“Biblical principles” and extrapolating new commands.

In my early 20s I went to a conference presented by youth pastor turned lifestyle guru Bill Gothard. He didn’t speak at it himself, in person; we watched videos projected on a very large screen. Gothard’s organization, the Institute in Basic Life Principles (formerly Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts, formerly Campus Teams) goes round the United States to teach young people “basic biblical principles” meant to keep them on the straight and narrow.

Bill Gothard. Wikipedia

Gothard ran it till 2014, when he stepped down ’cause he was accused of grooming young women who worked for him. He suffered a heart attack in June, and is reportedly in a coma. Meanwhile the Texas Supreme Court ruled a lawsuit against IBLP over its teachings, which the plaintiffs say encourages sexual assault, may continue.

Gothard is hugely popular among Fundamentalists, who promote him ’cause his teachings are right in line with conservative Christian culture. He doesn’t just teach people to memorize bible verses, pray, and go to church. He claims the bible says we should obey our parents no matter what. And women should obey their husbands no matter what. And everyone should revere the authorities over them. Plus rock music is of the devil, public schools are hopelessly corrupt (so homeschool your kids!), Christians need to dress not just modestly but conservatively, Christians should have loads of kids, and Christians should never borrow money.

In this article I’m gonna pick on Gothard a lot. But he’s far from the only guru who does this. Financial gurus like Dave Ramsey claim they also get their ideas from the bible. Leadership gurus like John Maxwell say much the same thing. Political activists on both the Christian Right and Left claim the basis of all their thinking comes from bible. Hey, if you’re an Evangelical, our ideas should be grounded in bible, right? (And even if we’re not Evangelical.)

Because Gothard taught debt is pretty much the same as sin, I actually left my Fundamentalist church. They wanted to take out a loan so they could hire two pastors. It was a bad idea for lots of reasons, but my outrage came from believing Gothard. When the congregation voted for the idea, I concluded, “Well they’re not following God,” shook the dust off my feet, and started going to my sister’s church.

Where in the bible are we commanded to never borrow? Well we’re not. In fact we’re commanded to treat people fairly and graciously when they borrow from us, Ex 22.25, Lv 25.37, Dt 15.8, 24.10, Lk 6.35 which indicates God is okay with them borrowing… which means he’s likewise okay with us borrowing, under many circumstances. Can’t quite pay the rent this month? If you can pay it back with your next paycheck, borrow. People in bible times did it; people today do it.

So how’d Gothard convince me it’s not acceptable? He claims it’s a biblical principle, an idea which isn’t explicitly stated in the bible, but supposedly it’s implicit. It’s there if you dig for it. There’s no command which says “Thou shalt not borrow.” But the accumulated proverbs discouraging us from borrowing, means the bible actually does teach this. We just gotta dig up those proverbs.

Not one of the “biblical principles” of Christian gurus are actual biblical commands. ’Cause if they were, the gurus could quote them! “Thus saith the LORD”—same as they do when they point out the LORD forbids murder, theft, and adultery. There’s no one bible verse to back up their teachings. But, the gurus state, there are tons of proof texts which suggest the authors of the bible implicitly believed these principles. And maybe we should believe these principles.

Two major problems here.

First, these gurus aren’t historical scholars. They have no idea what the underlying principles of ancient peoples were. I do, ’cause I majored in biblical history; I was trained to be an historian, and historians learn and teach this stuff. Crack open a history book sometime. You’ll learn tons.

What gurus know—and all they care to know—is they have a principle they wanna teach, and think they can prove it with biblical proof texts. Some of these texts are quoted in their proper historical context, but far more often, not. They’re interpreted as if they weren’t written by ancient Hebrews and Christians, but by 19th-century Americans. (Yes I know it’s the 21st century, but most Fundamentalists are stuck in a 19th century mindset; hence all the patriarchy and sexism.)

Which brings us to the other major problem: Does God approve of these biblical principles? Or was he actively trying to do away with them?—and these gurus are selectively choosing to ignore how God wants them gone?

