Thinking-Christianly

Advertisers are notorious for hiding critical information in the fine print of their promotions. Consumers who are not careful can discover that bargains can be marginal or even costly. Food establishments in our area commonly offer coupons that promise two main items of the same value for the price of one. On the surface it looks like a very good savings. But the smaller type will often include something like, “with the purchase of two beverages.” I’ve found in some instances that the price of the beverages was around $2 each, pretty much wiping out the savings. It would be more honest to tell the consumer that the meals are full price and the beverage is free. But it would not be nearly as effective.

 It’s irritating to hear a message which is not forthright about all the details. Unfortunately, modern Christianity in America often gives that kind of message. We tend to focus on the infinite love of God and his ability to make our lives full and complete, but we leave out other parts of the revelation. We tend to omit the fact that God detests all sin and rebellion, and he will punish every soul on earth that does not bend its knee to his authority.

 In Jeremiah chapters 47-49, for example, the prophet is commanded to speak out against the nations surrounding Israel. Though they are not Jews, they are accountable to God. He has sent his prophets to them as well as to his own people calling them to forsake their sins and their phony worship and to submit to him alone. (See the book of Amos as an example of this kind of multinational preaching mission.)

 In these chapters in Jeremiah God addresses each nation individually.  His words are chilling and detailed. He knows their major cities, what is going on there, and predicts what will become of them. Through Jeremiah God catalogues all the forms of arrogance, pride, greed, selfishness, injustice, and immorality that occur in places like Philistia, Moab, Ammon, and other surrounding nations. God knows what they’ve done. He understands their motives. He’s aware of their feelings of immunity. But he will hold them accountable and bring their cultures to an end.

 One of the great myths of our secular society is that God is either unaware or disinterested in the choices we make and the shape of our lives. We picture him as disengaged in our world and our culture. And if we ignore his revelation in the Bible, we are protected against his judgment in case our assumption that he doesn’t care proves incorrect. Our ignorance protects us. But these chapters demonstrate that God is intimately aware of our lives and that he holds us accountable.

 When the Christian community omits this dimension of the message of the Bible, they mislead the world God wants to reach through them. There is an element of peril and danger in being a morally fallen person before a holy God that we are sometimes afraid to articulate. We don’t want to “scare” people to consider their condition before God. We’d rather have them feel his love alone. But a God without wrath and retribution becomes a toothless deity who can only mumble suggestions to a world in moral chaos. He may pace the halls of heaven, weeping and wailing in grief, but unable to be persuasive enough to produce change in the hearts of people. He is a pitiable deity, not worthy of respect or attention.

 We must not be ashamed to share the full message of the peril we embrace when we refuse to submit to his Lordship. Jeremiah worshiped a fearful and majestic God. So must we.

In every language, the same word can often have a variety of meanings. For example, what does the word bow mean? As a noun, it can be something formed by a ribbon on a gift box. It can be an instrument a hunter would use. It can be part of the frame for a pair of eyeglasses. It can be a critical part of playing a violin. You can use the word to describe part of a ship. As a verb, it can refer to lowering your head as a sign of courtesy when greeting someone. It can describe bending something in a curve. The word can refer to crushing with a heavy burden.

Sometimes eager students of scripture look for “the meaning” in a word that describes how it is used everywhere it occurs in the Bible. This overly simplistic approach can lead to some erroneous conclusions. While there are some words that are highly unique and specialized—like phylactery—other words may have different meanings that are discovered by looking at the context. As with English, the context helps us understand the meaning of the words so that we can correctly understand what the author is trying to convey. That context is both grammatical and historical.

For example, one abused verse in the book of Proverbs is Proverbs 29:18. The first part of the verse in the King James translation reads, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” One of the buzzwords in the modern American church is vision. We want leaders who are visionary. We draft vision and mission statements for churches and mission agencies. And so when we look at this verse we see an endorsement about embracing a picture of a preferred future, which is at the core of the visioning process. The Bible seems to affirm our enthusiasm for developing vision in the church.

Unfortunately, that approach distorts scripture. It takes a modern day definition and imposes it on the text in a way that was alien to the author. The word vision in today’s vocabulary often refers to a thought or conception of the future in the mind of a leader looking for goals to achieve for himself or his organization. In numerous places I’ve read authors who cite Proverbs 29:18 as an endorsement for the concept of advancing visionary leadership in the church, just as others do in the business world. But that is not what the passage teaches.

