King is sailing, they say

Has anyone ever seen this?  I have never heard of this show, but I just stumbled into it yesterday while browsing some videos.  Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins (author of The Selfish Gene) discusses his thoughts on the dangerous, delusional and ugly sides of religion and explains why he thinks belief in God should be a left as a relic from our superstitious past.  This also includes some fascinating, and even gutsy interviews with disgraced evangelist Ted Haggard, and an American Islamic cleric in Jerusalem (I forget his name).  It’s about 45 minutes long so grab some popcorn.

Is Dawkins right or wrong?  Critique this for me – what are your thoughts?  I will save my thoughts for later.  Oh yeah, and to my personal friends who I hope are still reading this blog – don’t blow this off even though you may be offended.  Just watch it with an open mind and critique it.

[update 30 March:  The original video has mysteriously disappeared, but I found this alternate one which is also dubbed into Spanish]

I just read an article by societyvs, where he describes debating some Mormon missionaries who visited his house.  His knowledge of Mormonism is most impressive, but I had to reply.  I don’t normally copy from other people’s sites, but my reply to societyvs is most appropriate for my own site:

My dad is a Mormon of about 20 years. I must say that his beliefs drastically transformed his life. He turned from a real loser, hateful and just plain mean, to a man with real joy in his life. A real turnaround, that if he were a mainline Protestant I would attribute to nothing less than the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, his turnaround is viewed by my church friends as a Satanic trick to fool us into thinking there was something really godly to his religion. *sigh* As a Christian, you bet I felt convicted to confront him about his wacky beliefs. We would each try to convert the other over the years, we knew how each other stood. But whenever this happened we just grew upset with each other. It has been many years trying to build our relationship, one that we never had, so trying to convert each other just tore that relationship down again. In the end, after several years of this, we just quit trying. I have grown to hate religious differences and trying to convince everyone that I am right. He is 1000% of the man he used to be without his beliefs, and that is what is important to me right now. This issue is another reason I have been questioning my own beliefs so much. Is dad REALLY going to hell for believing what he is convinced is true? For trying to make his life better? For using his beliefs to be a joyous man like he has never been before? Right now, I want dad to be happy, and I want to keep a relationship with him as he grows older. That is what is important to me. Does that make me a Pansy Christian who does not hate his own family over Jesus? I guess so.

I have the correct religion!
No, I have the correct religion!
You are both wrong, I have the correct religion!
God, I am just sick of all that. I hope God is happy that we fight over him so.

 I will admit it, I hate this aspect of Fundamentalist Christianity.  The Bible, at least the way the New Testament is taught in our churches, is absolutely unambiguous in this regard:   

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. – John 14:6 (NASB)  

And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.  Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”   -Matt 26:18-20 (NASB)

And if we really believe this, we will share this news with the world.  Because Jesus told us to.  Because he is the only way.  And I did witness with all the faithfulness and fervor that I could muster, because I believed it all.  I would hang out at the bus depot and airport handing out Jack Chick tracts to strangers (this was the pre-9/11 world).  I would pray outside bars and stripjoints, hoping to catch people as they walked outside and convince them of their sinful ways.  I would tell my mother and father, brother and sister about the Jesus that I knew, our Savior who was the only way to our salvation.  I would try to convince my mother, once a committed Christian and now a practical atheist, the error of her backsliding ways.  I even got her to go to church with me a few times, but not before informing the pastor that I was bringing her and if he would not mind directing a word or two of his message her way.  At work, I did my mightiest to live my witness for Jesus Christ.  I prayed every morning that God give me the strength and the power of the Holy Spirit to witness to my friends.  And I did every working day.  Sometimes I would go to parties with my workmates, my strategy being that I could steer the conversation to the Gospel Message in a classic ‘bait and switch” maneuver.  I went on Church Missions, usually to the inner city, but my most memorable to south Florida after Hurricane Andrew.  Sure we helped clean up, repair what could be fixed, feed and comfort people.  But again, in a classic bait and switch, we always presented the Gospel of Jesus Christ to these people.  “The Hurricane has left you without hope?  Jesus will give you your hope back!”  Because that’s what it is all about, right?  The destroyed houses are mere temporary things, but our souls are eternal.  I invited homeless people into my own apartment, to feed them and witness to them.  I liked them.  They were usually my easiest converts.

