The random technotheolosophical blogging of Reid S. Monaghan
My friend put this on his Facebook status…good thoughts
the man with a perfect environment fell. the man preserved from disaster fell. the man whose children would bless the earth fell. the man who saw God face-to-face fell. the man with a heart after God’s fell. the man with the greatest wisdom fell. my father has fallen and so have i, so do i, and so will i. yet, there is One who will neither fall nor fail and it is He that stands in our stead. The final word will be His.
Wisdom, as related to human beings, may simply be defined as the virtue that enables one to make good choices in the complicated circumstances of life in order to walk a good path. For the follower of Jesus, wisdom is the art of godly living.
Every culture knows that there is a way to live that is rightly called foolishness. There really is a way to waste your life and fizzle your days away filled with folly. We are always seeking wisdom from others yet many times we go all over the place looking to figure out how life works.
Bookstores are jammed full with self-help books offering wisdom to the seeker. Movies and literature are filled with wise characters (Yoda and Gandalf the gray being some of my favorites). There is never a shortage of gurus being paraded out on the Oprah Winfrey show. Usually they are western dudes dabbling in eastern philosophy who write books and get paid.
Ironically, we are people who are surrounded by impressive knowledge but seem to be profoundly lacking in wisdom. Our culture seems to have a deficit of wisdom as we tend to float like empty ballasts upon a sea of nothingness. I offer MTV’s Jersey Shore as humble proof. Seriously, how many times can a chic fall in love and give everything she has to some idiot during the course of a summer?
We may know how to split the atom, make machines talk, decode the genome and scan the electrical activities of our brains but we remain unsure about how to make life work. In our search for meaning and happiness we simply lack the wisdom we truly need.
Wisdom is something that grows in us progressively as we walk with God in his world. It is no coincidence that the ancients saw the elderly as a source of wisdom; they have lived more life with God and have learned from him through teaching and experience. Proverbs 20:29 teaches us that the glory of young men is their strength, but the splendor of old men is their gray hair. It is not always the case that old age = wisdom, but there is a general principle here that we can learn and deepen in wisdom over time. The tragic story of King Rehoboam ignoring the wisdom of the elderly for the counsel of some punk young men is a classic example of this principle. You can read this in 1 Kings 12 in the Old Testament.
There is a bit of a paradox with wisdom. It is the thing we need most when we are young, but being young we do not have it. This confronts people, particularly younger folk, with some difficult choices. Will I learn from the wisdom God has given to others? Or will I remain an idiot? In our pride we can choose the latter, but if we are willing to humble ourselves, there are several ways that we can grow in wisdom.
God has revealed himself through his Word so we can study, read, listen, meditate upon and obey. Over time we gain the ability to discern good from evil (Hebrews 5:11-14) by the constant practice of the teaching of God. Learning and following over time results in becoming wise. Will we come to the Word for wisdom?
Proverbs 11:14 reads, where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety. Further Proverbs 24:6 teaches us that in an abundance of counselors there is victory. Of course, the counselors must actually be wise, but the point is that we can learn from others if we listen. In fact, the book of Proverbs begins with these words: Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance, to understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles. Our parents, pastors and our community of faith have wise counsel for us…but we don’t always listen. My favorite is to combine the first two – to hear the words of the wise, in the Scriptures. This essay will roll into that discussion in a minute.
Learning the Hard Way
The final way we learn is the hard way. This is where we do foolish stuff and we reap the reality. We all have been here have we not? God is kind and will discipline us to help us walk in wisdom.
In this paper we aim to do the following. First, we hope to provide a very short introduction to the wisdom literature of the Bible in general and the book of Proverbs in particular. In doing so we’ll encourage one another to become wise by heading and hearing the wisdom of the wise in Scripture. Second, we hope to introduce our short series, Lust, Language and Liquortown to our community and why we are putting our toes into the book of Proverbs at this time and season of Jacob’s Well.
There are many genres of literature (or kinds of writing) in the Holy Scriptures. There are histories, narratives, poems, law codes, songs, letters, writings about the end of history, parables, covenants and prophesies about events declaring God’s judgments and actions throughout history. There is also a unique body of writings properly called wisdom literature. The canonical books of Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Proverbs, some of the Psalms, the writings of James and portions of the teachings of Jesus are rightly seen as writings offering wisdom for God’s people.
Outside of the book of Proverbs, many of these treasures can be greatly unknown to many in the church, yet they offer great counsel to the human race living in a world cursed due to sin and death. Job teaches us about life as suffering in relationship with God. Ecclesiastes offers a philosophical reflection on meaning, happiness and the transient nature of life. Song of Songs teaches us about life as covenantal love. These themes are profoundly important and speak loudly with alacrity millennia after these works were inspired and written down.2
The biblical wisdom literature is a body of unique writings in that they instruct God’s covenant people (those who have entered relationship with him through his gracious promises and work in Jesus the Messiah) in how they are to walk with him on the earth. Living in wisdom is living in godliness and reflecting the nature of the kingdom of God in the course of everyday life. Many peoples, both ancient3 and modern, posses a body of wisdom literature. What makes the biblical writings distinct are their relationship to YHWH, the creator God. In the wisdom literature of the Bible we have writing that is not just enormously practical for all people on the earth, but also a description for how to live in the fear of the LORD.4
Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke rightly observes that the wisdom in Scripture exhorts us away from autonomy from God (Proverbs 3:7 being wise in your own eyes) and to live in trusting relationship with God following his paths (Proverbs 3:5-6). Though we find wise teaching of great value outside of Scripture, the wisdom of the Bible is unique in that its aims are far beyond just happily getting by on the earth. It is given to us to teach us to live within a trusting relationship with God as his people.
In coming to the words of the wise and the writing of the sages, we must remember that there are various flavors of wisdom floating around. There is a worldly wisdom that exists in the people, philosophies and religions which flow around us. Many of these have much to say to us, but much of it stands in contradiction to the wisdom of God. On two separate occasions the book of Proverbs reminds us “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.”5 Additionally, the New Testament writing of James is very clear for us here:
13Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. 14But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. 15This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. 16For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. 17But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. 18And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. James 3:13-18 (ESV)
As wisdom is offered to us as we sojourn on the earth, we must be concerned to discern it through the teaching of the Scriptures. In the Bible we have a sure word that can keep us from crashing like a runaway train being led astray by all manner of human opinions. Human wisdom is helpful at times as it has been forged in the furnaces of experience, but it must sit under the throne of a higher word that speaks from a higher place. Duane A. Garrett makes a good observation that we would do well to remember as we seek to learn and grow in wisdom.
Finally, biblical wisdom stresses the limitations of human knowledge. The gulf between human perception and divine reality is never really closed. The sage is commanded to go about his task with humility and reverence for God. The learned must never forget their limitations (Proverbs 30:2–4) and that they are prone to error and conceit. Above all, they must subordinate their quest to the Word of God. For “every word of God is flawless” (Proverbs 30:5)6
One of the most read and cherished portions of the Bible’s wisdom literature are the Hebrew Proverbs. It is a collection of sayings from various people in the ancient world mostly compiled by the ancient Israelite King Solomon who reigned from 971–931 B.C. We read in 1 Kings 4:29-34 that Solomon was a person whom God gave wisdom and understanding and that he indeed collected a quite a few proverbial sayings during his life. This passage states that his wisdom library included some 3000 proverbs and over a thousand songs. Now he couldn’t fit 1000 songs in his pocket, but he did manage to collect a plethora of wisdom in his life. Most biblical scholars segment the book into several sections based on the author of the sayings or when they were compiled. The following is commonly used:
This section focuses on persuading people of the important nature of wisdom in the life of God’s people. We also note the specific emphasis on parents teaching wisdom to the yutes7 by way of proverbs. Young people are also exhorted not to be hard headed and listen to their parents. Old School. There is some debate as to whether Solomon wrote these longer exhortatory poems with most conservative scholars agreeing with the attribution in Proverbs 1:1.8
After the early work of the book persuading us of the value of wisdom, the meat of the book is comprised of the various proverbs of Solomon. These are shorter sayings than the sections in chapters 1-9 and cover all manner of topics. Proverbs 22:17–24:22 contains thirty sayings that are not attributed to Solomon but rather simply coming from “the wise”
Proverbs 25 begins with the following phrase: These also are proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied. Hezekiah was a king who ruled much later than Solomon in approximately 715–686 B.C. and led a renewal of Judah’s spiritual practices and faith after a wayward time. During this time of spiritual renewal additional proverbs attributed to Solomon were written down.
The final two chapters contain the words of rather obscure people. Chapter 30 is attributed to Agur son of Jakeh who is mentioned nowhere else in the Bible. Whether his name is a metaphor, a pen name, or a real person is not clear or certain.9
Finally, another quite unknown sage named Lemuel, possibly an Ancient Near Eastern King is given props for chapter 31. Interestingly the words are said to have been taught to him by his Mother further reinforcing the importance of parents teaching wisdom to their kids. Some would couple the poem about the virtuous wife with the words of Lemuel, but one thing is for certain, the paradigm of feminine virtue extolled in the final words of Proverbs is a beautiful ideal. Here we find a wife, mother and business woman who is generous, wise and praised by her husband and her kids. In my opinion this woman should shift today’s goofy definition of who is “hot”.
In some ways Proverbs is a very easy book to read. In fact, believers have found it easy to read one per day due to the breaking of the book into 31 chapters. On the other hand the Proverbs require a little help to understand and appropriate, well, wisely. What follow are two sections designed to help you read proverbs. The first deals with the types of literary characters we find in the book and how understanding these help us grasp its message clearly. Second, we will wrestle with how to take the clarity of some of the Proverbs while living in a broken and fallen world. Proverbs seems to promise health, prosperity and the righteous finishing on top. Yet in other parts of Scripture we realize that we suffer, die and sometimes give up all wealth for the sake of following God. I’ll try to give a few points of help with this tension.
When reading Proverbs we run across several characters who personify certain human trends and actions. They do not refer to a specific person but serve as types which stand for many people. We will look at the fool, the simple, the wise, the wicked (including scoffers, and those wise in their own eyes) and the righteous. Many times these characters are contrasted with one another, for instance the wise and the fool, in order for us to see clearly the path we ought to take. The introductory article in the ESV Study Bible by Garrett and Harris describes this well:
Also, these characters usually serve as idealized portraits: that is, they denote people exemplary for their virtue and wisdom or especially despicable for their evil. The literary name for this is “caricature”: portraits of people with features exaggerated for easy identification. The positive figures serve as ideals for the faithful, to guide their conduct and character formation. The negative figures are exaggerated portraits of those who do not embrace the covenant, so the faithful can recognize these traits in themselves and flee them.10
What follows is but a brief look at how Proverbs uses these caricatures in order to help us see more clearly the path of walking with God.
The fool is someone who shows himself to be not only lacking wisdom and discretion but also morally deficient. We would call him an idiot or a moron but not simply in referring to intellectual capacity. The fool in Proverbs is an idiot in the sense of the way he chooses to live his life. Americans like to watch the fool on various reality TV shows usually to feel self-righteous and better about their own lives. The fool talks too much, does not listen, lies regularly, thinks sin is funny, hates knowledge and wisdom, and pretty much will have a ruinous end. Pull up the Bible online (www.gnpcb.org/esv/) and search for the word “fool” and you will find not a few Proverbs to read. Simply put, you don’t want to be an idiot so pay attention to the fool’s way of life as you read the Proverbs.
The person who is called “simple” is one who is in a situation needing some learning about the ways of godly living. She is not as far gone as the fool and her life could change or stay simple (Proverbs 1:22, 32). The simple person is called to take heed and listen and choose a path of wisdom rather than the moronic idiocy of the fool. The simple person is easily deceived (Proverbs 14:15) and needs to stop and think about her decisions.
The wise are those whom are taking the path which God sets out for us and are to be emulated. The lives of the wise are typified by hearing and learning from the ways of God (Proverbs 1:5; 8:33; 10:8; 12:15). The mouth of the wise is used for teaching, healing and preserving rather than tearing down (Proverbs 12:18; 14:3; 15:2,7). The wise avoids sexual misdeeds and adultery (Proverbs 5 and 6; 23:26-28) and stays away from drunkenness which is common deep downtown in Liquortown (Proverbs 20:1; 23:29-35).
Wisdom itself is personified in the book of Proverbs and is said to speak to us and cries out for us to listen. Many have rightly linked the personification of wisdom with the person of Jesus, the son of God. The New Testament teaches us that Christ is the wisdom of God and that in him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. The way of wisdom is found in following a way that is set out by God. The way of wisdom is following in the way of Jesus as his disciple
Joining the fool in Proverbs as a negative character is the way of the wicked. While we observe the fool’s jacked up choices in everyday life, we see that the way of the wicked is utter rejection of the covenant making God. The wicked is seen as setting his way in opposition to God and seeking to take others with him. He is sometimes called a “sinner” (Proverbs 1) but not in the sense that everyone sins and falls short of the glory of God. He is a sinner whose joy and goal in life is sinning it up and commending this as a good way to live. The wicked are said to be under God’s curse (Proverbs 3:33), living in darkness (Proverbs 4:19), living in a way that is an abomination to God (Proverbs 15:9) and will come to sudden, disastrous ruin. The message in Proverbs: you want to go to Hell? Walk in the way of the wicked and only the wrath of God remains.
There is a character in Proverbs known as righteous which shows the rich blessing of walking in covenant relationship with God. The righteous is also called upright, diligent and prudent to describe this way of life to us.11 The righteous is similar to the wise person whereas here the relationship with God is central rather than every day decisions and living. It should be obvious to any reader of the Scripture that our relationship with God (righteousness) and holy, wise living in the world are always conjoined. As followers of Jesus we understand that we are made righteous by God and we live righteously in our lives by his empowering Spirit. Proverbs does not present a self-righteous person living in his own strength, but rather one dependent upon God who makes straight his paths. The path of the righteous is light, his way is understanding and knowledge, his mouth and lips bring blessing to others and he is ultimately delivered by God.
Finally, there are also a few special folks listed in Proverbs: The sluggard, scoffers and those who are wise in their own eyes. The scoffer loves to mock and deride God’s people and those who are wise in their own eyes are utterly deceived. The former suffers from a deep arrogance and pride (Proverbs 21:24) while the latter’s condition is almost seen as without hope (Proverbs 26:12). The sluggard is the lazy guy who loves to sleep, never finishes anything he starts, and pretty much fails to utilize opportunities before him.12 Derek Kidner, in commenting on the sluggard, made the following observation: “[the sluggard] does not commit himself to a refusal, but deceives himself by the smallness of his surrenders.” 13 So, by inches and minutes, his opportunity slips away.
As the Proverbs are so practical and easy to read we must be careful not to misunderstand their message. There are several principle which can help us to ascertain and properly understand the proverbs. Let me give a few examples of the problems which can arise.
So how do we understand the Proverbs as we read so as to not be led astray by our excitement nor minimize the wonderful teaching of these verses? I pray the following might be of some help. I will use the example of wealth to illustrate each of these principles in order to help us read the proverbs with wisdom.
1. Proverbs are dealing with observed probabilities, not absolute promises and guarantees. Dillard and Longman make a great observation for us here, “they are not divine promises [for every occasion] for the here and now, but true observations that time will bear out.”14
2. Proverbs are to be read in the whole, not simply in their parts. There are many times other proverbs which balance the teaching of the first one you read. They do not nullify one another, but they give a bigger picture. Additionally, other parts of the wisdom literature and other parts of the Bible may shape how we understand a Proverb.
