Some Christians wanna make it particularly clear which god we’re praying to. Partly because some of ’em actually think they might accidentally invoke the wrong god (and y’know,
As I said in the Lord’s Prayer article, Jesus isn’t the first to teach people God is our Father. Many a
In
The Pharisee view, one we Christians share, is our God is the living God. Whereas other religions’ gods aren’t. They’re blocks of wood, stone, and metal; they’re abstract ideas without any intelligence behind them; they’re devils tricking people into worshiping them. When we speak to our God, he speaks back. When they speak to their gods, they don’t. They can’t.
Yet instead of realizing, “Y’know, since our god never, ever responds to us, I wonder whether she’s real to begin with?” pagans just shove that idea right out of their minds as if it’s doubt or blasphemy, double down on their beliefs, and come up with a bunch of justifications for why their gods can’t talk. Humans are too insignificant or sinful; the gods are too mighty or busy or distant; the universe doesn’t express its will like that; crap like that.
Regardless of the reasons, pagans get no feedback from their gods, so when they pray, they feel the need to repeat themselves. A lot. Their gods might not’ve heard them, so they just need to make sure.
Does our God require such behavior? Absolutely not. As Jesus said, he knew our requests before we ever made ’em.
Lots of Christians interpret this as a statement of God’s
Throughout history people
And a regular problem throughout history has been the person who gets up and prays publicly, not because they legitimately
Nothing annoys Jesus like hypocrisy, which is why he tries to discourage his followers from doing this. Although you know some of us do this anyway.
Standing was how the ancients prayed. They didn’t kneel, bow their heads, and fold their hands; that practice arose in the middle ages ’cause it’s how European kings wanted to be approached, and since Jesus is King it seems appropriate. But the ancients stood, looked to the sky (where
And Jesus notes the folks who prayed in really public places. Like synagogue. Which is not a Jewish church; it’s
“Major intersections” is how I translate
In both cases people were on their way someplace, and wouldn’t have had the time, nor spent the time, listening to this petitioner with his hands in the air. That wasn’t the point anyway. They didn’t care about being heard. Not even by God. They wanted to be seen.
The way we pray nowadays, doesn’t assume the ancient posture. Usually it’s heads bowed, eyes closed. Sometimes hands get raised, if the folks in the group have any Pentecostal influences in their background. But generally we’re not as noticeable when we pray. Unless we get loud… or unless there are a lot of us, like when a bunch of people pray in front of public buildings or around a flagpole.
But in those places, same as with the people Jesus critiqued, the point was to be seen and noticed by other people. Not so much God. And that’s what Jesus objects to.
Starting the second chapter of
The term Jesus used is
Various stingy Christians claim God owes us nothing when we do good deeds. ’Cause we should be doing ’em anyway, right? True. But they’ve got the wrong mindset. We’re not just God’s kids, who work for him for free: We’re his employees, who work
Unless of course we’re not working for God, but for our own gain. Unless we’re not making him any profit, but swiping all that profit for ourselves. And this is what Jesus addresses in this lesson:
There are three hypocritical practices Jesus objects to in the Sermon: Self-serving public charity, self-serving public prayer, and self-serving public fasting. Today I deal with the charity.
I already dealt with the fact Jesus’s objections appear to contradict what he previously said about
The difference has to do with motive. If you’re doing ’em for God, good!—shine your light. If you’re doing ’em for praise, bad Christian!—human praise is all the earnings you get.
And the way Jesus recommends we make sure we’re doing ’em for God—if we have any question about it—is to do these acts privately. If it’s public, it’s for the acclaim of others. If it’s private, only God sees it—’cause it’s only for him to see anyway.
Thus far
True, Jesus used to punctuate certain sayings with “Amen amen,”
But there’s a huge difference between the Lord’s motives for swearing an oath, and ours. His is to underline. Ours is to say, “Okay, you know the rest of the time I’m a horrible liar. But now I mean it. Now I’m telling the truth. The rest of the time… well, I’m generally truthful. But now you can trust me. ’Cause I swore to God.” Or swore upon of the other things people swore by in Jesus’s day, like swearing by the land of Israel, swearing by Jerusalem, swearing by one’s head. Nowadays it’s swearing on your mother’s grave, swearing on the lives of your kids, swearing on a stack of bibles, swearing “by all that’s holy.” Whatever you consider holy.
But you see the inherent problem with this, which is what Jesus wanted to highlight: The fact we have to swear to tell the truth, or swear to do what we say we will, implies we’re unreliable liars the rest of the time. Which is not who he wants his people to be.