I went through years of University work studying astrophysics.  It was very difficult to be a witness for Jesus Christ in this setting, because everyone would reject the Bible’s claim for a young Earth and a 6 day creation.  Trying to convince these scientists and PhD candidates to base their faith on a book that claimed a very young earth, a 6 day creation, talking donkeys, fiery chariots from heaven and a sun that occassionally stops in its tracks was absolutely impossible.  I remember when Phillip Johnson came to speak at our campus.  The question and answer period was very entertaining – the biology professors made absolute hash of his anti-evolutionary arguments.  How could I continue to witness Jesus Christ in this context?  I decided to live my witness.  Everyone knew I was a born again Christian, but I did not go out of my way to proselytize.  I soon discovered that ‘living a witness’ was a cop-out.  I was acting like any other well-adjusted law abiding citizen.  Living my witness meant being no better and no worse then anybody else.

When I left academic life I began actively witnessing again.  Then I met the woman who would eventually be my wife.  We started dating, and I soon discovered that she was Catholic.  I needed some subtlety when witnessing to her, after all I kind of liked her and did not want her to think I was too much of a nut.  I invited her to my Baptist Church, and she invited me to her Catholic.  She told me about why she revered Mary, the Saints, what the mass meant, and everything else associated with mainline Catholicism.  While I did not believe as she did, I learned to at least appreciate it.  I told her about all my beliefs, and we tried and I think succeeded to see how our differing views could be compatible.  After all, she still looked to Jesus as the only source for the forgiveness of sins, everything else is superfluous, right? 

Then there was my Mormon dad, which I have already mentioned a bit of. 

I am just exhausted from witnessing.  I am exhausted and drained from believing that I and my small sect of Christian brethren have the exclusivity on truth and everyone else, no matter what their beliefs, are going to eternal torment.  I am sick of believing that I am on the narrow path of righteousness, and my loved ones are on the wide path leading to destruction when in many cases, they are just simply much better people than I am.  For most of them, it is not a matter of loving darkness rather than light as the Gospel of John claims.  People believe what they believe from personal conviction and family tradition, or because they are not lead to by scientific, historical or philosophical arguments, or simply because their own particular, heretical beliefs lead them to lead fulfilled and productive lives.  And yes, yes, I know what the Fundamentalist will reply at this point: “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6).  Because Jesus is the only way, right?

Ever watch the movie Gandhi?  I had never seen it before, and I rented it several months ago.  I love what Ben Kingsley said near the end of the movie.  India is being torn apart by Islamic and Hindu factions, and will eventually result in the formation of Pakistan.  Towards the end of his life, Gandhi, who seems to have lived as Christ-like a life as any man who walked the face of the earth proclaimed, “I am HINDU!  I am MUSLIM!  I am CHRISTIAN!  I am JEW!”, because he was sick of all the religious fighting.  This was a universalist and even secular proclamation that we are one humanity, not religious divisions.  That scene brought me to tears, because I am probably just as sick of it as he was.  I lived the proselytizing life.  I understand.

Yes yes, I know, Jesus said, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”  Tough.  I have witnessed the Gospel of Jesus Christ for most of my adult life, guilt-ridden because I was afraid all of humanity was lost in delusion and in their sins, and if I did not witness to them, they were eternally lost.  I could not have real peace with that burden placed on me. 

I am sick of that guilt, I am sick of that arrogance of exclusivity, I am sick of looking at our life as a trial from God to see if we believe the correct doctrines, and I refuse to accept it anymore.  And if just letting people believe what they wish to believe means not being a real Christian, then so be it.

In the last article, readers joeyanne and Heather shared these comments: 

“I believe in an omnipotent God who gave us the Bible as His great communication to us. I believe that every word, (down to every last comma) is inspired by God.” – joeyanne

“Actually, I don’t think the Greek texts had grammar — that was left to the interpreters. For instance, the phrase would look like this: ‘godisnowhere.’  Which can be interpreted as ‘God is now here’ and ‘God is no where.’ Yes, it would be up to the context and such, but it was still determined by interpretors.” – Heather

Technically, Heather is correct.  Search on Google Images for some of the ancient manuscripts, especially some of the papyrus fragments and take a look at them.  They are usually solid columns of faded text, with no spaces, no punctuation and no case.  With troublesome stuff like ‘godisnowhere’, I am sure the interpreters have to put it in context and do the best that they can.

But I also understand what joeyanne is trying to say.  Chuck Missler holds the view that we will never fully understand Scripture.  But when the Messiah comes, he will interpret the words of Scripture, in fact he will interpret the letters, in fact he will interpret the very spaces between the letters.  Missler is smart enough to know there is no punctuation in the original text, but he has a sort of Biblical mysticism view where even the placement by God of an individual jot or tittle reveals profound truths.  Many Christians hold this view towards Biblical Inerrancy, as did I.  I now think that viewpoint is fallacious, and I am trying to rid myself of that view, in one way by writing these articles.