See, patriarchy and sexism are in the bible. They were part of ancient Hebrew and Judean culture; they’re part of the worldview of ancient western Asia. So was polygamy, polytheism, racism, and slavery. They come up a bunch, because peoples’ biases will come up from time to time in the bible. And because they’re cultural principles found in the bible, this makes them—no surprise—biblical principles.

But God was trying to mitigage them in the ancient culture. They’re not God-ideas. Never have been. Just because they’re in the bible, it does not mean the Holy Spirit endorses them. They’re fleshly.

Like the bad advice of Job’s friends, it’s okay for us to be aware these attitudes exist. But we’re meant to use our heads, and reject these principles as ungodly. Not distill them and teach them as if they’re biblical commands, and in so doing, lead Christians astray.

Elijah hides in a wadi.

1 Kings 17.2-7.

After Elijah of Tishbe told King Ahab ben Omri the rain would stop until he said otherwise, I’ve no doubt he was tempted to stick around and see how Ahab reacted once his declaration came true—when there was no rain till he said otherwise.

But God told him otherwise. And you Christians will recall the דְבַר - יְהוָ֖ה/davár-YHWH, “the LORD’s word,” is actually Jesus, so feel free to read him into this story. The LORD’s word wisely tells Elijah it’s time to go.

1 Kings 17.2-7 KWL

2The LORD’s word

comes to Elijahᴾ to say,

3“Walk away from this.

Turn yourself¹ to the east.

Go be hidden in the Kheríth wadi,

which is at the face of the Jordan.

4Be there. Drink from the wadi.

I ordered the ravens to provide for you¹ there.”

5Elijah walked away;

he did as the LORD’s word said.

He walked, and sat down in the Kheríth wadi,

which is at the face of the Jordan.

6The ravens took him bread and meat in the morning,

and bread and meat in the evening.

He drank from the wadi.

7It happened in the end of days

the wadi became dry

for there wasn’t rain in the land.

I should point out the word for raven, עֹרֵב/orév, is spelled exactly the same as עֲרָב/aráv, “Arab.” The niqqúd, the vowel marks around the letters, are different; but the niqqúd were invented in the 700s CE, 12 centuries after the Deuteronomistic Historian wrote Kings. For all we know the Arabs who lived east of the Jordan, not ravens, fed Elijah.

Which is way better than ravens! Ravens would’ve had to steal the bread, ’cause you know they don’t make it; and as carrion birds I’d be mighty concerned about where they got the meat. Carrion meat is ritually unclean Dt 14.21 and for that matter so are ravens. Lv 11.15 I won’t even bring up all the raven saliva.

Whereas if Arabs brought Elijah his food, it would’ve been properly cooked. And if these are people the LORD talked to, and had a relationship with, the food would’ve been ritually clean. Way more sanitary; way better food than the sort of table scraps even the most well-meaning of ravens might bring you.

If you’re thinking, “Hey, you’re taking all the supernatural out of the story,” no I’m not. These Arabs heard from God! That ain’t nothing. And God actually got Arabs and Israelis to get along for once. Isn’t that actually more supernatural than birds feeding Elijah?

But okay, if you insist on interpreting the passage in the traditional way, with birds feeding Elijah, why not. Either way, Elijah got fed. And had water to drink till the wadi dried up.

Sin is not apostasy.

Back in my junior year of high school, the emphasis of our English class was on British literature… so we read four of William Shakespeare’s plays: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Julius Cæsar. None of his comedies; I guess comedy was saved for the Oscar Wilde plays.

Anyway, there’s a bit in act 1 of Hamlet in which young Prince Hamlet encounters the ghost of his father, dead King Hamlet, who’s been granted a nightly break from his torments in purgatory. I’ll quote the Folger Shakespeare Library’s version:

GHOST. I am thy father’s spirit,

Doomed for a certain term to walk the night

And for the day confined to fast in fires

Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature

Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid

To tell the secrets of my prison house,

I could a tale unfold whose lightest word

Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,

Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,

Thy knotted and combinèd locks to part,

And each particular hair to stand an end,

Like quills upon the fearful porpentine.

