When two or three gather in Jesus’s name.

Matthew 18.20.

Matthew 18.20 KJV

For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

We Christians quote this verse for all sorts of reasons.

• To point out the importance of group prayer: When two or three of us pray together, Jesus is there, so he must therefore hear our prayers. (Though getting him to answer “Yes” is another thing.)
• To point out the importance of small groups. Same reason: Two or three of us are together, so Jesus is there, and supposedly his presence blesses our meeting.
• To avoid church. “You don’t have to go to Sunday morning worship; you just have to gather with two or three fellow Christians and talk Jesus for a few minutes. That counts.” It doesn’t, but I’ll get to that.

But in context it refers to church discipline.

Matthew 18.15-20 KWL

15 “When your fellow Christian sins against you,

take them aside and reprove them—just you and them alone.

When they hear you, you’ve helped your fellow Christian.

16 When they don’t hear you: Take one or two others with you.

Thus ‘by the mouth of two witnesses or three, every word can stand.’ Dt 19.15

17 When they refuse to hear you, tell the church.

When they also refuse to hear the church: To you, they’re like a pagan and taxman.

18 Amen, I promise you whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven.

Whatever you loose on earth is loosed in heaven.

19 Amen again, I tell you when two of you agree amongst yourselves on earth about any activity,

when you ask your heavenly Father about it, it’ll happen to it.

20 For I’m there in the middle of it wherever two or three come together in my name.”

It’s not about when we come together for any old reason, like prayer or worship. It’s when we’re trying to deal with a serious matter, where relationships may have to be suspended or end. It’s about the direction of the church; not about whether our little prayer breakfasts counts the same as Sunday morning worship.

There aren’t separate “earthly” and “heavenly” areas in God’s kingdom.

Whenever Jesus began a teaching with “Amen” (KJV “verily”), he did so ’cause he was teaching something important. Stuff his students had better remember, ’cause it reflected God’s kingdom way better than their popular culture. Stuff they’d initially be inclined not to believe, ’cause Jesus was stretching them. Heck, these amen statements still stretch us.

“Amen” is an oath. In saying it, Jesus promised these things are true. Not ’cause he wasn’t truthful the rest of the time; he doesn’t do degrees of truthfulness. He wanted us to believe him, not take him for granted. Or take him out of context.

Here, Jesus instructed us how to deal with fellow Christians (Greek ἀδελφός/adelfós “sibling,” which in context meant a fellow believer) when they sin. Εἰς σὲ/Eis se, “against you,” is a textual variant, found in copies of Matthew after the fourth century, so Jesus means any sin: If your fellow Christian robs banks, but not your bank, you aren’t off the hook. First deal with them privately; Mt 18.15 next bring one or two witnesses; Mt 18.16 then stage your intervention. Mt 18.17 As you know, your average American lacks the patience to follow any of these steps, and leaps straight to the intervention. Or petitions. Or public shaming. Or whatever the fastest method of resolution will be.

But whatever the church decides, Jesus promises he’ll back us up. Whatever binding agreements we make Mt 18.18 aren’t just a local, earthly, temporal thing—but no longer counts after the defendant dies, or once the Son of Man returns. They count. If you sin, won’t repent, and the church says you’re out, you’re out.

It might only feel binding when they’re the only Christian community in town. (As still is the case when the churches in town talk to one another, like we’re supposed to.) But most of the time you can do as many a kicked-out sinner has: You can go find another church which knows nothing about your sins. Hide ’em from this new church even better than you did from the old one. Stay there the next 40 years with them none the wiser. But that original decree of you’re out? Stands till you repent.

Yeah, the idea God backs up our decrees is an awesome thing.

Yeah, it also means it’s an ability heavily abused. Many a cult has made plenary declarations over Christians, pagans, the nation, their enemies, anyone and everyone. All because they figure God empowered ’em to do it. But they do it for all sorts of ungodly reasons.

So does God consider those churches’ decrees valid? Nah.

’Cause these churches are in the wrong. Remember, decrees are only valid when they’re done in Jesus’s name. Mt 18.20 But we can’t invoke his name when we don’t legitimately know him, and we can’t get anything done in his name if we ask for all the wrong reasons. Jm 4.3 When churches go wrong it’s obviously because they don’t know Jesus. He doesn’t know them either. So their “binding” and “loosing” never counts. Don’t worry about them. (Seriously, don’t. They can’t curse you.)

But if a church does legitimately know God, and if you are legitimately sinning—against God, against your neighbors, against them, against anyone—when they make any formal declaration over you, no matter how formal or informal it sounds, it’s binding. ’Cause Jesus said it is.

If you wanna imagine it only applies within that church, and only that church, you probably haven’t realized every single church, no matter the denomination, belongs to Jesus. Totally applies. So if you leave and go hide in a new church, they belong to Jesus too, and if they’re listening to the Holy Spirit, it’s only a matter of time before he outs you.

Yeah, your best hiding place is a church which doesn’t listen to the Spirit. Conveniently for you (but sadly for them) there are lots of those. But when you one day stand before Jesus, you still gotta answer for what your original church has against you.

Yeah, you’re gonna need better proof texts.

If the reason you’re misquoting Matthew 18.20 is because you’re hoping to make the case we Christians need to pray together, sorry: It’s not your best proof text. Prayer groups can be good things, but God never made group prayer mandatory, and actually doesn’t care whether we hold prayer groups or pray en masse. It’s nice when an entire nation of believers agree in prayer, but really God prefers we as individuals pray—and mean it, instead of hypocritically pretending there’s consensus.

Neither does God promise group prayer is more effective than solitary prayer. ’Cause it’s actually not. You wanna be heard? You pray righteously. Jm 5.16 He’s not more apt to hear us when we’re in bunches; he’s more apt to hear us when we strive for a proper understanding and relationship with him. When we take him for granted—especially when we assume we’ll be heard because of our greater numbers, as if God can be swayed by mobs—he’s far more likely to not be there, and have nothing to do with our sinful, self-serving prayer groups.

No I’m not knocking prayer groups. They’re great at teaching us to pray better, pray in public better, confirm the Holy Spirit is answering us, or confirm we’re on the right track. Go join one. But don’t assume just because two or three are gathered in Jesus’s name for prayer, you’re gonna get what you pray for because Jesus is listening. God’s always listening. Now give him something worth listening to.

Likewise with those Christians who think their kaffeeklatsch counts as church because Jesus is in their midst. He isn’t necessarily, ’cause it doesn’t necessarily.

It’s not a valid church if you can’t worship freely. If the coffeeshop manager has to tell you to stop singing ’cause it’s bothering the other customers; if you can’t do sacraments like, say, hold a baptism; if you simply don’t have the room to bring in new people; if you don’t meet regularly and frequently: You’re not a church. Now yeah, if you do practice these things in your small groups, fine, you’re a church. But most small groups never get that organized, and the justification, “I don’t need church; I got my group” is usually a rubbish attempt to avoid accountability.

Just go to church, wouldya? Jesus doesn’t wanna hang with rebels and phonies.

Anyway, you can see how our ideas of God go askew when we take this verse out of context. So let’s not.

The Judean senate.

Something Americans need to be reminded of, from time to time: Ancient Israel was never a democracy.

• Originally it was a patriarchy, run by the male heads of the Hebrew families: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and their descendants. That is, till the Egyptians took over and enslaved ’em.
• Then the LORD rescued Israel’s descendants from Egypt. So Israel became a theocracy, where God and his commands ruled Israel… with Moses and the judges serving as the LORD’s deputies.
• Of course, since the judges weren’t proper kings, Israelis fell back on patriarchy, ruled as they pleased, didn’t obey God, and triggered the cycle time and again. Read Judges. It’s a mess.
• Then monarchy, the rule of kings. The people wanted the stability of human kings (such as it is), so the LORD gave ’em kings. In theory these kings were to function the same as judges, with the LORD really in charge. In practice they ruled as they pleased, same as the patriarchs.
• Then foreign kings: The Babylonian emperors, Persian emperors, Greek emperors, Egyptian kings, Seleucid kings. Each of ’em put governors, like Zerubbabel and Nehemiah, over Judea, Samaria, and the Galilee.
• Back to local kings: The Maccabees (who were head priests) overthrew the Seleucids and took charge. They accepted the title “king” and ruled till Herod 1 toppled them.
• And back to foreign kings: Augustus Caesar took over from the Herods, and the Romans ruled till the caliphs conquered Jerusalem in 638. And so we move into the middle ages and Crusades.

So in Jesus’s day, the Caesars were Israel’s kings. First Augustus Caesar, then Tiberius.

The Caesars appointed governors—military prefects like Pontius Pilatus, puppet kings like the Herods, and procurators. These guys represented Rome’s interests, and made sure the locals didn’t do anything which’d interfere with taxes and “peace”—as the Romans defined peace. Everything else was left in the hands of the upper-class locals: The head priests, the leaders of the older and wealthier families, the “elders” of Israel.

In Latin, “elder” is senex, and that’s where they got the word for their council of elders, senatus. Unlike our senates, it wasn’t an elected body. It consisted of Roman nobles; those who had the most to lose if the fortunes of Rome changed. The Roman Republic was an oligarchy, run by the upper class. And when the emperors took over, and commandeered many of the senate’s powers, they still sought the senate’s advice and consent.