With all that in mind, I am going to change the subject.

The notion of the afterlife as described in the Bible is very ambiguous.  Most of our beliefs and images of heaven and hell actually come from literature and church tradition from the Middle Ages, and are found nowhere in the Bible.  For instance, the Bible never speaks of a human soul or spirit ascending to heaven to be with God upon death.  Despite the funeral eulogies that we hear, that idea is never in there.  The Bible teaches that upon death, a person goes to Sheol or Hades, which just means ‘the grave’.  Because of the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man in Luke, some people imagine Sheol to be a sort of holding tank or waiting room, sort of like hanging out at the DMV I guess.  At some point in the future, when the Kingdom of Heaven arrives, the dead shall be Resurrected out of the grave to somehow face judgment.  The Bible is very vague and dare I say contradictory how this judgment takes place, but the point is that this judgment by God decides a person’s fate to either eternal bliss or eternal torment.  But until the Kingdom of Heaven arrives, people are in the grave. 

So all our loved ones are not in heaven.  They are waiting in the grave to be bodily resurrected and face the judgment of God.  I believe that is strictly Biblical.  As far as I know, there is one and only one place in the Bible that even hints of ascending to heaven immediately upon death.  And it is an example of how comma placement, as discussed by joeyanne and Heather, can be Divinely inspired.  And wouldn’t you know it, it is from the last sayings of Jesus on the cross that I posted yesterday.  Divine intervention or coincidence?  You decide. 

Jesus said to the repentant thief on the cross, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.”  Now this puts the Biblical Inerrantist in yet another contradiction pickle.  Are we to ascend to Paradise upon death or not?  The rest of the Bible teaches that we wait in the grave for the Resurrection.  Are we ascending to heaven upon death, then come back down to our dead bodies in the grave during the Resurrection?  What is the sense of that?  The whole thing is a bit of a mess.

If you are absolutely hell-bent on removing all contradictions like this from the Bible and  keep every jot and tittle inspired by God, you can use an old apologist trick which I like to call the Sliding Tittle Tactic.  Here is how it goes.  Jesus said this:

“Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.” 

But because there was no punctuation in the original text, it can be changed willy-nilly to meet your needs.  So what Jesus really meant was this:

“Truly I say to you today, you shall be with Me in Paradise.” 

See?  We just slide that little tittle over by one word and our contradiction is gone.  Jesus is not saying that the thief will be in Paradise that very day!  No, he will meet the thief in Paradise at some undetermined time in the future, but he is saying it – Today.  Get it?  Because Jesus, while hanging in agony on the cross, found it necessary to mention to the thief that he was speaking to him, not Tomorrow, but – Today.  That he was making his grand statement of forgiveness, not last week, but – Today.  Absurd?  Of course it is, but we have solved that nasty Biblical contradiction and kept the text Divnely inspired just by moving a comma.

I have actually heard this taught from the pulpit several times over the years.  I cannot imagine using this ridiculous excuse to somebody who asked me about this tricky passage, and keep a straight face while doing it.  And thankfully, I don’t think anybody actually has!  Face it, the explanation is ludicrous!  The Sliding Tittle Tactic is rarely used by Apologists, but I can think of three other places off the top of my head where it comes in handy, and I am sure there are others.

I die hard but am not afraid to go.
- Last words attributed to George Washington, December 14, 1799

This being the Lenten season, we Christians often reflect on the 7 statements of Jesus while he died on the cross.  Let’s take a look at them:

1) Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing (Luke 23:34)
2) Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise. (Luke 23:43)
3) Woman, behold, your son – Behold, your mother (John 19:26-27)
4) Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? (My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?) (Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34)
5) I am thirsty (John 19:26)
6) It is finished (John 19:30)
7) Father, into your hands I commit my spirit (Luke 23:46)

 I used to hear sermons on these statements, usually during the Lenten season.  One pastor broke this up into seven different sermons – one statement per week!  You really have to have the gift of gab to expound on “I am thirsty” for an entire sermon, but I have heard it done. 

But I am suspicious.  I long ago noticed that except for statement 4, every one of these statements comes from different Gospels.  And the statements of Jesus are almost completely different in each Gospel, especially the last words spoken.  Why did the Gospel writers write them so differently?   

Mark and Matthew are nearly identical, so I will only quote Matthew:

About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ” Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”, that is, ” My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” And some of those who were standing there, when they heard it, began saying, “This man is calling for Elijah.” Immediately one of them ran, and taking a sponge, he filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed, and gave Him a drink. But the rest of them said, “Let us see whether Elijah will come to save Him.”  And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. – Matthew 27:46-50

Matthew/Mark have Jesus crying out to God.  I have heard many pastors tell me that this was the moment where the sin of humanity was laid on Jesus, and the Holy Father, finding sin unacceptable in his presence, turned away from Jesus.  That is actually not a bad theological argument. 

