Why the United States doesn’t control our guns.

I have friends outside the United States who look at our rampant gun violence, notice how our mass shootings even happen on a daily basis, and wonder why in God’s name we do nothing about it.

Two reasons. The first is Americans consider gun ownership a right. Not an option, not a privilege, a right. We even put it into our Constitution.

Y’see in the 1760s and ’70s, the British occupying forces tried to take Americans’ guns away lest we start a revolution. (’Cause we were gonna.) Once we Americans got our independence, we became fearful lest the Brits, or any other government, try to take us over, or go too far to curtail our liberties. So we made gun ownership the fourth article of the Bill of Rights, which became our Constitution’s second amendment.

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Guns aren’t an obvious and inherent right. This is why the Congress had to spell out their justification for guns: If we’re gonna remain a free state, we need militia, armed civilians who can help our police and armed forces defend our homeland. Some folks assume our National Guard fulfills the role of a militia, but nope; guardsmen are part of the Army and Air Force, and not civilians. (As demonstrated whenever guardsmen are called in to stop civilian unrest.) The way we keep civilians at the ready, is we let ’em keep their guns. And make sure they know how to properly use ’em. So once people hear the British are coming—or the Soviets, the North Koreans, the Iranians, the terrorists, or whoever’s the boogeyman today—they can grab their rifles and fall in.

Thing is, we Americans tend to describe our rights as sacred and God-given. In other words holy. With all the other baggage which comes with civic idolatry.

Proper religion involves self-control, but civic idolatry means when we Americans get it into our heads that something’s a right, we treat it as an unlimited right. Zero control. No limits. Absolute.

Fr’instance freedom of speech. We treat it like we can say absolutely anything, no matter how offensive, profane, or seditious. And should be able to say anything, without any repercussions from our neighbors or employers. That’s why we’re often stunned when there are totally repercussions: We lose jobs, money, status, or relationships over the dumber things we say. But what’d people expect would happen? Freedom of speech only means government can’t censor or censure us. Everybody else can.

So that’s the very same way many an American gun nut looks at guns: The right to bear arms means we can own any gun we like, decked out with any accessories or ammunition we like, take it anywhere, and shoot anyone we perceive a threat. ’Cause it’s a right. Constitution says so, which makes it sacred.

Now read the second amendment again. It describes our American militia as well regulated. Is it? Not in the slightest. Largely it’s not regulated at all.

This is where the United States goes horribly wrong. If the amendment were scripture, we’d be guilty of taking it out of context. Our militia is unregulated, and whenever any politician tries to regulate it, the gun nuts scream tyranny. And the gun lobby has bought so many senators, nothing gets regulated. Nothing changes for the better. Hence the daily shootings.

Doubt is our friend.

You might’ve heard the following verse before.

Matthew 21.21 NIV

Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done.”

Jesus says ἐὰν ἔχητε πίστιν καὶ μὴ διακριθῆτε/eán éhite pístin ke mi diakrithíte, “when you have faith and don’t hesitate,” though most translations follow the KJV’s lead and go with “doubt not.” Either way, people assume he’s contrasting opposites: Hesitation, or doubt, is the opposite of faith.

So either we have faith or we have doubt—so have faith, and never doubt. Doubt is bad. Doubt is evil. Doubt is how the devil convinces us to never do as the Spirit wants.

But in college I studied logic. (Hey, it’s a math class, and I wasn’t a fan of math, but logic sounded like something I could get into. Boy did I.) In logic I learned a lot of supposed “opposites” aren’t really. What’s the opposite of big? It’s actually not small. Big and small are contrasts, not opposites. A big coffee is not the opposite of a small coffee; both are coffee!

Big faith isn’t the opposite of small faith either. Jesus told us even small faith, mustard seed sized faith, will do the job. Mt 17.20 Same with hot and cold, black and white, young and old, male and female. Especially male and female. They’re not opposites; they’re complements!

The proper opposite of anything is its absence. The opposite of big is not big. Which could be medium, small, tiny, or even 3XL; what makes it opposite is it’s not what we want. Not what we’re looking for. And that’s not just something relatively smaller; it’s everything else. When it’s not as big as we want, it’s the opposite of big. “That’s not a ‘big.’ Get me a ‘big’!”

Likewise the opposite of black is not-black. The opposite of young is not-young. The opposite of love is not-love. And the opposite of faith is not-faith.

Now, if not-something has a one-word definition, we can probably say that’s a precise or true opposite. Fr’instance the definition of false is “not true,” so that’d truly make it the opposite of true. Likewise the definition of impatient is “not patient,” the definition of inconsiderate is “not considerate,” the definition of dissimilar is “not similar,” and the opposite of “inflammable” is… okay, that’s a tricky one.

Does doubt mean precisely the same as “not faith”? Actually no. It means not enough faith. There’s still a little faith in there! There oughta be more. And sometimes there’s no good reason why we don’t have enough faith, ’cause we really oughta trust God more than we do.

But sometimes we don’t have enough faith for a totally valid, very good reason: This isn’t a God thing.

Yep. Sometimes it’s not. There are a lot of things which Christians claim are God things, claim are holy, claim are Christ Jesus’s expectations for his followers, claim are mandatory doctrines or mandatory practices. Are they? Well… we doubt. And it turns out we’re right to doubt.

The reason we doubt is the Holy Spirit is making is hesitant. The Christianese term for this is, “I have a check in my spirit,” which usually means “I really don’t think we should.” True, sometimes we say this because of hypocrisy; we selfishly don’t wanna do something we should, and we’re trying to weasel out of it by claiming the Holy Spirit is warning us away. But sometimes it legitimately is the Spirit telling us, “Whoa there little buckaroo. That’s a cliff you’re heading towards.”

Sometimes we call this supernatural discernment: We know something’s not right, don’t know why, but trust God enough to put things on pause. Other times it takes no revelation from God whatsoever; any onlooker can see this is all kinds of wrong. And we should practice the regular kind of discernment as well—though you’d be surprised and annoyed how often Christians don’t, and get suckered into all sorts of cons. Christians can be some of the most gullible people sometimes.

Other times the Holy Spirit will obviously tell us, “No; don’t.” Ac 16.6-7 Won’t necessarily tell us why. Nor does he need to! We gotta trust him, y’know. But clearly the “doubts” we might have, aren’t always the product of doubting God. Sometimes they’re just the opposite. We doubt circumstances. We doubt fellow Christians. We doubt everything but God.

It’s a great thing to have the sort of mountain-moving faith Jesus speaks of. It’s just as great to pay attention to our doubts, lest we attempt to move the wrong mountains. ’Cause doubt isn’t always our opponent! Often doubt is our friend.

And few Christians have been taught this. Or even understand this. They’ve been taught Christians should never, ever, EVER doubt. Shove all those doubts out of your mind. Turn ’em off like a lightswitch. Suppress them. Fight them. Psyche yourself into believing.

In other words, embrace denial. And because denial’s a lie, it doesn’t legitimately get rid of our doubts. Instead, denial unravels our faith and turns us into hypocrites.

Y’see, whenever we Christians have doubts, our next step is to investigate. Confirm whether our doubts are valid. Find out whether there’s anything rock solid behind them, or whether we’re getting scammed by some Christian who only wants our money or loyalty. If these things are of God, they can absolutely hold up to scrutiny. If they’re not, they don’t—and the people trying to pull us in those directions get really angry, and all sorts of other fleshly behavior starts coming out of ’em.

Use those doubts to get solid about what you oughta believe and who you oughta follow—and get closer to God.

Relevance versus holiness.

Relevance became a pretty big buzzword among young Christians in the late 1990s. I was one of those young Christians back then, so I’d hear it all the time: “If we wanna reach our culture for Jesus, we can’t be one of those old fuddy-duddy Christians who act like we were wrong to progress past the 1950s. We gotta be able to interact with people outside the popular Christian subculture—and not just to critique and condemn them. We gotta be relevant.”

And no, this wasn’t just some clever reasoning we could use on old people whenever we went out and got tattoos. Well, okay, some of us went that route; but most of us honestly did mean it. The cultural conservatism of American Evangelical Christianity was making it impossible for us to share the gospel with our pagan peers.

