Read your bible, go to church.

Yesterday I wrote about resolving to be religious, and how reading one’s bible and attending small groups simply won’t be enough.

Problem is, among American Evangelicals, that’s what we’re taught whenever we talk about getting more religious. “Oh, you wanna get closer to God? Then you need to read your bible and go to church.” And pray, but y’might notice not as many Evangelicals will bring up prayer—partly because they presume you’re already praying for more God; partly because they themselves do the bible thing and the church thing, but not so much the prayer thing. Usually because their prayers are still unidirectional… but that’s a whole other tangent, and best you just read the article on that.

But as you’re fully aware, plenty of Christians already read bible and go to church… for all the good it does ’em. You might already read bible and go to church, and you know firsthand it’s not doing it for you. You know more bible trivia and doctrine, but you want Jesus, and the fan club meetings are fun, but they’re most definitely no backstage pass.

The key, like I said, is obedience. You wanna grow closer to Jesus? Do as he teaches. Don’t just memorize it, then just find excuses for not doing putting it into practice. Do it. Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow him.

That said, you know how Evangelicals say we gotta read bible and go to church? They’re right. Read your bible. And go to church.

Because once you’re actually obeying Jesus, you’re suddenly gonna find bible and church become way more useful and profound. See, bible and church can be good in and of themselves, but if you wanna activate them, you gotta start living the Christian life. It’s like buying a microwave oven and refrigerator, but you never plug them in, and you’ve been using them as storage cabinets. “Why is my food never hot nor cold?” Um… y’know that electricity stuff you’ve been using for the lights?

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Resolve to be more religious.

Too many conservative Evangelicals have been fed the false idea religion is a dirty word—that it means dead religion, where we only go through the motions instead of loving Jesus. So here’s the obligatory paragraph where I remind you: Religion is all the stuff we do to facilitate loving and following Jesus. If loving Jesus isn’t the whole point, it’s bad religion; if following Jesus isn’t happening, stop doing it!

With this in mind, one of a Christian’s resolutions—not only for the new year, but for all time—is we oughta get religious. Or more religious. Where we are isn’t good enough. Nor should we ever think of it as good enough. We must always strive to follow Jesus better.

Yeah, lemme throw in this caveat for the Evangelicals who get all paranoid about works righteousness: I’m not talking about being good enough for salvation. I’m fully aware salvation is by God’s grace; it’s a free gift we don’t earn. The point of being more religious is not, and never should be, so we can rack up more good-karma points so when we stand before Jesus at the End, we can tell him, “See Lord?—I did this, that, and t’other thing. Jewels please.” Frankly this idea of doing good deeds only to earn heavenly rewards, is just a variant of Mammonism and needs to be denounced more often. We don’t practice religion so we can get stuff. We do it for Jesus—we love him and wanna be closer to him, and the only way to do this is by obeying him.

So we need to obey him! And obey him more often. Not just when we remember, “Oh yeah, didn’t Jesus say something about this somewhere in the red letters?” Not only when the pastor brings up a random Jesus verse in a sermon. Not solely when we already want to behave a certain way, but we need a bible verse to support the behavior, so we’re proof-texting a defense. Preferably we obey Jesus all the time.

But obeying Jesus requires self-control. Self-discipline. Which means we gotta develop self-control… which because it’s self-control, means we gotta do it. Won’t just happen on its own.

We gotta get disciplined about how we follow Jesus. We need to practice the things which encourage good fruit and goodness in general. We need to love our neighbors better; certainly better than the apathetic “Well I don’t wish them harm” we practice more often. Way better than the toxic “tough love” bullpucky which too many Christians fall into.

The usual way Christians encourage us to follow Jesus better, is by getting involved in a small group and following a bible-reading plan. As if going to bible study, and reading lots of bible, is gonna trigger goodness. While I’m all for interacting with fellow Christians and reading lots of bible—the better to get familiar with it!—of course it’s not gonna trigger good deeds. Plenty of Christians go to small groups and read bible… and are the same royal dickweeds they’ve always been. Didn’t make ’em better; it only made ’em think, “Well of course I follow Jesus, ’cause I read my bible and go to a bible study.”

Nope; reading isn’t enough. We have to obey it.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

TXAB’s bible-reading plan.

Whenever the new year approaches, Christians resolve to read the bible. The entire bible, not just the parts we like best: Genesis to maps, as the old joke goes. (See, when you buy a bible in print, most of them have maps of Israel and the Roman Empire in the back. Yes, explaining the joke makes it less funny. Yes, deliberately making the joke less funny is ironically funny. Yes, this is metahumor. I’ll stop now.)

Christians tend to pick up a bible-reading plan of some sort, and most of the time it goes through the scriptures in a year. Which, I insist, is far too long. I prefer you do it in a month. Yes it’s totally possible; the bible’s a big fat inspired book anthology, but it doesn’t take an entire year to read. What book do you take an entire year to read?—unless you chop it into bite-size bits so small you’re spiritually starving. No wonder so many Christians lose track and lose interest.

Now if a month seems too extreme for you (especially if you don’t read), y’know what you could do: Read the bible at your own speed. Read it till you’re done. However long it takes you to get it done. Might be three months. Maybe two. Then again you might surprise yourself and finish it in one.

That’s where TXAB’s bible-reading plan comes in. It’ll help you read it at whatever speed you’re going.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Pinpointing Messiah’s birthplace.

Matthew 2.3-6.

Because the magi brought Jesus three gifts, Mt 2.11 people presume there were only three magi. We’ve no evidence of that. It seems way more likely there were a lot more magi than three. Three rich foreigners in Jerusalem would’ve caused a minor stir, ’cause rich people came to Jerusalem every day to go to temple. People therefore assume these guys came with massive entourages—dozens of camels per guy, hundreds of servants, as befit an oriental sultan. But again, these weren’t kings; they were magi seeking a king.

The actual king, Herod bar Antipater, wanted to know what this was all about, so he consulted his own wise men—the leaders of the Judean senate. This’d be the head priest, whom he appointed personally: Either Simon bar Boethus, Herod’s brother-in-law, who died that year; or Matthias bar Theophilus, who only served a year before Herod replaced him with Simon’s brother Joazar. The priests, whose field of expertise was the temple, not the Law, brought scribes with them.

Matthew 2.3-6 KWL

3 Hearing this agitates King Herod,

and all Jerusalem with him.

4 Gathering all the people’s head priests and scribes,

Herod is asking them, “Where’s Messiah born?”

5 They tell Herod, “In Bethlehem, Judea,

for this was written by the prophet:

6 ‘You, Bethlehem, land of Judah,

are in no way the least of Judah’s rulers.

For a leader will come from you

who will shepherd my people Israel.’ ” Mi 5.2

For centuries, Pharisees had been collecting bible passages which they considered Messianic prophecies, which they believed foretold a great king who’d take over Israel, conquer the world, and inaugurate God’s kingdom. True, some of these “prophecies” were great big stretches. This one, which comes from Micah, isn’t really a stretch. Yeah, there are gonna be people who insist Micah was really talking about King David ben Jesse, who was also born in Bethlehem; that was the leader—a literal shepherd!—who eventually shepherded Israel. But no, Micah wasn’t speaking of David. He was speaking of a king like David, who’d rule till the end of the world. Mc 5.4 A much greater king.

Pharisees believed in a coming Messiah, but Sadducees didn’t—and the head priest, his family, and the chief priests who worked under him, were almost entirely Sadducee. But they weren’t unaware of what Pharisees believed, so when Herod asked ’em about Messiah, they could easily tell him what the Pharisees claimed: “Oh, he’s gonna be born in the next town over. In Bethlehem.”

Read the whole thing! ➡️

The magi show up.

Matthew 2.1-3.

A fact too many Christians forget is our words Messiah and Christ both mean king. We tend to translate these words literally—as “anointed [one]”—and forget what Jesus was anointed to do, and presume he was only anointed to save us from sin. He did that too, but he didn’t need any anointing for that. Anybody can do great things. But Hebrew and Christian custom is to anoint people to lead.

