Karma has a breaking point. Grace doesn’t.

Matthew 18.21-22 KWL

21 Simon Peter came and told Jesus, “Master, how often will my fellow Christian sin against me,

and I’ll have to forgive them? As much as sevenfold?”

22 Jesus told him, “I don’t say ‘as much as sevenfold.’

Instead as much as seven seventyfolds.”

The point of this teaching, as many a preacher will remind us, is to keep forgiving till we lose count.

True, there are those individuals who keep track of offenses to a ridiculous degree. They won’t lose count; they can enumerate every last offense. And if you get ’em angry enough, they will.

But typically they have a breaking point, and it comes way before 490. Won’t even make it to 10. “Three strikes and you’re out” tends to be the common rule, as if baseball’s limits should apply to all humanity. Simon Peter’s seven strikes sounds far more patient and generous than most. (I’m betting he thought so too.)

The reason I bring up forgiveness, and the idea of losing count of the times we forgive, is to reemphasize the Christian lifestyle is about grace. About radical forgiveness. About not keeping a record of wrongs. 1Co 13.5 About loving people like our Father does.

But human nature keeps imposing limits where God means for there to be unlimited grace.

Even “good Christians” will rebuke us for “letting people take advantage of your kindness.” Because to their minds, unlimited grace is wrong. Radical forgiveness is naïve. Not keeping track of how people are wronging you, means you’re getting exploited. You’re only to love them so far. Love them only when they fulfill certain conditions. Cut ’em loose when they stumble. Practice a little tough love; it’s what’s best for them.

It’s because our culture doesn’t do grace. It does karma. People have to earn our compassion, merit our help, be worthy of our time and efforts. Basically our aid isn’t charity; it’s an investment. And if the people we invest in, never ever produce any kind of return on our investments, we’re just wasting our resources. We’re not trying to help the needy; we’re trying to profit off them. It’s not Christianity; it’s capitalism.

This expectation of reciprocity is why a lot of the so-called “love” we see Christians exercise, doesn’t quite fit Paul’s definition of agapi. Our “love” has strings attached. While proper love never fails, 1Co 13.8 this “love” has a limit. Might be three strikes. Might be when the physical attraction wears off. Might be once someone’s borrowed just enough money. “Fool me twice, shame on me” indicates for a lot of people, everyone gets one, and only one, error.

Dropping a little Hebrew on the fellow Christians.

For some Christians, the only fellow Christians they ever encounter are a small, insulated bunch. Basically it’s just family members and their church, and the few books and podcasts they personally approve of. They’ve got narrow little boundaries and won’t travel outside. Often out of the dark Christian fear they might be led astray, but more often it’s just because they don’t care to stretch themselves. Either way it’s a shame. But I’m not gonna discuss that particular shame today. Me, I browse widely.

And from time to time I run into Christians who insist on referring to Christ Jesus as Yeshúa ha-Mešiakh. They’ll spell it lots of different ways; I spell it the way it’s meant to sound, so if it looks a little unfamiliar they might not be pronouncing it properly. Basically it’s Hebrew for “Jesus the Messiah.”

Because they learned some Hebrew. And they’re gonna use their Hebrew on everything.

• God’s gonna get called Adonái/“my Master” or ha-Šém/“the [LORD’s] Name.” And if they wanna call him “Father,” they’ll stick with Abba.
• The Holy Spirit’s gonna be Ruákh ha-Qodéš.
• The Old Testament’s gonna be the Tanákh, the common Hebrew acronym for Toráh-Neveím-Khetuvím/“Law-Prophets-Writings.” The New Testament’s the Brit Khadašá.
• Student, or disciple, is gonna be a talmíd. Plural talmidím.

And don’t be surprised if they generally drop Hebrew words and terms all over the place. And, every so often, Yiddish.

Why? Three reasons.

1. They took a Hebrew class, so they’re showing off.
2. They’re of Jewish descent and grew up knowing a little Hebrew, so they’re showing off.
3. They think it’s important for us Christians to recognize our traditions stretch all the way back to the ancient, noble culture of Israel. So they’re showing off.