But this eternal blazon must not be

To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O list! 1.5.14-28

Why’s the good king in purgatory? Well, he wasn’t all that good. And before he had the chance to repent and beg forgiveness for “the foul crimes done in my days of nature,” his brother Claudius murdered him. Do not write me a peeved email about this 426-year-old spoiler; Hamlet is older than the King James Version and you should’ve read it yourself by now.

Anyway, because the king never made things right with God before he snuffed it, no grace for him. Now he has to suffer for his sins.

Cut off, even in the blossoms of my sin,

Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled,

No reck’ning made, but sent to my account

With all my imperfections on my head. 1.5.83-86

Considering King Hamlet comes back to the land of the living, only to demand his son take bloody vengeance on his behalf, it feels like the guy really deserves to be burning in torment. Really all the people in this play are terrible Christians. Well, maybe not Ophelia.

I didn’t believe in purgatory at the time. I still don’t believe it exists as the Church of England described it in Shakespeare’s day—as a sort of “light hell” where you’re tormented for a few ages until you’re clean enough to enter heaven. And there are plenty of Christians who figure unrepentant or not-yet-repentant sinners don’t even get purgatory: They head straight into hell. They spend their afterlife in torment, same as Dives did in Jesus’s story. Because if they were Christian, but sinned and didn’t repent—or didn’t get the chance to repent ’cause they died in the middle of sinning—it undid their Christianity. Whoops!

We see this idea again in Hamlet, when young Hamlet, who’d been waffling all the play long about murdering his murderous uncle, finally gets the chance to sneak up and stab him… and finds him praying, and thinks, “Wait, not now.”

HAMLET Now might I do it pat, now he is a-praying,

And now I’ll do ’t. [He draws his sword.]

And so he goes to heaven,

And so am I revenged. That would be scanned:

A villain kills my father, and for that,

I, his sole son, do this same villain send

To heaven.

Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge.

He took my father grossly, full of bread,

With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;

And how his audit stands who knows save heaven.

But in our circumstance and course of thought

’Tis heavy with him. And am I then revenged

To take him in the purging of his soul,

When he is fit and seasoned for his passage?

No.

Up sword, and know thou a more horrid hent.

[He sheathes his sword.]

When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,

Or in th’ incestuous pleasure of his bed,

At game, a-swearing, or about some act

That has no relish of salvation in ’t—

Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,

And that his soul may be as damned and black

As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays.

This physic but prolongs thy sickly days. 3.3.77-101

If Claudius is praying, he’s going to heaven. So Hamlet’s gonna wait till Claudius is sinning, then assassinate him, and that’ll send him to hell. Right? And Shakespeare’s audience would largely have said, “Right.”

But it’s not. We’re saved by grace. If we sin, we have Jesus. 1Jn 2.2 If we sin, it does not mean we’ve renounced Jesus and are bound for hell until we renounce our renunciation. We’re not on some ridiculous spiritual teeter-totter where one moment our actions are sending us to hell, and the next they’re sending us to heaven.

Yet we find this idea, not just in Shakespeare, but everywhere.

“Signs it’s God’s voice.”

Part of prayer is hearing God, and part of hearing God is confirming we truly heard him. You wanna know it’s God, you go find a fellow Christian who also hears God, and compare notes.

But people don’t wanna go find a fellow Christian and do that. We’d much rather tell ourselves, “Oh, I know what God sounds like,” be accountable to no one, and run with whatever we’re pretty sure he told us. Especially when it’s something which really appeals to our flesh.

So when we look for advice about how to hear from God, or how to know we’ve just heard from God, we’ll immediately uphold any shortcuts which tell us, “No you’re right; it’s totally God.” Which never threaten to make us feel foolish when a fellow Christian responds, “Oh God told me something very different,” or “I’m really not sure that’s God.” Which never require us to let iron sharpen iron.

I once got a list from a pastor on some ways we can tell it’s God talking to us. They’re all problematic because—again—they don’t require us to confirm anything with our fellow Christians. They don’t encourage us to interact with our Christian community. They encourage us to go it alone.