Because Messiah means king, you couldn’t just wander ancient Israel and call yourself Messiah. It’s a loaded title. It means you’re king. It also heavily implies the person who currently holds that job (unless he’s your dad and he arranged for your anointing, like King David ben Jesse did with his son Solomon 1Ki 1.32-40) is not king. Not the legitimate king, anyway. He’ll have to be overthrown.

In 5BC the king of Judea was Herod bar Antipater, and a lot of people were entirely sure he wasn’t the legitimate king. For the past century and a half the head priests had taken over the role of king, but 32 years before, the Romans made Herod king. He was neither a priest nor related to King David; he was an Idumean (i.e. Edomite) whose people had been grafted into Judea, and whose father worked for the Romans. God didn’t anoint him king; Marc Antony had.

And Herod was super paranoid about anyone who might try to overthrow him. ’Cause many had tried, and failed. Herod’s own family members, including his own kids, tried and failed. He knew the Judeans didn’t want him there. It’s why all his palaces were fortresses, in case he had to defend himself from his own countrymen; it’s why most of his bodyguard were Europeans, not fellow middle easterners. So you don’t wanna get on Herod’s bad side. Caesar Augustus used to joke he’d rather be Herod’s pig than his son. (Herod executed three of his sons, and since Judeans didn’t eat pork, Augustus’s comment was quite apt.)

How’d baby Jesus get on Herod’s bad side? Well, you might know parts of the story, and if you don’t I’m gonna analyze the story a bit. It begins with some people whom the KJV calls “wise men.” Contrary to the Christmas carols, these weren’t kings.

Matthew 2.1-3 KWL

1 At the time Jesus is born in Bethlehem, Judea,

in the days of King Herod,

look: Magi from the east come to Jerusalem,

2 saying, “Where’s the newborn king of the Judeans?

For we see his star in the east,

and we come to worship him.”

3 Hearing this agitated King Herod,

and all Jerusalem with him.

Triggering Herod was dangerous, but the magi didn’t know any better. More about Herod later, though if you want his backstory I already wrote about it.

These wise men are magi (Greek μάγοι/máyë) whom our nativity crêches tend to depict them as two white guys and a black guy, wearing either turbans or European-style gold crowns. Matthew states they came from the east, so they were Asian, not European and African. (“But they could’ve been Europeans and Africans who went east study with the magi!” Yeah, unlikely.) There’s also a common western assumption they were kings, but there’s no evidence of this.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

King Herod the Worst.

When Jesus was born, Judea was ruled by “Herod the Great,” as he’s commonly called. I don’t know who first gave him the title “the Great,” and loads of people—myself included—have pointed out the man was far from a great human being; he was a murderous tyrant. As achievements go, he did get way more done than the subsequent members of the Herod family. But in terms of character he’s the worst. Hence the title of this piece.

Lemme backtrack through history by way of introduction. So Isaac ben Abraham had two sons, Esau and Jacob. Jacob’s descendants became Israel, and Esau’s descendants became אֱדוֹם/Edom, a nation located just southeast of Judah, which likewise spoke Hebrew and likewise did a rotten job of worshiping the LORD. And yes, they did know and worship the LORD; one of Edom’s more devout examples was Job. Yes, that Job. The guy with the book about him. (No he didn’t live before Abraham’s day; that’s just a weird young-earth creationist belief. All the names in his book are Edomite, and his book was written in sixth-century Hebrew.) Edom had a really long history of being subservient to Israel: First it was conquered by King David ben Jesse, 2Sa 8.14 and made a tributary state to Israel. When Israel split into Ephraim in the north and Judah in the south, sometimes Edom was ruled by one, sometimes the other; either way they weren’t big fans of Israelis. They rejoiced when Babylon conquered Judah in the early 500s BC, and were annoyed when the Babylonian Jews returned to found Judea in the 400s.

In the 300s BC, the Edomites themselves were exiled from their land—shoved out by the conquering Nabatean Empire. They were forced to resettle west of their old land, in southern Judea. This land became Ἰδουμαία/Iduméa—which is simply the Greek word for Edom. In 110BC, king and head priest John Hyrcanus 1 of Judea decided to take the land back, conquered Idumea, and told the Idumeans—who are ethnically the same as Judeans, y’know—they could stay there only if they followed the Law. Historians like to describe it as forcibly assimilating them, but the Idumeans could’ve fled to Egypt you know. But they didn’t; they stayed. By Jesus’s day they had largely assimilated into the rest of Judea. They’re Jews now.

(Yeah, there are various Christians who claim Jordanians are descendants of the Edomites. They’re not. They are descendants of Abraham; just not through Esau.)

Anyway 37 years after the Judean conquest, an Edomite named ܗܶܪܳܘܕ݂ܶܣ/Horódos was born to a former governor of Idumea, Antipater bar Antipas, in 73BC. Herod (Greek Ἡρῴδης/Iródis, Latin Herodes) was Antipater’s second son. His mother was Kyprós, a Nabatean noblewoman related to King Aretas 3 of Nabatea. Historians sometimes call Herod an Arab because they confuse Edomites with Arabs, or speculate the Idumeans weren’t really Edomites, but only claimed to be so they could relocate in Judea. Conspiracy theories regardless, Herod was a descendant of Abraham on both sides.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

When God became human.

INCARNATE 'ɪn.kɑrn.eɪt verb. Put an immaterial thing (i.e. an abstract concept or idea) into a concrete form.

2. Put a deity or spirit into a human form, i.e. Hindu gods.

3. ɪn'kɑr.nət adjective. Embodied in flesh, or concrete form.

[Incarnation ɪn.kɑr'neɪ.ʃən noun, reincarnation 're.ɪn.kɑr.neɪ.ʃən noun.]

Most of our christology lingo tends to come from Greek and Latin. This one too. Why? Because that’s what ancient Christians spoke… and over the centuries westerners got the idea Greek and Latin sound much more formal and sanctimonious than plain English. But they absolutely weren’t formal words in the original languages. When you literally translate ’em, they make people flinch. Incarnate is one of those words: In-carnátio is Latin for “put into meat.”

Yep, put into meat. Nope, this isn’t a mistranslation. And it’s an accurate description of what happened to Jesus. The word of God—meaning God—became flesh. Meat.

John 1.14 KJV

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

This isn’t a temporary change, solely for the few decades Jesus walked the earth. When Jesus was resurrected, he went right back to having a flesh-’n-bone body. When he got raptured up to heaven, he still had, and has, his flesh-’n-bone body; he didn’t shuck it like a molting crustacean. It’s who he is now. God is now meat. Flesh, blood, spit, mucus, cartilage, hair, teeth, bile, tears. MEAT.

God doesn’t merely look human. Nor did he take over an existing human, scoop out the spirit, and replace it with his Holy Spirit. These are some of the dozens of weird theories people coined about how Jesus isn’t really or entirely human. Mainly they were invented by people who can’t have God be human.

To such people, humanity makes God no longer God. It undoes his divinity. He’d have to be limited instead of unlimited. And these people, like most humans, define God by his power. Power’s what they really admire, really covet, about God: His raw, unlimited, sovereign might. Not his character, not his goodness, not his love and kindness and compassion. F--- those things. God has to be mighty, and they can’t respect a God who doesn’t respect power the way they do.

So that, they insist, is who Jesus really is. Beneath a millimeter of skin, Jesus was secretly, but not all that secretly, all that raw unlimited power. He only feigned humanity, for the sake of fearful masses who’d scream out in terror if they ever encountered an undisguised God. He pretended to be one of us. Peel off his human suit, and he’s really omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, omni-everything.

To such people incarnation dirties God. It defiles him. Meat is icky. Humanity, mortality, the realness of our everyday existence, is too nasty for God to demean himself to. Sweating. Aching. Pains and sickness. Peeing and pooping. Suffering from acne and bug bites and rashes. Belching and farting. Sometimes the trots from bad shawarma the night before. Waking up with a morning erection.

Have I outraged you yet? You’re hardly the first. But this, as we can all attest, is humanity. Not even sinful humanity; I haven’t touched upon that at all, and I needn’t, ’cause humans don’t have to sin, as Jesus demonstrates. I’m just talking regular, natural, physical humanity. When God became human, he became that. And people can’t abide it.