And by “impossible” I don’t just mean really, really hard. I mean impossible.

Maybe you read my piece, “The limitations of legalists.” Maybe not; I’ll summarize anyway. Back in college I was trying to share Jesus with some pagans, and there was this conservative Evangelical who tried to insert himself into our conversation. To make him go away, I invited the pagans to a pub. Conservative guy’s tradition not only forbade alcohol, but even setting foot in a pub; shunning the appearance of evil y’know. It did the job and got rid of him.

The reason I knew to pull this stunt with him, is because I used to be the very same kind of conservative Evangelical. I would never have set foot in a pub—and not just because I was underage. I would’ve presumed anybody who practiced pub evangelism was probably a rotten Christian. (Even though I was a big fan of C.S. Lewis, and he hung out in pubs all the time—which I justified to myself by saying, “Well he’s British,” and ignoring the fact Britain has a drinking problem. Not to pick on Britain; my own homeland definitely has a drinking problem too. But I digress.)

See, if you don’t live in the Bible Belt, you gotta interact with (gasp!) liberals. Your neighbors and coworkers are often gonna be progressives who don’t bother to read the Moral Majority’s voter guides, and vote for the wrong party. How on earth are you gonna share Jesus with them? Many Bible-Belt Christians have told me they don’t even try anymore, and have abandoned them to the devil. But where I live, we don’t have that luxury… and some of them are so close to God’s kingdom, and all they need are a few nudges in the right direction.

The “Forgive me” prayer.

Part of the Lord’s Prayer is the line, “Forgive us our sins.” Or “Forgive us our debts,” or “Forgive us our trespasses”; it all depends on the translation. Jesus goes on: “As we forgive those who sin against/trespass against/are indebted to us.” It’s one line in the whole of the prayer.

But there’s a whole category of prayer which consists of begging God’s forgiveness for sins. Sometimes it’s a part of a bargain with God—we wanna ask him for stuff, and we wanna first make sure we have a clean slate with him before we start negotiating. But most of the time it’s because we’ve sinned, we know it, we feel bad or guilty about it, and we wanna repent and get right with God.

Emotions vary. Some of us get mighty weepy. Lying on the floor, mascara running, blubbering, sobbing, snot pouring out of our noses, and so forth.

I’m not one of those. I’m the type which is really annoyed with myself for repeating the same stupid sins. Far less weeping; far more angry self-recrimination. Still others are upset, frustrated, embarrassed, exasperated, resigned, furious, woebegone… There’s no one way people feel, and they won’t always feel the same way every single time. But the one thing we have in common isn’t emotion, but unhappiness. We fell short of God’s glory. So we repent.

(Well… some of us don’t repent. We don’t like being on the wrong side of God, and wanna rectify that. But we don’t really have any plan to change our behavior any. I’ll discuss that rotten attitude another time.)

There are two ways Christians approach the “Forgive me” prayer. Some of us are just crushed by it. Others of us are blasé: “Hey, sin’s a part of life, and God knows I’m not perfect.” There are attitudes in between, but these are the main two extremes I find in Christians: Those who worry we’re taxing the limits of God’s grace, and those who take this grace way too much for granted. There’s a happy medium in there somewhere. That’s what we should seek. Sin should bother us… but God has us covered! 1Jn 2.1 So repentance shouldn’t be a regular meltdown. Grace should take away all the extremes, and leave us feeling sorry, but not bothered.

The sepulcher guards.

Matthew 27.62-66 KWL

62 In the morning,

which is [the Saturday] after preparation,

the head priests and Pharisees

assembled with Pontius Pilate,

63 saying, “Master, we remember this imposter said while alive,

‘After three days I rise.’

64 So command the sepulcher to be secured for three days,

lest his coming students might steal him,

might tell the people, ‘He’s risen from the dead!’

and the last imposture will be worse than the first.”

65 Pilate tells them, “You have a guard.

Go secure it as best you know.”

66 Those who go, secure the sepulcher,

sealing the stone with the guards.

 

Matthew 28.2-4 KWL

2 Look, a great quake happens,

for the Lord’s angel, which comes down from heaven,

upon coming, rolls away the stone

and is sitting down upon it.

3 Its appearance is bright as lightning,

and its clothing white as snow.

4 The sepulcher guards shake in terror of it,

and become like the dead.

 

Matthew 28.11-15 KWL

11 As the women leave, look:

Some of the guards, coming into the city,

report to the head priests everything that happened.

12 Getting together for a meeting with the elders,

taking enough silver to give the soldiers,

13 the priests were saying, “Say this:

‘His students, coming at night, stole him as we slept.’

14 And when this is heard by the governor,

we’ll convince him, and you needn’t worry.”

15 Those who took the silver, did as the priests taught,

and spread this word throughout the Judeans

until this very day.

There’s some debate among Christians as to who these soldiers are. Did Pontius Pilate send his own soldiers to secure the sepulcher? Or were these Senate police?—the same guys who secured the temple for the priests; the same guys who arrested Jesus; the same guys who handled Senate security? When Pontius said, “You have a guard,” did he mean “You can have my guards,” or “You already have guards, and don’t need any of my guys”?

I lean towards temple guards. Here’s why.

Why Amazon is my favorite Christian bookstore.

Unless you count all the mini-bookstores found in the larger churches, my hometown has only one bookstore. One. It’s downtown; it mostly sells used books.

We used to have a Borders, a Crown Books, a Book Outlet, and multiple used bookstores. And a Family Christian Stores—which wasn’t so much a bookstore as a one-stop shop for all Christian. They had books, but they had even more Christian tchotchkes: CDs, shirts, toys, art for the walls. “Jesus junk.” Now we have just that one bookstore… and the book sections at Walmart, Costco, Target, the other department stores, and the thrift stores. (And the local library’s monthly book sale.)

Why can’t a town of 102,000 sustain a new-books bookstore? Because those stores, for the most part, didn’t know what they were doing. They didn’t realize, till it was too late, their primary competition was Amazon—and that Amazon had ’em so beat, people would shop at Amazon while browsing their stores. I did it myself. I’d browse their stacks, find a book I was interested in, take down its ISBN, and look it up on Amazon. Guess who always had the better price.

No, Amazon doesn’t pay me to sing their praises. Even though I link a lot of the books, movies, and albums I mention on TXAB to their website.

I learned a long time ago, and keep seeing it: No matter the bookstore, Amazon offers a lower price on the same book. Even if the bookstore marked everything at 20 percent below the suggested retail price. Even when the books are on the clearance shelf at 60 percent off. Even when they’re in a $2 bargain bin. Even when I find ’em at Dollar Tree for $1.25. Amazon regularly has ’em beat.

I’m not the only bookstore customer who noticed this. I’ve seen other customers browse the bookstore… then whip out their smartphone, compare prices, go with Amazon, and buy nothing from the bookstore but their coffee. If that. Too often Starbucks is cheaper.

Unitarians: Those who insist God’s not three.

UNITARIAN ju.nə'tɛr.i.ən noun. A person or doctrine which emphasizes God’s oneness, and rejects the doctrine of the trinity.

2. [capitalized] A member of a church or group which asserts this belief.

3. adjective. Having to do with this belief, or with unitarians.

[Unitarianism ju.nə'tɛr.i.ən.ɪz.əm noun.]

Christians correctly understand God’s a trinity. One God; three people (or “persons,” as theologians prefer, but it’s bad English) who are the one God. Well, most of us do; there are holdouts who insist he’s not. They tend to fall into one of two camps:

• MODALISTS. Those who say the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are God… but really all three of them are just one person. Not three people. Just one person in different modes.
• UNITARIANS. Those who say the Father is God—and the Son and the Holy Spirit are not.

People are more familiar with unitarians—mostly because there are entire unitarian denominations, like the Unitarian Universalists, the Unitarian Christian Church, and Unity Church. (The United States has even had four Unitarian presidents.) But that’s also because unitarianism is very obviously non-trinitarian, and very obviously denies Jesus is God. Whereas modalists will never say Jesus isn’t God. For that matter you’d likely never even know they were modalist… until you start asking ’em about trinity and they reply, “Well I really don’t like to use the word trinity to describe God…” then go on to explain why they say he’s not.