In case you didn’t read
First of all I need to remind you of
Or, more accurately, rape.
Yes rape. People keep presuming “adultery” in the bible was consensual. And in some cases it might have been. But that just makes it statutory rape, like when someone in our culture has sex with a minor: The woman’s “consent” wasn’t lawful.
God, and our current laws, did away with patriarchy and slavery. Yeah, various sexists try to re-implement it, or some form of it, and claim their variant is somehow biblical. Nevertheless (in the United States anyway) we live in a free society. Married women voluntarily belong to their spouses. Underage girls belong to their parents till they reach an age where (supposedly) they’ll be responsible. Every other woman is free: She belongs to no one but herself. And if she doesn’t agree to be yours, once again, sex with her is rape.
Yep. That’s what Jesus’s teaching now means in today’s culture.
If you thought doing away with patriarchy made things lighter, or gave us a bunch of loopholes, it really didn’t. Everybody who looks at a woman to deliberately covet her, who has no business nor permission to imagine such things of her, has raped her in their heart. People object to radical feminists (or even ordinary feminists) using such terms to describe the way men leer at them, or referring to their objectification as “rape culture.” Turns out they’re absolutely right.
And I remind you: Jesus’s instruction was primarily addressed to the young men he taught, but it applies just the same to women. Covet a man who’s not yours, and it’s either mental adultery or mental rape. So don’t go there.
In
Typically bibles translate Jesus’s followup as “But I tell you.” (
De can be translated whatever way the interpreter thinks would make the clearest English. But really it’s got no more meaning than a semicolon. (I’d even translate it that way… if it didn’t wind up producing giant run-on sentences.)
Here’s the problem: Interpreter bias. When we correctly recognize Jesus isn’t throwing out Old Testament commands and replacing (or significantly updating) them with his; when we realize he’s explaining the L
But. When we incorrectly think Jesus is inaugurating a new dispensation—or we at least think Jesus is trying to add to the Law, despite Moses telling the Hebrews they don’t get to do this
So I went with the simplest option, and dropped de as redundant. On to Jesus’s lesson.
In Matthew he begins his brief commentary on the spirit of the Law with the “Don’t murder” command from
Popularly, this passage is interpreted all kinds of wrong. Namely it’s explained, “Hating your fellow Christian” (or hating anyone) “is just as bad as murder. Because you’ve spiritually killed them.”
This connects to Jesus’s similar teaching in Luke.
Despite this very lesson, many Christians do in fact teach Jesus did come to dissolve “the Law and the Prophets”—the way people in his day referred to the bible, our Old Testament.
As in
Luke 16.16-17 , Jesus is not announcing the termination of the OT’s relevance and authority (elseLuke 16.17 would be incomprehensible), but that “the period during which men were related to God under its terms ceased with John”; and the nature of its valid continuity is established only with reference to Jesus and the kingdom.—
D.A. Carson, Expositor’s Bible Commentary at Mt 5.17
It’s still relevant, still authoritative; it’s why Christian bibles still include it. But it’s no longer valid. It no longer counts. Fun to read, useful for historical context, and we can even pull a few End Times prophecies out of it. But follow it? Nah.
Exactly how is that not dissolving it? See,
This idea exposes a huge, huge error in the way Christians think about God, his commands, the Law,
Gonna be a lot of “smallest” Christians
In
So which is it?
Both, obviously. It’s not a contradiction. Jesus is the true light who entered the world;
Yep, this light metaphor is all over the bible. Wouldn’t hurt us to read up on it, and see all the different ways God wants us to carry his light.
Starting with the city-on-a-hill idea. Nowadays we don’t create cities on hills. When developers create a town, they place them somewhere convenient: Outside bigger cities, near main roads, a place easy to access. Hills aren’t so easy, plus there’s all the hassle of building on a hill. Put a city on a hill, and it’ll nearly always be an expensive city. But back in ancient times, rulers worried about invasion, and figured a hill was easier to defend than a plain. Plus they could see their enemies coming. The downside was their cities were very visible-especially at night, with all their torches burning.
That’s the trait Jesus wants his followers to have: We oughta be nice and obvious. (True, it makes us more visible to enemies, but let’s not hang up on the negative.) If Christianity is a city on a hill, we Christians need to be visible. No hiding our faith. No concealing who it is we follow.
If you’ve ever heard someone called “the salt of the earth,” usually they mean a decent person—but kinda ordinary. And no, that’s not what Jesus meant when he coined the phrase “salt of the earth.” Or as I translated it, “the earth’s salt.” I’ve no idea how it evolved from a remarkable person to an unremarkable person.