Yet it’s true. God did it intentionally. He wanted us to be with him. So he made the first move, and became one of us.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Christology: What we understand about Jesus.

Christology is a branch of theology, and the christ- prefix should give you the hint it specifically has to do with Christ Jesus.

Historically, christology has been about who Jesus is. Because Jesus came to earth and said some profound things about himself, and it took us Christians a few centuries to hash out those ideas.

I know; plenty of Christians insist they’re pretty self-explanatory ideas. They read the bible, and it’s plain as day! But that’s because they, like most people, greatly lack self-awareness: It wasn’t plain as day when they first became Christian. (It certainly wasn’t plain as day before they became Christian—which is why they weren’t Christian!) It became plain as day after they were exposed to Christians who explained Jesus to them, and after they were exposed to the Holy Spirit who made ’em stop rejecting every little thing they heard, stop insisting they knew it all, shut up, and listen, dangit.

It’s still not plain as day to a lot of Christians. For all sorts of reasons. They lack the humility to listen to other people or the Spirit, try to figure out Jesus for themselves, invent some “clever” ideas which are really just old heresies that’ve been tried and rejected ages ago, and won’t listen to anyone who tries to correct ’em. Some of ’em simply never read their bibles—never read the gospels, never read the Sermon on the Mount, presume Jesus thinks exactly the way they do and shares all the same prejudices, and proclaim that instead of Jesus.

Yeah, much of the reason Christianity has a thousand denominations is because Christians don’t agree about Jesus, what he teaches, and what he emphasizes. They’re not seeking Jesus’s input; or as theologians are gonna put it, they have a weak christology. They don’t value who he is, and don’t care what he’s about. They have their own ideas.

So let’s look at christology. Which examines a few particular areas of Christian theology:

• What Jesus teaches and does—both in the first century, back in time before he came to earth, in the future during the End Times and millennium and New Earth, and of course what he’s doing right now.
• Sin, how it affects humanity, and precisely how Jesus conquers it.
• God’s kingdom, ’cause Jesus is after all its king. Also how he’s its king.
• Jesus’s family. Particularly his mom, who’s a person of huge interest within Roman Catholicism. Likewise what she did and is doing.

But most of our focus in christology is how Jesus is the primary lens through which we understand God himself. Humanity doesn’t understand him correctly without Jesus.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Jesus, our Immanuel.

Isaiah 7.14, Matthew 1.22-23.

In the middle of the Joseph story, the author of Matthew inserted this comment.

Matthew 1.18-19 KWL

22 (All of this happened so it could fulfill

God’s message to the prophet, saying,

23 “Look, the maiden will have a child in the womb,

and will birth a son,

and they will declare his name to be Immanúël,” Is 7.14

which is translated “God is with us.”)

So let’s jump from the first century of our era, to the eighth century BC, for that story.

If you’re not familiar with the nation of Ephraim, that’s because the writer of Kings preferred to call it “Israel.” It’s the nine northernmost tribes of Israel, which split from Jerusalem and were run by the king of Samaria. Back round the year 735BC, the king of Samaria, Peqákh ben Remalyáhu (KJV “Pekah the son of Remaliah”) joined forces with Radyán of Damascus, Aram (KJV “Rezin the king of Syria”) to attack Jerusalem. 2Ki 16.5 This was one of the first campaigns of the Assyro-Ephraimite War… which eventually destroyed Samaria. The Assyrians dragged all the cities of Ephraim into exile, and all the country-dwellers left behind either moved south to Jerusalem, or evolved into the Samaritans.

While Jerusalem was under seige, the prophets Isaiah ben Amóch and his son Sheüryahsúv had come to King Akház ben Yotám (KJV “Ahaz son of Jotham”) with good news from the LORD: Ephraim and Aram’s plans would ultimately come to nothing. But Akhaz—who wasn’t the most devout of kings—really didn’t know how to take the encouragement.

Isaiah 7.10-17 KWL

10 The LORD’s word to Akház, saying,

11 “Request a sign from your LORD God.

Make it deep as a grave,

or make it high as outer space.”

12 Akház said, “I won’t ask.

I won’t test the LORD.”

13 Isaiah said, “House of David, listen please.

It takes little for you to tire people,

because you also tire God.

14 For this, my Master himself is giving you a sign.

‘Look, a pregnant maiden gave birth to a son.

She declared his name Immánuël/‘God with us.’

15 He’ll eat curds and honey,

and learn to reject evil and choose good.

16 But before the boy learns to reject evil and choose good,

the nations you fear are laid waste

before the face of these two kings.’

17 The LORD is bringing upon you, your people, and your father’s house

days which haven’t been

since the days Ephraim turned away from Judah to Assyria’s king.”

God had Akház’s back. Proof? Little Immánuël. And Matthew quotes this prophecy because Jesus is like little Immánuël.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Joseph, father of Jesus, prophet.

Matthew 1.18-21.

The idea of Mary being a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus, doesn’t work for a lot of people nowadays. “She was a virgin? Yeah right. She totally had sex with somebody. And then lied about it, and said God did it, and that sucker Joseph believed her.”

Clearly they’ve not read the gospels, because Joseph clearly didn’t believe her.

Matthew 1.18-19 KWL

18 The genesis of King Jesus is like this:

His mother Mary, who was betrothed to Joseph,

before coming to live together,

is found to have a child in the womb

from the Holy Spirit.

19 Her man Joseph, a right-minded man,

not wanting to make a show of her,

intends to privately release her.

Joseph knew you don’t just “have a child in the womb from the Holy Spirit.” He knew how babies are made.

Greek myths abound of stories where Zeus disguised himself so he could have sex with Greek women, and produce théhi-human hybrid spawn who grew up to be famous Greek heroes. And more than likely, all the women who contributed to this myth of a horny god raping various noblewomen in the Greek Empire, had simply had sex with somebody, and blamed Zeus rather than suffer the usual consequences of non-marital sexual activity.

Of course if you read the myths, you’ll notice when women claimed Zeus impregnated them, the Greeks didn’t believe ’em either. They took out their outrage upon their wives and daughters all the same. Banished ’em, imprisoned ’em, sealed ’em in a coffin and threw them into the sea. (Then, say the myths, Zeus had to smite them for their unbelief.) The ancients knew exactly how babies are made. The “Zeus did it!” story never worked.

And the “God did it” story didn’t work on Joseph either. To his mind, Mary clearly had sex—and not with him. And she was trying to blame the Holy Spirit, of all people. But the Spirit isn’t Zeus! He’s not gonna transform himself into bulls and geese so he can rape silly teenage girls. The very idea is the most ridiculous, offensive sort of blasphemy.

Mary’s apparent infidelity and outrageous excuse aside, Joseph was what Matthew calls δίκαιος/díkeos, which the KJV translates “just” and the NIV “was faithful to the law.” It means as I translated it: Right-minded. He’s the type of person who always seeks to do the morally right thing. He didn’t wanna be vengeful, and expose Mary to public ridicule. He simply wanted this relationship to be over with.

Betrothals among first-century Israelis were a contractual agreement between the husband and wife’s families. (The husband would provide this, the wife that.) But all it took to end these agreements, was for the husband to declare, “I divorce you” three times, and bam, the contract was null, the couple would stop living together, and the wife would go back to her parents. So Joseph figured he’d do that. Not in the town square; probably just in front of their parents.

So yeah, let’s put aside this idea that the ancients were naïve idiots who’d believe such stories. They didn’t. Devout Israelis in particular, whose God isn’t at all like that. Joseph didn’t believe the virgin-conception story any more than any pagan nowadays.

But something flipped him 180 degrees—so much so that he legally adopted Mary’s kid and raised him as his own. This something was a prophetic dream—and from what we know about prophetic dreams, it wouldn’t have worked on Joseph unless

1. he was stupid, or
2. he had multiple experiences with prophetic dreams, and his experiences taught him they were reliable.

