The Heresy of Ham

I am working my way chapter by chapter through Joel Edmund Andersons's very erudite book The Heresy of Ham (Archdeacon books, 2016).  Joel covers interesting topics like biblical literalism (I prefer hyper-literalism) as idolatry and heresy is anything that promotes division and schism in the church.  I love Joel's insights and his writing style is both powerful and filled with beautiful prose.  Even though so much of this book registers with me, I will say as I read his section on history and heresy (chapter 2), I was surprised at his understanding of the Arian controversy is so different than mine.

Let me explain, I fully agree with the orthodox position and the early councils eventually siding with Athanasius.  After saying that, it just seems to this student of history that Joel paints with a very big brush between Arius and Arianism (as if they are identical and I don't believe they are) and Athanasius as a saint and Arius as a terrible sinner.  He says the Arians never fully took over the church, they didn't?  I remember for about a ten year period where they pretty much had taken over every high position and power territory of the church.

Arius I don't believe denied the divinity of Christ as Joel claims (although this is closer to the truth when it came to later Arians).  Arius focused on the humanity of Christ whereas Athanasius focused on the divinity of Christ.  Was some of Arius theology blurry and fuzzy?  Absolutely?  Was Arius this terrible heretic?  I doubt it.  Arius did lay the roots to what did turn into some very bad fruit.  But before we get too critical of Arius, let's not forget it was Augustine who laid the foundation for the church and state joining forces and power that eventually later turned into the inquisition, witch hunts, and the crusades.

Joel rightly says the early church fathers were not infallible or saints but he paints the whole picture in such stark black and white hues of the orthodox as always the good guys and Arius and his followers as doing all the bad stuff in history.  History I believe is more messy and more colored than Joel makes it out to be.  Yes, Athanasius did get banned 5 times, but he was the guy who was on this never ending crusade against Arius.  Arius just wanted to preach the gospel and be left alone.  Rather than Arius simply playing the victim card as Joel suggests, maybe other church leaders saw Athanasius really as the bully and zealot?

The power of the Holy Spirit led the early church into the right conclusions for orthodoxy but that does not mean everything they did as fallen humans was right or proper.  The power politics used against Nestorius and misrepresenting his views was absurd.  Montanism was accused of several things but the real threat was them running towards martyrdom.  If everyone ran to martyrdom, there would be no church left to defend.  Everyone followed the orthodoxy of Origen but that did not stop the later church to condemn the Originists as heretics even though there was little resemblance to Origen who died a martyred death 500 years earlier.  And what about Joan of Ark who died faithfully for her Catholic faith and branded a heretic only to be made a saint 500 years later.

If there is something to learn from church history and the complex story of orthodoxy and heresy is sometimes the church needs it heretics to define orthodoxy and sometimes the church just got things wrong at a certain time.  In the end, I fully concur with Joel's thesis that if Evangelicals and Protestants are going to combat and safeguard themselves against heresy, they need to become much better students of church history and embody history better themselves.

Walking the Plank on Noah's Ark

I have just started reading Joel E. Anderson's book which is a fascinating study of one Christian teacher who lost his job because he did not believe in YEC (Young Earth Creationism).  Most Evangelical Christians believe in a very literalistic young earth view of history even if the details do not all match Ken Ham's version of it.  Sadly, YEC is becoming a litmus test for Christian school's hiring policy and most Christians think not only is evolution false, but it is evil and puts people on the slippery slope towards atheism.

Some of the things that YEC teaches that people may not be aware of are things like:

1.  Adam and Eve possessed a perfect genome and stood anywhere from 12 to 16 feet tall and had super intelligence (what evidence scientific or even biblically is there for this?)

2.  There was no death before the fall except for plant and bug life because they technically don't count as "life?" (really, plants and bugs don't count as life?  And what about the fossil record of animal death?)

3.  Adam and Eve were vegetarians and did not kill animals for food (what about our teeth as mammals are made for ripping and tearing flesh?)

4.  Incest was okay until Moses said it was wrong due to genetic mutations (how do we know incest was okay for Adam and Eve's family especially if God created the first pair of humans in community and not just a solo family interpretation?  If you take the risk of genetic mutation away, do we really want to say that incest then is okay in all situations?)

5.  It never rained before the flood for there was this perfect like canopy until God made it rain? (how on earth do you explain no rain, no sun or moon at one point in the creation story and the questions just go on and on).

6.  The pre-flood civilization were highly intelligent and they had advanced technology that dwarfs even our modern technology today.  Go to the Noah Ark exhibit and check this out for yourself.  Of course all this advanced technology got blotted out by the universal flood so there is no evidence for it today.  The flood not only explains away all geology against a YEC interpretation but it covers the loss of this early advanced technology as well.

7.  Dinosaurs were on the ark and they fit by being small newborns (where exactly is that in the Bible?)


(Excerpts and ideas from Joel Anderson The Heresy of Ham (2016)

The Genesis of You

One can read many academic books on the book of Genesis by many various scholars but it is difficult to find someone who preaches and teaches on the book of Genesis from a pastoral perspective.  Peter Hiett is writing a three book series on Genesis one through three and his first book is called "The History of Time . . . And the Genesis of You (Relentless Love Publishing, 2015)

Hiett challenges modern Christians to read the book of Genesis within its historical context and its spiritual implications for our lives today.  The great adventure of missing the point in Genesis is not about the age of the earth or whether or not dinosaurs were on the ark (sorry Ken Ham).  Hiett rightly says, "The point is always Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Cor.2:2).

The book of Genesis is not just a book of beginnings but it is God's love letter written to you.  You were created to read the story and fall in love with the author.  Rather than allowing God to fashion us into His image, we try the reverse and fashion the book of Genesis and God into our image which is just another form of idolatry that this book is trying to counteract.

God's story is Jesus story which is also your story.  This first book of the Bible is the genesis of you.  Christ in you.  It is the grand story of God making all things new (2 Cor.5:17).  What we find in the book of Genesis is the story of God, the story of creation, the story of Israel, the story of Christ, and the story of your life all wrapped up into one glorious story.

The Best Books in Understanding Genesis

I want to list a few of my favorite books on Genesis.  I will say probably the best Christian scholar who is writing the most on this topic is John Walton.  He has done more than possibly any one else in helping readers understand the ancient cultural context and temple motif in the book of Genesis.

Two other scholars that have written very academic and helpful commentaries are Gordon Wenham and Bruce Waltke.  For those who simply desire the scholarly consensus and academic approach to Genesis, these works will suffice.  But if people are wanting to look at some of the more hidden and spiritual connections of the book of Genesis, here are some of the works that have given me deeper spiritual insights into the first book of the Bible. 

This list will go from the best in descending order:

1.  Beginnings: Ancient Christian Readings of the Biblical Creation Narratives.  Peter Bouteneff (Baker, 2008).  This is my favorite work which gives what the earliest Christian interpreters understood the book of Genesis to be speaking to us today from their Christ centered approach.  There more spiritual and cosmic vision of Christ is so richer and deeper than the modern literalistic scientific approach most scholars take today.

2.  From Eden to the New Jerusalem.  T. Desmond Alexander (Kregal, 208).  This gives the best overview of the book of Genesis from a canonical standpoint of the whole Bible.  One can especially see biblical parallels and connections of Genesis to the book of Revelation.  Highly recommended for seeing the big picture of Scripture.

3.  Genesis.  Derek Kidner (IVP, 1967).  This is a classic older work on the book of Genesis.  One of the things Kidner does that is so helpful is to look at the book of Genesis through a different lens and way of seeing things.  He breaks the black and white lens of literalism for a multi-colored lens that understands key events and signs in the book of Genesis from a different angle and perspective.  An eye-opening read.

4.  The Genesis of Perfection.  Gary A. Anderson (Westminster John Knox Press, 2001).  Anderson takes the reader through Jewish and Christian approaches to the first book of the Bible showing the evolution in early historical thought of Genesis and how the concept of perfection played a key role in understanding the Adam and Eve story.