But when Jesus uses it, he means remarkable. He means a flavor enhancer. Be the salt of the earth: Enhance it. Make it taste better.
The spin Mark took on it is a little bit different than the ideas we find in Matthew. I’ll get to it momentarily. First the
A lot of Jesus’s teachings are bunched together as the
Let’s be blunt: They’re not. We’re not blessed with poverty, misery, no justice, no peace, and persecution.
I’ll explain. But first let’s get to the beatitudes in these two gospels.
Yeah, you likely noticed I went with a much different translation of
My translation of the Sermon on the Plain.
I don’t know whether Jesus preached this as a whole other sermon from the Sermon on the Mount, or whether Luke heard a short version of that sermon… or whether Matthew heard a long version of this sermon. My guess is Jesus gave the same sermon lots of times; shorter or longer versions depending on the location and audience. So this is kinda the short version.
My translation of the Sermon on the Mount.
No, not so I can have my own spin on it, or an “authoritative text” to work from;
Feel free to read it in other translations. Compare them to one another so you can see the translators’ consensus—and that gives you a better idea of what Jesus means, than simply reading
And the best way to follow him
When people read the New Testament (even though evangelists tell ’em to read John first, which they don’t have to;
As, I would argue, it should be. John is great for talking about our salvation and Jesus’s divine nature. But now that we’re saved, how are we to live? What are the good works God has in mind for us?
A little too challenging for a lot of Christians. For some new believers, it’s like a punch in the face. This is what Jesus expects of us? Righteous behavior? Self-control? Radical forgiveness? Integrity? Total faith in God? No double standards? In fact higher standards than the most religious people we know? Christ Almighty!
Some of us figure, “Okay,” and give it a shot. And grow as Christians really fast.
But historically most Christians have looked at the Sermon on the Mount, balked, and tried to find loopholes.
The result has been the five most common ways Christians choose to interpret the Sermon on the Mount. Four of ’em are obvious attempts to weasel out of it.
Lately I’ve been seeing a meme on social media, warning people about what might happen if society goes cashless. Some of the memes claim Dave Ramsey wrote it; he did not. Like most memes which go viral pretty quickly, it’s meant to scare people. And since it plays right into many a Christian’s fears about the End Times, of course Christians have been spreading it too.
My comment after yet another friend posted it on Facebook: “Isn’t it funny? The first thing Christians worry about when the Beast comes… is Mammon.”
A few current translations drop the reference to Mammon and translate this verse, “You cannot serve both God and money” (
A false god of course. But some god which competes with the L
In Luke when Jesus made this statement, he’d just told
So is Mammon a money god? Or simply Jesus’s personification of money? Or a mistranslation?
First of all, there’s nothing in ancient literature about the god Mammon. Seriously, nothing.
The
Archaeologists have dug up nothing about Mammon in Israel and ancient Aramaic-speaking territories. That’s not to say one of ’em won’t discover something someday. But till something gets found, all our talk about the god Mammon, all of it, is guesswork. The ancients may have never worshiped any such god as Mammon. We’re just extrapolating all of it from Jesus’s lesson.
But this sure hasn’t stopped us Christians from extrapolating away. The mind can’t handle gaps in our knowledge, and has to fill it with something. Anything. Myths if necessary.
Christians invented all sorts of theories about who Mammon is. Fallen angel or
All of it guesswork. ’Cause our only source of Mammon’s existence is the Mishna and Jesus, and neither of ’em define it as anything but money.
Is there any legitimacy to any Christian teachings about Mammon? Depends on who’s teaching. Any preacher who claims, “We know from the bible that Mammon is a demon,” knows no such thing. “We know Mammon is headquartered in the financial capitals in the world”—no we don’t. “We know Mammon gains power every time the market goes up”—we do not.
We know money is a force. Educated economists understand how we create it. Yes, we humans create it. Money’s a human invention. We used to barter. Barter’s inefficient; how is a week’s labor precisely worth one goat? But if you can trade goods and labor for grams of copper, silver, gold, or platinum, now you can meter out how much you think something’s worth—and haggle over that price. Problem is, the value of precious metals is way too easy to manipulate, so governments switched it to pounds, dollars, yuan, yen, and our other currencies… and now people worry about how much governments manipulate its value. Not that the “cashless society” meme considers that… but I’m gonna stay off that tangent today.
