Treasures in heaven.

Matthew 6.19-21, Luke 12.33-34.

In Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, after he finished objecting to hypocrisy in giving to charity, in types of prayer, and in public fasting, he moved on to talk about wealth and money.

You’ll notice the three verses in Matthew I’m gonna point to today, don’t by themselves nail down precisely how we’re to stash our treasures in heaven. That, we actually have to pull from Jesus’s parallel teaching in Luke: Give to charity. And if you know your Old Testament, you might remember this proverb:

Proverbs 19.17 NKJV

He who has pity on the poor lends to the LORD,

And He will pay back what he has given.

Jesus’s first-century audience would’ve known that one… and Jesus’s 21st-century audience had better learn that one.

Matthew 6.19-21 KWL

19“Don’t hoard wealth for yourselves on earth,

where moths and corrosion ruin it,

where thieves dig for it and steal it.

20Hoard wealth for yourselves in heaven,

where neither moth nor corrosion ruins,

where thieves don’t dig for it nor steal it:

21Where’s your wealth?

Your mind will be there too.”

Luke 12.33-34 KWL

33“Sell your possessions and give to charity.

Make yourselves a wallet which never wears out.

Infallible wealth in the heavens,

which a thief can’t come near, nor moth destroy.

34“Where’s your wealth?

Your minds will be there too.”

This passage has been greatly nullified by our culture. Y’see, we have banks and insurance. Nowadays, if our minds are on our money, it’s only because we don’t have those securities; we have too much cash in our wallets, and fear someone might steal it, or we own valuables in a neighborhood full of thieves. Back then, such things were a constant fear—“Is my money secure?”—because the ancients had to secure their own wealth. Neither financial institutions, nor the government, would do it for ’em. Wasn’t their job. Wasn’t anyone’s job.

Americans tend to take property rights for granted. The ancients weren’t so naïve. If the king wanted your stuff, he’d take it. Land, cattle, wives. You remember Abraham was regularly worried different kings would swipe his wife from him—’cause kings did that. Ge 12.12-13, 20.2 Even though Abraham was powerful enough to muster his very own private army to rescue his nephew.

God mitigated this by having, “Don’t steal” Dt 5.19 apply to kings and commoners alike. True, it’s way harder to get justice when the king’s doing the thievery, like when David ben Jesse stole Uriah’s wife, or Ahab ben Omri stole Naboth’s vineyard. The LORD had to personally intervene, because nobody else could.

And in Jesus’s day, Israel wasn’t ruled by a proper king. It was ruled by Roman puppets. You could appeal to the Romans, but good luck getting justice if you didn’t have citizenship; the Romans would treat you just like Americans treat illegal aliens. (Well okay, crucifixion is way worse than how ICE treats foreigners. But still.)

So if you had wealth, you had to secure it. Just like paranoid people do today. Better build a strongroom in your house, or find a clever way to disguise or hide it. Lots of people simply buried it in a hole in the ground, just like the worthless steward in Jesus’s story of the talents. Mt 25.25 Or that buried treasure in Jesus’s other story. Mt 13.44 Hey, if nobody knows where your hole is, thieves can’t dig it up. (The KJV decided to translate διορύσσουσιν/diorýssusin, “dig through” as “break through”—a common enough way to get into a flimsy wooden house in the 17th century, but much harder to do with the solid stone houses of the first century.)

And even so, after all the precautions they took to make sure nobody could find or get at their wealth, the wealthy would worry. ’Cause any disaster could destroy it. Invading armies, or some covetous noble, could grab your land. Earthquakes could flatten your buildings. Determined looters, or even just a fire, could gut your house. Any possession could be lost. Easily.

It’s the very reason we invented insurance. Pay a little each month or year, and your possessions are protected and guaranteed? Brilliant. Now the only thing we need worry about is whether we have enough money.

So we need to climb into the first-century mindset about money before we can really understand Jesus. Imagine you’re in a really bad neighborhood, you’re not carrying a gun or taser or pepper spray, and for some crazy reason you’ve got a roll of $10,000 on you. How secure are you gonna feel about that money?

Got that mental picture? Good. Now imagine having that worry all the time.

God’s existence. In case you don’t consider it a given.

Since Christian creeds usually begin with “I believe in God,” people think the existence of God—and proving it—is a theology subject. It’s not really. It’s an apologetics subject.