The main difference, y’notice, is modalists believe Jesus is God and the Holy Spirit is God. Unitarians do not. Well, generally unitarians do not; some of ’em are kinda pantheist and believe everyone is God. But for the most part, they insist God is One: One person, one being, one heavenly Father (or Mother; some of ’em aren’t particular); our Creator, the Almighty, and infinitely good. And while they consider Jesus to be Lord and Savior and King, they don’t consider him God. Same with the Holy Spirit—although I’ve known a few unitarians who believe the Spirit is God, but like modalists, don’t believe he’s a different person than the Father. To them, “Holy Spirit” is just one of God’s titles, like when certain indigenous Americans refer to God as “the Great Spirit.”

But unitarian doesn’t just describe Christians. Technically it describes everyone who believes in the One God, and doesn’t believe he’s a trinity. Most unchurched pagans figure there’s one God, aren’t so sure about Jesus, and know nothing about the Holy Spirit—and this description would mean they’re unitarian. Every Muslim would be unitarian: They definitely believe in one God, believe Jesus is a prophet but not God, and believe the Holy Spirit is a messenger of God but also not God. Religious Jews are unitarian, Sikhs are unitarian, Baha’is are unitarian.

But if you’re unitarian and call yourself Christian, you’ve chosen to ignore the scriptures which reveal God as a trinity. Which puts you outside historical orthodox Christianity and makes you heretic. And here I gotta remind you heresy does not send you to hell—but it does greatly interfere with getting to know and trust God, so it always needs to be dealt with.

By Law we’re good as dead—so live for Jesus!

Galatians 2.17-21 KWL

17 “While looking to be justified by Christ,

if we’re found to be sinners ourselves,

then isn’t Christ a servant of sin?”

This ought not be said!

18 For if I rebuild the things I destroy,

I stand up for my own transgressive behavior.

19 For I, through the Law,

die to the Law so I can live for God.

I was crucified with Christ.

20 I no longer live. Christ lives—

in me. He now lives in flesh.

I live by faith in the Son of God, who loves me

and hands himself over for me.

21 I don’t reject God’s grace,

for if rightness comes by Law,

then Christ died for nothing.

Previously:

“Paul and the apostles of note.” Ga 2.6-10

“Paul challenges Simon Peter.” Ga 2.11-14

“Being good justifies nobody. Nobody.” Ga 2.15-16

Paul’s academy trained him in Greco-Roman rhetoric, the art of speech and debate. Most of us don’t know how the Romans practiced rhetoric, so sometimes we struggle to follow Paul’s arguments, and come to some very different conclusions than he was trying to make. This is nothing new; few things are. Peter rebuked ancient Christians for doing the very same thing. 2Pe 3.14-15

Anyway it’s why I translated verse 14 with quotes. Paul’s doing a rhetoric thing: He’s quoting what other Christians have said, and responding μὴ γένοιτο/mi ghénito, “This ought not [be said]!” Most bibles translate it some variant of the KJV’s “By no means”—this is an idea we oughta strongly oppose. It’s heresy.

So apparently this is what certain early Christians were teaching, particularly the legalists in Antioch. “You claim you’re following Jesus. But you sin. Everybody sins. You shouldn’t, but you do. So are you saying Jesus is okay with your sins? It’s fine with him if you sin? He even endorses your sinful lifestyle? (Because certainly we would never say this.) You need to stop; Jesus can’t save a willful sinner.”

To some degree we still hear this from today’s legalists. Yes, of course we’re to resist temptation and quit sinning—but they turn it into something we have to do lest we lose salvation. Lest we undo everything Jesus did for us. Lest Jesus himself reject us, because sin offends him so much, and he simply can’t work with people like us. It’s a mindset which entirely goes against Jesus’s stated practices in the scriptures, and of course grace. But that’s kinda to be expected of legalists.

So Paul preemptively deals with this one: No it’s not okay to sin. Jesus doesn’t say that; Paul didn’t write that. Sin is still evil and wrong. But the fact Jesus works with and through sinful humans, does not mean he endorses sin, nor overlooks sin, nor did some behind-the-scenes jiggery-pokery which nullifies the Law and means nothing’s a sin anymore.

What he did do, is kill our sin. Killed it on the cross with himself. Killed us on the cross with himself. Our penalties are paid for. Our debts are paid. Now follow Jesus.

Hearing God. It’s vital!

Prayer is of course talking with God: We talk to him and he talks back. It’s not a complicated idea—though Christians obviously overcomplicate it all sorts of ways.

And because it’s talking with God—’cause he talks back—prayer is therefore the most common, usual way God communicates with people.

Yep, even more common than bible. I know; I’m fully aware plenty of Christians claim bible is the only way God communicates with people. They believe this because it’s what they’ve been taught: “God doesn’t talk to people anymore, so stop trying to hear him and read your bible.” And hey, if you shut your ears to everything God tells you in prayer, in dreams, through prophets, or even full-on personal appearances, of course you’re gonna claim he only communicates through bible. It’s like someone who throws out their phone and computer, burns their mail, refuses to interact with anyone in person, and only communicates by carrier pigeon: Okay, guess we’d better get some carrier pigeons. God’s frequently willing to work around our ridiculous arbitrary rules. But for normal people, we pray and he talks back.

I’m also aware there are Christians who insist they don’t hear anything. They’ve tried hearing God, but they got nothing. So they gave up and presume prayer is unidirectional: We talk, he hears, but he says nothing—’cause he doesn’t need to say anything, ’cause he said everything he cares to say in the scriptures. Such people are easily swayed into believing God only talks through bible. You can find whole churches full of people who claim they never, ever hear God in their prayers.

But you’ll also find that’s what they tell you when other people from their church are around. In private, they’ll confess they did hear God once. Or twice. Or all the time.

And hearing God is confirmed by the scriptures. All over the scriptures. ’Cause the guys who wrote the scriptures heard God, and they’re writing about other people who likewise heard God. The whole reason there are scriptures in the first place is because people hear God. Yeah, certain cessationists are gonna claim prophecy doesn’t work that way; that prophets opened their mouths, God took ’em over like a ventriloquist manhandles a puppet, and his voice came out of ’em. Or his words flowed from their pens. Whichever. But that’s more like the mumbo-jumbo we find among Spiritualists and pagan religions; it’s not at all how God works. The prophets came to God with questions—

Habakkuk 1.2-4 GNT

2 O LORD, how long must I call for help before you listen, before you save us from violence? 3 Why do you make me see such trouble? How can you stand to look on such wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are all around me, and there is fighting and quarreling everywhere. 4 The law is weak and useless, and justice is never done. Evil people get the better of the righteous, and so justice is perverted.

—and God responds with answers.

Habakkuk 1.5 GNT

Then the LORD said to his people, “Keep watching the nations around you, and you will be astonished at what you see. I am going to do something that you will not believe when you hear about it.”

(Followed by an answer they probably didn’t like at all—if you keep reading Habakkuk.)

This is why prayer and prophecy is so closely connected: It’s how God gives prophets his messages for other people. We’ll ask God questions; he’ll give answers, and add, “Tell this to others.” ’Cause other Christians have the same questions, and God’s answer applies to them too.

But of course if you don’t pray—or you think all your prayers are unidirectional—you’re not gonna get prophecies like this. Or have any prophecies in your church at all. Or you’ll have what your preachers claim are “prophecies,” but they’re all angry, political, fruitless, and otherwise inconsistent with God’s character.

The resurrection in 𝘔𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘸.

Matthew 28.1-10 KWL

1 After sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week,

Mary the Magdalene (and the other Mary) comes

to see the sepulcher.

2 Look, a great quake happens,

for the Lord’s angel, which comes down from heaven,

upon coming, rolls away the stone

and is sitting down upon it.

3 Its appearance is bright as lightning,

and its clothing white as snow.

4 The sepulcher guards shake in terror of it,

and become like the dead.

5 In reply the angel told the women, “Don’t fear, you two:

I knew you seek Jesus the crucified.

6 He’s not here. He’s risen, just as he said.

Come see the place where he was laid.

