Daniel 12:8-9, The Rapture is Today!!

Saturday, May 21, 2011 in Bible Commentary | 3 comments

I heard, but I did not understand. So I asked, “My lord, what will the outcome of all this be?” He replied, “Go your way, Daniel, because the words are closed up and sealed until the time of the end.

Mark 7:27, Casting the Children’s Bread to Dogs

Friday, May 20, 2011 in Bible Commentary | 4 comments

But Jesus said to her,  “Let the children be filled first, for it is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.”

//A Greek woman came to Jesus asking him to cast a devil from her daughter. Today’s verse is Jesus’ reply, a very nasty way of saying that because the woman was a gentile, she did not deserve the attention reserved for God’s people. Harsh words, indeed, hardly what we would expect to hear from Jesus.

Hearing these words, the woman does not grow angry. It is not for herself that she asks help, but for her daughter. She replies, “Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs under the table eat from the children’s crumbs.”

Suddenly, a light goes on for Jesus. God has sent him into the world to proclaim a Kingdom, a new way of life, a way of love and compassion. At first, he believes his focus should be entirely on Israel, and displays a low opinion of the gentile world. But suddenly, he realizes that this woman’s desire is the very same as God’s desire! She loves her daughter and doesn’t want that daughter to suffer.

This is a unique and special story, because as best I can tell, this is the only occasion in the Bible where Jesus gives up his opinion and accepts that of another! He lets a gentile woman convince him! Against all odds, in a patriarchal society that despised pagans, a pagan woman has better helped him understand his own mission.

For that, we should trust and appreciate the mission of Jesus even more.

Book review: The Jefferson Bible: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth

Thursday, May 19, 2011 in Book Reviews | 0 comments

by Thomas Jefferson

★★★

We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus. There will be remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.

With this goal, Jefferson set about with razor in hand to extract the true words and actions of Jesus from the enveloping hype and miracle stories of the Gospels. Rejecting the virgin birth, the annunciation, and even the resurrection, Jefferson wanted to dig down to Jesus’ message of absolute love and service. The result is a chronological new Gospel formed by merging select portions of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

An excellent, concise introduction by Forrest Church and an afterward by Jaroslav Pelikan (Whose Bible Is It) round out the book. Jefferson espoused a Unitarian philosophy, subjugating the topic of religion in his library to the category of “moral philosophy.” Pelikan, in his afterward about Jefferson’s contemporaries, classifies Jefferson among the “Enlightenment rationalists.” After reading Jefferson’s Bible, I’d say that’s a fair assessment.

Genesis 1:1, Evolution: Fact, Fiction, Religion, or Just a Theory?

Wednesday, May 18, 2011 in Bible Commentary | 9 comments

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

//Today, I’m sharing a guest post from a friend. You’ve probably seen Tim’s comments on various threads, and you’ve seen us go head to head, and maybe you’ve figured out we’re the best of friends despite differing beliefs. In my desire to provide fair and equal treatment to a variety of religious beliefs and experiences, then, how could I do better than a guest post from Tim?

I did talk with Tim briefly before posting his article, trying to nail him down on some of the issues the article raises. What, Tim, do you mean by evolution? What is a theory versus a fact? What exactly do you have faith in? The article seemed purposefully oblique, purposefully interpretable in a variety of ways. And that turned out to be just what he wanted: an exercise for your noodle, to make you think for yourself, to build your own paradigm. So, I left it alone.

Tim wanted me to emphasize that he does not have social media accounts. Replies to this article are best posted on my blog, at http://www.dubiousdisciple.com/.

Here, then, are Tim Walker’s ramblings about evolution and creation.

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Evolution: fact, fiction, religion, or just a theory.

I am going to talk about evolution and some natural processes. Bear with me, it all relates to my paradigm.  We will get started with little things. Keep in mind that how one looks at anything including little things is based on our paradigms. Paradigms are perspectives. What we have faith or belief in sets a perspective up.  Individual perspectives determine how we define evolution, and I am going to work at presenting a perspective. This is one of my paradigms and I hope you appreciate it and maybe understand it.