5.  In the Beginning We Misunderstood.  John Miller and John Soden (Kregal, 2012).  This is a helpful little book challenging many misconceptions and popular misreadings of the book of Genesis.
For people who like to learn in charts, this is a helpful work.

Lastly, I am currently reading Peter Hiett's three volume series on the first three chapters of the book of Genesis.  This is probably the best practical and pastoral approach to the book of Genesis I have read so far.

What is your favorite book in helping you understand probably one of the most misunderstood books of the Bible?

Is God a Cosmic Child Abuser?

This is why the writer of Hebrews says,

“Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins,” (Hebrews 9:22) but then goes on to say,
“Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said,
‘Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
but a body you have prepared for me;
in burnt offerings and sin offerings
you have taken no pleasure.
Then I said,
“See, God, I have come to do your will, O God”
(in the scroll of the book it is written of me).’
When he said above,
‘You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings’
(these are offered according to the law),
then he added,
‘See, I have come to do your will.’
He abolishes the first in order to establish the second.”
(Hebrews 10:5–9)

In other words, the psalmists, the prophets and the writer of Hebrews come to understand that God abolishes primitive ritual sacrifice in order to establish actually doing God’s will as justice. This is what we see in the life of Jesus.

Jesus was faithful to embody God’s will even to the point of shedding blood as he forgave sinners. Jesus did not shed his blood to pay off God in the form of a ritual sacrifice. That’s not what God wanted. Jesus shed his blood in faithful obedience to his Father’s will, demonstrating divine forgiveness…even as he was crucified! As Jesus told the sacrificed-obsessed Pharisees, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice!’” (Matthew 9:13)

God desires lives marked by mercy, not the sacrifice of victims. Jesus’ death was not a ritual sacrifice of appeasement, but the supreme demonstration of God’s mercy. Jesus did not shed his blood to buy God’s forgiveness, Jesus shed his blood to embody God’s forgiveness!

(Excerpts written by Brian Zahnd)

The Binding of Isaac Story

The question was asked if this story of Abraham binding his son and willing to sacrifice and kill him should be a troubling biblical text for us today.  Here was my reply:

Responses may vary but it should be a troubling text for people of faith. Why? God calls us to do the impossible at times and even calls us to make the most difficult of all choices. I believe Kierkegaard got it right that this text tests all our preconceived ideas about God and orthodoxy. God is not a tame or domesticated God and he calls us to a radical faith. It's not just this text goes against our modern justice sensibilities but it even goes against logic and reason. It makes no sense at all for God to give Abraham and his wife a child of promise and then seem to suggest that He is gong to somehow kill the child of promise while all at the same time bring those promises to fruition. This is faith tested and stretched to its very limits!

Although I highly respect Leonard Sweet and hope he has changed his mind concerning this text, here is someone with postmodern proclivities who turns the biblical text on its head some years ago. Abraham is not the father of faith in this text but doing his own perverse tempting of God. He is going to sacrifice the child of promise and it is only God who comes in at the end of the story and provides the ram and saves the son that shows Abraham's foolishness in all this. This neither follows Jewish or Christian readings of the text. This may save face with people who are offended by the text but I really don't think these kinds of radical revisions is going to "save" the Bible in the end.

I'm currently working through Jesus parables and I was reading Herzog's "Parables as Subversive Speech." Herzog interprets the parable of the talents and the last guy who buried his talent is the hero of the story. He is using a kind of postmodern liberation theology and anti-empire hermeneutic. I am not opposed to using any of these hermeneutical tools but when it turns the bad guy into the hero of the story and flips everything on its head, there is something greatly amiss.

I think we need to ask serious questions about what are we really trying to do with the biblical text since it seems like we may not really be that concerned at all for its original context and original purpose and outcome. It's takes faith to submit to Scripture, even when it does not always make sense. It takes faith to accept the Bible's own portrayal of reality at that time rather than imposing our own modern understanding and preferred reality onto the biblical text.

I find it problematic when people either try to save the biblical text and end up interpreting the text in ways that goes against what the text actually says. I also find it problematic when people read the text in the worst ways where God always comes out on the short end of things and always looks bad. I doubt those same people would want others to view everything they say and do through the same negative and overly critical lenses. I know some Christians who do this to atheists and I think its wrong no matter who is doing it.

Heaven Taken by a Storm

"Jesus is the King who fights for us" -  (told to me today by a little girl in our after-school ministry)

Thomas Watson was a puritan preacher who wrote a little book in the 1650's explaining the verse, "the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force" (Matthew 11:12).  One can read the many numerous arguments and interpretations by modern scholars who have a in-house debate on what does this verse really mean?  I for one found myself prompted by God to go back into history and read this little treasure of a book, "The Christian Soldier or Heaven Taken by a Storm" to gain better insight and spiritual power to what this verse means for today.

Watson I believe rightly interprets this verse to mean a holy violence to advance God's kingdom.  It is not a bloody violence to shed blood but a passionate violence for truth and salvation not just for others but also a strong violence against ourselves to live out God's kingdom faithfully before others.

1.  We need a holy awakening to the power and presence of God.

2.  We must crucify our flesh as we contemplate heaven on earth.

3.  We are warriors for God against Satan and the principalities and powers and rulers of this present age.

4.  The violence of heaven purifies our soul and the pleasures of this world disappear in the light and beauty of God's everlasting delights and eternal joys.

5.  Holy violence subverts and overcomes by God's grace the unholy violence of the world.

Prophets and Whistleblowers

The prophets of old have been both revered and murdered.  They were listened to and heeded and they were run out of town or martyred.  Prophets in the Jewish tradition would sound the alarm on the moral failings of their rulers and kingdom.  They offered a moral vision for a better and more just society.

King Saul had the prophet Samuel.  When the King listened to Samuel, things went well.  When the King ignored and stopped listening to Samuel, things went from bad to worse.  David had the prophet Nathan who told him the truth concerning his adultery as King with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah.  David failed miserably but he listened to his prophet.

Elijah was a prophet to King Ahab and Jezebel.  These were not willing listeners but adversaries who took the people into idolatry and paganism.  Elijah fled twice trying to avoid being killed himself.  Sometimes the establishment listened and sometimes they do not.  Often eh establishment tries to silence opposing voices through intimidation, persecution and even murder.

In today's democratic society of America, powerful elites keep the powers that be in place and to go against these empire building powers can spell political suicide or worse where reputations are destroyed, the legal system suddenly turns on the whistleblower, and like Elijah, one is running for one's life.  Many people are becoming more aware of the government spying on them or selling weapons to their enemies, or under-mining some other less powerful country.  But government has become so powerful, it is hard to go against the tide when the very people in charge make all the waves.

A whistleblower is not the same thing as a prophet.  But they do perform a similar role in calling its leaders to a more just and accountable society.  The whistleblower may also be motivated by other things than just moral or just causes.  Things get messy and complicated today but do whistleblowers have to be labeled traitors?  If we jail every person who blows the whistle on our government, who will speak up or out against corporate evils and corruption within our society?  Without truth-tellers, won't we just end up being a society as Jesus suggested of the "blind leading the blind?"

What You Believe about Wrath Determines What You Believe About Justice

Wrath is our self-inflicted wounds.  Sin blinds us, separates us and gives us false illusions about the importance of self.  Justice then turns into winners and losers, us and them, comparison and blame games.  But God's wrath is not aimed at you.  It is redemption aimed at our sinfulness.  When we fail to love our neighbor, it leads to injustice.  The church unfortunately is often more concerned about how kids behave in church buildings than they do about those same kids misbehaving in the world.

People are so negative looking at all the social problems among the younger generation.  Can we see with eyes of faith that the young meth addict may be the next Billy Graham.  Who would have ever known that a terrorist by the name of Saul would become the great apostle to the Gentiles?  Who would have known a slave trader like John Newton would become a hymn-writing Christian?  Who would have known that an atheist Cambridge professor by the name of C. S. Lewis would become one of the great intellectual defenders of the Christian faith?  Who would have known?

