Tag: biblical interpretation

Does God Flip Flop? Abraham, Isaac, and Us

What changed from the Old Testament to the New Testament?

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I am listening to The Basic Folk podcast episode 316 with Joy Oladokun (an artist I like by the way) Perhaps, that is a strange way to open a blog post on the age old heresy of Marcionism – the belief that the god revealed in the Old Testament is different from God revealed in the New Testament. Hang with me though!

Joy Oladokun (who is a musical artist you should check out) grew up in the church and cut her musical chops on worship music and listening to Phil Collins with her father. She uses biblical themes in her music, which also has a distinctly spiritual character to it.

Though she may have some heretical ideas about God and the Bible, I believe we can appreciate and like music even when the artist doesn’t believe exactly as we do and, in this case, even when she has heretical ideas about God and the Bible. We are all on a journey in our relationship to God, and I appreciate that about people and the music people make on their own journeys.

Anyway, around the 15 minute mark in the podcast Joy Oladokun expresses her understanding that God, in the Old Testament flip flops. Then, she provides this short theological synopsis, “It’s like, ‘Sacrifice your son…. Never mind, here’s a goat.” I am chuckling even now, but her thoughts and the example she gives deserves a response.

Many people her age (and all ages, really) have an issue with the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac. It also opens up a biblical theme that I glimpsed as a young nonbeliever reading the Bible for the first time many years ago that continues to develop as I age.

Perhaps, I am fortunate that I didn’t pay much attention to theology in my formative years, because I didn’t formulate many theological ideas that colored and warped my view of God. When I read the Bible for the first time in college, I came to it with no preconceived ideas and no assumptions (that I recall).

I was raised Catholic, but I didn’t even realize that the readings in the mass were from the Bible (until after I became a Christian). I could not recall anything from the catechism classes I took. I was pretty much too zoned out (and, later, stoned out) to latch onto many theological constructs.

I didn’t know anything about evangelical ideas, like biblical inerrancy, predestination, and eschatological schemes. I came at the Bible like I approached all literature, poetry, and philosophy. I let it speak to me and convey its message to me.

Early on (as I read Genesis), I learned that Abraham heard the voice of God, and he responded in faith (with trust). I learned that the Ancient Near Eastern people from whom Abraham descended and believed in many gods who were more or less arbitrary and capricious. One of those beliefs that was ubiquitous in Abraham’s day was the belief that gods require child sacrifice to be appeased.

I could see that the God who Abraham “heard” was not like those other gods that he and the people around him believed in. I could see that Abraham lived his life on a journey (quite literally) of discovery about this God whose “voice” he heard.

Abraham’s understanding was evolving as he sensed this God and responded in faith to Him. He was learning that God was not like the gods with which he was familiar. This God made promises, and He kept them. This God desired a relationship with Abraham, and He was trustworthy.

I have to admit that the story about Isaac was a bit of a mystery to me then, but I didn’t rush to any conclusions. I understood that child sacrifice was practiced throughout the ancient Levant, but something was different about this story that carried some significance, though I wasn’t quite sure of all that it meant at the time.

There was a lot I didn’t understand. I was on a journey myself, and I realized there was mystery in the stories that belied quick or simple explanations. I, like Abraham perhaps, was willing to explore where a connection to this God might take me (after a brief flirtation with Eastern religion).

I have been on this journey now for over 45 years. I responded to the God of Abraham when I was 19 (the summer after I first read the Bible). I was far from knowing all the answers (though I did go through a period in which I thought I knew much more than I did).

I guess the thought that we know more than we really do is a human trait, and it is one we are well advised to resist. We are finite beings, regardless of the knowledge we collect, and we will never be more than finite beings in these earthly bodies that we will take to our graves.

I can’t tell you how many years I have taken to get to a place of some comfortable understanding on the Abraham and Isaac story. It is more than I might like to admit, but I have always been willing to give God the benefit of the doubt, which is what Abraham did. It is what he was commended for: faith, which is simply trusting in the goodness of God.

The Bible we have says that God told Abraham to go sacrifice his son, Isaac. We cannot escape that is what the Bible says. But, is that what God actually said?

Or is that just what Abraham “heard”? Or is it just what Abraham understood? Or is it just what he felt compelled to do?