3. Proverbs are true in certain circumstances and life contexts yet perhaps not in others. Wisdom is always exercised in real life, not simply in abstraction. So Proverbs is not playing a pithy game when it tells us “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.” and then in the very next verse “Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.” (Proverbs 26:4,5) The point here is that fools are complicated to deal with and wisdom would require balance.
4. Proverbs are to be read with a long horizon of eternity – Even though some of the wise sayings dictate what usually happens with a certain course of action and behavior, they do not always obtain in the here and now. However, in light of eternity, they will prove true. In a fallen world where sin, death and injustice still have a hand in life we long for a day when the life, health, peace and prosperity talked of in Proverbs will be final and absolute. These have us long for the day when the righteous will inherit the earth in the Kingdom of Heaven.
5. Proverbs are about life Coram Deo – The proverbs should not be read in a vacuum where God is not considered. I know this may seem like a ridiculous thing to say but we are a people who can love formulas and sayings more than we love God. God is sovereign and his will sometimes is mysterious. Job’s wife and friends were quoting proverbial type wisdom to him when the truth of what God was doing was quite different. We trust a Sovereign God who has made sure promises to us. We trust and stand on his actual promises in Jesus and hear and heed the wisdom in Proverbs. There is a difference between a promise of God and a wise Proverb inspired by God. One is sure and we rest in it, the other must be skillfully heard and daily applied.
OK, let us apply these principles to an example that many a prosperity preacher might use to talk of all the money Christians should have. Proverbs 13:22 says, “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children, but the sinner’s wealth is laid up for the righteous.” Each of the numbered thoughts below will correspond to the same numbered principle from the previous section.
1. If one absolutizes the latter part of this verse into a promise or a guarantee we must be required to think that whenever a wicked person dies some Christian is going to get all his money. Some actually teach this sort of schmack. In the short term, this is not true.
2. The book of Proverbs teaches much about wealth not simply this one verse; it might help us to know the bigger picture. Wealth is good when it is gained justly and when walking faithfully in the ways of God. Good stewardship will lead to the sort of blessing in the first half of this verse. Proverbs 11:7 teaches us that “when the wicked dies, his hope will perish, and the expectation of wealth perishes too.” There is nothing for the wicked after the grave, and his wealth goes to someone else.
3. This entire proverb can be completely true now in certain circumstances. I know of one personally.
4. Ultimately all who belong to Jesus will quite literally “inherit the earth” and the wealth and riches of God will not remain with the wicked. The long term horizon validates the Proverb completely.
5. The promise of God is that we have a secure, unfading, eternal inheritance in Him (1 Peter 1:3-9) that includes every spiritual blessing in Christ (Ephesians 1). When the wicked continue to prosper in this age we know the final judgment of God will stand firm and clear.
I hope this simple example is helpful in thinking through the reading and living of the wisdom literature. For those desiring a bit more discussion of this matter I refer you to Mark Dever’s excellent treatment in his sermon on Proverbs in The Message of the Old Testamant: Promises Made. 15
In the early days of Jacob’s Well we have a few reasons to jump into the Proverbs for a few weeks together. First, we are a young church made of up young singles, young marrieds and families. I want us to learn to listen and head wisdom from the wise. One of the strengths of youth is zeal, optimism, hope and passion to make a difference in the world. One of the silly things about youth is that the young tend to be foolish and think they know it all when they do not. Second, there are particular issues we walk with in our culture which we need to hear and heed the wisdom of God. Sexuality, the use of language, and alcohol are important in every age; certainly in our time and culture.
Followers of Jesus can also fall all over the map when relating to these issues of life. Some act as though the only places the omnipresent God never visits are where people have sex. We all dishonor God greatly with what comes out of our mouths and some are very concerned if someone uses a word considered to be on some hidden forbidden list in heaven.16 Furthermore, God is not ignorant of the fact that he created all things that bring about the process of fermentation. Yet our culture is perverted and abuses these good gifts from God so we need to have honest discussions about what Scripture teaches on these issues.
As a new church we need to have three things on these important issues: clarity, unity and charity (gracious love).
Our series will proceed with three messages after an introduction on Wisdom. If you have read this up until this point you have gotten more than most! Go give yourself a gold star you overachiever!
There is a divine shout out going on in the world today where wisdom is crying out for us to hear. God in his kindness has given us literature like Proverbs to shake our deaf ears. Proverbs 1:20-23 reads so clearly:
20 Wisdom cries aloud in the street, in the markets she raises her voice; 21at the head of the noisy streets she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks: 22“How long, O a simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge? 23 If you turn at my reproof, behold, I will pour out my spirit to you; I will make my words known to you.
How much more longing we have for wisdom as God’s people who see and savor Jesus Christ as “the wisdom and power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18-25) What a tremendous privilege we have to follow Jesus within who are all the hidden treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3).
In proverbs wisdom is personified as shouting aloud in the streets to us? Will we listen? Wisdom was incarnate in Jesus Christ and crucified by the wisdom of the world. Will we do the same day after day? Derek Kidner, the late Old Testament scholar, commented simply on the urgency to gain wisdom: What it takes is not brains or opportunity, but a decision. Do you want it? Come and get it?17 Jesus was even simpler in his call to us all in relationship to wise living. Come, follow me! Even concerning Lust, Language and Liquortown.
May each of us choose his paths, as he gives grace, in the year ahead!
Reid S. Monaghan
Lead Pastor
1. This introduction is adapted from an essay I wrote during our study of Ephesians in the summer of 2009. The original essay, Wise Guys, can be read athttp://www.powerofchange.org/blog/2009/8/16/wise-guys.html
2. A good little reflection on these themes is found in Peter Kreeft, Three Philosophies of Life : Ecclesiastes— Life as Vanity, Job— Life as Suffering, Song of Songs— Life as Love (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989). Kreeft is a philosopher and not a theologian but still offers some helpful insights surrounding these wisdom oriented books of the Old Testament.
3. See Bruce K. Waltke and Charles Yu, An Old Testament Theology : An Exegetical, Canonical and Thematic Approach, 1st ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2007), 898-901.
4. Proverbs 1:7 is clear that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” The term LORD here is God’s unique covenant name YHWH, or I AM as expressed in Exodus 3.
5. Proverbs 14:12 and 16:25
6. Duane A. Garrett, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs (Nashville, Tenn.: Broadman Press, 1993), 58.
7. Yutes, plural for young adults. “The two yutes in question.” - My Cousin Vinny”The Urban Dictionary.”
8. Waltke and Yu, 905. See also the brief authorship discussion in Raymond B. Dillard and Tremper Longman, An Introduction to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1994), 236-237.
9. For more discussion on the identity of Agur see Proverbs, Book Of, in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia Revised ed.: Wm. B. Eerdmans., 1988; 2002), s.v.
10. Introduction to Proverbs, Crossway Bibles., The Holy Bible : English Standard Version : The Esv Study Bible (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Bibles, 2008).
11. Ibid.
12. Mark Dever, The Message of the Old Testament: Promises Made (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2006), 512-514.
13. Quoted by Mark Dever, Ibid., 513.
14. Dillard and Longman, 244.
15. Dever, 509-511.
16. There is no such list. Yet the Bible is razor sharp in clear about sins of the tongue. For more on this show up for the sermon or you can hope over to our essay “Watch Your Mouth” at http://www.powerofchange.org/blog/2009/8/1/watch-your-mouth.html
17. Quoted in Waltke and Yu, 908. Emphasis mine.
Bromiley, G. W. , The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Wm. B. Eerdmans., 1988; 2002.
Crossway Bibles. The Holy Bible : English Standard Version : The Esv Study Bible. Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Bibles, 2008.
Dever, Mark. The Message of the Old Testament: Promises Made. Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2006.
Dillard, Raymond B., and Tremper Longman. An Introduction to the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1994.
Garrett, Duane A. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs. Nashville, Tenn.: Broadman Press, 1993.
Kreeft, Peter. Three Philosophies of Life : Ecclesiastes— Life as Vanity, Job— Life as Suffering, Song of Songs— Life as Love. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989.
“The Urban Dictionary.”
Waltke, Bruce K., and Charles Yu. An Old Testament Theology : An Exegetical, Canonical and Thematic Approach. 1st ed. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2007.
OK, when I start teaching little Thomas Reid to wrestle I might show him this video first thing…with one small comment. Don’t go down like this…too funny.
There are many times I walk into a movie theater uncertain whether or not the film before me will be enjoyable, cause meditation of gospel and human themes and be worth the time to hear the story be told. There are other times when I simply know I will like the movie ahead of time. Avatar was one such movie. I knew the combination of consciousness transfer, technologically animated bodies, strange creatures on strange worlds and a huge SciFi mega battle would be right in the range of awesome for me. What I did not expect was the visual spectacle that is Avatar. What follows is not a formal film review, but simply some thoughts which left the theater with me on opening night. Yes, I saw it opening night, it is what I wanted to do for my birthday. :)
From the outset let me say this. Movie theaters are one of the venues that our culture does its story telling and many times heavy doses of proselytizing and preaching ideas. I participate not as a convert who lives his life through the movies or worships the next creation of an established or up and coming film making. I participate to learn, enjoy and think about who we are and what we are saying to ourselves today as a people. My definition and narrative that I live is the one lived out on earth, inspired by the creator God, culminating in Jesus the unique God incarnate and the savior of the human race. It is precisely because I find the gospel true that I care about modern pulpits like the movies; there are other gospels being compellingly preached all the time to those in stadium seating across our country. Just as any person bringing the gospel to a people with a different religion and world view should care to understand the beliefs of a people, so we should care about the stories our friends live by…many times at the movies. With that said, I really enjoyed Avatar and had some deep questions about its message. Let me share why.
I cannot say this enough, Avatar is a stunningly visual movie. The world created by the Cameron and his cohorts cannot even be described fully; it must be seen. The makers of Avatar crafted an entire alien world that seamlessly blends together creatures, deadly monsters, a unique natural world, humans, some mind blowing technology and machines of war. The film is a constant blend of CGI and human performances presented in a wonderful display of real 3D technology. From the beginning until the end I was riveted by the creative imagination being displayed floating before us. To be honest, I will likely see Avatar again (maybe in IMAX) as it reflects much of what I enjoy in the science fiction genre.
The storyline and screenplay are not award worthy, but it is a story that moves, draws you in and culminates simply. The plot is easy to predict but this does not detract from the story. It is definitely not as thoughtful/cerebral as I would like as it doesn’t require much wrestling with ideas. There is of course some techo nature worshiping, goddess centered pantheism (more on this in a bit) but it was assumed with tribal simplicity and not wrestled with seriously. For those new to the Avatar world, here is a synopsis from 20th Century Fox:
Avatar is the story of an ex-Marine who finds himself thrust into hostilities on an alien planet filled with exotic life forms. As an Avatar, a human mind in an alien body, he finds himself torn between two worlds, in a desperate fight for his own survival and that of the indigenous people. More than ten years in the making, Avatar marks Cameron’s return to feature directing since helming 1997’s Titanic, the highest grossing film of all time and winner of eleven Oscars® including Best Picture. WETA Digital, renowned for its work in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and King Kong, will incorporate new intuitive CGI technologies to transform the environments and characters into photorealistic 3D imagery that will transport the audience into the alien world rich with imaginative vistas, creatures and characters. —© 20th Century Fox
For a more thorough summary of the plot let imdb be your friend.
The film is longish but certainly does not feel so. There was not one part in the movie when I felt the story or the action was dragging. Granted, it is not simply a techno shoot em up as there is some character development along the way. The performance turned in by Zoe Saldana as the princess of the Na’vi is excellent and in my opinion overshadows everyone else. Of course, a hat tip to the computer animators as they made the 10 foot tall blue chick to go along with Saldana’s performance.
In summary, I really liked Avatar. It was fun, had the most mind blowing worlds on screen and hits basic themes that human beings like. The underdog wins, the oppressor is vanquished, there is the hero/redeemer that is selected by some sort of divinity, there is a love story, a coming of age story, belonging to a family, betrayal, redemption and the like. Come to think of it Avatar is one big cliche dressed up all fancy in another fantastical world; a masterfully created spectacle of a world at that.
Though I really enjoyed Avatar some of its content was a bit sophomoric when you think about it for more than a few seconds. Though it is not a film that I would mock in any way, there are some preachy moments that came off a bit silly to me. Some of are themes deeply woven into the plot, others were lines of dialog that were so transparently jabs at certain points of view that it was hard to take serious. I wish I had more to interact with philosophically from Avatar, but here are a few thoughts I did take away from the messages being proclaimed.
One thing I liked about Avatar was some thought about the virtues and use of technology. Though it was not as nuanced a discussion as one might want, the film does cause some reflection about the importance and centrality of technology. First, the humans are using sophisticated technology while the native Na’vi are much more simple people tied to their natural world. Of course, the humans think that they are primitive savages but what you learn in the film is that a harmonious relationship with nature exists with the Na’vi while the humans are just raping the land for a valuable mineral using technology. The way of life of the Na’vi is seen as spiritual, respectful of nature and they are just a perfect happy Utopian sort of people (more on this late).
Though the human technology is superior it is used for destruction and shows no respect for “mother” nature. To be honest, it is all a bit preachy and you get the feeling that we would be better off if we were all running around in a perfect forest like the natives of Pandora. Of course, this world is not real. Ironically, it is a human, using sophisticated technology who saves the people but afterwards he is converted to be one of the Na’vi (called “The People”) in both body and consciousness. The message seems to be nature over the creations of men, which is being presented to humans watching the creation of high tech film makers wearing 3D glasses in indoor theaters. Irony.
Now the Na’vi also have some interesting spiritual biotechnology in that the trees and animals all can interface/network with one another through interfaces akin to a biological USB cable. In fact, the Navi’s long hair serves as a sort of USB dongle so that they can control six legged horses, flying reptiles and the like. Who created this network and interrelationship is unclear, but one thing is. This “nature” is the goddess mother in Avatar. So rather than a pro science, con spirituality view, Avatar provides a naturotechnological mystical science that is so much better than you.
Avatar is also a movie steeped in religion and it is an exercise in preaching. The message is not even subtle or hidden but couched in the spirit of the age in such a way that audiences will likely not mind too much. Western culture stands at an interesting epoch of its history. It evolved from a people who were primarily farmers who believed in one creator God to a industrial people building all matter of stuff all over the planet in the name of “science and progress.” Humans, through engineering and industry would create a Utopian existence and we would all sing to ourselves of our greatness. Sadly, this did not occur. Many today have grown skeptical about our ability to transform the world through building things and have realized how separated we have become from the natural environment which God created. So today we have those who think industry and technology simple destroy the planet, pollute the world and ruin our lives. The human creations that were reveled in during the 19th and 20th century have now become green house gas creating enemies for the green avant garde to rail against. Bad humans. This is undercurrent for the worldview of Avatar.
In addition to this, a simple people, dependent upon and in harmony with mother earth (or Mom Pandora) are seen as an almost perfect people. Every time they kill a deer they snuggle up to it, thank it and almost regretfully eat it. They are mystics that consult Eywa, their God which is pretty much everything that exists and encompasses all. For those unaware of what pantheism is, God is all and all is God, go see Avatar, it is preached everywhere.