Me, I’m pretty sure it’s that second thing.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

How Joseph became Jesus’s father.

Matthew 1.18-25.

The gospel of Luke tells of Jesus’s birth from Mary’s point of view, but Matthew does it from Joseph’s. Which is useful, ’cause it gives us a better picture of Jesus’s dad and what kind of person he is.

And let me preemptively say yes, Jesus’s dad. Way too many Christians try to downplay Joseph of Nazareth, and say he’s only Jesus’s foster father, only step-father, but his real dad is God.

No; Jesus’s biological dad is God. But God himself chose Joseph to be the guy to raise Jesus. And the guy who raises you is your actual dad. Doesn’t matter what custom and law say.

Although custom and law, in first-century Israel, likewise considered Joseph to be Jesus’s actual dad. And no, not because of any subterfuge on Joseph’s part; not because Joseph pretended to father Jesus or anything like that. Once you read the gospels, once you learn the historical background, you’ll realize Joseph is Jesus’s legal father. No foster- nor step- prefix needs to be added.

First the text.

Matthew 1.18-25 KWL

18 The genesis of King Jesus is like this:

His mother Mary, who was betrothed to Joseph,

before coming to live together,

is found to have a child in the womb

from the Holy Spirit.

19 Her man Joseph, a right-minded man,

not wanting to make a show of her,

intends to privately release her.

20 As he was thinking these things,

look, the Lord’s angel appears to him in a dream,

saying, “Joseph bar David, you shouldn’t fear

to accept Mary as your woman:

The child in her, fathered by the Spirit, is holy.

21 She will birth a son.

You will declare his name to be Jesus,

for he will deliver his people from their sins.”

22 (All of this happened so it could fulfill

God’s message to the prophet, saying,

23 “Look, the maiden will have a child in the womb,

and will birth a son,

and they will declare his name to be Immanúël,” Is 7.14

which is translated “God is with us.”)

24 After rising up from his sleep,

Joseph does as the Lord’s angel commands him,

and accepts Mary as his woman,

25 and doesn’t ‘know’ her till after she births a son.

Joseph declares his name to be Jesus.

The bit where the angel tells Joseph, “You will declare his name to be Jesus” in verse 21, and Joseph actually does this in verse 25? Naming a kid, in first-century Israeli culture, was something the child’s father, and only the child’s father, did.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Jesus’s genealogy, in 𝘔𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘸.

Matthew 1.1-17.

Christ Jesus has two different genealogies. I dealt with it elsewhere, so if the contradiction (or “difficulty,” as Christians prefer to call biblical contradictions) makes you anxious, go read that piece. Today I just want to look at the genealogy in Matthew, ’cause the author of that gospel decided to begin with it, ’cause he considered it important. And away we go.

Matthew 1.1 KWL

The book of genesis of King Jesus, son of David, son of Abraham.

Other translations are gonna have “Christ Jesus” or “Messiah Jesus.” Mostly because they’re going for literalness; the Greek word is Χριστοῦ/Hristú, “Christ,” which itself is a translation of מָשׁיִחַ/Mašíakh, “Messiah.” But a literal translation isn’t always the best one.

Culturally, to first-century Israelis, Hristós doesn’t merely mean “an anointed guy.” It means king. It’s a title of the king of Israel—who was, if everything had gone as it shoulda, anointed by the LORD to rule his people, same as Samuel ben Elkanah had anointed Saul ben Kish and David ben Jesse. We Christians claim Jesus was anointed by God, same as those guys, to rule Israel. And the world. So Christ isn’t merely Jesus’s last name, nor does it signify he’s a religious guru. It means he’s our king. Our only king; human kings are usurpers and false Christs, and every last one of them has got to go. Even the nice ones. Especially the ones who claim they’ve come in Christ’s name.

Pharisees had readied first-century Israelis with tales of a Messiah who’d conquer the world. If the prophecies about him meant what the Pharisees claimed—and the Pharisees weren’t wrong, were they—this’d be the guy who finally threw out the hated Roman occupiers, established Israel’s independence, then went forth to conquer a ton of territory and establish a new Israeli Empire. One even better than the Roman Empire, ’cause now it wouldn’t be run by dirty gentiles. Now gentiles would be the second-class citizens in their new Empire. Semite supremacy!

Yeah, there was a lot of nationalism and racism wrapped up in Pharisee ideas about Messiah. Unfortunately that’s still true in popular interpretations about Jesus’s second coming. But I digress. Distorted perspectives aside, “King” is still the best interpretation of Hristú.

And though Jesus is a literal descendant of both David, the third king of Israel, and Abraham ben Terah, the ancestor of the Arabs, Edomites, and Israelis, the more important thing is Jesus is the fulfillment of their relationships with the LORD. Without Abraham’s faith in the LORD these people-groups wouldn’t even exist, much less be monotheists who pursued a living God instead of ridiculous pagan myths. Without David’s loyalty to God, the LORD wouldn’t have responded with any promise to make one of his descendants the greatest king ever. There’s a lot of theological baggage in Matthew’s simple verse.

There’s a fair amount of baggage in the rest of the genealogy too.

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Grace and liberalism.

As regular readers know, I’m somewhere in the middle of the political spectrum in the United States. It’s because I’m trying to follow Jesus rather than any of the political parties, and when his teachings differ with the party platforms, or the politicians running for office or holding office have deficient character and no plans to reform, I’m gonna differ too. Hence progressives see me as conservative, and conservatives see me as liberal.

Since most of the people I know are conservative, some of ’em see me as just a little bit leftist, and others consider me a fully radical socialist nightmare. Of course it all depends on how conservative they are; really, how much they’ve permitted partisans to compromise their Christianity. Because some of their beliefs aren’t Christian at all. They’re disguised as Christian beliefs, which is why I call ’em Christianist: Some of ’em do a full 180-degree turn from anything Jesus, the apostles, and the scriptures teach.

And no, this isn’t just a phenomenon found among conservatives. Partisans of every stripe do it. I know lots of people on the Christian Left who’ve made similar compromises. Because more of the people I know are conservative, you’re gonna find me pointing at them more often. Same as in the gospels when Jesus was constantly correcting Pharisees (or as the gospel of John calls ’em, “Judeans” or “Jews”) —that’s who he interacted with most.

Whenever conservatives object to my politics, it’s predictably because I don’t follow the party line. Right-wing radio and TV told ’em real Americans gotta think or behave a certain way; I won’t behave that way, so they rebuke me. I don’t keep up with their favorite pundits, so obviously I’m not gonna be in lockstep. Which is fine by me; those guys aren’t my Lord anyway.

But an equally common phenomenon is they object to my politics because I’m practicing grace. As Christians should; it’s a fruit of the Spirit. Jesus expects us to love all, forgive all, be generous with strangers and even enemies, show compassion, and preach good news to the poor. So I try to do that. And they object.

Yes, they object to grace. The same grace by which they’re saved; the same grace God shows to the just and unjust without limit. They don’t practice grace y’see, so it stands to reason they don’t recognize it as something we Christians are to do. It’s only something “the bleeding-heart liberals” do.

You know where the bleeding heart idea comes from? From Jesus. From the Roman soldiers stabbing Jesus in the heart. Jn 19.34 Over time Roman Catholics turned “the sacred heart of Jesus” into a big devotional thing, meditating on how Jesus’s compassion for sinners resulted in shedding his blood to save us. A “bleeding heart” used to be how irreligious people mocked compassionate Christians. Now it’s how conservatives mock compassionate people in general. They lost sight of the connection between bleeding hearts and Jesus—and whenever I point it out to them, they just dismiss it as ridiculous Catholic stuff. No, it’s Christian stuff—but what do they know of how Christians oughta behave? They don’t do grace.

To them, compassion is “liberal.” Charity is “liberal.” Generosity is “liberal.” Good works are “liberal”—they’re “works righteousness,” and the only reason people do ’em is to make themselves feel self-righteous. Loving your neighbor?—“liberal.” Grace? Same deal.