Judea had a similar senate. After the Persians permitted Jewish exiles to return and rebuild Jerusalem, Persian governors organized the elders into a governing council, loosely based on the 70 elders of Israel in Moses’s day. Ex 24.1 By the first century this συνέδριον/synédrion (Greek for “seated together,” which the Mishnah translated סנהדריןsanhédrin) consisted of 71 people: Seventy elders of Judea, supposedly representing the great Judean families; and the head priest, its נָשִׂיא/naši, “chief,” nowadays translated “president.”

This is the group which ran Judea in the New Testament… under the suspicious eye of the Romans.

A “judicial body.” (No, not really.)

Roman governors didn’t care about the day-to-day lives of the people. But the senate did. The governors had the power to overrule its decisions, and only they could legally put people to death. Jn 18.31 (Yes, Stephen was stoned to death by what look like senators, Ac 7.57-60 but the Romans would’ve considered that illegal. Hey, nobody’s saying the system wasn’t broken.) But that’s largely all the Romans did: Kill insurgents, collect taxes, and enforce Roman peace. The senate ran everything else.

Today’s senates are legislatures. The Roman senate likewise wrote and passed laws. But the Judean senate didn’t do that. Technically couldn’t: The Law had been handed down to Moses by the LORD, and they were forbidden from adding to it or subtracting from it. Dt 12.32 Law-making was absolutely off the table.

Well… officially off the table, but unofficially what the senate did was issue binding rulings on how the Law was to be interpreted: Here’s what they figured the LORD meant about this command or that, and here’s how they were gonna enforce it.

Sometimes, as Christ Jesus objected, their interpretations bent and broke the Law. Mk 7.13 But this was how they got round Deuteronomy’s prohibition against any new commands. They weren’t writing laws; they were interpreting the Law. Much as the United States Supreme Court does… and arguably goes too far in some of its interpretations.

In any event Christian historians tend to refer to the senate as a court, not a legislature. But as Judea’s only branch of government, the senate also recorded its rulings like a legislature, and commanded police like an executive. All power, unless the Romans overruled them, was in the senate’s hands. And they considered their rulings binding over not just the land and people of Judea: All Israel, All Jews, arguably into the Galilee Mk 3.22 and Damascus. Ac 9.1-2

Whenever people needed an executive decision, or a definitive opinion on the Law, they typically sought out an elder who was in the senate, i.e. a senator. If it had to be an official ruling, the Mishnah indicates it required the agreement of three or five senators. If it involved the death penalty, 23 senators. And if they were to censure a whole tribe or city, deal with a false prophet or head priests, go to war, expand Jerusalem or the temple, or establish a lesser council for a Jewish community, it had to be a unanimous 71. Mishnah, Sanhedrin 1.5

The Mishnah includes a lot of details about how the senate was to run. But bear in mind the Mishnah wasn’t written in the first century, by people who saw the senate in action. It was compiled centuries later by Pharisees, and described how third-century Pharisees ran their senates. It’s why the Mishnah contradicts the New Testament in some parts. (It’s also why various Christian commentators insist Jesus’s trial was illegal—because it violated the Mishnah’s procedures. But that’s like claiming Abraham broke the Ten Commandments—which weren’t handed down till 6 centuries after Abraham died.)

Political parties.

In Jesus’s day, Pharisees didn’t run the senate. That’d be the other major Jewish party, the Sadduccees. The head priest and his family were all Sadducee.

Technically Pharisees and Sadducees were denominations of the Hebrew religion. But back then there was no such thing as separation of church and state, so in senate they functioned as political parties. Yep, with all the corruption and politicking you’ll find in today’s parties.

Most devout Judeans were Pharisees, and Pharisees dominated the senate till the second century BC. Then John Hyrcanus (ruled 135–05BC), king and head priest, grew sick and tired of the Pharisees treating him like their lapdog. He quit the Pharisees, joined the Sadducees, and kicked the Pharisees out of the senate. His daughter-in-law, Queen Alexandria (ruled 76–67BC) let ’em back in, but the head priest’s family remained Sadducee from then on, and that faction dominated the senate.

Well, probably dominated the senate. Y’see, the Romans wiped out the Sadducees in the year 70. So our history was written by the survivors… the Pharisees. Arguably re-written. Pharisees retroactively inserted a ton of Pharisees into earlier senate history. According to Pharisee rabbis, the head priest didn’t lead the senate; the naší was a Pharisee, and apparently had been Pharisee ever since the senate gave King Onias bar Simon a vote of no confidence in 191BC.

But rabbinic history contradicts both the gospels and Flavius Josephus. Those records describe the head priests, not some imaginary Pharisee naší, running the senate. Mt 62.3-4, Mk 14.60-64, Jn 11.47-53 Plus it contradicts commonsense: Why would the smaller religious party get to hold the senate presidency?—and overrule the head priest?

Most likely the rabbis’ list of senate presidents, from 191BC onward, were just leaders of the Pharisee opposition. Pharisees rewrote history to make themselves look more prominent. As people do.

There was no third party. Other denominations, like Essenes, the Qumran sect, Samaritans, and Zealots, were shut out. They held no senate seats, and did their own thing; the Samaritans even had their own senate. For the most part, these other denominations figured the Judean senate and priests were corrupt “sons of darkness” whom God and his Messiah would someday overthrow.

Senate leadership.

Like I said, the head priest was the senate president. Once Herod 1 took power—and as an Idumean, not a Jew, couldn’t become head priest—he claimed power to appoint the head priest, and switched up head priests many times. So did the Roman governors who followed him.

In Jesus’s day, the head priests came from the family of the former head priest Annas bar Sethi (ruled 7–15CE). His five sons, and son-in-law Joseph Kahiáfa (KJV “Caiaphas”), succeeded him. Joseph was officially head priest at the time Jesus was executed, but Judeans arguably considered Annas the real head priest, Ac 4.6 regardless of whom the Romans appointed.

Other officers of the senate were the סָגָן/sagán, “ruler,” the head priest’s second-in-command, a job which was considered a prerequisite for head priest; and treasurers and secretaries. Pharisee traditions also include an av beth din/“father of a house of judgment,” the most senior senator. Typically he’s described as the Pharisee everyone listened to, like when Gamaliel got up to speak at the apostles’ trial. Ac 5.34 (The writers of the Mishnah tended to claim these guys were president, as they did with Gamaliel.)

Both Pharisees and Sadducees had among them scribes (KJV “lawyers”) who were bible experts who knew the Law backwards and forwards. The scribes were the folks you consulted whenever you needed proof texts for your decisions. Although some scribes played really fast and loose with the text—as Jesus was known to complain.

After the New Testament.

After Jerusalem was destroyed, the Pharisees reconvened the senate in Yavneh, and moved to the Galilee in the year 80. Since there was no more head priest, the most venerable Pharisee became president. The Pharisees rewrote the rules to suit their traditions, and that’s what we have in the Mishnah. It continued to exist until emperor Theodosius 1 outlawed it around the year 358.

Since then there’ve been several attempts to start another senate. Problem is, just like Christians, there are way too many denominations of Jews—and not all of ’em are gonna recognize the authority of any “Sanhedrin” where they lack power.

The current group, which was founded in October 2004, wants to become the State of Israel’s senate, with the Knesset as its lower house. They also wanna become Israel’s supreme court on all things biblical—including the power to veto any of the Knesset’s laws which they consider unbiblical.

Understandably, this bothers a lot of people who don’t trust these guys’ interpretations of the scriptures. Particularly Israelis who want their nation to be more secular, and separate synagogue from state—lest, as usual, the politics of the state corrupt the teachings of the synagogue. (Something we Americans also need to bear in mind.)

Why does bad stuff happen in a good God’s universe?

THEODICY θi'ɑd.ə.si noun. Explanation or argument for how God can be good, despite the existence or activity of evil.

[Theodicean θi'ɑd.ə.si.ən adjective.]

Disaster strikes our world on a daily basis.

Might be a huge natural disaster, like an earthquake, hurricane, tsunami, or plague. Might be a “man-made” disaster, like a war, famine, mass shooting, or some terrorist activity. Might be a small disaster: One person unexpectedly dies. Or it’s a wholly expected death; a long illness, and we knew that person wasn’t gonna recover, despite doctors and treatments and prayers.

Every time these disasters strike, people wanna know why God didn’t prevent it.

’Cause that’s his job, they insist. He’s almighty, right? He could totally stop it. But he didn’t. Why the [angry expletive] not? What’s his problem? Doesn’t he care? Does he want evil to happen? Maybe he’s not really almighty. Maybe he’s not really there.

These questions and accusations come out of suffering and loss and rage. They’re totally natural. Most of us wonder ’em from time to time: If God’s almighty, why doesn’t he intervene? ’Cause we’d intervene. If we were God, we totally would step in and put a stop to the suffering. We’d rescue everyone. Or at least the good people. I mean, if a tornado’s gonna smite a trailer park full of child molesters, meth cooks, and white supremacists, that’s fine; they’re getting what’s coming to them. But good people oughta live!

Anyway, whenever people have these questions, out come the Christian apologists, who take it upon themselves to answer the questions, instead of just letting emotional people vent for a bit. Because they’re afraid these people will get so angry with God, they’ll quit. They’ll turn apostate. They’ll spread doubt and nontheism and unbelief, and we’ll be in an even bigger mess than before. We gotta defend God. So they do.