Luke however, has completely different last words:

And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into you hands I commit my spirit.  Having said this, He breathed His last. – Luke 23:46

OK, I can see how this could be harmonized with Matthew/Mark.  They have Jesus crying out indistinguishably immediately before dying, so this could be what Jesus was actually crying out.  But another problem arises.  God has forsaken Jesus in Matthew/Mark, but Jesus then commits his spirit into God’s hands?  Is Jesus forsaken of the Father or not?

With John though, we start getting some real problems:

A jar full of sour wine was standing there; so they put a sponge full of the sour wine upon a branch of hyssop and brought it up to His mouth. Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.  – John 19:29-30

Now we have two separate and distinct claims to Jesus’ last words, that in Luke and that in John.  What is going on here?

Faced with this dilemma, every inerrantist I know uses the famous Harmonization by Omission technique.  I used that technique too, since there are not many other options open to the Fundamentalist.  The argument is that the gospel writers only chose those statements of Jesus that emphasized those characteristics that they were interested in.  So they chose what they wanted and discarded the rest for some inexplicable reason.  “It is finished” does not fit Luke’s needs so he ignores it, Mark has no need of “Into your hands I commit my spirit,” so he leaves it out.  After thinking that argument through, it is really straining to me, especially considering the last words of Luke and John are obviously written to mean his literal last words!

Here is another option that I think makes more sense and one that I am leaning toward.  An important person, a person from a dramatic story or a great historical figure is sometimes easily remembered by their Great Last Words.  I guess the same could be said these days for famous epithets written on grave markers.  They are usually clever or dramatic phrases that, real or imagined, are sometimes used to remember famous people by.  Mark and Matthew were written with Jesus crying out to God in agony!  Maybe Luke and John did not think Jesus should go out on such a humiliating note – imagine being forsaken of God himself!  They are writing about their Messiah leaving the Earth.  This is a dramatic moment – what saying is Jesus going to be remembered by?  What final words is Jesus leaving to his followers?  Could it be that Luke decided that instead of being forsaken by God, he embellished Jesus to be accepted by God, releasing his spirit into God’s hands?  Maybe that just fits Luke’s idea of Jesus’s relationship to God.  In contrast to the Synoptics, John portrays Jesus as dying quietly, almost stoically.  A simple and painless “It is finished” would better show Jesus’s godlike characteristics.  No crying out to God to be found in John.  The Gospel of John portrays Jesus as God Incarnate – would a Jesus as God wail to God for forsaking him as his dying last words?  That does not make much sense in the Gospel of John, not to me anyway.

Is this the way it happened?  Were Jesus last words fabricated by the Gospel writers? At the very least embellished?  I have no idea – but it seems plausible to me.  There is a contradiction in the last words spoken by Jesus, and it must be worked out somehow.  And my simple argument, an argument that would have offended me as a Fundamentalist greatly just a year ago, makes much more sense than the tired old Harmonization by Omission trick that I used to use so much.

So is the Bible the inerrant, wholly inspired word of God?  I think not.  And I am getting more comfortable with that idea.

That was the best ice-cream soda I ever tasted.
- Last words attributed to Lou Costello, March 3, 1959 

I placed this site here in the hopes of organizing my thoughts and maybe getting some feedback.  Not just a way for me to spout off, but a way of sharing ideas that hopefully I could learn from.  My last article, Why do you Love Jesus? really stirred up a hornets nest, and I learned a few things from commentators.  I am putting some key comments here – thanks to everyone. 

I love this!  I can place my religious insecurities here for the world to see, and be psycho-analyzed for free by strangers and rank amateurs.  What a deal, eh? 

 Heather Says:
March 16th, 2007 at 9:29 am**Why do I love Jesus? I have grappled with that question for years. The answer is because he died for me, and because he saved my soul from eternal death.** It’s interesting that the response to this, in general, is never “Jesus lived for me.” Because yes, Jesus was cruicified, which was a horrible death. BUt that’s not the end of the story. The end of the story is that God resurrected him, and Jesus ascended — as in, God had the last word, and the last word is life, not death. After all, Paul says you know you are saved when you believe in your heart that Jesus resurrected, and publicly confess that Jesus is Lord. It was more important to believe in the resurrection then focus on the death. 

