Exploring the Well

Wandering the savage garden...

Take Care for Yourself

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I’ve been doing a Bible-in-a-Year project, thanks to Logos. I’m actually just now getting to D’varim (Deuteronomy), despite the schedule saying that I should be most of the way through Shmu’el (II Samuel, specifically; Samuel isn’t really supposed to be broken up into two books, but often is for convenience’ sake).

Way, way behind. I’m here because I got sick in late February; came down with a set of killer migraines. (Obviously, not killer enough; I’m not dead yet.) Then my family went through some stressful situations; it’s great having teenagers!

And along the way, my Bible reading dropped off. And with it, my prayer life. And with it… me. I felt alone, lost.

Time to fix that, I think. It’s past time, always, really.

So I’ve been pushing myself to read a few days’ worth each day, to catch up again. Yesterday I finished Bamidbar, Numbers; if I had to say that I had a “favorite book of the Bible,” Bamidbar wouldn’t be it.

Today’s reading – well, actually, March 1’s reading – was D’varim 3-5. This is the Covenant, restated; Moshe is saying “here’s the history, here’s the stipulation, here’s the requirement.” (See Covenant Treaty Format for Near Eastern Kingdoms for what looks like a decent walkthrough on the forms of covenants.)

Along the way, D’varim 4:9 stood out like a sore thumb:

9 “Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children’s children— (Deuteronomy 4:9 ESV)

It was being addressed to Israel, but it’s pierced my heart. I’ve not done that. And it shows.

Pray for me, if you would.

The Challenge of the Pardes

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There are reactions we’re all called to make, in every occurrence in our lives. Those reactions determine, and are determined by, who we are, and tell us much of what we are – and, thankfully, we have some measure of control and determination.

The Talmud, in the Mishnah, refers to the legend of the Pardes. In this, four eminent rabbis traveled to Paradise, and encountered Holiness there.

They had four different reactions: one went insane, one lost his faith, one died, and one came and went in peace.

These reactions mirror ours. When we are presented with… anything, a situation, a question, an experience, we reflect that experience and channel it in some variations of these.

Insanity

When we integrate the experience without context or understanding, we are “mad,” in a way. Imagine those who think the Easter Bunny is somehow a canonical Christian image, or that Santa Claus hung around with Jesus. Imagine those who can’t tolerate that Jesus is the Way and the Life, and think that a good Buddhist is as deserving of Heaven as a good Christian.

(Meanwhile, orthodox theology says that none of us deserve Heaven, period, but are considered co-heirs with Christ through acceptance of His death on the Cross in our stead [Romans 8:12-17]. Anyone who refuses that sacrifice, no matter how wonderful a person they are, is unsaved.)

Death

We might also endure an experience, neither adding to it nor subtracting from it. We become static, unchanging, fixed in position. This lack of growth is “dying,” in a sense.

Loss of Faith

When we reject an experience and its implications of the glory of God, we lose our faith… maybe not literally or wholly, but we might simply become jaded, or refuse to acknowledge God’s role in that experience. (Or, of course, we might literally lose faith entirely.)

The rabbi who lost faith was Elisha ben Abuyah, and he’s referred to as Acher, אחר, “the other.”

While accounts are not mechanically literal (and therefore we don’t know for sure), it seems he rejected the idea of the afterlife; one story has it that he saw a child do a good deed, and lose his life, while a man who sinned suffered no consequences.

He then became a self-declared outsider, one who rejected the teachings that he himself possessed.

It’s tragic, really, to think about.

Peace

The rabbi who “survived,” Rabbi Akiva, “came in peace and went in peace.” This suggests that he was the only one who went to the Orchard knowing who and what he was, and let that inform his actions and reactions. He preserved his faith, he extended his experience of the Holy, he grew.

The Holocaust – referring to the Nazi extermination of groups such as Jews, Gypsies, and other such ethnicities and subcultures – stands alongside the Exodus and the destruction of the Second Temple in Jewish life as hallmark events. (There are more, but for me, these are the three most impactful.)

Jews had a chance to react to the Holocaust, after its ending — and those reactions mirrored the reactions of the rabbis to the Pardes. Some Jews lost faith, rejecting God; some Jews went mad, embracing hatred. Many, many, many Jews obviously died. Some endured, retaining their faith and their essential character despite the horror.

This is me. This is us. This is everyone, to every experience.