There are many different things we could say about evolution, and most have already been said. There are many things that are quite interesting and really do relate to how we look at evolution. I have put some of these together for consideration in hopefully a new or at least interesting way. For example stars are a long ways away.  In fact, there are stars that are over one million light years away. It would by definition of the speed of light in a vacuum take light over a million years to reach us from those stars. How does that relate to evolution, you ask? We will get to it after a few other things.

First let us consider some small things. How about dirt? Have you ever considered that trees, flowers, grasses and plants need dirt to grow in? Unless of course you want to talk about hydroponics or aeroponics, but those are outside the scope of this discussion. Any garden needs soil, but what is soil? Soil consists of differing amounts of sand, clay, silt, humus, organic matter on its way to being humus, water, gases, minerals, and a bunch of small to large living organisms. These small things can tell us some very interesting things.

Sand is produced through erosion of rocks. Clay and silt are also produced from erosion of rocks. I would be tempted to say that all of us believe in erosion. Please, remember that belief in erosion. Now let us look at humus. Humus is made up of dead organic matter that has decayed to the point where it is pretty stable.  Some of the best humus is in soil called Terra preta. The organic matter takes years to decay into humus.  This is another natural process that most of us can believe in. How do the gases and water get into the soil?  Precipitation gets both the water and most of the gases into the soil. What about the minerals, how do they get into the soil? The minerals get there through a number of natural processes; some are quite similar to how humus is made. The decay of dead things helps with both humus and mineral availability in the soil. That means you have to have dead things in the soil for those natural processes to work. Those dead things do not always decay; sometimes they just get buried too fast, or one of a number of other ways dead stuff can be preserved. These are other natural processes that most people believe in. These natural processes that create soil are ones that most all of us can believe in.

Anyone want to talk about trees and some other stuff? Trees, as most of us know, have growth rings. There is one ring for each growing season. If there are ten rings the tree is ten years old. Shells have bands that show their age. In a pond you can dig down into the mud deposited on the bottom and again see layers that will correspond with the seasons. These again are other natural processes that most of us accept.

How do these natural processes relate to evolution? Evolution was proposed as an idea many years ago. It is an idea that has been proposed to explain some natural processes that have been observed by a few people.  Many people have fought against acceptance of that idea. For them, it has to be fiction. It is now generally thought of as a theory, but it is not treated as a theory. For some people, accepting evolution would mess with an important paradigm that they have. Of course there are others that fight for it just as hard. There are enough facts supporting it that they have developed a faith in the theory being a fact. For them, to think of evolution as just a theory messes with their paradigm also. This is enough of my rambling about evolution being a fact, theory, or religion. The fact is it messes with some people’s paradigms.

If you have a creator that creates a world, and wants things to live there, it has to work. “Work:” what does that mean, you ask? If a creator creates a tree, there has to be soil for the roots. In the soil you need all of the things talked about above. The sand, clay, silt and everything else is created. The fact that sand, clay, and silt are now also produced through erosion is quite a different matter. The natural process of erosion is still correct; it is just a different way of creating sand, clay, and silt. The dead organisms have to be created also. By the way, I hope that no one has a problem with God creating organisms that are already dead. A cat, a dog, a person or two, that were created already dead. Actually the numbers of dead things would have to be quite high. There are many things on this earth that just can’t survive without dead stuff.  How deep did the creator create dead stuff? There are living and dead organisms many thousands of feet below the surface of the earth.

What else does it mean to create something that works? Hmm, I have an idea.

If a world was created 10 years ago what would it be like? It could be just like this one or not. What would a tree be like? If we counted the tree rings on a giant tree how many would be there? If there were 10 tree rings or less that might say something. In fact it might be hard to argue that the world was more than 10 years old. It would probably be a pretty good theory, or just a very accepted fact that the world was created 10 years ago. Everyone would know that something or someone created the world. In this proposed world we could even imagine that the intelligent life had a book similar to the Bible. It would just be a bit shorter in the history area. Another thing that would be different in it would be faith. There would not need to be much about faith in the existence of a creator. Faith is accepting something you do not understand or know. It is not based on fact. For me, and according to the dictionary, this means that faith is not proven or disproven by facts. If the Creator of this hypothetical world wanted the people of this world to believe in Him/Her by faith, there would be a problem. It just would not work. For that Creator, this hypothetical creation does not work. A better job of creation would need to be done. So that a belief in a Creator by faith, and not by fact, would be required.

