TXAB: The Christ Almighty Blog

Why we fast. And why we try to call every act of self-deprivation “fasting.” FAST /fast/ v. Go without food [for God].2.n. A period of going without food [for God].Whenever I talk to people about fasting, their knee-jerk reaction is “No food? No food? No FOOD? You’re outa your [profane adjective] mind.” After all, this is the United States, where a 20-ounce soda is called a “small.” In this nation, the stomach rules.This is why so many Christians are quick to redefine the word “fast.” My church, fr’instance, is doing a 21-day “Daniel fast.” I’ll explain what that is in more detail; for now I’ll just point out it’s not an actual fast. Nobody’s going without food. They’re going without certain kinds of food. No meat, no sweets. But no hunger pains either.That’s why it’s not a fast. Fasting, actual fasting, is a hardcore Christian practice. The only things which go into our mouths are air and water. In an “absolute fast” you even skip the water. Now, we need food and water. If we don’t e…

Are you ready for what God has planned for you? No? Then get ready.Season /'si.zən/ n. An indeterminate period of time during which something happens.Properly a season is a well-defined period of time. But people like to play fast and loose with how well-defined it actually is.As soon as the weather switches to cold, whether that’s in November as usual, or freakishly earlier like September, people (Game of Thrones nerds included) start talking about winter: Winter’s coming. Some will go so far as to say winter’s here.Winter’s not here till the winter solstice, which in the northern hemisphere is 21 December. Winter is defined by the time between the day of the year with the least daylight, and the next time we have equal day and night. Ends at the vernal equinox, 20 March. But that’s considered the scientific definition of winter, the too-literal definition. Winter means “the cold season,” however long that season lasts.This sort of fudgery also happens with Christmastime. Again, …

I get it. I do. Churches can be a pain. But when done right, they’re far better for us than not. Church. /tʃərtʃ/ n. A Christian group which gathers for the purpose of following and worshiping God.2. God’s kingdom: Every Christian, everywhere on earth, throughout all of history.3. A denomination: One such distinct Christian organization, namely one with its own groups, clergy, teachings, and buildings.4. A Christian group’s building or campus.Ekklisía, the Greek word we translate “church,” really means “group.”Yeah, you might’ve heard some preacher claim it means “a specially-called-out people.” It’s ’cause ekklisía’s word-root kaléo means “call,” so those who like to dabble in Greek assume that’s gotta be part of its meaning. But words evolve, y’know. Our word congress used to mean “group” too. Nowadays it nearly always means “our do-nothing legislature.” Sometimes ancient Greeks also used ekklisía to refer to their legislatures. But it’s just a generic term for any group. So Jesus u…

Why Joseph and Mary went to temple, and the people they encountered who had “words of knowledge” about Jesus.Luke 2.21-40Luke 2.21-24 KWL21 Once eight days were fulfilled, Joseph circumcised him and declared his name Jesus,which the angel called him before he was formed in the womb.22 Once the days were fulfilled for Mary’s purification, according to Moses’s Law,they took Jesus to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord,23 just as it’s written in the Lord’s Law:“Every male who opens a womb will be called holy to the Lord.” Ex 13.2, 1224 And giving a sacrifice, according to the saying in the Lord’s Law:“A pair of doves, or two young pigeons.” Lv 12.8Jesus followed the Law. If he didn’t, he couldn’t be described as without sin, He 4.15 because sin is defined by the Law. Ro 3.20 And though, as an infant, he couldn’t yet do anything on his own to actively follow the Law, he had Law-abiding parents who took care of it for him. As instructed in the Law, eight days after birth Ge 17.12 (meaning…

What proof do Christians have of an absentee God? Only the lack of books between testaments. Which is hardly enough.It’s usually round Christmas that preachers start talking about “the silent years,” or “the 400 silent years,” and how the annunciations of John the Baptist and Christ Jesus mark the end of them.As it’s taught, for roughly four centuries between the writing of Malachi, “the closing of the Old Testament canon,” and Gabriel’s appearance to John’s dad, God was silent. He had no prophets—’cause if he did, the prophet would’ve written a book, but no prophets wrote a book, ergo no prophets. And he did no miracles—’cause if he had, someone would’ve written a book about it, but nobody wrote one, so nothing happened. If those 400 years weren’t silent, we’d have more books of the bible.(Um… what about the books of prophets, and of divine doings, among the apocrypha, which were written during that 400-year period? Oh, insist these preachers, they’re mythology. They don’t count.)Oka…

How to ask for prayer, yet keep everyone in the dark about what it’s about. When I was in high school church youth group, our youth pastor would pray during the service, and take prayer requests before he “opened up” in prayer. Anybody want a real live capital-P PASTOR to pray for you?—’cause surely Jesus hears his prayers, if anyone’s. Here’s your chance kids. Pitch him anything.So we would. Big test coming up; we want God’s help, either in improving our memory, or compensating for our rotten study habits. Big game coming up; we want God’s help to do our best, and of course we’d like him to confound our opponents. God, help this kid I know whose dating life is a wreck (followed by some gossip about the juicy details, which is totally permissible because it’s a “prayer request”—yeah right). God, help this kid I know whose family life is a shambles. Help me, God, ’cause I have stress for one of the myriad reasons kids stress.And just about every week, one of us—different kids every wee…

