Category Essays

A Man in Need of an Ally

Todd R Leave a comment

Do you hate paying taxes?  Maybe you think you pay too much.  That others don’t pay enough.  Maybe you don’t like what its being used for.  Maybe the system is just too complicated and a hassle.

In Jesus’ day, people also hated paying taxes.  As noted in a prior post, Jesus lived and ministered during the “Pax Romana”, or “Roman Peace”, which was announced by Roman Caesars in “gospel” messages telling the people they benefited from unprecedented peace and prosperity due to the godlike powers of the Caesars and their Roman government.  Of course, these benefits could be expensive and had to be financed.

Worse than Turbo Tax

Enter the tax collector, or as some historians say: the tax “farmer”.  Instead of collecting taxes themselves, the Roman state sometimes sold the right to collect taxes to individuals at contracted rates.  Tax farmers collected required taxes, including “ground-, income-, and poll-tax. The ground-tax amounted to one-tenth of all grain and one-fifth of the wine and fruit grown; partly paid in kind, and partly commuted into money. The income-tax amounted to 1 per cent.; while the head-money, or poll-tax, was levied on all persons.”[1]

On top of this, the tax farmer invented other taxes for his own benefit, “such as on axles, wheels, pack-animals, pedestrians, roads, highways; on admission to markets; on carriers, bridges, ships, and quays; on crossing rivers, on dams, on licenses”.[2]  These taxes the farmer would keep for themselves, usually making them incredibly wealthy.

Adding insult to injury, they sometimes would use Roman soldiers to enforce payment, or if they were especially well-off, they had their own private enforcement squads, subjecting citizens to the “vexation of being constantly stopped on the journey, having to unload all one’s pack-animals, when every bale and package was opened, and the contents tumbled about [and] private letters opened.”[3]

Not Religious Freedom
Now enter Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea and Samaria, who later presided over the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.  Pilate was the man in charge of maintaining the hypocrisy of the “Pax Romana” while the soldiers under him harassed citizens for taxes.  He had a history of provoking the Jews and reminding them of their powerlessness, including seizing money from the Jewish Temple treasury to build an aqueduct, and by prominently posting Caesar propaganda within Jerusalem.  Both instigations are recorded by first-century historian Josephus[4].

Therefore, to many Jews of Jesus’ day, tax payments were seen as not only supporting the corruption of the tax collector, but also as financing an oppressive government and its pagan gods.  Often, the tax collector was Jewish himself, putting themselves forward for the job, then being appointed by their province.  In them, Jewish leaders saw not only a symbol of their contempt for “Pax Romana”, but also traitors and cheaters, representatives of an enemy power.  “They were a criminal race, to which Lev 20:5 applied,”[5] which says “then I will set my face against that man and against his clan and will cut them off from among their people, him and all who follow him in whoring after Molech.[6]”  All tax collectors as a group fell under the Rabbinic ban, or their version of excommunication.  Under the ban, a person or group of persons became “like one dead”, not allowed to socialize with other Jews, who could not even give them directions.  “It was forbidden to eat or drink with such a one.”[7]

Zacchaeus Has No Friends
In Luke 19, we meet one of these chief tax collectors, Zacchaeus, who appeared to be having a mid-life crisis.  He was a very rich, successful man because of the abuses described above, but was trying to reform.  Luke 19:8 records Zacchaeus’ words when he met Jesus: “And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, ‘Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.[8]’” Comically, he had to climb a sycamore tree to see Jesus at all, who was surrounded by crowds.

Excommunicated from the Jewish faith, and probably less popular with his Roman bosses due to collecting less tax, Zacchaeus was looking for anyone to accept him.  We don’t know for sure what led Zacchaeus to search for Jesus, but maybe he knew about John the Baptist calling tax collectors to “Collect no more than you are authorized to do”, as recorded in Luke 3:10-13.  Later, maybe Zacchaeus heard Jesus’ teaching about taxes and tax collectors as did Matthew, another tax collector and eventually author of the first book of the New Testament.  In Luke 18:9-14, Jesus contrasted the obnoxious self-righteousness of a Pharisee to a humble tax collector begging for forgiveness.

When Jesus saw Zacchaeus in the tree, he called out “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.”[9]  Then came the complaints of the Pharisees, a group of religious leaders, who “grumbled, ‘He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.’”  See, the Pharisees were right that Zacchaeus is a sinner.  They were right that he was an oppressor.  The Pharisees divided the world into “us” and “sinners”, and expected Jesus to do the same.  After all, the Rabbinic ban applied to the entire class of tax collectors and if Jesus wanted to be a Rabbi, he had to enforce the ban.  If they were Mandalorian, they would have said “This is the way!” [10]

In contrast, earlier in Luke 6:27-32, Jesus taught:

“But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.  To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either.  Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back.  And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.  If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.”