Jim Jordan Says:
March 16th, 2007 at 9:52 amHeather, that’s an excellent response. I’ve very little to add except that Heissailing is questioning himself and focusing mostly on himself for the answer. We need to take a step back and appreciate who Jesus is. We are alive because of Him. Everything we are given to enjoy is because of Him. We are able to love our wives because of Him. Etc.
The more we focus on ourselves, the more corrupted and confused we become. The more we focus on Him, the more we become like Him. That is the goal. When you walk the walk (and not just talk the talk) with that mindset, you will love Jesus because His love is in you. (Rom 8:38-39) 

Heather Says:
March 19th, 2007 at 8:36 amThe death/life response was my reaction to Christianty’s focus on Jesus’s death, which I find interesting, given how much Paul and the other letters emphasize the resurrection, and how without the resurrection, there’s no point to faith. I’ve read many books by people sometimes disturbed by sermons that rush through the Gospels to get to crucifixion. That dismisses a lot of what Jesus teaches, and how he used his life. The sermons come across as, “He DIED for you!! A horrible, God-forsaken death!!” Pause. “Oh, yeah, and he rose three days later. Because he DIED!!!”I’m not detracting from Jesus’s death, and I’m not mocking it. But the Gospels and the epistles are filled with such joy of God-given *life.* And I don’t often see that in conservative Christianity, with the focus on death. Especially since death is supposed to be the last enemy that Christ defeats.

joeyanne Says:
March 19th, 2007 at 5:13 pmI have found this question and the multiple answers to be most interesting. What about the question of what is love? In my marriage, I view love as a decision. Sometimes the feelings go with it, but when I show love the most, is when I don’t feel those feelings. I sacrifice what I want to do because I promised to love my husband. (of course this is give and take, and a poor example, at best, of the love between creator and created being). In 1John, love is contrasted with sin so that I can conclude that sin is the opposite of love. To show love, I must sacrifice self. That does not mean losing myself, but sacrificing something that would cater to my “self”. Sin, then, is catering to self. These thoughts are far from completely thought out, but they are what came to me as I read your post and the comments. Keep searching. Finding God is not a destination, but a journey.

Heather Says:
March 19th, 2007 at 6:29 pmAgreed. I’m paraphrasing here, but “Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for his friends.” Self-sacrifice is the highest type of love.I think it’s more of sacrificing the old self in favor of the new self, though. Paul has a mention of how his old nature was crucified along with Christ (I want to say it’s in Galatians). So I think that type of love demands that one be willing to sacrifice the sin-self lead by the carnal mind in favor of man originally made in God’s image and likeness.   

It has been a long and emotional weekend in the HeIsSailing household.  My wife and I attended the wedding of dear friends on Saturday.  We attended the funeral of another dear friend on Sunday.  Many of the same people were in attendence to both, and it was like witnessing the beginning of one life and the end of the other. 

My wife and I, in reflecting on the emotional weekend, just finished a long conversation about our beliefs and faith.  She also read my latest article “Why do you Love Jesus?”, and we shared a discussion with all that in perspective.   

During today’s dedication for the repose of our friend’s soul, my mind was on God, and I had a minor revelation.  I just got done ranting about a love for God in my last article, whereas today the love for God was evident in everyone that spoke during the eulogy.  Am I just not letting faith unquestioningly take over, to love God unconditionally for the life and strength that he has given us?  Am I being a selfish little boy when I dare question the infinite and the holy that is God?  What do I do when I am faced with our human mortality, our tiny speck of life that we have been given on Earth?  In one sense, I feel very petty asking questions like I have been.  In another sense if I just “get over it already” as Jim Jordan would say, I could easily proclaim my love for God right now!  But God will know that I am just trying to fool him, because frankly I feel no love for him at all despite God’s command that I do otherwise.  So there is no point in doing that.  

Know this for certain.  I am not asking difficult questions about my Christian faith because I enjoy playing theological word games.  I am not doing it because I enjoy bucking the trend and making family and friends upset.  I am not doing it to masterbate my ego, or feed my intellectual curiosity, or to reveal to myself my “next big thing”.  I am not the agenda driven Bible Gestapo out to show all you naive Christians how foolish you are compared to my superior debating skills.  I am just a schmuck on the internet pondering infinity here. 

One thing that I am becoming pretty convinced of since stepping out in the last few months is this:  there is a lot more to God, whoever God is, than what our Bible and our Christian church creeds contain.   I used to be shocked when some would dare claim that the Bible does not meet all of our needs.  How could I have been so naive?  But after much reading, contemplating and prayer, I am convinced of this. 

I have never admitted anything this anti-Christian before, if that really is anti-Christian.  I am not sure where to go from here.