Now we are getting into the meat. Is a theory greater than a fact? Does a fact prove or disprove a theory? A theory is less important than a fact. If a fact can’t prove or disprove faith, then a theory sure doesn’t even come close. Theories can’t do anything to a belief in God, if it is based on faith. Theories can’t even hurt those that base their beliefs on facts. Facts are stronger than theories. Now, if you are basing your belief on facts, theories, or convenience, that is a different thing. Then you get a battle. That is why there is a battle going on about a theory called evolution. If you are basing your belief on facts, theories, or convenience, then you will fight change until the fight costs more than the change. (There is another basis for belief and that is power, but I will not get into that here.) Not so, some would say, faith is about not giving room to false heretical teaching. That is a bad road to go down, people! The Catholic Church has done a good job of showing us some of why that is true. Imagine that carried to a ludicrous extreme: We would need thought police to keep us from entertaining random thoughts, which might go against some excepted knowledge. Oh, wait, it has already been done. For me the real meat of the issue is, do I believe by faith or not? If I do believe by faith, then all of the theories and facts do not affect me. Still, those facts and theories are really interesting to me, because they are the man’s best attempt to describe God’s creation. I like getting to see and understand how God’s creation works; it speaks to me of the Creator.

Evolution is just another theory. Please do not get confused by the idea of natural processes being evolution.  The natural processes, facts, are either explained by the theory or not. The change in any one species’ characteristics, or any other natural process, is a natural process, not the theory. Again, theories describe facts and suggest possible facts we do not yet know. Theories can be disproved by facts. Some theories will probably never be disproved by new facts, but all can be.

What about those stars out there? In a vacuum, we already know it takes light a long time to reach us.  Imagine, again, that world with only 10 tree rings even in their oldest and biggest trees. What would it be like to be looking up into space and see light just getting to us for the first time from another star? It would be kind of cool. It would be a whole different ball game. We would not need to be using layers of theories and facts to try and calculate the age of the universe. It’s age would be very obvious. Let me give an example for clarity. If we saw today for the first time a neutron star, and that neutron star was 6000 light years away, and we could see no star farther away, then that fact would give us an age to the universe (assuming we all can agree that neutron stars are old stars.) It would also make the idea of the universe being created a fact. We would know there was a creator. We would have a different Bible.

Having my paradigm, I know that faith must be pretty special, for God to have planned its necessity. For me, I know it is. It gives me peace and joy.

(Contributed by Tim Walker)

Book review: Letter to a Christian Nation

Tuesday, May 17, 2011 in Book Reviews | 4 comments

by Sam Harris

★★★

Nobody needs another review on this short little atheist booklet. Amazon now has 724 reviews. By now, we all know how aggressively Harris attacks Christianity, and how effectively his writing pushes buttons. I’m not going to review the book so much as I’m going to discuss the problem.

Does Harris have good points? Of course. Is he right? Quite often. Is he offensive? Duh. I’m about as “liberal” as a Christian can get, and even I am offended when Harris writes.

The funny thing is, Harris cares. He cares about people, he cares about truth, he cares about our future. If you don’t believe me, begin the book by turning to the back and reading the conclusion. But Harris’ method pretty much assures that the audience he wants to reach will continue to ignore him. Just as Harris continues to ignore the Christian writers who seek to reach him.

There’s a lot of truth flying in both directions in the Christian/atheist argument, and certainly a lot of honest intentions and concern for one another, yet very little connection. It makes me want to throw up my hands and conclude that atheists simply cannot grasp Christian thinking, and Christians simply cannot grasp atheist thinking. Atheists think they can use logic and common sense to somehow talk Christians away from what they feel and know through experience. Christians think if only atheists would give in to the God they are so frantically resisting, all would be well. If I thought you’d let me get away with it, I’d suggest that one side thinks with their head, the other with their heart … but, of course, I’d just be offending both sides with a trite oversimplification.