The first part of this seems to be describing precisely the actions of tax collectors and their thugs, and saying “Love them!”.  The latter part sounds like a rebuke to the Pharisees.  What the Pharisees did not understand is that from Jesus’ perspective, all are sinners and all are enemies of God.  Fortunately, He does not leave it at that: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” – Romans 5:8. If Jesus had not loved His enemies on the cross, we – including the Pharisees – would all be without hope, like Zacchaeus in the sycamore tree.

Jesus announced “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham.  For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” – Luke 19:9b-10. In saving Zacchaeus, Jesus was proclaiming a new paradigm, where there is no “Us versus Sinners”, but in His death and resurrection He created a church that is “Him for Them”, and then “Us for Them”.  He elevated Love above “truth”, letting the Pharisees know that although their accusations against Zacchaeus and all tax collectors were “true”, that truth was not good enough.  The truth of the Law condemns because we are all sinners. Jesus is the Truth we need, that brings peace and sets free.  Zacchaeus was excluded from church and state, but Jesus offered a third, superior kingdom that would accept him.  By disowning his sin (Luke 19:8 above), Zacchaeus didn’t become perfect, but he acknowledged Jesus as the Savior and King he needed and relied on His grace.

Ripple Effects
The Pharisees continued longing for a political messiah who would get rid of traitors like the tax collectors and overthrow Rome.  Their worldview pointed back to the reign of King David, who oversaw a sovereign Jewish nation governed by the laws of the Pentateuch[11], with a “pure” system of Jewish law centered around worship and sacrifice at the Temple in Jerusalem.

Rather than being reformed by the Zacchaeus episode, Pharisees later tried to force Jesus to take sides between church (as the Pharisees saw it) and the occupying Roman state in Luke 20:19-25, asking “Is it lawful for us to give tribute to Caesar, or not?”  Jesus deftly replied, “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”  Jesus did not condemn paying taxes even though he knew fraud and corruption was involved, but he earlier demanded that those responsible for corruption repent.

If you feel like a Pharisee in this story, break the stereotype of “Us vs. Them.”  Find a Zacchaeus out there and bring the love and forgiveness of Jesus to them.  I guarantee you know one.  The nightly news or your social media feed are probably very good at identifying enemies.  However, “Blessed are the peacemakers”[12], because they are like Jesus.

Zacchaeus probably continued to collect taxes, but as a reformed man.  He would refuse to be a cog in a corrupt machine.  As a chief collector, he may have influenced subordinates to be less corrupt, and therefore his conversion was good for the citizens while also making Pax Romana look more like its propaganda and less like what the Pharisees hated.  A bit of the righteousness and justice of heaven was injected into Pax Romana because Jesus saw Zacchaeus as a person, and not as a category or type, beyond redemption under the ban.

If you feel like Zacchaeus in this story, cast out and rejected with unforgiving enemies on every side, turn to Jesus.  Perhaps you feel like the religious establishment doesn’t like you or your kind.  Jesus is not the religious or political solution the Pharisees and Romans wanted, but He is the solution – the Answer[13].  For you.

The Right Side of History
When people say they are on “the right side of history” they’re implicitly claiming to know the future and also claiming the right to judge the present based on that knowledge.  However, they often ignore the One who actually does know the future.  When Jesus met Zacchaeus, saving him from slavery to the kingdom of sin was more important at that moment than overthrowing Rome and saving the Jews from state oppression.  Jesus knew that Zacchaeus’ soul was eternal, but that Rome and all its institutions and culture were temporary.  Only in hindsight do we know what Jesus already knew at the time: in AD 66, Rome would invade and level the city of Jerusalem, including desecrating the temple.  In 410 AD, Germanic tribes would sack the city of Rome and eventually overthrow the empire of Pax Romana.

What was Zacchaeus’ fate in AD 66?  We don’t know, but if we are Christians, we know we will meet him in heaven.  He was rescued, spiritually, just days before Jesus went to the cross for him.  Jesus overcame the temporary power of the world – the oppressing power of sin and darkness that enslaves us – by offering Himself and the radical power of forgiveness.  Zacchaeus was a state oppressor of the Jews as an agent of Rome, and also religiously oppressed by the Jews who tried to keep him from God, but he will outlast both systems.  He overcame, in Jesus, the Oppressor that cuts across all categories of people – sin.  “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” – Galatians 3:28

From the perspective of eternity, being on “the right side of history” is when the oppressor loves the oppressed and the oppressed loves the oppressor.  Isaiah 11:6-9 describes the future from which Jesus will judge our present actions and whether we are on the right side:

“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
            and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together;
            and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
            and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.
They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain;
             for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.”