 This is a question that has nagged me off and on for years as a Fundamentalist Christian.  It is a question that I still have today, and I am not satisfied with the answer.  Let me share it with you. 

Many Fundamentalists share the cliché “I am not religious, I just love the Lord”, or something very similar.  I know, I used to have a pin clipped to my hat that said that very thing, and I wore it for years.  Before my day at work, I used to tell Jesus that I loved him, that he was the world to me, thanked him for dying for me and that I would be forever grateful.  I told Jesus that I loved him non-stop on my bike ride to work, as I prayed for the strength of the Holy Spirit to help me witness to my unbelieving friends.  Another popular cliché emerging at the time was “Jesus is not about religion, He is about relationship”.  I took that to heart and strove to have a relationship with my Savior.  I prayed “without ceasing”, which was not that hard to do since I lived alone at the time.  I played worship music cassettes and sang along, hoping to honor Jesus.  Of course, loving Jesus was difficult sometimes, because it always felt like a one-way relationship.  I did all the conversing, and had to listen for God in that elusive “still, small voice”.  Yes, that voice could have really been my own, but I took it on faith that God was communicating to me through his Word and through daily testings and trials, so I left it at that and accepted it.  I was as sincere, believing, diligent, obedient and faithful as a Christian could be. 

But something still bugged me.  Why did I love Jesus? I would sometimes ask myself.  The answer troubled me, so I tucked it away and forgot about it, but it eventually snuck back to haunt my thoughts.  Through apologetic studies, I trained myself to answer why I believed in Jesus, but I never heard a single message on why I should love Jesus. 

The Psalms are filled with songs of love and devotion to God.  I am commanded to love the “Lord thy God” with various combinations of my heart, soul, mind and strength (Deut 10:12, Matt 22:37, Mark 12:30, Luke 10:27) as the greatest commandment.  To Love the Lord and love my neighbor as myself was interpreted as encapsulating the entire Law into two commands! (Luke 10:26).  That is an incredible statement by Jesus!  God takes love, and in particular my love towards him, very seriously.  So my intentions for love had better be correct.  Paul spends the better part of 1 Corintians 13 telling us that without charity (agape) our works before God are pretty much useless.   

So, just like I cannot believe in just any old Jesus like the Mormons do, but the real Jesus as proclaimed in the Gospels, so too I must love Jesus with whole and sincere love (agape).  I must love Jesus more than anybody, because he is worthy.  As Pastor Skip Heitzig used to tell us, “He does not want to be number 1 on a list of 10.  He wants to be number 1 on a list of 1.  Because if you really love Jesus, is there really much room for anything else?”   

Why do I love Jesus?  I have grappled with that question for years.  The answer is because he died for me, and because he saved my soul from eternal death.  And that, I believed, was the correct theological answer.  But is that pure love?  Is it sincere agape that will be acceptable to God?  I love my wife more than any human on this world.  I would gladly give my life for her – as many of you would do for your own spouse, I am sure.  Why do I love my wife?  Not for repayment for anything that she has done to me, I love her because of who she is.  I love her simply because she is my wife.  Why do I love my mother?  Same thing.  I love her, not because there is anything in it for me, but because of who she is.  I am not a poet, so this is difficult for me to convey, but just imagine the love that you have for your wife, your husband, your mother or children.  Ask yourself why you love them.  Is it conditional?  Is it because they merited your favor?  Is it because they earned your love?  I had a terrible dad growing up.  He was an abusive, violent drunk.  He has done nothing in this life to earn my love.  If anything, I could be justified in this world to hate him.  But all these years later, I love him.  I love him for some inexplicable reason – I love him, not because of anything he has done, or anything that I could possibly get out of it, but simply because of who he is. 

In contrast, what do you call loving somebody because they have done something for you?  Conditional, insincere love.  Passing love.  Surely not the agape which Paul told us about.  I am to love Jesus more than all – and my reason for loving him was conditional.  I love him for dying for me, and saving me from eternal death.  Do I love him because he has done that, or for virtue of who he is?  Try a thought experiment.  What if Jesus had not died on the cross.  What if he gave us the Sermon on the Mount and other ethical laws from God, demanded that we love him, and ascended into heaven?  What if we did not have the threat of hell to be saved from?  Jesus would still be the same God as presented in our Gospels.  Would we love him?  Would we still love him if there was nothing in it for us? 

What if Jesus commanded that we love God, but did it with no promise of heaven, and no threat of hell.  What if Jesus just left it ambiguous as to what lay in the afterlife?  Would we love him? I suspect not.  I truly think that the only reason any of us claims they love Jesus is, not by simple virtue of his greatness and who he is, but because there is something in it for us.  Or to be more cynical, we love Jesus because he is fire insurance.  Why else would he command us to love him?  When was the last time your wife, your father or mother, your children, anybody commanded you to love them?  If we are loving God because he commanded us to do it, how in the world can that love be sincere?   