The church can no longer avoid justice issues or acts like injustice only deals with personal sin without resisting the very environment and structured evil that perpetuates so much injustice today.  It is easy to write a check to end human trafficking but we lack concern for how we demand cheap affordable clothing and so many of our technology toys that exploits workers in other countries.  We can say we are against global terrorism but still demand our need for cheap gas from middle east countries that often pays terrorists to do the evil things they do.  We can say we want to see world hunger and poverty end and continue to support large corporations that exploit the poor in other nations.  The law of God's economics is for life, not death.  What are we teaching our kids when in comes to God's wrath and justice and the economics of life?

Where is Eden Today?

If you ask biblical archeologists, they will say that we can not physically locate Eden today.  We keep looking for a physical location out there somewhere but could it be right in front of us and we keep missing it?  More accurately, could it be right inside of us undiscovered?  The ancient Christian mystics said our soul is the garden of Eden and God's furious love comes in to fully posses us.  Eden then is within us or as Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21).

Mystic Marriage is the place where God's Spirit touches our spirit and makes us one with God.  The soul is the fertile ground of spiritual union and intimacy with God. Christians have wrongly concluded that when Jesus said people in heaven did not marry or were given in marriage, he was not saying as popular conventional church wisdom often does that there is no marriage in heaven (Luke 20:33-38).  For those with spiritual eyes, everyone is married in heaven to Jesus.  He is the bridegroom and we are His Bride.  It's not that there is no marriage in heaven but heaven is all about being one big marriage banquet for the Lamb!

Pray For Peace, Work for Justice

Ezekiel the prophet is known for many things, but one of his most popular moments is his vision of the wheels.  Here is this strange vision from heaven with four strange looking creatures and a great chariot of fire in the sky.  This is not about UFO's or aliens.  Ezekiel is giving this strange and powerful vision of God to broken people in exile.  The vision is scary, difficult and not safe or comfortable.  One of the greatest challenges for the church today is to regain a sanctified imagination and have a scriptural vision from God once again.

If Ezekiel vison means anything, it means God is on the move.  God can not be tamed or domesticated or pushed to the fringes of society.  Even when the world pressures God's people to conform and act like everybody else, the powerful Spirit of God is moving us to sweet surrender to build into us a daring and bold faith.

Ezekiel name literally means "God strengthens."  We can do nothing on our own without the help of the Holy Spirit of God.  The book of Ezekiel wants to strip us of all our self-sufficiency, our pride, our self-righteous illusions.  We are to no longer be preoccupied with self but only with God.  When this happens, compassion for others leads to sacrificial service and giving.

The whirlwind of conflict and social upheaval is all around us.  Just this past week I dealt with marital strife among couples, children in jail, and attempted suicide, a child in critical condition, and a family whose father is in a coma.  We live in a world of chaos and deception.  God is on the move and sometimes in the most unusual ways.  One family prayed their teenage creating havoc would get help and their child got arrested.  It may not have been the way this family thought God would answer the prayer but now that child is actually getting some help.

Do we choose the path of least resistance or do we take the fiery path of God to places of the unfamiliar? The book of Ezekiel not only calls us to a higher vision of God but it also transforms God's people into a new creation.  All the sudden justice issues really matters and are not just ideas to share and talk about.  When it comes to standing up for the poor and powerless against the bullies and powerful of the world, it is easier to stay out of the fight, back away, and become cowards.  The Bible will not leave us where we are or let us easily off the hook.  Are we resisting the empire and the status quo or are we inadvertently supporting them?  When I pray for peace, am I also working for justice?

Ben Hur Revisted

The original Ben Hur movie with Charleston Heston and Stephen Boyd is one of the greatest Christian classics of all time.  So I went with fear and trembling to the remake of the new 2016 remake and I was happily surprised.  Here was a movie with great cinematography and unbelievably made a great story even better.

The creative changes in the story and the retelling of this story brought both great memories and new experiences.  The historical cultural background of this movie came out more as well as deepened characters who were more complex than the good versus bad characters within the first movie.  There was so much more relational building, actual interaction with Jesus and his teachings in this movie, and a different finale that left one with both wonder and stirred emotions on the beauty of reconciliation. 

Not only is this movie doing well at the box office but it had much direction and production by Christians in the making of this movie.  The quality of the script and filming was great so I hope Christian film makers will do more quality projects like this in the future.  They even built a huge spectacular Roman city for the filming of this movie.  This is a movie I highly recommend for people to go and see it for themselves.

Secrets to Unlocking the Parables of the Kingdom

"To you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God . . . So do you not understand this parable?" (Mark 4:11, 13)

Jesus says if you are going to understand his parables, you must understand the parable of the sower.  In it is the DNA that unlocks the meaning of Jesus other parables.  Jesus wants us to humbly come as a child and not with adult like pride.   Jesus wants us to apply his hard sayings to our own hard- headedness and hard-heartedness.  If we do not see how our lives fit into all the soils at varying moments of our lives, we will miss the spiritual truth that Jesus wants to awaken within us.

1.  Jesus comes to plant the seed of His word of Life and Spirit into us to make us fruitful for God's kingdom.

2.  Satan comes to steal the seed so it does not take root.  Spiritual warfare and fighting the enemy who attacks and accuses us from within and from without will always be a part of the Christian pilgrimage.

Parables come to conceal and reveal.  The enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy and God comes to give us life everlasting and reveal to each of us who we are as God's beloved children.  I am in the process of still learning and growing in my understanding of unlocking the secrets of Jesus/Yeshua parables.  I know there is so much "more" to unlock and discover.

If there is one area many followers of Jesus are lacking in is boldness and confidence in their Christian faith.  I am coming to a deeper awareness that when Jesus speaks about the kingdom of heaven suffering violence, and the violent take it by force" (Matthew 11:12), there is a whole debate and controversy over the meaning of this by biblical scholars.  I simply believe it means that we are too passionately pursue and advance God's kingdom by the force and power of God's Holy Spirit.  In the Spirit realm, this will be a clash of kingdoms and violence going on in the heavenly realm as we live as citizens of heaven here and now on earth.

This is brought home to me when a couple asked me and another friend last night to pray for a man who is technically brain dead from a bad reaction to medicine.  He has been laying in a comma for a week.  This husband and wife are stepping out with a mustard seed of faith and a belief in Jesus and God's Word to pray for healing and wholeness for this man.  The wife confessed afterwards she struggled in having confidence in overcoming the enemy.  The husband confessed the opposite problem of lacking faith and confidence in God to heal the man.  The secret missing in many Christians lives today is possessing the boldness and confidence God desires for us to posses as followers of Jesus.  If Jesus came bold and daring then shouldn't we be bold and daring as well?

When Reading the Bible is Bad for You

“You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” –John 5:39, 40

The Pharisees made the tragic mistake of making the Bible an end in itself. They used it as a collection of prooftexts to justify themselves while condemning others. They substituted the accumulation of Bible knowledge for actually doing the will of God. They weaponized the Bible and used it cruelly on their enemies. And modern day Pharisees do the same thing with the Bible.  If we don’t see the Bible as directing us to the true Word of God who is Jesus, we can play tricks with the Bible. We can make it do our bidding. We can make it roll over and fetch. We can make it stand on its hind legs and dance a jig. If we just want to proof-text our own opinion, we can do that with a concordance and a bit of cleverness in ten minutes.

“The Bible clearly says, _______________________________________.”
(Fill in the blank with what you want to believe socially, scientifically, politically, theologically.)

It’s a game of proof-texting. And there is little you can’t “prove” with the Bible if that’s the game you want to play. Wars of conquest, capital punishment, the institution of slavery, women held as property, and genocidal ethnic cleansing can all be (and have been) justified by the Bible. But Jesus doesn’t endorse any of those things! If Christians aren’t going to read the Bible in the light of Christ, they would be better off not reading it at all!