This particular field of apologetics—defending God from people who aren’t so sure he’s good or almighty—is called theodicy. And no, it’s not an abbreviation for “theological idiocy,” though some of its arguments sure make it feel like that. It’s a compound of the Greek words Theós/“God” and díki/“behavior”—it’s an attempt to explain God’s behavior. Or absence of it.

“Why does God let bad things happen to good people?” is the usual way it’s phrased. And when it gets right down to it, there are about five typical answers.

1. God’s not there. Nobody’s there to stop evil from happening. It’s up to us.
2. God is there… but doesn’t get involved. Again, up to us.
3. God’s there, does get involved, and this was him getting involved: He’s behind the disaster. (For reasons. Bigger picture, secret sins, you name it.)
4. God’s there, involved… but isn’t God as you imagine him. (He’s not almighty, doesn’t actually know the future, isn’t actually good, has some special arrangement with Satan, etc.)
5. God’s limited himself, and won’t always intervene. (For reasons.)

And—no surprise—those who’ve just suffered a loss, don’t like any of these answers. Because they’re not actually looking for reasons. They just want the disaster undone, and defending what we think God is actually up to, isn’t helping.

Know your audience.

There’s a time and place to talk theodicy. It’s not after a disaster just happened.

Yet a lot of Christians assume it’s the perfect time to talk about it. ’Cause hey, people are thinking about God! Yeah, they’re royally pissed at him, but they’re thinking about him, so here’s our opportunity!

Trouble is, we use the opportunity to misrepresent him. Which pisses people off at God (and us) even more; and in some cases alienate ’em for life. As happens whenever Calvinist pastor John Piper gets it into his head to declare what he believes about God. That’d namely be theory #3, where God’s there, fully involved… and occasionally smitey.

Back in 2013, right after a tornado killed 24 and injured 377 in Moore, Oklahoma, Piper tweeted this:

Piper has since taken this tweet down—but not after offending a lot of people. Paul Wilkinson

What the heck is wrong with Piper? Believe it or not, he finds comfort in such verses.

No, seriously. To him, they mean God’s in control! And in the long run, God’s gonna make everything all good, and restored, and better; God’s gonna let Piper into his kingdom, happy and whole and living forever. Therefore it’s totally okay if Piper’s miserable, broken, and dying in this age; the next one’s gonna be awesome, and makes up for all the misery of today.

Piper’s had a lot of years to reconcile himself to the idea of God as a destroyer, a shatterer of worlds. So if God were sic a tornado on his house, and lay waste to his entire family, of course Piper wouldn’t be happy about it… but it’s precisely the sort of behavior he expects of God. To his mind, sometimes we get good from God, and sometimes evil. Jb 2.10 It feels kinda arbitrary and random from our end, but it all makes sense to God; it’s sorted out within his secret will. Sometimes God keeps us under his hedge of protection, Jn 1.9-12 and sometimes he lets Satan use us as its toilet paper. Whatever. God knows best.

Whereas your average pagan—heck, your average Christian—isn’t used to this idea, and finds it atrocious. And any God who runs the cosmos by it is just as atrocious.

Anyway, someone finally clued Piper in on how he was being perceived. So he took down this tweet, and another Job quote like it. One of his associates explained this doesn’t mean Piper retracted his beliefs; he still totally believes God is the first cause of every plague. It’s just for the sake of Christian charity, he realized now’s the time to be kind to those who mourn. God definitely slew their family, but the news has to be broken to people gently.

That’s advice the rest of us would do well to remember. Even if you believe, as Piper does, God’s actively or passively behind every disaster: If you present the news like a thoughtless a--hole, people will immediately assume your God is likewise a thoughtless a--hole. Hey, it’s the fruit you’re bearing. Take that into consideration for once.

But hopefully you realize this description of God makes God sound… well, awful. Even after you justify all the awfulness, most people’s response is still gonna be, “Good Lord, is that who you believe God is?” And even if they’re pretty sure you’re wrong about God, they’re gonna have all sorts of doubts about your level of compassion.

But more often they’re gonna confuse your dark Christianity for the real thing, your bad news for the good news… and want nothing to do with it.

That said…

I’m gonna write more than one theodicy piece, ’cause it’s a complicated discussion.

And I’ll admit up front my own beliefs. I begin with the premise God is good. Not “God sovereignly determines all,” which is usually what leads people in John Piper’s direction. Because the way they define sovereignty, they can’t reconcile God’s micromanagement of the universe with the character of a good God. There’s so much evil in the universe. If it’s all a necessary part of God’s plan, it’s bluntly an evil plan. You can’t reasonably call it anything else. This insistence on determinism inevitably makes Christians redefine “good” till it’s not goodness anymore, and God’s turned into a cosmic hypocrite who only pretends he’s good. I’m absolutely not going there. God is authentically good.

Hence my beliefs hover round theory #5, God’s self-limitation. But regardless of my beliefs, hopefully we Christians all accept that in the long run, God is gonna restore the universe to the way he originally intended it. Everything will be definitely good.

Meanwhile, when people are hurting, we can’t only think about the short run. Yes, we want God to fix things. Mend our hurts, save lives, repair buildings, restore health, provide jobs, put our finances back. Thing is, for most people, after God fixes things… we kinda want him to leave us alone from now on. We wanna go back to the life we had where he wasn’t involved. Which isn’t at all what he wants. But we aren’t thinking about his feelings.

God doesn’t wanna fix just one thing. He intends to fix everything. Including stuff we were kinda hoping God would never, ever touch. God’s in the process of eradicating sin. Some of us really don’t want him to interfere with our sins.

Picture a rich man who’s only used to spending his wealth selfishly. Say he invests with a con man and loses everything. He’s gonna want God to restore his fortune, right? But God’s gonna want to restore him, to righteousness. But all the rich man really wants is his money.

Picture a poor woman who’s awful to her neighbors. Say she gets injured, and desperately wants her health back. You do realize God wants her, once restored, to make nice with the neighbors. Again, all she really wants is to be well. But God isn’t content to only fix us in part. He wants us whole. He wants to heal everything. That’s his goal.

We only want God to return everything to status quo ante, then go away. So of course we don’t understand him. And of course we don’t like the answers which suggest God’s trying to bring about his endgame—his kingdom here on earth—as part of his restoration process. We don’t want that. (Or we do, we claim… but we want it way, way in the future, or after we’re dead, or someplace where it won’t interfere with our plans.) When that’s the way we think, our beliefs about God are swiftly gonna tilt in every other direction. God’s gonna be judgey and vengeful. Or passive and absent. Or have a secret evil plan kinda like we have secret evil plans. Or in any other way… not actually good.

Yep, theodicy’s a minefield. It’s gonna make these articles an interesting little dance.

Jesus’s crucifixion.

Ever bang your funny bone? That’s the ulnar nerve. The equivalent in the leg is the tibial nerve.

About 26 to 24 centuries ago, humans in the middle east figured out the most painful way to kill someone: Take four nails. Put one through each of these nerves. Then hang a victim, by these nails, from whatever—a wall, a tree, a pole, a cross.

If you stretch out their limbs, it’ll squeeze their lungs. They’ll find it extremely hard to breathe. Can’t inhale unless they actually push themselves up by their pierced ankles, and pull themselves up by their pierced wrists. And each pull feels like they’ve taken these nerves and crushed them with a hammer, all over again.

Leave ’em like that, to die slowly, by asphyxiation. It might take all day. Multiple days, if the person has a strong enough will to live. But they’ll die eventually, in agony. There’s no real way to stop the constant pain. It’s so intense, Latin-speakers had invented a new word to describe it: Excruciare, from which we get our word excruciating.

Crucifixion (Распятие), by Nikolai Ge, 1892. Note the victims on either side of the center guy, pulling themselves up to breathe. Pretty nasty. Gallerix

The earliest records we have of crucifixion, Persians were doing it. Haman in Esther, fr’instance: He built a 50-cubit עֵץ֮/ech, “wood” or “tree,” probably a pole, to crucify Mordecai upon. Es 7.9 The KJV calls it a gallows, but that’s ’cause its translators thought crucifixion was a Roman thing. Nope. In fact crucifixion probably predates even the Persians.

But Romans were definitely known for crucifixion. Not just because of Jesus: The Romans made crucifixion their thing. It’s so nasty, Romans forbade it to be used on their own citizens—but exactly like Americans’ attitudes about torture, the Romans figured foreigners were fair game: Mess with the Roman Empire and you’ll suffer the very worst form of death possible. But as usual, terrifying people doesn’t actually deter insurrection and crime, ’cause insurgents and criminals never expect to get caught. All crucifixion actually did was horrify the law-abiding subjects under Roman rule—“What kind of sick animals do this kind of thing to other people?”—and make ’em hate Romans all the more. (Americans, pay attention.)

Christian art has stylized and toned down crucifixion a lot. The average crucifix isn’t historically accurate at all, and not just ’cause Jesus isn’t white. Because present-day people have never seen an actual Roman-style crucifixion; they’ve seen Jesus movies and passion plays. (Maybe they’ve seen terrorists on the news crucify Christians, but the terrorists do it wrong too.) So Jesus is depicted with nails through the palms of his hands, with one nail spiking through the top of both feet, usually into a little platform.

“But wait, isn’t that how Luke describes Jesus—with nail-scars in his hands and feet?” Lk 24.39-40 Yeah, when you interpret Luke too literally. Jesus’s χεῖράς/heirás, “hands,” and πόδας/pódas, “feet,” refer to the general areas of his hands and feet, which include his wrists and ankles.