Amen.

[1] Edersheim, Alfred. The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1886). P. 357
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Josephus. The Jewish War (2.9.2) (AD 75) and Antiquities of the Jews (18.3.1) (AD 93). Cited in Wikipedia entry on Pontius Pilate.
[5] Edersheim, Alfred. The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. (1886). P. 357.
[6] Molech was a god of the Ammonites, whose followers sometimes sacrificed their children to him by fire. Ammonites were descendants of Abraham’s brother Lot, through his younger daughter who got him drunk and seduced him. (Gen 19:38)
[7] Edersheim, Alfred. The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. (1886). P. 602.
[8] Possibly referring to Exodus 22:1 – “If a man steals an ox or a sheep, and kills it or sells it, he shall repay five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep.”
[9] Luke 19:5
[10] In the Disney+ series, The Mandalorian, the title refers to a tribe of bounty hunters who use this phrase when referencing their shared code of conduct.
[11] The first 5 books of the Bible, or the “books of Moses”
[12] Matthew 5:9
[13] See my first post, “42 is Not the Answer” for more on how Jesus is the Answer.

42 is Not The Answer

Todd R 8 Comments

[This is a repost of my first post from May 2021, for the blog’s 3rd anniversary tomorrow. Enjoy!]

“You shall have no other gods before me” – Exodus 20:3

“The carpenter…plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it…He takes a part of it and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Also he makes a god and worships it; he makes it an idol and falls down before it.  Half of it he burns in the fire…And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, ‘Deliver me, for you are my god!’”  – Isaiah 44:13-17 (abbreviated)

Meet Deep Thought

Even if you’ve never read Douglas Adams’ classic science fiction comedy novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, chances are you’ve heard that the number 42 is The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything.

In the story, a supercomputer called Deep Thought is built, specifically designed to do one thing: calculate the answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything.  Deep Thought’s creators planned to re-build all of society around this answer.  The benefit to society would be worth the 7 ½ million years it took to calculate it.  “Never again will we wake up in the morning and think: Who am I?  What is my purpose in life?”  Deep Thought completes its work.  The world awaits.

Deep Thought says the answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything is 42.

Deep Thought also reveals that his creators didn’t know what the question was and although the answer was right, 42 was not useful if they didn’t know the question.  Of course, Deep Thought also says he’s not powerful enough to produce the question.

So, instead of giving up after 7 ½ million years of effort, Deep Thought is tasked with helping to create another, stronger supercomputer to come up with the question.  But, after 8 million years of calculation, the new computer is destroyed 5 minutes before it was finished.

So, instead of giving up after 15 ½ million years of effort, those in charge of the project know they need to provide some sort of question to their superiors to salvage the situation.  They consider possible questions.  “What do you get when you multiply six by seven?” was considered, but not very useful or philosophical enough.  They consider a few more and settle on “How many roads must a man walk down?”, a Bob Dylan lyric, and report that to their bosses as the computer’s question.  (Which, I suppose is giving up after 15 ½ million years of effort.)  They sought a guiding principle to organize a utopia around and ended up with a song lyric.  The universe continued with no sense of meaning.  But the questions remain, like a “splinter in our mind” as Morpheus says in the Matrix, another story where Artificial Intelligence fails to fulfill our desire for meaning and purpose.

In the real world, many are working – across the political and ideological spectrum – to satisfy the market for answers.

Jordan Peterson, perhaps one of the most misunderstood thinkers of our current time, has published some brilliant best-selling books trying to answer these questions, or at least to provide a path forward in the absence of those answers: “In the West, we have been withdrawing from our tradition-, religion- and even nation-centered cultures, partly to decrease the danger of group conflict.  But we are increasingly falling prey to the desperation of meaninglessness, and that is no improvement at all.”  His books sell because people are searching, and he has a ton of good advice.

But Jordan Peterson is stuck in a paradox: he knows something like Deep Thought is needed to prevent humanity from destroying itself under the weight of meaninglessness, but also that what Deep Thought represents is a grave threat to humanity.  “This is what totalitarian means: Everything that needs to be discovered has been discovered.  Everything will unfold precisely as planned.  All problems will vanish, forever, once the perfect system is accepted”.  Thus, he is tenaciously anti-utopian in his thinking.  In fact, the walls of his house are covered in totalitarian propaganda as a constant reminder of the horrors of the 20th century.