I don’t know, and I think it is ok to say, “We don’t really know.” I also think it is ok to ask the question and to assume we may not necessarily have the right answer.

In any event, Abraham clearly believed that God told him to sacrifice his son. That requirement, of course, is antithetical to the promise God had given Abraham – that Abraham’s descendants would fill the earth and become as numerous as the stars in the sky. Yet, Abraham dutifully (if not reluctantly) complied with what he believed he must do.

This is a kind of faith that we don’t understand today, especially in the post Enlightenment age of reason and science driven more recently by post-modern skepticism. We are told in Sunday school (as I have learned) that this story is about Abraham’s faith and willingness to do what he was told, though it didn’t make sense

I think that is partially true, but I have come to see that the story is not only (or maybe even primarily) about faith. The story isn’t primarily about Abraham, either. He is just the vessel through which the story unfolds. The story is about God, and who God is, and the character of God.

Whether God told Abraham to sacrifice his son, or Abraham jumped to that conclusion, doesn’t matter so much. Child sacrifice was demanded by the gods, according to Ancient Near Eastern religious thought that was formative in Abraham’s outlook on the world. He responded according to the custom, practice, and wisdom of his age.

I have written about this a number of times before. (See the Abraham and the Paradigm Shift, Abraham and the Love of God, Abraham and Isaac Revisited: Introduction, Abraham and Isaac Revisited: Here I Am, Abraham, Abraham and Faith and the Hope Deferred, and Abraham and the Blood Path) I am not going to cover all that ground again, but I return to the same theme again because it has roots in my initial revelation of God and my own journey of faith. As I hope to flesh out, it also provides some insight into the God who seems to flip flop.

Continue reading “Does God Flip Flop? Abraham, Isaac, and Us” →

The Importance of Humility, Openness, and Generosity toward the Holy Spirit in Reading Scripture

We need to be ever humble before God and ever humble in our reliance on our own understanding

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In my last blog post, I wrote about the crippled woman Jesus healed in the synagogue, to the synagogue leader’s chagrin (The Danger of Being Too Set in Our Interpretation of What God Requires and What He Is Doing). The synagogue leader thought Jesus shouldn’t be working/healing on the Sabbath, so he instructed the crowd that they could come any other day of the week to be healed, but not on the Sabbath. (Luke 13:10-17)

It seems ridiculous to us, but who knows what doctrines, dogmas, understandings, and ways of thinking we have that get in our way of recognizing God and what He is doing in our present time. If we shrug our shoulders at the seeming insignificance of the Sabbath concern, we will miss the weight of this encounter.

The keeping of the Sabbath was a sacred tradition that goes all the way back to Genesis, when God rested after the six (6) days of creation. (Gen. 2:2-3) Moses passed on the commandment directly from God when the Hebrews were delivered out of Egypt: “Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work….” (Ex. 20:9-10)

The Sabbath was reinforced by Moses as part of the covenant relationship established by God with the Israelites. Many centuries before Jesus, God told Moses:

“Say to the Israelites, ‘You must observe my Sabbaths. This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come, so you may know that I am the Lord, who makes you holy. Observe the Sabbath, because it is holy to you. Anyone who desecrates it is to be put to death; those who do any work on that day must be cut off from their people.” (Ex. 31:13-14)

Can you see why the first century Hebrews held so tightly to their Sabbath doctrine? It was a commandment; it was sacred; it was an intimate sign of their covenant with God going back many centuries; and the penalty of violating the Sabbath in the Mosaic law was death (or being cut off from the people).

For that reason, the Jewish leaders added strict protocols to the observance of the Sabbath to be sure that no one violated it, even inadvertently. Thus, when Jesus did something highly irregular, like calling a crippled woman forward in the synagogue in the first place, and then healing her, the synagogue leader was legitimately concerned, in his mind, about a violation of that sacred commandment.

Yet, in his concern for not offending God and for observing law, he failed to recognize God in the flesh standing right before him! Ironically, the Law that was intended to point the Hebrews to God got in the way of the him recognizing God.

God commanded them to keep the Sabbath at the risk of death and exile! Thus, they believed they couldn’t be too careful! What are we to make of this?

One clue is in the details of the response by Jesus. He called the religious leaders hypocrites because they untied their livestock and took them out to get water on the Sabbath. (Luke 13:13) If they believed that caring for their animals on the Sabbath was ok on the Sabbath, they should have recognized that healing a person was ok also.

