Category: Christian

Straightening the Crooked Path

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2012-10-21_15-18-06_197

When uneducated and inaccurate statements are made about evolution, materialism or scientific evidence, people smirk and are quick to point out the ignorance. Uneducated and inaccurate statements about the Bible raise hardly a snicker.

Apparently in defense of homosexuality, I have heard people suggest that the Bible endorses many forms of sexual and gender relations that most people today find more offensive than a loving, gay or lesbian relationship. That is the point of this Upworthy post – “The Top 8 Ways to Be ‘Traditionally Married’ According to the Bible” (sarcasm noted).

I am not going to take on the subject of homosexuality in this piece. I will leave that to others. My issue is with the claims that the Bible endorses deviant sexual acts in the Old Testament. The intention of this type of argument is to undermine the Bible as a standard for conduct, to undermine the reliability or the Bible and to suggest that people who believe the  Bible is inspired from God are either hypocrites or do not understand their own Scripture.

But the statements about what the Old Testament says beg the question of their accuracy. I should note at the outset that reports of things that happened are not endorsements of the actions reported. Would anyone mistake a newspaper article on the kidnapping and rape of a ten year old as an endorsement of kidnapping and rape of ten year olds?

Much of the Old Testament is a chronicle reporting things that happened. There are statements of what God purportedly communicated, to be sure, but much of it is written as a history. Clearly, there is a difference between a history or chronicle (report of what happened) and a standard of conduct. Was anyone confused in middle school when reading about the Holocaust in history books that the textbook was endorsing the Holocaust?

If you read the Bible from beginning to end, and attempt to understand what it says, you will find that it reads like a chronicle of God revealing Himself to men and women, and the responses of individuals and people groups, especially the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, to those encounters. The history includes an unfolding of knowledge and understanding, if you will, little by little over a long period of time. It is not terribly unlike the history of science and the unfolding of knowledge and understanding of the universe.

The Bible reports the ancient view of women as chattel, a view that was almost universally shared in every part of the ancient world during times in which physical strength and prowess determined a “might makes right” society. We find throughout the Old Testament examples of women being granted much greater rights and respect that the culture of the time afforded them. Still, the treatment of women reflected in the Old Testament must be viewed in the context of the culture of the time.

Compare that to Paul’s entreaties in the New Testament that husbands should love their wives as their own bodies (Eph. 5:28) and “as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (a self-sacrificing love that exults the needs and interest of another above one’s own).  (Eph. 5:25) The whole passage in Ephesians is prefaced by this statement: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” (Eph. 5:21) Paul reflects a more “enlightened” view of women than what was reflected in the Old Testament.

The changes are not contradictory; they are progressive. The Bible chronicles the growth in understanding of what it means to be a follower of God. We have some a long way. The things that people commonly did thousands of years ago are no longer tolerated. Things that were accepted centuries ago are no longer accepted today. All that means is that people have changed; God has not changed. (Heb. 13:8)

None of the activities and relationships reported in the passages cited in the Upworthy piece purport (in the text itself) to have the “blessing” of God. Even the passage in Genesis 2:24 does not read as a command, but as a statement: “a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh”.

The Upworthy piece and other pieces like it are gross mischaracterizations of the Bible and what it says by people who have not given serious effort to understand what they have read.  A serious discussion about anything should start from an accurate beginning point. Beginning a discussion with inaccuracy will not lead to understanding; it will just lead us down a crooked path.

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Postscript ~ As for commandments, Jesus actually raised the bar. One of the Ten Commandments is, “You shall not commit  adultery.” Jesus said,

“But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matt. 5:29) 

The context of this statement is the pronouncement that Jesus did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. (Matt. 5:17) Jesus revealed that God’s standard is even higher than what the Pharisees thought. God’s standard goes beyond what we do, and includes what we think and who we are. 

Who has not lusted in their hearts? No one! By God’s standards, we are all deviant; we are all sinners; we have all missed the mark.

…. and that gets to the heart of the Gospel ….

but a person must understand the Law and the purpose of the Law to understand the Gospel  (Good News). Revisiting the Garden may be a good place to start. 

 

The Unsettling Nature of Man, and God

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2010-06-15 20.12.35I have been reading through Genesis the last couple of weeks. In reading the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Isaac’s twelve sons, who would become the twelve tribes of Israel, I have been impressed, negatively impressed, with them as people. I must not have really noticed before their blemishes.

Abraham, the father of faith, lied about his relationship to Sarah, not once but twice. When Abraham visited Egypt, and the Pharaoh’s princes were struck by Sarah’s beauty, Abraham instructed Sarah to say she was his sister so they would not kill him. When Pharaoh found out, he was appalled and let her go. Years later, when Abraham was living in the land of the Philistines, Abraham openly declared Sarah was his sister. After King Abimelech discovered the truth, he was equally taken aback.  Why did he lie about it? It hardly seems like a noble thing to do. I would call it cowardly.