Yeah, I realize a number of them will be totally offended that I’ve accused them of showing off. The rest will shrug and say, “Well yeah. But who’s it hurting?” Well, nobody really. So relax.

“Just war”: Vengeance disguised as righteousness.

Humans like to take revenge.

Watch two kids on the playground. One will smack the other, entirely by accident. (That’s what they claim, anyway.) The other kid will immediately want to retaliate. And not in some equitable blow-for-blow response, either. They’ll wanna beat the living tar out of the other kid.

That’s not a learned behavior. Just the opposite: It’s instinct. It’s our self-preservation instinct, but warped by human depravity till we defend ourselves from future harm by preemptively destroying anything or anyone who might harm us. Kids have to be trained to not retaliate like this.

A good parent is gonna teach their kids to forgive. (It was unintentional, after all.) Even selfish parents won’t necessarily demand a reciprocal response. Although the dumber ones might: “She hit you? Hit her back!” But this behavior will backfire: Kids’ll do as comes naturally, and hit back harder. And then the first kid hits back even harder. And things escalate from there.

I know; from time to time someone will insist revenge isn’t part of human nature; that left to their own devices children will be naturally peaceful and good. Clearly they don’t have children. Nor do they remember they were conditioned to forgive and let live, rather than respond in vengeance and wrath. True, some kids are passive, some are cowards, and some are much easier to train than others. But that doesn’t mean we don’t all need such training. We humans aren’t peaceful creatures.

Take these playground disagreements to an adult level, to a national level, and we wind up with war.

One nation harms or offends a second nation. The second nation will wanna retaliate. I was gonna say “understandably,” because we all understand they would; we would. And the wronged nation won’t wanna respond proportionally: They wanna respond punitively. They wanna hurt the nation which hurt them. Make ’em suffer—or at least fear to ever attack again. Karma goes right out the window.

But we’ll call it “justice.” That’s the Christianese term for vengeance. Actual justice is about doing what’s just—what’s equitable, what’s fair, what’s morally right. You know, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, limb for limb. Ex 21.24 What westerners mean by karma. But when American Christians say “justice” we are, once again, talking about a punitive response. It doesn’t match the crime; it exceeds it because we feel the perpetrator should suffer loss. Steal $100 and you should have to pay back $150, with the extra $50 teaching you to never do that again. Even if you accidentally, unintentionally took the $100: You should’ve been more conscientious.

Since the people of the United States predominantly claim to be Christian, this mindset of “justice” is immediately gonna slam into a little something Jesus taught about war:

Matthew 5.9 KWL

“Those making peace: How awesome!—they’ll be called God’s children.”

Wait, Jesus expects God’s kids to make peace?

Well of course. Because that’s how you actually stop a war. Not by destroying your opponent, but by befriending your opponent. Not with vengeance but forgiveness. It’s how God acts towards his kids. He could easily flatten us. But he’d rather adopt us.

The problem with Jesus’s teaching? It violates our sense of vengeance. It interferes with our desire to destroy our enemies. It strikes us as impractical: “But how’s that gonna stop them from still doing evil?” We don’t like it, so we find excuses to never do it—same as every other teaching of Jesus.

Racism has no place in God’s kingdom.

Ephesians 2.11-22.

To remind you: Paul didn’t write Ephesians to his fellow Jews. He wrote it to éthnoi/“ethnics,” goyím/“nations”—words we usually translate with the Latin-derived word gentile, meaning “people of another nation.” Jews use the word to describe non-Jews. (And Mormons use it to describe non-Mormons.)