It’s actually not liberal. Conservatives can do all these things too—and if they claim to follow Jesus, they should be doing all these things too! Heck, they should be outperforming pagan liberals by a mile. So why don’t they? Because there are tons of Mammonists in the American conservative movement. Loads of social Darwinists who see generosity as a drain on their wealth; who see no profit in helping needy people whom they consider unworthy. They’ve come up with Christian-sounding arguments so as to lead the Christians in their movement astray—and these arguments have worked profoundly well. Screw grace; it’s not “good stewardship.”

Hence gracelessness has become associated with conservatism. I know; if you’re conservative but practice grace, you certainly don’t see it that way. Back when I was conservative, I didn’t see it that way either. But that’s reality. The Mammonists are ruling the movement (they are funding it, after all), and their policy is the reigning policy: Charity is for suckers, and if you “need” a handout you’re either weak or a con artist. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Get a job.

If conservatives don’t do grace—at all—stands to reason you’d think it’s a liberal thing.

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Grace is a fruit of the Spirit.

Paul’s list of the Spirit’s fruit in Galatians 5 is not a comprehensive list. Wasn’t meant to be. Plenty of other fruit, like generosity, forgiveness, and humility, oughta be overt and obvious in Christians who follow the Spirit. But Christians who suck at fruit in general, who struggle enough with faking the few items Paul enumerated, immediately squawk when I make mention of other fruit: Stop adding to the list! But if they were truly trying to follow the Spirit, they shouldn’t have to protest; we’d already see this fruit in ’em.

And if they already exhibit love, they should already exhibit grace.

God’s love is what generates his grace. Love, like Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians, “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” 1Co 13.7 NKJV Love forgives all, takes the optimistic view, and grants unmerited favor to people because we simply love ’em as God loves them. Because the Spirit within us wants to use us to spread more grace.

Those who don’t do grace, are always looking for ways to merit the favor. Fr’instance, “Everybody has potential.” They love the unloveable because they’re hoping their love will change these people, just like it does in their favorite romantic comedies. They figure their love will break these people, show ’em the error of their ways, get ’em to repent, make ’em want to be a good person from now on. You know, like Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, or Darth Vader in Star Wars. Yea, happy endings!

But offering favor because of someone’s potential, isn’t grace. It’s a karmic bet. One which often won’t pay off in real life; some people are far too set in their ways to ever make them pay off the time and attention we show them. But worthiness isn’t the point; never was. The point is to follow the Spirit. Do as Jesus does. Love everyone. Love enemies. Lk 6.27 Love the people who mock and crucify you. Lk 23.34

Luke 6.35-36 NLT

35 “Love your enemies! Do good to them. Lend to them without expecting to be repaid. Then your reward from heaven will be very great, and you will truly be acting as children of the Most High, for he is kind to those who are unthankful and wicked. 36 You must be compassionate, just as your Father is compassionate.”

The reason people get called “children of the Most High” is because we exhibit his traits—or in other words, his fruit. Grace is one of the Spirit’s most obvious fruit; so obvious it really doesn’t need to be listed. Christians are meant to be known for our love, and grace means our love doesn’t come with strings attached. It’s not about trying to profit off new relationships, not about the satisfaction we feel when our love affects people in positive ways; it’s not even about winning them to Jesus, although that’ll happen. It’s about the fact every human being is a child of God, and if God loves them, so should we.

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Ingrates.

As I indicated in my article on grace, a number of Christians aren’t familiar with the concept, and think it’s a mystery or something indefinable. God grants us his unmerited favor; they know not how.

They don’t define grace by God’s attitude towards us. Largely because they don’t share this attitude, and don’t think we have to duplicate it towards others. God’s instructions about generosity, forgiveness, compassion, mercy, favor, and kindness haven’t sunk in. God is love, but we don’t love; at least, not without conditions.

So they’re graceless. They’re ingrates—a word usually defined as someone who’s not grateful, but comes from the Latin ingratus/“no grace.” They don’t do grace. They love friends and family… but big deal; everybody does that.

Matthew 5.46-47 GNT

46 “Why should God reward you if you love only the people who love you? Even the tax collectors do that! 47 And if you speak only to your friends, have you done anything out of the ordinary? Even the pagans do that!”

The love of God doesn’t project outside their social circle, into the world, into dark places where we’re meant to be light. We don’t represent Jesus to our lost and hurting society. We don’t spread grace. We don’t produce fruit.

’Cause grace is a fruit of the Spirit. True, it’s not one of the fruits Paul listed in Galatians. Doesn’t need to be included in his list. It should be fairly obvious this is a trait Christians oughta have if we have the Holy Spirit within, and are following him, and his godly attitudes and characteristics are overflowing into our lives. You oughta see grace in Christians. If you don’t, they might have the Spirit in them, but they don’t know him.

Grace is the whole point of Jesus’s Unforgiving Debtor Story. We were forgiven; we oughta forgive as well. God has been compassionate towards us; we oughta show compassion. God loves everybody; so should we. God makes no exceptions; neither should we.

Christians can be easily identified because we love one another—as we should. But we should likewise be identified because we love everyone. Because we’re gracious to everyone. Because we act like Jesus in that regard.

But as you probably notice, we don’t. We’d rather not.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Grace. (It really is amazing.)

GRACE greɪs noun. God’s generous, forgiving, kind, favorable attitude towards his people.

2. A prayer of thanksgiving.

[Gracious 'greɪ.ʃəs adjective.]

Years ago I was sitting in on a kids’ Sunday school class when the head pastor visited, and encouraged the kids to ask him anything.

Bad idea. We spent way too much time discussing the existence of space aliens. The pastor’s view: They’re not real, and all UFO sightings are likely evil spirits messing with people. (He was one of those dark Christians who suspect devils are just everywhere.)

Dark Christianity is likely why this pastor whiffed this question: One of the kids asked what grace is.

Someone had previously told her we Christians are saved by grace. Ep 2.8 So she understandably wanted to know what this “grace” stuff was. She wanted to get it and be saved. Her assumption—same as that of way too many Christians—is it’s some sort of heavenly pixie dust. Pastor’s response: “We can’t define grace. It’s a mystery. It just is.”

I know; you’re probably screaming at your phone right now, “It’s God’s unmerited favor, you numbskull,” which isn’t very kind of you; bad Christian. But yeah, shouldn’t a pastor of all people know what grace is? Shouldn’t any Christian in church leadership? Heck, shouldn’t every Christian?

Problem is, many Christians don’t know. Largely because our fellow Christians suck at teaching on it, and more importantly and problematically, living it. There are a lot of ingrates in Christendom… because there are a lot of ingrates in humanity, and they didn’t give up this behavior once they became Christian. Instead they excused their ungracious behavior by describing and justifying it with a lot of Christianese words. You know, hypocrisy.

And too many churches don’t teach on grace enough. Or at all. We’re saved by God’s grace, but when you listen to those churches, you get the idea we’re saved by other things. Like having all the right beliefs. Like being a good person. Like saying the sinner’s prayer, getting baptized, regularly doing certain sacraments, being a regular at church, knowing another saint who can “get us in,” or just believing really hard you are—and never permitting yourself to question it.

If you think you’re saved by any of these other things, and not grace, stands to reason you don’t understand grace. And won’t care that you don’t. Won’t practice it much either.

Since Pastor didn’t know what grace was, and I did, I explained it once he left the room. (I figured since he wasn’t clear on the concept, he wouldn’t appreciate me correcting him.) And no, I didn’t go with the usual cliché of “God’s unmerited favor”—though it’s that too. But more accurately it’s God’s attitude. One he wants us to share.

God is love, and loves us. Despite our bad behavior, rebelliousness, apathy, and sometimes outright hostility towards him, grace is how God thinks of us. His attitude overwhelms and overcomes everything we totally deserve. Any of us would give up on humanity entirely, and sweep us away with floods or raging fires, or burn us down like a mean kid takes a magnifying lens to an anthill. But God forgives all, loves us regardless, and even adopts us as his kids and gives us his kingdom.

That’s why we call it amazing.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

When sucky Christians share Jesus.

Christians are fond of saying the reason people won’t believe in Jesus is because of fleshly, irreligious Christians. Because we’re so awful, they stay away.