Because had they nailed Jesus by his hands and feet, the nails wouldn’t have held up a body. The weight of the body would rip right through his hands and feet. That’s why so many Jesus movies add ropes; the thinking is the ropes held him up while the nails were there for extra torment. Sometimes the thieves crucified with Jesus are depicted as only tied by ropes—no nails for them—so Jesus suffers worse than they. But ropes would defeat the purpose of crucifixion: Now the victim’s weight would rest on the ropes, not the nails, and they’d suffer less, and wouldn’t struggle to breathe. Archaeology doesn’t match the ropes idea either.

Likewise Christian art tends to put Jesus in a loincloth, for modesty’s sake. But loincloths were impractical: Victims would soil themselves quickly. Crucifixion hurts so bad, you don’t care about other bodily functions. Even if you did, they weren’t taking you down for bathroom breaks. So for practical reasons, victims were crucified buck naked. Not to humiliate them; Romans, and most pagans, didn’t mind nudity. You’ve seen their statues.

A horrible way to go.

Since God has ultimate control of history—including the place, time, and death of the Son—you gotta wonder why he was willing to involve crucifixion. Of all the ways to go, it’s the worst we humans have ever invented. Why was Jesus willing to die that way?

Most of us Christians figure God chose crucifixion because it’s so awful. Sin and death needed to be destroyed, and deserved to be destroyed in the worst way possible. Well, that’d be crucifixion.

It also makes a big statement of how much grace God offers the world. We killed Jesus in the nastiest way, yet he forgives us. If God’s grace can overcome such an unjust, horrible death, surely it can overcome anything.

More than that: Because Jesus died by crucifixion, it spurred us humans to finally stop crucifying one another. (Well, not finally. Antichrists, when they wanna terrorize Christians, find it amusing to crucify us. But other than making sick statements against our religion, other societies don’t use it.) We finally saw how terrible it is, by virtue of our Lord, his apostles, and many of his followers dying that way. We realized we mustn’t do that to one another, no matter how much a person might deserve death.

And loads of us have also applied that to the death penalty in general. Many Christian countries got rid of it altogether (though it sure took ’em long enough). In countries which still permit it, like the United States, we try to make our executions humane, as painless as possible. Despite all the vengeance-minded folks outside who’d love to watch the convicts suffer, and who wouldn’t mind at all if we brought crucifixion back.

Lastly, in dying a slow death, Jesus had time to demonstrate for us how to die as a martyr. Not passively: Jesus actively refused the nasty stuff they offered him to drink. (Mark calls it wine and myrrh, meant to be medicinal; Matthew wine and bile, meant to make you puke; Luke and John wine vinegar, or really old wine.) But the gospels describe him speaking to various people from the cross, to offer them grace, forgiveness, and comfort. Not wrath, not cursing and damning his killers and persecutors, threatening them with destruction as soon as he was back from the dead, or took possession of his kingdom. We’d do that. Jesus wouldn’t, and didn’t.

Regardless of the circumstances, regardless of the torture, Jesus bore it with as much peace and self-control as he could muster. His was a noble death. And if we must ever go through anything like it—’cause you never know—may we be Christlike.

“Believing for God” and viruses.

As I write this, the United States is dealing with an outbreak of coronavirus; specifically COVID-19. It’s as communicable as flu, and a little more fatal, so people are encouraged to wash their hands, avoid touching their faces, and stay away from one another.

And since humans are creatures of extremes, this also means they’re stockpiling supplies, “just in case.” This is why the grocery stores are running out of hand sanitizer, cleaning supplies, toilet paper, and certain types of food. (The average American diet being as lousy as it is, y’notice the stores aren’t really running out of fresh fruits and vegetables though. Just saying.) Likewise a lot of major events, like sports and concerts—any venue where they’ll pack a lot of people in the audience—are getting canceled, just in case someone with coronavirus is there, and infects everyone else. Better safe than sorry.

I live in California. Our governor encouraged everyone to cancel any large gatherings: Any events with 250 or more people should be canceled, or postponed till the end of the month. He didn’t make it an executive order; he’s trusting people “to do the right thing.”

Some will. Some have. My church, fr’instance, is moving our services to the internet. We don’t have 250 people, but it’s a lot of people in a small space, and again: Better safe than sorry.

My mom’s church, on the other hand, has more than 250 people in regular attendance. Last I heard (and this might change), they’re meeting Sunday as usual. Because “we’re believing for God.”

Believing for God to what? Did he promise them anything? Did he specifically tell them he was gonna do something? Because he didn’t tell Christians in general any such thing in the bible.

Jesus did say we can pick up snakes Mk 16.18 in a textual variant; it’s a passage which we oughta interpret as God’s divine protection during something which could potentially happen in the course of ministry. Ac 27.3-6 Unfortunately there are such Christians as snake-handlers, who’ve turned this into a sacrament—if you really trust God, let’s play with the snakes! Like I said, humans are creatures of extremes.

But in that variant, Jesus didn’t say, “These signs accompany believers: They will interact with people who have communicable diseases, and won’t get them.” He certainly has the power to make such a declaration—and contrary to the name-it-and-claim-it crowd, we don’t. But Jesus didn’t grant us any such thing, because he doesn’t want his followers to foolhardily assume we’re immune to everything, and step into situations which’ll kill us.

And that’s precisely what’s going on when churches choose to ignore basic precautions, and do as we do regardless. It’s not an act of faith: God’s given us no promises to put our faith in! It’s an act of wishful thinking. We hope God’ll spare us this plague, even though he gave us no preventative measures we can do as acts of faith (i.e. look at the snake on the pole, Nu 21.6-9 or paint the doorposts with blood Ex 12.13).

…Although God did give us public officials, Ro 13.1 who offer us these preventative guidelines because they’re trying to prevent worse. When we ignore them because “we’re believing for God,” we’d better have a darned good, biblical reason for expecting God to act. Not just wishful thinking or “I know better” libertarianism.

Nor carnal thinking.

I mentioned the governor’s precautions to someone a few days ago. His response? A dismissive, “Oh, the governor.” He doesn’t respect the governor. Mostly because he’s Republican and the governor’s Democrat: If they’re in the opposition party, they must be bereft of all commonsense, so you can ignore everything they tell you. Even in this instance, when they’re simply repeating the advice of medical professionals.

And yeah, no doubt a number of Christians feel they’re entirely free to do likewise. Honor our civic leaders. Honor the president. Pray for them and follow their advice. That is, until they’re in the opposition party; then mock them, dismiss them, and ignore them. If our governor were Republican they’d be quick to limit their meeting sizes and close their buildings; it’d be their patriotic duty! But he’s Democrat, so f--- him; they trust God.

So this whole “believing for God” deal? I’m not saying Mom’s church has adopted it because they’re led by Republicans; I’m entirely sure they’d do the same thing if our governor were Republican. But plenty of people in her church will easily adopt the “we believe God” mantra because he’s not Republican. It’s their own small, petty way of sticking it to the governor: “We’re meeting anyway. In your face, you liberal wiener.”

Likewise there are too many Christians who don’t believe in science. So when nurses and physicians assistants and doctors tell ’em, “Here’s what you oughta do,” their response is likewise, “Oh you don’t know what you’re talking about,” and do as they’re gonna do anyway.

Or fall for any “wellness” scam which supports their biases. I have friends who seriously think oregano oil will cure coronavirus—hey, it killed a different coronavirus in a lab test, years ago!—so they’re gonna buy that. So I actually read the lab report which they think proves their claim: It might win a grade school science fair, but it proves nothing. It poured oregano oil directly onto the virus—which is fine if you’re using it as a household cleaner, but these folks are talking about it as if you eat it and it cures you, and that’s an entirely different, and unproven, deal. It didn’t compare oregano oil to the results of what a placebo, like saline, might do—and I betcha saline would kill coronavirus faster. Since there was no placebo, of course there was no double-blind study; we’ve no idea whether oregano oil honestly works better than alternatives. Honestly, it might! But it might not: It wasn’t tested properly, so we don’t know. All we really know is people are selling oregano oil, and I betcha it costs way more than bleach.

Both these problems are examples of carnal thinking. It’s people who follow their biases, not the facts; believe what they choose to believe, rather than what’s been tested and proven, whether they like the results or not; believe whom they choose to believe, because the people they trust tell ’em everything they want to hear.

In some cases it’s obvious carnality; it’s pure arrogance. This one pastor I know of, who plans to open his church no matter what, hasn’t even bothered to consult God: He’s entirely sure God would want the churches to be open, because we Christians can pray for the sick to be cured… and of course because he doesn’t trust the government. He’s entirely sure he knows God’s mind, and that he’s right; so why ask? This pastor’s kind of a dick, so his behavior doesn’t surprise me any.

Trusting your gut instead of wisdom: That’s not faith in God! That’s pride: That’s faith in your own gut. That’s faith in your flesh. Those who follow the flesh are actually opposed to the Spirit, Ga 5.17 and are following themselves to their own detriment; Paul even says it’s death. Ro 8.6 We must never confound the desires of our own minds with God’s will, or project our wishes upon him. We must only pursue what he actually wants, what he truly promises.

And, if he’s promised nothing, use your heads. Use your commonsense. Follow the advice of experts, of scholars, of wiser people than us. And yeah, sometimes the advice of public officials in the wrong political party.