See, what’s missing in the Hitchhiker’s story is any explanation of why all the people of the universe could reasonably be expected to do what Deep Thought says.  What do we do with those who don’t agree with Deep Thought’s advice?  What do they do in the Kingdom of Deep Thought to the Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego[1] who conscientiously object?  What do they do with the blind, the deaf and the lame, if Deep Thought says you need to see, hear, and walk?  After all, 15 ½ million years of effort can’t go to waste because a few inconvenient people got in the way.  You might say it was a blessing that Deep Thought failed.

While these concepts and questions aren’t new – Adam and Eve themselves got the answer wrong[2] – what’s new is that in our current American culture, more are boldly saying: “We tried Christianity and that didn’t work, so now we’re trying something else” and they fully expect the support of everyone and everything.  Resistance is futile, as they say in Star Trek.  While all past attempts at worldly utopia have utterly failed, momentum seems to be rising to make us all guinea pigs in the next attempt at building an idol, which is what Deep Thought, and its ideological brethren clearly are.  If Bob Dylan met Deep Thought at the crossroads, he might say we’ve been down this road before 42 times.  While we might take heart that G.K. Chesterton said: “When I fancied that I stood alone I was really in the ridiculous position of being backed up by all of Christendom”, we ask what can we do?

Which brings us back to Jordan Peterson.  He is highly aware of Christianity as a force that has shaped culture and civilization over centuries.  He finds value in the Bible as a collection of useful and profound stories, pulling from that a lot of helpful insight.  However, he falls short of saying Christianity is true.  He is always careful not to get “metaphysical”.  If Jesus is actually real, isn’t that utopian and rigidly ideological?

I pray Jordan makes the leap of faith because what if Jesus really is the Answer?  We’ve all seen the “Jesus is the Answer” bumper stickers.  What if it’s that simple?  Ok, maybe, but what’s the question?  What about “Who am I?  What is my purpose in life?”  If we claim this Jesus is the Answer, who is this person and what does He have to do with me and my problems?

Now we get to the section of the post where I literally had a placeholder in the draft saying: “Insert Christology Here”. If I say too little, it won’t make sense, but if I say too much not only do my odds of blasphemy increase, but my first “blog post” will take years, and multiple volumes, to write.  But I’ve painted myself into this corner…

So, here goes (after a multitude of re-writes) …

Meet Jesus

Jesus is God the Son.  He is the Messiah, the Christ, foretold in the Old Testament as the perfect prophet, priest, and king.  Where the leaders of the Old Testament failed, He would succeed.  Jesus eternally holds these offices of prophet, priest, and king, who also announces Himself as the Way, the Truth, and the Life – the representation of God the Father and the way to Him.  These attributes show Him as superior to all the Deep Thoughts of the world:

Truth: As omniscient God, he is our prophet, communicating to us His revelation.  He has no gaps in his knowledge or biases and therefore His utopia – His New Jerusalem – is not an inadequate abstraction or wishful thinking.  He alone is perfectly trustworthy.

Way: As our perfect priest, He is our unblemished sacrifice, putting to death our spiritual rebellion on the cross.  This priest does not sacrifice others in pursuit of earthly goals but sacrifices Himself to free us to pursue heavenly goals in service of others.  The perfect world is not only available to some lucky few in the future, but to everyone in all times who follow Him by sacrificing themselves for the truth.

Life: He offers us eternal life in His Kingdom.  His resurrection shows He has conquered death itself, and His people will be resurrected with Him, with new bodies, His law written on our hearts, enabling us to implement the answer.  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego[3] – and everyone else – will have clear consciences.  The blind will see, the deaf will hear, the lame will walk[4], and everyone will be fully able to realize their purpose.

Thinking of Jesus as creator may also be a clue to our purpose.  As shown in the introductory quote, it makes no sense than man could create something that transcends man, something that could know better than man himself what man should do.  But the prophet cries out to those who would build Deep Thought and seek their own way in Isaiah 29:15-16:

“Ah, you who hide deep from the LORD your counsel,
                   whose deeds are in the dark,
                   and who say, “Who sees us? Who knows us?”
You turn things upside down!
        Shall the potter be regarded as the clay,
        that the thing made should say of its maker,
                “He did not make me”;
        or the thing formed say of him who formed it,
                “He has no understanding”?”

Jesus as creator is, however, adequate to the task of being our Answer.  He is the “Word” of John 1:1 – the “logos” – or logic behind all of creation.  He knows us better than we know ourselves.  He could snap His fingers and start over, but He chooses not to.  He chooses to make us co-creators, to work through, and overcome, all our weaknesses.