It’s rubbish, and I’ve written at length why that’s so. Talk with any pagan and you’ll quickly discover most of ’em do believe in Jesus… but they don’t believe in “organized religion” (by which they mean Christianity or church) and they much prefer their own eclectic ideas about who Jesus is, to anything Christians teach. Talk with any nontheist and you’ll find they don’t believe in Jesus because they don’t believe in miracles (i.e. his resurrection, his rapture, his second coming) and hate the idea that a God who has infinite power to stop anything they consider evil, doesn’t.

Sucky Christians aren’t why people don’t believe in Jesus.

Sucky Christians are no help, either. If I’m trying to share Jesus with someone, it’s so easy for that person to point to ill-behaved Christians and say, “They don’t help prove your point.” Absolutely right. They don’t. But the reason these folks don’t believe is they don’t wanna believe. Because I believe in Jesus despite ill-behaved Christians. Most of us do!

But those who claim sucky Christians are why people don’t believe in Jesus, really just have an ax to grind against misbehaving Christians.

And yeah, I admit I have an ax to grind against ’em too. Because I used to be one of those misbehaving Christians. I grind an ax against my former self all the time. I tell on all the sins he committed, and use him for illustrations of what not to do. Many Christians do likewise with their former selves. See, we can do it with impunity, and because we’re not picking on someone else, it’s not cruel. It’d look totally cruel if we used one of our kids, fr’instance—“Man, my kid is such a sinner. You should hear what he did last week.” It’d be gossipy if we did this with anyone else. With ourselves, no problem.

I was a rotten kid in my youth. And yeah, I still shared Jesus with people—and I actually got a few of ’em to come to church with me. Despite me. ’Cause that’s how the Holy Spirit works: He takes seriously messed-up humans, and does something good through us. He can, and does, use fleshly Christians to spread his gospel. I know from personal experience as one of those fleshly Christians.

That said, is it ideal when fleshly Christians share the gospel? Of course not. Got way easier to share the gospel when I started to act like Jesus. People don’t mind hearing the good news from good people. But when you’re kind of a dick, the good news doesn’t tend to come across as all that good. Too much hellfire, not enough grace. Too much hate; no love. Too likely to become dark Christianity, dark evangelism, and proselytism. Too likely to reproduce all our worst traits, like Jesus complained about Pharisees doing to their converts. Mt 23.15

No; ideally we want fruitful Christians to exhibit all the same winsome traits as our Master: Love, kindness, patience, forgiveness, grace, compassion, peace, and joy. Because we’re trying to duplicate that in new believers; not the same phony fruit we find among Christianists—the folks who nowadays make “sons of hell” instead of Pharisees.

Don’t misunderstand me. Irreligious Christians need to repent. But can they share Jesus, his gospel, and his kingdom? Of course they can. God’s used talking asses before, Nu 22.26-30 and apparently he still does.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Dark Christianity.

Here’s a good passage to remember:

1 John 1.5-10 NLT

5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

People don’t bother to read this passage in context, and presume light and darkness have to do with truth versus lies, or revelation versus mystery. Nope; it has to do with obedience versus sin. Christians shouldn’t sin. When we live in light, we oughta stay away from sin.

But it’s more than that: We shouldn’t fixate on sin either.

We shouldn’t obsess about what sinners are up to. We shouldn’t analyze the devil’s works in order to understand it better, Rv 2.24 since knowledge is power. Our ability to fight the devil and resist temptation isn’t from our studies of devilish strategies anyway: We’re to defeat sin and temptation through God’s power. Ep 6.10 Trust God, resist evil, and lead others to the light.

Yet there are loads of Christians who firmly believe a significant part of our duties—if not our only duty—is to study sin, fight it, and condemn it.

In preparation these folks spend an awful lot of time on the dark side of Christianity. They wanna instruct the church in Defence Against the Dark Arts classes, and be ever vigilant to battle He Who Shall Not Be Named. (Forgive all the Harry Potter references, but there are an awful lot of parallels. It’s almost like J.K. Rowling grew up Christian or something.) Namely these areas:

• The fall of the angels, the fall of humanity, original sin, total depravity.
• Sin, mortal sin, unforgiveable sin, spiritual death, spiritual suicide, apostasy, heresy, works of the flesh, temptation.
• Satan and its fellow tempters: Unclean spirits, devils, demons, idols, antichrists.
• Spiritual warfare, exorcisms, intercessory prayer, hedges, umbrellas of protection.
• The End Times: Signs of the times, fulfillment of end-times prophecy, rapture readiness, tribulation, the Beast.
• Theodicy, judgments, punishments, double predestination, hades, purgatory, hell, second death.

True, all Christian theologians deal with this stuff, ’cause they’re part of Christianity. but they’re the stuff Jesus defeated and frees us from. We’re not to worry about this; we’re to focus on loving our neighbors, and having an abundant life in God’s kingdom.

But dark Christians we’re not free of these things. Not at all. ’Cause there’s still evil in the world, isn’t there? We still have the gates of hell to knock down. Jesus’s mission may have been to destroy the devil’s works, 1Jn 3.8 but they don’t believe he’s yet accomplished it. They believe it’s now our mission. They don’t consider the fact our own depravity constantly gets in the way of accurately identifying evil, or regularly corrupts us into using devilish tactics to fight it—that Jesus really does want us to have nothing to do with evil.

To dark Christians, our primary duty isn’t to proclaim the good news of God’s kingdom, but fight evil. So it’s all they do.

Hence people don’t see them as bringers of light, peace, hope, love, and good news. Just darkness. Dark Christians make pagans flinch and fellow Christians facepalm. Our job of proclaiming good news becomes substantially harder, because now we gotta make up for the fleshly behavior and jerkish actions of these nimrods: Pagans assume we’re all like that, or suspect any loving actions on our part have, at the back of them, hatred, fear, horror, and judgment.

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Bummed your candidate lost?

Yesterday was Election Day in the United States, and since elections take time to tabulate (and people whose candidate lost will sometimes refuse to accept the tabulations, and demand they run ’em again, and even then insist something went wrong in the counting process, and sue, and bear false witness against the tabulators for years afterward), the results are still up in the air. It agitates the impatient. But eventually we’ll know who won… and one side or the other is gonna mope about it.

And, same as in every election, the losing side is gonna put on a brave face, say the usual platitudes—“God’s will be done,” and “God is in control,” and “God works out everything for our good,” et cetera, ad nauseam. God’s on the throne, even though their candidate won’t be. They’re very bummed, and sometimes there’s even weeping and gnashing of teeth and rage.

But they put their trust in Jesus. So they say… now. They weren’t before. This “God’s in charge” stuff is what people say after they’ve been putting their trust in an idol, and God just smashed that idol. As he does.

But not all of ’em will accept the idea God’s in charge. A number of them are plotting violence, and justify it by claiming God’s will has been frustrated. What comes next? God’s wrath… which looks suspiciously like their wrath.

I heard quite a lot of rightists talk about wrath during the Barack Obama years. Yeah, it’s projection; they’re angry, and covet power, and dream of sweet vengeance. Broken idol or not, they’re still idolaters—coveting and worshiping power.

Some of us are just that dense. I sure was.

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Politics, Christians, and our democracy.

POLITICS 'pɑl.ə.tɪks plural noun. Activities associated with gaining or holding power; frequently seen as divisive and devious.

2. Activites associated with governing a country, land, or organization; or dealing with relations between one such organization and another.

3. Beliefs and principles regarding the gaining or holding of power.

4. The academic study of government and the state.

[Politic 'pɑl.ə.tɪk adjective or verb, political pə'lɪd.ə.kəl adjective, politician pɑl.ə'tɪ.ʃən noun, politico pə'lɪd.ɪ.koʊ noun.]

God’s kingdom is entirely about surrendering our power, authority, will, even our identity, to God.