People who don’t understand money, and how humans influence it, tend to imagine money has a life of its own. They attribute all sorts of special powers to it. Those are myths too. Stands to reason these same folks would imagine Mammon has a life of its own too. And that it controls money, not humans. And that we’re powerless against it—when in fact we humans have a great deal of power over everything we’ve created. Yeah, even when it gets away from us sometimes.
I’m gonna stop capitalizing the word now: I treat mammon as the same as money. It’s a spiritual force. Not a person. Yes it’s always possible there’s some no-foolin’ spiritual being which attached itself to money, and claims power over it. After all, there are humans who do the very same thing; why not a devil? But it has no more power over money than we do. It’s tricking us into thinking it’s mightier than it is. We can dismiss it, because through Christ
So… why’d Jesus personify it? Because Jesus is a poet, and this is what poets do. When the Greeks described
Mammon doesn’t need to be a person before humans’ll worship it. A money manager doesn’t go to any Church of Mammon to pay homage to her god; she just goes to the office. A banker doesn’t need to pray to Mammon; accessing his online bank account serves the very same function. The ancients worshiped lifeless stone gods, and Mammonists just happen to worship lifeless wealth. Worshiping a dead god is just as wrong as worshiping a spirit; the pursuit of a fake deity will lead us just as far afield.
Yeah, every once in a while some Christian claims they had
Money isn’t material.
I know; pocket change is a physical thing. As are dollar bills. But these items only represent the actual value of money. That’s why people will pick up a quarter when they find one in the street, but they won’t pick up a washer. (Or even pennies anymore.) They’ll pick up a $10 bill, but not a napkin. Currency makes money appear tangible. In fact money is a cloud of mathematics, behavioral psychology, economic theory, and political theory. When we convert it into bills, coins, and bonds, we make it look tangible, solid, countable, and controllable. It may be countable and controllable, but it’s really not solid.
For the longest time, instead of bills and coins, humanity used metal, and we attached a specific value per gram to the metal. (Or in the States, value per ounce.) For this reason certain people wanna put us back on a gold and silver standard: They insist gold has a built-in value, and dollars don’t. But they’re wrong: Gold has no built-in value. ’Cause human psychology easily manipulates that value.
It’s actually way easier to manipulate the value with gold than dollars. One of the first events people called “Black Friday” was when Jay Gould and James Fisk tried to manipulate the New York gold market. They slowly bought up a lot of gold… then on 24 September 1869 they sold all of it, dumping it on the market. Thanks to the rules of supply and demand, too much gold caused people to value it less, and gold’s price plummeted. Gould and Fisk took advantage of the new cheap price of gold, and bought back more than they sold. And if we didn’t pass laws against this practice, people would do it again and again, just to enrich themselves. Other countries don’t pass such laws, which is why gold isn’t a safe investment: They could dump gold on the international market, and mess with the world’s prices for fun and profit.
Goldbugs insist such acts artificially alter gold’s price. ’Cause they refuse to believe gold doesn’t have a fixed value. Which only proves they’ve no idea how money works. All value is entirely based on belief: What do people imagine something’s worth? Same with trading cards, collectible toys, art, memorabilia, silver, gold, and the dollar.
The U.S. dollar is worth a dollar because the American people believe it buys a dollar’s worth of something. If we figure a dollar can buy a cup of coffee, that’s how far its power extends: Any coffee sold for more than a dollar is “too much,” or less than a dollar is “a bargain.” Everything gets tied to that dollar=coffee metric. We don’t even think about why they should be equal. Says who? Um… the government? The Federal Reserve? The economy? (Clearly not Starbucks.) The collective belief of every American?
Actually… yeah it is collective belief.
Gold works precisely the same way. Gold is worth $40 per gram because gold buyers believe it’s worth $40 per gram. When they don’t anymore, that’ll change. Might go up, or down. Claiming, “But its real value never changes” is the illusion: Everything’s real value changes. And you don’t want two speculators who don’t mind bankrupting the world, wielding the power to make those changes so they can enrich themselves. That’s why we abandoned the gold standard.
Stocks are a more obvious example. A corporation might make no money, and hasn’t for years, but it’s an internet company, and people are convinced they should put their hopes (“put stock”) in internet companies, so its stock is outrageously overvalued. Some ninny on
The collective belief of shareholders just happens to be far more volatile than that of every American. But even American faith and credit has its limits. When other things take greater priority than money, like food during a famine, humans will trade a decent pile of money for donkey heads and dove crap.
So money isn’t material. And any force which isn’t material is spiritual.
I know, some folks are gonna object to my reducing things that way. In part because many pagans imagine material things are real, and spiritual things are not. And money’s real!—therefore it must somehow be material. But it’s not material. Yet it’s real. Therefore spiritual.