Tying these ideas together with Matthew 6:10: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”, I propose 2 principles in passing now, which will be ongoing themes of this blog:

  • Our Life’s purpose is to witness to the future kingdom, to bring glory to our King, to bring Truth about the next world into this world lovingly and creatively, to point others to Jesus, who is the Way to that world
  • We model the hierarchy of the next world, where the Creator is over all of creation, and man, unique among the creation as God’s image, implements a perfect world

So, in summary: where does purpose come from?  From One greater than us, who loves us.

Why do we create to find purpose? Because He created us like Himself and shares His work with us.

What does this look like?  Here is an interesting example:

Meet Tyler

Tyler Joseph is the singer, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter for the genre-bending music group twenty øne piløts.  Tyler, raised in a Christian home but struggling with depression and anxiety, started writing songs in his basement and before long was performing shows with friends in the Columbus, Ohio area.  Early songs[5] included a lot of Christian symbols and references, hinting at Jesus as an answer for people with similar struggles and the band cultivated a following at Christian music festivals.  Now their fans are known as the “Skeleton Clique”, one of the most rabid fan bases in music.  If you spend any time on their social media or at their shows, you will find people who say Tyler saved their life, and others sharing their struggles.  “Stay alive, fren” is the response, often with “the clique loves you” tagged on too.

One early song is “Isle of Flightless Birds,” which I believe is about the pointlessness of life without God.  Tyler says without God we’re like birds who can’t fly, so we “find our worth in giving birth and stuff” as the “demons and angels” manipulate us.  Our lives are “frustrating and so degrading” and “we repeat the same routines” ignoring what “our soul is really thinking”

Tyler suggests a solution is to “wake up every morning and decide what we believe”, and ends the song with this: “It’s time you pick your battle, and I promise you, this is mine”

He doesn’t spell it out, but it seems Tyler’s battle is an answer (lower case) that points to the Answer (upper case)?  What if his triumph over depression was discovering that music was his way of creating something in this world that both improves this world and points to the next?  What if his battle is to minister to an immediate need – compassion and understanding in the face of despair – while dropping breadcrumbs pointing the Way to eternal life?  If he can help people survive a bit longer, perhaps they find God – “And He is waiting, oh, so patiently”

Tyler transparently chooses to deliver a veiled message, using layered metaphors containing both spiritual and secular meanings.  He struggles with how explicit to be about his faith in the song “Clear” – “I wish that I had two faces to prove which theory works: Yelling on the street corner, or cleverly masking your words”.  In another song, “Ode to Sleep”, Tyler sings “I’m afraid to tell you who I adore; won’t tell you who I’m singing towards” amid a verse including a reference to Peter’s triple-denial of Christ[6].  Why go to the trouble of intentionally identifying what you’re denying?  It’s puzzling, but that might be his way of drawing more people in with curiosity.  He even wrote an entire song, “Heathens”, that seems to be about asking his Christian fans to accept his other fans who benefit from the secular message of the music.

Tyler’s battle is not my battle, and it’s probably not your battle.  We all have different experiences, talents, and desires.  Therefore, his answer is different than our answer.  But all our battles are fought under our King, with the tools He provides.  “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” – Ephesians 2:10

We’re not all going to be successful rock stars, but we can all do something.  We’re not all going to be artistic, but each of us has value, an answer that wouldn’t exist without us.  “Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best,” said Henry Van Dyke, a presbyterian minister and writer.

“Are you searching for purpose?”, asks Tyler in the song “Kitchen Sink”, where he suggests that everyone has their own demons and that finding purpose through creating something could be a first step toward victory over those demons.  “Write something, yeah it might be worthless; Then paint something then, it might be wordless; Pointless curses, nonsense verses; You’ll see purpose start to surface”.  I hope this blog won’t be worthless, but it’s a step and I hope you’ll take one too.

God’s ceiling for each of us is in the heavens, much higher than the ceiling we manifest for ourselves[7] when we choose not to act.  My prayer is that someday we will no longer be flightless birds, but “mount up with wings like eagles”[8] and never come down.

[1] Daniel 3:20
[2] Genesis 3:6
[3] Daniel 3:28
[4] Matthew 11:5
[5] The name of this blog is taken from a line of an early twenty øne piløts song.  More on that in a later post (maybe)
[6] Matthew 26:75
[7] Easter egg alert!

[8] Isaiah 40:31

Supernatural Claims of Natural Men

Todd R Leave a comment

Have you ever heard a voice from heaven?  If you did, how would you know to believe it?

In John 12:28 Jesus said in front of a crowd of people: “Father, glorify Your name.  Then a voice came from heaven, saying “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.”

When this voice spoke, the hearers still had to decide whether or not to believe it.  Not everyone on the scene had faith that this voice was actually God.  Not everyone who heard it and thought it was God decided that this God deserved their obedience, even though these people were eyewitnesses to a supernatural event that many today would be thrilled to see, to “prove” God’s existence.

