"Speaking the Truth in Love"

A "brilliant" realization struck me yesterday morning while driving to work, regarding Ephesians 4:15:

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ

My responsibilities in this are "simple". I am responsible to speak the truth. I am responsible to be motivated by love. And I am responsible to speak lovingly. I am not responsible for the other person's response.

Compromising the truth, obscuring the truth or speaking just part of the truth, however motivated, is a failure to speak the truth. Failing to speak needed full truth out of concern for the other person's "feelings" is also a failure of love. And clubbing some one with the truth is an obvious failure of love.

These are things I can control, and being fully truthful and loving are tough enough. I cannot control what the other person does. They may take the truth to heart and start the process of walking in it. They may get angry, defensive and walk away from our friendship. My responsibilities are to speak the truth, clearly, fully, and lovingly. I must trust the Holy Spirit to persuade the other person of that truth and their need for it. I must resist the temptation to play Holy Spirit, and trust Him to do His "job". The other person is responsible for their response. I must resist the temptations to assume responsibility for things I cannot control and for which I am not responsible.

Adventures In Applesauce

A snack I've been having lately is a simple mix of a half cup of plain non-fat yogurt, a quarter cup of granola (chosen carefully to avoid super high calorie types) and a quarter cup of crushed pineapple (packed in its own juice). It's pretty good nutritionally, pretty filling, and under 200 calories. I decided that it would be good to introduce some variety, but what to use?. Applesauce seemed a natural choice in place of the crushed pineapple, but to me, store-bought jarred applesauce is barely mediocre. On the other hand, I have fond memories of my Mom's homemade applesauce.

Her “recipe” was simple, cut up apples, a little water, a little brown sugar and a pinch of salt (to enhance the flavor). The critical ingredient is the apple. I know, “Du-uhh!” But seriously, apples that are great eaten fresh – e.g. Jazz, Honeycrisp or Jonagold – are not necessarily very good for cooking. I tried using Honeycrisp, and while the resulting applesauce was better than the stuff from a jar, it was just OK. So I decided to try several types that are good for cooking. So far, I've tried Pink Lady and Pippin, and the results have been very good. I'm going to try Granny Smith also (when on sale). My Mom always used Gravenstein, but I haven't seen that variety at our local store. At any rate, my family is enjoying the homemade applesauce and I have some variety in my snack.

I know, no profound lessons about not accepting mediocrity in our walk with Christ or how God uses different types of people for different purpose. How weird of me! But God wants us to enjoy his creation, and really great applesauce is very enjoyable!

My Response to a Bit of Popular Facebook “Wisdom”

This comment regarding the Bible seems to be popular on Facebook at the moment:

I believe in god. I don't go to church, reasoning be i don't want some priest trying to tell me what "gods" words are or how things went down back in the day. The bible to me is a fake, maybe not all of it. A bible is like a scary story passed down generation to generation, as the story gets passed down the words are twisted and the story changes. I want to go to heaven, but im gonna live my life to the fullest and not regret a thing.

I don't know who wrote it or how much it has bounced around the Internet, being modified by various people as it is passed along. Whichever is the case, the author(s) displays such a lack of understanding of the Bible that I wonder whether (s)he has even read it – more than just verses from here and there, the entire Bible. Why do I say that? Well, the reason is in the Bible itself.

Starting with the New Testament, it has three literary types – historical accounts, personal letters, and a book of prophetic vision. The book of prophecy and the personal letters were written by the ones speaking (or in a few cases, someone acting as a secretary). In most, the author is Identified: "From Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus ..."; "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ ..."; "From Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ"; Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ ..."; "From John, to the seven churches". There was no time when these books were passed orally, being embellished with every generation.

The historical accounts are the four Gospels and the book of Acts. Two of the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses, Matthew and John. Mark may have been an eyewitness to some of what he wrote, but Mark also worked, at different times, with Paul, a probable eyewitness to some events recounted, and Peter, who was an eyewitness to Jesus' life and ministry. Luke, the author of the eponymous Gospel and the book of Acts was not an eyewitness. However, Luke informs his readers that he consulted multiple eyewitnesses for his Gospel account. No doubt, Luke also did this for slightly more than half of the book of Acts. Then, at Acts 16:11, Luke changes from “they” to “we”. Almost half of the book of Acts is his eyewitness account. Again, there was no time when these books were passed orally and embellished with successive re-tellings.