7 Go quickly; tell Jesus’s students

that he’s risen from the dead,

and look, he goes before you into the Galilee.

He will see you there. Mark what I tell you!”

 

8 The two, leaving the sepulcher quickly,

with fear and great joy,

run to report to Jesus’s students.

9 Look: Jesus meets them, saying, “Hello!”

They come to him, grasp his feet, and worship him.

10 Then Jesus tells them, “Don’t fear.

Go. Report to my brothers

so they can leave for the Galilee,

and there they will see me.”

Ordinarily in the synoptic gospels, if they share a story in common, Matthew and Luke typically use Mark as the main source of their information. It’s why the gospels sync up so well.

But in the resurrection stories, they don’t sync up very well at all. Oh, they get the basics right. Jesus rises before dawn, the women get there first, there’s an angelic explanation of what just happened, and everybody’s freaked out because they weren’t expecting it—even though Jesus totally foretold it.

The stories are all different because the writers of the gospels aren’t quoting one another anymore. They’re quoting four different people who were there. Tradition claims Mark gets its data from Simon Peter… though if that’s so, why didn’t Peter tell Mark about running to the sepulcher to see for himself? Lk 24.12, Jn 20.3-10 John of course is written by an eyewitness; we don’t know Matthew’s source (and no, it’s not the apostle Matthew; there are two Matthews); and we don’t know Luke’s.

What we do know is Matthew and Luke chose to go with their independent sources rather than Mark—probably because they figured they had a better account. More details, perhaps. Mark does after all end with the women being told Jesus was risen… then drops the story. Hence other endings were added. Endings which ancient Christians much preferred.

Abortion, and Christian conservatives.

Abortion doesn’t come up in the bible. At all.

Infanticide does. Many ancient cultures used to strangle or smother a baby after birth. Ex 1.16 Or drown it, either in a nearby river Ex 1.22 or the local bathhouse. The Romans were notorious for exposing their unwanted kids to the elements: If a patriarch didn’t consider their child healthy enough, or simply didn’t want another kid, he could order it to be abandoned in the woods, to die of exposure.

The scriptures don’t specifically condemn such practices as murder… but neither do they treat ’em as if they’re not murder.

Miscarriage does come up in the bible. Again, it’s not condemned as murder. But it’s not like the ancients didn’t know how to trigger a miscarriage. There were certain herbal poisons you could take, and a miscarriage would result. Sometimes the mother would die too, but them’s the risks. Since people didn’t care for these risks, what they usually went with was infanticide.

Now there is a command in the Law which indicates God doesn‘t approve of triggering a miscarriage.

Exodus 21.22-25 KJV

22 If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. 23 And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

“Her fruit depart” implies a premature birth; “mischief follow” implies the baby is born dead, or dies. So the guy who punched the mother could merit a life-for-life penalty. Unless the judge or her בַּ֣עַל/baál, “master”—her patriarch, meaning her husband, father, brother, father-in-law, or whatever man had the care of her—had mercy, the perpetrator would be executed. Usually by her closest male relative, who was instructed to take vengeance in such cases. Nu 35.19

Now obviously there are Christians who read this passage differently. They figure “her fruit depart” means of course the child died, and “mischief follow” actually means the woman had complications, which varied. Hence that list of “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth,” etcetera: These were all the types of “mischief” which might follow. If the man knocked her eye out, he’d have to pay with his own eye. But if the man knocked her fetus out… he’d only have to pay a fine. Because a fetus doesn’t count as a life. And hey, they could always make another.

So, some Christians are adamant this passage proves a fetus is a baby, and other Christians are adamant this passage proves just the opposite. Which one they go with, largely depends on their abortion politics.

Because, like I said, the bible is mum on the subject of abortion.

Not that people don’t try to read abortion into all sorts of verses. And frequently they take the scriptures out of context—because they’re not really interested in what these passages are actually about. They have an ax to grind. They’re entirely sure they’re right, and God has taken their side. True of most political issues, but abortion especially.

Christians who don’t believe God’s a trinity.

God’s a trinity. Jesus is God, his Father is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; yet there’s only one God, an idea which shoulda sunk in after read in the Old Testament about the Hebrews trying to worship multiple gods. Nope, there’s just the One God—and these three are the One God.

And that’s a hard concept for a lot of people. It’s a paradox, and they simply can’t allow God to be a paradox: God is reasonable, rational, logical. Not impossible. And when we’re trying to explain our belief in God to other people, it’d help a whole lot if he didn’t sound impossible. So they downplay trinity as much as they can… and in some cases, dismiss it altogether. God, they insist, is not a trinity.

Some of these people happen to consider themselves Christians. Sometimes really good Christians, as opposed to Unitarians who consider Jesus and his teachings to be optional. They actually strive to follow Jesus’s teachings. They just… don’t really care for the trinitarian idea. Lots of them lean more towards modalism, the belief God isn’t three people (or in theologian-speak, “persons”), but has different modes—and sometimes he’s the Spirit, sometimes the Father, sometimes Jesus.

Problem is, modalism—and any other theory about God which denies the idea of trinity—is inherently flawed. We Christians didn’t just make up the idea of trinity. We found it in the bible. We tried to explain it, couldn’t, and came up with a doctrine which states what little we do know… and likewise what we can’t say trinity is, ’cause it goes too far, and it’d be wrong. God’s not a three-headed, three-bodied, three-pronged being. He’s not a committee of three gods which speak in union, like the Mormons posit. He’s not one guy with three personalities, like someone with dissociative identity disorder whose three alters happen to also be nice guys. He’s not working in three modes.

These alternative ideas are wrong, and often so wrong it gets in the way of people’s relationship with God. (And may get in the way of their salvation.) That’s why we call ’em heresies.

Of course people regularly, incorrectly think “heresy” means bad. (Usually ’cause certain cultish heretics are really bad people.) So they’re gonna be offended by my calling them heretics. “I’m no heretic. You are. You’re the heretic. Trying to get people to believe in three gods…” No I’m not; three gods is a heresy too.

But okay, in the interest of fairness I’ll present their point of view. Generally they stick to five points.

Levites: A tribe of priests.

If you’ve heard of “the 12 tribes of Israel,” I remind you ancient Israel had 13 tribes, not 12. Yet the bible regularly, consistently refers to the 12 tribes, because it’s referring to the tribes which had land, which had territory we could see on a map, designating their borders and landmass. One of the tribes had no such territory. Just cities—which were located without the boundaries of the other tribes. The tribe wasn’t on the map, so it wasn’t listed with the 12.

This tribe would be Levi, the descendants of Levi ben Israel, Jacob and Leah’s third son. He’s notorious for plotting with his elder brother Simeon to kill a Canaanite who raped their sister… and while they were at it, kill every last man in the rapist’s city. Ge 34 Jacob greatly disapproved of his homicidal sons, and as patriarch he could’ve totally punished them for it, but it seems he did nothing. The only thing he did was “bless” them by prophesying Simeon and Levi (really, their tribes) would be scattered.

Genesis 49.5-7 NKJV

5 “Simeon and Levi are brothers;

Instruments of cruelty are in their dwelling place.

6 Let not my soul enter their council;

Let not my honor be united to their assembly;

For in their anger they slew a man,

And in their self-will they hamstrung an ox.

7 Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce;

And their wrath, for it is cruel!

I will divide them in Jacob

And scatter them in Israel.”

Bible doesn’t say anything about them hamstringing an ox, so I can’t speak to that. Maybe it was something they did while murdering Canaanites; maybe it was some sick ’n twisted fun they had as kids—some kids get off on torturing animals, and it’s no surprise when they grow up to be mass murderers. But that’s pure speculation.

In any event Simeon’s descendants, or tribe, were granted a territory which was wholly surrounded by Judah—and the Simeonites were eventually absorbed into that tribe. As for Levi’s descendants, the Levites (Hebrew לֵוִיִּי/Levyíy, or לֵוִי/Leví for short), they were granted cities, not territory.

Seems rather harsh to curse Levi’s descendants for their murdery ancestor. But in fact this wasn‘t a curse. The LORD did this to designate Levi’s tribe—yep, the entire tribe—as his priests.