Through Christ, we are able to achieve peace, and with His grace and mercy, we are able to go in peace, if we listen to Him and not to the chaos of our own hearts in our agonies and ecstasies.

And our reactions can tell us who we are in Him, too; if we have not His peace, then we know what we lack. We know then that we must attempt to invite Him to be nearer to us, to reach out for His Hand in our lives.

Have peace.

Ricky Gervais on the nature of God

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Not long ago, I read a tweet by Ricky Gervais, asking why God let terrible things happen. It was framed as a multiple choice question, with the answers stacking the deck, naturally: God must not exist, or God is allowing terrible things as punishment, or God doesn’t care, for example.

All of the choices reflected negatively on God. The answers presupposed that “terrible things” were of primal importance, as if the comfort of this very moment were the only thing about which we or God should care.

I don’t mind the sentiment, honestly. In the 1940s, most of my family disappeared in the Holocaust; I can fully sympathize with the anguish associated with terrible things.

Yet… God is responsible, but not to blame for these terrible things. He’s responsible in the sense that in the end He will create a new Heaven and a new Earth, using the construct we have at our feet.. but not to blame, in that we choose.

And blame presumes that the “terrible thing” is evil, when it may or may not be. Perhaps it was caused by evil; maybe it is evil indeed. (Or perhaps it’s a natural event which causes harm, like a tsunami or tornado.)

Regardless, the event is not normally the result of God hitting the “smite” key.

What it comes down to is this: God allows events to happen in accordance with His plan, such that an event chosen by Him will occur in His time and in His way.

That event is His reforging the earth, the “Day of the Lord,” when He returns.

Everything that has happened or will happen on earth is designed to advance His inestimable will. Every event causes a ripple in a sea that flows to His desire.

A terrible event – let’s say a tornado – happens, killing a family of five Christians. Are they being punished for their sin? The Bible says “probably not.” (It’s possible, but not very likely; “natural consequences” are by far more likely to be chosen as “punishment” rather than a tornado. If there’s abuse going on, then the consequence is normally going to be family ruin, not a natural disaster.)

Yet with this “terrible event…” what is God doing?

Honestly, I don’t know, and can’t presume to know. Yet I think God can use that terrible event – not just to usher that family into His arms, but possibly as something that leads others to Him as well. Perhaps the grief of the community leads someone to search for Him, for example.

Of course it’s possible that the event could turn some away. But someone who’s turned away by such things… their faith is in desperate need of shoring up, because they’re seeing God as some kind of magic vending machine, that disposes candy when we dance in a certain way.

God is not a vending machine. God is greater than our ability to describe; expecting Him to dance to our tune, and turning away when He does not, is more of an indictment of us than of Him.

Terrible things, indeed. Perhaps the focus shouldn’t be on the terrible events that catch our eyes, but on the terrible things that those flashes of despair illuminate through our responses.

Does Christianity hate homosexuals, or what?

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Yesterday I read a post on CNN, “When Christians become a ‘hated minority’.” In it, CNN attempts to summarize a situation in which Christians are refusing to identify homosexuality as a sin, and as an added bonus (thanks, CNN!) some Christians claim that maybe it’s not so bad.

It’s not a particularly focused article, but it has a lot of useful statements.

I’d rather know I’m wrong than suspect I’m right. I don’t know I’m wrong unless I put some stakes in the ground: I make an assertion, with the full knowledge that someone wiser than I might come along and tell me what a fool I am. I’m okay with that; the delivery isn’t important, but the message is.

So what’s happening here is good, in the long run: it defines a problem (dressed in frilly clothes of “Christians are becoming a hated minority”) and describes a lot of issues in the Christian community concerning a specific issue (namely, homosexuality).

One thing that stood out – and actually inspired me to write about the article, which seemed rather “me-too” at first – was this passage:

What the Bible says

What about the popular evangelical claim, “We don’t hate the sinner, just the sin” – is that seen as intolerance or hate speech when it comes to homosexuality?

There are those who say you can’t hate the sin and love the sinner because being gay or lesbian is defined by one’s sexual behavior; it’s who someone is.

“Most people who identify as gay and lesbian would say that this is not an action I’m choosing to do; this is who I am,” says Timothy Beal, author of “The Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book.”

Beal, a religion professor at Case Western University in Ohio, says it should be difficult for any Christian to unequivocally declare that the Bible opposes homosexuality because the Bible doesn’t take a single position on the topic. It’s an assertion that many scholars and mainline Protestant pastors would agree with.