The Na’vi certainly are presented in the way some historians love to present native Americans. They are peaceful, nature loving folks just being oppressed by the Europeans or the “sky people” in the case of Avatar. Never mind, the warrior culture, warring clans, territorial battles and all that - the message you should get is “technological sky people = always bad” and “nature worship environmental loving people = good.” No need for any sort of contoured reality, just fundamentalist and ideological proclamation. Those who have commented that Avatar is like “Dances With Wolves” in a galaxy far, far away seem pretty accurate in this observation.
I could get into some of the pantheistic philosophy of the movie but that would be a bit of a long journey. I will mention I found it silly how Eywa is said not pick sides in wars, she just keeps “balance” of all things. Whatever balance happens to mean. I guess pantheists like having a balance of evil around to keep your honest or something. Or we could then ask why this non side taking deity actually takes sides like a medieval deity and to win the war for those who hug her trees.
The religion of Avatar is a rehashing of the Gaia hypothesis mingled with pantheism. A whole world is divine and one big symbiotic organism. The philosophical problem of individuation (or the one and the many) is obliterated with such views, where all are seen as one whole organism rather than individual beings in harmony with a creator that is not creation.
In my mind, a more balanced view of nature is needed in our day, particularly in the West. We need a view that advocates neither raping creation nor worshiping it as a goddess. Rather, we need to see ourselves as responsible for caring for creation and utilizing our world for good. Such responsibility has been uniquely given to human beings for the creation. We are made in the image of God and called to cultivate and care for the world. However, we are to worship the Creator, not the creation, and so use all things that have been made for the glory of God and the good of others.
I always find it odd that those who think we are just specified apes and then think we have a moral duty to the environment in a way that is “different” than other animals. Don’t get me wrong, I believe we do have a different responsibility than the beasts of the fields, I just don’t find such a duty deriving from naturalistic worldviews. In theism, we have this moral responsibility and duty to God…we call it stewardship.
As mentioned earlier, there are so many human aspects that we love in a story contained in Avatar that are almost cliche. Yet one of the things I found a little frustrating with Avatar is how hard it is to find a real, contoured human character in the movie. The characters are either clearly wrong headed and wicked (see the white guys running both the corporation and the military) or they are simply the good team who seems to lack any tragic flaws. Grace, Sigourney Weaver’s scientist character, is just learning…just learning away and would never harm a fly. Well, maybe she would harm those evil white guys running things. Jake Sully, the paralyzed marine and future hero/redeemer of the Na’vi, could be more interesting, but he goes from being seen as innocent to being Pandora’s Jesus Christ. Perhaps his dual loyalties to the sky people and the Na’vi could have revealed a human Sully, but you never believe in the movie that he is going to stay a marine, he is Na’vi from the time he puts on his 10 foot tall blue man suit. I suppose when a movie just wants to preach, it does not need characters that are like us; simply characters that we wish we could be.
I think you are left with the feeling from Avatar that we should all be like the Na’vi, especially if we could have cool technology that somehow mother earth just gave to us. My problem is that the Na’vi are not real, they do not exist. I do not mean to say that 10 foot tall blue people on Pandor do not exist, that is a given. What I do mean is that people are truly innocent, untainted by sin, are not real. We need redemption because we are deeply flawed, not because we just need to learn to be more like some phantasm of our minds. Utopian visions of peoples or societies always let us down when we realize that we are human. We know we belong in the clouds but yet are so much a part of earth. This is precisely why I love the views of Jesus. He taught us that we are both more valuable than we can imagine, very much like God. Yet he taught us that we are deeply wicked and in need of forgiveness and change that comes from outside of ourselves.
So I find Avatar to have deep human themes in the story, but had very few humans living them out. The story was incomplete in that sin lived only in “certain types” of people while others are presented as righteous altogether. This is actually troubling to me as self-righteous people may watch this film and feel very good about themselves. We are good, tree and nature loving people. We are not like those warring people who like “terror against terror” and “shock and awe” (yes, there are clear and silly statements like this in the dialogue). The ideologues of Hollywood love to declare their ideas and views to be good and those of others (usually libertarians or conservatives) to be eeeevil. Avatar certainly, and in sophomoric fashion, goes after this shtick. I was surprised their was not a call for government provided universal health care for the forest trees and some evil person saying NO! so he could be rich.
Overall, I loved the grandeur and visual spectacle of Avatar. As a fan of sci fi movies I was thrilled to go, came out with sense of wonder at what I just watched. It is a movie unlike any I have ever seen and simply must be watched in 3D. I will likely see it again because it was a pleasure to watch and experience and the story does have its redemptive elements. The fact that some hero must indeed come and save us is a truth about the universe that we can never escape. Yet, in the midst of the spectacle there was so much preaching that I recommend people watch with a discerning mind. Avatar represents the ideas of our age and not the truth about ourselves or about God. Avatar contains false teaching and religion hidding behind every fluorescent Pandoran tree; be not deceived as it seems the makers of Avatar would like to remake you into their image.
One final warning: if you see Avatar with a anti-war, tree hugging, mother goddess worshipping, hate George Bush, shock and awe hater, the terrorists are just misunderstood, I hate Obama now too for sending more troops, America is the evil empire type friend…beware, they are going to feel really good about themselves and will likely be ready to preach when you pass out beneath the exit signs. It is probably a good time to go get coffee or a beer and chat a bit about Jesus. If you see it with a Canadian…just kidding, we all love Canadians.
One of the beautiful aspects of living here in Jersey is the sense of humor and the diversity of friendships God has given us. So in honor of this I wanted to link to a few rendentions of the 12 Days of Christmas sent to me this week.
First, sent to me from an Italian friend, I give you the 12 Guido Days of Christmas…my favorite is number 5.
Second, for all my friends from the Desi nation, a friend sent me the following on Facebook…my favorite was number 11.
Many of you may be aware of Matt Chandler’s recent brain surgery to remove a tumor found over the Thanksgiving weekend on his right frontal lobe. You may not have been exposed to Matt the man or his view on this unexpected trial in his life. The following video was recorded the week of his surgery just a few days before he went in. It is a different view on life and suffering that comes from faith in Jesus Christ.
Please pray for Matt’s recovery. Updates on the Chandlers can be followed on Facebook here.
The Theology track from the recent Acts 29 Bootcamp in Louisville, KY is now online. The following were breakout sessions offered, and they are listed in the order sessions were given.
Pastor as Resident Theologian Track
Thanks to Tyler Powell for getting everyone wired up and recording the breakout sessions…It was a great privilege to introduce and teach one of the sessions with my good friend Dr. Gregg Allison.
The guys at Precentral have put up some good thoughts and reflections regarding the first six months of Palm’s new webOS and phones. The Pre and the Pixi both now live in the Monaghan household and Kasey has become a fan of the latter. I, for one, am pulling for Palm to take the webOS into cool lands in the months ahead and thankful to be an early adopter of the Pre.
Here are a few of my thoughts on webOS, the Pre, the new Pixi and Palm’s overall execution…
webOS
In my opinion the user interface and experience is such a win for Palm. The core apps and the apps that stick to basic webOS UI conventions are absolutely beautiful. The deck of cards metaphor for app switching and multi-tasking simply has no comparison in the smartphone world. Each time I play with another phone I am shocked at home simple and elegant Palm’s solution really is. The beta app catalog is expanding and I have found plenty of useful apps. It is only going to get better. I think Palm needs to put the graphics chips in play and allow some more direct hardware calls; overall the strategy to use a browser as the presentation layer is cool. One drawback is some amazingly ugly user interfaces some people have put on their apps. Just because you can use any HTML/CSS as the interface does not make non standard user interface buttons and elements a win. Design apps that look like webOS apps people - your creativity sometimes turns out ugly.
Palm Pre
Overall, I am a huge fan of my little Palm Pre. The camera is excellent, the processor speedy, WiFi and 3G all work seamlessly. However, the Pre feels like a less than serious piece of hardware. The choice of materials and build quality really shows when compared with iPhone and the new Motorola Droid. I like the slider well enough and I absolutely love having a physical keyboard. I have used all the virtual ones and I find real typing much more preferable. Palm needs to follow up with a rock solid built phone on the high end that feels less like a toy.
Palm Pixi
Though it lacks WiFi, has a bit slower processor and smaller screen than its big brother, the Pixi is a fantastic little phone. The design feels much sturdier than the Pre and it is so freakin small. It is so thin and tiny that my wife is now using a dedicated phone sleeve in her purse to keep track of it. The keyboard on the Pixi is fantastic; I like it better than Pre. It is small but the buttons are really clicky and give a super solid feel. The Pixi is a little slower but overall the webOS experience is great on this little phone. To be honest, if they can make a phone as thin Pixi, with a slightly larger screen, wifi and a bigger processor…I’m in. The candy bar styling of Pixi is a win.
Palm’s Execution
To be honest, Palm’s marketing for the Pre was pretty lame. The crazy children of the corn looking chic looks so silly compared to the Droid’s rabid robot advertising. Palm obviously has tried to expand their smartphone reach to the ladies and the young peeps (with Pixi ad) but they lost a ton of cred in my opinion with creepy stuff like this and this…note to Palm - in future ads and marketing, don’t chit chat about reincarnation and talk about THE PHONE!
I’m looking forward to seeing the webOS and the phones from Palm thrive in the future; I think they executed just enough to stay afloat for another act or two…but they better build some good hardware, optimize webOS for speed and get on multiple US carriers. So overall, I am hopeful but not triumphant about Palm’s effort. May the best days be before them.
Most Americans would say they are either busy or feel busy. This is particularly true on the east coast where Forbes magazine listed New York, NY as the third most stressed area in America1. We can just assume some of that stressed out love reaches far into the NYC metro area as well. There are many who would give advice on life management and getting things done2 but sometimes having the right priorities and system just doesn’t solve the problem. There is a long running human struggle with sticking to the things we say are our priorities. A good plan on paper might be a good first step, but it provides no guarantee you are going to change your own life. It is not uncommon for someone to say their priorities are God, their relationships, family and then work or play. In that order. Yet it is also not uncommon for the same people to spend all their hours and energy working and recreating with little time on their spiritual growth or with their people. We realize that intentions are one thing, but living is another.
In this short essay I want to explore a simple question which has been wrestled with over the centuries: Why don’t we always do what we say we want to do? To do so we will first look at some discussions in philosophy about a concept the Greeks called akrasia—the weakness of the will. We will then look at a view of human freedom found in the works of New England theologian/philosopher Jonathan Edwards which will shed greater light on why we sometimes fail to do what we intellectually know is right. Finally, we will close with a discussion of a controversial and important biblical text which deals with human nature and its effects on our “want to” and how we might find help with following through with our desires.
The ancient Greek philosophers discussed a concept known as akrasia, the weakness of the will. The word literally means to lack command over oneself. In Plato’s dialogue Protagoras, Socrates dismisses the idea that anyone, knowing the good thing to do, would ever do otherwise. A person might not do the right thing or act according to what is good, but this only because he does not rightly understand it. If you know what is truly good, you do it by way of reason. Aristotle, a couple of philosophical generations later, chose a less rigid understanding of a person finding weakness when choosing to do what is right. In his section VII.1-10 of his Ethics, Aristotle, describes times when people act in a way that is contrary to reason because they are overcome by some passion which they do not master rationally.3 The Greeks saw the good person as always acting in accordance with reason but they, like everyone else, were surrounded by people doing things they ought to have judgment about. Ultimately, Aristotle is more charitable than Socrates acknowledging the reality of akrasia, but only that people are mastered by their passions rather than mastering them. He does return to rationality in the end thinking that an akratic person will eventually see the errors in his thinking after some time and experience. He does think, like Socrates, that a truly wise person can never experience akrasia as he rightly sees it is a vice.4 To boil it down, Socrates thought that those who claim to have weakness of will to simply be stupid; Aristotle, thought that they were perhaps temporarily stupid but could recover their way. The Greeks felt if you know right, you do right. However, they were still writing about this issue because people seem to fail in follow through quite often. The Greek answer, and I would say the modern secular answer, was to become wiser and wiser and then you would always do the good. Of course they could never quite define, or agree upon a definition of “wise” and “good” so the philosophizing continues until this day. Over the years, many Christians have thought differently about why we often fail. We will look at the views of one such thinker before we discuss the biblical text.
Unfortunately, many only know of the 18th century theologian and pastor Jonathan Edwards from a sermon in which he sought to vividly present the teaching of Revelation 19:15 which read: He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. This sermon, entitled Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, is many times the only work contemporary Americans read of Edwards. Various historians and scholars know a fuller picture of the man that some have called the greatest mind of the American colonial period. The recent renewed interest in Edwards studies in theological, historical and philosophical circles is both encouraging and warranted.5
One of his more influential works was entitled, in typical Edwards fashion, A Careful and Strict Enquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of that Freedom of the Will, Which Is Supposed to be Essential to Moral Agency, Vertue and Vice, Reward and Punishment, Praise and Blame. Thank God it is known by its more popular and short title The Freedom of the Will. Edwards had many reasons to write about human freedom and choice and what sort of freedom humans had. Whereas the Greeks typically assumed that human beings naturally should choose the good and were puzzled why they most often did not, Edwards was a Christian who firmly believed that the human will was bent towards sin, not toward doing good. Edwards was no pessimist, but he was realistic about the strength of human desires regarding their choices.
Rather than simply talk about freedom of the will in terms of seeing the good and then doing it, Edwards argued that human beings do what they are most inclined towards. People always act according to their deepest desires.6 The problem with not doing what we ought is with our want to, not simply with our knowledge. This gives a much better understanding to why humans often know their duty and fail to follow through. Our desires can lead us away from what we even know to be the right path. This does not alleviate us of moral responsibility for our actions, but it does mean that we need new desires, new inclinations towards what is good, right and true.
As an aside, Christian thinkers in every age have understood that what is good is related to who God IS. Furthermore, what he wills for human beings according is always in accord with his own good, unchanging character.7 The character and nature of God grounds that which is good ontologically so that we might see our lives conform to his character ethically. The Christian tradition differed from that of the Greeks in that it saw human fallibility not simply in terms of wisdom or knowledge but in terms of deepest desires and inclinations. We needed to have our desires changed and set free from the law of sin and death so that we might be able to be changed to be more like God. We would do the good when we become more like the one that is good. The internal struggle of human beings, their wrestling with the weakness of will and the fallibility of our nature comes through clearly in the writings of St. Paul in his epistle to the Romans.
For the sake of brevity, I want to quote a portion of the seventh chapter of the book of Romans from a paraphrase of the New Testament. It brings to light quickly the human struggle we have been discussing here:
I can anticipate the response that is coming: “I know that all God’s commands are spiritual, but I’m not. Isn’t this also your experience?” Yes. I’m full of myself—after all, I’ve spent a long time in sin’s prison. What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can’t be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God’s command is necessary. But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge. I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question? The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.
Though a complete explanation of this text is beyond the scope of this essay, I want you to see the internal struggle described. Here we find a human being struggling to do the good he sees revealed in the law of God (for simplicity think of the 10 commandments) but yet he sees another power at work within him. Indwelling sin has made him a prisoner to his own desires so that even when he wants to do the good he often falls short. Rather than a better education he feels he needs to be set free, he needs help from outside of himself. This insight is offensive to those who have their minds set on fixing themselves. Pride in human beings will not face the truth that they need to be rescued, forgiven and changed. Yet the human struggle and internal wrestling with sin is real as is its power.