For Christians the first half of the Bible is the inspired story of how we get to Jesus — the Word of God incarnate. And as Christians we should have no problem recognizing the changes in perspective that occur along the journey. Ritual sacrifice, Torah sanctions, and killing in the name of God are all eventually re-evaluated. Sacrificing animals, stoning Sabbath-breakers, and slaughtering Canaanite children all belong to the story of how the chosen people arrive at Messiah. But once Messiah has come, everything must be re-evaluated according to what Jesus taught. Jesus saves the Bible from itself. It’s Jesus who saves the Bible from being just another violent and vengeful religious text.
Speaking of violent religious texts. The same kind of criticism that Christians often level at the Koran can also be leveled at the Bible if that’s how we want to read it. I’m not an authority on the Koran, but I know very well you can justify all kinds of atrocity by reading the Bible as a flat text and apart from the light of Christ. This is when the Bible is bad for you!

If the Bible becomes a barrier to true discipleship by providing legal loopholes for avoiding what Jesus taught his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount, that’s when the Bible is bad for you. It’s true. There is a way of reading the Bible that is bad for you!

If you want a violent, retributive God, the Bible will give that to you.
If you want capital punishment, the Bible will give that to you.
If you want to hate your enemies, the Bible will give that to you.
If you want divine warrant for your every opinion, the Bible will give that to you.
If you want to be a smug, self-righteous, know-it-all, the Bible will give that to you.
If you want assurance that only people like you are going to heaven, the Bible will give that to you.
And that’s when the Bible is bad for you!

But if you want peace, nonviolence, mercy, forgiveness, reconciliation, humility, advocacy, and love, the Bible will also give that to you. But it will do so by faithfully pointing you to Jesus! When we look to the Bible without self-interested agenda, the Bible says to us, “Now look to Jesus, for he is the true Word of God.” When the Bible becomes a faithful and trusted guide to lead you to Jesus, that’s when the Bible is good for you!


(Excerpts written by Brian Zahnd)

Holy Communion and Holy Sex

"Marriage is God's sneaky way to get a person crucified" -  Peter Hiett

Many Christians today don't think communion is much of a big deal and neither is sex.  As a matter of fact, let's keep holy sex out of the pulpit and let's treat the bread and cup like its no big deal.  If sex is the sacrament of marriage, maybe we have an unbiblical view of sex as we often do of communion?  We have not discerned the body and blood of Christ.  It's just a piece of bread and its just wine or grape juice.  Sex is just a bodily urge and biology.  We have failed to discern our own human body in what sex is and we have failed to discern the body of Christ in the reenactment of communion.

Sex seals the covenant of marriage as baptism and communion seal the covenant of grace.  Just like something spiritual and supernatural happens when you take the bread and wine and place them in your mouth, something spiritual and supernatural happens when two bodies are joined in marital sex and intimate communion.  Great sex is a momentary taste of Eden.  Holy communion is a momentary taste of Eden.  Sex is not a result of the fall and sex did not cause the fall.  God made sex and said it is good within the beauty of intimate, holy, sanctified, relational covenant.  Sex is a gift to delight in which God calls good.  Communion is God's grace gift given to all who come to enjoy it as a communion of delight.

The Cosmic Christ

"For God so loved the cosmos that he gave his one and only son . . . for God did not send his Son into the cosmos to condemn the cosmos, but to save the cosmos through him"
(a more accurate translation of John 3:16-17 I got from Richard J. Mouw)

The whole story of Jesus is how the God of Israel becomes King over the whole cosmos.  We like to translate the word "world" but its even bigger and greater than that.  Jesus is King over all the whole universe. 

1.  Jesus makes us one with God. 
2.  Jesus makes us one with each other. 
3.  Jesus makes us one with creation. 
4.  Jesus makes us one with the whole cosmos.

Since the creation of the universe and that point in history, we are end the sixth day and just about to enter into God's seventh day of rest.  Jesus is Israel's Messiah who is restoring the whole cosmos and renewing all people.  The kingdoms of this world clash with God's kingdom as God is ushering in a whole new world order through Messiah Jesus.  All the world powers and principalities are pretenders.  God is replacing the arrogance of man with His own grace.

Jesus by his Spirit today is creating Spirit-led Jesus followers.  One of my friends asked me today what title should we use in designating oneself as a Christian today.  I thought of simply saying I am a radical follower of Jesus or more simply, "I am a follower of Jesus."  But I confess, to say "I am a spirit-led Jesus follower" does add another dimension to the designation.  And to be one with Jesus is the evolution of being one with the Christ who is in all and all in all of the entire cosmos.

Speaking of the Devil

Speaking of the Devil Book Review

August 24, 2016 by Jonathan Storment

Today in my column on Scot McKnight’s blog, I’m starting a fairly lengthy book review of Richard Beck’s new book “Reviving Old Scratch: Spiritual Warfare for the Doubters and Disenchanted”
But this is more than just a simple book review for me, I go to church with the Beck’s and have witnessed up close how these ideas have changed their lives, and how they can change yours.
There’s a good chance that if you are reading this blog, you have a healthy bit of skepticism when it comes to things like Spiritual warfare, and if so, I’d love to encourage you to get this book and read it immediately.

And since I’m not going to be talking about this on my personal blog, I just wanted to give you one snippet of why this is so important to me (and potentially you).

A few months ago, I was at an event where Richard was discussing his book with N.T. Wright, and at one point Wright brought up that his great problem with the way Western Christians talk about the Devil is that they tend to greatly over-emphasize him.

And then he said, ” I don’t want to say that the Devil is a personal being, because I think that the point of Scripture is that the Devil is sub-personal.”

Wright alluded to the Devil character in C.S. Lewis space trilogy, as a great example, because he used to be human, but he colluded with evil forces long enough he became something much more powerful, but something much less than human.

I loved that example so much I went and looked it up. It’s in Lewis 2nd book from that series, Perelandra, which is set on the planet Venus. In this story, sin/the fall has not yet happened to Venus, but the Satan character is trying to do the whole Garden of Eden thing there as well.

In revolt, God has sent a man from Earth named Ransom to confront Satan, and here’s the scene of what happens in that confrontation:

What was before him [Ransom] appeared no longer a person of corrupted will. It was corruption itself to which will was attached only as an instrument. Ages ago it had been a Person; but the ruins of personality now survived in it only as weapons at the disposal of a furious self-exiled negation. It is perhaps difficult to understand why this filled Ransom not with horror but with a kind of joy. The joy came from finding at last what hatred was made for.

I love that! The Joy came from finding at last what hatred was made for.
This is why a theology of Spiritual warfare is so important.
Rage against the powers, Hate the evil in the world.
Those are God given impulses. But never hate a person.

Because they are made in the image of God and to be cherished and rescued from the principalities and powers.  This is exactly what Paul is talking about in Ephesians! “Our battle is not against flesh and blood” So redirect your hate toward that for which it was actually made for. That’s how you learn to love your enemies, and to do good to those who persecute you.

Hate the right things, which are always things and never people. Follow Jesus into a revolt against the powers, fight the good fight.

The Church as a New Creation

God is making the world a better place, which is to say, God’s work is “new creation.” The church is the citizenship of that new creation and at the same time called to be God’s ambassadors to summon the world into the better place, into reconciliation with God and others. Eg 2 Cor 5:17-21 and Romans 10:14-15.

How so?

1. The church is to embrace the kingdom
2. The church is to embody the kingdom
3. The church is to proclaim that kingdom

Notice this features of a NT kingdom theology that brings to the surface what #1 (embrace the kingdom) means, and in our next two posts we’ll dip into #2 and #3:

1. We have entered into a new era in world history: Matt 4:17
2. We have entered into a new world reality: 2 Cor 5:17
3. We have entered into a new life: Col 2:12; 3:1
4. We have entered into a new social reality and set of relationships: 2 Cor 5:16; Gal 3:28; Eph 1:13-15; 2:21-22
5. We have entered into a new way of living: Col 2:10; 1 John 1:7; 1 Thess 5:4-5
6. We have entered into a new status: Phil 3:20
7. We have entered into God’s abundant blessings: Mark 10:29-30; Gal 1:4

“We cannot accept forgiveness of sins and an eternal afterlife without embracing the abundant life and new world that God has called us into even now in the body of Christ” (84).