Suppose someone on the scene looked up at the sky and said: “Who do you think you are?  I don’t know who this ‘Jesus’ guy is, and I sure don’t know who you are – why should I follow you?”  Perhaps the voice from heaven responds with a bolt of lightning, and this poor man is now a dead smoldering heap.

Now, the man next to this one could be thinking: “I really should follow this Jesus person, because if I don’t, the next bolt could be for me.”  This is rational, solid reasoning.  But reason is not the same as faith.  This man’s other response could be: “Jesus really is the Son of God and deserves my loyalty.  I’m grateful that He is willing to accept me as I am.”  Did the lightning really provide convincing evidence of this?  Are there still other alternatives?  Could the voice be interpreted as some other deity trying to gain followers?  Perhaps, so therefore this second response is more like faith than reason.

So, even faced with overwhelming evidence, “reason” does not power a decision to truly make a decision, “faith” does.  Reason can lead a horse to water, but it can’t make him drink.  “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Eph 2:8)

In addition, claims contrary to Christianity require a supernatural faith (albeit one without a source), and here are two examples

1) “There is no God” – Some say that if he exists, he should show himself.  Of course, as we have seen, even those who claimed to know Jesus Himself and witness his miracles say this would not convince a skeptic who decided not to believe.  Also, how does one prove God does not exist?  Europeans used to believe there was no such thing as a black swan because they had never seen one – until they traveled more of the world.  They could never prove that black swans did not exist, but they could (and did) believe it.   To prove it, they would have to be personally present in all parts of the universe at all times simultaneously – in essence, they would need to be God to prove that all swans were white.  “There is no God” cannot be proven by reason, but a skeptic can claim that they have not witnessed God in their experience, and that they have faith that God does not exist outside their experience.

2) “Man is the result of purely natural processes” – If “natural” is that which science has explained, and “supernatural” is everything else, it turns out that this is a claim about the supernatural, not a claim that there is no supernatural.  If you change “observed” to “observable” in Merriam-Webster’s definition of “supernatural” (“of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe”), you see this distinction.  Merriam-Webster takes for granted that all things “supernatural” will become “natural” through scientific advancement in the way the current majority thinks they will.  The consensus in Galileo’s day was that everything revolved around the earth – but the consensus was proved wrong.  Proving that man is purely natural requires that the current thinking on evolution is correct, and faith that nothing outside of current knowledge could ever possibly over-turn it.

However, in the words of G.K. Chesterton, “Science knows nothing whatever about pre-historic man; for the excellent reason that he is pre-historic.”  The “evidence” for one species changing into another is based on deductions from historical fossils, not on eyewitness accounts.  While man has observed species mutate and acquire new traits, we have not yet seen a monkey (or anything else) mutating into a man.  Regardless, theories of human evolution make a lot of claims about the history of mutations across species.  It takes the observed changes within a species, and assumes that over millennia these mutations lead to one species changing into another, then another…  It also claims that future evidence will inevitably support current evidence, in spite of the fact that evidence for evolution has been overturned repeatedly in history.  Even in my own experience, what I was taught in middle school was different than what I was taught in college about evolution.  If the historical track record is not that good, why have faith that the future track record will be perfect?  Evolutionists refer to the process of discovery by trial and error consistently as “progress”, but is it always?  Unless you already know beyond any shadow of doubt what you are progressing toward, how do you know you are progressing?

I’m not claiming to have dis-proved evolution here, but only to show that to prove it beyond a shadow of any possible doubt is beyond the power of reason.  It’s another black swan.

Claims that there is no supernatural, are claims about the supernatural.  These claims would require supernatural means to prove.  They require seeing the future and the past, therefore, to believe a supernatural claim without supernatural evidence requires faith.  It is beyond reason and proof.  To me, the evidence and the logic do not live up to the claims they want to support.

Claims that there is no supernatural,
are claims about the supernatural.

All people have faith – just in different things.  Materialists fail to explain how man, as a mere complex set of materials and chemical reactions, consciously and intentionally goes about his life pondering deep thoughts about the origin of himself, while an earthworm does not bother.  Christians – even the authors of the Bible – fail to explain how some consciously and intentionally choose faith when presented with miracles, while others do not.

There will always be such a thing as the “supernatural”.  All people speculate about what’s out there in that realm of knowledge we can’t reproduce in a lab.  Many people have dogmas about what’s in that realm – evolutionists believe that everything they do not understand yet will confirm that there is no God; religious people believe that there is enough evidence in the world we’ve already observed to warrant the possibility of a God.

