idea that Christianity borrowed from prior pagan mythology gained notoriety with the rise of New Atheism. The Zeitgeist: The Movie (2007) is a poster child for this popular trend in thinking.

The Zeitgeist movie forces the narrative, ignoring glaring dissimilarities, and manufacturing similarities that don’t really exist. It ignores (or isn’t familiar with) the relevant academic scholarship, but it has been watched well over one million times. We might say that the Zeitgeist movie has become legendary in a truly mythic sense itself.

I will go out on a limb, nevertheless, to say that Christians have shown far too much angst over this trend of claiming that Christianity is similar to prior pagan mythology. There are critical differences, and they are significant, but there are some similarities also. Do the similarities pose a problem for Christianity?

The short answer is, no. In fact, if truth is truth and reality is reality, ancient, pagan attempts at explaining that reality are likely to hit on some metaphysical truth. If they didn’t, I might begin wonder about the nature of reality and our ability to recognize and understand it.

Mythic literature as a genre is an attempt to provide some explanation and understanding of basic realities and the ebb and flow of life. I am reminded of these things as I sit outside on an unseasonably warm day in November with a view of trees bared of their multicolored leaves that have been collected by my earnest neighbors in piles lining the suburban streets for pickup.

Fall is ebbing into the dark night of winter. The subtle coolness in the breeze portends (what seems to me now) a distant spring. I am braced for what comes next as I enjoy what is likely to be the lest vestige of warmer days for longer than I care to think about.

My hope for the spring, however far off it seems in my present mood, is rooted in my experience of the certainty of the seasons. I know my hope is not fanciful, even as I brace (all too knowingly) for the cold, bleak trudge ahead.

It seems completely natural that ancient mythology captures this duality in stories that have religious significance. These experiences are common to man. We remind ourselves of the hope of spring as we gaze in wonderment at fall trees in the throes of seasonal death and the chill onset of winter. It reminds us of our own life and death sagas, even now in all our modern comforts.

Our modern comforts allow us to be a bit more disconnected and circumspect, perhaps, than our ancient forbearers. Those comforts and great advances in scientific knowledge allow us to be intellectual about these things. Ancient pagans lived literally at the mercy of the seasons, and all the things they didn’t know played like gods on the stage of their fraught imagination.

Modern people chalk seasonal changes up to natural cycles that just happen. We believe humans chased all the gods off long ago. The ownership we have asserted in our knowledge of the way the world works gives us an illusion of control that I surmise is not all that much different than the ancients, who sought some ownership and control of this world through the mediators of gods they thought they could appease.

Pagans found solace in the seasons as we do. Myth is rooted in collective experience, and it is driven by an impulse to understand and import control into our experience. We also have a natural inclination to seek meaning. We might call this impulse a “religious” one.

Though we have the chased the gods off, we still have a religious impulse. Though we no longer believe in many gods, and we no longer venerate ancient myths with more than a curious read, the idea of one, Creator God God persists, and it is not explained away by modern science and knowledge. The Bible, though it has ancient origins, stands up to our modern scrutiny in ways that pagan myth does not.

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Christmas: The Triumph of the Almighty God Is Not Exactly As We Might Have Imagined It

The hope we reflect on in wonderment at this time of year

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The words of the ancient prophet, Isaiah, are spoken often this time of year:

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.”

Isaiah 9:6-7 NIV

These words were spoken many centuries before one, Jesus of Nazareth, was born in Bethlehem while his parents were in town for a census. This passage is full of triumph: “Mighty God”, an “Everlasting Father”, and “Prince of Peace”. “The government will be on his shoulders,” and he will “reign on David’s throne” – the “Lord Almighty!”

These words foretell of a mighty, conquering, benevolent God. (Benevolent after the conquering bit, of course). Human beings have always venerated and celebrated strength, and what could be more compelling to us than a conquering king (provided he is benevolent also!)

This is the way people view God and the world. This view of God inspired the crusades. It inspired many kings and nobleman through the ages like Stephen I, Szent István király. Born in 975, Stephen took the throne on December 25, 1000, and he became the last “grand prince of the Hungarians”, and he is the first King of Hungary.

I took the photos I have reproduced here when I was visiting my daughter in Hungary this time of year 6 years ago. The prominence of Steven and other kings in Hungarian lore is evident in the statuary around Budapest and in the stately basilica named after him that lies near the Danube in the center of the City.

Stephen succeeded his father as a grand prince of the Hungarians, but he had to fight for the throne against his own extended family. He fought many wars against surrounding tribes and chieftains, including his own uncle. He “converted his uncle’s ‘country to the Christian faith by force’ after its conquest,” and he “encouraged” the spread of Christianity “by meting out severe punishments for ignoring Christian customs.” (See Wikipedia)

Many modern minded people with sensibilities trained over the last generation likely squirm (or fume) over stories like Stephen’s, as children are taught in grammar school to recoil at the “imperialism” of our Western/Christian forebears. The so-called “Christian nationalists” among us likely count Stephen a hero of the faith.

Indeed, Hungarians today proudly celebrate Saint Stephen as a national hero, but this celebration seems more focused on nationalistic pride than the spread of Christian faith – if faith can be commandeered by force. Stephen is hailed for unifying the tribal regions around him under his kingship, giving birth to the nation of Hungary.

That the nation was unified under a Christian flag seems to be more of a national identity than a statement of faith. While I was visiting, I observed that Hungarians did not appear, as a whole, to be a people of devout faith.

A 2017 poll reveals that Hungarians, indeed, are not very religious. While about 76% of Hungarians self-identified as “Christian”, only about 8% of Hungarians attended church services on a weekly basis, “placing Hungary among the countries with the lowest church attendance in Europe” (according to my very cursory research using Chat GPT).

While the notion of a king conquering in the name of Christ may be a source of national pride for some, it makes other people feel uneasy. It makes me uneasy.

We celebrate at Christmastime the triumphal prophecies foretold by Isaiah of the Lord Almighty taking the government on his shoulders with zeal and reigning on David’s throne. Yet, this imagery contrasts with the images of the story of the birth of Jesus, born of a humble virgin in a lowly manger because they had no influence to make room for themselves anywhere else.

As this story goes, God incarnate was born in poverty, on the edge of the Roman empire, in the humblest of circumstances, to parents who were not even married. God came into the world as an infant, weak and vulnerable.

God is human form became a refugee when his parents fled to Egypt to avoid King Herod’s decree to kill the male babies in the region of Galilee. They returned after Herod’s death but moved to the more remote and neglected area of Nazareth where Jesus grew up in almost total anonymity apart from the small community of people who knew him.

These realities stand in stark contrast to the conquering and reigning king imagery of Isaiah and the images of kingly might we celebrate in people like Saint Stephen. We consider these paradoxical images this Christmas day, December 25, 2024, as we recall the birth of our Savior and Lord, Jesus, and what it all means for us.

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