Israel was God’s chosen people. Levites became the chosen of the chosen. They weren’t to become farmers (well, other than farming their own gardens), nor merchants, nor builders. Instead they were to worship God, maintain the worship sites, carry out God’s rituals, and otherwise help their fellow Israelis follow God. Priesthood, not land, was to be their birthright.

So whenever we find the word “Levite” in the bible, it’s considered a synonym for priest.

And of course Christianity has a parallel. Every Christian is likewise a priest.

“Praying right.”

Prayer is, as I’ve said, simply talking with God. But for many Christians, it’s a profound ritual which connects us with the divine… so that we can get stuff from him.

This is why their focus is so much on effective prayer. On powerful prayer, and how “the power of prayer” can change one’s life. On appeasing God… as if he’s a petty human oligarch who won’t give us what we want unless we suck up to him in just the right ways, and if we get any one part of the ritual wrong, “Whoops! Didn’t do that right. No grace for you.”

From time to time I get rebuked for “praying wrong.” For not being formal enough, not bowing my head, not closing my eyes, not being solemn enough (or at all; I have no problem making jokes with God), not taking my hat off. I remind you when the LORD first spoke to Moses, he never told him to remove his keffiyeh; only his shoes. Ex 3.5 But y’know, different cultures.

The idea that we activate prayer through our good works, is of course crap. But popular crap. And because the people who practice this crap will actually get their prayers answered—not because they did the rituals right, but because God is good; it’s correlation not causation—they’re convinced the crap works. You’re never gonna change their minds about it. I’ve tried; I’ve failed.

Since they are still legitimately talking with God, I figure that’s the important thing. Yeah they’re wasting their own time and effort in trying to talk with him “right,” and they unnecessarily agitate themselves over the rest of us who “boldly approach the throne of grace” He 4.15 i.e. approach God informally, ’cause we can, ’cause he’s Dad. But don’t let them bug you. Talk with God, and don’t fret at all about making sure you’ve prostrated yourself properly. He doesn’t care about that, and we shouldn’t either.

Portable bibles.

For convenience, we Christians oughta always have a bible on us, or near us. And now we technically do: We have phones. Our phones have web browsers. And those web browsers can easily call up Bible Gateway, or one of the other bible websites—and voilá, we got bible.

But before phones with internet access became so ubiquitous, I encouraged Christians to get a portable analog bible. One they could always have on them, or carry with them. Not just stash extra bibles everywhere we usually go—like an extra bible at work, in the car, in one’s gym locker, and so forth. I’m talking about a convenient portable bible. I tend to get ’em pocket-size, and call ’em “tiny bibles.” But they don’t need to be tiny. Just portable.

Yes, bible apps have kinda made the portable bible moot. Our phones are already portable, and they’re usually on our person. Plenty of women keep their phones in their pockets, not their purses (assuming they’re wearing pants, and their pants have decent phone-size pockets), so for many people our bibles are always on us. Always immediately accessible. More so than a portable bible.

Still, I’m kinda partial to tiny bibles. Even though I read my bible app way more often than that tiny bible, I still stash a tiny bible in my duffel bag.

Trinity: The paradox in the middle of Christianity.

TRINITY 'trɪn.ə.di noun. The godhead as one God in three people: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

[Trinitarian trɪn.ə'tɛr.i(.)ən adjective.]

In the scriptures, from the very beginning of the scriptures, it’s strongly emphasized that YHWH, the LORD God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, is one. Israel was to have no other god.

Deuteronomy 6.4-5 KJV

4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: 5 and thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

 

Exodus 20.3-6 KJV

3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me. 4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: 5 thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; 6 and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

One God. No other gods. Got that?

Well, Israel didn’t always get that, which is why the LORD let their enemies conquer them, drag them off to Assyria and Babylon, and keep ’em there till it finally sunk in. After which, idolatry wasn’t so much the problem anymore; hypocrisy was. Still is. But I digress.

Okay, one God. Till we get to the gospels, and the teachings of Jesus, and the rather obvious statements from the gospels that Jesus is actually, literally, YHWH. Jn 1.1 But, y’know, he’s now human. Jn 1.14 He came to earth and walked among his people, and explained who God is so we’d understand him better. Jn 1.18

Yet Jesus talks about his Father, “whom you say is your God.” Jn 8.54 They’re two different people. But wait… wasn’t it spelled out in the Old Testament how there’s only one God? Weren’t the Israelis dragged off to exile because they refused to acknowledge this?

Then Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit. He’ll pray to the Father, who will send us this παράκλητον/parákliton, “helper, assistant, advocate” (KJV “Comforter”) who’s gonna both dwell among us, and in us. Jn 14.15-17 It’s also made pretty explicit this Holy Spirit is likewise God. So there are three different people who are God. But wait… one God, right? Unless the Israelis got sent into exile for nothing.

This idea of three people (or to use the way theologians much prefer to put it—and rebuke me all the time for not putting it—three persons) who are nonetheless one and only one God, is called trinity. And it’s the hardest concept in Christian theology. It’s brought far wiser men than me to ruin. It’s based on two ideas, both of which are absolutely true. And both absolutely contradict one another.

1. There’s only one God.
2. Three individual people—Jesus, his Father, and the Holy Spirit—are God.

Got that? Good. Hold both ideas in your head at once. Accept and believe both. Never dismiss one idea in favor of the other, or try to explain away one by using the other. And there ya go. That’s the trinity.

The sermon.

SERMON 'sər.mən noun. Homily. A lecture on a moral or religious subject, usually presented to a church.

2. A long, boring lecture.

[Sermonic sər'mɑn.ɪk adjective, sermonize 'sər.mən.aɪz verb.]

In sermon-focused churches, the central part of their Sunday morning worship service (or Saturday evening, or Wednesday night, or whenever they hold it) is duh, the sermon. If they didn’t have a sermon, or if the sermon wasn’t impressive enough, they “didn’t have church.” They could shorten the music; they could skip holy communion entirely. But they’d better have a sermon.

I should point out neither Jesus nor his apostles instructed us to preach sermons as part of our worship services. Seriously; they didn’t! But I suspect that’s because they presumed religious instruction would automatically be part of the services anyway. Christians are expected to strengthen, encourage, and comfort the church, 1Co 14.3-5 and good religious instruction does that.

And religious instruction was the whole point of synagogues. Pharisees invented them so Israel wouldn’t be religiously illiterate, and fall into sin. Early Christian churches behaved an awful lot like Christian synagogues: At some point someone would go up front, read the scriptures, sit down, and answer questions about what was just read. Over time this instruction got less interactive, and more lecture-y.

For many Christians, sermons are the entire point of attending a church service: They wanna learn about God! They don’t know enough about him… or do, but wanna hear more. The newbies need to learn the basics, and the oldtimers need to be reminded to stick to these basics. As knowledgeable as we might get about theology, bible history, religious practice, and our own experiences with God, we need to be regularly reminded: Love God, love your neighbor, pray, share Jesus, be fruity, do good works, and grow his kingdom.

Pray!

Prayer is talking with God. No more; no less; that’s all.

Yeah, you’d be surprised how many people, including us Christians, claim it’s way more, and way more complicated, than that. To them, prayer is a profound mystical and spiritual undertaking. It’s a connection with God which links our entire being to him. Done right, we don’t just communicate with him, but commune with him; we become one with him. It must only be done thoughtfully, seriously, soberly, and ritually. Only then will it work.

Thing is, when you’re just talking with anyone, like your parents, kids, spouse, best friend, whomever: Sometimes these conversations can likewise feel like a profound thing. Sometimes you feel so connected with them, you feel like you’ve connected on multiple deep levels; you might even feel like you’re one with them. These conversations work. That’s why we can say the very same things about praying to God—because it is the very same thing.

These folks simply have an over-romanticized, over-spiritualized idea of what prayer is. Which is why they’re so loath to give up the idea and admit we’re just talking.