Theology, the study of God, takes God’s existence as a given. As does the bible.

Genesis 1.1 NASB

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

John 1.1 NASB

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The authors of the scriptures never bother to explain God’s existence. (They do have to explain Jesus’s existence, but never God’s.) Because he’s just there. Existing. Creating. Interacting with humanity.

Not battling the universe, nor Titans and other gods, so he could reign over them and control the elements. He’s not at all like the creator-gods or king-gods of pagan mythology. He alone created the universe; he alone rules it. Humans and devils and lowercase-g “gods” might stand against him from time to time, but there’s absolutely no contest as to who’s right, who’s mightiest, and who’s gonna win.

So why do most theology books have to start with a chapter on God’s existence? We never have to convince fellow Christians of such a thing; Christians already know he exists.

Well… okay, fair, there are some Christians who have their doubts about God’s existence. They’re not as rare as they oughta be; I’ve met plenty. They’re usually children or teenagers, or new believers, or longtime Christians who never bothered to take Jesus seriously until recently. The reason they’re Christian is someone told ’em about Jesus, and they believed that evangelist. But they have yet to experience God for themselves. Haven’t seen a miracle. Haven’t heard the Holy Spirit talk to them. Might not even know there is a Holy Spirit; they go to one of those cessationist churches which swap out the Holy Spirit for the Holy Bible, and worship that instead. Those folks claim God turned off the miracles—and tell these poor newbies they can’t have any God-experiences till Jesus comes to get ’em, either in the rapture or when they die. In the meanwhile, the newbies gotta take God’s existence on faith. Well, they’re not wholly sure they have that much faith!

I suspect those initial theology-book chapters on God’s existence are written for such doubters, to remind ’em, “No really; as Christians we gotta believe in God. Makes no sense to call Jesus ‘the son of God,’ or ‘God incarnate,’ if there’s no God!” When you look at cessationist churches, and look at the effects of their assumption God won’t interact with humanity till the End Times, it’s so disturbingly hollow, fruitless, and hypocritical. We got plenty enough of those problems in continuationist churches, but at least we acknowledge the Spirit’s among us to correct us, and we might actually heed his corrections! They don’t, and when he tries, they’re apt to reject him as a devilish trick. Yikes.

But I digress. Ordinarily we don’t have to prove God’s existence to fellow Christians. It’s a given that Jesus is God and comes from God. It’s as silly as going to a physician who doesn’t believe in science, or using the GPS in your car when you believe in a flat earth. God’s a foundational belief, and you can’t very well built a house without a foundation.

Yet Christian apologists insist we should start every theology discussion, every theology class, every theology textbook, with an obligatory lesson on what a God is, and how we know such a being exists. The better-written books do as I did, and point out the scriptures take God’s existence for granted, with no preliminary explanation. And tell us how we know he exists: Special revelation. People throughout history, including today, have God-experiences. He talks to people and performs the occasional miracle, and many of us Christians have witnessed this for ourselves. He may be invisible, but his presence among believing Christians is so blatantly obvious, we never had to deduce him from nature or logic.

So why do apologists persist on using logical deduction to prove God’s existence? Well… they’ve been convinced they really oughta learn how to. By whom? By the sucky Christians I described a few paragraphs ago. Despite the scriptures repeatedly talking about personal experiences with God, and encouraging us to do likewise, 1Jn 1.1-3 they claim we can’t have any such personal experiences; we gotta depend on reason. They don’t believe they can have an interactive relationship with God (or, bluntly, don’t actually want one), and have adopted a belief system which justifies an absent God. Really, logical deduction is all they have left.

You wanna prove God’s existence? It’s super easy when you can point to God-experiences. And I still find it bonkers when I meet a Christian who claims they’ve had God-experiences… yet whenever they talk to skeptics about God’s existence, the very first thing they turn to are apologetics arguments based on logical deduction.

Dude, you could simply give them a word of knowledge, like Jesus did to Nathanael!

John 1.47-50 NASB

47Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, and said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite, in whom there is no deceit!” 48Nathanael said to Him, “How do You know me?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” 49Nathanael answered Him, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God; You are the King of Israel!” 50Jesus answered and said to him, “Because I said to you that I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You will see greater things than these.”