So, what about the Old Testament, which is about 80% of the Bible? Again, there are three literary types in the Old Testament, historical accounts, poetry & wisdom, and prophecy. The books of prophecy, like the New Testament personal letters and book of prophecy, were written by the ones speaking, and are named for their authors (eponymous). There was no period of oral transmission for these books – no retelling, no embellishment.

The books of poetry & wisdom and most of the historical accounts in the Old Testament were written by compilers, who used records and writings contemporaneous to the people and events that were the subjects of books of poetry & wisdom and historical accounts: no oral transmission, no embellishment.

The historical account books I excepted from the previous paragraph are the first five books of the Bible, those written by Moses. Of those, Moses was an eyewitness to the events of four – Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (except for the accounts of his infancy and of his death, which would would still be from contemporaneous eyewitnesses). For these books, there was no period of oral transmission – no retelling, no embellishment.

That leaves just one book – one book out of the 66 books of the Bible – not yet considered. Genesis was written by Moses, but it tells of events hundreds and sometimes thousands of years before Moses' lifetime. Obviously Moses was not an eyewitness. What was (were) Moses' source(s)? He didn't say. His source(s) may have been oral traditions; his sources may have been written accounts; or a mix of both. My guess, based on the amount of detail in some accounts and the summary quality of other accounts, is that Moses drew from both oral traditions and written accounts.

IF my guess is correct, just 11 chapters of the book of Genesis derive from oral tradition. If all 50 chapters of Genesis have oral tradition as their source, that is but a tiny fraction of the whole Bible. Whether part or all of Genesis derive from oral tradition, that still is short of being a, “scary story passed down generation to generation, as the story gets passed down the words are twisted and the story changes.” Families in non-literate and semi-literate societies did not treat their oral family histories the way Boy Scouts tell scary stories at camp-outs. Family histories were the heritage, the identity of family members. If, hypothetically, exaggerating significance and heroism was a temptation, reading the book of Genesis will dispel the idea that Genesis chapters 12-50 have been thus embellished. Genesis recounts the good stuff and the moral warts of the patriarchal ancestors of Israel – scaredy-cats, deceivers, braggarts, spousal and sibling rivalries, murders, would-be fratricides. If orally transmitted, Genesis chapters 12-50 evidence brutal honesty, not heroic embellishment, and derivation from contemporaneous written accounts is possible.

Thankfully, in US society one is free to believe or not believe the Bible as one chooses. And no one is under compulsion to give a reason for their choice. Contrary to popular stereotype, the vast majority of Christians would not want it otherwise (“compelled belief” is oxymoronic, and compulsion in religious matters would be horrible). That said, if one chooses to explain belief or disbelief based on claims of fact, those claimed facts should actually be facts. And that is the problem here. The fact-claim that, “A bible is like a scary story passed down generation to generation, as the story gets passed down the words are twisted and the story changes,” makes for a nice just-so story, but it lacks basis in fact.

For some one who might wants to go a bit deeper beyond this blog post, I highly recommend Josh McDowell's “Evidence That Demands a Verdict”. It goes a step (and more) into the manuscripts of the Bible and text transmission.

A Little More on the Deity of Jesus in Philippians 2

Philippians 2:9-11 

Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

It's not getting any easier or less deep than verses 6-8! Paul is still talking about the nature of the man, Jesus. God exalted Jesus and gave Him the name above every name. Verses 10 and 11 are two more all-inclusive statements. Every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. There is none greater, on Earth or in heaven, than Jesus. This means that Jesus is God, or (how absurd!) Jesus is greater than God.

Philippians 2:6-11 is a remarkable, deep, picture of the nature of Jesus. Paul said what he meant, and meant what he said. The curious thing is that, unlike similar passages in Colossians (1:15-20 and 2:9-10) the nature of Jesus is not Paul's main point. In Colossians, Paul was correcting errors in how the church in Colossae understood Jesus. In Philippians, Paul is referring to Jesus' true nature to illustrate the extreme to which Jesus regarded others as "more important than" Himself and looked out for the interests of others as well as His own.

Spong'ed – The Revised Non-Standard Version of Noah & The Ark

Most of last week I paused in reading Why Christianity Must Change or Die to write the blogs I posted Saturday and Sunday. I really thought nothing could beat the, “Where did he find that in the Bible?” straw man argument that was the topic of Saturday's post. Little did I expect what awaited me in the very next paragraph!