It seems utterly impossible to bring the two sides together. I’m not sure it’s possible for the two sides to even understand each other. But you’d think coexistence and mutual respect would at least be possible. To that end, I recommend Christians read Harris’ book to better understand the way atheists think, and just do their Christian best not to be offended.

Matthew 7:14, the Strait Gate

Monday, May 16, 2011 in Bible Commentary | 2 comments

Strait is the gate and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

//Here is another of those verses that help religions draw lines in the sand. If a denomination grows, that’s proof that God is welcoming people to His one and only way. If instead it is rejected by others, well, that’s equal proof that it’s right, for strait is the gate and narrow is the way. Your pews not filling as they used to? What more proof do you need that God is with you, for the Bible promises a “falling away.” Your constituents having trouble believing what you say? Not your problem, since the Bible promises to reward believers, though it seem like “foolishness.”

Religion encourages self-assurance, and when we feel the presence of God, that bolsters our opinion that we have found the one “right” way. Preach it, brother! If others embrace your teaching, glory be to God! If others despise or disagree with you, well, that’s to be expected! It’s a no-lose situation.

What never seems to cross anyone’s mind is that other types of believers—those deceived by other religions and denominations—also experience God, and have just as much evidence for their opinion that you are the one who is wrong. As Karen Armstrong says…

Where is the fun in religion, if you can’t disapprove of other people! There are some people, I suspect, who would be outraged if, when they finally arrived in heaven, they found everybody else there as well. Heaven would not be heaven unless you could peer over the celestial parapets and watch the unfortunates roasting below.

Book review: Whose Bible Is It?

Sunday, May 15, 2011 in Book Reviews | 0 comments

by Jaroslav Pelikan

★★★★★

It’s been maybe a year since I read this book, but I recently dug it out again for a bit of research. I was looking into the Comma Johanneum, that controversial little verse in the first epistle of John that got a facelift in the Middle Ages: 1 John 5:7-8.

In this book, Pelikan discusses how the Bible came to be, how it was interpreted, and how Christianity built its own message atop the Tanakh (the Torah, the prophets, and the Writings). But the Bible didn’t stop growing 2,000 years ago; it continues to be interpreted, modified, translated through the ages.

Did Christianity steal the Bible from the Jews? Pelikan has a way of uniting Christian and Jew even while recognizing an impenetrable rift. His writing is wonderfully readable and occasionally funny, as he points out how contradictory religions can read the same words and be inspired in different ways. He sees diversity as something to be appreciated, not condemned.

One cannot help but appreciate the Bible more as a living, growing, entity after reading this. The Word is alive! And ultimately, in the search for who owns the Bible, we must conclude as Pelikan does: To speak of possessing the Bible or even to ask “Whose Bible is it?” is … not only presumptuous but blasphemous.

Acts 10:38, A Good Man

Saturday, May 14, 2011 in Bible Commentary | 2 comments

God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power: who went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, for God was with him.

I have a habit of unpacking this verse whenever I feel the need to steer my blog back toward the straight and narrow. I’d like to quote from Karen Armstrong’s The Spiral Staircase where she is learning from Hyam,  a Jew, of what it means to practice Judaism:

“No official theology?” I repeated stupidly. “None at all? How can you be religious without a set of ideas—about God, salvation, and so on—as a basis?”

“We have orthopraxy instead of orthodoxy,” Hyam replied calmly, wiping his mouth and brushing a few crumbs off the table. “’Right practice’ rather than ‘right belief’. That’s all. You Christians make such a fuss about theology, but it’s not important in the way you think. It’s just poetry, really, ways of talking about the inexpressible. We Jews don’t bother much about what we believe. We just do it instead.”

Yet, beneath the later posturing of Christian writers, isn’t this was Jesus was about? Jesus was a Jew, and taught before a backdrop of the Jewish religion, but in many ways, Jesus showed as much disdain for the 613 laws of the book of Moses as did Paul. He left instead a legacy of kindness and compassion, as a doer.