God’s gotta actually say something.

God never stopped talking to his kids, despite what some doubters might imagine… the better to ignore what he’s currently telling them, although that’s a whole other article. So when we’re talking with God, if we ask him, “Hey, should our church meet this Sunday?” and he says, “Sure; don’t worry about this virus thingy; I got you,” now we have something we can put our faith in. Now we have something we can trust.

We still need to get this confirmed though. We absolutely do. For three reasons.

SUPER HIGH HEALTH RISK. If all the other churches are staying home, you’re gonna get visitors. The bigger the church, the greater chance strangers might attend… and the greater chance one of ’em is infected. In fact if you’re a church which believes in faith healing, and people intentionally visit you to get cured, there’s a really good chance you’ll get an infected visitor.

All sorts of people attend church, but the gospel is particularly for the weak and ill… and as a result our churches have a lot of weak and ill people in ’em. People with chronic conditions, the elderly, the young… and all of these are people whom flus and coronaviruses will particularly affect. These viruses are deadly enough as it is, but if you’re already sick, or your immune system is already compromised (i.e. you’ve got AIDS or lupus, or you received an organ transplant), it’s likely to kill you. Churches in particular need to be cautious about disease!

And, frankly, we’re not. Because too many of us “believe for God” instead of taking basic precautions.

Plus churches aren’t all that sanitary anyway. Churches can seldom afford to hire professionals to clean the bathrooms, much less the seats, so things can go years without disinfection. Too many Christians wear their best clothes, not their cleanest like the bible mandates, and some of their “Sunday best” hasn’t been washed in a while. Too many of us like to greet one another with hugging and kisses and warm handshakes, and of course don’t use sanitizer. Churches are meant to be family, so we let our guards down just like they’re family—and you know how fast a virus can spread within a family.

So God had better say, “I got you.” Otherwise the virus will.

WE DON’T WANNA CLOSE. Unless we don’t really wanna go to church anyway, we wanna follow the scriptures’ admonition to keep meeting regularly. He 10.25 Christians need our support system; newbies especially. There’d better be a really, really good reason to skip a week. Heck, we’re entirely sure God wants us to meet, no matter what! Viruses and hurricanes and other plagues? Pshaw; isn’t God mightier than all those things combined?

Plus if you don’t personally know anyone who’s fallen ill, you might not think the situation is all that dire anyway. Shutting down all the sporting events, concerts, and conferences feels like overkill; like living in fear, and we’re certainly not afraid. Perfect love casts out fear 1Jn 4.18 and all that.

So if we pray and that voice in our head says, “Nah dude; open as usual,” of course you’re gonna hope that voice belongs to God. But this is a classic case of confirmation bias: The voice is telling us what we want to hear. It’s tapping our desires. Even righteous-looking desires, like the desire to have church services as usual.

But God doesn’t need to instruct us to do what we’re already gonna do.

Yep. The Holy Spirit is far more likely to correct us than confirm us. He confirms us when we have doubts—“No no, stay the course”—but otherwise he doesn’t have to confirm us; we’re doing fine! It’s only when we start veering off course that he’s gotta drop us a new message—“Come on, child, you know better”—or when an unexpected obstacle is coming—“Later today you’re gonna have to do something out of the ordinary.” (And sometimes he tells us why… but often he doesn’t, ’cause he’s trying to grow faith in us.) In every circumstance the Spirit speaks as necessary—and no, this doesn’t mean he speaks rarely; we need a lot of guidance! But telling us to do as we’re doing, usually isn’t necessary at all.

So if the Spirit tells us to ignore our elected officials—and especially if he tells us to ignore the laws!—we’d better darned well be sure the Spirit told us so. Test that voice; make sure it’s his voice and definitely not our own, or the devil’s. Viruses are a life-and-death thing, and we especially don’t wanna be wrong about that.

POTENTIAL TERRIBLE TESTIMONY. When we’re “believing for God” to keep our churches virus-free despite the obvious health risk, he’d absolutely better come through for us. Because if he doesn’t, and we become the epicenter of an outbreak, we’re boned.

And not just us. Christianity as a whole. You think pagans care about the differences between one church and another? Between one denomination and another? They don’t care about our differences. (Neither does Christ Jesus; pagans have that correct, at least.) So if one church, fr’instance, harbors pedophiles, pagans treat it like every church harbors pedophiles. If one church thinks science is hogwash, pagans think every church dismisses science.

So one church’s reckless behavior is gonna affect the whole of Christendom. Same as usual. Not good.

And it gives antichrists more ammunition to bash Jesus, bash people who depend on Jesus, discourage those who might be considering Jesus: In general it makes our work harder. All because one pastor didn’t bother to double-check his gut feelings, and now his church is Plague Central.

Our faith is only properly placed in God and what he’s no-fooling, in-context said. Accept no substitutes. Doubt yourself; trust him. And be wise.

The eight loves.

One of my previous pastors likes to use Foreigner’s 1984 song, “I Want to Know What Love Is,” as an example of how our wider American culture really doesn’t know what love is. (Plus he likes the song itself.)

He’s not wrong. When we hear English-speakers talk about love—whether in our movies, songs, talk shows, books, even academically—they’re using about eight different definitions of love. Only one of these definitions is the one Paul and Sosthenes used in 1 Corinthians. The rest comes from the culture. Other languages, other cultures, might have even more than eight.

I mention eight different definitions to people, and they usually nod their heads: Yep, we define “love” at least that many different ways. But every once in a while some Christian wants to correct me, and tell me there are four loves, not eight. ’Cause they’ve read (or at least heard about) C.S. Lewis’s 1960 book The Four Loves, so there y’go: There are four loves. Where’d I come up with another four?

Um… from a dictionary. You know how dictionaries have definitions in them?

Why’d Lewis say there were only four? Well he didn’t. His book’s about four words in ancient Greek, which English-speakers translate “love”: Στοργή/storghí, φίλος/fílos, ἔρος/éros, and ἀγάπη/aghápi. (Only two of ’em are used in the New Testament.) There are other ancient Greek words which get translated “love,” like ἐραστεύω/erastévo, πόθος/póthos, and ξενία/xenía; and of course all the words used as metaphors. Lewis wasn’t trying to be comprehensive. He simply used the four words as a jumping-off point to analyze his personal thoughts about love… and frankly, Lewis was a rather bookish introvert who’d read more poetry than gone on dates. I expect his book would’ve been way different after he married.

The dictionary I used, actually listed more than eight concepts. But some of them were mighty similar, so I condensed ’em to eight.

1. AFFECTION (storgí). The “natural love” we feel towards familiar people: How people feel towards relatives, childhood friends feel for one another, people feel towards friendly neighbors and coworkers, owners feel towards pets.
2. FRIENDSHIP (fílos). The “love” we feel for people who share common interests with us. We like doing certain things with them, and like them because of it.
3. ROMANCE (éros). “Being in love”: The intense pleasure taken in another person. Ranges from harmless crushes, to the extreme cases of lust and obsession—which see #8.
4. CHARITY (aghápi). Unconditional, benevolent, self-sacrificing, gracious love. The sort of love God is, 1Jn 4.8, 16 the sort of love the Spirit grows in us, Ga 5.22 the love Paul describes. 1Co 13.4-8 “Biblical love.”
5. HOSPITALITY (xenía). Conditional love. Looks exactly like charity, but it expects to be reciprocal, and compensated—with gratitude at the least, profit at the most.
6. FAVORITISM. Our love for favorite things: Beloved foods, clothes, TV shows, cities we visit, sports, songs, musicians, politicians, etc.
7. NARCISSISM. The love we have for ourselves, which comes from our self-preservation instinct. Can be used as a helpful gauge for how much we oughta love others, Lv 19.18 but more often than not turns into pure selfishness.
8. INFATUATION. Lust or obsessive love. Whenever any of the above escalates into the jealous desire to possess the one they love. By this point outsiders, disturbed by how it looks, try to call this anything but love, but the infatuated person insists it’s love.

Your own dictionary and thesaurus will no doubt list more than these eight. You may even look at my categories and figure I could’ve lumped them together even more. (Or less.) That’s fair. There’s lots of overlap. Debate it all you like. My point is to show you the many things we English-speakers mean by “love.”

Defining aghápi.

When Christians talk about love, we refer to aghápi (KJV “charity”), which most of us spell “agape,” and sometimes mispronounce. That, we insist, is godly love.

Same as our culture, ancient Greek speakers had multiple definitions of the word. They used it all sorts of ways, and used many of the same eight definitions we do. Every once in a while you’ll hear some Christian claim aghápi and fílos are two entirely different kinds of love… but to your average ancient Greek speaker, no they weren’t; they were interchangeable synonyms.

The Corinthians had a bunch of definitions for aghápi. And they were entirely sure they knew what it meant. Corinth was the location of the biggest temple of Aphrodite, the Greek god of love. Corinthians presumed they, of all people, oughta know what aghápi is.

Hence Paul had to write out his definition in order to show ’em no, they really didn’t.

1 Corinthians 13.4-8 KWL

4 Love has patience. Love behaves kindly. It doesn’t act with uncontrolled emotion.

It doesn’t draw attention to how great it is. It doesn’t exaggerate.

5 It doesn’t ignore others’ considerations. It doesn’t look out for itself. It doesn’t provoke behavior.

It doesn’t plot evil. 6 It doesn’t delight in doing wrong: It delights in truth.