So naturally he got a lot of positive feedback from people who were thrilled to hear they didn’t have to talk with fellow Christians about what they thought God told ’em. Now they could confirm it’s God by themselves! In private. With no one to embarrass them for how fleshly their “still, small voice of God” actually sounds.

John the baptist, the second coming of Elijah.

John 1.19-23, Matthew 17.10-13.

There are two series I’m starting: One on the prophet Elijah, and one on the prophet John bar Zechariah, also called John the baptist.

Yes, I know the custom is to capitalize “baptist,” along with way too many other things in Christendom. But if I capitalize the word, I mean people and things of the Baptist tradition, started by English dissenters in the 1600s and continued in the United States by Roger Williams and John Clarke. The prophet John is “the baptist” in that he ritually washed (Greek ἐβάπτισεν/eváptisen “baptized”) people as a sign of their repentance, Mt 3.11 which is not traditionally why people ritually cleansed themselves. It was odd, so it got people’s attention, made him stand out, and drew people to him.

In the Pharisees’ beliefs about the End Times, they taught before Messiah came to Israel to overthrow the Romans and rule the world, God would send forerunners. Multiple forerunners, actually. There’d be the Prophet, and there’d be the second coming of Elijah. Obviously the Pharisee End Times Timeline had a few screws loose—same as all the Christian End Times Timelines—because they mixed up God’s benevolent intentions with their own selfish desires to see God smite anyone they considered their enemies. Human depravity regularly befouls our End Times views, and makes each one more fearful and vengeful, and less Christlike, than the last.

But some parts they got right. There is an End Times Prophet… and he’s Jesus. And there is a second coming of Elijah… but he’s not a literal second coming of Elijah; he’s someone just like Elijah, and that’d be John. Although John was entirely sure he’s not Elijah, and said so:

John 1.19-23 KWL

19This is John’s witness

when the Judeans of Jerusalem

send priests and Levites to him

so they could ask him, “Who are you?”¹

20John confesses,

and doesn’t refuse them.

He confesses this:

“I’m not Messiah.”

21The Judeans ask Johnᴾ, “Who then?

Are you¹ Elijah?”

He says, “I’m not.”

“Are you¹ the Prophet?”

He answers, “No.”

22The Judeans tell Johnᴾ “Who are you?¹

—so we can give an answer

to those who send us to you.¹

What do you¹ say about yourself?”¹

23John says, “I’m ‘the voice

shouting out in the wilderness,

“Straighten the Lord’s road!” ’

just as the prophet Isaiah says.”

So he’s neither the Prophet nor Elijah; he’s some third guy they hadn’t detected in their End Times studies.

But it turns out… John was wrong. (Yep, John put an error in our bibles!) Jesus says he totally is Elijah. And Jesus is absolutely in a position to know, so whenever I quote what John had to say about himself, I make sure to tell you Jesus corrects him.

Matthew 17.10-13 KWL

10The students are questioning Jesus,ᴾ

saying, “So why do the scribes say this?—

‘Elijah has to come first’?”

11In reply {Jesus} says, “Elijah comes {first} indeed,

and restores everything.

12I tell you² this:

Elijah comes now.

They don’t acknowledge him,

but do to him whatever they want.

In this same way the Son of Man

is about to suffer under them.”

13Then the students understand this—

Jesus is speaking to them about John the baptist.

“That’s it; God’s shutting off your water.”

1 Kings 16.29 - 17.1.

Four prophets in the Hebrew scriptures stand out above all the others: Abraham ben Terah, Moses ben Amram, David ben Jesse, and Elijah—we don’t know Elijah’s father’s name, but we know where he’s from. (Or think we do; I’ll explain in a bit.) So we know him as Elijah of Tishbe.

True, you’re gonna find people who want to add other favorite prophets to this list. Or debate whether David counts as a prophet, ’cause he was primarily a king. But these four were big deals because hearing from God led ’em to act, and what they did significantly influenced ancient Israeli history.

We get to the first appearance of Elijah right after the first appearance of Ahab ben Omri, whom the Deuteronomistic Historian considers the very worst of Israel’s kings. Right here, you’ll see why.