(Excerpt from John Nugent on Jesus Creed)

Love Can Get You Crucified

God's love came bleeding, dying, crucified for me.  I am captivated by God's love that died for me and lives in me.  Before God's love, I was a monster.  I lusted and was a consumer of love but not a giver of love.  I was living like a zombie and trying to feed off others.  I craved blood like a vampire and wanted to suck the life out of others.  But Jesus is the great transformer who turns monsters into lovers.  Jesus death on the cross exposed the monster in me and Jesus resurrection from the grave turned me from a monster into a lover.  Here are the words bursting forth from my inward being:

Jesus, your love bleeding on the cross.
Jesus your love dying for me.
In awe and captivated by love crucified.
I can no longer do what I have been doing
I am no longer captured by the world's web.

The monster in me is dead.
Jesus turned my lust into love.
Jesus turned my heart toward Eden.
I am no longer chasing the wind.
Now the wind of God's Spirit lifts and carries me.

Love got crucified that lonely day in Jerusalem.
I am captured by love.
All I see is through the eyes of love.
Jesus tamed the beast and set me free.
Free at last.  Free to love.

What is the Gospel? The Puzzle of a Lifetime

It's a simple question and it seems on one hand everyone knows the answer like one plus one equals two and on the other hand, it is complicated with many different theological tribes giving different answers or focusing on different parts of what the gospel and deemphasizing others parts.

I was at a meeting with a group of ministers and one pastor asked the question, "What is the gospel?"  Some stuttered, others reflected, some said it the gospel of Paul spelled out in 1 Corinthians 15 and yet it's more than that?  What does that mean?  Do we just parrot the words, "that Christ died for our sins according to Scriptures . . . and by repeating the words mechanically, is that it?

The two best answers given were that the gospel of Jesus is a gospel of God's grace and the gospel of Jesus is God's power to be a new creation.  What is interesting are the words "grace" and "Power of God" exact language or words is missing from Paul's Corinthian proclamation or are they?  Suddenly it struck me like lightening from heaven that Paul and his hearers all understood that these were the very pillars of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I just started reading N. T. Wrights "How God Became King" and here is what N. T. Wright perceptively says concerning the gospels and the gospel:

"We use the gospels.  We read them out loud in worship.  We often preach from them.  But have we begun to hear what they are saying, the whole message, which is so often much greater than the sum of the small parts . . .  This is the lifetime puzzle.  It isn't just that we've all misread the gospels, though I think this is broadly true.  It is more that we haven't really read them at all.  We have fitted them into a framework of ideas and beliefs that we have acquired from other sources" (pp.9-10).

Politics of the Lamb

As you can see, I have been reading Brian Zahnd's provocative blog and loving it.  If you have not read Zahnd before, try his new book "Turning Wine into Water" (a great read).  Two other blogs I enjoy reading is my friend John Armstrong and Scot McKnight's Jesus Creed."  But in another mess of an election year where there is more confusion, emotion, and noise than ever, here are Brian's wise words for politically incorrect Christians:

"You see, having pledged all my allegiance to the Lamb I have none left for elephants or donkeys. I’ve placed all of my hope in the kingdom of Christ. My short form politics is, “Jesus is Lord.” My long form politics is the Sermon on the Mount. And I know good and well that neither the elephant party nor the donkey party have the inclination or ability to seriously embrace the cruciform politics of Lamb. That’s the gist of my political theology."

The Idolatry of Certainty

Certitude is a poor substitute for authentic faith. But certitude is popular; it’s popular because it’s easy. No wrestling with doubt, no dark night of the soul, no costly agonizing over the matter, no testing yourself with hard questions. Just accept a secondhand assumption or a majority opinion or a popular sentiment as the final word and settle into certainty. Certitude is easy…until it’s impossible. And that’s why certitude is so often a disaster waiting to happen. The empty slogan “the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it” is cheap certitude, not genuine faith.

Real faith will cost you. Real faith is forged in the fiery theodicy of Job’s bitter trial where every assumption of the goodness of God is put to the test. Real faith is found during the forty-day wilderness temptation where the first question from the tempter is, “Are you sure?” Real faith reaches the apex of “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” only after the agonizing cry of “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” We have to wrestle with doubt to arrive at real faith. Certitude can’t be bothered with all that. Real faith has room for doubt — understanding that the effort to believe is the very thing that makes doubt possible. Real faith is not afraid of doubt, but the faux faith of certitude is afraid of its own shadow.

I have no idea how to arrive at real faith without a journey involving doubt. The mistake of pop apologetics — the silly kind that looks for an ancient boat on a Turkish mountaintop or Egyptian chariots on the bottom of the Red Sea — is that it is an attempt to do away with the need for faith altogether! The Noah’s Ark hunters want to “prove” God so that faith will be unnecessary. But God does not traffic in the empirically verifiable. God refuses to prove himself and perform circus tricks at our behest in order to obliterate doubt. Frederick Buechner says it this way:

“Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me.”

The problem with the kind of certitude found in fundamentalist biblicism is that it truly is a disaster waiting to happen. You’re just one new atheist argument away from abandoning Christianity altogether. Yes, this happens! When a pastor in my city trained in fundamentalist biblicism encountered a crisis of faith — and we all do! — he was completely ill-equipped to deal with it. After a lonely year-long struggle with doubt he finally announced to his congregation on the Sunday after Easter that he had become an atheist and was leaving the ministry. At first glance it might appear that the move from fundamentalism to atheism is a tremendous leap of faith, but this may not necessarily be so. Fundamentalism and atheism are two sides of the same thin empiricist coin. And it’s why certitude is a disaster waiting to happen.


(written by Brian Zahnd)

Judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.” (James 2:13)

Mercy triumphs over judgment. That’s tattoo worthy. I recommend tattooing it on your soul!

When you can blame…have mercy.
When you can shame…have mercy.
When you can criticize…have mercy.
When you can condemn…have mercy.
When you have a political disagreement…have mercy.
When you have a theological disagreement…have mercy.
When you are certain you are completely right…have mercy.
When you could exact your revenge and get even…have mercy.
So that when you pray, “Lord, have mercy on me”—


(written by Brian Zahnd)

The Church Lied to Me

The older I get, the more of a reflective person I become.  I became a pastor thirty years ago and the world that my Bible college and seminary trained me for no longer exists.  The thriving churches I served in no longer grow as easily today for many reasons.  There is a whole generation of families that have no church background whatsoever and a whole evolving American church whose mentality has shifted from "Jesus and the church" to "Jesus and the church really does not matter that much to my personal faith."

The biggest change is not only church people attending allot less than they used to but there are so many more people outside the domain of the church that have been hurt and wounded by the church than the number of people who actually attend any given location a church meets at.  Ministry has changed to counseling and listening to a multitude of people say why they used to go to church but don't anymore.

What makes matters worse is some of the cultural bad attitudes people hear from the church from bashing immigrants, gays, people of color to you fill in the slot.  Rather than the church being known for its love, it more known today for its intolerance and perceived hate towards various groups of people.  There are so many stumbling blocks that the church has unneccessarily created for itself. 

There was a church recently going through my neighborhood handing out fliers for a community event.  I thought here is a church trying to do something for the community but when I asked about which church it was, they did not want to tell me the name of the church.  Why would Christians be so hesitant to tell the name of the church if there was not negative perceptions connected to the name of that particular church or denomination?

Many young people are told that the earth is young and evolution is a lie only to go to the university and discover what the church told them was a lie.  Some bold young Christians are asking now, "What else has the church lied to me about?  We have set up a false choice for many young people to either choose their faith or science but you can't believe in both.  The whole history of the church has been God has spoken through two books.  God speaks both through nature and Scripture and to falsely pit these against each other is to lead another younger generation away from the church.

