Insights for Living: #1

Chuck Swindoll was a pastors pastor and a wonderful influential preacher in my life. I loved hearing him preach on his radio program, "insights for living." I have been going deeper into my studies of scriptures and reading some of the best translators of the Scriptures, I am seeing the need to address this important issue of Bible translations.

I am not concerned with the KJV only debate or are modern translations undermining somehow biblical authority? Actually, God can speak through any of these translations since they are all imperfect representations of God's perfect Son Jesus who tells us that all scripture read correctly is about him (Lk.24:7: Jn.5:39). Biblicists get so hung up on the Bible being perfect when the truth is, if that really were the case, we still would not get it right because we are imperfect interpreters of God's Word! The foundational problem with Biblicism is it confuses biblical authority with biblical interpretations and judges all truth by sola scriptura or prima scriptura when it should be, prima Yeshua!

One of the problems Christians have had with the Watchtower Society is they came up with their own translation of the Bible putting in their own extra biblical words to make the New World Translation conform to their theology. The sad reality is that many of our Bibles, ancient and new have done the same thing but we have not been aware of it. To make the Bible read more smoothly or to make more sense of it, we have added to God's Word which does not need man's help and therefore many translations have fallen into the same trap or problems we accuse the JW's of doing.

For example, there has been an age old debate between JW's between the meaning of the Gospel of John's prologue. Is Christ the divine Logos or a divine logos? Is Christ the Creator or a creature? Certainly the JW's have inserted certain words into their translations to make Jesus a part of creation rather than identifying him as one with the Creator. But the prologue of John's gospel actually is very ambiguous at best when it comes to determining how to translate son which is without the article (a son or the son?).

Actually, this is characteristic of John all the way to where you get to the risen Christ and Thomas explicitly says, 'O Theos.' A fully divine designation after the resurrection! What is fascinating in all this is how John holds back the full title of Jesus as God until his disciples experience and see the resurrected Lord Jesus. There is a beauty, mystery and power in all this that John wants you to see how the story of Jesus develops and unfolds until you have your own "aha" resurrection moment! Maybe a better approach to the Bible is to read the Bible with expectancy and surprise and not like one who has read the ending of the story first and then reads that ending into every verse of the Scriptures as if Scripture intends to be read this way. May God give us all fresh eyes to read the Bible as if for the first time.

(This first insight on John's prologue comes from David Bentley Hart, The New Testament: A Translation)

Leaving Behind the Rapture

How can it say it? Rapture theology promotes an end-time scenario of escapism, survivalism, and a violent destructive end to earth. The clock is ticking but not in the way dispensational Left Behind thinkers imagine. God did not so love the world that he sends us World War III. I am a huge Star Trek fan but Rapture theology sure sounds a lot like "Beam Me Up" theology. Let me give a few words about Rapture theology scriptures:

1.  Thess.4:13-18 is not about the rapture but a but the resurrection of the dead. In other words, there are not two stages of Christ's final coming, there is only his final return. This text of Scripture is not emphasizing some people will be left behind but we will all be together with our loved ones in our resurrection life!

2.  Matt.24:39-42 & Lk.17:34-35 says nothing about born again Christians being taken up in some kind of rapture to escape the last great days of Tribulation. There are Christians throughout all of church history until the present that are going through great tribulation. The only promise Jesus makes is his followers will go through tribulation (Jn.16:33), not escape it. This judgment describes in Matthew and Luke will be like the days where those taken, swept away by the flood or taken up is not as positive thing but are the ones who are going to judgment. The ones left may be the righteous and therefore these versus not only don't teach about the Rapture but actually teach the opposite!

3. And however one wants to interpret Jesus Olivet discourse in Matthew chps. 24-25,  one has to deal with Jesus words in verse 34, "Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place." In the end, the ancient church has always focused on a new heaven and new earth where God's people are a new creation in Christ. It is not the Rapture that has been the historical teaching of the church but its all things become new because of the Resurrection of Jesus, God's Messiah.

The Riddle of Isaac - Part 2

Some people are good at getting riddles and others are not.  Some people are so literal that they don't even recognize a riddle even when it is staring one in the face.  Scripture is always more pregnant with meaning than we understand.  God's Word is not a book that can be tamed or stroke our intellectual egos.  When it comes to the journey and story of faith, faith is always a mix of belief and unbelief, flesh and spirit, mystic sweetness and messy junk hidden deep inside our lives.

Christians can take a very simplistic reading to this story or try to reinvent it for the modern ears that are scandalized by it.  Jews find the hope of atonement and the cry of lament in the Abraham and Isaac story.  Skeptics and atheists stumble and can't get the riddle so they abandon the story and move on in their lives.  For one person, this is a story of hope and redemption.  For another, this is a story of absurdity and moral failure and evil being masqueraded by a god who pretends to be good and just but is neither.

Since nobody died in the story, the question is was God wrong in asking Abraham the question which demanded a response?  Can God present us with riddles we don't understand and ask us to do the impossible?  Can God ask us questions God already knows the answers to like "Adam, where are you?"  Can God ask us questions that say something more about us than they do about God?  Jesus at times refused to answer questions and gave answers to questions where he said it was for our benefit and not his in his response.

When Jesus is asked about the divorce question in Matthew 19, his answer is met with unbelief because God told Moses to give permission for divorce.  Jesus said God spoke, God commanded, and God permitted not because of any hardness in God's heart but because of the hardness that was within our own hearts.

So once we receive the answer we were not expecting nor even wanting, then we move onto the next question.  Why did God send an angel of death to the Egyptians?  Why did he drown all those Egyptians?  Why did God order Joshua to kill and destroy all the Canaanites?  If that is not bad enough, why does God allow all the tyrants and oppressors to continue to rule the world?  Why does God act in ways we don't like in killing people and then why doesn't God destroy the very people we think should be killed?  We want simplistic answers.  Don't speak in parables or riddles.  Give us an answer God or whoever the spokesperson is for God.