Didn’t take Jesus three hours in a coffeehouse to at least convince Nathanael he was somebody worth listening to. It took Jesus two statements which peered directly into Nathanael’s soul, and the lad believed. Beat that with a stick.

But I digress. You wanna know about the logical arguments for God’s existence? Fine. Let’s talk.

Jesus is the way, truth, and life. [Jn 14.6]

John 14.6 KJV

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

After his Last Supper, Jesus spoke with his students about leaving them to go prepare a place for them, so he could take ’em there and they could be with him. Jn 14.1-4 His student Thomas expressed concern that he and the others had no idea which way Jesus was going.

So in this verse, Jesus tells Thomas he’s the way. It’s not so much a path the students were on; it’s a person they follow. They follow Jesus. As did Christians throughout history; as do Christians today. He’s the way.

There’s a number of reasons this Jesus quote is such a useful memory verse to meditate upon. That’s one. We really oughta consider what it means that we follow Jesus—not a program, a system, an agenda, steps to enlightenment, ranks and classes and levels. Our religion isn’t practices and ritual. Our religion is Jesus. We follow him. He’s the way.

Think of our religion like a body—and Jesus like the spirit. A body without its spirit is dead. Well, Christianity without Jesus is dead: All we’d have left are the practices. And plenty of people are just fine with that!—the practices are familiar, comfortable, meaningful, and make ’em feel spiritual instead of actually being Spirit-led. But it’s like that old movie Weekend at Bernie’s, where they’re propping up a corpse and making it appear alive. Gruesome. But commonplace.

Not everybody recognizes this. Even longtime followers who think they get it—who are eager to tell everybody within earshot, “It’s a relationship, not a religion!”—don’t get it. ’Cause they’ve prioritized their religious activities over Jesus. Prioritized their favorite Jesus-experts and rituals. Experts and rituals are fine when they actually do further our relationship with Jesus, but when they’re just spinning our wheels, they’re just dead religion—sometimes even bad religion—and need to be ditched in favor of following Jesus.

Saying grace.

The most common type of prayer—the one we see most often, and probably the type taken the least seriously—is the prayer before meals. We call it “grace.” Not to be confused with God’s generous, forgiving attitude.

Why don’t people take these prayers seriously? Bluntly, it’s a type of dead religion.

Living religion is what we do to further an authentic, healthy relationship with God. And we can do that when we pray for meals: We can be authentically grateful to God for providing us food. We can ask that he bless the food and keep it healthy, bless the cooks who made it, maybe bless the restaurant which serves it and keep ’em profitable. (I really don’t know why Christians don’t think to pray for the restaurants they’re in.) But more often, Christians say grace before meals because that’s just what Christians do in our culture. It’s custom. It’s tradition. It’s habit. That’s all.

Nope, it’s not said out of gratitude. Nor love. Nor devotion. Nor even as a reminder of these things. We say grace because if we didn’t say grace, Grandma would slap the food out of our hands and say, “You didn’t say grace!” We say grace because Dad would take his seat at the table, fold his hands like you’d do for prayer, and give us kids dirty looks until we stopped eating, noticed what he was doing, and mimicked his behavior. We say grace because it’s how people wait for everyone to be ready before the meal starts. Beyond a minor acknowledgment, God has nothing to do with it.

Y’notice in these scenarios, it’s because Grandma or Dad insisted upon saying grace. Not because anybody else did, or thought to, or even cared. It’s enforced religion: Everybody’s gotta participate in Grandma or Dad’s spiritual practice, which might be a valid part of their relationships with God, but not ours. And probably wasn’t even a valid part: They did it because they were likewise raised to do it. They felt it wasn’t proper to eat before a ritual prayer. So it’s just a formality.

And in many cases it’s a superstition: If you don’t bless the food, it’s not blessed; it’s cursed. Eat it you’ll get sick. Supposedly God is spiteful like that. (But really the superstitious Christians are spiteful like that.)

As a result of all this Christianist junk behind saying grace, we wind up with people who treat it as an annoyance. Or even passive-aggressively mock it with silly rote prayers.

Good bread, good meat.

Good God, let’s eat.

Rub a dub dub

Thanks for the grub

Yea, God!