The word translated vision in the KJV of Proverbs 29:18 is a Hebrew word that refers to a revelation of God to man. When young Samuel was ministering before Eli, God did not disclose himself to the people much. 1 Samuel 3:1 states, “There was no frequent vision.” In Micah 3:6 God speaks of his judgment as a refusal to disclose himself further to the people. The text tells us, “it shall be night to you, without vision, and darkness to you, without divination.” The prophets will have nothing to say because God will be silent. The revelation to Daniel in Daniel 8:2 is described as a vision. The ESV aptly translates this word in Proverbs 29:18 as “prophetic vision” and NIV as “revelation.”

In the context of the Old Testament language, this verse tells us that if God does not speak, the consequences for man are not good. The KJV translates the following verb in verse 18 as “perish.” The NIV uses the phrase “cast off restraint.” The concept here is a letting go, even to the point of running wild. It makes me think of the uninhibited behavior often associated with Mardi Gras. Without God’s clear guidance, we tend to do that which seems logical to us, which often leads to moral and social chaos.

If we give some care to our reading of the Bible, we will grow in our understanding of the truth. If we fail to do that, we may misrepresent God in ways that are embarrassing, if not destructive.

I have an uncle who didn’t know how old he was in years. He was born when my grandparents were in the desert southwest during the depression. He picked a year in order to join the military during World War II, but he couldn’t be precise. That’s the way it was for many back then. It’s not too difficult to guess the age of a human within a few years. But the age of the earth is a different matter.

 Some in the Christian community seek to look for answers in scripture. English Bishop James Ussher was one of the most notable individuals who sought for a specific answer in scripture. For example, Bishop Ussher came to the conclusion that Adam and Eve were driven from Paradise on Monday  November 10, 4004 BC.

Such precision is beset with several difficulties. First, the Old Testament does not provide all the details needed for this task, and some sequences of events may be concurrent rather than consecutive. This calculation assumes there are no gaps in the genealogical tables in Genesis 5 and 11. But the Bible demonstrates there are. Genesis 11:12 tells us Arphaxad became the father of Salah. But Luke 3:36 inserts Cainan between them. Matthew 1:8 refers to Joram the father of Uzziah. But the parallel listing in 1 Chronicles 3:11-14 adds 4 more generations between the two individuals. In addition, the ancient versions, e.g. the LXX, sometimes offer variant figures. This adds more mathematical uncertainty into the equation.

Other assumptions come into play: that no names are omitted from the genealogies, that all the numbers given are consecutive, and that numbers used in an ancient biblical source carry the same meaning as that associated with them in the modern Western mind.

 Another key factor is purpose. The Bible does give accurate lines of descent, but it does not give complete chronologies. Its primary purpose is to trace ancestry rather than provide a modern Western chronology. This is reflected in Matthew 1:17, where a numeric pattern is used to abbreviate the lineage of Jesus. Matthew writes, “Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ.” The names selected reflect a symmetry that has meaning in the culture.

The good news in all of this is that the Bible does not equivocate regarding the what and the how of creation. God created all that exists out of nothing (ex nihilo). This reality gives meaning to all that exists, both to the created order and to man. And that knowledge changes everything.

Most of us have experiences in which we spent money on something that looked like a great deal, but turned out to be a waste. There was that wrench set that was an unbelievable bargain. It was great until you tried to turn a nut with it. Then the metal of the wrench would bend. I recall spending about $700 on car repairs, trusting that would buy me another 6-12 months of use on an older vehicle. Within ten days, I nursed that same car to a salvage yard. Something else expensive broke. We all have our stories. And savvy marketers continue to come up with persuasive ways to get us to trade our dollars for promises.

What’s the worst deal you can think of? Jesus mentions one really poor tradeoff in Matthew 16. It’s probably the top ‘bad deal’ of life. It was a kind of trade that millions of people get hooked into today. Our culture considers it an easy choice. But in the end it leaves us broke in more ways than one.

In Matthew 16:26 Jesus asks, “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?” Part of your answer to the question flows from the assumptions you bring to the question. Let’s think about that a moment.

All of us know that the world is temporal. It is impermanent. Most of what we deal with in life is subject to decay. Clothes become soiled, worn, or out of date. Automobiles don’t stay new for long. Electronics become outdated almost overnight. Roads crumble, roofs leak, siding fades. These days even investments shrink. To gain the whole world is to gain something that is temporal, and subject to loss. Even if we assume that the value of the world’s stuff is relatively stable, we are not. If we owned the world tomorrow, we could hang on to it for maybe 80-100 years. The wealthiest men of all time own nothing at death. We don’t view the transfer of their assets after death to others as theft because they cannot possess what they had any longer. So gaining the world is an impermanent quest on two counts.