“Noah's Ark” has to be one of the all-time iconic Sunday School stories! It combines Noah's years-long obedience to God, God's command over nature and God's judgment against wickedness – much more than just cutesie pictures of animals walking into a gigantic boat! John Shelby Spong's version of the story (chapter 3, “In Search of God”, page 50) is, to say the least, bizarrely fanciful. And though he represents it as how the Bible tells the story, I doubt many Sunday-Schoolers will recognize it as he tells it. Without further ado:

God was a great warrior, it was said, and occasionally the wrath of this warrior deity turned against human life. The great flood was interpreted as one such incidence of God's warfare against sinful creation. When the rains ceased and the floodwaters began to recede, the scriptures suggested that what had actually occurred was that God had laid aside his weapon of war. In that era where the bow, together with its projectiles called arrows, was the primary weapon with which to attack an enemy at some distance, God, the distant heavenly warrior, was said to have laid the divine bow aside. Since God was conceived of as a Being of enormous size, this divine bow had to be large enough to cover the heavens. Since God was magnificent in splendor beyond human imagining, this bow had to include all of the brilliant colors of the spectrum. So when God laid down the divine weapon and ended the warfare designed to punish the sinfulness of humankind, the sign was the divine bow, called the rainbow, that covered the sky. It was an ingenious interpretation, and it lasted until scientists figured out how rain reflects and refracts the rays of the sun into the colors present in a beam of light.

I urge anyone even slightly so inclined to read Genesis chapters 6-9, the entire story of Noah and the flood. Spongs' fanciful version of the story – which he attributes to scripture – is almost at complete variance with the account in scripture! Genesis has: no warrior god; no warfare against “sinful creation”; no divine bow and arrows. The arrows strangely disappear from Spong's fantasy of the divine bow being laid down and becoming the rainbow … maybe Spong's god ran out of arrows?

I'm left wondering … where in the world did Spong get this nonsense version of the Noah story? As weird as his version of it is – it, at most, slightly resembles the account of scripture – more important is the reason he cites it. He claims the Noah story, his version of it, is evidence that man created god in man's own image. His “evidence” is bogus. I cannot imagine Spong not ever having read Genesis 6-9 and thereby knowing his version is bogus. So again, Spong has … LIED. Any 10-year-old who has attended a theologically conservative church for more than a couple of years would instantly recognize Spong's version of the Noah story as utterly false! So it again appears that Spong's intended readers are people who have little knowledge of the scriptures. And he is taking advantage of such persons' lack of knowledge and their trust that he would not knowingly deceive them!

Deceptions like this have me wondering what point there is in my continuing to read Why Christianity Must Change or Die!

Regarding the "Occupy" Movement

I never said this blog would be exclusively religious, and I know some "out there" (in the real world) will whole-heartedly disagree, but I'm going to say this anyway.

The Occupiers claim to represent the 99% of Americans who are not rich. Curiously, I am very far from rich - in money and material things, within the context of the USA - but no one from their movement ever asked me my opinions of their ideas. Yet they speak for me? I guess they know what's good for me better than I do.

Excuse me while I pry my tongue out of my cheek. 

The Occupiers, to me, seem to be a .1% or .01% who are bent on recycling one of two failed ideas: the communes of the 1960s and 1970s; a Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist-style planned/command economy. Both ideas are proven failures, though the former less bloodily than the latter.

Communes, like the hippie communes of the 1960s, or Plymouth Colony in its beginnings, fail as soon as one (and usually both) of two things happen: lazy people realize they get the same amount of goodies as hard-workers; hard-workers realize they get the same amount of goodies as lazy people.

Planned/command economies fail because a few 10s of thousands of isolated bureaucrats cannot know as much or respond as quickly as 100s of thousands or millions of business people who know their product, their marketplace and their customers.

Recycling failure is stupid!

Spong'ed – The Attributes of God, Or, You Can Spin, but You Cannot Hide

John Shelby Spong (Why Christianity Must Change or Die) continues his man created god in man's own image argument (mentioned in my previous blog post on this topic) by saying (page 49; chapter 3, “In Search of God”):

'... we can see ever more clearly the process of “God creation” that we human beings have always pursued. The attributes we have claimed for God are nothing but human qualities expanded beyond human limits. Human life is mortal. God, we said, was not mortal. Stating it positively, we claimed that God was immortal. Human life is finite. God, we said, is not finite. When we state it positively, God became infinite. Human life is limited in power. God is not limited. Omnipotent then became our positive word. Human life does not know all things. God is not bound by that limitation. Omniscient then became our positive word. Human life is bound to a particular space or by immutable natural laws. God is conceived of as being not so bound. Omnipresent and supernatural then became our God words.