At one children’s ministry I worked with, we had a rote prayer we used for grace. Actually it was an old hymn, suitable for thanking God for food. And since each line was eight syllables long, it meant it perfectly fit a whole lot of tunes. Old TV show theme songs were popular, like The Flintstones and The Addams Family. The adult leaders would have the children sing the prayer to these silly songs… then wonder why the kids didn’t take grace all that seriously. Well duh: They weren’t being taught to! Obviously.

Okay, so let’s take a more serious look at saying grace. And, believe it or not, whether we oughta drop the practice. Yeah, you read right.

The new people of God.

1 Peter 2.9-12.

Passages like the section of 1 Peter I’m analyzing today, tend to get quoted by people who wanna preach replacement theology, the belief Israel is no longer God’s chosen people, ’cause he ditched them because they rejected their Messiah. It’s not a belief consistent with the scriptures, ’cause God never ditched ancient Israel. He may have let the Assyrians and Babylonians conquer them, but he stuck with them regardless. Yes, after they rejected Jesus, he let the Romans conquer them. Yet he still hasn’t ditched them. Still wants to save them. Still wants to be their God, and they his people.

But—so long that we continue to abide in Christ, y’know, Jn 15.4 God also considers us Christians his people. A new people, bonded to him by his new covenant. Simon Peter applies some of the covenant-language of the Old Testament, previously applied to Israel, to us Christians. Not because those Old Testament passages were prophesying about Christendom; they weren’t. They’re absolutely about ancient Israel. But when we come out of the darkness and into God’s light, we become like ancient Israel, and discover our relationship with God looks like everything he promised their relationship with him coulda been—and could still be!—had they only followed him.

1 Peter 2.9-12 KWL

9All of you “chosen generation,” Is 43.20

you* “kingdom of priests

and holy nation,” Ex 19.6

you* “people I preserve” Is 43.21

exist so the virtues might be made known

of the One calling you* out of darkness

into his wonderful light.

10 Previously not a people,

and now God’s people.

Previously not shown grace,

and now you were shown grace.

11Beloved, I encourage you all,

like foreigners and refugees,

to stay away from fleshly desires—

whatever wages war with the soul—

12having your* way of life among the gentiles

be better so that,

though they speak ill of you* like criminals,

yet still seeing your* good deeds,

might glorify God on Judgment Day.

There are a lot of similarities between Christians and the ancient Hebrews. Previously they lived in darkness; they weren’t really a people-group; they were slaves in Egypt until the LORD rescued them. Christians, in comparison, before we turned to Jesus, were slaves to sin. God had to rescue us, same as he rescued the Hebrews—and wants to lead us towards a glorious destiny, same as he intended for the Hebrews.

If only we’d continue to follow him. Too many of us really don’t, give in to our fleshly desires, 1Pe 2.11 and hypocritically pretend that’s okay; we’ve got grace now! That’s gonna have consequences. Peter doesn’t get into that, but I remind you to learn the lesson from Israel’s bad example. There but for God’s grace go we.

King David and “biblical masculinity.”

When I was a kid, my pastor preached a sermon series on the life of King David. This’d be David ben Jesse of Bethlehem, third king of Israel, who reigned about 40 years during the 10th century before Christ. Many consider David the greatest king of ancient Israel; yep, even greater than his outrageously rich and legendarily wise son Solomon. His story’s found in Samuel, the very first part of Kings, and a few chapters of Chronicles.

In my teenage years—same church, same pastor—he decided to preach another series on the life of King David. Nope, not from a different point of view; same one. Very same one. “Guess I’m old enough to notice when Pastor’s doing reruns,” I joked at the time.

But seriously: Two sermon series on David in less than a decade? It’s not like the bible is short on material, nor important bible figures to expound upon. Jesus himself has so much material in the New Testament, it’d make sense to cover him multiple times, if not constantly. But David? What’s this fascination with David?

My pastor was a fan. As are lots of Christian men. David is a “man after God’s own heart,” and men presume this means David’s thoughts… were just like God’s thoughts! David pursued God so hard, he knew God better than anyone else. So this’d make David a role model, right? The best example ever of a God-minded man. It’d do well for us to look at David’s life in great detail, and learn how to likewise be men after God’s own heart.