On the other side of Jesus’ question is the soul. If the soul doesn’t exist, or if it is a temporal thing that ceases to exist at death, then it has no more intrinsic value than all the stuff in the world. In that case, trading one flimsy soul for lots of stuff in the world would be a fair exchange. But is that the case?

Jesus insists that on the ‘soul’ side of the equation is something that is eternal. Centuries before Daniel 12:2 echoed the same thought. “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.” The Bible insists that the immaterial part of us will outlast all the things of this world. If we trade a positive future destiny for something temporary that we cannot keep, we have made a poor choice.

I’m tempted to speculate on some of the reasons why that poor choice is still so popular, but I’d like to ask you who read this blog to weigh in. Why do you think so many in our culture will trade the care, feeding, and destiny of their souls for the stuff of this world?

Since it has become public knowledge that I will be transitioning to a different church, some have asked me about the future of this blog. I’ll keep sharing thoughts and insights with anyone who is interested in developing a thoughtful, winsome Christian faith. Nothing will change for those of you who visit Thinking-Christianly. I appreciate your interaction and welcome posts like those you see here.

The personal side of my wesite will be updated after the transition, but my prayer is that God might continue to use me as a catalyst in the minds of many to build the courage, confidence, and understanding to share the matchless truth of Jesus with those who find themselves spiritually adrift in our culture. May God bless you as you seek to live out his incredible truth!

What is the chief obstacle to those who advocate biblical Christianity? Several possibilities come to mind. There is the naturalistic mindset that rules out the supernatural a priori. There is the pressure of secular thought that attempts to marginalize anyone who acknowledges the possibility that mankind is answerable to God. There is the oppression of faith in various ways around the world. Add to that the rise of militant Islam and the syncretism that embraces Eastern thought wearing the many costumes of New Age philosophy.

One of the most overlooked obstacles to those who contend for biblical Christianity is Christian leadership. I’m speaking of those who proudly wear the label of being Christian leaders, but who deny the precepts and teachings of Moses, the prophets, Christ, and the apostles. One would expect those who call themselves spiritual leaders within the Christian faith to embrace the tenants of that belief system. But throughout history, both Christianity and Judaism have been misrepresented by leaders who imposed their own values on the revelation of God, discarding whatever they felt was unnecessary in the process.

In Jeremiah chapter 26, Jehoiakim is the ruler of the kingdom of Judah. Jeremiah summons the king and the leaders to return to obeying God’s law, or God will bring disaster on the land through Nebuchadnezzar. Jeremiah’s chief opponents turn out to be the religious leaders. Jeremiah 26:11 records, “The priest and the prophets said to the officials and all the people, ‘This man should be sentenced to death because he has prophesied against this city.’”

They charged the prophet with treason and demanded his execution. In this case, the people had more common sense than their religious leaders. Upon hearing that Jeremiah attributed his words to the Lord, they came to the defense of Jeremiah before the priests and the prophets. They pointed out that Jeremiah’s words were consistent with those God has spoken through other prophets. Because his message was in accord with known and accepted Old Testament teaching, he should not die simply because some in the religious establishment found the message of repentance to be unpalatable.

Divinity schools in the American academy, and many of their graduates who hold prestigious posts in much of mainstream Christianity frequently stand in opposition to the historic message of Christianity that flows from the Bible. Whether their attitude is condescending or confrontational, they stand in the place of those who opposed Jeremiah because the message was not in accord with their desires. They are widely quoted in the mainstream press, and favored at Easter and Christmas when some in the media engage in annual attempts to discredit Christianity.

It would be convenient to take aim at liberal theology and stop there. But it would not be accurate. Those of us who desire to be driven by scripture are not immune to the temptation to discredit the faith. We can be selective too. If we are not careful with scripture and humble before God, we too can embrace a flavor of Christianity that undercuts the message of God to our generation.

The authentic message of the truth often discusses realities we don’t want to deal with. It exposes our pride, unmasks our selfishness, and reveals that much of what we label as commitment is simply a passing loyalty that evaporates when the cost is too great. If we are to stand with a Jeremiah in our day, we must plead with God to become the kind of people who embrace all of his truth and respond to him in ways that are consistent with our profession of faith.