7 It puts up with everything, puts trust in everything,

puts hope in everything, survives everything. 8A Love never falls down.

In most translations this passage is rendered, “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude,” etc. 1Co 13.4-5 NRSV That’s not a bad translation, but using all these adjectives gives people the idea Paul described what love is. He didn’t; he used verbs. This is about what love does. Or doesn’t.

English lacks a single word for the verb μακροθυμεῖ/makrothymeí, “has patience”; or the verb χρηστεύεται/hristévete/“behaves kindly.” Hence all the English adjectives. Consequently we get the wrong idea that love is something, and not so much that it does something. Love is active, not passive.

Paul’s definition was corrective, ’cause the Corinthians, same as our culture, had the usual wrong ideas of love.

• “Love has patience”—whereas our culture can’t wait. It’s now or never.
• “Love behaves kindly”—we’ll do all sorts of rude and crude and thoughtless things in love’s name, and insist love means never having to say you’re sorry. And don’t get me started on “tough love.”
• “Love doesn’t act with uncontrolled emotion”—love is nothing but out-of-control emotion, wild and unstable, here today and gone tomorrow.
• “Love doesn’t draw attention to how great it is”—whereas just about every single one of our pop songs extols the greatness and glory of love.
• “Love doesn’t exaggerate”—whereas lovers offer to climb the highest mountains, swim the deadliest seas, and sacrifice their futures for love. And never really do.
• “Love doesn’t ignore others’ considerations”—whereas people in love will ignore all their friends, and sacrifice those relationships for their beloved.
• “Love doesn’t look out for itself”—of course it does.
• “Love doesn’t provoke behavior”—we’ll lie, cheat, and steal for it.
• “Love doesn’t plot evil”—we’ll ruin other people’s relationships and marriages for it.
• “Love doesn’t delight in doing wrong”—but “if loving you is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.”
• “Love delights in truth”—whereas people will tell their loved ones all sorts of lies, just to protect their feelings, just to keep the romance going.
• “Love puts up with everything”—until it doesn’t.
• “Love puts trust in everything”—until you realize your lover is a lying weasel, and you decide you can’t forgive ’em anymore.
• “Love puts hope in everything”—until reality sets in.
• “Love survives everything”—tell that to our divorce rate.
• “Love never falls down”—it wears off after a few years, and people end things because there’s just no hope of getting it back once it’s gone.

You see how our culture has love completely backwards? Corinth was no different. When you read the myths about Aphrodite, you discover she was flighty and unstable. She demanded ridiculous things for “love,” and her emotions turned on a dime. All throughout history, love’s been depicted the very same way. Even today. Watch any present-day romantic comedy.

And none of that is what Paul, or the scriptures, or God, means by love. God is love, and we define love by God’s character: Love isn’t temporary or unstable, because God isn’t temporary or unstable. Love has patience, behaves kindly, acts hopeful and faithful, because God has patience, behaves kindly, and acts hopeful and faithful. The reason true Christians produce the fruit of love is because God’s own character overflows into our lives, and produces the very same behavior.

Stick with Paul’s definition.

I’ve heard a lot of loopy sermons based on the idea of overlaying our culture’s ideas of love onto bible verses. Fr’instance one preacher claimed “Love your neighbor” Lv 19.18 means we need to pursue a close, intimate friendship with every single one of the people in our apartment buildings or housing developments. We should all be the bestest of best friends. With everyone.

Frankly this is nuts. We should love them—be patient with them, kind to them, look out for them—but develop close personal relationships with everyone on the block? Can’t be done. Even if we had that much time and put in that much effort: Some of them are self-centered jerks, and are never gonna do any more with us than use and abuse. They’re not trustworthy. They’re not safe. Don’t befriend them.

Yeah, Jesus befriended sinners. Lk 15.2 But he wasn’t close with them, for he knew what sort of people they were. Jn 2.24-25 We need to exercise the same sort of wisdom when it comes to certain people. It’s far easier for sinners to lead us astray, than for us to lead sinners aright.

“Love your enemy” Lk 6.35 exposes just how dumb this instruction is. Then we see the foolishness of trying to have warm fuzzy feelings towards them. (Although some have tried. Like I said, I’ve heard the sermons.)

So how do we love our neighbors, our enemies—basically everybody? Stick with Paul’s definition. Behave like love does. Impatient? That’s not love; don’t do that. Jealous? That’s not love; don’t do that. Overwhelmed by passion? That’s not love; don’t do that. Shouting from the rooftops? That’s not love; don’t do that.

What’s more, don’t justify such behavior, like pagans will: “But I’m doing it out of love.” That’s not love. Love is self-controlled. Love isn’t possessive. Love doesn’t demand undue attention or outrageous devotion. When you see these non-loving behaviors, recognize ’em for the carnal desires they are. Ask the Holy Spirit for help in weeding them out of your life.

I realize for some folks, they’ll have to do a complete 360-degree turn in their mindset about love. It won’t be easy. But once you get the hang of actual love, the other fruits of the Spirit come much, much faster. Paul likely listed love first Ga 5.22 because the other fruits are so dependent upon it. When we’re deficient in love, of course we’ll be deficient in the others. So make it a priority.

Looking for God. But not 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦.

Some years ago I was listening to a radio host talk about his doubts. He used to be a pastor, but more recently he’d come to doubt God even exists. Mainly—and understandably!—because of his utter lack of God-experiences. If God exists, shouldn’t his kids have God-experiences?

And he’s absolutely right. We should! But he hadn’t. More accurately, he’s entirely sure he hadn’t; whatever he’d seen thus far, hadn’t convinced him. He’d been Christian for years, yet was pretty sure he’d never heard God’s voice, never seen a legitimate miracle, never had any supernatural event in his life. And, he claimed, he wants these experiences, but thus far, nada.

It was a call-in type of show, so a caller responded, “What about the Pentecostals? They claim they have God-experiences all the time. Why not go there and see what happens?”

“Oh no,” said the host. “I’m not going there. I don’t wanna get into that whole scene.”

Lemme pause a moment and make clear: I’m Pentecostal, but no I’m not trying to rope you into visiting a Pentecostal church. Or visiting any particular church. You can experience God anywhere.

My point is how the radio host’s knee-jerk reaction was, “I’m not going there.” He claims he wants a God-experience; this caller said, “Here’s a place where Christians have God-experiences on the regular,” and the host’s reply was, “No, not there.” It’s about when people don‘t actually want God that badly.

There are pop songs where the singer claims he’d do all sorts of crazy things of his beloved. (Bruno Mars’s “Grenade” comes to mind…although it sounds less like risking his life for her, and more like violently killing himself over her. But enough about problematic pop songs.) Singers are willing to climb high mountains, swim deep seas, cross dry deserts, and battle legions of horny suitors for their beloved. But what’ll Christians do for salvation? Anything!… well, anything but go to that church.

Anything but go outside our comfort zones.

For pagans, that’d be us Christians.

I’ve met various pagans who were curious about God, although some admit they aren’t looking all that hard for him. Others claim they’re very interested, and are learning whatever they can about him. Others don’t care at all. It’s a spectrum.

I ask the curious and the interested whether they’ve ever had an actual God-experience. Some of ’em claim they have, and point to some profound “spiritual experience.” (Turns out nearly all of them are emotional experiences, ’cause they don’t know the difference between spiritual and emotional. But that was not the time for me to nitpick.) Others say, “No; I’m not even sure God does that sort of thing.”

“He does,” I tell them. “I go someplace where he shows up regularly.”

“You mean a church,” they respond, suspiciously.

“That too,” I say.

Nah. They’ll pass. Not interested. Because they don’t wanna go to church. They don’t want anything to do with religion. They like God, and might even want God… but they really don’t wanna deal with Christians, our institutions, and our expectations.

Sometimes for legitimate reasons; we’ve been awful. Sometimes not; they were told we’re awful… and it’s not like there’s no truth to those rumors. I grew up Christian, so I’ve seen firsthand how awful we can be. And of course I’m gonna insist we’re not all that way, and that’s gonna fall on deaf ears when a pagan is wholly prejudiced against Christians. They need to see we’re not that way, and that’s gonna take time, and a lot of active love on our part. But back to my point.

Christians, and our churches, make people uncomfortable. And if you can’t fathom this, imagine you’re them. Imagine you have questions about God. Imagine there’s this friendly weirdo you know; might be a coworker, or might be some stranger you met in a coffeehouse, and she claims she can get you all the God-answers you want, and all you gotta do is visit her cult. And no, the people there aren’t mean or controlling at all; they don’t want your money; they’re the nicest folks you’d ever meet! Wanna go check it out?

Swap “cult” for anything which pokes you in your own prejudices: Mosque. Ashram. Coven. Strip club. Maybe then you’ll realize that’s why it’s so hard to get ’em to visit. We’re not part of their comfort zone. Not in the slightest.

We need to bear this in mind when we invite pagans to our churches. If you’ve ever wondered why it’s like pulling teeth… well, there y’are.

This doesn’t stop once we’re Christian.

Once we’re in—once we’ve met Jesus, decided he’s Lord, joined a church, and started following him—we often find ourselves in whole new places where we claim we wanna follow God… but we just won’t follow him there. Plenty of people tell God, “This far; no further.”