When we unravel the theological tomes of the ages, the makeup of God becomes quite clear. God is a human being without human limitations who is read into the heavens. We disguised this process by suggesting that the reason God was so much like a human being was that the human beings were in fact created in God's image. …

The sentence I have particular problem with is: “The attributes we have claimed for God are nothing but human qualities expanded beyond human limits.” I have just two problems with Spong's illustrations “proving” his argument: the attributes he chose; the attributes he did not choose. If the attributes he chose are considered fully, they actually illustrate how utterly different God is from humans. In the order Spong cites them:

Immortal – this understates Christian teaching, but shows how God and human beings differ totally: humans are mortal, God is not. But it's more than that! God does not merely not die, God is the source of life, as the Creator and sustainer of life. As Jesus pointed out, no human can add so little of an hour to his or her life.

Infinite – if “without human limitations” includes an opposite such as finite-infinite, I'd have to concede this attribute. But I think calling opposites similar is oxymoronic.

Omnipotent – man's power is limited, as individuals, as communities, as nations, as a race, and is bounded by time and space. God's power is not, and God created the time-space continuum we call the universe. God's power is not merely greater, without limits – quantitatively different. God's power is qualitatively different.

Omniscient – as individuals, collectively and across all time, man's knowledge is limited and imperfect (we “know” things that are wrong). God's knowledge is complete and perfect. God's knowledge encompasses what we call the past, present and future. Again, God's knowledge is qualitatively different, not merely without quantitative limits. Also, a man can choose to limit his knowledge by refusing to learn. God cannot: being omniscient is part of God's nature.

Omnipresent and Supernatural – In citing this, Spong unintentionally demonstrates another way in which God truly is utterly unlike humans. Every human being is located at and limited to a particular place in space and time. Not only is God not thus limited (another opposite Spong tries to call a similarity), but, again, God created the time-space continuum by and in which we humans are bound.

God's attributes are not merely human qualities writ large, “human qualities expanded beyond human limits”. These attributes are qualities in which God is utterly different from humans, expressed in human language (i.e., for some reason, not in Vulcan or Klingon). And then there are some Divine attributes Spong did not cite, qualities that further underscore the fact that God is not merely a really big human being. A couple of examples would be:

Goodness – this is expressed in all God does, and is not some static perfection (which becomes imperfect when anything is changed). Being “good” is what God is. How we got this way is another story, but human beings are not fully, totally, always good. At our best, everything we do is limited and flawed; human history is replete with examples of humans' worst, especially the most recent and current centuries. In this attribute, God is not man without limits. God is unlike man, utterly.

Creator – humans have done and do impressive (to human perception) things, using natural materials. But natural materials are always needed for humans to make the useful things. God (in Judaism and Christianity, at least) used no raw materials when He created: God spoke and the universe came into existence.

Examined fully, each individual aspect of God's nature Spong cited shows that the God of Judaism and Christianity is utterly other than human, not a sort of enlarged human-without-limits. But it's when the attributes are considered collectively that the otherness of God becomes awesomely clear, and Spong's idea that God is man writ large is overwhelmingly shown to be worse than laughable.

Considering – and rejecting as false – Spong's idea that man created God in man's own image leads naturally to a question. How did Judaism and Christianity come to have such a God? The Judeo-Christian God is utterly unlike the pantheons of the civilizations that surrounded Judaism and Christianity. Whether Egypt, the Canaanite, the Philistines, Babylon, Persia, Greece or Rome, all were polytheistic, mixed with animism. Except for the god and demigods of Persia, all their gods exhibited various limitations, faults and foibles. The pantheon of Persia (Zoroastrianism) had a supreme god, and was more dualistic, with aspects of animism, but Jewish contact with Persia came well after almost all the books of the Jewish scriptures were written. Even the one seeming exception to the general polytheism, the Aten worship of Akhenaten of Egypt, was not a clean break with polytheism and animism. Akhenaten's semi-pseudo monotheism still was very different from Judaism and Christianity.

The Judeo-Christian God did not evolve from the pantheons of contemporary religions, but utterly different. Just as there is no evolutionary path from contemporary paganisms to the Judeo-Christian God, neither is there an evolutionary path “there” from eastern pantheism or the animism of various cultures (both of which contradict Spong's, “Man created God in man's image,” theory). Pantheism is likewise utterly different from the God of Judaism and Christianity. Contemporary religions show what kind of gods are produced by human imagination. The Judeo-Christian God being utterly different, from where did He come? Though Spong would reject and ridicule such a notion out of hand, believing Jews and Christians would answer that God revealed Himself to man in the scriptures.