Churches need to reclaim intellectual honesty and behavior integrity where our hearts and minds are stirred by the Spirit of the living God and not our own fleshly desires and personal human constructs and agendas.  Justice issues, relational self sacrifice, and intellectual integrity and Godly behavior need to be what the world witnesses and sees.  The church can not afford to drive away the best and the brightest because of its own dysfunctional power plays, lack of security, and fear of change.  The world is yet waiting for the sons and daughters of God to act and bless and restore a world that is badly in need of repair and broken.  Will the church reflect the image of Christ or will it simply reflect the same brokenness and dividedness of the world?

Jesus Trhough the Centuries

I have been contemplating doing a Bible study on Jaroslav Pelikan's Jesus Through the Centuries (Yale University Press, 1985).

1.  Jesus the Rabbi (early Jewish first century)

2.  Jesus light to the Gentiles (second and third century)

3.  Jesus as King and Lord (rise of Christian empire in fourth century)

4.  The Cosmic Christ (Byzantine Christianity)

5..The monk who rules the world (medieval Christianity)

6.  Bridegroom of the Soul (mystical Christianity)

7.  The Universal man for all mankind (Renaissance Christianity)

8.  Poet of the Spirit (classical nineteenth century Christianity)

9.  Jesus the liberator (two-third world Christianity--20th century)

10.  The man who belongs to the world (21st century global Christianity)

I will have much work to do to unpack and lead people both into the word of God and how it was interpreted at that time and how we might see scripture from another angle and from a different point in history.

You Can't Hear the Voice of God if You are Listening to Yourself

Brokenness is critical to hearing the voice of God

1.  Brokenness brings openness to hearing God's voice.  It is by learning to daily depend on God and trust God that we hear his voice.  It is by crucifying our flesh and desires and placing God's desire and will above our own that we begin to hear God's voice.

2.  Brokenness brings humility.  God reveals the secrets of His heart to the broken-hearted and the humble.  If we think too highly of ourselves, we will miss the voice of God that speaks to the humble.

3.  Brokenness brings obedience.  By obedience leads to hearing more from God.  Disobedience shuts out the voice of God in our lives.  Why should God tell us things if we are not going to do them.  Obedience leads to more listening and hearing God's voice.

William Blake fourfold vision says this,

Unless the eye catch fire
God will not be seen.
Unless the ear catch fire
God will not be heard.
Unless the tongue catch fire
God will not be named.
Unless the heart catch fire,
God will not be loved.
Unless the mind catch fire
God will not be known.

(insights from Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola, "Jesus Speaks")

The Story of Adam and His Bride

I have been reading Peter Hiett's new book, "God and His Sexy Body" It's a sermonic look at Genesis chapter two which is the second book in a three book series on Genesis 1-3.  HIs first book was "The History of Time and the Genesis of You."  In this new book which is a fresh look at Genesis 2, Hiett wants people to see Jesus as the great bridegroom and the church as God's beautiful bride which is immersed in mutual surrendered love.

This book has some great anedotes throughout like "Don't be afraid to be empty because you'll always be filled."  "The missing link is not the survival of the fittest but the sacrifice of the fittest."  Here is one of my favorites: 

When one person forgives, it looks like the cross.
When two people forgive, it looks like marriage.
When everyone forgives, it looks like the body of Christ (the church)

The Church in Exile

I have been preaching through the book of Ezekiel where God's people are suffering and in exile.  We live in a day where people are waking up that the world has changed and the American church is in exile.  There is a growing secularism of our culture that is infiltrating the church making the church less relevant as the church tries to be more relevant and continue to lose members and influence.

Worse, more and more people who identify themselves as unchurched or Christians see a major disconnect between their identity and church membership.  Some Christian leaders even promote "forget the church, follow Jesus."  Why?  The American church especially is perceived as standing on the side of the rich, abandoning the poor, and pursues it own agenda, success, and power.

Ecclesiology is so low among protestants that people think the church is little more than a loose association of Jesus Facebook friends.  The church today is often viewed as a chaplain to the culture and society.  The church seems less different than the world around it in how people live and behave.  Church hoping is so frequent now as people view the church from a consumer perspective as one product competing against many other things for their time.

As the church now participates in Israel's story, it too also experiences exile and the need for restoration.  The church is being challenged once again to convenantal faithful to Christ over and even against popular ideologies, national interests, and political causes.  Can the church once again be God's new creation on earth?  God's people are not just a bunch of individuals but a called out community with a mission to transform the world more into the shalom of God's kingdom.

Top 20 Books for Sermon Series:

1.  Discipleship on the Edge by Darrell Johnson (great for preaching discipleship in the book of Revelation)

2.  A Genuine Faith by Rodney Reeves (great book preaching on Jesus from each of the four gospels)

3.  How to start a Riot by Jonathan Storment (Great for preaching through the book of Acts)

3.  Sinai Summit by Rick Atchley (preaching ten commandments)

4.  What is the point? by Misty Edwards (preaching on purpose and life mission)

5.  Jesus through middle eastern eyes by Kenneth Bailey (preaching the gospels)

6.  You see bones, I see an army by Floyd McClung (preaching on leadership and church)

7.  Holy Fire by Michael L. Brown (preaching on revival)

8.  The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson (preaching on the power of prayer)

9.  He Ascended into Heaven by Tim Perry (preaching on Jesus ascension and our ascension)

10. The Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen (preaching on the prodigal son story)

11.  Laugh Again by Charles Swindoll (preaching through the book of Philippians)

12.  The Upside Down Kingdom by Donald Kraybill (preaching on the kingdom of God)

13.  Dangerous Wonder by Michael Yaconelli (preaching on child-like faith)

14.  Leap over the wall by Eugene Peterson (preaching on first and second Samuel)

15.  No Small Snakes by Gordon Dalbey (preaching on spiritual warfare)

16.  God is bringing animals of every kind into the ark by Clay Sterrett (preaching on Christian unity)

17.  Resident Aliens by Stanley Hauerwas & William Willimon (preaching on the Church in culture)

18.  The Barbarian Way by Erwin McManus (preaching on an untamed faith)

19.  What's so amazing about Grace by Philip Yancey (preaching on grace)

20. Jesus Speaks by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola (preaching on hearing God's voice)

Prophetic Lament

The church loves to lament but often ignores or forgets to lament.  I read Soong-Chan Rah prophetic and challenging book "Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times" (IVP, 2015).  Why does it seem like the cry for justice burns in the hearts of the younger generation and not the older generation?  Have we gotten so old and cynical that we have lost a prophetic imagination to imagine a truly just world?  There is so much pain, trouble, turmoil, and suffering in the world, why does the American church avoid lament?

Can we see our own blind spots of segregation, racism, capitalism run amuck where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.  Why does the church solely focus on individual transgressions and sins while missing the institutional and corporate injustices that keep much of the evil we see in the world firmly in place.  Can we so quickly write checks to end human trafficking without seeing the connection for our demand to buy cheap clothing that generates this exploitation of poor people.  Do we care about hunger in Africa without connecting the dots to large multi-national corporations that benefits from exploiting these weaker nations.  Do we care about our cheap oil from the middle east more than how it continues to fund global terrorism around the world?

Can the American church see its own American exceptionalism whereas God is sending us many Christian immigrants from around the globe to help us and we are so threatened by them.  Maybe if  America and the wealthy American church lost its wealth, materialism would lose its death grip on us all?  Maybe if we lost our position as a world leader we then could lose an elevated view of ourselves?  Maybe if we lost our power and leverage over other nations we would join them in understanding what true powerless really feels like?  Maybe then we could lament.

God's Not Dead 2

I was shocked by how much controversy and anger atheists had over the first movie "God's Not Dead."  I understand the cold apologetics and there are obvious different perceptions and interpretations of movies but there was so much critique of the first movie that was so off based I wondered at times did they actually see the same movie as I did?

I liked the first movie better than the second and Kevin Sorbo did such an excellent portrayal and tremendous acting in the first movie.  This movie I liked as well but it is spotty at times.  There are some great moments in the movie that I liked better than the first movie and then there are several weak and contrived moments.  Can we all be honest and real for a moment.  Does Christianity have to win in the end?  Does winning a court battle actually prove God is not dead?  I thought a better ending to the movie would have been if the Christian teacher would have lost the case and let the viewers ponder that.