Our English word “pray” used to mean “beg,” as in the King James Version’s many uses of “I pray thee.” Ge 18.3 KJV, etc. Most instances of “pray” in the Old Testament have to do with begging God—same as a lot of instances nowadays. Most prayers are requests. Nothing wrong with that, but this idea of begging is pretty deeply embedded in our ideas about prayer. Begging is why humans have all these rituals and postures involved with praying: It’s what humans demand of the people who came to them with requests. They want us to humiliate ourselves and suck up to them. So we basically teach our fellow Christians we oughta approach God the very same way.

And we don’t need to. God is not a dick!

Hebrews 4.15 KJV

Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.

Y’know what “coming boldly unto the throne” means? It’s not like serfs approaching their feudal lord, with bows and curtseys and facing the ground lest they make eye contact. It’s like when the lord’s 5-year-old daughter comes into the room, climbs into his lap, and hugs him while he’s trying to be all lordly—and he lets her ’cause he loves her. We don’t have to be formal and ritualistic with God when we pray: He’s our dad. Acting like he’s not—like he’s that feudal lord whom we have to appease before we can get anything out of him—means we don’t really know him at all.

And not all prayer consists of begging God for stuff. Sometimes we’re thanking him. Sometimes it’s praise. Sometimes apologies: We screwed up, and we’re acknowledging this. Sometimes we’re sharing with him what we’re going through, or venting our frustrations or outrage. Sometimes we have questions and know God has answers.

Basically all the same reasons we humans talk to one another, we talk with God.

Yeah, sometimes prayer even consists of lying and gossip. Shouldn’t, but we don’t always realize what we should and shouldn’t tell him. But even so: Prayer is just talking.

Who decides what’s orthodox and what’s not?

I’m involved in a few different online discussion groups.

In one, the subject of Darbyism came up. ’Cause one of the members is Darbyist, and wanted a shout-out from all his fellow Darbyists in the group. To his surprise, turns out most of us aren’t Darybist at all… and in fact a number of us stated Darbyism is unbiblical, and some of us called it faithless… and some of us flat-out called it heresy.

Heresy is taking it too far. Those who called it heresy got some backlash from the rest of us. ’Cause while we might disagree with Darbyism (often profoundly), we’d call it wrong, but we won’t call it heresy. We don’t throw around the H-word so casually.

Of course there are plenty of Christians who use it all the time. There’s a pastor I’m thinking of (and no doubt you can guess who he is) who drops the H-bomb every chance he gets. If you’re not Protestant, Calvinist, and Darbyist like he is; if you claim miracles still happen; if you have women in any positions of leadership in your churches; if you in any way support members of the opposition party… well you’re heretic and going to hell. The way he describes it, nine-tenths of humanity is going to hell, and God is somehow pleased with this idea. No surprise, he doesn’t talk a lot about how God is love. In his mind, God’s really not.

I think he’s profoundly wrong too. And yet I won’t even call him a heretic.

See, there’s a difference between being wrong, and being heretic. Guys like this pastor don’t recongize any such difference: Heresy is whenever we get anything wrong. Understanding the trinity wrong is heresy… and so is mispronouncing “Habakkuk.”

Okay. If every wrong belief is heresy, does this mean any wrong belief might send us to hell? Well few of them will ever go that far. They’ll make distinctions between minor sins and mortal sins. Little heresies are forgivable, big heresies not so much, and the biggest ones are so grievous you instantly forfeit salvation and are doomed. For that matter, in Dante Alleghiri’s Inferno he tells of some people whom he was surprised to find in hell—he thought they were alive! Turns out they committed such grave heresies, they were instantly extracted from their bodies and put in hell… and their now-dead body is actually being puppeted by a demon. (Yes this is pure mythology; the bible teaches no such thing. But some Darbyists have borrowed this idea for how they imagine the Beast is gonna someday be taken over by Satan.)

When I was a kid, I grew up among people who defined heresy like this. Get God wrong just enough, and you’re outside the pale of God’s kingdom altogether. But this thinking is largely based on faith righteousness—the belief we’re saved by “faith,” only they don’t actually mean faith; they mean the faith, i.e. orthodoxy. Get the faith wrong, and you’re not Christian. So even if you have actual faith, and trust God to save you… whoops, you got the trinity wrong, so he’s not gonna. His grace is wholly contingent upon our good work of getting our theological ducks in a row.

Of course it’s the wrong definition of heresy. I go with the historical defnition: Heresy is any belief or opinion which goes against historic Christian orthodoxy.

If we believe and teach contrary to what Christianity has taught since the ancient church—long before Christians split into the Orthodox and Catholic camps, and way before Protestants ever came around—that counts as heresy. Whenever theological issues became particularly divisive, ancient Christians convened church councils, hammered out their differences, and defined orthodoxy. They didn’t do it comprehensively, but they covered pretty much everything vital, and did it really well.

Church councils since antiquity.

But after the Orthodox/Catholic split, Christians don’t do these councils anymore. Not because we can’t; ecumenical Christians certainly make an effort. But none of these councils can claim to speak for all of Christendom.

The Roman Catholics hold councils every few centuries. Their most recent, Vatican 2, took place in the 1960s. They call their councils ecumenical, and claim they speak for every Christian. Thing is, no other church, no matter how much they respect Catholics and consider them our sisters and brothers in Christ, considers these councils anything but internal Catholic matters. I may like several of Vatican 2’s reforms (particularly the one which acknowledges Protestants as fellow Christians), but I still feel free to ignore their idea of a male-only priesthood. I affirm a priesthood of all believers, like the scriptures describe. ’Cause I’m not Catholic.

So can any new councils determine something is orthodox Christianity, and condemn beliefs contrary to theirs as heresy? Only if we can get all the Christians together. Good luck with all that; only Jesus is gonna be able to pull it off.

And yet individual churches, and individual Christians, are gonna point to some council or conference, and claim it’s applicable to every Christian everywhere. Some Christian political activist group is gonna gather, write a manifesto denouncing the death penalty, and anathematize every Christian who doesn’t agree with them. And the rest of us who have no problem with executing dangerous criminals (though we may absolutely have a problem with the way the death penalty is implemented!) are gonna feel entirely free to ignore them. Because they don’t speak for Christianity. Nobody but Jesus does, anymore. They only speak for themselves.

Sometimes these groups are gonna have a lot of supporters. Fr’instance in 1978 the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy put out their “Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy,” in which they defined what biblical inerrancy means to them. A lot of Evangelicals have decided this council does speak for them, and require anybody who works for their organizations to sign off on the Chicago Statement. If you don’t believe in inerrancy the same way they do, they’d call you heretic, or certainly treat you as one. But again: That’s only among these Evangelicals. You can of course find other Evangelicals who have their own views on inerrancy, who want you to sign off on their statements; or no statement at all. In fact you’ll find a number who chafe at the whole idea of agreeing with someone else’s statement, ’cause once again: These guys don’t speak for Christianity. Why are we ceding them any authority? That authority only belongs to Jesus.

You see the problem. One conference or church doesn’t speak for all of us: We’re no longer functioning as one church. Jesus may ignore all our denominational barriers, but we don’t. Heck, sometimes an individual church will choose to disagree with its own denomination. So how can any church council speak for all of us anymore?

Not that Christians don’t try. Many a preacher, many a church board, many an individual Christian, thinks they can. They’ve read their bibles and are pretty sure they understand it perfectly. They’re pretty sure certain issues are non-negotiable—they certainly are non-negotiable to them!—and therefore anyone who disagrees must be heretic. So they’ll use the H-word. And figure they’re entirely right to.

And they’re not. Orthodoxy and heresy aren’t defined by individual Christians, nor individual churches. They’re defined by Christendom as a whole… and since we’re not a whole anymore, we’re limited to the conclusions we came to when we were a whole. And if you don’t care for the ancient Christians’ conclusions, or wanna add new heresies to the list, I would say you fall in the very same boat as those people who wanna add books to, or take ’em out of, the bible: That’s not for you. That’s been decided long ago.

Later councils, later “heresies.”

What individual Christians, and individual churches, do get to do, is define our own limits. We have the freedom in Christ to decide, “This is what I believe; this is what I’m gonna teach; if you wanna teach otherwise, there are other churches to teach it in, but not mine.” We’re perfectly free to draft faith statements and tell the world where we stand.