And just as in evangelism, quite often the Holy Spirit honors our lines in the sand. Problem is, sometimes he doesn’t have a plan B. There’s only one route he intends to take us, and if we tell him no, he’s not taking us an alternate route; he’s gonna sit there and wait for us to step over that stumbling block. If we refuse… well, we’ve come to a dead stop. We stop. So he stops.

I remind Christians of this, and for some reason this surprises them. What’d they think “Stop” meant? “Stop and go another direction”? Often yeah, that’s what we naïvely thought. But all these other directions are merely side trips. Inevitably we come right back to the original stumbling block.

“Stop just this one thing”? For God, our entire lives are holistic. He’s Lord of all, not Lord over just the religious parts. He doesn’t make exceptions for just this one thing. We may only want him to be Lord over spiritual things, like the happy thoughts we have when we sing worship songs, and the sense of self-fulfillment we get from agreeing with Christian memes. But God refuses to be Lord over only a segment of us… especially such an insignificant segment. He must be rule all, or nothing. If that means our happy thoughts are on their own, so be it.

Every real relationship, especially close ones, pushes us out of our comfort zones. Couples gotta learn how to put up with one another’s quirks and irritating habits. Sometimes they gotta drag one another away from their respective comfort zones, and ask, “Do this one thing, just for me.” Sometimes they gotta ride out a crisis together. Sometimes—God forbid, but sometimes—they gotta go through trauma, and learn to support one another instead of pushing one another away… and not all of ’em successfully do.

I’m not saying they need to seek suffering in order to forcibly (and artificially) strengthen their relationships: Unlike God, they can rarely control the outcome. Trials will come on their own. But when they do, “This far; no further” won’t just put your relationship in a holding pattern while your partner tries to figure out a different direction. In nearly every relationship, “No further” kills the relationship. You’re done.

Thankfully God isn’t like that! He’s not abandoning us when we balk. He’s kinder than that. But in any other relationship, “no further” is a deal-breaker. God, in comparison, patiently waits us out. He’s always willing to pick up where we left off, once we repent. But we still gotta follow the Spirit over that stumbling block: When he tells us, “Do this one thing, just for me,” it really does need to be done. For our sake. That’s why God brought us there to begin with.

So when we have doubts, and God says, “Do this, and it’ll help you deal with them,” and our response is, “I’m not going there,” we shouldn’t be surprised when our Christian growth comes to full stop. Nor when, the absence of Christian growth, our doubts grow instead. It’s easy to see this coming. It’s harder to just follow the Spirit. But that’s what we gotta do.

Same as the pagan who has to take that initial leap of faith—who has to put aside their discomfort and false expectations, because God is more important than any of that.

When God tells us no.

If you ever browse books on prayer, you’ll notice most of them are about being successful at prayer: Prayers that work. Prayers that get heard. Prayers which’ll definitely reach God’s ears. How to be persistent at it, and thereby get what we want. How to have the proper prayer attitude, so God’ll be pleased with us and give us what I want. How to pray as God would want, and therefore get us what we ask for. Yada yada yada.

What makes prayer “successful”? Clearly, getting all our wishes granted.

Of course we won’t always admit this. We’ll try to make our answers sound less greedy, more spiritual, less self-centered. “Um… A successful prayer gets us closer to God.” Yeah, nice try Bubba. Closer to God for why? So now that he knows us, he’ll grant all our wishes.

Look, I already pointed out it’s okay to ask God for anything. The Lord’s Prayer entirely consists of prayer requests, and Jesus tells us to pray like that, so clearly God’s not gonna be offended when we tell him we want stuff from him.

But let’s be honest for once: As far as every Christian is concerned, successful prayer gets results. We ask God for miracles, money, quick fixes to big problems, autonomous fruit of the Spirit, power and influence, and maybe daily bread. God grants all our requests, we get what we want, we give him all the credit (’cause apparently that’s all the payback God needs, and thus we restore our karmic balance), and that’s how prayer works.

Thus we have Christians who arrogantly expect everything we pray for, to just happen. We named it; we claimed it; God’s gotta cough it up, because he promised he’d give us whatever we ask for in Jesus’s name. And he wants us to live successful, prosperous, territory-expanding lives. And he gave us his power to call forth the things that are not, as though they were. Ro 4.17

Now lemme be blunt: God is not your genie.

Nearly all the name-it-claim-it Christians do not have the ultimate goal of growing faith and glorifying God. Their goal is to enrich themselves, and justify their comforts on the grounds God wants us to be comfortable. Their relationship with God is distorted into a senile grandpa who wants to spoil the kids, or a Santa Claus who’ll give us everything on our Christmas lists. It’s entirely based on how God benefits me, ’cause I am the center of this universe.

So those people who are wealthy and comfortable and problem-free, figure God’s happy with them and they needn’t apply any more effort to their relationship. They’ll gleefully call him a mighty God. The rest of us, who still have struggles and suffering… wonder what’s wrong with this system. And one of four things follow:

1. We figure we’re the problem. We prayed wrong. Or we sin too much, or haven’t confessed everything, and thus alienated God. Or we don’t have enough faith; let’s believe even harder! Or we’re short on good karma; let’s do a bunch of good works and get back in God’s favor. Or maybe we’re not even saved; maybe God isn’t gonna save us.
2. We figure God turned off the miracles. He doesn’t answer prayer anymore. He left. All he left behind is the bible; read that and be ye warmed and filled. Jm 2.16 KJV
3. We figure God’s the problem. And if God won’t come through for us, f--- him; we quit. (Happens more often than you’d think.)
4. We still don’t get it… but we don’t really care enough to investigate, and like the trappings of Christianity too much to just quit. So we go through the motions, claim we believe but really don’t, put our faith in other things, and go Christianist.

All these wrong ideas are based on the assumption that too many Christians don’t honestly consider: God can, and does, tell people no. He’s not ignoring us; he’s not denying us; he’s not punishing us; he’s simply saying, “You don’t know what you’re asking” Mk 10.38 —same as Jesus told two of his students when he told them no.

Yep. God’s not a mathematical formula that, once you figure him out, you can get the answers you like. Our relationship isn’t a contractual quid pro quo, where we do for him, and he’s therefore gotta do for us. He’s a sentient being with free will, and as the wisest being, he knows best. He says “no” for good reason. If we can’t accept that, we’re presuming we’re the wisest person in our relationship… and that’d be stupid.

Learn to trust his no.

It’s actually not true that most of God’s prayer answers are “no.” We humans just tend to focus so much on the “no” answers, we forget how frequently God tells us yes. Imagine a child whose parents took her to the Disney store and bought her every princess tchotchke imaginable… yet because they won’t let her stay up past her bedtime to play with them, her day’s just ruined. That’d be us. We get so fixated on the “no” answers, it colors the way we look at God’s infinite generosity.

Simple fix to the problem: Start keeping track of your prayer requests. Mark down God’s answers. Notice how few “no” answers God actually gives you.

And notice how often these “no” answers are actually “not yet.” I get a lot of those. I get ’em every time I pray for Jesus to return. I know it’ll become yes eventually; it’s inevitable. But God’s response is “Not now,” and I want it to be now. You know, like the kid with the princess toys.

So why not now? Well, God doesn’t have to tell us. Sometimes he will; sometimes he won’t. If the answer will do us any good, he’ll tell; if it doesn’t, he won’t. You might notice, in Job, how we know the entire backstory: The devil dared the LORD to let it smite Job, and the LORD said okay… and poor Job didn’t know what hit him, nor why. Come to think of it, Job would’ve been pissed had God explained it: “Well y’see, Job, the devil and I had this bet…” I sure wouldn’t have appreciated it—even though God has every right to take back my property, my family, my health, and my life, if he so chooses. And Job needed a reminder of that fact, which is why God answered, “Can you do what I can?”—and this truth shut Job up.

When we’re miserable, no answer God gives us is really gonna comfort us. That’s why sometimes God won’t bother with answers. They don’t help. We just need comfort. And faith. We need to remember God knows best.

He doesn’t tell us no because he wants to frustrate his kids, and deprive us. Just the opposite. Mt 7.9-11 He has far better in mind for us—but we don’t see it right now. We can’t see how the consequences of our smallest actions might affect or influence people for billions of years, from this age to the next. We may not even care about such things; we think of ’em as hypothetical realities, and we’re only looking at what’s right here and right now. But to God, these “hypothetical realities” are realities, ’cause he’s infinite and is already there. In order to bring us from here to there, he’s gotta bring out the best in both us and everyone else. If we can’t fathom this, there’s really no point in God giving us any answer: We’ll just flail about in confusion and anger, nitpick his decision (kinda like we already do), and wallow in self-pity.

Look, I don’t like God’s “no” answers any more than you. Deep down I probably still foolishly think I know better. God’s “no” is a reminder I don’t. He does. There are infinitely good reasons why I follow him, and not vice-versa. And if I’m gonna follow him, I need to accept a “no” from time to time and be okay with it. So I try. So should we all.

“Spiritual… but not religious.”

SPIRITUAL 'spɪ.rɪtʃ(.əw).əl adjective. Dealing with immaterial things in the human spirit or soul.

2. Dealing with religion.

[Spirituality 'spɪr.ɪt.ʃəw.æl.ə.di noun.]