No, others will argue; it’s intellectual. It’s psychological. It’s conceptual. Pick any synonym with means “immaterial but real,” and they’d far rather use that word than “spiritual.” ’Cause that word “spiritual” bugs ’em, and they wanna strictly limit it to religious stuff. Stuff they don’t believe in. They believe in money; God’s another deal. If money is spiritual just like God is spiritual, perhaps they’ve gotta take another look at God… and they really don’t wanna.
If that’s your hangup, get over it. Spiritual is real. God is real. Stop treating religion as if you’re only pretending. This is substantial stuff.
And too often money has taken religion’s place. It’s why Jesus warned us about making a master of it. People look to money to save them! It solves their problems, achieves their dreams,
But like every false god, it destroys more than it gives, and all its promises are deceptions. The Beatles figured out money can’t buy you love. I joke sometimes, “No; but you can rent it.” Sadly, for a lot of people, renting will do.
Back when Jesus first taught about mammon, it was to remind his students money is substantial. Y’see, they had the opposite problem from us: God was real, but money not so much.
First-century Palestine didn’t practice free-market capitalism. Back then the Roman Empire was on the gold standard, but gold wasn’t common enough for common people to use. (Hence the big parties they’d throw when you found a lost coin.
God was more tangible to them than money. As he’s supposed to be.
Jesus taught about mammon because he wanted people to take money more seriously. Well, nowadays we do. Often too seriously. In fact our economic system is rigged in such a way, it’s no longer possible to follow the rules set out in the Law.
Every once in a while I hear of some Christian money-manager who holds a seminar, who claims he’ll teach you some biblical principles for dealing with wealth. I’ve been to a few. What they actually teach is free-market capitalism. (Not that there’s anything wrong with learning about capitalism; it is the system Americans live under.) The rest is about debt avoidance, based on various scriptures they quote
Economics in the bible were greatly different than economics today, so of course what these money-managers teach doesn’t wholly jibe with the bible. Problem is, it doesn’t always jibe with the parts of the bible which can apply to our culture. Generosity, fr’instance. Giving to the needy
True Christianity is forsaking everything, everything, to follow Jesus. When we spend too much time on wealth “stewardship,” rather than making God’s kingdom grow, we forget to be generous. We forget to take leaps of faith with our money: It’s not prudent to be foolish and wasteful, even if it’s for the kingdom’s sake. We trust our pile, instead of trusting the ultimate Owner of every pile, who can easily tap those other piles for our sake. We serve the wrong lord. And as Jesus said, we just can’t serve both.
But dammit, we Americans are convinced we can serve both if we try hard enough.
A particularly American teaching—one popular among the poor, and one we’ve even exported to poor countries—is God doesn’t want his kids living lives of defeat. (Which is true.) He wants us to find success in everything we do. (Which is also true.) He wants us to be rich. (Wait a minute…)
Supposedly God wants us to have so much wealth it makes pagans jealous, and want to get in on this Christianity stuff so they too can become fat and comfortable. (Wait, God tells us not to covet,
This prosperity-gospel bushwa isn’t a new idea. The Pharisees believed in it too. It’s how the rich justified their many possessions… and their stinginess towards others. They were wealthy because God blessed them… and the poor had nothing because God didn’t bless them. Why? Well, they must’ve sinned or something. Some defect of character.
Properly this philosophy is called
In bible times this was how Pharisees believed the world worked. It’s why Jesus’s students were floored when their Master informed them the rich are gonna have the darnedest time getting into the kingdom.
Nope, prosperity gospel folks aren’t worshiping God. Really he’s a means to an end, and that end is wealth. They’re Mammonists. Whether they think God’s got a mansion and a crown waiting for them up in heaven, or they think God’s gonna get them a Bentley and an Apple Watch here on earth, they’re following him for the bling. They’re proclaiming their ideas to an impoverished world because hopeful Christians who believe their tripe will send them donations, and these contributions fund their lifestyle. They’re exploiting the poor, same as plutocrats who make 10,000 times what their underpaid employees do. They irritate God just as much.
Look, I have no problem with billionaires, or with preachers who make really good salaries. But like I said, God gives his people wealth so we can spread his kingdom. Hoarding it spreads nothing. And one of the surest signs we’re dealing with a Mammonist instead of a Christ-follower, is when people justify this sort of behavior. I’ve heard many a Mammonist misquote Jesus’s story of the Vineyard Employer, “Isn’t this my money, to do with as I please?”