As a Fundamentalist, these thoughts troubled me greatly for years because it is central to our faith but I could never overcome it.  What are your thoughts?   

I have to stop listening to these Christian radio teachers.  I swear they are going to make me blow a gasket.  Here is something I transcribed from a recent Dave Hunt broadcast:

Referring to Peter claiming that to God a day is like 1000 years to justify an earth created over 6000 years ago:

How can you change his (Peter’s) thousands of years to billions of years?  You can’t justify that belief from scripture.  This is isogesis not exegesis.  Had secular science not come up with this idea, surely no one reading the Bible ever would have.  And why did secular science do this?  Solely because evolution required billions of years.  So this an evolutionary theory, not a Biblical one.

I just love how in creationist circles, scientists are always lumped into two camps: Christian and Secular.  I went to a Secular University, studied hard for eight years, and received advanced degrees in astrophysics.  And I can tell you that in those eight years I learned that there is one and only one reason why Secular Scientists date the Earth to 4.6 Billion years old and the Universe to 14 Billion years.  And that single reason is to uphold the lie of evolution!!  Forget all the scientific evidence that exists to support a 6000 year old planet, because us evil Secular Scientists have conspired to suppress that evidence derived by those Crafty Christian Scientists.  We must keep Darwin’s theory alive at all costs!  So we have fabricated our evidence which supports an old earth and pulled those long ages from our collective Secular keisters!!

First J Vernon McGee and now this.  I tell you, some of these folks make it really hard to for me to believe anything in scripture.  And that is not what I want!  I just have to remember it is just one guy with one dopey statement.  I really have to start playing music on the radio again.

…or you may get mauled by a she-bear..!!

It was darker than usual this morning due to turning the clock ahead an hour, so I was able to pick up a distant AM station on my drive into work.  It was broadcasting a rerun of one of those ancient J Vernon McGee Thru The Bible programs.  He was working his way through 2 Kings when he hit this troublesome passage concerning the prophet Elisha: 

Then he (Elisha) went up from there (the River Jordan) to Bethel; and as he was going up by the way, young lads came out from the city and mocked him and said to him, “Go up, you baldhead; go up, you baldhead!”   When he looked behind him and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the LORD. Then two female bears came out of the woods and tore up forty-two lads of their number. He went from there to Mount Carmel, and from there he returned to Samaria. – 2 Kings 2:23-25 (NASB)

 I have never heard a sermon from this portion of Holy Scripture, but there it is in black and white, right there in our Bibles.  Face it Christians – this is embarrassing.  As a Fundamentalist, I found it very troubling, and I prayed that nobody would bring it up when I evangelized to my buddies.  But it is not the scripture that bothers me so much, as McGee’s rationalization for it.  Let me summarize what he said. 

McGee said that scoffers just love this passage of Scripture, and try to mock God because of it.  Mankind has an innate streak of rebellion against God.  We desire not to believe in God, so any opportunity that the Scripture affords will be used by the heathen to ridicule God.  No, God will not be mocked.   

News of Elijah’s ascension into heaven on a fiery chariot preceded Elisha on his trip from the River Jordan to Bethel.  Now Bethel literally means “House of God” in the Hebrew language.  We also jump to the conclusion that the youngsters were precious and innocent children.   But this assumption is wrong!  No no, see they were in fact young men from an ungodly parentage and students of the false prophets!!  (WOW, talk about a huge leap of logic!)  Much like young heathen in the “House of God”, they were like the hippies of today in Los Angeles “The City of Angels” (here the program really dates itself). 

Then McGee just tells a bald faced lie.  See, the Hebrew word for little children is everywhere else translated in the Bible as young men, and should not be translated as little children at all.  In fact the same word is used in 1 Kings 12:8 to speak of young men.  So these innocent and precious youngsters were in fact no better than a gang of thugs..!!  I guess McGee could get away with this back in pre-internet times.  But it took me about 10 seconds on the online Hebrew concordance to see that McGee was lying.  No, I am not giving him the benefit of the doubt here.  According to Strong’s Concordance of the Hebrew Bible (blueletterbible.org), little and children are almost always translated as little and children, despite what McGee, our radio evangelist, claimed.  McGee went from little children to a gang of thugs (or hippies, take your pick) for one reason – because he wanted it to.  He lied, and I don’t make those kinds of accusations lightly.  As a pastor and Bible teacher he should have known better.  Look it up for yourself.  In these days of instant information, Evangelists just cannot get away with this stuff.  Look it up for yourself and see whether these things be so. 