Here are a few problems I did have with the film.  Almost every atheist in the movie is portrayed in pretty black and white and in this case, dark terms.  The atheist parents of the girl are uncaring for their daughter and seemed to have moved on quickly from their son's death.  The atheist lawyer and the ACLU are portrayed as people who genuinely hate Christians and want to destroy them.  There is the atheist lawyer who seems virtuous and wants to win the case for the Christian teacher and there are other forms of belief and disbelief and doubts that are shown throughout the movie.

I know we are to chuck our minds and just enjoy a movie but I know too many things in how our legal system really works.  The whole legal proceedings lacked authenticity and credibility in this movie.  What judge would let an attorney turn on his own client that turns out to be a kind of gimmick to win the case?  Then there are numerous Christian apologists who are paraded before the audience to give evidence that Jesus was a real historical person and that one should not try to separate the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith. 

But what was really on trial was the issue of whether this Christian teacher was trying to evangelize her students in her history class.   Like a shell game, the movie gives the impression, if one believes there was a real historical person Jesus, then he should be taught in the public high school like any other historical figure.  The whole bait and switch is for the whole movie to be an evangelism apologetic for the Christian faith.  From a legal standpoint, the movie failed in not really proving its case in a legal sense since it was too busy trying to prove the case for Christ for the watching audience.

I believe Christian persecution is a real issue and there have been teachers and coaches that have lost their jobs over their Christian beliefs and faith in court.  After saying that, how big of a problem in the American church is persecution really happening?  This movie plays on Christian worst fears that some day things are going to get really bad for Christians.  Christians have been thinking this way for centuries and for many, like most fears, never have materialized in a significant way. 

In the future, I wonder if Pureflix or any Christian movie company could make a movie where a Christian and atheist are best friends who show mutual love and respect for each other and maybe die in the end sacrificing themselves for some greater common good.  Now that is a movie I would love to see!

Was Jesus Wrong About His Soon Return?

(When the Son Of Man Didn't Come" by Christopher Hays new book)

The delay of the parousia, the return of Christ in glory and the resurrection of the dead   to salvation and judgment, is one of those white elephants in the Christian life. On the one hand, Christianity seems to have at its core this longing for Christ’s return (marana tha was one of the earliest Christian sayings cf. 1 Cor 16.21) and the idea that the earliest Christians thought it was going to happen in their lifetime (cf. the farewell discourses of Mk 13 and Lk 21). That imminence of the end was what (as has been argued by people like Albert Schweitzer) grounded the radical ethic of the community and was the driving force behind their missionary fervor.

However, we stand 2000 years away from those days and the parousia seems farther away than ever. Although some people will emphasize that we never know the ‘time of the end’ just as Jesus himself didn’t or that ‘a thousand years are like a day in the eyes of God’ following  the temporary answer of 2 Peter 3, these seem like smokescreens to the real issue at times. The fact that we are still waiting for Jesus, still waiting for the end, after 200 years is a pretty big deal. And those well meaning solutions offered by the pious are kiddy bandaids slapped on a wound we tend to overlook. Even as I sit in seminary, this question as been deflected time and again by professors when it is pressed that if the disciples (and possibly Jesus, depending on who you ask) thought the end was coming SOON and it didn’t, doesn’t that mean that Christianity is faulty?

While I’m not sure that the end was so fervently thought of and expected by the early Church in the way often painted by scholars or End Times speculators, I stumbled upon this quotation in Wolfgang Pannenberg’s Jesus-God and Man that is giving me a new way to conceive of the question. He explains, about the delay of the parousia and the possibility that the early Church was wrong:

“When we speak today of God’s revelation in Jesus and of his exaltation accomplished in the resurrection from the dead, our statements always contain a proleptic element. The fulfillment, which had begun for the disciples, which was almost in their grasp, in the appearance of the resurrected Lord, has become promise once again for us. The unique significance of the apostles’ witness for all subsequent church history, however, is connected with the fact that at that time Jesus’ resurrection and the end of the world could be seen together as a single event under the impression f the imminent expectation of the end. To that extent the eschatological future was nearer then than at any time since. All subsequent church history lives from that, even though the truth of seeing the resurrection and the end together has become more problematic again in the meantime than it was for the first community, and will be completely confirmed only in the future.” (108)

I gathered three insights from this that are helpful in negotiating the delay of the parousia.
First, the delay is difficult and frustrating, to be sure.  But this delay is grounded in the nature of the constantly unfolding future, of that which is still expected and has always been that way. Resurrection faith has always been proleptic, always waiting for fulfillment even after the firstfruits of Jesus. We are in no different place than the early Church in this respect. Or for that matter the generations of slaves in Egypt longing for freedom, the years Job spent longing for God to act, or the exiled Israelites scattered abroad. Longing is part of what we, as people of YHWH, do.

Secondly, the fervor in waiting for and expecting the end has no bearing on how soon it will come, but rather it is an expression of how we live and conceive of time. The early Christians lived expectantly because their conception of time had been relativized by Christ’s sudden resurrecton. In explaining his theory of relativity, Albert Einstein captures this notion of time in dialogue  when he explains, “When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it seems like two hours; that’s relativity.” For the early Church, the reality of Jesus’ resurrection was so vivid and recent that their conception of how you live in time was different, and the lifestyle followed. Jesus’ resurrection relativized time so the dawn of the new age was already anticipated and lived into in real, substantial ways with the practice of non-violent love of enemies, sharing of goods, and worship of the risen Lord. And as Pannenberg explains, this meant that the eschatological future for the early Church was nearer than it ever has been in church history, not because it was more likely to happen but because they lived into a lifestyle that knew it was happening.

(excerpt from an article written by Alex Thompson)

If I don't take Genesis literally, then I can't take any part of the Bible Literally

When Augustine wrote a literal interpretation on the book of Genesis, one of the earliest examples of early Christian understanding of the book of Genesis, he did not mean sola literalist as if the literalist interpretation alone was the only way to read scripture for this misses the deeper and more important spiritual and allegorical meanings of scripture.

Early Jewish hermeneutics had four senses of scripture that parallels the four senses of meaning that the ancient church and Catholic church has today. Modern Evangelical conservative hermeneutics in their desire to protect and defend the Bible have focused on the literal meaning of the biblical text as the only true meaning of God's Word while confusing and collapsing together biblical authority with certain biblical understandings and interpretations of Scripture.

I have come to the conclusion a long time ago that approaching biblical issues as either/or issues is often a mistake rather than a more holistic both/and approach. The Bible has literal and spiritual meanings and multiple layers of meaning. Anytime we pit these meanings against one another or ignore or silence the multi-voices of the Bible is always to do damage to what Scripture actually gives us----God's Word in human words and language.

In the end, asking the question "do you believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible?" as if there are no figurative, symbolic or spiritual meanings of Scripture is just as much the wrong question as "do you believe in a symbolic understanding of Scripture?" if that means one can not believe in any kind of literal connections and literal meanings of scripture.

These kind of dichotomous questions shuts down fruitful interactions of language that comes to us with multi-layers from the literal to the figurative and from the historical to the spiritual meanings and intersections of the biblical text. If we keep asking the wrong questions of the biblical text, we will continue coming up with the wrong answers.

A Quiet Prayer

To Pray.
To live in silence.
So that you might die quicker,
so that Christ may grow in you faster.
To pray for peace.
To pray for missions and unity.
To love truth and be a lover of Christ.
To learn total surrender to God quicker.
Don't make Christ wait any longer!

(my adaption of Catherine Doherty prayer in "Poustinia")

Character (Still) Counts

Character Counts: Well Done, Jonathan Merrit

Aug 11, 2016 @ 9:57 by Scot McKnight 15 Comments

Jonathan Merritt:

“Character counts.” That was evangelicals’ rallying cry in their all-out assault against Bill Clinton beginning in 1993. In response to what they perceived as widespread moral decline, some religious groups had become aligned with the Republican Party during the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. To them, the allegedly draft-dodging, pot-smoking, honesty-challenged womanizer symbolized everything that was wrong with America.