The insight of Jesus and his followers was simple yet profound. It is from the heart that sin flows in our lives. When we do what is contrary to what we know is right, we are choosing that path because we want to. The problem is that our “want to” is precisely the problem; it is not our heads that let us down, it is our hearts. Jesus said it this way in Mark 7:14-23:
And he called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.” And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
So, do we do what we want to do in life? I would say for the most part yes. The problem we have is that our desires are contorted and greatly in need of reformation. Sin affects the mind so we don’t always think to do what is right, so we do need moral instruction and education. Sin also affects the will in that it twists the desires of our heart. What we need is a new mind and a new heart so that we can both see what is good and actually want to live it.
So let’s revisit our busyness and priorities. We are prone to fill our lives with all manner of things while neglecting that which we claim to be our priorities. Saying that God, our families and relationships is a priority while other pursuits are secondary is quaint. Actually desiring to love God and your neighbor is a work of grace in us and through us. If we want our priorities to shift, we actually need a renovation of our hearts. We need to be set free from sin and death to live a life of freedom and faith.
Jesus died to lift the curse of sin from us to give us new inclinations to love God and walk in his ways. He now enables us to do so — even when we feel stressed out and busy. We need to sit at the feet of Jesus as his disciples so that we learn a new way and then follow with the new hearts he gives to us. Even making the time to read Scripture, spend time with God in thoughtful prayer and to be a disciple is a choice that he empowers us to make. When he calls, we follow and a new life awaits. The strength of love overpowers the weakness of will when the heart has been turned around by God himself.
In Luke 10:38-42 Martha bustles with activity and Mary sits at Jesus’ feet. Jesus tells us that it was Mary who chose the better path. To come to the one who has to power to make us new is what we must learn as we travel through life. Coming to him is a discipline but one he enables day by day. As one wrote long ago, “give what you command, and command what you will. You enjoin continence [self restraint].”8 He has not left us to our own desires, he is giving us new ones each day. We have our abiding hope in his power to help us live out his priorities in our lives today.
At his feet with you,
Reid S. Monaghan
1. America’s Most Stressed Out Cities, Forbes.com—http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32588942/ns/business-forbescom/, accessed 11/20/2009.
2. David Allen’s best selling book Getting Things Done is a must in my opinion. If you like technology the web site LifeHacker.com can be a great help as well.
3. For a discussion of Aristotle’s Ethics see the excellent summation in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-ethics/index.html accessed 11/21/2009.
4. See Alternate Readings of Aristotle on Akrasia at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-ethics/supplement1.html accessed 11/21/2009.
5. For a wonderful treatment of Edwards’ Life see the works of George Marsden. His unabridged Jonathan Edwards, A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005) is in my opinion the best work on Edwards’ life and writings. Also the works Gerald R. McDermott and Mark Noll are also of note. John Piper and Sam Storms (to a lesser extent) have also brought the thought of Edwards forward in our day. See John Piper, God’s Passion for His Glory Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards (Wheaton: Crossway, 1998) and Sam Storms, Signs of the Spirit: An Interpretation of Jonathan Edwards’s “Religious Affections” (Wheaton: Crossway, 2007) are of particular interest.
6. See treatment of Edwards view of Freedom in Bruce Ware, God’s Greater Glory (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2004) 79-81.
7. See William P. Alston ‘What Euthyphro Should Have Said’ in Philosophy of Religion: A Reader and Guide edited by William Lane Craig, Rutgers University Press, 2002.
8. Augustine, Confessions, Book 10, Chapter 29.
Recently I have been reading some sociological books on young people and young dudes in particular. It has been a good study and I thought I would recommend them for those hanging with the peoples born after 1970 (and yes, I barely make it into that club by 2 years)
And a few pleasure reads - on audio book…
What is this web site here? Oh, its my personal blog. Man, if I wasn’t very thankful for everything else filling my life I would get depressed seeing the lack of posting around here. I do hope to continue to write here and post from time to time but there are a few other things grabbing my attention today.
Anyway, I do love Power of Change and the POCBlog is not dead; just sleeping. Napping a bit awaiting the return of some technotheosophical nonsense. Until then, I bit you adieu.
We will soon be launching six missional communities, small formations of our church, throughout Central New Jersey. We are humbled and thankful for what is going down here in the early days of Jacob’s Well.
Today at the POCBlog, we have a guest essay by my friend and Jacob’s Wellian Scott C. Jones…this was written in conjuncture with his teaching of John 8:1-11 at Jacob’s Well on 10/25/2009.
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Grab a Bible and consider what you’re holding: a bound volume - pretty cover and all - of a bunch of documents written long ago over the course of hundreds of years. It may come as a shock to realize that none of the handwritten originals of these documents exist today. Nothing that Paul - or any of the other Biblical writers - wrote exists in the form that came from their pens. In fact, most of those handwritten drafts probably vanished from the face of earth within 10-20 years of their composition. Yet we still believe that what you’re holding in your hand is the inspired, inerrant Word of God. We very much have what was written. How can that be? How can we say that we know exactly what the original authors wrote, if we don’t have their original manuscripts in hand?
Well, first let’s briefly clarify what Christians mean when they call the Bible “inerrant.” The doctrine of inerrancy doesn’t hold that your NIV or ESV translation is the exact words that God inspired the original authors to write. For one thing, Moses and Paul didn’t speak English. The Old Testament was almost entirely written in Hebrew, and the New Testament in a common Greek dialect. As such, your English translation is at least one step removed from the exact original wording. However, there is also the above mentioned reality which is that we don’t have any of the exact original Hebrew or Greek manuscripts. Therefore, it is important to clarify that inerrancy holds that “Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact.”1 That may seem to question our reliance on Scripture as the Word of God, but before we despair, it’s important to consider that he have literally thousands of copies of the Biblical documents. And though almost all of these copies have small variations at certain points, our reliance on “second-hand” copies of the originals is no cause for alarm.2
If this all seems disconcerting, consider the meticulous science of textual criticism. Textual criticism is “the science that compares all known copies of a given document in an effort to trace the history of variations in the copying process so as to discover the original form of the text.”3 Did you get that? If not, picture this: you send a handwritten letter to a friend. Your friend receives the letter and wants other people to read what you’ve written. However, she wants to keep the original for herself. So, she decides to hand copy the original letter and sends copies out to 10 different friends. They’re so inspired by your words that they too decide to hand-write copies and send them to their 10 best friends. And so on and so on. Eventually there would be hundreds of copies of your original letter. As you might imagine, by the one-hundredth copy, there might be a slight difference in wording here and there. Some of the copyists might have corrected your grammar in certain places or changed the wording a bit to improve a phrase that wasn’t entirely clear to them. They also could have simply messed up in the copying process and left things out or switched words by mistake. Now imagine that your friend lost your original letter and wanted to reconstruct it as exactly as possible. What would she do?
Well, she would first try to get her hands on the original copies she herself had made. If she couldn’t find those first copies, she’d probably start compiling a bunch of other people’s hand-written copies. She’d then sit down and do a thorough examination of those copies. If she found differences in the copies she’d ask herself a series of questions to determine what the original actually said. Those questions might include: Does this sound more or less like the way my friend normally writes? Which is more likely to be an improvement on the original, rather than the original itself? Which copy came earlier in the copying process and is therefore less likely to have been varied along the way? Is the variation an understandable mistake in spelling (i.e.–God becoming good); if so, is one clearly correct given the context? Is there a difference in one later copy that doesn’t appear anywhere else in the earlier copies? Did someone clearly forget a line or phrase that seems to show up in a majority of the copies? Here is an example. You give it a try on the following:
You just did some good textual work and most likely came to a decision as to which was the original.4
By asking this series of questions, your friend would be doing textual criticism. Luckily there are many faithful Christians (and non-Christians) who have given their lives to this very task with respect to the reconstruction of the original manuscripts of Scripture. Still more exciting is the reality that they have an enormous amount of material with which to work. Compared to other ancient documents, the New Testament has an almost unfathomable number of early copies. For instance, the well-known historians Thucydides and Herodotus wrote around 500-400BC. There are, at most, 75 copies of their original work and many of those are one or two pages of multi-volume histories. The oldest manuscripts we have of their work date from the first century AD (400 years after they lived). In comparison, there are approximately 5,700 copies of the NT written in its original language (Greek), accompanied by 10,000 Latin copies and literally a million smaller quotations in the sermons and writings of the early church fathers. The earliest of these copies date from the early second century A.D., just decades after the originals had been penned.5 If necessary, read those numbers again. It is truly amazing how thoroughly preserved the New Testament documents are, due to this abundance of handwritten, early copies.
Given this plethora of evidence there is an understandable amount of variance between the copies. In fact, in the NT alone there are approximately 400,000 variants among the manuscripts. However, it is absolutely critical to understand the nature of these variations. Most are simple spelling or copying errors which are immediately spotted. Furthermore, they are almost universally without consequence to any basic Christian doctrine. As theologian Wayne Grudem explains:
“Even for many of the verss where there are textual variants … the correct decision is often quite clear, and there are really very few places where the textual variant is both difficult to evaluate and significant in determining the meaning. In the small percentage of cases where there is significant uncertainty about what the original text said, the general sense of the sentence is usually quite clear from the context.”6
Or as Daniel Wallace suggests:
“In the final analysis, no cardinal doctrine, no essential truth, is affected by any viable variant in the surviving NT manuscripts. For example, the deity of Christ, his resurrection, his virginal conception, justification by faith, and the Trinity are not put in jeopardy because of any textual variation. Confidence can therefore be placed in the providence of God in preserving the Scriptures.”7
The lack of the original hand written manuscripts should not cause us to throw away our reliance on Scripture as the only authoritative guide for life and doctrine. Quite the contrary—we have the New Testament as it was written. In the same way, the existence of differences between copies should not draw us away from the tough work of textual criticism. Rather, we should praise God that in his sovereign wisdom he has given us a wealth of manuscripts with which to determine what those original documents said.
This text is a great example of the contribution textual criticism makes to our confidence in the veracity and reliability of the Biblical documents. Most English Bibles will include the heading {THE EARLIEST MANUSCRIPTS DO NOT INCLUDE JOHN 7:53-8:11} before this passage. Well, before you freak out and claim that Jacob’s Well doesn’t preach Scripture, a brief word on this heading. Basically, none of our earliest full copies of the Gospel of John include this particular episode. However, the scene itself is widely talked about in very early Christian literature. While scholars disagree as to where the scene is best placed chronologically, they almost universally agree that given the many references to the story outside of Scripture, this definitely happened – and was widely known to have happened – some time in the course of Jesus’ ministry. The reason it’s been put here is that Jesus is hanging around the temple at this point in John’s Gospel (the other Gospels have much briefer accounts of this particular period in Jesus’ ministry) and it’s a pretty good bet that this would have happened around that time. Textual critics have felt it necessary to include this story somewhere in the Gospels as it is the only story of its kind (a story we know happened because of strong, widespread evidence, but one that wasn’t written down by the four Gospel writers). And so, most Bible editors agree that this is the best place to place it. However, they don’t want to mislead us and suggest that this was definitely written by the hand of John (in fact, much of the language is very un-Johnlike or non-Johannine, for you scholars). And so, they include this somewhat shocking heading just to provide honest, full disclosure. Textual critics take their work very seriously, as they are reconstructing the inspired word of God. The lengths they’ve gone to make sure we understand the source of this particular account underscores their diligence and respect for the Scriptures. As Wallace said above, God in his providence has preserved the Scriptures for his people; and the textual critics are one of the tools God has chosen to use in that process.
Joining you in treasuring God’s Word,
Scott C. Jones
You might too…or maybe not :-)
There are several views of the world which populate the human landscape. Each of these views wrestle with the various questions we face in our existence. One of the most perplexing issues is that of our own mortality. In fact, death has been said to be the great equalizer, the fate of the rich and powerful and the poor and destitute alike. One of the great mysteries is what happens when we die. Various beliefs have been held throughout time regarding life after death, but none greater than the big two. The eastern philosophy of karma/reincarnation and the widely believed philosophy of divine judgment. People in our culture today are fixated with the idea of Karma. You see it in the obsession of a regular guy named Earl on television, in the writings of Oprah Winfrey show superstar Gary Zukov, and it even appears in a line of Ben and Jerry’s low carb ice-cream.1 In our culture Karma has become kool and divine judgment is well, too judgmental for many. In this little essay, I want to compare the two and actually show that judgment is much more humane and coherent, though the consequences perhaps more serious.
Karma is one of the main tenants interwoven in the diversity of philosophical views from the east. Eastern philosophy is a literal smorgasbord of ideas, practices, and religious concepts, but there are a few ideas which are universal in the various systems. The Law of Karma, the endless cycle of reincarnation, and the oneness of all things are common threads throughout the various genres of eastern thought. The law of Karma will sound familiar in part to people in the west. At its most basic level it is a teaching that says that all our actions, whether good or bad, have consequences. These consequences form a chain creating your reality into the future. What you do, the choices you make literally “create” your future. The idea of Karma goes beyond a mere understanding that “whatever a man sows, he also reaps” for Karma extends between subsequent lives and existences. Each person builds up positive or negative Karma over the course of this life which then determines their subsequent lives after being reincarnated. A person moves “up” through a succession of being in the lives they live with the hope of escaping the endless cycle of birth and rebirth, which is known by the term samsara. If you have bad Karma you may come back as a dung beetle, good karma may have you return as an upper class Brahman. So judgment is seen in the movement “upward” and “downward” in this chain of existence. Many western people fail to see that reincarnation is not a good thing to the eastern mind, but a cycle from which the soul desires to escape, to be absolved into the oneness of the universe finally eliminating the illusion of individual existence. I find the karmic view offers true insights on several fronts. First, it acknowledges that we do indeed reap what we sow and our actions do have consequences. Second, it realizes that our actions and choices are moral in nature. Though the eastern view sees good and evil as two sides of the same coin, part of one reality, it is in the view of Karma that eastern philosophy is a bit more honest. Good is good and bad is bad and you better work towards the good or your Karma gauges will be spinning in the wrong direction. Though many put forth the view of Karma as a pathway towards moral living without any view of judgment, Karma has some serious bad Karma of its own.
There are several major philosophical and theological problems with Karma but I will only elaborate here on a very short list. First, Karma is a sort of score card for your life, where your good and bad tally up against each other. The problem I see in this is that there is literally “no one” there to keep score. Who is watching your life? Usually the answer is that the universe has a built in law that regulates these things, but there is no discussion on how this could be the case. If your good and bad “add up” it seems that somewhere this reality must be “known” by someone. This makes sense in a world in which God himself is taking our lives into account. Second, the law of Karma knows absolutely no grace. It is an unforgiving brutal taskmaster by which your life is determined by your previous lives. If you have a bad run now, it could be the result of previous incarnations where you were a real jerk. The problem is you know nothing of your former lives and are sort of screwed by them. There is no grace extended to sinners by Karma, sin becomes a millstone around your neck forever and ever through perhaps infinite reincarnations. Finally, there is an unexpected, but inevitable unjust result of Karmic thinking. You would think that this view only holds one responsible for our actions, but in fact it has unbelievably unjust societal consequences. Think about it. Who are the good guys in this life? The ones who had good Karma in previous lives. Who are these people? The upper classes, the “successful” people, the wealthy and the rulers are in their stations in life because they were good in past lives. So it is no coincidence that the system of caste, where the poor and low caste “deserve” their station in life and should not aspire better, arose from a Karmic philosophical tradition. They are working out bad Karma; these are the views that made the high caste Brahman in India, oppose the work of Mother Teresa with Indian low caste untouchables. She was interfering with them paying for their karma by serving them and helping them. The god of Karma, is the god of caste, which is a system of long term systemic oppression of those who were bad in “previous lives” nobody knows anything about.