What we miss is God always invites us back into the story for us to ask the hard questions.  God calls each of us like Israel to wrestle with God (which by the way is what the name of Israel literally means, "God-wrestlers").  The bottom line is entering into the wrestling match and to keep digging deeper and keep wrestling.  People leave the wrestling match prematurely and often declare themselves the winner.  This is not how the wrestling match with the Bible and God works much less how it works in real wrestling today.  You keep wrestling till you get an answer or a blessing.  Now that is something worth going after! 

The Death of Death

My Mother died and I'm asking why?
Why does death take the people we love?
Why can't we be happy and just live together?
Why does death have the final word?

They hung my Savior on a cross.
Why did death have to take him away?
I hurt so bad that somebody is going to pay.
Why can't death just stay away.

When I look into a casket, is that the end?
Bury me in the ground with the rest of my kin.
Is life worth living if death is the end?
Does death have the last word?

When death happens, the preacher tells us not to cry.
People try to tell you everything is okay but that's a lie.
I'm so fearful of death that I weep.
Is there nothing in life to hold onto, nothing to keep?

When Jesus was laid in the ground, death thought it had won.
The ground shook, the stone rolled away,
Jesus rose from the grave and said it was done.

Death lost the victory when it tried to bury love.
For love conquers all, even death from above.
Do not let your hearts be troubled even when the world breaks you down.
Love wins in the end and now it's only death that frowns.

So if somebody asks why does all this death happen?
Tell them the death of death happened when Jesus rose from the dead,
and now whether in life or death, Jesus is our Captain.

The Divine Comedy

"The Cross is the ground-plan of the universe: it stretches from nebula to nebula, linking the furthest limits of the worlds, holding out to them the wounded hands of love." -  John Cordelier

I thought today would be a good day to talk about divine comedy since it is April fool's day.  Our comedy for this day is to tell fibs to one another and see if others will believe them and then say with a grin, "I got you."  Or more, play an elaborate prank on someone and then say just at the right moment, "April fool!" 

This is holy week and the biggest prank of history is the resurrection.  The cruelest joke of all is the crucifixion.  The greatest irony of all is how the resurrection made a fool of the Devil.  But then none of us can laugh too long since we are either fools for Christ or fools of the world which means we are the Devil's fools.  We don't like to think about it but we are either a slave to sin and Satan or we are a slave to righteousness and a bond-slave to Christ.

The mysteries of the Christian faith are all divine comedies.  The great passion play of Jesus last week is played out in our own lives in countless ways every week.  Scientists can find on the marking of every human hand to the smallest molecules that hold this universe together called "laminin," are all in the shape of a cross.  The cross is the bridge for all who dare to enter into the Divine Comedy.
The cross is where our pain, struggles, and sacrifices intersect with God's perfection.  It is through the cross our failures, disabilities, and darkness connect to the light of incarnation and divinity.  Suffering is the door we must all walk through and embrace as we embrace the One who suffered for us.

The Exodus

"Jesus is the most attractive, haunting and disturbing figure in the history of the world"

I am a huge fan of the original movie "The Ten Commandments" with Charleston Heston. I have not seen the new "Exodus" movie but I suspect many followers of Jesus will be conflicted by the way Hollywood portrays biblical stories today.  The whole exodus story is about exile, deliverance, Passover, defeating the powers of evil and rescuing God's people.  The whole exodus story is wrapped as the back drop of Jesus life and story as Jesus ushers in a new exodus in a way that was different from his contemporaries.

Jesus did not look like or act like what some thought of the coming Messiah.  And nobody thought of the Messiah dying on a cross.  People forgot Isaiah's portrait of a suffering Messiah for the other prophets who spoke of a conquering victorious Messiah.  Jesus had a different relationship and vision of God and simply did not fit the pattern of what others were expecting.  Jesus not only turned over the money changers table in the temple but he turned over people's assumptions and understandings as well.

If it were not for the resurrection, it would have appeared like Jesus was a failed Messiah along the lines of many failed Messiahs of Jesus' time.  It is by the power of Jesus resurrection where we can make sense once again of ourselves and the world around us.  It is by the resurrection that we can begin to experience heaven on earth rather than simply be caught in the endless cycle of violence, evil and hell on earth.  Every obstacle of grace is overcome by Jesus resurrection power and the new exodus he has created for you and for me.

Easter Scandal

"Scandals followed Jesus wherever he went"

It is quite amazing that we have sanitized Jesus life so much that his whole life and death and resurrection seem less embarrassing much less scandalous.  The events around Jesus birth would scandalize conservatives and liberals alike.  Conservative would be scandalized by a baby born out of wedlock and liberals would be scandalized that Jesus was born at all, especially by such nonsense as a virgin birth.  There was the scandal of Jesus bad table manners and overturning tables and driving people out.  There is the scandal of Jesus hanging around the wrong people and supposedly drinking and eating too much to be any kind of a proper man of God. 

Then there was Jesus shameful execution.  Only criminals and frauds end up on crosses.  And then there is the whole embarrassment of the resurrection.  The Jews believed that God could raise a person from the dead but they did not expect the Messiah to be raised.  To be crucified was a sign of illegitimacy and a curse, certainly not a way to receive God's favor.  Besides, the Messiah was to be someone who would be victorious over Israel's enemies and bring in a long awaited vindication of Israel, not a vindication of the Messiah on Israel's and the world's behalf.

Let's face it, scandals are inconvenient truths and we have tamed and sanitized Jesus down so much that scandals have turned into politically correct conveniences for the church.  The scandal of Easter has been lost and we can all sleep better for it.