After Abraham was told by God that he would bear a son and his descendants would become like the stars in the sky, a number of years went by. Sarah then offered her servant to Abraham, and the servant, Hagar, gave birth to a son, Ishmael. Such an act violating the marital covenant does not sit well with a twenty first century reader. It was also not God’s plan. God’s plan was to give Abraham a son through his wife, Sarah.

Isaac, of course, was the son God promised. He, too, seemed less than sterling as a man of God. He followed his father’s footsteps in deceiving the same King Abimelech that Rebekah was his sister, when she was his wife. Like father like son.

Isaac had twin sons, and he favored the oldest, Esau. God blessed the younger son, Jacob. How could Isaac have gotten it wrong?

As for Jacob, he deceived his father for the blessing that his father thought he was giving to Esau, and he did it with his mother’s help. In his old age, Jacob had become blind. Rebekah put Jacob up to pretending to be Esau to receive his father’s blessing. Deception seems to run in the family.

All of this has been unusually unsettling for me for some reason. I have stewed on it for days. Today it struck me that anyone looking at my life would be equally unsettled (or more I dare say). I am no example to follow. I have made many mistakes in my life, too numerous to count. I have done many things of which I am not proud, and my thoughts are another matter altogether. Why should I expect anything other than humanity from these men of old? The amazing thing is that God chose them!

Clearly, it was not their spotless virtue that is the testament of their lives. It was their faith. They heard God. They responded to God. They honored God with sacrifices and pillars and altars where they went. They believed God when He spoke. They lived their lives in deference to God. They relied on God. Their faith was counted to them as righteousness.

My take away is that these men were in right relation to God. I take comfort in that, even if I am bit unsettled by their weakness and humanity, as well as my own.  I am in good company, but more importantly, I am reminded of the importance of living a life with an attitude toward God.

Ham vs. Nye Debate: Take Two

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I have had some time to think about the debate last week in a little more detail, and I have some additional observations. (Disclaimer: I am not a science guy.)

One place where I think Ham made a legitimate point is where Ham drew a distinction between observable science and historical science. He said that creationists do not disagree with evolutionists on the observable science; they come to different conclusions on the same evidencce. Nye kept stating that only science that is “reproducible” is real science, but how can scientists reproduce the Big Bang? How do we observe primordial goo turning into a life form (any life form)?

We don’t. Clearly Bill Nye overstated or misstated the scientific method when it comes to determining what happened in the past. We must necessarily engage different scientific tools than the tools of the laboratory. We need to employ a different tool kit. 

Nye’s point that creationists cannot test and reproduce the theory of creationism is not well-taken because evolutionists cannot test and reproduce the ultimate conclusions they reach either. In fact, both conclusions of the origins of man and origins of the earth require scientists to go beyond laboratory science because we can’t reproduce either a 6000 year old earth or a 4.3 Billion year old earth. We must use historical evidence at hand and reason to the best conclusion, and we have to understand that those conclusions will be impacted by our initial assumptions, which are often more philosophical than scientific.

To reach those conclusions requires something more than “pure science”. It requires logic, philosophy and even faith – because we don’t know what we don’t know.

To reach those ultimate conclusions requires us to start with a premise that is not based on “pure science”. That initial premise is often driven by worldview. Worldview has more of an impact on science than the scientific community cares to admit.

In this 30 minute piece called Evolution vs. God, fundamental holes in the evolutionary theory of the origin of the earth and man are exposed. The gaps come out of the mouths of evolutionary theorists themselves in response to questions asked of them. It is well worth the time to watch it.

This is not say that Ken Ham is right about the age of the earth, mind you.

Debriefing the Nye v. Ham Debate

While, Nye would never admit the Bible as evidence, Ham came off as stubbornly refusing to accept the proof of science.

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How many people watched the Bill Nye v. Ken Ham, young earth/old earth debate the other night? Apparently, Pat Robertson did, and he thinks that Ken Ham is full of water (as reported by many, including Patheos).

I have to say that I wanted to believe Ham, but it was hard to do. Of course, I do not buy Nye either. Just because one person of faith may not have it right, does not mean the baby should be thrown out with the bathwater (or Noah for that matter).

What is it about people that we want to know everything? We want everything to be tied up in neat bows and make perfect sense. But life is not like that. It just isn’t.

It seems to me, in my imperfect opinion, that we tend to get ourselves in trouble when we insist on knowing. Not that there is anything wrong with knowledge or with wanting to know things. But wanting to know everything and for all of it to make perfect sense is just asking too much this side of heaven. It also plays in to pride that is the root of all sin.