On the one hand, you have the supernatural claims of natural men, claiming two things: 1) that they (and you) are the accidental result of millennia of chemical mutations, and that these chemicals follow rules that they do not know the origins of (yet); and 2) that the chemicals in their brain “believe” without a doubt that they can predict that what they do not know will confirm what they currently know and believe.  This future evidence will prove their current belief, which was itself the result of a chain of accidental chemical reactions (but apparently under the purposeful control of some unknown thing that seeks to convince you of your mere natural chemicalness).

On the other hand, there is a written record of a man who claimed to be from that supernatural realm, who sees the future and the past, who knew there were black swans.  How many there were.  Where they were.  And that the Europeans would eventually find them.  This man asked for your belief – which set of claims is more reasonable?

“Come near to God and he will come near to you” – James 4:8

Religion That Puts People Before Issues

Todd R 1 Comment

It’s become cliché to say social media brings out the worst of people, since they can hide from consequences behind internet anonymity and distance.  Mike Tyson, one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time, said “Social media made y’all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.”  But disrespect and wanting to punch people in the face who disagree with us is nothing new.  Just one generation after Adam and Eve were made in the image of God and living in perfect love, their son Cain killed his brother Abel for uncertain reasons.  Genesis also doesn’t tell us exactly how Cain killed Abel, but we can be sure social media wasn’t involved.  Hate doesn’t require an internet connection or working Wi-Fi, only one person deciding that another person is a thing to be defeated, not as a person made in God’s image.  Sometimes by focusing on what we are disagreeing about, we can lose sight of the fact that the person disagreeing with us is inherently valuable.

Today, after months away, we return to a series on James 1:27, which says: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”  James gave careful thought to this phrase, not as hyperbole, but as an example of what perfect religion – worship of God the Father – looks like.  Eternal life is for people who love when there’s nothing more at stake than the person being loved, but putting issues above people is one way we get stained by the world and fail to represent Christ.  Note that I didn’t say ignore the issues – it’s a question of priority.

The Singular Person
Psalm 113 is a Psalm about praising God and making Him known throughout the world, and ends with a very specific praise:

“He gives the barren woman a home,
            making her the joyous mother of children.
Praise the LORD!”

To me, what’s most striking here is that this is a singular barren woman, not barren women as a group.  It doesn’t say that God ends all barrenness (although He might).  The Psalmist chose as a climactic ending to this poem about the heart of God and how He wants to be known a praise to God for giving a home and family to one barren woman.  This means that the sovereign God of all the universe is concerned about individuals, their specific circumstances, and their specific need for salvation.  He does not respond to an “issue” of the barrenness of women but responds in a way that satisfies the needs of individual people.  People are not statistics to Him, to be counted and divided into opposing sides until one prevails over the other.  Each person’s needs and path to redemption are unique in God’s eyes, and only He can provide for all.  He is the only way to a perfect world.

Similar to the “barren woman”, James 1:27 is about visiting specific “orphans and widows,” not fighting for the end of all afflictions for all widows and orphans.  He is fighting for people, not total victory in an argument.  While this might seem obvious to some, it’s so easy to exalt issues over people that we don’t always notice when we do it.

The Issue of Family
A common issue today is “family,” which I put in quotes because as an issue it doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone.  A lot of time and energy is put into fighting for “family values,” defined many different ways, and James 1:27, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world,” is relevant in multiple ways.

First, an earlier post of this series, said “whatever its source, civil law is a provision for a fallen world, not a pathway to a perfect world.”  In both the Old and New Testaments, God tells us there will always be poor in the land and that every civil law is inherently limited in a broken world.  Christians should “defend the family,” but in what way?  James 1:27 says to stand for individuals for whom the institution of family has already failed – widows and orphans.  “Pure and undefiled religion” succeeds where law fails, filling the gap with the heart of God, who cares for the specific “barren woman” of Psalm 113:9.  There is no perfect law that solves the issue of “family values,” therefore “visit orphans and widows in their affliction.”  Affliction comes in many forms and is too complex and diverse for any government to deal with entirely.

Second, when we fight for perfection in our laws, taking absolute stands on either side of an “issue,” we risk elevating law to a level it’s not possible of achieving, and we also may justify hurting people in the process, thinking the end result will be worth it somehow.  Once we see the world in fully black/white, either/or terms, it becomes easy to think that if only the right side came out ahead, the issue would be resolved, any collateral damage can be explained, and everyone would be happy.  However, consider the extreme example of violence around both abortion clinics and crisis pregnancy centers.  In that case and many smaller ones, when we cause harm to opponents, we prove that there are cracks in our own system, creating new victims on top of the existing ones.  Those left behind haven’t been helped, but new affliction has been added by those hoping it will be somehow worth it to win the “issue” battle.