In fact it’s probably best we do. If people are gonna worship with us, they oughta know what we and our churches believe! And if they happen to disagree, they may wanna worship elsewhere. I certainly do.

Let’s say I find out my church leaders have embraced cessationism, and use that lens to interpret everything they teach. Um… that’s a big problem. God still does miracles; he ceased nothing. So I can no longer trust a thing these church leaders teach me. I may respect these people’s character, personal behavior, personal devotion to God, but I certainly can’t respect their teachings.

I won’t feel comfortable inviting newbies to such a church, because I’ll have to refute and correct so much. It’ll be a massive stumbling block. Yes we’re all following the same Lord Jesus; I’m not gonna call them heretic! But I can’t stay in such a church. Not unless Jesus personally directs me to reform them—and man alive is that gonna suck, ’cause it’s such a gargantuan task. Not that Jesus can’t easily do the impossible, but still.

Now, that’s me. To many a cessationist, they’re mighty quick to call me heretic. Because they firmly believe miracles are of the devil, so either I believe as they do, or I’m following the devil. I can’t be Christian.

Which church council decided all us continuationists are heretic? Well you’ll find cessationists don’t know squat about Christian history. (They’re way more interested in the future than the past.) So they have no clue that church councils determine orthodoxy and heresy. In fact most of ’em assume all the ancient church councils were Roman Catholic—and they’re not Catholic, so these councils don’t apply to them. Or anyone. Heresy, they figure, is only defined by bible, and thanks to their harebrained interpretations, they’re entirely sure it tells ’em they’re orthodox and we’re heretic.

Now they’re not entirely wrong the bible determines orthodoxy and heresy.

2 Timothy 3.16 KWL

Every inspired scripture is also useful for teaching,

for disproving, for correcting, for instruction in rightness.

But when the scriptures don’t clearly, bluntly say something’s true or false, Christians gotta use wisdom to figure out whether something’s true or false, good or evil. We dig through the scriptures, find proof texts which defend a point of view (hopefully quoted in context!), and take a stand based on them. Same as the Christians of the ancient church councils did: They searched the scriptures for themselves, bounced their ideas off one another, and came to consensus about them. It wasn’t just one nut making binding declarations, nor one faction or party prevailing in a popular vote. It was a diverse bunch of Christians coming to the very same Spirit-led conclusion.

But after the Orthodox/Catholic split, we don’t have diverse bunches of Christians doing that anymore: We have factions. We have denominational councils. We have Catholics who figure they speak for everyone, but really only speak for themselves. That’s one thing the Protestants get right: Their denominations recognize they only speak for themselves, and won’t claim otherwise.

Well, most won’t. Like I said, there are those Calvinists who like to refer to the Synod of Dort, and act as if their ruling applies to all of Christendom. Which is just as loopy as claiming Vatican 2 does likewise.

We’re not in charge of defining orthodoxy.

If Christians could actually get every church on earth (or at least a serious majority of us) to set aside our differences for the sake of our common Lord and his gospel, maybe we could hold a definitive church council again. And maybe we could officially, universally decide certain new controversies count as heresies.

But don’t hold your breath. I expect we’re just gonna have to wait for Jesus to return and rule on these issues personally.

In the meanwhile I’m not wholly sure we do need such rulings. The universal church had seven centuries to sort out the really necessary stuff. Most present-day problems are simply those old heresies with new names, or hypocrisy disguised as righteousness. We don’t have any desperate need for a church council; if we did, the Holy Spirit might actually put one together! But as it is, we can denounce sin, confusion, delusion, and stupidity just fine without another one.

And we Christians need to resist the temptation to seize the reins of orthodoxy, and claim we get to set new standards for who’s in God’s kingdom and who isn’t. That’s not our call; never was. That’s always been up to Jesus, whose judgment is infallible and trustworthy. Us, not so much.

Simon the Cyrenian, the man who carried Jesus’s cross.

Mark 15.21, Matthew 27.32, Luke 23.26.

Enroute to Golgotha, leading Jesus to the place they’d crucify him, the Romans decided he was inadequate to carry his crossbeam.

Movies and art, following St. Francis’s lists of the stations of the cross, depict Jesus falling over a bunch of times. The gospels don’t, but who knows?—maybe he did. He had been up all night and flogged half to death. Between sleep deprivation and blood loss, carrying a hundred-pound crossbeam would’ve been too much for anyone. (No, not the 300-pound full cross we see in paintings, such as the El Greco painting in my “Stations of the Cross” image. Even healthy convicts would’ve found that unmanageable.)

The Roman senate made it legal for soldiers to draft conquered peoples—basically anyone in the Roman Empire who lacked citizenship—into temporary service. Jesus referred to this law when he taught us to go the extra mile. Mt 5.41 So the Romans grabbed an able-bodied passerby to carry Jesus’s crossbeam. And since he later became Christian and his sons became bishops, the writers of the gospels mentioned him by name: Simon the Cyrenian (or “of Cyrene”).

Mark 15.21 KWL

The Romans draft a passerby,

a certain Simon the Cyrenian who’s coming from the fields,

the father of Alexander and Rufus,

so he’d carry Jesus’s crossbeam.

 

Matthew 27.32 KWL

Coming out, the Romans find a Cyrenian person named Simon.

This man, they compel

to take up Jesus’s crossbeam.

 

Luke 23.26 KWL

While the Romans lead Jesus away,

taking hold of Simon, a certain Cyrenian coming from the fields,

they lay the crossbeam upon him

to carry behind Jesus.

Jesus given a robe and crowned with thorns.

Mark 15.16-20, Matthew 27.27-31, Luke 23.11, John 19.2-3, 5-6.

People became Roman soldiers for all sorts of reasons. Some because the Roman army was a path to Roman citizenship. Some as punishment: It was either military service, or slavery and prison. Some for the adventure, or to get rich, or because they couldn’t imagine any other job options. Some because how else are you gonna get to crucify barbarians?

So it’s safe to figure the soldiers under Pontius Pilatus weren’t there to make friends with Judeans. On the contrary: Over time they likely grew more and more tired of Judeans. Especially those Judeans who were bigoted against gentiles, or were outraged over the Roman occupation. The Romans gave ’em legitimate reasons for not liking them: Soldiers tended to abuse their power so they could steal and extort. Lk 3.14 And bullies look for any excuse to justify themselves, so they were happy to return the hostility.

Given the opportunity to abuse a Judean and have some evil fun at his expense, the soldiers took advantage of it. That’s why they beat the crap out of Jesus. Crucifying him wasn’t enough for them: First they had to play a little game they called “the king’s game.”

Mark 15.16-20 KWL

16 The soldiers lead Jesus inside the courtyard,

which is the Prætorium.

They summon the whole unit.

17 They dress Jesus in “purple,”

and place a braided garland on him—of thorny acacia.

18 They begin to salute Jesus: “Hail, king of Judeans!”

19 They strike Jesus’s head with a staff,

and spit on him,

and bending the knee, they’re “worshiping” him.

20 While they mock Jesus, they strip the “purple” off him,

dress him in his own robe,

and send him away to crucify him.

 

Matthew 27.27-31 KWL

27 The leader’s soldiers then, taking Jesus into the Prætorium,

called the whole unit to him.

28 Undressing Jesus,

they drape him in a crimson coat.

29 Weaving a garland of thorny acacia,

they put it on Jesus’s head,

and a reed in his right hand.

Kneeling before him, they ridicule him,

saying, “Hail, king of Judeans!”

30 Spitting on him, they take the reed

and strike Jesus on the head.

31 While they mock Jesus, they take the coat off him,

dress him in his own clothes,

and lead him away to crucifixion.

 

Luke 23.11 KWL

Considering Jesus worthless,

Herod with his soldiers mockingly dressing him in campy clothing,

send him back to Pilate.

 

John 19.2-3 KWL

2 The soldiers, braiding a crown of thorny acacia,

force it on Jesus’s head.

They put a “purple” robe on him.

3 They’re coming to Jesus and saying, “Hail, king of Judeans!”

—as they give him punches.

Nope, Jesus didn’t sweat blood.

Luke 22.39-46.

Before Jesus’s arrest on Good Friday, he went to Gethsemane and spent some time in intense prayer. ’Cause he didn’t wanna get beaten and tortured to death. Who would?