We are not done yet – it gets worse.  What was Elisha taunted with?  “Go up you Bald Head, go up!”  What were they saying?  They were mocking Elisha and challenging him to ascend to heaven the same way Elijah just did down at the River Jordan!!  You see, they were ridiculing the truth in Scripture, that God can take people out of this world.  This passage is placed here by God to let us know that God intends to judge those who dare to ridicule the second coming of Jesus Christ!!! 

HUH??  WHAT???  So God is making an example of the thugs to warn us not to ridicule the Second Coming of Jesus??  That will teach those punks, considering that Jesus does not come onto the scene for another 750 years or so!  Does J Vernon McGee really believe this rediculous leap of logic?  Does he really expect the unbeliever to be convinced by this? 

He continues.  Elisha cursed the mockers in the name of the Lord.  God shall smite thee, you whitened sepulchers.  Elisha is not responsible for the young men’s deaths, God is – so find fault with him if you dare do so.  We live in a day of lawlessness.  The minds of the people of this country have been brainwashed.  We need judgment, just as in the early days of this country, we need to take the young lawbreakers and whip them in public!  We can be assured that nobody in Bethel ever scoffed Elisha again. 

I don’t know what to say about this.  It is easy enough to find fault with this portion of Scripture, in fact I avoid it because it is too easy to ridicule.  That our Holy God of moral perfection, the God whom Jesus is equated with, would send a couple of bears to maul anybody, be they children, thugs, hippies, whoever, just for taunting a prophet just cannot be harmonized with our God of Love and Mercy.  And if that is God’s idea of justice, then Falwell, Robertson and Hagee are absolutely correct when they say that God punished New Orleans via Katrina for its sin.  But that is not what upsets me.  What upsets me is the lengths that Fundamentalists will go through to rationalize the Bible, to excuse God for his killing, and the outright laziness, sloppiness and deception that is used in doing so.  This is what I am supposed to believe in?  Fine, but if you find passages from your own Scripture so embarrassing and so difficult that you cannot be honest in dealing with it, or honest in explaining it to us, the laity or the unbeliever, then it is not my fault when I say I cannot believe it.   

This really does make me upset.  I heard a similar thing last month on another program, but this one was the limit.

Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. – Matt 5:48 (NASB)

Most of your fellow churchgoers are Biblically illiterate.  I have heard pastors harp on that point for nearly my whole life, so I am not surprised by this USA Today article – hot off the presses:

It is basically a book plug for Stephen Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University.  But the main point is that most Americans don’t know Jesus from Adam.  Prothero has a point.  I do think it is important for all people, not just Americans, to know at least the basics of the major beliefs of the world.  We are an increasingly global society, and unless we understand, and accept, basic beliefs of our neighbors, we will end up fearing them.  With free information at most Americans’ fingertips, there is little excuse these days for not knowing. 

I also have another theory regarding the Christians’ ignorance of their own scripture.  I am a product of Calvary Chapel, where verse-by-verse Bible Study was emphasized.  Nearly every other church I have been to, Protestant and Catholic, emphasizes anything BUT the Bible.  At most, there are a few select verses from the New Testament followed by a sermon or homily of varying length.  But the Bible is inserted, almost as a fifth wheel.  There is no need to even reference the Bible in most of these sermons, yet the pastor will admit the Biblical ignorance of his congregation.   

My theory is that most pastors secretly do not want their congregations to know the Bible, not very well anyway.  Lately, as I began critically looking at the claims of the Bible, I was warned by my pastor not to make the Bible a god.  Huh?  Does he mean not to use knowledge of the Bible to draw me away from God?  If not, then I have no idea what he was talking about.  I have always admired Calvary Chapel’s exegetical approach to Bible Study.  But I have personally seen Calvary Chapel pastors skirt around issues like the Rapture, the patriarchs each living in excess of 900 years, a 6 day creation of the universe, and the biggie, HELL.  Many attempts were made to soften these topics, or to take them as allegory, probably belief in such things taught in our Bible are embarrassing as hell.  The most embarrassing to me was the Rapture.  The idea that when the fullness of the Gentiles come in, that the dead will be physically raised to meet our Lord in the air, join him in Heaven for the marriage supper of the Lamb, etc etc.. gag.  I just could not admit believing that stuff to my friends, even though it is clearly taught in Scripture.  

If Christians really knew what was in their Bible, I think there would be fewer Christians.  That is an old saying, but I am beginning to believe it is true.  What do you think?