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I wish CNN would stop: today it’s Moses

Posted on April 15, 2014 Written by savage Leave a Comment

CNN.com has yet another Biblically-related piece, this time on Moses. I’m glad to see CNN acknowledge the Bible, I suppose, but I wish it was less “surprise!” journalism and more rationally-based.

I totally get the “We’re going to inform you of things you don’t know” vibe – hey, to some degree, that’s the whole point of writing. But they tend to forget that they could be wrong, and very much so.

So let’s look at what they say about ol’ Moshe.

“He was Egyptian.”

Their first point is that moses was an Egyptian, and not Hebrew. Actually, no – let’s try again.

… despite all the indications that Moses was Egyptian — especially his name — he was actually Israelite.

In order to be an Israelite, Moses would have had to wait until after someone created Israel – Abraham’s sons were Hebrew, not Abrahamites.

Err… well. The truth is, he might have been an Egyptian, an Egyptian who saw Hebrew (not Israelite) theology as a reflection of Atenism, and bought into the value of all men (unlike what Atenism would dictate). But he also would have had to go against every Egyptian value of humanity in order for this to be true.

Not impossible – Abraham, too, went against the mores of his culture – but it also means that the blanket statement that Moses was Egyptian, based on his name and station, has a lot less strength than it should have. Bad way to phrase it, CNN.

“Moses wasn’t anti-slavery.”

Um. This is based on the edict that Hebrew (not “Israelite!”) slaves were to be freed after seven years – making them bondservants and not slaves – and on the rules regarding injury to slaves who were not of Hebraic descent.

This is a misunderstanding of slavery and the Law. (Surprise; CNN doesn’t understand Hebrew thought! Oh, wait, I just used “surprise journalism.”)

Slaves were not merely property, no matter their descent. To some degree, the Law catered to the culture of the time (and not the culture of the time of Josiah, when some would claim the Torah was created); there’s other Scripture that makes reference to the same point.

So the Hebrews came from a culture where everyone was a slave (except Pharoah); therefore, despite the assertion that they were created in the image of God, slavery would still have been very much the norm. The concept of bondservitude would have been typical – the new idea would have been the mandated freedom (although a servant could choose permanent association with his master.)

Was Moses antislavery? Um… yes, especially by comparison to his compatriots. Were the Hebrews antislavery themselves? Far from it, although having been slaves, they were slightly less favorable toward it than others.

Moses’ edicts towards slavery were revolutionary for the time; the Law moved very much left of center. Claiming otherwise is poor form.

Moses had a black wife.

Surprise! In other news, water is wet. The sun is apparently warm. Ice is cold.

CNN pointed out that the protest might have been culturally-based, rather than based on skin color (especially after making the assertion that Moses was Egyptian, with a suggestion that the Egyptians were black as well.) This is a worthwhile assumption – Moses was death on a stick when it came to idolatry imported from other cultures.

However… um. If Moses was Egyptian, why was Aharon his brother? And Miryam his sister? I’m confused how that would work – with repeated assertions of the common descent – if Moses was Egyptian as being claimed.

Moses didn’t come up with a single law.

The assertion here is an unusual one for CNN: It says that Moses didn’t originate the Laws, but that God did.

Whoa — very unusual for CNN, indeed, to acknowledge God somehow, even if it is Pesach.

But is the assertion worthwhile?

Sort of, maybe. If you squint.

Here’s how I see it: God gave Moses the Torah. (Torah meaning “the law,” not “the five books of the Torah,” although you could make that argument as well. I won’t. Out of scope.)

The Torah is the written Law; that came from God as its source. But at the same time, God set Moses down to judge (Exodus 18:13, for example.) Those judgements are not necessarily part of Torah given directly by God; Moses may have derived them, and they may have been binding.

We don’t know the source of everything. That means the statement from CNN is weakened.

Moses didn’t write the Torah.

Here, we are speaking of the Five Books of Moses, what people usually mean by “The Torah” – the Pentateuch. The assertion is that Moses didn’t actually commit them to scrolls.

It’s hard to argue with this point – Josiah does factor in. Moses probably wrote very little – he may have been literate (probably was, given his station in Egypt, but may not have been literate in Hebrew.) But the “books of Moses” refer to his role as lawgiver, not as author.


In the end, CNN is still not being entirely honest about their approach to the Bible. They’re still looking for some sort of “gotcha!,” how what you believe isn’t right – and even if it’s not, the core of what is believed doesn’t need destruction through smarmy statements of “I know better than you.”

Shalom.

Filed Under: Bible Study Tagged With: cnn, moses

Does Christianity hate homosexuals, or what?

Posted on May 6, 2013 Written by savage Leave a Comment

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)

Wow, that’s a two-sentence gospel summary.

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.

Homosexuality is carnal activity between two people of the same gender. Pederasty is a relationship between a man and a young boy. I find the latter a concerning issue about which – as a father of three young men – I am unable to reason without overwhelming emotion. Short form: pederasty – don’t go there.

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)

To CNN’s credit, it referred to and included both Romans 1:26-17 and Leviticus 18:22. It’s where I would have gone – and I actually looked them up before continuing to read the CNN article – and I’m glad they had the guts to mention the verses, since they deconstruct the very assertion CNN’s trying to make about the so-called vagueness of the Bible on the issue.

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.

One pastor who attends my church said that he was glad to attend our church because of its systemic willingness to ignore what people called themselves. When he was visited by some deacons, he told them he’d been a pastor… and yet one of the deacons still asked him about whether he’d accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, not accepting a claim at face value about such an important issue.

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)

Filed Under: Bible Study, Lifestyle Tagged With: cnn, homosexuality, leviticus, romans, sin

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