’Cause when we’re not, when we’re fruitless and tight-fisted, we’re likely not his children either. We’re mammon’s.
It’s not a complicated definition. It only gets complicated when people don’t wanna define it that way. When they wanna claim prophecy is only for the very, very few (not every Christian, like Joel described
Today I’m dealing with the second group, the cessationists. And if prophecy is when we share what we heard from God, but nobody hears God anymore… are there prophets anymore? Can there be prophets anymore?
Some’ll say no. Which is a problematic belief. If there’s no such thing as prophets and prophecy, what’re we to do with all the verses in the scriptures where we’re encouraged to prophesy,
Others have come up with this explanation: Yes we can hear from God in the present day—through the pages of the bible. When you read God’s word, you’re “hearing” from God, aren’t you? And when you share what you read in the bible, and explain it to people who struggle to understand it… well this, they claim, is prophecy. We prophesy every time we teach bible.
Even
Is this an accurate definition of prophet? Hardly.
What makes someone a prophet? Simple:
Yes, the Spirit’s message will sometimes be a passage from the bible. The Spirit regularly quotes himself. (’Cause he said it right the first time.) So when a Christian needs a bit of encouragement, and the Spirit drops a suitable, timely scripture into her mind, it’s just as good as if he told her something new. It’s just as much prophecy as if the Spirit said something new. It’s all from God, y’know.
Okay, so what about pulling quotes from the bible when we’re not talking with the Spirit?
’Cause that’s
Nobody identified Pharisees as prophets until they honest-to-goodness prophesied, like Simeon and Anna.
Ezra ben Seraiah, fr’instance. He read the entire book of the Law to the Jews who’d recently returned to Jerusalem, reminding them what was in it, and expounding on it so they were clear about what it meant.
(Yes, in certain
In Jesus’s day there were likewise scribes who knew bible backwards and forwards. Yet people didn’t call ’em prophets. They taught God’s word, and taught God said various things in the scriptures. They did all the things cessationists call “prophecy.” Yet the scribes never claimed God directly told ’em one thing or another, and that’s why people didn’t describe ’em as prophets.
Jesus, on the other hand, is called a prophet,
So the scriptures themselves don’t verify this notion that anyone who quotes or expounds bible is a prophet. Because anyone can quote bible. Plenty of pagans do. But to be a legit prophet, we gotta hear God. If the Holy Spirit didn’t tell you anything, you’re no prophet.
Yeah, you’ll hear cessationists claim Simon Peter’s description applies only to prophetic writing; namely bible. They claim he wasn’t speaking of present-day prophets and prophetic speakers. And yet interpretive speakers are what cessationists mean by “prophets”: People who crack open a bible, then individually interpret it.
It’s already hard to defend the hypothesis God stopped speaking to his people. But flipping the definition of “prophet” 180 degrees away from how the apostles defined it in the bible so they can turn scribes (namely themselves) into prophets? You gotta wonder whether anything a cessationist teaches is in any degree reliable.
This said, anyone who preaches ought to first become a prophet.
Anyone who wants to proclaim God’s word, and expound on the scriptures, really needs to begin with a serious conversation with the Holy Spirit. He needs to direct what we preach. Not the guy who wrote some book of sermon outlines. Not the liturgy. God.
Talk it out with the Spirit. Yeah, you might have a bible passage you want to preach about (or are expected to preach about), and the Spirit can work with that. Sometimes he’ll override it ’cause he has something more pressing. But he needs to direct your bible study.
If the Holy Spirit is directing your sermon, it’s gonna be so prophetic.
If however, your sermon outline was borrowed from a website, or a big book of sermon outlines; if all your anecdotes were taken from some other big book of anecdotes; if all your research was cribbed from the biblical commentaries in your library (even when the commentaries were written by Spirit-filled scholars): It may certainly look prophetic. And sound prophetic.
I’ve heard a number of preachers claim they had the Spirit’s guidance in their messages. I have my doubts, ’cause of various red flags. Like
If the Spirit has an impact on people through such teachers, it’s in spite of them, not through them. Wouldn’t you much rather it be through you?
Sermons, preaching, and teaching can totally come through human effort. I admit I’ve written many an article through my own efforts. (Which is why I later gotta go back and revise ’em.) But get the Spirit involved, and he’ll make it prophetic.