Plus David’s not just any man. He’s a warrior. He’s a fighter. He killed hundreds of Philistines. Sometimes in war… and sometimes as part of the world’s most disgusting dowry. 1Sa 18.27 David also had multiple wives and at least 10 concubines, and while that’s wholly inappropriate behavior for Christians no matter what era you live in, you’ll notice plenty of Christian men will openly admire, even envy, David’s promiscuous success with the ladies.

David also write music and poetry, including many biblical psalms. He wept where appropriate (and sometimes where not 2Sa 18.33 - 19.8), danced himself silly before the LORD, 2Sa 6.14 and expressed manly emotion in ways most of these Christian men heartily approve of.

David’s a role model to these men in lots of heroic, masculine ways. And I won’t even touch upon the “masculine” ideas they project upon him which have no basis in scripture, ancient Hebrew culture, or common sense—ideas which are entirely based on conservative, usually sexist, Christian culture.

So yeah, the Christian fandom consists of a lot of that. David was a real man, they figure; a real man like they wanna be, and they use him to justify themselves and their “manly” behavior. If David was this way, they get to be this way. David’s after God’s own heart, right?—well so are they, ’cause they’re trying to be just like David.

Thing is, as Christians… aren’t we called to be like, oh I dunno, Jesus? Isn’t he the real man we’re actually instructed by the scriptures, instructed by Jesus’s apostles, instructed by Jesus himself, to follow, to be like?

The Nicene Creed.

If you consider yourself an authentic orthodox Christian, you should be able to read the following creed, and easily agree with it 100 percent. If not… well, you gotta work on that.

I believe in one God:

The Father, the almighty,

maker of heaven and earth,

of all things, visible and invisible.

I believe in one Lord, Christ Jesus,

the only-begotten Son of God,

begotten of the Father before all ages.

God from God, light from light,

true God from true God, begotten not made,

of one being with the Father.

Through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation

he came down from heaven;

by the Holy Spirit was incarnate from the virgin Mary.

He was made man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate.

He suffered death and was buried.

On the third day he rose again in accordance with the scriptures.

He ascended into heaven.

He’s seated at the right hand of the Father.

He’ll come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.

His kingdom will have no end.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

the Lord, the giver of life.

He proceeds from the Father [and the Son].

He, with the Father and the Son, is adored and glorified.

He’s spoken through the prophets.

I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.

I recognize one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

I look forward to the resurrection of the dead

and the life of the world to come.

Amen.

When we Christians define orthodoxy—the doctrines Christians oughta hold to, as opposed to heretic beliefs which lead us away from God—we often do it subjectively. We presume we get to define what’s orthodox and what’s not; we have bibles and the Holy Spirit, so shouldn’t we easily able to do this? We fix the standard.

I know; loads of us are gonna claim it’s not really us who fix the standard; the bible does. Which sounds humble enough, but it’s tommyrot: Our interpretation of the bible sets the standard, and since its ours, it ultimately comes back to us. Still subjective.

Others point to their denomination or individual church’s faith statement. Sounds slightly less subjective, ’cause most of the time they had nothing to do with the writing of these faith statements; they started going to their churches, and later agreed to the churches’ faith statements. Thing is, unless we live in a Christian nationalist country (say, Russia) where there’s an official state church in which we’re automatically enrolled, and we’re obligated to abide by that church’s beliefs whether we ever attend that church or not… we get to choose our churches. We get to accept, or reject, those churches’ faith statements. We can pick a church based on its faith statements; we can decide, “I don’t like what that church believes; I’m going to this one, which believes as I do.” Still subjective.

So this is why I point to creedal Christianity. They define Christian orthodoxy. The ancient Christians hammered ’em out in the first seven centuries of Christianity, way back before Christianity split into Orthodoxy and Catholicism and all the other denominations. They predate me by about 1,650 years, so I can’t claim I define them.

And the very first formal faith statement is this one, written in Níkea, Asia Minor, Roman Empire (today’s Iznik, Türkiye) in the year 325, and updated in 381. We call it the Nicene Creed, although the Orthodox and Catholic churches call it the Symbol of Nicene Faith (Greek Σύμβολο της Πίστεως της Νίκαιας/Sýmbolo tis Písteos tis Níkeas) or Nicene Symbol (Latin Symbolum Nicaenum), or Faith Symbol. Nearly every other creed is based on it.