More than two decades after Clinton’s first inauguration, many evangelical leaders of that era have endorsed the draft-dodging, foul-mouthed, honesty-challenged womanizer named Donald Trump for president. Only a handful refuse to follow suit, including Albert Mohler, the president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. During the Clinton years, he regularly argued in mainstream media outlets that the Arkansan was morally unfit to serve as Commander-in-Chief.

“If I were to support, much less endorse, Donald Trump for president,” Mohler says, “I would actually have to go back and apologize to former President Bill Clinton.”
At least Mohler is consistent, which is more than can be said for some of his peers in leadership. While prominent evangelicals tied Bill Clinton to the public whipping post for nearly a decade to make him pay penance for his character defects, they now celebrate a reality-television star who is at least as flawed. As Mohler said, if these Christian leaders want to endorse Trump, they should apologize to Bill Clinton….
Given all of this, it’s perplexing that the former Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed declared that “character matters” when it came to Clinton but privately offered to run Trump’s campaign in 2012. It’s hard to understand how the former Family Research Council head Gary Bauer ran television ads in the ’90s calling for Clinton’s resignation due to a “virtue deficit” but now supports Donald Trump. It’s confounding that the theologian Wayne Grudem signed a public letter lambasting former-President Clinton for “ill use of women” and “manipulation of truth” but recently wrote a 5,000-word endorsement of Trump, calling him “a good candidate with flaws” and arguing that people who vote for Hillary will be sinning….

All of this signals something bigger: an end to meaningful evangelical power and influence. Since the late 1970s, conservative Christian leaders have claimed their political engagement is about morality. They have claimed it is about character. They have claimed it is about values. They have claimed it is about biblical principles. Pious preachers, thunderous televangelists, and moralizing activists have sold America a bill of goods about their pure motivation for decades. But evidence indicates that evangelical political engagement is really about cultural influence, social dominance, and power.

Trump-loving evangelical leaders should either apologize to Bill Clinton or admit, after all these years, that they, too, have a character issue.

(From Scot McKnight "Jesus Creed" blog)

Trading the Gospel for Political Pie

As I see it, USAmerican evangelicalism is now a distant mirror to 1st century, 2nd Temple Judaism. Or, more correctly, Judaism(s).  In this post-Christian era, we have frantic groups longing to return to the Promised Land. Each group, just as in Jesus’ day, thinks they know how to get America back again. Consider the Pharigelicals for whom law is King, especially at the Supreme Court level. Then there’s the Sadducelicals who long to cross the aisle, not rock the boat and “just get-along.” The Herodigelicals don’t fool around, grabbing for all the power and following the money. Every age has its Essenigelicals, the pious few, the self-appointed faithful remnant who “fold the fort” ’til Jesus comes again. Watch out for the Zealogelicals whose slogan is “Guns, God, and the US Constitution!”

All this furor within the blood-soaked, gun-running, drug-dealing, super exceptional USAmerican Empire slouching toward a dominant globalism. “In God ‘Money’ We Trust.”

In the midst of being exiled from the public square, the US Church wants their “land” back. When Trump barks, “Make America great again,” hordes of believers hear, “Make the church great again!” One Christian blogger, committed to prayer for the state of the church, characterizes the screechy clamor belching from all the evangelical factions as a frantic looking for the political messiah, be it Trump or Clinton.

I have seen, sadly, good friends sell out unity in Christ for unity of Party or candidate. One prominent Christian author even demanded on FaceBook to unfriend her if you plan on voting for Trump. Let’s pour political poop all over Philippians 2:1-4 and exile the “mind of Christ” into oblivion. Far be it from non-Trump Christians to come to the Table with Trumpites. America has built the dividing wall, not on the border with Mexico, but right in the heart of the church. The Table of the Lord is now an ecclesial mockery in the degenerate state of the Church in the USA.

One prominent Christian leader actually wants us to wink at all of Trump’s deplorably pagan, and I mean pagan qualities because Trump is an alleged “baby Christian.” All this wasted passion toward flesh and blood entities all the while purporting to believe that the church’s struggle is not against flesh and blood. Evangelical leaders, followers, FaceBookers, bloggers, you name it, are talking out of both sides of their mouths and have become stupidly unintelligible. Even unbelievers are questioning Evangelicals for trading in the Gospel for a piece of political pie!

A thoughtful millennial evangelical laments the sorry mess handed to her and her peers by a Church sold out to an elephant and an ass. Isn’t that considered idolatry? “Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love; and the greatest of these is Hillary.” Why don’t we admit that is where so many hearts are set? I don’t think either Hillary or Trump died on the Cross for me. Can I tell this young millennial that?

When I was a child I was seeking to know the signs of the times and who the anti-Christ was and shuddered at the thought of being “Left Behind.” But when I became a man, I still believed in a rugged biblical idea: God’s judgment on the church first. “For it is time for judgment to begin with the family of God” ought to slap some sense into us for selling out to Caesar. Many will say, ‘We’re just exercising our American right to vote.” Then why are those many covered in stinky political slime? Why does their vote come at the expense of brothers and sisters who make up the bride of Christ? Shouldn’t we stop talking about Jesus’ body in filthy ways merely to advance a human, fleeting kingdom?

(Written by John Frye)

My Noah Ark Encounter

I really enjoyed the Creation museum.  Maybe I had too high of expectations of the Ark experience or they simply built it and put it all together too quick?  The biggest difference between the Creation Museum and Noah's Ark is the Creation museum was a self walking tour through wonderful technology with a 4-D movie presentation to moving robotic life like characters through the museum. 

Noah's ark was a walking tour where you stood in several long lines as people waited to look at paintings on the walls and read various compositions about Noah's ark and read an apologetic for young earth creationism.  If the creation museum was about enjoying the experience of creation, Noah's ark is an apologetic against evolution, against a regional flood, and why Ken Ham's worldview is the best explanation in understanding the book of Genesis.

It is quite a sight to see the sheer massive size of Noah Ark from the outside.  Usually, what is on the inside is what counts and is so much better than what is on the outside.  I will have to say in regards to the Noah Ark encounter, what is on the outside is better than what is on the inside in this case.

Do We Have to Kill the Messenger?

If one traces the line throughout history of darkness and evil and light and God's kingdom, there is an ongoing clash of kingdoms where darkness tries to extinguish the light if it can to hide its secrets.  Jesus came to planet earth to disarm the principalities and powers and destroy the works of the Devil  To come and seek and save the lost for God's glory and God's kingdom.  The powers of the earth killed the messenger rather than listening to him.

Several powerful movies I have seen or are coming out is "Kill the Messenger" which exposes how the government and big media in the 1990's, rather than listening to small town reporter break a huge newspaper story on how the government was cashing in and selling drugs to America to catch drug dealers on the war on drugs, it killed the messenger instead.

I also saw the powerful movie "Thirteen Hours" which showed a secret CIA operation in Benghazi where they helped save the lives of Americans who were under attack at the embassy.  This investigation has been ongoing but the movie delivered a powerful punch on what it was like during those thirteen hours.  What is now only be recently looked into is why was the CIA group doing there anyway?  WikiLeaks may be suggesting in the near future that they were running guns to Jihadists.

A new movie coming out soon is "Snowden."  Snowden worked for the NSA and leaked damaging information to the media on how the government was willfully and illegally spying on Americans.  Many have tried to portray Snowden as a traitor to our country.  

Jesus was hung on a cross.  The newspaper reporter going against the CIA supposedly committed suicide.  WikiLeaks founder is in hiding at an embassy and Edward Snowden is in exile and hiding from charges of espionage.  The question is do we really want to hear the dark truth about ourselves and our nation?  Will we listen to those who tell us the truth or will we try to silence them and keep killing the messenger?