In America we celebrate the fact that everyone should be able to voice their opinion or express their point of view. This value is central to the core freedoms upon which our republic is founded. In these days, however, many expand that value to declare that all points of view are equally valid. This notion that all truth is normative only to the individual who holds it is commonly called relativism.

Relativism sounds attractive because it offers the hope of crafting your own personalized moral code irrespective of any other value. It promises freedom and independence. But does it work?

Relativism doesn’t prevail when attending a sporting event. We conveniently suspend the belief that every opinion is of equal value when cheering for our major sports teams. Some in the crowd have the nerve to believe that my favorite players should loose. I judge that my team is perhaps better or more deserving of a win. A stadium in which relativism ruled would be a very boring place indeed.

Or take our response to the evening news. News reports about government policy hinge on different views about proposed legislation. You and I discover that people are all over the spectrum on almost every issue. Some insist that a proposal—like the ‘stimulus package’—is right and urgently needed. Others argue that it is a recipe for disaster. Whether the issue is fences on the southern border or alligators as pets, people seem to naturally respond in ways that are anything but relativistic.

It doesn’t stop with preferences, because many of these debates eventually translate into law that is imposed on the entire culture. City government, state legislatures, and the congress turn opinions into requirements for living. They become the guidelines we are expected to follow, controlling such behaviors as buckling our seat belts, parking our cars on certain streets, and buying a license to catch a fish.

Relativism sounds like a liberating approach to living, but it doesn’t fit well into how humans really interact with each other.

We like to think that the liberty implied in relativism is novel, a byproduct of our enlightened time. It is ancient. There seems to be this tendency within the human spirit for an autonomy that wishes it could design its own reality and play by its own rules. This propensity is irrespective of culture or circumstances.  For example, over 2,600 years ago, Jeremiah spoke about this attitude among the people living in Israel. He noted, “Every man’s own word becomes his oracle and so you distort the words of the living God.” (See Jeremiah 23:36.)

The demand for absolute autonomy in the area of morals is not a novelty of modern thought. It’s an echo of the historic fall. Though unworkable in relationship to either God or man, this attitude of relativism continues to entice us. When we embrace the notion that we create our own truth, we tumble into a frustrating world of make-believe. Worse, we rob ourselves of the beauty that comes from unselfish cooperation with God and others that is part of our role as finite creatures.

Many of us who wear the label “follower of Jesus Christ” discover that we tend to view scripture through the lens of the self. What does it say about me? Where can it help me improve? What tools does it offer to enhance my life? Those are not bad questions. But if they are the only kind of questions we ask, they reflect a tendency to view the revelation of God as a textbook for self-improvement rather than a disclosure of the majesty, glory, and greatness of God himself.

It’s easy for me to read scripture with a distorted perspective. Despite my insistence that I’m looking for God, I discover that often I’m very me-centered. I tend to filter what I see and hear and read through the filter of the self. I want answers for my problems; hope to conquer my fears, and promises to enrich my future.

For example, American Christianity has made much of the image of the potter and the clay. We look at Jeremiah chapter 18 where the prophet is commanded to go to the house of a potter. He sees the potter forming a vessel. The clay does not comply with the idea the potter has in his mind, so he starts all over with the same clay and creates a different pot. We take the illustration and conclude that each of us are pots in the hand of God. We conclude that he is shaping us in a way he thinks is best. Our job is to be pliable and responsive to his touch.

Those conclusions may be useful, but they are not the point of the teaching. The focus of the story is not to you and me as individuals, but to nations. Look at the comparison in verse 6: “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.” Though there may be implications for us as individuals, the thrust of the message to Jeremiah is the God is Lord over nations. He wants the prophet and his audience to understand that God rules over the kingdoms of men. (Look at the repetition of the phrase “nation or kingdom” in verses 7 and 9.)

In our secularized culture where God is pushed to an invisible place behind the pulpits of America, the word to Jeremiah is that the God of the Bible rules over the nations of the earth. He shapes the course of men and nations. If they submit to his revelation and order their lives after his principles, they will flourish. If they reject him, they will decay and disappear from the pages of history. The picture here is that God as potter responds to nations based on the kind of clay they are—the way in which they cooperate with his revealed truth or stand against it. If God decrees doom and the culture takes the warning seriously and repents, that doom will be averted (verse 8). If God promises blessing and the culture turns from God, it will suffer (verses 9-10).