Before moving to a biblical understanding of divine judgment I want to make a few things clear. When we speak of the judgment of God we are talking about a judgment that has finality to it. We realize that during our time on earth it can temporally seem as if injustice triumphs and the wicked prosper. In fact, the biblical authors wrestle with this reality (Jeremiah 12:1-4, Habakkuk 1:1-4, Psalm 73:1-3, Psalm 94:1-5). Even though this age is mingled with justice and evil we trust and know that when all is said and done, the creator will judge the world with equity. This judgment will be altogether righteous and all the failures of justice in the courts of men will be set right for eternity. The following description is a succinct summary of the biblical teaching on final judgment.
The biblical concept is that at the end of history Jesus Christ will return in glory to earth, the dead will be raised, and they, together with all the living, will be finally judged by Christ and assigned their eternal destiny in heaven or hell. This great eschatological event will be a visible, public, and universal judgment; Christ’s glory and His victory over sin, death, and Satan will be fully manifest; righteousness will be exalted; the perplexing discrepancies of history will be removed, and the mediatorial reign of Christ will reach its ultimate triumph as believers inherit the kingdom prepared for them.2
With this in view let’s compare the view of divine judgment with that of Karma/Reincarnation.
The biblical view of life after death is a very different than the view of Karma. Like the view of Karma, our actions, both good and evil have consequences, but in our view God is the observer and judge of our lives. He treats us as responsible moral agents in relationship to Him, creation, and other people. We are responsible to God and others for our actions and their consequences. All persons, rich or poor, “successful” or not, powerful or not, are all completely equal and responsible for their lives. We live this life before God and when we die our lives will be judged by God and his appointed one, his own Son Jesus Christ (Acts 17:30-31). God does not show favoritism in that he will take our sins into account and does not turn a blind eye towards the sin done on the earth.
Wonderfully, the God who is our judge chose to take our place and receive the judgment we deserve for our sins. It is in the gospel that God extends to us the hand of mercy and grace. The very one who will judge our wrongful deeds, against whom we have committed sin, is the one who pays our debt and freely forgives. This is the view of the Bible. God treats us as responsible human beings but willingly provides payment for our sins, atonement is the biblical word, so that we can be reconciled with God and be judged as righteous because of the work of Christ.
The book of Hebrews teaches us that it is appointed for us to live and die once and then be judged with impartiality (Hebrews 9:27). We either face God in our sin or with an advocate and substitute for our sin. Jesus is the one who delivers us from just wrath and judgment of God and all glory and honor goes to him.
The path of Karma makes you the one who receives glory for your good and blames everything bad that happens to you directly on you. In the gospel we see that God works by the law of the Spirit of life to set us free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. You might even say he sets us free from the tyranny of the taskmaster of Karma. 3
See Karb Karma at http://www.benjerry.com/our_company/press_center/press/bfyfactsheet.html
Geoffrey W. Bromiley, The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Revised (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1988; 2002), 2:1162.
For more on Eastern philosophy you can read the sections by LT Jeyachandran in Norman Geisler and Ravi Zacharias, Who Made God? And Answers to Over 100 Tough Questions on Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003). Additionally, though I heartily disagree with his views of election and predestination, Paul Copan’s Chapter Why Not Believe in Reincarnation from That’s Just Your Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001) is an excellent treatment of some problems in Eastern philosophy.
Coming to certain portions of the Scriptures can be an adventure when it is your first time reading them. For instance, the first time I read through the book of Leviticus I found a bizarre world of food regulations and lots of talk about who was clean or unclean. As an American, I was familiar with the proverbial phrase Cleanliness is next to godliness1 and I knew about Mr. Clean from an unforgettable bald guy advertising campaign. However, I knew very little about the aspect of being “clean” or “unclean” that is all over the book of Leviticus in the Old Testament. I thought it would be an interesting discussion for us to undertake in light of our study of lepers in Luke 17.11-19.
In our study of the 10 lepers we see the afflicted crowd is standing at a distance from the other people. Many times lepers, those affected with various forms of skin diseases or infections would be quarantined from the rest of the community. The reasons are obvious in that the disease (s) would be kept from spreading through the rest of the population. There is something about this separation that is a parable or type of our spiritual condition before God.
In this essay I want us to learn a few things. First, we will look at the symbolism God teaches us by separating his people from the other nations in the Old Testament by dietary laws and cleanliness codes. Second, we will look at the way in which God told the Israelites to live and worship after their exodus from Egyptian slavery. The role of the tabernacle (tent of meeting) and the structure of the Israelites camp will be discussed here as well. Finally, we will look at the issue of our spiritual condition before God and how it is illustrated by the brokenness and fragmentation of our physical bodies—even with various nasty skin infections. With that said, lets jump in and get our hands dirty…or, uh, unclean.
The book of Leviticus is not as well known today and it is at times a chore for modern readers to grasp its meaning without a broad knowledge of the larger biblical narrative. Yet, did you know that America’s Liberty Bell takes its name from Leviticus 25:10? In fact, inscribed on the bell itself are the words “Proclaim Liberty Lev 25:10.”2 Seriously, read the verse, it is pretty sweet. The second greatest commandment (Matthew 22:39), quite the favorite of Jesus himself, is found in the pages of Leviticus. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is from in Leviticus 19:18. Yet also in the book we read stuff like this in Leviticus 13.
1The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, 2“When a person has on the skin of his body a swelling or an eruption or a spot, and it turns into a case of leprous disease on the skin of his body, then he shall be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons the priests, 3and the priest shall examine the diseased area on the skin of his body. And if the hair in the diseased area has turned white and the disease appears to be deeper than the skin of his body, it is a case of leprous disease. When the priest has examined him, he shall pronounce him unclean.
There are also verses about sexual immorality as well as very specific dietary regulations. The book also has detailed descriptions of various sorts of sacrifices God’s people were to offer with a mind towards atonement3 for sins. We do need to ask the question, what is up with all the clean and unclean talk? Scholar and Pastor Mark Dever gives a very succinct summary of the book of Leviticus and in it we find a bit of a clue for what is up with all the quirky, strangeness in this inspired book from God:
First, we see that God’s people are distinct; so they should live holy lives. Second, we see that God’s people are sinful; so they should offer sacrifices.
For our study, we have the first purpose of the book in view. God gave his people certain cleanliness codes to display to the people his holiness and how they are to be a people set apart (made holy) for him.
The cleanliness codes of the Old Testament have obvious and helpful public health purposes. They are for the common good of the community to limit the spread of disease and infection through unwise behavior. Yet to stop the discussion there would entirely miss the point God is making in this book and in the instruction of the ancient community. Leviticus 10:10 gives clarity to this issue: You are to distinguish between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean.
Some of you might remember the movie, Meet the Parents, where the lowly male nurse Gay Focker was meeting the somewhat psycho Dad of his fiancé. In the movie the father tells Gay about his “circle of trust” that he would either be in that circle or outside of it. Mark Dever uses a similar analogy of circles to describe the notion of clean or unclean things. In this case, a large circle would represent all that is clean and the normal state of things. Outside of this circle God placed certain foods, certain behaviors and certain temporary states like curable diseases. Outside the circle would be all that is “unclean.”Furthermore, unclean things were not always and necessarily the result of sinful activities but activities that made one ceremonially and temporarily unclean for worship. Dever calls all things clean and unclean things that are “common” to being human. One more category is brought to bear on life in Leviticus. There were things that could be set apart (or sanctified) as holy. To take a holy thing and connect it to anything unclean was forbidden and the gravest of offenses.4 The diagram below illustrates these ideas.
In giving these categories to Israel God is teaching them that all of life matters to God and that he is not to be worshipped by perverse sexual practices, religious prostitution, sacrificing children or the abuse of human beings. It is interesting that Leviticus speaks about how all these make one unclean for worshipping God. They are not to worship as the idolatrous nations which surround them.5 In summary, God is teaching his people in Leviticus that he is holy so he is setting them apart as holy. The law shows them that they are to worship the one true God differently that the way others will pursue idolatrous spiritualities. God has declared things clean and unclean, holy and profane. His people should see all of life this way and seek to live and worship in the way that he shows us.
One more aside is necessary before moving on. Do all these laws apply to us now? The simple answer is no. Many of the Old Testament teachings had a purpose to point forward to the coming Messiah and are literally fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Jesus himself now “sets apart, sanctifies, and makes holy God’s people” (See 1 Corinthians 6:11; Hebrews 10; Hebrews 13:12). Another example relates to the Old Testament sacrifices. Jesus is the very lamb of God; he was God’s own sacrifice for sin so animal sacrifice is no longer necessary. The Old Covenant sacrifice was a shadow that pointed to the reality of the coming one who would give his life for the sins of the world (See Isaiah 53, Hebrews 8-10). It is not that these laws were bad in their time, their purpose in pointing us towards Jesus has been fulfilled. Further, we are free to eat all foods with thanksgiving as we come to God in Jesus (Mark 7:14-23). Jesus made it clear that the point of the Levitical law was to show us that clean/unclean are actually pointing to issues of the heart; in fact, this was the point of Leviticus all along.
After God delivered his people from slavery in the Exodus (see Story in the biblical book of the same name) he led them in the dessert to teach them how to worship and about his character and nature. Part of this education was in the very way they lived, traveled and set up for worship. God gave very clear instructions of how to design a tabernacle/tent for worship. This tent was a series of courts/chambers that were progressively more set apart from the people. The further you went in, the holier the place was in which the person traveled. The outer courts contained the holy place, then further inside was the most holy place where the very presence of God was said to dwell. Outside of this tabernacle was the camp, the place where the people lived in smaller tent dwellings. The whole structure looked as follows, of course much less SIM6 like.
The Israelite would be very aware of proximity to God as being holy. To be outside of the camp would be a separation from the community of God and far away from the presence and worship of God. To be outside the camp was to be an “outcast” - a place where the unworthy and the unclean would be found.
Now, lets go back to the story of the 10 lepers. In the Old Testament and the New the leper, whatever form of skin disease one had, would be separated from the people and thereby be seen as stricken by God. Let me be clear. The Scriptures do not teach that the leper was afflicted and cursed by God but it was a common idea in the mind of the Jew and the non Jew. In light of the social and religious stigma, in light of having to dwell outside of the camp until deemed “clean” again by the priests, ten lepers cried out to Jesus in Luke 17.
What does Jesus do when he hears the cry for mercy coming from outside the camp? The incarnate son of God, who has left the holy of holies at the right hand of the Father goes outside of the camp to show mercy to the outcast. He tells them to go show themselves to the priest, the very action they would do if they were already healed. He calls them to trust him and act by faith on his words. As they were going, Luke’s gospel tells us, they were healed of their affliction. At this point the most scandalous thing occurs in our story. Almost all of the lepers who were healed did not come back to thank the one who had healed them. Only one of nine returns in order to express praise and gratitude. He is the outcast of outcasts for he was not simply a leper, he was a Samaritan. He was doubly “unclean.”
The tabernacle was not a bad set up, but it was a teaching aid for God for all time. It was to show us the amazing grace and radical nature of the love of God in the gospel. God is holy, he is separated from us and we dare not enter the holy place in our sins and spiritual leprosy. Yet what does God do for humanity? First, he goes outside of the camp and dies as a cursed man (Deuteronomy 21:22,23) for the sake of those under the curse of sin and death. Galatians 3:10-14 says it clearly:
10For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” 11Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” 12But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” 13Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— 14so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.
Furthermore, Jesus went outside of the camp to show mercy on the leper, the one separated from God due to sin and rebellion. He shows mercy upon human beings who trust him by faith and as he told the Samaritan leper, he saves them. Hebrews 13 wraps all of these ideas together for us in a sweeping panorama of the grace of God shown to unclean sinners in Jesus Christ.
7Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. 8Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. 9Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them. 10We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat. 11For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. 12So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. 13Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. 14For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. 15Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. 16Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.
Hebrews 13:7-16 (ESV)
In this passage we see cleanliness by eating foods superseded. We see that a final sacrifice has superseded the sacrifice of animals to cover and cleanse sins. We see that Jesus sets us apart and then calls us outside of the camp to live on his mission to save sinful people through the gospel. All of this is in light of the eternal camp, the eternal coming city of God in the Kingdom known to many simply as “heaven.” In this age now we have been forgiven of sin through Jesus and now offer this same grace to others in the proclaiming of good news to those who need the love and mercy of God. Finally, we see the purpose of our lives in Jesus. We are to offer up a sacrifice of praise to God through our lips, through our service to others, through joyful generosity. Why? For such sacrifices are pleasing to God who through Jesus was pleased to seat us with him in the most holy place. None of this is of our doing, it is all the manifest, glorious, revealed plan of God in Jesus. As such we must echo with the apostle Paul, that early leader of the church: For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
Worship God you lepers! And say thanks, you have been healed and saved to the uttermost.
1. The phrase, much like God helps those who help themselves, is found nowhere in the Bible. It is not even in the book of 2nd Opinions. Apparently it dates back to 17th century England and the words of Francis Bacon. We do know that the exact wording appeared in one of John Wesley’s sermons in 1791. See William and Mary Morris, Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins (HarperCollins, NY, 1977, 1988).
2. Mark Dever, The Message of the Old Testament (Wheaton, Crossway Books, 2006) 110.
3. The word atonement means to satisfy or repair an injury to a relationship or an offense given. It means the reconciliation of two estranged parties through sacrifice.
4. See the excellent discussion in Dever, 115-116.
5. Ibid 116.
6. SIM refers to a whole genre of computer simulation games made popular in the last few decades, particularly the series of games by designer Will Wright.
Our world measures importance, success and social status by various measures. Abundance of wealth or lack thereof being a prominent one indicator of who is doing well in the world and who is not. Jesus did not see it this way and we see this through his interactions with two very wealthy men. The gospel according to Luke touches on wealth and poverty quite a bit. In fact, Luke’s gospel has a strong focus on Jesus’ identification with and love for the poor Furthermore, it has much to say to those who are wealthy and how we might worship God not coin.
Luke records several interactions of Jesus during what is called his “travel narrative.” So yes, if you were wondering, Jesus did indeed have skills with teaching on the road trip and Luke’s gospel has quite the travelogue. Jesus’ journey was heading to a different sort of destination. He was traveling towards a cross awaiting him in Jerusalem and in the accounts of his journey towards that destination he interacts with two rich men. One simply known as the rich young ruler and another a little guy named Zacchaeus.
In Luke 18 we see a young ruler1 approaching Jesus with some flattering words asking what he must do to receive eternal life. Jesus simply tells him to follow the commandments of God and the man replies that he is on point with all of that. Jesus then tells him…”oh yeah, one more thing—give away all your money to the poor to have treasure in heaven and come follow me.” Now it is clear that Jesus is not telling all of his followers to never have any possessions. There are too many counter examples in the Bible for this to be the case. What he is doing though is asking the rich man to stop worshiping his money, value the Kingdom of heaven above the systems of the earth and be a true follower and worshipper of God. Well, the guy was not so happy after that. In fact, Scripture teaches us that he went away περίλυπος, a word that means “extremely sorrowful.” Luke casually reveals to us the source of his sadness; the man was extremely rich. Jesus had gone after his god and the man chose to worship and love even over his devotion to God. Jesus then tells us that it is very hard for a wealthy person to enter the Kingdom. In fact, his followers seem to think that nobody is going to be able to change in such ways to follow Jesus. The response of the master was simply this “What is impossible with men is possible with God.” Then just a few passages later he shows us just how true it is that God can save even the most money grubbin and corrupt rich dudes.