“Yes, but God commanded!”, the synagogue leader might have said. I suppose Jesus might have asked in return, “Commanded what?” The synagogue leader might have protested further, “But we cannot be too careful! These things are not to be taken lightly. We need to err on the side of caution, lest we step over the line!”

These things should not be taken lightly, no doubt, but the synagogue leader obviously missed something of essential importance. What he missed, I think is better understood in the context of some global criticisms Jesus expressed toward the religious leaders of his day (which likely are as applicable today as they were then):

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” (Matt. 23:23-24)

The Law and all of its rules were not meant to be the end all be all. Paul says the law was a guardian or tutor to lead us to Christ. (Gal. 2:24) Perhaps partially, to help us recognize our need for Christ in our inability to keep the Law. Perhaps, partially, to provide rituals by and through which a relationship could be established with God. Perhaps, in other ways as well.

The point is that the Law was never meant to define the totality of God’s relationship with people. What God wanted, which is what the Law was intended to teach, was for the Hebrews to love Him and for them to love each other.

Jesus said as much when he said the Law can be summed up succinctly in two phrases: Love God, and love your neighbor.

This was not a new concept when Jesus spoke those words, though. Jesus was once asked, “What is greatest commandment?”, by a teacher of the Law. When Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love God, and the second greatest commandment is to love our neighbor, the teacher commended Jesus for the answer, demonstrating that the teacher of the Law knew the answer, himself. (Mark 12:28-34)

When the teacher of the law commended Jesus for the answer, Jesus told the teacher that he answered “wisely” and, therefore, is “not far from the kingdom of God.” (Mk. 12:34) In other words, the key to unlocking the “mystery” of the Law is to understand that it is meant to teach us to love God and love our neighbors. If we fail to see that, we are missing the boat

When we hold too tightly to our doctrinal constructs to the point that we miss the ultimate point, like the synagogue leader did, we fail to understand God; we fail to recognize God when He is acting in our midst; and we risk being on the “outside” with God, though we may be good, religious people in every other way.

Jesus said,

“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”

Matthew 6:22-23

How do we apply this? How do we make sense of the things God has commanded us without missing the forest for the trees? How do we take a lesson from the synagogue ruler? I am no theologian, but I have some thoughts.

Continue reading “The Importance of Humility, Openness, and Generosity toward the Holy Spirit in Reading Scripture” →

Taking the Hand of God, Literally; How We Read the Bible

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Heaven is my throne, and the earth my footstool. What sort of house will you build for me? says the Lord, or what will be my resting place? Did not my hand make all these things?

Acts 7:49‭-‬50 CSB

I have thought and written about the fundamentalists and the atheists of the world who, ironically, approach the Bible in the same way. Both groups of people read the Bible in a wooden, inflexible, literal kind of way. (See Sam Harris Podcast with Bart Ehrman – Part 2 – Wooden Fundamentalism)

This passage above gets me thinking about these things again. The passage quoted above is from Steven’s address to the Jewish leaders who had him stoned after calling them stiff-necked like their ancestors in the desert (among other things).

Steven recited the Jewish history to them, including the Ark of the Covenant that was created to hold the Ten Commandments and the Tent of Meeting that was carried through the desert and set up where they stopped as a place for God’s “presence” to “dwell” among them. The Tabernacle with the Ark of the Covenant became the inner sanctum of the Tent of Meeting. These structures the people carried with them became the place they would meet with God.

David desired to build God a home, a permanent place for the Ark of the Covenant and Tabernacle, and Solomon accomplished David’s dream. David knew, however, that God does not live in a temple made by human hands. Solomon, David’s son who built the Temple, acknowledged the same thing when he dedicated the Temple:

“But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!

1 Kings 8:27

They understood that the Tabernacle, the Tent of Meeting, and the Temple were symbolic. These physical structures and the activity organized around them and in them were meant to point to a metaphysical reality of much greater substance.

It’s ironic that David, a man after God’s own heart, knew these things, but the people of God generally often did not. David was a man after God’s own heart, but the Israelites on the whole were often stiff-necked, as Stephen said.

I find it ironic that people who try to interpret and apply the Bible in the most literal way fall on opposite ends of the spectrum. Fundamentalists and atheists both tend to interpret the Bible literally. They are the two sides of the same interpretive coin. The only difference is that one side believes every part of it, and the other side believes none of it.