In Mark, only three of Jesus’s students come along with him to pray, but they keep falling asleep and he has to go back and awaken them thrice. In Luke it appears to be all his students, and he only comes back to chide them once. Falling asleep is totally understandable: They’re tired! They just had a big Passover meal and a lot of wine. Plus a walk uphill. Plus it’s late. But Jesus warned them his time was coming, and they needed to pray—not for him, but themselves. They’d be tempted to do a lot of dumb stuff when he was taken from him. (And that’s exactly what we see them do. Shoulda prayed.)

Certain preachers love to quote the Luke version of the story, because they love to point out how Jesus was so incredibly stressed out by his soon-coming passion, he was sweating blood. You see that in verse 44. Here’s the whole passage.

Luke 22.39-46 KWL

39Leaving the seder, Jesus goes as usual to Mt. Olivet,

and {his} students go with him.

40Coming to the place, Jesus tells his students,

“Pray to not enter into temptation.”

41Jesus draws away from the students—

like as far as a stone’s throw—

and takes to his knees and is praying,

42saying, “Father, if you¹ will,

take this cup away from me!

Only don’t do my will,

but yours.”

43{A heavenly angel appears to Jesus,

strengthening him.

44Being in agony, Jesus is fervently praying,

and his sweat is becoming like drops of blood,

pouring out onto the ground.}

45Rising from the prayer, coming to the students,

Jesus finds them sleeping from the grief.

46Jesus tells his students, “You’re² sleeping?

Rise up and pray, lest you² come to temptation.”

Turns out sweating blood is an actual medical condition, called hematidrosis (from the Greek for “bloody sweat”) or hematohidrosis (“bloody water”). It’s rare, but possible. Blood vessels under your skin break from stress, and blood comes out your pores. It looks creepy. But not a lot of blood comes out of you this way, so it’s largely harmless. Might cause a little dehydration, so drink some Gatorade; you’ll be fine.

Preachers find this fascinating. And they love to point out how Luke, the traditional author of this gospel, was a physician! Cl 4.14 So, a scientist! Who’d know all about such medical conditions, right?

But more than once, I’ve heard a preacher claim hematidrosis actually isn’t a harmless condition. They insist it’s life-threatening. That’s why Jesus needed an angel to strengthen him in verse 43: He was on the verge of bleeding out. After all the verse says great drops of blood. Not a little trickle; blood was pouring out of him already, and he hadn’t even been arrested yet! You don’t want Jesus dying before the Romans could unjustly execute him; for some reason that might bungle the atonement. (I’m not entirely sure how. Something about how Jesus had to go through the criminal justice system. Yet at the same time, this system was totally corrupt and totally immoral. Yet at the same time the atonement wouldn’t have worked without it. Frankly it sounds like these guys are following some weird formulaic magical incantation—“No, it doesn’t work unless you cast the spell do it this way!”—but that’s a whole other rant. I digress.)

Anyway, as you can tell from the title of this article, these guys are wrong. Not just about how dangerous hematidrosis is or isn’t. They’re wrong top to bottom; they’re wrong about Jesus sweating blood in the first place. The verse doesn’t say that.

Being good justifies nobody. Nobody.

Galatians 2.15-16 KWL

15 We’re biological Jews, not sinners from the gentiles.

16 We’ve known people aren’t justified by working the Law

—unless we work it because of faith in Christ Jesus;

we trust in Christ Jesus.

Thus we can be justified by faith in Christ,

and not by working the Law,

since working the Law won’t justify any flesh.

Previously:

“How Paul remembered the Council of Jerusalem.” Ga 2.1-5

“Paul and the apostles of note.” Ga 2.6-10

“Paul challenges Simon Peter.” Ga 2.11-14

This passage is part of a bigger paragraph and context, but I still wanna zoom in on just this.

The bigger context, just so you know: Simon Peter was treating gentile Christians as second-class Christians, so Paul had to stand up to him. Peter totally knew better, ’cause he did after all defend gentile Christians at the Council of Jerusalem. But certain visiting legalists got him to backslide on that issue, and Paul challenged him: “If you, a Jew, act like a gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the gentiles to be like Jews?” Ga 2.14 KWL

Some translations take these verses and make ’em part of what Paul told Peter. I don’t know that Paul presented this entire argument, in this way, in these words, to Peter at that time. Pretty sure he didn’t. But he did remind Peter of what Christ Jesus teaches the both of them, and us: We’re not saved by being Jews, nor becoming Jews. We’re saved by following Jesus. The gentile Christians did not need to first become Jews so they could be saved; and treating them like they did is heresy. It’s not just a minor error; it’s a whole other false gospel.

Thing is, legalistic Christians still teach this heresy. As do dispensationalists, some of whom teach that Jews can be saved simply by being Jews. (I mean, it’d be nice if they became Christian, but these dispensationalists claim they don’t actually need to. Considering Peter and the apostles went to so much trouble to preach the gospel to their fellow Jews, this idea isn’t biblical in the slightest. Sounds more like a trick of the devil to keep Jews from hearing the gospel.)

Paul challenges Simon Peter.

Galatians 2.11-14 KWL

11 When Peter came to Antioch, I personally stood against him,

because he was being in the wrong.

12 For before the coming of certain people from James,

Peter was eating with gentiles.

When they came, Peter was withdrawing,

and separating himself—afraid of the circumcised.

13 The other Jews acted like hypocrites along with Peter,

so even Barnabas himself was led astray by their hypocrisy.

14 But when I saw they aren’t consistent with the gospel’s truth,

I told Peter in front of everyone,

“If you, a Jew, act like a gentile and not like a Jew,

how can you force the gentiles to be like Jews?”

Previously:

“How Paul remembered the Council of Jerusalem.” Ga 2.1-5

“Paul and the apostles of note.” Ga 2.6-10

Simon Peter is an apostle of note. He’s the first in every list of the Twelve because he’s Jesus’s best student—the first to declare Jesus as Messiah, the only one who tried walking on water, the first to realize there’s no one else worth following, the one who renounced him yet came back to him. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, Peter’s also the guy who spoke at the first Christian Pentecost and led thousands to Jesus; he cured the sick, raised the dead, and brought the gospel to gentiles. Two of Peter’s letters are in our bible, and the gospel of Mark is likely based on his personal recollections. Not for nothing do Roman Catholics consider him the head apostle, and are eager to claim their pope now sits in Peter’s seat. (Pope Francis would more humbly claim he certainly tries to.)

But if you’ve read the gospels, you know Peter wasn’t infallible. None of us are.

Paul wasn’t either, and would be the first to say so. 1Co 15.9, Ep 3.8 But here Paul tells of the time he had to stand up to Peter… because Peter was getting mixed up with the hypocrite faction in his church.

In this passage Paul refers to Peter as Κηφᾶς/Kifás, a Greek form of the Syriac nickname Jesus gave to Simon bar John: ܟܐܦܐ/kifá, “stone” or “rock.” Jn 1.42 The KJV renders Kifás as “Cephas,” and some Christians have either got the idea Cephas is some other apostle, or try to read something into Paul’s switch from Πέτρος/Pétros, “Peter,” in Galatians 2.7-8, to Kifás in verse 9 and afterwards. Why the switch? Some speculate Peter somehow fell from grace. But that’s rubbish: Pétros is Greek for “stone,” same as kifá is Syriac for “stone.” It’s just Simon’s nickname in different translations, and Paul’s audience knew both translations. They’re interchangeable names. That’s why I translate ’em both as Peter.

Peter didn’t fall from grace, because God doesn’t work like that. Peter only stumbled. He behaved one way when he first came to Antioch, Syria; then as soon as certain legalists showed up, Peter behaved another way. Paul correctly identifies this as hypocrisy. And it can happen to anyone. Sometimes because we have no backbone, and bend with every passing fart. Sometimes because we never learned how to resist peer pressure, or can’t withstand how much of it we’ve encountered. Sometimes because we heard some really clever, but really deceptive, arguments. My guess is it’s this last one—but regardless of the reason, Peter fell into hypocrisy. And Paul had to tell him so.