Some people cite Old Testament scriptures as condemning homosexuality, such as Leviticus 18:22 – “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination.” But other Christians counter by saying they are not bound by the Old Testament.

Oh, my. This block of text is horribly written, as a series of assertions.

Let’s be clear: first, we should all reject all sin.

13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. (Romans 6:13, ESV)

Second, ain’t none of us innocent in and of ourselves:

21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. (Romans 3:21-25, ESV, with verse 23 highlighted)

So let’s look at the crucial part of that: all of us have sinned and fallen short. We are justified by His grace as a gift, the gift of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Ain’t none of us better than any other. In the eyes of God, sin is sin is sin is sin; while some sins carry greater consequence from a human perspective (murder’s worse than lying to someone about what you ate for dinner, right?), all sin carries with it the separation from God’s Will.

So: “hate the sin, not the sinner” is alive and well. As Christians, we can’t hate the sinner – that’d call us to hate ourselves as well.

It may be that homosexuals are who they are, that they have no free will in the matter. I don’t know; I’m not homosexual, last I checked. 🙂 But that’s of no account; we’re called to go unto all the world, to witness to everyone who sins. Therefore, they get included in that set; their homosexuality is irrelevant when it comes to “do they need Christ?”

And now we get to the statement that really hit me:

Beal, a religion professor at Case Western University in Ohio, says it should be difficult for any Christian to unequivocally declare that the Bible opposes homosexuality because the Bible doesn’t take a single position on the topic. It’s an assertion that many scholars and mainline Protestant pastors would agree with.

Really?

That’s horrifying. “Many scholars and mainline Protestant pastors” are ignorant of the Bible, then.

Leviticus 18:22 is, indeed, a starting point. And it refers to the sin as an “abomination.” That’s pretty relevant. And Paul, in the NT, makes a lot of reference to homosexuality – not pederasty, even though the Greek in which Paul wrote had both words available.

If Paul had meant pederasty and not homosexuality, he could have said so. He didn’t. Therefore: he meant homosexuality, because that’s what he wrote. It isn’t difficult to figure out.

26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. (Romans 1:26-27, ESV)

Sorry, Mr. Beal. You can claim that Jesus said little about sex; that’s because the Torah said it, and Jesus saw no need to echo everything about the Law, except that He fulfilled it. (See Matthew 5:17 and Romans 3:31.)

Some, of course, choose to rewrite the Bible: they say that Christians are not bound by the Old Testament.

Oh, my. Let’s run back to the Bible, but let’s use the New Testament, since they say the Old is no longer relevant:

31 Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law. (Romans 3:31, ESV)

Wait, that says we uphold the Law. (And yes, this is one of the verses to which I referred a paragraph or two ago.) And if we uphold the Law, that says the Law is the standard by which we’re to consider ourselves moral (gosh, see Romans 2 and 3.) And the Law serves to convict us of our sin, which is why we need Christ in the first place!

Christians who say the law has no importance for us are wrong. Do away with the Law, and you do away with Christ. Do away with Christ, and you do away with the basis for calling yourself a Christian.

And honestly? If you’re going to do away with Christ, do Christians a favor and stop self-identifying as one; when you say you’re a Christian, you make it harder for actual Christians to witness to you properly. We tend to assume you know at least a little about what you’re saying about yourself.

Lastly: I mentioned a while back the use of the word “abomination,” תּוֹעֵבָה. This is a heavy, heavy word.

Sin is bad; it separates us from God.

Abomination is worse. Abomination causes God to push us away from Him. It marks behavior God rejects. It’s not for nothing that Paul goes on and on about certain sins; not only were they pervasive, but they were abominable.

This doesn’t mean the homosexual is a worse sinner than any other person; sin is sin, remember? And we all need Christ. What sin leads us to that condition is irrelevant to the condition itself.

But it does speak to the severity of the sin.

Eating a cheeseburger is wrong (as long as it’s beef and you’re using cheese from cow’s milk: see Exodus 23:19, and the reasons I say “wrong” are too complex for this post – let’s just say that it’s gross to think about in the context of that verse) but it’s not an abomination.

The sin is still sin; we’re freed from the punishment of the Law, but not the consequences of it.

I believe there are actively homosexual Christians, and by that I mean fully saved, covered by grace Christians. I also think that a homosexual act (not being homosexual, but engaging in homosexual acts) is a transgression to which Romans 6:1 applies:

6:1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? (Romans 6:1, ESV)