Karma is a Hindi word, from the Sanskrit karman, “fate.” Because Hindus and other eastern religions believe in reincarnation, karma has to do with why you’re born into your particular family, class, comfort level, or
When Hindus talk karma, it’s usually in that context: Why they need to be good. Why they deserve to be in the caste they’re in. Why others deserve to be in the castes they are. (And how they justify treating lesser castes like crap, even though proper Hindu teachings frown on treating anyone evilly; it’s bad karma! But just as there are many sucky Christians, there are many sucky Hindus.)
But when westerners speak of karma, most of us aren’t thinking of reincarnation. We’re thinking of the afterlife: Goodness gets you into heaven, and badness puts you into hell. No that’s not how it works, but that’s
But we don’t just use this idea to describe the afterlife. Humans believe it applies to this life as well. Be good, and good things will come to you. Be evil, and some day there will be a reckoning. It’s how the universe works, they claim. It’s a natural law. You get what’s coming to you. You reap what you sow. What goes around comes around.
It’s in the bible, isn’t it?
Various Christians who believe in karma insist it certainly appears to be in there. Unlike pagans and
Other Christians figure God’s holding off on these judgments till the End. In the meanwhile, any good things experienced by good people are either coincidences, or the result of people wanting to reward good deeds and punish evil deeds. Because let’s face it: There are a lot of good people who get crapped on, and a lot of evil people who get away with stuff. Life is unfair that way. And yeah, that’s in the bible too.
Much as people wanna believe in karma, believe the universe sorts out good and evil people and gives them what they deserve, we know plenty of cases where that’s not happening; where people live as “exceptions” to this rule of karma. I would argue we mostly know “exceptions”; for some of us, we know nothing but “exceptions.” And I’d also argue most of the reason they remain exceptions is because nobody lifts a finger to bring justice to the situation, ’cause we assume the universe is gonna do it for us. Meanwhile evil people keep right on doing evil, and good people keep suffering.
In fact there are a whole lot of evil people who are counting on the rest of us clinging to karma. Because it’s how they justify their prosperity and wealth. “I’m doing well because I deserve to do well; I’m doing something right, and you’re not.” It’s the very same thing as the Hindus who insist they deserve to be in their castes… and the poor and needy deserve to be ignored and mistreated for the same reason. We may not be Hindus, but we’ve fallen for the same fiction.
Whether we call it karma, reciprocity, eye for an eye,
Well, on our better days. Left to our own devices, humans want
But God’s ideal has never been reciprocity.
Now, have you ever seen someone turn the other cheek in real life? Probably not. Most of the time, when someone gets socked in the jaw, they don’t get back up and offer the other side of their face. They punch back. Christians included. People simply don’t follow this instruction: They retaliate. It’s human nature. You hit me, I hit you. Bruise for bruise. We’ll justify it by
Now, in movies you sometimes see someone turn the other cheek. But the reason they do it actually isn’t because they’re trying to follow Jesus. It’s ’cause they’re trying to intimidate the person striking them, “Look what a badass I am. That was the best you could do? Your mother kisses harder. I could stand to take another punch. Go ahead. Hit me again. I dare you.” Yep, it’s a hostile act.
Ever seen someone have an item taken away from them, and in response they offer to give up something else? Again, they’re not doing this ’cause they’re following Jesus. It’s part of a tantrum: “Oh, so you’re repossessing my car? Well here! Why don’t you take my driver’s license while you’re at it! Take my bike! Take my bus pass! Take every means I have of getting anywhere! Here, you can have my shoes!” Again, it’s not done for any other reason than aggression and a lack of
“Hit me again!” or “Go ahead, take it all!” are never done in the spirit Jesus wants of us. ’Cause when we interpret Jesus’s teachings, we primarily have to remember Jesus’s character. He wants us to do these things
So I interpret Jesus’s statement as “No standing toe-to-toe with evil.” Don’t adopt evil’s tactics. Don’t reciprocate with violence or vengeance. Don’t give in to the temptation to help karma along. Be gracious like our heavenly Father is gracious.
I’ve heard preachers point out more than once: A right-handed opponent is likely to hit the left side of your face. The only way they’d hit your right cheek is if they backhand you. For some reason, preachers assume this is worse than getting hit or punched any other way. More degrading; more insulting. But the fact is, people tend to be outraged when they’re hit in the face, no matter how they’re hit. And Jesus’s instruction tells us to stifle that outrage, our dignity, our vengeance… and expect more.
As for suing your tunic off: Jesus is actually
Why do people assume Jesus means giving people more than what they ask for? ’Cause of verse 41, going the extra mile:
Under Roman law, a Roman soldier had the right to draft non-Romans to carry their gear for 1,000 paces. (Mille/“thousand” is where we get mile—even though it’s now more than 1,000 feet.) Problem is, Romans would cheat. They’d miscount the paces. Or, once you did your thousand and put down their gear, they’d immediately draft you again for another mile.