We kinda have to do this. Humans, y’see, are selfish to our core. Everything we do, even everything good we do, has a self-centered ulterior motive. Makes us feel good about ourselves. Makes us feel self-justified. Yeah, some good deeds might feel self-sacrificial and miserable, but somewhere in our psyche is some “greater principle” which feels really good to make great sacrifices for. We’re just that carnal. It’s why God needs to save us, ’cause we’ll never be good enough to save ourselves. And why the Holy Spirit needs to give our consciences a total overhaul.

In contrast politics is about wielding power. And for politically-minded folks, it’s also about gaining more. Sometimes for noble reasons; mainly to help others. More often, for not-so-noble reasons: To keep it out of the hands of other people, lest they do something we dislike with it. Not that we’re necessarily doing anything with it, including anything good. Note the United States Congress: Too often it’s all about doing nothing—’cause many a politician figures nothing is better than anything.

So yeah, there are antithetical ideas at play whenever we talk about God’s kingdom and politics. One’s about surrender, because we humans can’t be trusted with power. The other’s not; it’s about gaining or taking or stealing power, because we imagine we’re the right-minded exceptions who can be trusted with power. Others can’t. The opposition party surely can’t.

How do Christians juggle these ideas? Same way we’ve always justified our possession of power. Same as we’ve always justified not surrendering all our power to God. In brief: “I’m gonna do good things with it! The power’s not gonna corrupt me. My heart is pure.”

In other words, we lie to ourselves. And our fellow Christians. And God.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Vote! But bear in mind what your vote really does.

God’s kingdom is not a democracy.

True, whenever we talk about repentance, turning to Jesus, voluntarily following him, and our free will, it sounds like our choices have a lot to do with Jesus’s reign as king. And they do… for now. Because for now, Jesus lets humanity choose sides.

Once he returns, it’s to take possession of a world he’s already conquered, and finally run it properly. At that time people will no longer have the final say about our rulers; Jesus will. And we definitely no longer get to choose the man in charge: Every knee’s gonna bow to Jesus. Pp 2.10-11

If that sounds disturbing or terrifying to you, it’s probably because you don’t know Jesus. Don’t worry; he’s awesome. He’s gracious even to the people who want nothing to do with him. We his followers don’t represent him adequately, if at all; we suck. His partisan followers, of every political party round the world, are typically the very worst of us.

Every election year, these partisans try to get out the vote. Everybody tells us to vote. Even churches who absolutely won’t endorse candidates (and rightly so; that pulpit is to promote God’s kingdom, not earthly ones) will still endorse the act of voting: “Christians need to get to the polls and vote our values.” We’re encouraged to vote for all the candidates which “stand with God.” We’re told our votes make a difference; that when we Christians vote, we’ve contributed towards making our country more Christian.

But once again: God’s kingdom is not a democracy. And God doesn’t endorse any other ruler but Jesus.

Christians will point to the bible and claim God did so endorse human rulers, like Abraham, Moses, the judges, certain kings, and certain head priests. But we fail to recognize God’s leadership structure is entirely different from our democracies. Whenever God appointed or backed a ruler, it was with the understanding God’s the real ruler, and this human on the throne was his employee. (All things considered, pretty messed-up employees too.) Whereas in democracies, our rulers work for us. They’re to do as we want.

This belief our democratically elected leaders will work for God, is pure campaign rhetoric. They will not. Even the most earnest of ’em will at best work for what they think God wants… which conveniently seems to be exactly what the party wants, which means they’ve been projecting an awful lot of their politics upon God. So whenever we get a politician who claims to be on God’s side, we’ve either got someone who doesn’t actually know God, or is a giant hypocrite. The non-hypocrites in politics will recognize this from the very start, and inform us voters “I work for you.” (Now, whether that “you” is the voters or the lobbies, is another thing.)

Unfortunately many Christians have totally fallen for the hypocrites. Remember when Jesus talked about fakes fooling people?

Matthew 24.24-25 KJV

24 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. 25 See, I have told you beforehand.

I used to think, “How are they ever gonna fool us Christians?” But Christianist politicians fool us every election year. Fooled me for a lot of years.

So am I telling you not to vote? No; do vote. It’s your civic duty to vote for leaders of good character. People who, because of their character—and certainly not their stated policies, which they can always change their minds about, and often will when they’re bad policies—will do the most good. As Christians who are called to love our neighbors, we likewise must vote in the national interest; don’t just vote for your own interests, as far too many always do. Much of the reason for our messed-up culture is because it’s based on selfishness instead of selflessness, and our votes reflect this all too well.

And don’t delude yourself into thinking your vote, your candidate, our leadership, and our government, is our salvation. We have one savior, and it’s Jesus. Put your hope in him, not whichever yutz the electorate picks this time around. If your particular yutz loses the race, stop acting like the world’s gonna end! It was always gonna end. But Jesus makes all things new.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Meaningless things.

Ecclesiastes 9.11.

“Time and chance” is how the King James Version renders עֵ֥ת וָפֶ֖גַע/et va-fegá, “a moment and an accident.” I tend to interpret it as dumb luck, ’cause that’s the concept the author of Ecclesiastes is going with. Dumb luck exists, and it’s why the best and brightest aren’t guaranteed success.

Ecclesiastes 9.11 NKJV

I returned and saw under the sun that—

The race is not to the swift,

Nor the battle to the strong,

Nor bread to the wise,

Nor riches to men of understanding,

Nor favor to men of skill;

But time and chance happen to them all.

Yeah, our culture teaches otherwise. And no I’m not talking about our wider secular culture; I’m talking about popular Christian culture. Loads of Christians insist nothing happens outside God’s intricate plan for the cosmos. He’s got everything mapped out, everything under his thumb; even evil and chaos and destruction and sin are part of the arrangement. Dumb luck can’t exist in the realm of our sovereign God. There’s no such thing as luck. Everything’s determined, and everything happens for a reason.

They absolutely hate when I point ’em to Ecclesiastes. ’Cause it’s part of our Holy Spirit-inspired bible… yet its author relentlessly insists plenty of things happen for no reason. At all. It’s the entire premise of his book.

Ecclesiastes 1.1-3 NKJV

1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

2 “Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher;

“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”

3 What profit has a man from all his labor

In which he toils under the sun?

I’ve actually had people try to explain Ecclesiastes away, as if the book’s “pessimism” no longer applies or matters in the Christian era. The author’s a descendant of David who called himself קֹהֶ֣לֶת/Qohelét, “preacher.” Most folks assume it’s Solomon. And, Christians will tell me, Qohelét wrote it when he was depressed. Because he lacked revelation of God’s grand will of purpose, he didn’t know God has a plan for everything. So he wrote it out of his utter faithlessness. It’s in our bible as a warning to people who likewise lack faith. You know, like Job’s friends. Don’t be like those guys.

That’s just how dead set certain Christians are in demanding their worldview: Let’s overturn entire books of the bible by claiming they’re ironic.

But the reason the Spirit inspired this book, and the reason we kept it in the bible, is ’cause Qohelét’s right. He makes it clear God isn’t behind every fumble, every failure, every accident, every coincidence. God’s behind a whole lot of things!—but certainly not all. Some things aren’t him. Evil isn’t him, and claiming God causes evil to happen is pure slander. Common slander, but still.

To Qohelét, some things are just הֲבֵ֤ל הֲבָלִים֙/havél havalím, “vapor of vapors,” which the KJV calls “vanity of vanities.” It’s a Hebrew idiom meaning “the most evanescent of vapors.” You know how, on a cold day, you can see your breath, but it quickly disappears? This disappears even more quickly. It immediately disappears. It’s the breath of that breath: Here one instant, gone the next. Can’t hold it, can’t catch it, can’t chase it. It’s empty, unimportant, meaningless. “Vanity,” the KJV puts it—it’s less than meaningless, ’cause time spent on it is time utterly wasted.

Does anything happen for a reason? According to Qohelét, anything God does happens for a reason. But everything else? The vapor of vapors.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Election: God did choose you, y’know.

ELECT ə'lɛkt verb. Choose for a purpose or position, like a political contest or a job.

2. noun. A person (or people) chosen by God for a purpose or position. [Often “the elect.”]

[Elector ə'lɛk.tər noun, election ə'lɛk.ʃən noun.]