Third, ministering to widows and orphans keeps us from the pollution of the world which insists that our salvation is political and based on power.  James 1:27 encourages us to reject a world that wants to put laws, culture, even hashtags above actual people.  The world too often believes the ends justify the means because belief in worldly utopia depends on a 100% solution, but also believes it’s ok to ignore concrete problems while fighting for a solution that will never arrive.  Salvation comes from only one source: the cross.

In the start of this post, I wrote that it’s become cliché to say social media brings out the worst of people, and its cliché because massive amounts of time and energy go into fighting over abstract issues and dividing into groups of “us” and “them”.  James 1:27 says that we are not defined by which side of an issue we support, and what we’re willing to do to achieve victory for our side, but by how we love those individuals for whom this world has failed.

It is better to minister to the ones who have been punched by this world than to add another punch to the damage.

Therefore, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.  And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” – Hebrews 10:23-25

And what are “good works”?  “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”

An Ethic That Prioritizes the Gospel

Todd R 1 Comment

The gospel is more than just the good news that Jesus took the punishment for our sin, dying for sinners like us so that we may be saved.  The gospel is also the good news of what the punishment has been replaced with – the kingdom of heaven.  If the gospel is about a kingdom, our lives should reflect the values of our King and we should seek for others what our King would offer.

This post, another in the series on James 1:27 (“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world,”) is about that verse as an ethic that prioritizes the gospel over all other issues by looking briefly at the issue of slavery.

The period of the American Civil War was similar to modern times in its obsession over issues.  While its naïve and vastly simplified to say the North was anti-slavery and the South was pro-slavery, it is not entirely false either.  Those views were typical of many in each area.  Both sides had a high conviction in their cause, using the Bible to justify why their side needed to win, and at what costs.

Paul’s Concern Was for Individuals
Part of the reason for this confusion comes from the apostle Paul’s comments on slavery, which seem ambivalent to many on the actual issue of slavery.  One relevant passage is Ephesians 6:5-9, in which Paul writes:

“Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free.  Masters, do the same to them, and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him.”

Verses like these were used to justify slavery during the American Civil War and at other times, by people claiming that Paul did not condemn it.  Since the War, others have said that Paul was cruel not to condemn slavery and a few even refuse to read Paul’s words in the Bible, claiming they have no authority because of this cruelty.  This topic goes way beyond what can be covered here, but the reason for Paul’s seeming ambivalence on the issue is that his focus was somewhere else: on the specific individuals involved in all aspects of slavery, including both masters and slaves.  He even addresses them directly and separately: “Bondservants” and “Masters.”  One group was to follow what was addressed to them, and the other group was to follow what was addressed to them.  Why did he take this approach?  Because people matter more than issues.

Photo by Anthony Garand on Unsplash

Having no power to end slavery, which still exists today, Paul did have influence and authority as an apostle to improve the lives of specific masters (who would have to justify their actions to God), and of specific slaves (who would have to do the same).  Paul knew the real question before him was: If slavery currently exists and I have no power to end it, should I do nothing to improve the condition of slaves until slavery is 100% abolished?  Should Paul have focused on ending slavery, or on improving the lives of people affected by it, and offering them a way to eternal life without slavery?  Paul knew God’s heart goes out to individual souls, and the issue of slavery would be eliminated in eternity.  However, many would condemn Paul for not going straight to an all-or-nothing, hyperbolic position we expect when talking about issues.  Also, it’s not necessarily an either/or, but a matter of priority and emphasis.

Some approach contentious issues like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day, “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.”[1]  These burdens take the form of ostracism, public humiliation, insistence on use of #hashtags and slogans, rude comments, and other means of hating others simply because those others don’t think the weight of all the issues in the entire world need to be on everyone’s shoulders.  But Paul presents a contrast to this.  He knew God called him to proclaim grace and peace to all people, in Jesus’ name.  Paul’s ministry saved many souls for an eternity where slavery is no longer an issue, and in the meantime, slavery still exists as an issue people mistreat each other over.  Yes, we should fight for peace and justice, but not at the expense of individuals, on either side.

D. A. Carson, a professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, said, “The overthrowing of slavery, then, is through the transformation of men and women by the gospel rather than through merely changing an economic system…In the final analysis, if you want lasting change, you’ve got to transform the hearts of human beings. And that was Jesus’ mission.”[2]

During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln said “My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.”  This should be our main concern as well.

“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”

To start the series on James 1:27 from the beginning, the first post is at this link.

[1] Matthew 23:4
[2] Strobel, Lee.  The Case for Christ (1998).  P. 168