“Go tell it on the mountain!” isn’t actually part of the story. Sorry.Luke 2.8-20The same night Jesus was born, a bunch of angels appeared to some nearby herdsmen, scared the bejesus out of them, told them Christ had just been born, then let ’em watch the angels rejoice at what their Lord had done. Nice.As usual I’m gonna pick apart that story in some detail, ’cause our average Christmas stories tend not to know the background (or care) and therefore miss significant things.Luke 2.8 KWLSheep-herders were in that area, keeping watch over their flocks that night.Starting with the poiménes/“pastors,” the shepherds, or sheep-herders. Most preachers like to point out these were rough, dirty, low-class people. These weren’t like your refined upper-class Pharisees, the sort of people who thought they should be the ones to receive God’s birth announcement when their foretold Christ (or Messiah, or anointed king) had come. Nope; God hadn’t sent angels to those jerks. He sent ’em to ordinary pe…

The opposite of faith isn’t doubt. It’s unbelief. Doubt means we kinda believe. It’s a start.Matthew 21.21 KWLIn reply Jesus told them, “Amen, I promise you:When you have faith, and don’t waver,not only will you do the miracle of the fig tree:If you tell this hill, ‘Be raised and thrown into the sea,’ it’ll happen.”Because of bible verses like this one, where Jesus contrasts ékhite pístin/“[maybe] have faith” with mi diakrithíte/“don’t waver,” people assume he’s comparing opposites. Wavering, or doubting, is the opposite of faith. Either we have faith, or we have doubt. So have faith, and never doubt. Doubt is bad. Doubt is evil. Doubt is how the devil gets us to never do what the Spirit wants.But because I studied logic in school, I learned a lot of supposed “opposites” aren’t really. What’s the opposite of big? It isn’t small. Those are contrasts, not opposites. Same with hot and cold, black and white, young and old, male and female. Especially male and female.The opposite of anythi…

Covering what 99 percent of Christians believe about the End Times.At some future point, Jesus is gonna return. Mt 24.42, Ac 1.11, 1Th 4.16-17, 2Th 2.1, Rv 22.20 Not maybe, not we hope he will: Gonna. It’s in the creeds; it’s orthodox Christianity. Any so-called “Christian” who says Jesus isn’t returning, or who thinks his return isn’t literal but a metaphor (or is “spiritual,” by which they mean imaginary) would fall under the category of heretic. Sorry, heretics. He’s coming again.But even though Christians are unanimous in our belief that “from [heaven] he will come to judge the living and the dead,” we’re not universal as to how that’ll happen. Because Jesus didn’t give us specifics. He gave us apocalypses, images which represent what God’s up to, but aren’t meant to be taken literally. (Not that some Christians, out of sheer frustration, don’t interpret ’em literally regardless.) His Olivet Discourse—the bit in the synoptic gospels where he teaches his students about the End—is f…

I know; I should’ve stalled this article till Christmas, right? Nah. Here y’go. Early present.Luke 2.1-7Luke 2.1-3 KWL1 This happened in those days: A ruling, to survey the whole Empire,went out from Augustus Caesar.2 This first survey happened during Quirinius’s leadership of Syria,3 and each and every one was traveling to their hometowns to be surveyed.Some bibles refer to this apo-gráfesthai/“write-up,” as a census. But it wasn’t just a head count. The United States takes censuses every decade to figure out how many representatives each state should get, but the Romans and other empires took censuses to figure out exactly how much tax money they should expect from their territories.Historians were a little confused because for a long time they couldn’t find records of a specific Roman survey round the time of Jesus’s birth (roughly 7BC or so). They assumed surveys were rare, something that’d have a lot of documentation around it. But surveys were regular. The Romans held one every …

Nowadays it’s just another synonym for “hypocrite.” Just like, all too often, “Christian.”Pharisee /'fɛr.ə.si/ n. Adherent of a first-century denomination of the Hebrew religion, which emphasized the widespread teaching of the Law.2. A hypocrite. [Thanks to Jesus’s regular condemnation of hypocrites among the Pharisees.][Pharisaic /fɛr.ə'seɪ.ɪk/ adj., Pharisaism /fɛr.ə'seɪ.ɪz.əm/ n.]People nowadays don’t really know much about the Pharisees—other than that they opposed Jesus an awful lot, and that he called ’em hypocrites right back. Mt 23.13, 15, 23, 25, 27, 29 So there’s a lot of false information floating around about ’em. Stuff like this:“But they were hypocrites.” Yeah, some of ’em were. Otherwise Jesus wouldn’t have had to denounce that tendency in them. But be fair: A lot of us Christians are hypocrites. A lot of us humans are hypocrites. Hypocrisy is universal. Singling out the Pharisees just means we’re gonna ignore our own tendencies towards fake behavior.“They w…