When I take a grand truth like this and view it only in terms of myself and God, I shrink the message to a personal postcard. In its original form, it is more grand, more bold, and more threatening than that. Let’s be careful not to personalize our understanding of scripture so much that we inadvertently dull its challenge to the culture around us. In doing so, we can unwittingly tame the truth of God before people who need to hear the full force of his claims.

There is something inside of each of us that hungers for a perfect world. We find ourselves complaining about software that doesn’t do what we expect. We are irritated in flaws we discover in the clothes we buy or the products we purchase. We wish that some of the annoying habits of people around us would evaporate.

Though this hunger for perfection can be self-centered and lead to a bitter spirit, it is understandable. God put the first human pair in a perfect world. We were not created for a place that is broken, but for one which is whole and in harmony with the living God. Perhaps this yearning is a reflection of what we once knew in Adam and Eve.

One of the benefits of a life of trust and obedience to Christ is restoration. Our broken relationship with God is repaired through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Our relationships with others have the promise of moving toward wholeness through the work of the Spirit in us as we learn God’s ways.

Some Christians go farther and insist that reconciliation with God also gives us the promise of universal health. They maintain that God offers faithful men and women lives that are free from injury, sickness, and debilitating disease. That would be a wonderful gift. Unfortunately, it’s not something promised to believers in this life.

Paul approached God about what he called a “thorn in the flesh” in 2 Corinthians 12:7. We don’t know what it was, but the description implies it was physical. God did not take it away. In 2 Timothy 4:20 Paul sends his final greetings to Timothy. He notes that he left Trophimus sick in Miletus. If perfect health were a byproduct of salvation this would have been a strange thing to do. If Trophimus’ sickness was a result of a lack of faith, would not Paul have rebuked Trophimus and brought him to repentance so his health would have returned? Or Paul might have healed him outright. In 1 Timothy 5:23 Paul instructs Timothy to add wine to his diet because of his “frequent illnesses.” That is odd advice if health is to be the norm of the redeemed believer. In Philippians Paul writes about Epaphroditus, who almost died due to illness.

In his mercy God sometimes responds to our requests by giving healing. Most of us can recount vivid experiences where we witnessed his grace in this way. And God invites us to seek him for all things, including physical health issues. But it overstates the biblical account to maintain that all reconciled believers are promised perfect health in this life. Just as God used the moral brokenness of men to bring about redemption through Christ (Acts 4:27-29), so too he moves his agenda along in our lives, using physical issues as part of his perfect plan.

One of the arguments against Christianity is that because the world is full of varied religious ideas and practices, Christianity is arrogant to assert that it is correct. In light of the diversity in religions, Christianity cannot be right.

This argument contains several fatal flaws.

Most of us dislike arrogance, but the idea that one idea may be true while other competing ideas are false is not arrogance. Life is full of exclusive truth. I cannot claim anyone I choose as an exemption on my tax returns. If I follow a recipe I can’t quadruple the baking temperature or the amount of sugar and produce the same results. If I’m to visit a relative who lives in Calhoun County in Michigan, I must at some point travel in that county to see them. No other county will do. If I want to deposit my tax refund into my checking account, there is only one combination of routing number and account number that will accomplish that specific objective. Any other combination of random numbers will not work. Truth can be exclusive without being arrogant.

A second point to note is that this argument against Christianity often confuses truth with preferences. When it comes to religious practice, there may be some approaches I prefer over others. I can study the Upanishads, chant a mantra, sacrifice a goat, or contemplate my own divinity. I may like one practice the same way I like one movie over another. But my tastes do not create truth. They tell you something about me, but do not define objective reality.

Religious diversity is as old as the Bible. In Jeremiah’s day the majority of the Judean prophets declared that the nation would thrive, even though the society rejected God’s moral demands. In Jeremiah 14:14 the Lord tells his prophet, “The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I have not sent them or appointed them or spoken to them. They are prophesying to you false visions, divinations, idolatries and the delusions of their own minds.” The sources of religious claims may vary. And in many cases they reflect the preferences of the promoters more than anything else.

The diversity of conflicting religious claims tells us that all of them cannot be true. Islam declares that Jesus did not die on a cross. Christianity insists he did. They both cannot be true. If Jesus never existed, they would both be false. The key issue here is that religious diversity does not in itself negate any particular system of thought. Each one must be examined in light of the objective evidence that it puts forward. In many cases, the ‘diversity argument’ is only an excuse to avoid the task of investigating Christianity thoroughly to see if the evidence supports it or not. It’s a lazy way to sidestep the issue altogether.