We are finite, limited beings. That we know as much as we do is, indeed, remarkable. That we should expect to know it all is something else altogether. (Interestingly, it was the temptation of knowledge, the knowledge of good and evil, that led Adam and Eve into sin.) Not that either Bill Nye or Ken Ham professed to know it all in the debate; they did not.

Let me say this though: I get Ken Ham: he takes the Bible for what it says, and he stands on faith that it is true. I get Ken Ham more than I get Bill Nye. Without faith, we can’t please God.

But the Bible does not say “the earth is 6000 years old”. It could be 10,000. It could be 10,000,000. I, personally, do not think that any of those scenarios matter much in the big scheme of things. The exercise of considering what if the world is only 6000 years old is interesting. It’s kind of fun, but only in a “what if” kind of way. My faith surely does not depend on it. Continue reading “Debriefing the Nye v. Ham Debate” →

Two Trees in the Garden

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Connecting with nature

“In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Gen. 2:10

Sometimes things jump out when I read the Bible. Two days ago, I was reading Genesis, and it struck me:

 There were two trees mentioned in the garden

The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil….

and God only told Adam and Eve they could not eat from one tree – the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

God did not forbid them to eat of the tree of life.

That suggests that they could have eaten of the tree of life without prohibition, and it struck me: What if Adam and Eve had chosen life? Would there have been a fall? Would God have allowed them to remain in the garden with the tree of knowledge after having partaken of the tree of life?

We can only speculate because Genesis tells us Adam and Eve chose knowledge instead of life. They were drawn to the one tree that God forbade them to eat. It dawns on me that the very act of choosing was a sort of an introduction to that knowledge, and I suspect God knew that they would choose it: the one thing He told them they could not have. What is it in us that we are drawn to the things that we cannot have? Why are we drawn to the things we know we should not have, even over the things that we would rather have?

I suppose some people might choose knowledge again, even knowing that life would be forfeited. Even so, one theme of great literature and art over the centuries is a longing for eternal life. The fountain of youth is the coveted grail. Nothing strikes more darkly at the heart than the certainty of death and takes more of toil on the human heart than the loss of a loved one to its clutches.

I am certain that God foresaw and knew the path that His crowning creation would take. We are created in God’s image and for a purpose higher than our own designs. God must have known that Adam and Eve may have chosen (wold choose?) knowledge over life. He gave them that choice, and he must have been prepared to respond to it. In that sense, it seems to me that knowledge was a part of the plan, even if meant that we would be separated from life and separate from God by it.  

Ironic it is that partaking in the knowledge of good and evil would mean loss of fellowship with God and loss of a personal knowledge of God.

It had to be part of God’s plan as, without the ability to choose, and without the knowledge of good and evil, there would be no truly free will, and without free will, no true love. There would be no place for God’s mercy, no reason for Him to extend it. Without the knowledge of good evil and the opportunity to exercise truly free will, people would be one directional beings, not different in kind from every other animal, unable to appreciate God or to love Him fully.

Knowledge, however, could only come with a price. After gaining the knowledge of good and evil, there would need to be additional work done in the hearts of men, work which could not have been done without that knowledge, work that could not have been accomplished if knowledge were combined with eternal life, work that could take root only in the shadow of inevitable death, separation from God and the need for God’s redemptive mercy.

I do not believe that God could have (or would have) allowed the knowledge of good and evil to be gained along with eternal life. Knowledge, alone, puffs up. Indeed, it was the temptation to know what God knows and to be like God that induced Eve to eat. Sin, separation from God, toil, pain and inevitably death remind us that we are not in control, that knowledge, alone, cannot save us from this condition – that we are the creatures and not the Creator.

Knowledge alone does not make us like God. It does not ensure character, heart, mercy, justice, kindness, goodness and ultimately love. Those things must be chosen, and evil must be rejected. The knowledge of good and evil ensures that there is a choice to be made. It cannot be avoided. And in having to make the choice to embrace good, even though the tendency of man is to choose that which is forbidden, is where God meets the heart and does His work.

God placed the trees side by side; He forbade one, but made them both available. God made eternal life available in the Garden, and He makes it available to us still. God put eternity in the hearts of men. (Eccl. 3:11) He gave us the desire for eternal life. God desires that no one perish; and that all come to eternal life. (John 3:16) … but, men must choose. We must choose God, who is good, and His ways over ourselves and our ways. We must choose the merciful redemption of God, embrace the goodness of God and reject our own ways.

In the end, believers will have both knowledge and life, and that life that God gives freely will be given precisely because we choose goodness – because we choose God. The knowledge that was chosen in disobedience to God puts the horrible responsibility on us to choose, and by choosing, to end up with goodness and God for eternity … or  separation from God. It would have been so much simpler and better for us if we had chosen life, instead of knowledge. Instead, it is a matter of life and death.