But rather than embrace the hurt feelings and outrage—“Hey, I’m done with my service!”—Jesus instructs us to quit thinking, “What’s the least I have to do before I’m done?” and just fulfill the whole obligation. If you have to carry a burden a few more steps, don’t pile a grudge on top of it. You’ll be carrying the grudge long after you put down the other burden.
Anyway, Christians read that extra-obligation idea back into the previous verses. And they don’t necessarily belong there. If someone sues your pants off, you do owe the money, so accept your circumstances. If someone punches your jaw, don’t escalate things; again, accept your circumstances. If a Roman makes you walk 1,300 paces, that’s annoying, but don’t let it eat you up inside; accept your circumstances.
None of this is about inviting extra abuse upon ourselves. It’s about the fact life will sometimes suck. Stop looking to balance the score. Stop seeking karma or reciprocity, whether it’s merited or not. Accept the circumstances,
I’ve heard this preached many times: “The word ‘fairness’ isn’t in the bible. Go ahead and look. You won’t find it.”
Well no, not in the
But like karma, westerners redefine justice so that it no longer means “fair or reciprocal behavior”—like eye for eye, tooth for tooth. When people say they “want justice,” what they now mean is they wanna see people get what they deserve… in the negative sense. Someone did ’em wrong, and they want the wrongdoer punished. More accurately they want revenge. Since revenge isn’t allowed under our laws, they’ll settle for the next best thing: “Justice.” Meaning a great big fine, prison, or the death penalty. Given the option, they’d prefer the death penalty. But that’s what “justice” has become in our culture: Fair punishment.
Justice means more than that in the scriptures. ’Cause God wants us to be fair with one another. When we see things going wrong, he wants us to make things right. He’s more pleased with that, than when we offer him sacrifices.
I bring up justice and fairness ’cause I’m trying to explain the cultural baseline which Jesus was starting from. Our culture does karma, which is kinda like justice. But unlike the scriptures, we expect the universe to make things right. We expect God to punish evildoers, reward the righteous, or help the needy. Not us; that’s not our job. We’re fellow recipients of karmic payouts.
Just goes to show how disconnected we are from God.
Meanwhile Jesus is trying to teach grace. If someone punches you, don’t punch back. If someone penalizes you, don’t try to get out of it. If someone obligates you, don’t perform the bare minimum. If people ask your help, don’t drive ’em off. You know, like Moses said in the Law:
This attitude flies in the face of popular culture. Including popular Christian culture. Plenty of Christians will likewise insist we should offer the needy “a hand up, not a handout.” Plenty of people—both in Jesus’s day and now—take advantage of generosity, and accept handouts regardless of their own ability to provide for themselves. They milk the system. Jesus knows this. Knew this when he taught us to give to those who ask of us. Yeah, they might scam us. Even so. Fight your tendency to want to get your own back. Put others first. Do for them. Be generous. Even if it’s “unfair.”
It’s a hard command for a lot of Christians. One we tend to ignore: Look at all the Christians who are insistent, even proud, that we stand up for our rights, and stop people from taking advantage of us. In American culture it’s considered shameful to let someone have the advantage over us. Yet Jesus orders us to let ’em.
Yes, we have rights. No, it’s not fair when others exploit us, or take from us. Karma fans expect when we’re mistreated this way, the universe will step in and rectify things. When they’re Christians, they’ll even preach it: “Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek because, at the End, that cheek-slapper will get his. Jesus’ll see to it.” In fact Jesus said no such thing. In fact Jesus wants the opposite: He wants that cheek-slapper to repent, turn to him, be saved, and beg forgiveness. Jesus wants that cheek-slapper to get away with it, and enter
Same as you. And me. And everyone. How many cheeks—literal or figurative—have we slapped? And Jesus wants us all to get away with it. That’s what grace means.
Jesus wants his followers to demonstrate this grace. Yeah, we can try to make things equitable, balance things out, or get even. Might feel really good about ourselves for doing so. Might feel great satisfaction. But he wants us to be bigger people than that. Let it go. Forgive, in favor of people who need saving. Be merciful instead of “fair.” Seek to help the needy instead of seeking “justice.” Show ’em grace instead of righteous anger.
It’s why Jesus caps off this teaching, in Luke, with
Be generous. Not because they’ll then owe you, but because it’s how our Father works. It’s how his kingdom works—and you wanna be ready for it, right?