Many pagans like to describe themselves as spiritual. ’Cause they are: They believe in immaterial things, like the soul. Might even believe in other spirits; or God, whom they correctly recognize is spirit; Jn 4.24 or a spiritual afterlife. Or not: They only believe in spiritual forces, like good vibes or positivity, bad vibes or negativity, which can affect not just ourselves, but everyone around us.

Christians call ourselves spiritual too, ’cause we are. We have the Holy Spirit, who’s hopefully working on us—if we let him. We’re taught to pursue spirit, not flesh. Ro 8.5-6 We believe in God and angels and unclean spirits (like the devil) and that we’re part spirit. For the most part, we believe in the supernatural too.

Now, you can tell a pagan all this: “You’re spiritual? So’m I.” But there’s still a dividing line which they insist they won’t cross: They’re spiritual. But not religious. We Christians are religious, and they don’t wanna go there.

This’ll confuse many an Evangelical. ’Cause over the past six decades, many have got it into our heads we’re not religious. (And we might not be, but that’s another article.) When Evangelicals say “religion,” most of us mean dead religion, and we’re not that; we have a living relationship with Jesus, right?

I used to believe this rubbish too, so I’d tell pagans, same as most Evangelicals, “Oh, I don’t have a religion. I have a relationship.”

Which confused ’em. To a pagan, if you go to church—and we should!—you’re in an organized religion. You don’t get to determine, on your own, by yourself, what you do and don’t believe: Your church does. Your bishop, pastors, and elders do. They tell you what to think and believe and do. There are rules. There are mandatory rituals. You’re threatened with hell if you don’t do them.

Obviously they’ve never been to church (or if they have, it was kind of a cult), ’cause it doesn’t work that way at all. Yeah, the church has official doctrines, and if you wanna get into church leadership you gotta agree with the doctrines. But the regular members believe what they want, do as they want, and answer to nobody but the Holy Spirit; and they won’t even follow him half the time. Or most of the time. And there’s grace, or at least there had better be; we do have a proper understanding that good works don’t save us; nobody should be using hellfire to threaten one another.

Even so: Whenever we Evangelicals claim, “Oh I’m not religious,” pagans believe either we’re lying, and trying to trick ’em into joining our religion; or we’ve been brainwashed, and don’t realize just how far our religious leaders have their tentacles in us.

Likewise, “No, my church doesn’t work like that.” Pagans won’t believe this either: They’ve heard the horror stories… or, sadly, might’ve lived them. They “know better.”

The religion they prefer is one which permits them perfect freedom. Nobody tells them what to think, how to do things, how to be, where to go. Maybe God gets to; maybe their angels. Maybe they listen to their favorite gurus with fervent devotion, and do everything they’re told, same as any cult member. But to their minds, they can walk away whenever they like; they’re in control. They’re not sure they can maintain this level of control if they set foot in your church building. So no thank you. Organized religion isn’t for them.

Not all disorganized religion is the same.

I’ve heard Christians describe the “spiritual but not religious” as if they’re all the same—as if these pagans only dabble in religion, but have no strong beliefs. Or if they totally do have an organized religion, but like Evangelicals they’re in denial, because they redefined their vocabulary words.

As I explained in my article on eclecticism, humans don’t monolithically all believe the same things. We can lump people into categories, and even then they don’t all believe likewise. You gotta ask ’em on an individual basis.

But generally I find the “spiritual but not religious” fall into six groups.

FAKE CHRISTIANS. By all outside appearances, these appear to be Christians… but they just won’t affiliate themselves with any church. They’re going it alone. They call themselves Christian; they know Christian terms, and have Christian trappings. But in fact they’re incognito pagans—they only think they’re Christian. They have no Holy Spirit within them, and produce none of his fruit.

Nope; they’re not hypocrites; they’re not faking anything. They honestly do think they’re Christian. They have no idea they’re not, or have some idea but suppress those doubts as much as they can. They like Jesus; they just don’t follow him. They like the bible; they just never read it, don’t know it, and are easily tripped up with fake bible quotes. They don’t pray, or they assume their positive attitudes count as a form of prayer. And they certainly don’t go to church, ’cause they never wanna be told they’re wrong.

There’s more than one type of fake Christian. I just mentioned the positive sort, whose idea of Christianity is happy and uplifting and heavenly and friendly. Then there’s the negative sort. All the fears and paranoia of dark Christianity—and the reason they won’t go to church is they don’t trust any church, and think they’ve all been corrupted by Satan. Yours included. They might read the bible, but only to find proof texts for their conspiracy theories. They might pray, but largely they’re imprecatory prayers—“God, smite my foes” and all that. They’re more obviously fruitless than the positive Christianist: No grace, no love, lots of anger.

DEVOTEES. These folks have a religion. But they’re like Evangelicals who’re in denial about how their consistent practices are so a religion. They figure because they’re in no organized religion, they’re not religious. But of course they’re religious: Whatever beliefs they have, they believe in ’em devoutly. They’ll even try to convert you.

’Cause many pagans, though they refuse to join any particular church or religion, really wanna know the truth about the universe, the afterlife, God, and so forth. So they explore, study, learn… and believe. They find things to believe in, and are entirely sure they’re true. They’ll bet their lives (and afterlife) on it.

In any event, their minds are made up, and you’re not gonna convert them till they shake their beloved beliefs.

SEEKERS. And here’s the polar opposite of the devotees: These folks are totally open-minded. They don’t currently adhere to any religion. But if we present ’em with a good one, they’ll join.

These are just the sort of pagans we Christians love to work with. ’Cause their minds are open. They’ll visit our churches. They’ll listen to what we have to say. They may not agree with everything, but that’s okay: If they hang out with us long enough, they’ll meet Jesus, and he’ll cinch the deal and make ’em Christian.

DIVORCÉS. They’re a form of seeker: They just left another religion. They used to be devotees—sometimes of their own ideas—but they realized it was all bogus, or it stopped working for them. so they quit. In some cases their gurus and leaders drove ’em away. Regardless, they’re still open to God and spirituality. They just haven’t found a new religion yet.

Like seekers, these are also the sort of pagans we Christians love to work with. Although if they just left one branch of Christianity, they’re gonna come with a lot of baggage—a lot of hurts we have to minister to. And they’ll still have a lot of misconceptions about God, held over from their previous religion—some of which they might be really fond of. Gotta be patient with them.

ANTICHRISTS. Regardless of their beliefs, when it comes to Christianity, they want nothing to do with it, and that’s firm. They had a terrible experience with it, or encountered really awful representatives of it. Frankly, they’d like to see it done away with.

Since I’m writing about the “spiritual but not religious,” I don’t mean the non-spiritual: I don’t mean nontheists and agnostics. They tend to be antichrists too; they often want to see all religion eliminated. But when a pagan is spiritual yet antichrist, it means they do believe in God or gods or spirits… just not Jesus of Nazareth, nor his followers. They don’t consider us valid. Antichrists will claim Jesus’s followers made everything up, and even that Jesus himself never existed. They’ll be open to everything but Christianity. Their minds are open to everything else, but not us. They’ll try anything else, so long as it’s not Christian.

APATHETIC. They sorta believe in God, gods, or spirits. But really, they figure there are way more important things in their life than religious beliefs. They don’t wanna explore these ideas any deeper. They figure they’re just fine as-is.

True, sometimes an apathetic pagan evolves into a seeker. When life gets rough or unmanageable, people might point ’em to religion, so they’ll dabble, and see whether it can help ’em any. And maybe nothing more than that: They’ll use meditation to relieve stress, but they won’t examine meditation to see whether it reveals anything more about God. They’ll believe in a higher power ’cause it helps them through their 12-step program, but they won’t try to get to know their higher power, ’cause the important thing is breaking their addiction. The goal is their own well-being. Nothing more.

Help them find their way.

As you can tell, some of the “spiritual but not religious” folks are open to what we have to say… and some not so much. Seekers and divorcés might listen. Devotees and fake Christians will try to instruct us. Antichrists will fight us. And apathetic folks won’t care. So if you wanna share Jesus with pagans, first figure out what stripe of pagan they are.

No, I’m not saying to skip resistant pagans, like the antichrists. God wants to save them too. I’m just warning you: They’re gonna fight us. It’s way harder to share Jesus with someone who hates Jesus. In many ways it’s even harder to share Jesus with the apathetic: They don’t care whether he loves them. And Jesus tells us we ordinarily shouldn’t waste our time and theirs: Once you tried, shake the dust off your feet against ’em. Mk 6.11

But sometimes pagans change camps. Fake Christians repent and become real Christians. Antichrists like Saul of Tarsus run into the living Christ and switch teams in a blink. Devotees realize they’re totally wrong and become divorcés. I don’t care what determinists tell you: Don’t ever write someone off. You never know what the Holy Spirit is doing to ’em.

So as you wait for the Spirit’s next instructions, be available. They may have no questions for you right now, and not even care to hear a thing you have to say. So make sure they know you’re a non-judgmental Christian, whom they can come to once they ever get curious. When the Spirit’s about to crack that walnut, he often turns to the people who made themselves available like that.

And by non-judgmental I really do mean non-judgmental. Don’t judge them! Don’t debate ’em. Don’t rebuke ’em. Don’t correct ’em. They’re not Christians; you have no business holding non-Christians to God’s standards. Not even God does that. Ro 2.14-16 You’re there to be Jesus to them, and Jesus didn’t come to condemn but save. Jn 3.17 When they wanna turn to Jesus, you’re there to point the way. Till then… well, point the way.