When one arrives to Zacchaeus in Luke’s narrative, the rich young ruler immediately comes to mind when you read Luke 19, verse 2. And there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich. Ok, another rich guy, we know how this will go. Or do we? For some reason this tax collector wants to see Jesus, he is curious and goes out to see what the buzz was about concerning this man. What happens next was probably a bit unexpected. The late London preacher Charles Spurgeon said it this way:
Zaccheus’ motive was purely one of curiosity—he wished to see Jesus, who he was. He was curious to know what kind of a man was this who had set all Judea on a stir? Who was this that made [KING] Herod tremble, was reputed to have raised the dead, and was known to have healed all manner of diseases? Zaccheus, the rich publican, is a lover of sights, and he must see Jesus. But there is the difficulty—he is too short; he cannot look over the heads of the crowd. Yonder is a sycamore tree, and he will for once imitate the boys and climb. Mark how carefully he conceals himself among the thick branches, for he would not have his rich neighbours discover him in such a position. But Christ’s eye detected the little man, and standing beneath that tree, unasked, unsought, unexpected, Jesus said, “Zaccheus, make haste and come down, for to-day I must abide in thy house2
So whereas the rich young ruler “went away” in deep sorrow, Zacchaeus has Jesus come over to hang with him at his house. The results are staggeringly different. The ruler remained bound to his money and his little god; Zacchaeus was set free to bless others with his wealth and be changed by the living God.
These two stories tell us much about how we should view wealth in light of the teaching of Jesus and Scripture. We’ll use the second half of this essay to explore this in a very simple fashion.
One thing we see all over the Bible is that the values and distinctions that we make in the world are radically inverted, turned upside down, by the rule and reign of God. Jesus teaches us that in the Kingdom, the last will be first and the first will be last (Matthew 20:16). He teaches us that those who are meek and humble will inherit the earth (Matthew 5-7). The poor who know God are in no way “worse off” than the one who loves sin, self and riches yet remains under the condemnation of a holy and just God. In Jesus’ Kingdom being a servant is actually a “higher” position than that of an oppressive King (Matthew 23:11,12). In fact, our God quite literally came to earth as our servant King. Being a Christian means to see the world as he does and realize that it is we who are upside down.
The view of Scripture clearly states that God is owner of all things (Psalm 24:1; Psalm 50:10,11) and we are stewards and co-rulers with him (Genesis 1-2). He grants to us what we have and we are to use our resources—be it time, talent or treasure for his Kingdom and purposes. It is also true that in this world some have little, some have much. In fact the one of Jesus’ stories teaches us that this will be the case (see parable of the talents in Matthew 25). However, we cannot make judgments upon people purely on the size of one’s bank account or the roll in his pocket. Jesus taught us that our treasure is a heart matter; a matter of worship. Where you place your treasure and where you find value indicates our heart’s disposition towards God. Frightening if you think about this for a moment.
Let me also be clear. Poverty and not having one’s basic needs met is not presented as a blessing in and of itself in Scripture. Yet someone who is poor can be deeply blessed and dependent upon God despite circumstances. The poor, the meek and the oppressed who trust in Jesus will receive a great reward in the Kingdom (Luke 6:2—23) but starving is not a good thing. Second, material prosperity is not always a bad thing either, yet if riches become our God it is the worst of traps that lead us in all manner of sin. 1 Timothy 6 teaches us this clearly:
9 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.
Most of us are taught to see the world in terms of haves and have nots. We are taught to see rich and poor as on two competing teams that must be at enmity with one another. If you swing from the left the poor are the good guys and the rich sit next to the devil along with people who run corporations. If you swing from the right the rich can be seen as the only people of merit, hard working and responsible. The poor—well, not so much. Scripture does not pit these teams against one another and God will not be the pawn of either left or right wing political spin. You see, Jesus cares much more about the heart of the matter than simply the amount of gold, or lack thereof, stuffed under your mattress.
Rather than a simple class war of the worlds, the Scripture teaches us that there are ways that both poor and rich can honor or dishonor God. Furthermore, there are rich and poor that can both be blessed of God (See Matthew 6, Luke 6, Proverbs 11, 1 Timothy 6). The following represent four different realities.
How we see money is of utmost importance. Some will see their money as theirs and will help others only if and when they feel like. Others will realize that God owns everything and seek to use their money for Kingdom purposes and to help others. Jesus taught us to seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness and he will take care of our needs (See Matthew 6). This should free us to live in generosity.
One of our core identities at Jacob’s Well is finding joy in generosity and mission. We want to be a people that lives life with open hands giving our time, talents and treasure to the mission of God with people. In fact, the solution to the worship of money in Scripture is what Paul, an early Christian leader, called the grace of giving (2 Corinthians 8:1-7). In being generous we declare that money is not our God, life is more than the abundance of our possessions (Luke 12:15) and we are free to give. Jesus was very clear with us—it is better to give than to receive (Acts 20:35). Most of the time we simply don’t believe him as Christians today give away very little of their incomes to their local churches and charitable causes.3
Christians are certainly called to provide for the needs of their families (1 Timothy 6: and 1 Timothy 5:8) but we are not called to simply hoard up stuff for ourselves. In fact, Scripture clearly exhorts those who are wealthy “to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.” (1 Timothy 6:18, 19)
There is no “rule” I can give you about your lifestyle and your generosity, but we must not miss the joy of responding to God in worship with generosity. He has lavishly given life and grace to us and our gratitude is expressed as we give back to his work. You must decide how you will steward what God has placed into your hands whether it is a lot or a little. You must decide what sort of material provision is appropriate for you and your family. Yet the stories of the rich ruler and Zacchaeus should be fully in view as you decide how to live and invest God’s resources.
Will we be ones who make little or no sacrifice for others and continue to worship things and treasures on earth? Or will we worship our God together in generosity?
The following is an essay written for the people of Jacob’s Well associated with our fall launch into the series Let Jesus Speak…
Many today love to talk smack about Jesus, speak for Jesus or comment about Jesus without stopping to listen to what he actually said to real people, in real time, in the the real world. Jesus said many things to many people in all walks of life. He spoke with hookers, conmen, religious people, busy people, adulterers, murderers, the powerful, his friends and people who were outcasts. His message is radical and will challenge our paradigms today.
This fall we are going to take a look together at how this enigmatic figure of history interacted with real human beings. There are many things which can be observed when looking at the life of Jesus of Nazareth. One could focus purely on his identity, who was this man who broke history wide open long ago in the ancient Middle East? One could focus on his works, what kind of things did he do and what are their significance? The person and works of Jesus are actually the central focus of our faith as Christians and could never be minimized. Yet I want us to peer into something quite interesting in the life of Jesus as we travel together this fall as Jacob’s Well. I want us to look at how Jesus treated people, interacted with people and instructed people who were from various stations and walks of life.
However, it must be made clear that what a person does is indeed an outflow of who that person is. With that in mind, I want us to do a few things in this essay. First, I do want to touch on the question of Jesus’ identity so we can see just exactly who it was that was interacting with a varied cast of characters in history. Second, I want to make a case that the canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the place we should be looking to observe Jesus. This is not taken for granted in our day of Da Vinci Codes and wild speculation about Jesus. Furthermore we must ascertain which historical sources should be approached to find the ipsissima vox, the very voice of Jesus Christ. As a brief aside, we’ll discuss why we are using the gospel according to Luke as our primary text for the series. In looking at the gospels I hope we will see that Jesus is more radical than many assume. In fact, Scripture teaches that to look upon Jesus is to see the very being of God. Finally, I want to close with the focus of our series, namely that it is in the words and actions of Jesus that we see how God himself treats human beings. With that said, let’s look at perhaps one of the most important questions of history. Just who was Jesus of Nazareth?
Jesus is such a simple name but one that stirs the soul of humanity in a profound way. He is venerated as God by adherents to one of the world’s largest faiths and is unavoidable when you draw up a short list of names of people who have quite literally changed history. Many people have an opinion about the identity of Jesus. Robert Bowman and J. Ed Kmoszewski begin their book, Putting Jesus in His Place with a profound observation:
Interpretations of Jesus are fraught with bias. He’s a powerful figure whom people want on their sides—and they’re willing to re-create him in their image to enlist his support. Animal-rights activists imagine a vegetarian Jesus. New Agers make him an example of finding the god within. And radical feminists strip him of divinity so that Christianity doesn’t appear sexist. “Frankly, it’s hard to escape the feeling that our culture has taken Jesus’ question ‘Who do you say that I am?’ and changed it to ‘Who do you want me to be?’”[1]
Various groups of people endeavor to assign an identity to Jesus, any identity, other than the one most uncomfortable and yet most glorious: God. Let us look briefly at what various religions and philosophies have to say about this man.
Those who believe phrases like “The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was or ever will be”[2] will only be able to see Jesus as a “a man, only a man and will always just be a man.” Many who have an anti-supernatural bias simply try to understand Jesus as a mere human. Even if the evidence should point that he might be more, those with a commitment to philosophical naturalism will not consider anything more. To some he may be seen as a wise and moral teacher, others may dismiss him as a religious nut, but the Jesus of the humanist is a dead man and they are tightly closed minded to any other options.
To the follower of Islam, Jesus or Isa[3] is highly respected and honored. Jesus is a prophet second only to Muhammad in terms of prominence. The Qur’an, written close to 700 years after Jesus, is the source Muslims use to arrive at their opinion of Jesus. The Islamic view of Jesus is quite exalted with Jesus being born of a virgin, said to be the Messiah, a performer of miracles. Jesus was a Muslim who actually foretold the coming of the final prophet Muhammad.[4] However, the idea that Jesus was God become a human is a severe blasphemy in the view of Islam. In fact, according to Islam, anyone who worships Jesus is guilty of shirk. This sin is the worshipping of someone alongside the Muslim God Allah.[5] Furthermore, despite historical sources verifying the event, Muslims deny the very fact that Jesus was crucified and died on Roman cross.[6] Jesus in Islam is a prophet, who did not die and who should never be worshipped as the Son of God.
At the core of many eastern philosophies such as Buddhism and Hinduism is the teaching that all reality is of one essence and individual entities are illusory. The technical term for this idea is monism. Some flavors of Buddhism do not believe in any divine reality to this oneness of being but other forms certainly do.[7] Furthermore, various Hindu philosophies see all of life as one and all as part of a divine reality. The technical term for the all is one and all is god view is pantheism. This divine reality is revealed to us by many enlightened masters or yogis throughout history. Jesus is one of many revelations of the divine in the eastern mind but he is not the one transcendent creator God. Interestingly enough, many in contemporary Western culture, are merging ideas from the east and at times using the terminology of Christianity to do so. The results usually end up on the Oprah Winfrey show.
A strange amalgam of ideas is being mixed together in a day where we no longer seek truth but float through a myriad of ideas and experiences. There are some today who are into creating spiritualities from various concepts and our bookstores are full of such volumes. Centered on merging self help, eastern spirituality and an obsessive inward focus, America is concocting new religious ideas every day. In its pure forms, the eastern mind was about self-denial and becoming one with reality through meditation. Today those in the west have taken eastern ideas and married them with self-actualization. If you can learn certain laws of self-actualization, you can acquire the secret of unleashing the god within you. Books about this sort of thing sell well in America.[8] When you throw this thinking together with Christian language and ideas of evolutionary theory something interesting emerges. You arrive to the idea that we are cosmically evolving towards a higher state of “Christ consciousness” by spiritually moving to higher planes of reality. In this view, Jesus is more of an idea of becoming one with the universe and revealing your inner god rather than a unique person and savior through whom we reconnect in relationship with God. Jesus Christ is reduced to a divine “you” that is deep down inside which just needs to be actualized and set free.[9] It is very American when you think about it, but this tells us nothing about Jesus.[10]
A healthy skepticism about truth claims is a good thing when evaluating ideas that others tell us are “true” about the world. However, there is a flavor of skepticism that refuses to accept or believe anything. For instance, there are skeptics who try to say that the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth never even existed. This sort of historical doubt is in no way helpful to anyone, but there are those who make sport out of denying even the most readily available historical realities. Beware of those who revel in being “deniers” of clear historical facts. Just saying.
Over the last several decades there has been an increasing interest in other writings from the first few hundred years of Christianity. Sensational stories about the recovering of “lost gospels” have made their way from the scholar’s tomes into the mainstream press.[11] These “lost gospels” are said to represent a different story from the one we find in the New Testament of the Bible. We’ll comment on why these records are not reliable guides to the person of Jesus in a section below, but people like to take ideas from these books and make cool, fantastic stories from them. Seriously, Dan Brown has sold lots of books and movie tickets with the Da Vinci Code Jesus. This Jesus is a weird mixture of Gnostic ideas, conspiracy theories and a creative imagination. The only problem is this Jesus has little bearing on reality. Even one of the most skeptical, non Christian New Testament scholars has shown Dan’s Brown fiction to be a terrible twisting of history.[12]
Just kidding. Though they do have a view of Jesus it is just too weird and involves galactic war lord aliens and psychological implants. Anyone else bummed out that Tom Cruise’s movie career has been struggling ever science he went scientology weird on TV a few times? Let’s move on friends, nothing to see here.
Perhaps the best source to learn about Jesus would be from the man himself, yet here we find a problem. Jesus himself never wrote a book and he did not leave a YouTube video for the world. We must ask an important question: Just what did Jesus leave us from his time on the earth? The answer is both simple and astounding. Jesus left behind disciples; women and men who followed him, who proclaimed and wrote down his teachings. His followers walked away from his empty tomb and began to take his message, quite literally, to the whole world. Christ is raised from death and is the savior of all people. Turn from sin, receive forgiveness, trust in him and follow him as God and king. Their testimony about Jesus is uniquely found in the words of his apostles (messengers), in the writings of the New Testament.
In these texts, we find a Jesus that is much less a creation in our own image. It is not a humanistic, Islamic, Eastern, new age or Gnostic Jesus. In the gospels of the New Testament we find the glorious creator God being born in a rustic animal stall. We find the one who spoke galaxies into existence, the one who designed the intricacies of physics and biology, became a human being and walked among us. Jesus in his own words is much less tame than we at times make him to be. The late Scottish preacher and theologian James Stewart wrote powerfully to describe this untamable figure.