I grew up with a Christian mom, a Christian upbringing, and lots of relationships with people who happened to be Christian. Whole lot of opportunities to have God-experiences.

It’s kinda like I was set up. As if stuff was deliberately stuck in my path to influence me to become Christian.

Obviously other Christians haven’t grown up the same way. Things were a lot less Christian, a lot more pagan—or they grew up in another religion altogether. But at one point in their lives they were obviously nudged in Christ Jesus’s direction. Maybe they had a rough patch and Christians showed up to redirect ’em to Jesus. Maybe a miracle happened and they realized, not just that God’s real and here, but that Jesus defines him best. In some cases Jesus even personally showed up and told them to follow him. He does that.

The fact is, God wants to save everybody. Jesus died to make it possible, and everybody’s been given the invitation to come to Jesus, become adopted by God, and enter his kingdom. Everybody. Without exception. He’s not turning anyone away. (Unless they clearly don’t want him—as proven by their defiant, godless behavior. But that’s another discussion.)

But. Even though God’s invitation is for anyone and everyone, there are lots of individuals whom he makes a particular effort to save. Like me, ’cause he clearly set me up to become Christian. Like most people who grow up in a Christian family, or in a predominantly Christian country or community.

Like you, more than likely: When you look back on your life, chances are you can think of many situations where God got your attention, moved you into place, and came after you. Some of them were subtle, and some of them were outrageously obvious. Hey, whatever got you into his kingdom! But God definitely, specifically, wanted you.

Christians call this idea of God choosing us election.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Jesus’s top command: Love God.

Deuteronomy 6.4-5.

The reason people say the LORD has 613 commands in the bible, is ’cause Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon counted them. Just went through the bible, plucked out all the commands God gave to Moses (and a few he gave to Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Israel), combined all the repeated ones, came up with 613, and compiled them in his Sefer Hamitzvot/“Book of Good Deeds.”

If you haven’t heard of Rabbi Moshe, he’s a big deal in rabbinic Judaism. Jews often refer to him by Rambam (or “the Rambam,” in case you confuse him with another Rambam—it’s an acronym, RMBM, with vowels thrown in so you can pronounce it). Western philosophy courses tend to call him by the Latin version of his name, Moses Maimonides. He lived in Spain in 1135-1204.

Rabbi Moshe also listed the commands in order of importance. To his mind, the most important was the first of the 10 commandments, and while Christians think it’s “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” Ex 20.3 Jews figure it’s actually this one:

Exodus 20.2 NKJV

“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”

No really; it’s a command. It identifies which God we’re to follow. There are plenty of other beings which identify themselves, or which others identify for us, as God. Plenty of pagans will talk about how “the universe” is pointing them a certain direction, or wants ’em to do something. But for us monotheists, the universe isn’t God; it’s one of God’s creations. For us Christians, God is the being Jesus identified as his Father—and when this being first identified himself, it was as YHWH/“the LORD,” Ex 3.14-15 the name he permanently chose for himself. He’s the God who rescued the Hebrews from Egypt. That God is our God.

Identifying which God is our God, is actually vitally important. It’s why theology books tend to begin by nailing down which God we follow: The Father of Jesus and the God of Israel. (There’s usually a bit in there about whether God exists and how we know this… which is entirely unnecessary when you’ve met him. But a bothersome number of theologians aren’t sure they have… which is a whole other discussion.)

Okay, so that’s Rabbi Moshe’s number one command. It’s a good one. But now let’s ask God himself—or more specifically God incarnate, our Lord, Christ Jesus.

Mark 12.28-31 NKJV

28 Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that He had answered them well, asked Him, “Which is the first commandment of all?”

29 Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. 30 And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ Dt 6.4-5 This is the first commandment. 31 And the second, like it, is this: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Lv 19.18 There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Jesus identifies the most important command as what Jews call the שֵׁמַע/šemá or Shema, the “declaration” of faith. They repeat this verse to publicly declare the LORD is their God.

Deuteronomy 6.4-5 NKJV

4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one! 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.”

The first part of this passage actually does the same thing as Rabbi Moshe’s number one verse: It identifies which God we follow, and that’d be the LORD. And the LORD is our one and only lord. We’re monotheists; we don’t follow multiple gods. (And Jesus isn’t another god; he’s the same God.)

More than that, we’re commanded to love the LORD. Moses said it’s with all our heart, soul, and might; Jesus expanded “strength” into “mind” and “strength,” lest people think strength was only a mental or physical exercise. It’s both. In case anyone was looking for a loophole, as people so often do, Jesus plugged it.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Christians who want us to be angry at sin.

“Doesn’t this make you angry? Well it should! It’s sinful, and it’s an abomination, an outrage, to God. It should be an abomination, an outrage, to you too. Don’t just tolerate it. Get angry!”

Betcha you’ve heard this statement, or something like it, before. Hopefully not from your pastor, from the pulpit, as part of the official messages and teachings of your church. God forbid. But I know churches where it doesn’t just slip into the messages; it’s the message. They feel it’s every Christian’s duty to hate sin. It needs to offend you so much, you’ll stay away from it. If you don’t do this, falling into sin is inevitable; if you won’t do this, it’s like you’re inviting sin into your life, and they want nothing to do with you.

It’s a pervasive teaching in some denominations. They think it’s how we achieve holiness, which they’ve confounded with goodness. To their minds if we’re gonna be holy, we gotta love what’s good—and hate what’s evil. Isn’t that how it’s done?

It might not be how your denomination thinks; your bishops, pastors, and presbyters may know better. But I guarantee you there are always gonna be some people who were exposed to one of those sin-hating churches, who consider it a mandatory Christian discipline… and who are regularly outraged it’s not taught as one in your church! (It’s one of many things they’re angry about, y’notice.) Lots of ’em will take it upon themselves to make sure it gets taught. They’ll promote it in the small group meetings, the Sunday school classes, the bible studies, the prayer groups, or simply the conversations individual Christians will have with one another.

These’d be the folks who preach, “Love the sinner, hate the sin,” and spend 99 percent of their efforts hating the sin. They insist Christians have to hate the sin; hate it with the very same white-hot intensity God hates it. Shun it. Ban it. Vote for politicians who will outlaw it. Kick anyone who does it, out of our churches till they repent. It’s how we stay pure—pure as that white-hot hatred we’re supposed to have.

Um… what’s with all this hatred? Aren’t enmity and anger works of the flesh? Even if we should avoid sinning whenever we can, isn’t this emphasis on hating sin gonna drive us to unintentionally hate sinners, and drive them away from Jesus?

I’ve brought this fact up quite a few times to Christians who claim we gotta be angry at sin. Their usual responses are to

• accuse me of compromise, or of secretly committing such sins myself: “Are you saying we should tolerate sin? You realize God’s gonna judge all the nations which tolerate sin.”
• be okay with hating sinners: “Those people hate God, as you can tell by their bad fruit. They’re destined for hell. Why waste time and effort on people who hate God?”
• claim it’s actually easy to do both: “People can both hate sin and love sinners. I can absolutely hate when my kid lies to me, but still totally love my kid.” (Sure; I get that. But now try again with someone whom you don’t unconditionally love. Say, a coworker who constantly lies to you. Or a politician from the opposition party.)

In general, the thinking is we Christians have to be angry at sin… because if sin enrages us, if we absolutely hate it, we won’t commit it. It’ll repel us, and we won’t sin.

It’s a useful trick to help us resist temptation. Does it work? Not at all. Didn’t for Paul of Tarsus.

Romans 7.15 NRSVue

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.

Paul sinned, same as every human. And Paul knew better than to sin, and didn’t wanna sin… but he did. He blamed his body, his “flesh,” for having sin embedded in it, and doing what he didn’t want.

Romans 7.22-23 NRSVue

22 For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, 23 but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

Well, Jesus. Ro 7.25 But rather than trust Christ Jesus, a whole lot of Christians have adopted the “useful trick” of trying to get us to be angry at sin. Since it’s already quite easy to get people angry, may as well put that anger to good use, yeah? Get ’em angry at evil.

Read the whole thing! ➡️