1 Kings 16.29- 17.1KWL

29Ahab ben Omri became king over Israel

in the 38th year of Asa, king of Judah.

Ahab ben Omri ruled over Israel

in Samaria for 22 years.

30Ahab ben Omri did evil in the LORD’s eyes,

more than everyone before him.

31It became trivial to walk

in the sins of Jeroboam ben Nabat.

Ahab took the woman Jezebel bat Ethbaal

—he was king of the Sidonians—

and went to enslave himself to the Baal,

and popularize him.

32Ahab erected an altar to Baal

in the house of Baal he built in Samaria.

33Ahab made an Asherah pole.

Ahab added to what he did

to provoke the LORD, god of Israel,

more than all Israel’s kings before him.

34In Ahab’sᴾ day,

Khiyel of Bethel rebuilt Jericho.

With Abiram his firstborn, he established her;

with Segub his youngest he set up her door,

according to the LORD’s word

which he said by the hand of Joshua ben Nun.

1Elijah of Tishbe, a settler in Gilead,

told Ahab, “By the life of the LORD,

God of Israel, whose face I stand before,

for these next years dew and rain

will come only by the word of my mouth.”

And that’s the entirety of our introduction to Elijah. Nothing more about his background other than he comes from Tishbe, which is present-day el-Ishtib, Jordan, also called Tell Mar Elias. about 53km south from Lake Tiberias, in the mountains. There are those who claim תִּשְׁבִּ֜י/tišbí, “Tishbite,” actually means “nomad”—it’s not where he’s from but what he is. Maybe. Very little is known about Tishbe.

Elsewhere in Kings we’re told Elijah is hairy and wore leather, 2Ki 1.8 and from this most Christians assume he was a Nazirite, an ascetic who swore a special vow to abstain from grapes, corpses, and cutting one’s hair. I’m not sure he was Nazirite, because he raised a boy from the dead, and touched him in order to do it, 1Ki 17.19 so that’d break a Nazirite oath. Oh, and don’t forget that glass of wine we leave him in the Passover seder.

Since there’s so little to say about Elijah, let’s back up to Ahab.

Manic Christianity.

When you’re a brand-new Christian, you tend to geek out at everything.

It’s totally understandable. Newbies are so hungry to learn, yet know so very little. So they constantly lose their tiny minds about all the cool stuff they’ve just discovered. “Wow, have you read this verse? Have you read this book? Have you heard of this preacher? Are you going to this conference? Check out this worship album!” They’re like fangirls and fanboys at a convention. Their enthusiasm is fun; I wish more Christians were as excited about Jesus as they.

Problem is, some longtime Christians sound exactly like they do—excited about every new discovery they’ve just made about Christianity—and it’s like, “Wait, you’ve been Christian for 20 years. This is stuff you should’ve learned already. Why haven’t you?”

Well duh: They’re not growing as Christians.

They discovered a new book, and were all hyper about it, and devoured it, and lived by it a few weeks, and then forgot about it. And a year passed, and they didn’t grow any. And then they discovered another new book, and got all hyper about that book for a time. They’re still making baby steps of faith, and the reason they’re all excited about it is because they’re still spiritual babies.

And every time they come across a new Christian resource, they think this is the resource which is really gonna get ’em to grow into mature Christianity. It’s not, because a resource doesn’t make mature Christians; the Holy Spirit does, by growing good fruit in us. The resources just teach us a thing or two. Some of it practical, some of it really not, but knowledge ain’t maturity. Fruit is.

And this lack of maturity expresses itself as mania. That’s why they’re as twitchy as yapper dogs, years or decades after they said the sinner’s prayer. They haven’t developed the fruit of gentleness, so their emotions are still getting tossed hither and yon by every new Christian fad—or sometimes really old Christian fads they’ve only just discovered. They don’t have emotional control because they’re not working on growing fruit. They think, wrongly, these wild emotions are a sign of a growing faith: They’re still so excited about Jesus!

But all too often this turns into chasing that spiritual high, instead of following Jesus.