He was the meekest and lowliest of all the sons of men, yet he spoke of coming on the clouds of heaven with the glory of God. He was so austere that evil spirits and demons cried out in terror at his coming yet He was so genial and winsome and approachable that the children loved to play with Him and the little ones nestled in His arms. No one was half so kind or compassionate to sinners yet no one ever spoke such red-hot scorching words about sin… His whole life was love. Yet on one occasion he demanded of the Pharisees how they ever expected to escape the damnation of hell…He saved others but at the last, Himself He did not save. There is nothing in history like the union of contrasts which confront us in the Gospels. The mystery of Jesus is the mystery of divine personality.[13]
Finding the Voice of Jesus in the Canonical Gospels
The New Testament contains the earliest and most reliable witness to the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus. What one believes about the existence of God and the supernatural may affect how one reads or believes these texts, but they are the primary place where all go to learn about Jesus. Period. At Jacob’s Well we trust the gospels, as both a theologically and historically accurate accounting of the life of Jesus, but I wanted to take some time to unpack why we place our trust in them. To do so we will do two things. First, we’ll look at the recent buzz about “lost gospels” and “gospels” outside of the Bible. In doing so, we will see that these documents are archaeologically and historically interesting, but they are in no way reliable guides to the life and words of Jesus. Second, we’ll unpack the reasons why we do look with trust and anticipation to the canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
There have been some amazing archaeological finds in the last six decades dealing with the early centuries of the Christian movement. Many may be familiar with the Dead Sea Scrolls[14] found at Qumran which contain the scrolls of an apocalyptic sect of Judaism known as the Essenes. This find in 1947 was of particular interest to Old Testament Scholars. What the scrolls provided was a look at copies of many books of the Old Testament which date back to the time just before Christ. Due to the fact that the earliest existing Hebrew manuscripts dated only to the 10th century AD, the scrolls of Qumran gave us an opportunity to examine the transmission of the books over a gap of some 1000 years. What we found is that the text had been copied quite faithfully even over this long period of time. The Old Testament has been handed down with astounding accuracy.
Perhaps a less known discovery took place in 1945 in the Egyptian dessert at Nag Hammadi. It had been known for millennia that in the 2nd-4th centuries the Christian church countered a false teaching known as Gnosticism. Local farmers pulled an earthen jar from the ground at Nag Hammadi which contained some fifty Gnostic gospels and writings. Gnostic held a radical dualism between matter and spirit with spirit being good and matter evil. Through secret gnosis (Greek for knowledge) people could escape the bondage of the physical world and achieve salvation. The Christian version of Gnosticism held that Jesus was not really a human being, but merely appeared as such. As the human Jesus suffered and died, the divine Christ hovered above laughing at the confusion of people taken in by the appearance. This hyper-divine Christ would reveal secret knowledge to his elect via religious experience rather than conveyed truth in the apostolic writings.[15] Early church leaders such as Iraneus wrote against certain 2nd century teachings. Iraneus actually speaks of these Gnostic writings by name. For example, you can read his reference to the content of the gospel of Judas in this segment of his work Against Heresies.[16] Additionally, the early church historian Eusebius also named many of these writings. The point to be made is that these writings: Gnostic gospels, epistles and apocalypses were well known to the church and rejected by the Christians as false teachings. The great interest of the archaeological find at Nag Hammadi is that some codices (early books) of these mentioned works were actually dug up. Believe it or not the discovery was made by a guy named Mohammed Ali (no, not the one who floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee). This of course shed light on the early debates within Christianity and the sources of the doctrines which the church rejected. It was a great archaeological find of actual copies of documents that we already knew existed.
Why then all the buzz about the “Lost Gospels” of Thomas, Judas, Mary etc.?[17] First, many people including most Christians, are uninformed of church history and have no idea about the world in which the church was birthed, grew and confronted these false teachings. Second, there is a new school of scholars and practitioners who paint the early Christian world as a battle between equally valid, possible expressions of Christian faith.[18] Therefore the poor Gnostics, losing the popularity contest years ago, need a new hearing today. Third, the media sensationalizes these things with misleading titles like “Lost books of the Bible” being recovered, etc. These books were never in the Bible and they were never lost, but titles like this apparently sell magazines.
What we need to know is this. The first several centuries of the church were filled with theological spaghetti and a myriad of writings. This in fact led the church to recognize and canonize the apostolic witness found in the 1st century gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. That which was false, which did not match the tradition handed down from the apostles, was rejected and not included in what eventually became the collection of the 27 books of the New Testament. The gospel of Thomas, The Apocalypse of Peter, and the gospel of Judas were never part of the Christian Bible, nor will they be. They were lost to history, but not lost from the Word of God. They were lost to us in manuscript form, many of which we have now recovered. This is a great thing for our understanding of the Gnostics, who they were and what they taught. But it is not ground shaking in that it gives us a “new Christianity.” It simply gives us an up close look at beliefs that were deemed not Christianity at all. And that was decided a long time ago; by the Christians.
Now don’t get me wrong, people are welcome to believe the Gnostic teachings if they so choose (they are pretty wacky and convoluted); but let us not come up with some nonsense that the Gnostic way is just another way of being a Christian. This is simply not the case. Therefore, if we will not find Jesus and his words in the Gnostic gospels, what reasons do we have to place confidence in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? To this issue we now turn our attention.
Skeptics throughout the ages have asked whether the gospels are to be trusted because they were written by supposedly biased people, the followers of Jesus himself. They surely must have had a skewed point of view as to who this Jesus is. After all, you cannot trust someone’s biggest fans to give an objective account of someone’s life…Can you? This skepticism has been found unwarranted for a couple reasons. First, we know that eyewitness accounts are always the most reliable when looking at events that we ourselves did not observe. If the gospels demonstrate themselves to be the testimony of eyewitnesses they are then the most trustworthy views of Jesus we possess. Second, the claim that someone is unable to correctly convey a story because they are “biased” is highly unwarranted. We will look at each of these issues.
When asking the question “What happened with this Jesus guy?” the first persons we should ask are those who walked with him, talked with him and lived their lives with him. Or as 2 Peter 1:16 rightly records, those who were eyewitnesses of his majesty. This requires us to look at the claims of the gospels to be just that – a written record of eyewitness testimony. This was a view taken for granted for years until the advent of critical scholarship in the 19th century where the origin and source of all the gospel writings was brought into question. Revisionist historians and liberal New Testament scholars began to claim the gospels were 3rd or 4th century compilations of Christian communities which did not reflect anything close to eyewitness testimony.
However, there has been much movement in New Testament studies over the last several decades which has ruled out the revisionist ideas of liberal theology. The late 3rd and 4th century dates have been utterly repudiated and we have been able to date all the gospels conclusively to the first century. This has been due to amazing archaeological discoveries such as a fragment of John’s gospel dating to around 125 AD. Additionally, recent scholarship has shown that there are very good reasons to understand the gospels as testimony. In 2006 Scottish New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham published Jesus and the Eyewitnesses – the Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony which makes a strong case for our understanding the gospels as containing the testimony of those who knew the life and teaching of Jesus directly. More and more scholars are coming to the position which the church has always held. The gospels are the most reliable portrait of the life and teaching of Jesus because they contain the accounts of the people who were there.[20] But were these people just Jesus fan boys, too biased to be trusted? Good question.
The question of bias is important, after all, the gospel writers did not leave us with a simple narrative that records nothing more than rote historical facts. No, they were convinced of the truth of Jesus’ teaching and their account of history contains the teaching of theology about Jesus as well as historical data. Yes, there are towns, rulers, times and places mentioned, but also teaching as to the identity of Jesus and his mission from God. But does this one sided account, that of Jesus’ followers, disqualify their testimony as being valid? In fact I will argue that if you want to know anything about something or someone, you are better off asking people who are passionately committed to the story he shares. A few examples can help us see that Bias is not always bad.
One example comes from the world of technology and through a simple question. If you desire to know about the ins and outs of Macintosh computers, would you ask someone has never touched a Mac to be your teacher? Of course not…who would you ask? You probably would ask one of those MacIdolaters who are loyal subjects of the cult of Steve Jobs. You know that crazy Apple guy who has to put down Windows every time the subject arises. You know the guy who is flossing[21] his iPhone for all to see. You may be that guy. My point is this. The people from whom you will get the best information about Macs are probably the ones who are the most biased; the ones who are passionate about their elite computers. In like manner, NASCAR fans should be consulted on the intricacies of Stock car racing, indie rockers should be the ones you talk to about what is happening in that music scene and his original followers are the ones we should consult about Jesus Christ.
One final example of a more serious kind should be mentioned. To exclude a person who was involved with an event, who passionately cares that the story be told, as being a reliable witness would be quite odd indeed. This sort of reasoning would rule out the accounts of Jewish historians of the Holocaust. They are most interested as they were the ones most closely involved with this horrific course of events. We would not think of discounting someone’s testimony because they are “biased” against the Nazi’s because their family went through the Holocaust. No, rather we trust them as they were the closest people to the events and care most passionately about conveying and passing on this history.[22]
Until someone is shown to be an unreliable witness we ought to take their word for something until they are shown to be not trustworthy. The philosopher Immanuel Kant rightly showed some time ago that an assumption that all people are lying all the time is self-refuting. We should assume truth telling unless we have good reason to think that someone is not telling the truth.[23] If we find that someone is in their right mind and capable to tell the truth, is willing to do so, his words are recorded and preserved with integrity and his testimony is validated by other witnesses, we should trust the words of that person.[24] It seems that this is precisely the sort of reality that we find in the writers of the gospels.
Most of them were religious Jews who thought that intentional falsification (lying) was a direct violation of one of the Ten Commandments. Lying was not a virtue in their community. This does not mean there were not religious Jews who were liars at the time, but it was not a virtue extolled in the community.
The New Testament writers were concerned with “delivering” the teaching of Jesus and the gospel to the next generation in their writing. The Apostle Paul specifically says that he delivered or passed on to the Corinthian church the gospel. This gospel was considered by the early Christians as a matter “of first importance.” See 1 Corinthians 15:1-3. There is good evidence that they believed they were passing on what they saw as a holy tradition through their writings.[25]
They were a culture steeped in a tradition of oral teaching and memorization. In fact, scholars have shown that ancient peoples could memorize massive amounts of information, with an important focus on maintaining the very words of their teachers.[26]
If they experienced any external pressure it was against the preaching of their message. They gained nothing in the way of position, power and possessions for faithfully telling the Jesus story. To the contrary most of them were killed for it.
It is beyond the scope of this paper but there is good textual evidence that we have the New Testament documents today in a form that is extremely close to the original manuscripts. This is non controversial. Most scholars agree that the current Greek texts of the New Testament are very accurate. To put it simply, we have pretty much what was written.
Additionally, there was very little time between the actual events of Jesus and the writing of the New Testament. The less time that passes the less likely legendary development occurs. The gospels were all finished by around 90AD with Mark and Matthew likely within just a few decades of the resurrection of Jesus. In the period in which the gospels were written down many eyewitnesses of the events would have still been alive. As Richard Bauckham states, “The Gospels were written within living memory of the events they recount. Mark’s gospel was written well within the lifetime of many of the eyewitnesses, while the other three canonical Gospels were written in the period when living eyewitnesses were becoming scarce, exactly at the point in time when their testimony would perish with them were it not put in writing”[27]
If an author shows that he tells the truth on matters that are verifiable externally, he is thought to be a reliable witness. The New Testament writers note at least thirty historically confirmed people in their works. The gospels in general and the passion narrative in particular find corroboration in several ancient sources outside of the New Testament.[28] In addition, we find quotations at length from the gospels in the sermons and writings of the early church fathers.
When the gospels are examined, they show a strong historicity which is only doubted when a bias against the supernatural is brought to bear. Many skeptics have written off the testimony of the gospels because they were written down by men who believed in God, who record the occurrence of the miraculous and the resurrection of an incarnate Savior God. Yet such bias against the supernatural is just the work of a closed mind. Someone who says – I cannot believe the words of the New Testament because I don’t believe in God or miracles – is already closed off to any amount of evidence. They are saying “I don’t believe because I don’t believe.” Such views are intellectually stifling and hardened to what God might say if they simply read the gospels with an open heart and mind to see the unparalleled life of Jesus on display.
In closing, the gospel literature is unique indeed. It is part biography, part history, part theology yet passionately what Bauckham simply calls testimony.
Understanding the Gospels as testimony, we can recognize this theological meaning of the history not as an arbitrary imposition on the objective facts, but as the way the witnesses perceived the history, in an inextricable coinherence of observable event and perceptible meaning. Testimony is the category that enables us to read the Gospels in a properly historical way and a properly theological way. It is where history and theology meet.[29]
In this series we will be looking at testimony which records the interactions of Jesus with people from various stations and walks of life. Our primary source for these narratives will be the gospel according to Luke. We will observe a few stories from Matthew and John as well but primarily we will walk with Luke to hear the voice of Jesus. With that said, we’ll take a little time together to learn a bit about the gospel written by the one who historically became known as the beloved physician.[30]
As with any work of literature there are some pertinent questions we ask when approaching a text and there are additional questions when coming to a work of Scripture. Some questions we want to discuss briefly about the gospel of Luke.
Who wrote it?
When was it written?
What is the subject and theological focus?
As we approach Luke several of these questions will be directly related to the book of Acts as we have very good reasons to see Luke/Acts as a large work by one author in two parts. Luke and Acts, have similar prologues that connect them overtly and they also share a similarity in style and language. In the discussion below we may refer to this as “Luke/Acts.”
The oldest traditions and writings we have all ascribe authorship of this gospel to a gentile follower of Jesus and companion of the apostle Paul. He was an educated person who was referred to in Scripture as being a physician. We have no good reason to doubt this as the internal evidence (what is said in the New Testament) and external evidence (what is said about this book by others) all point to Luke being the one who compiled the story of Jesus from eyewitness accounts from those in the early church. In fact, Luke’s gospel is introduced in the following manner.
1Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, 2just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, 3it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.[31]
The reasons for holding to Luke’s authorship are as follows. First, the earliest existing manuscript of Luke ascribes authorship to Luke and there is no other author in the early tradition mentioned but Luke.[32] With Luke being directly addressed to someone, in this case someone referred to as Theophilus, M. Dilebus makes the point that it is highly unlikely that the book was ever anonymous.[33] It is clear that Luke’s name has been connected to this work from very early in tradition. The external evidence is equally convincing as Lukan authorship for this gospel is found in the Muratorian Canon, the anti-Marcionite Prologue to Luke, Ireneus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian, Eusebius, and Jerome.[34] All of these early literary works speak of Luke as the author for the gospel bearing his name. Finally, the book of Acts provides some interesting internal evidence to corroborate Luke as the author of this two-volume work. There are four passages in Acts (16:10-17, 20:5-16, 21:1-18, 27:1-28:16) that record “we” did this or that suggesting the author’s own presence in these situations.[35] The final passage in Acts has the author with Paul in Rome so he must be one of people mentioned as to being with Paul in Rome. This leaves Demas, Crescans, Jesus called Justus, Luke, Epaphras, and Epaphroditus. There has never been any reason given to assume authorship to any of these, so Luke’s authorship is again reinforced.[36] One final note, many have discussed the nature of the medical language used in this gospel as evidence that “the beloved physician” (Colossians 4:14 ESV) was indeed the author. New Testament Scholars DA Carson, Goug Moo, and Leon Morris agree that this argument from medical language has suffered recently in some circles, but the linguistic nature of the book does show that the author was an educated person. Luke, the doctor, would certainly fit this description.[37] Both internal and external evidence shows that the traditional attestation of authorship to Luke is accurate and trustworthy.
There are certain events in New Testament chronology that are largely uncontested by historians and NT Scholars (whether skeptical or confessionally oriented). The following list gives the events and approximate dates:
Event Date (AD)
End of the Frist Century 100
Fall of Jerusalem 70
Martydom of Peter and Paul 64-68
Epistles of Paul 45-68
Some Oral Tradition 32-70
Crucifixion of Jesus 32
It is these dates that serve as external references or historical markers for our discussion of the four canonical gospels. These are major events in church history and some, like the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, are so well documented as to be without dissent. These dates are important as we investigate the relationship to early church history recorded in Acts and these well established first century dates. Acts is important in dating the gospels due to the fact that it is the second volume of the two-part Luke/Acts work. If one can zero in on a good date for Acts, then the composition of Luke must be at least written at a similar time if not earlier.