I find the study of religions interesting, their creeds less so. To my way of thinking as a liberal Christian, any religion which does not express itself in good works is a failed religion.

Book review: The Gospel and the Greeks

Friday, May 13, 2011 in Book Reviews | 0 comments

by Ronald H. Nash

★★★★

Did the New Testament borrow from Pagan thought? Nash approaches the topic of outside influence in three parts, approaching the question of dependence from a traditional Christian viewpoint.

Part I: Hellenistic Philosophy. How much Hellenistic influence do we see in the Gospels? From Paul’s quoting of Stoic philosophers to John’s interpretation of the Logos, there are unquestionable connections. The most fascinating passage in this section is Nash’s “test case” in the book of Hebrews. There, Jesus is promoted as superior to the Alexandrian Logos and Sophia, superior to priestly mediators, superior to Moses and Melchizedek. Jesus is the true Logos, the fulfillment of it all. Where Hellenistic thinking often formed cyclical patterns, Hebrews portrays Jesus as breaking the pattern. The author of Hebrews perceives time not as cyclical, but as linear. “The once-for-all, fully completed, never-to-be-repeated, and final character of Jesus’ sacrifice contrasts sharply with the continuing sacrifices of the Levitical priests.”

Part II: The mystery religions. Each region of the Mediterranean world seems to have produced its own mystery religion. How much influence did these religions have on Christianity? Nash sees it as a dead issue, in part because we know so little about the mystery religions before the third century. It was in this century that Christianity began to blend with mystery religions such as Mithraism, and the next century before the terminology of the mystery cults first began to appear in the language of the church. On the other hand, other cult practices such as that of Dionysus are too early to have an influence. Those who compare communion with pagan ritual are not taking timing into consideration: the savage practice of eating one’s god appears to have long since disappeared before the time of Jesus.

Part III: Gnosticism. The idea that any of the canonical books reflects Gnostic influence is losing favor. Renowned theologian Rudolf Bultmann believed the writer of the Gospel of John had been a member of a Gnostic sect who was converted to Christianity, but Nash examines various Gnostic writings and concludes that Gnostic thinking postdates the Biblical writings.

Personally, I find it hard to believe that any Mediterranean religion grew up in a vacuum, yet a rash of recent books tend to sensationalize the commonalities between Christian and Pagan practices. Tom Harpur’s The Pagan Christ provides one example. Nash’s book provides some needed counter-balance.

(Note: Nash’s research is not a response to recent writings, but a precursor; I’m reviewing the 2003 second edition of a 1992 original.)

Matthew 6:10, Thy Kingdom Come

Friday, May 13, 2011 in Bible Commentary | 0 comments

Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.

//So ends my book about Revelation. Father and son recite these words in prayerful anticipation of the day their Messiah will bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth, setting up a very real and political world power.

Perhaps no other verse in the Bible so epitomizes the confusion between early Christians over how to interpret the life and death of Jesus. Did Jesus already bring down the Kingdom of Heaven as was expected of the Jewish Messiah, or is he coming back another day to bring it? All early Christians agreed that Jesus had or would have a profound effect on the world; they just disagreed over how and when. Matthew’s Gospel anticipates the Kingdom arriving soon by force, while Luke argues that the Kingdom has already arrived peacefully: “Neither shall they say, Lo here! Or, lo there! For, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” Luke’s understanding of the Kingdom was very different from Matthew’s. The epistles continue the argument, some siding with Luke, some siding with Matthew. Revelation sides very definitely with Matthew, promising a real and immediate bloody victory by Christ, with 200,000,000 enemies vanquished, and a new kingdom quickly established from within a New Jerusalem on earth.

Two thousand years later, the dream of a coming kingdom has yet to die. But how are we to relate to the original, first-century beliefs? How do we get inside the heads of early Christians, to understand the excitement of a coming kingdom on earth? The philosopher Bertrand Russell argued that there are two types of knowledge: knowledge by description versus knowledge by acquaintance. Storytelling can help bridge the difference, which is why I was determined to write my book as a combination of both fiction and nonfiction. I hope to share with you the percolating excitement among early Christians about the coming Kingdom.

http://www.thewayithappened.com