At the end of the passage quoted above, the Lord poses the rhetorical question, “Did not my hand make all of these things?”

Does anyone literally believe that God’s hand made the universe? I suppose we should ask, also, “Does God have only one hand?”

I would venture to guess that everyone understands this phrase to be allegorical. Yet, there are so many things in the Bible that people try to take and apply literally that are, perhaps, not as obviously allegorical.

I’ve heard the counter statement that we cannot pick and choose the things we believe out of the Bible. We must believe every word of it, or reject all of it. This is the fundamentalist/literalist approach – all or nothing. Never mind that a verse like the one quoted above is clearly not intended to be taken literally!

Not to pick on “fundamentalists” (whatever that term might mean), but those people we tend to label with that term tend to push a very literal interpretation of Scripture. They, in a sense, double-down on the “facts” stated in the Bible and attempt to believe “everything”. Many atheists dig in on the same literal way of interpreting the Bible, but they believe none of it. They both approach the Bible the same way, but one believes 100% and the other believes 0%.

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Focusing on Following Jesus in a Chaotic World

God continues to work out His purpose in history.

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There is so much angst in the world today. First the corona virus and now the explosion of racial tensions. The political and worldview polarization we we have experienced in recent years have been magnified as political machines ramp up for another presidential election. It even threatens to pull the church apart.

I have recently written about black lives matter and white privilege from a biblical perspective, in an attempt to redeem those phrases from a biblical point of view.  I realize that those terms are loaded. The Black Lives Matter organization has a specific message and worldview that runs contrary to biblical principles at various points, but I tried to find the kernels of truth in those phrases through a biblical lens.

We run a risk in the church of getting off the narrow path of following Jesus by aligning ourselves too closely with a particular political platform, secular philosophy or other way of viewing the world that is not gospel focused. We also run a risk of falling off the narrow path the other way, by  reacting in opposition to everything a particular political platform, philosophy or worldview stands, just because some of it (or even most of it) is contrary to “off”.

Truth is truth, and truth is objective. No one person or particular view is apt to be absolutely true, because we are flawed beings with limited perspective. The likelihood of one person, one church, one theology being absolutely true in every detail is not likely.

At the same time, truth is truth. It is objective, and people can see it. That means that even people who may not acknowledge the truth of the gospel may, nevertheless, accurately see some aspect of the truth.

It’s like science, the facts and evidence must be interpreted. We are all looking at the same facts and evidence, but we do not all interpret it the same way. Still, the facts and evidence are the same. We continually discover new facts and evidence that alters our interpretations of the facts and evidence we previously knew, and we sometimes discover that what we thought we knew is not accurate.

God, of course, never changes. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. Our perspective, knowledge and understanding, however, is finite and limited, and that requires we adopt a posture of humility in our understanding.

God’s Word doesn’t change, but our perspective of it changes. Think of the radical change of perspective Jesus introduced to the descendants of Abraham! God became man, came to His own people, and they didn’t even recognize Him!

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Meaning in the Metaphor in the Bible

God intertwines metaphor and fact as only the very writer of history can do

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Imagine hearing these words in the First Century:

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.  Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.  This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.  I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”  The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.  Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.  Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.  As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me.  This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”
(John 6:47‭, ‬49‭-‬54‭, ‬56‭-‬58 ESV) (emphasis added)

The crowd asked, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”… and they were probably thinking, “Why would we want to it? That’s disgusting!”

They took him literally, but we understand that he was speaking figuratively. In fact, Jesus spoke figuratively all the time. In fact, Mark says that Jesus spoke in parables everywhere. (Mark 4:34).

To Jesus, the physical world was like one big figure of speech. He spoke about bread, and light, and salt, and a lamp, and a vine, and a mustard seed, and on and on and on. In this way, Jesus was continually challenging the people listening to him to think beyond the physical world they knew to consider spiritual truths that transcend it.

Many, like the Jews who asked how Jesus could give them his flesh to eat, had a hard time with the way Jesus spoke. Even the disciples, themselves, found these words the comparison of Jesus as living bread for people to eat hard to swallow (pun intended). (John 6:66)

Continue reading “Meaning in the Metaphor in the Bible” →