Though some make an argument for placing Luke in the AD 80-90 range the most central argument for this is that Luke’s gospel (Luke 19:41-44; 21:20-24) seems to predict future events surrounding the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 there are good reasons to prefer an earlier date in the 60s.[38] The book of Acts concludes with Paul under house arrest in Rome a situation which lasts two years according to Acts 28:30-31. This two year time period comes after the rise of Festus to power in Judea recorded in Acts 24:27 in AD 59. This places the time of Paul’s imprisonment at precisely 60-62, which implies Acts was completed in the early 60s around this same time period. If so, then we must place Luke no later than that, with the Luke/Acts work completed before A.D. 62. It may also be noted that there is no mention of the widespread persecution in the mid sixties at the hands of the Roman emperor Nero, as well as no mention of Paul’s death by martyrdom of which Luke certainly would have mentioned had it already taken place.[39] Furthermore, there is no direct mention of the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 in the book of Acts which features a Jerusalem setting on two occasions (Acts 6-7 and 21-23).[40] Thus, a date in the early 60s explains this absence of these events in Acts; they simply had not taken place at the time of its writing.
Along with Matthew and Mark, Luke’s work is one of the canonical gospels known collectively as the synoptics. The word synoptic is derived from two Greek terms that when combined mean to see together. When examined together, these gospels present a multifaceted view of the life and teaching of Jesus. So put simply, Luke’s subject in writing is Jesus, his life, his works, his death and resurrection. Though we do not have time to investigate all the themes explored in Luke’s gospel here, a few are worth mentioning. First, the gospel has a strong focus on good works and justice for the poor. This is typified by Luke’s accounting of Jesus beginning his ministry with the reading from Isaiah in Luke chapter 4:
18“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed,19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”[41]
Jesus is seen often in Luke as a compassionate servant who cares about broken people and people in need. Women, children, the poor and the socially outcast were groups of people in the first century who would have been seen as marginal. Jesus is seen associating and serving all of them in Luke’s gospel.[42] Second, there is a focus in Luke on the prayer life of Jesus and his dependence upon the Father as well as the importance of prayer in our lives. Finally, Luke has been called the gospel of the Holy Spirit due to his focus on the work of the third person of the Trinity. The Spirit led Jesus in his ministry on earth and the Spirit now leads us in continuing the work of Jesus in our time.
In closing I do pray that when we look to Jesus we see him as he actually is. He is much more than man, guru or prophet. He is much more than the divine you that has yet to be discovered. He is the incarnate God, the living and breathing Savior who walked the earth, died a sacrificial death for sin, rose from death and today is leading his people. As we know who he is we can encounter him through the gospels. As we see him interact with various people in our series together we truly see the great answer to one of the great questions facing human beings. How does God treat people? How will God treat me?
As we walk forward together I pray that in a world where voices about Jesus are in abundance we would stop and hear his voice to us today. It is my hope that the risen Christ will shape us, move us forward in mission and connect us deeply to God through the gospel. God put his feet on planet earth in a small, obscure area of the Middle East some two thousand years ago. He left behind an empty tomb, a living people and good news for the world. God is a forgiving God, a just and holy God and a God who conquers sin, death and suffering through his own sacrificial love for us. He is there and he is not silent – he is bursting through barriers and speaking to hearts and lives today. As we look to the stories of people’s encounters with Jesus this is our passion. We want to clear out all the noise and our own preconceived notions of him and simply Let Jesus Speak.
To that end let us listen well,
Reid S. Monaghan
Lead Pastor, Jacob’s Well
[1] Robert M. Bowman and J. Ed Komoszewski, Putting Jesus in His Place : The Case for the Deity of Christ (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel Publications, 2007), 17.
[2] This, of course, is the famous dictum of the late humanist astronomer Carl Sagan who popularized this line on his public television show Cosmos. The book with the same name begins with these same words. See Carl Sagan, Cosmos, 1st ed. (New York: Random House, 1980), 1.
[3] Muslims refer to Jesus as Isa (from the Arabic for Jesus).
[4] See Mark Durie, “‘Isa, the Muslim Jesus.” http://www.answering-islam.org/Intro/islamic_jesus.html [accessed September, 18 2009].
[5] Norman L. Geisler and Abdul Saleeb, Answering Islam : The Crescent in Light of the Cross, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2002), 20.
[6] See Tacitus, Annals 15.44
[7] Theravada Buddhism holds not concept of the divine while Mahayana does. For a comparison of the two see the chart in Huston Smith, The World’s Religions : Our Great Wisdom Traditions ([San Francisco]: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 126.
[8]One thinks of the bestselling book The Secret where the idea that if you learn a secret spiritual law of the universe you can have “the ability to transform any weakness or suffering into strength, power, perfect peace, health, and abundance.” Rhonda Byrne, The Secret, 1st Atria Books/Beyond Words hardcover ed. (New York, Hillsboro, Or.: Atria Books; Beyond Words Pub., 2006).
[9] See Douglas R. Groothuis, Unmasking the New Age (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1986), 27-29; 144-146.
[10] For a very thorough treatment of the relationship of the biblical worldview to the myriad of new age ideas see John P. Newport, The New Age Movement and the Biblical Worldview : Conflict and Dialogue (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, 1998).
[11] See for example Maggie Sieger DAVID VAN BIEMA, Chris Taylor, “The Lost Gospels,” Time Magazine (2003). http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1006499,00.html.
[12] See Bart D. Ehrman, Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code : A Historian Reveals What We Really Know About Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). Ehrman is a skeptic about biblical Christianity but does a good job showing the sensationalism in Dan Brown’s work. For a critique from Christian historians see Darrell L. Bock, Breaking the Da Vinci Code : Answers to the Questions Everyone’s Asking (Nashville: Nelson Books, 2004); Ben Witherington, The Gospel Code : Novel Claims About Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Da Vinci (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2004).
[13]James Stewart, The Strong Name.
[14] See Paul D. Wegner, The Journey from Texts to Translations : The Origin and Development of the Bible (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 1999), 186-188. For basic information even the wiki can get you up to speed here - “The Dead Sea Scrolls,” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls.
[15] See Darrell L. Bock, The Missing Gospels : Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities (Nashville: Nelson Books, 2006). Bock lays out the underlying texts and ideas surrounding these early Gnostic documents.
[16] Philip Schaff, “The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus,” (Public Domain, Electronic Version Logos Research Systems, Inc.). http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.ix.ii.xxxii.html.
[17] Greg Koukl has a brief and helpful commentary on how there can simply be “no lost books of the Bible” Greg Koukl, “No Lost Books of the Bible,” (1994). http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5473 [accessed Septermber 25, 2009].
[18] Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities : The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (New York ; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
[19] The following is a discussion adapted from my previous work Reid S. Monaghan, An Introduction to the New Testament, 2007. Available online at www.JacobsWellNJ.org/resources/theology-booklets.
[20] A really good recent book on the trustworthy nature of the canonical Gospels is Mark D. Roberts, Can We Trust the Gospels? : Investigating the Reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2007), 39-51.
[21] See the Urban Dictionary for a definition of the word floss - Schaff.
[22] For a more sophisticated look at the uniqueness of Holocaust testimonies see the treatment in Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses : The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2006), 493-502.
[23] James Porter Moreland, Scaling the Secular City : A Defense of Christianity (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1987), 137-138.
[24] Ibid., 138.
[25] Ibid., 144.
[26] See particularly chapters 10 and 11 of Bauckham, 240-263.
[27] Ibid., 7.
[28] See the chapter “The Corroborating Evidence” interviewing history professor Edwin Yamauchi in Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ : A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998), 73.
[29] Bauckham, 5,6.
[30] Luke the beloved physician greets you, as does Demas. Colossians 4:41. The Holy Bible : English Standard Version : Containing the Old and New Testaments, (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Bibles, 2001).
[31] Ibid. Luke 1:1-4 (ESV)
[32] Douglas J. Moo and Leon Morris D.A. Carson, An Introduction to the New Testament (Grand Rapids: MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992), 113.
[33] Ibid., 115.
[34] Leon Morris, Luke : An Introduction and Commentary, Rev. ed. (Leicester, England Grand Rapids, Mich.: Inter-Varsity Press ; Eerdmans ;, 1988), 19-20.
[35]Craig Blomberg and William Lane Craig, “The Historicity of the New Testament,” in Reasonable Faith - Christan Truth and Apologetics (Wheaton: IL: Crossway Books, 1994), 205.
[36] D.A. Carson, 114.See the following of Paul’s epistles for references to these individuals Philemon 23,24; 2 Tim 4:10,11; Col 4:11-14; and Philippians 4:18.
[37] Ibid., 114
[38] Darrell L. Bock, Luke, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 1994), Volume 1 - 17, 18.
[39] Morris, 29.
[40] Bock, Luke, 18.
[41] The Holy Bible : English Standard Version : Containing the Old and New Testaments, Luke 4:18,19.
[42] Morris, 50-51.
Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the Eyewitnesses : The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2006.
Bock, Darrell L. Luke. 2 vols. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 1994.
________. Breaking the Da Vinci Code : Answers to the Questions Everyone’s Asking. Nashville: Nelson Books, 2004.
________. The Missing Gospels : Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities. Nashville: Nelson Books, 2006.
Bowman, Robert M., and J. Ed Komoszewski. Putting Jesus in His Place : The Case for the Deity of Christ. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel Publications, 2007.
Byrne, Rhonda. The Secret. 1st Atria Books/Beyond Words hardcover ed. New York, Hillsboro, Or.: Atria Books; Beyond Words Pub., 2006.
Craig, Craig Blomberg and William Lane. “The Historicity of the New Testament.” In Reasonable Faith - Christan Truth and Apologetics. Wheaton: IL: Crossway Books, 1994.
D.A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo and Leon Morris. An Introduction to the New Testament. Grand Rapids: MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992.
DAVID VAN BIEMA, Maggie Sieger, Chris Taylor. “The Lost Gospels.” Time Magazine (2003). http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1006499,00.html.
“The Dead Sea Scrolls.” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls.
Durie, Mark. “‘Isa, the Muslim Jesus.” http://www.answering-islam.org/Intro/islamic_jesus.html [accessed September, 18 2009].
Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Christianities : The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. New York ; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
________. Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code : A Historian Reveals What We Really Know About Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Groothuis, Douglas R. Unmasking the New Age. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1986.
The Holy Bible : English Standard Version : Containing the Old and New Testaments. Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Bibles, 2001.
Koukl, Greg. “No Lost Books of the Bible.” (1994). http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5473 [accessed Septermber 25, 2009].
Moreland, James Porter. Scaling the Secular City : A Defense of Christianity. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1987.
Morris, Leon. Luke : An Introduction and Commentary. Rev. ed. Leicester, England Grand Rapids, Mich.: Inter-Varsity Press ; Eerdmans ;, 1988.
Newport, John P. The New Age Movement and the Biblical Worldview : Conflict and Dialogue. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, 1998.
Roberts, Mark D. Can We Trust the Gospels? : Investigating the Reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2007.
Sagan, Carl. Cosmos. 1st ed. New York: Random House, 1980.
Saleeb, Norman L. Geisler and Abdul. Answering Islam : The Crescent in Light of the Cross. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2002.
Schaff, Philip. The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus: Public Domain, Electronic Version Logos Research Systems, Inc. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.ix.ii.xxxii.html.
Smith, Huston. The World’s Religions : Our Great Wisdom Traditions. [San Francisco]: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991.
Stewart, James. The Strong Name.
Strobel, Lee. The Case for Christ : A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998.
Wegner, Paul D. The Journey from Texts to Translations : The Origin and Development of the Bible. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 1999.
Witherington, Ben. The Gospel Code : Novel Claims About Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Da Vinci. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2004.
Sojourn Community Church is hosting the final Acts 29 bootcamp of 2009 November 10-11. If you are interested in church planting this would something you would want to check out.
Here is a little 411 from the boot camp web site. You can register online if interested.
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AMBITION. Simply knowing how to plant and lead a church is not enough. Knowledge must come hand-in-hand with God-given ambition. The Apostle Paul responded to God’s call to make the gospel known among the Gentiles with zealous determination. Paul, empowered by the Holy Spirit, made it his ambition to take the gospel to those who did not have it even if it cost him everything. He proclaimed the gospel, gathered believers into churches, established elders, and discipled believers; and he did all this with zeal and passion. In the hope of this type of ambition overflowing in the Church, we would like to invite you to the Acts 29 Network Ambition Boot Camp, November 10-11, 2009, which will focus on planting and leading churches with God-given ambition.
Today’s Junk drawer is mainly scripture and summary. It is a walk together back through some of the high peaks that we viewed during “Life on Doctrine.” I pray it may be of help to you this week in slowing down, meditating on truth and living your life “on it.” Grace to you all.
That all of life is relational, we are not the result of blind matter + time + chance, NOR are we all God and just have not realized it yet (pretty big thing to forget, no?). The universe, animals, humans and all that exists are related to God who is renewing and redeeming all the time. He is bringing people into his family from every corner of the earth, every tribe, tongue and people.
Ephesians 1:3-10 – 3Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. 7In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight 9making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
God’s purpose includes rescuing rebellious punks, human beings that are running from him and under his just wrath and condemnation for sin. God forgives us, places us into a new family called the church, bringing together a new people out of the many peoples of the world. The church is therefore a family, sent on mission, living to reflect the goodness, kindness and mercy of God in Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 2:1-10 (ESV) 1And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Ephesians 2:13-22 (ESV) 13But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. 17And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. 18For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. 19So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
God is sending his people into this world to reflect his wisdom in the world…doing through them wonderful works. We as his people pray for one another that we might first and foremost love God and then allow him to change us and use our lives for his purposes in our times.
Ephesians 3:7-20 (ESV) - 7Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power. 8To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, 9and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, 10so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. 11This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, 12in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. 13So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory. 14For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 20Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us,
As a family living in unity of truth and mission we want to walk in a manner worthy of our calling. We desire to be equipped to serve, not to be people coming to a religious WALMART we call a church in order to consume. We desire to live in a new way together in — not in malice, drinking haterade, back biting and punking each other all the time.
Ephesians 4:1-6 (ESV) 1I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— 5one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
Ephesians 4:9-12 (ESV) 9(In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? 10He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) 11And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,
Ephesians 4:17-24 (ESV) 17Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 20But that is not the way you learned Christ!— 21assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
We are a community which follows God together seeking wisdom about how we live. We seek his paths in the way we approach sex, our speech and money, in the way we live out marriage and the household and radically equality before God together as a Spirit-filled community.
Ephesians 5:1-10 (ESV) 1Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. 2And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. 3But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. 4Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. 5For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. 6Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. 7Therefore do not become partners with them; 8for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light 9(for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), 10and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.
Ephesians 5:15-21 (ESV) 15Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. 17Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, 19addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, 20giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
We realize that we are in this together as his people and that not everyone is cheering for us. Our lives are lived in the shadow of a spiritual war that Jesus has won completely. He now leads us in the final phases of God’s full triumph over the forces of darkness and evil.
Ephesians 6:10-18 (ESV) 10Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. 11Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. 12For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. 13Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. 14Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, 15and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. 16In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; 17and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, 18praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints…
It is our hope and prayer together that we would seek to live our lives on doctrine and to find joy in repentance when we fall short of walking in a manner worthy of our calling. No perfect people, just people on the way with Jesus. Hoping that we might find life, satisfaction and transformation in Him.
Walking Together…