Ancient Jews tended to highlight the primary physical difference between Jews and gentiles. Wasn’t skin color, ’cause Jews, then and now, came in every color. It was whether or not you had a foreskin. Following God’s instructions, Jews cut the foreskin off every 8-day-old male. Lv 12.3 Jews were therefore “the circumcised,” and gentiles obviously weren’t. In fact the popular Jewish term for a gentile, which we even find in the New Testament, was akrovystía/“foreskin.” Most bibles tend to be more polite, and translate this word as “the uncircumcised.” They really shouldn’t. The crudeness of referring to people as “foreskins” gives us a better idea of just how ancient Jews thought of gentiles.

’Cause to their minds, gentiles were unclean. Ritually unclean, ’cause when would they ever get the chance to hear God’s expectations for ritual cleanliness? But literally unclean too, ’cause for the most part, gentiles didn’t wash. Didn’t always bathe regularly. They’d eat anything. (The Romans even prided themselves on the weirdness of what they’d eat.) Touch anything, wear anything (or nothing), have sex with anything or anyone, worship a lot of icky gods whose priests demanded icky forms of worship. And they still had their dirty foreskins.

Hence Pharisee custom was to never, ever touch a gentile. After all, you don’t know where they’ve been.

We gentile Christians would like to imagine we’re not that offensive. But that’s because we weren’t raised with Pharisee prejudices. Instead we were raised with our own—and if we were raised by racists, some of our prejudices are pretty similar. People have it drummed into their heads from an early age: Foreigners are gross and dirty. Touch not the unclean thing.

And then Christ Jesus goes and turns these filthy pagans into family.

Ephesians 2.11-15 KWL

11 Therefore remember: Previously you, gentiles in the flesh,

called “foreskins” by those called circumcised (which was done in the flesh by hand);

12 you, at that time, were Christless. Alienated from Israeli citizenship.

Foreigners to covenants of promise. Having no hope. Godless in the world.

13 Now, in Christ Jesus, you who were once far away, became near through Christ’s blood,

14 for Christ is our peace, making both sides one,

destroying the barrier fence—our fleshly racism. 15 Clearing the field of doctrinal commands.

Thus he can build the two into one new person in him, making peace.

This wasn’t a radical new idea to the ancient world. The Persians, Greeks, Romans, Huns, Rashiduns, and Ummayyads didn’t consider ethnicity to be a barrier to citizenship. But the Jews did—which is why Israel never became an empire, and Pharisaism struggled to spread. Thing is, since God created everyone, loves everyone, and wants to save everyone, racism is unnatural and has to go.

“He had some good bits.”

She came up to me after the sermon.

SHE. [referring to the speaker] “Wasn’t he great?”

ME. “Yeah, he had some good bits.”

SHE. “Good bits? That was like good solid food!”

ME. “Meh.”

She left to go find someone who was as excited about the sermon as she was.

This didn’t take place at my church; I was visiting another church in town. And “she” is someone who used to go to my church. She stopped after we wouldn’t let her into leadership. For good reason; she’s spiritually immature. Regularly tossed to and fro by every charismatic fad, exactly like St. James described the unwise. Jm 1.5 So she went to find another church whose standards weren’t so high. Which is probably why she was visiting this other church.

I was visiting because of a special guest speaker. I won’t give his name, to protect the totally guilty. Many Pentecostals in northern California know who he is. Quite a few Pentecostals outside the area have heard of him. I hadn’t heard him preach before, so that’s why I was visiting.

Good public speaker. Entertaining, winsome, enthusiastic, clever. Had some really positive, uplifting, encouraging things to say. Quoted the bible out of context like the devil itself, though.

No I’m not calling him a devil. Nor an antichrist. Nor uninspired, nor a false teacher, false prophet, false anything. Just saying he’s really sloppy when it comes to interpreting bible. Lots of preachers are, because they don’t do their homework. They repeat what popular Christian culture claims the bible means, rather than double-check anything for themselves. They figure if their conclusion sounds all right, it doesn’t matter what route they took to get there. And obviously they didn’t pay attention in science class… or math, forensics, logic, hermeneutics… Let’s just say they spent their college years, if they had any, having fun instead of studying.

From what I know, this preacher earnestly tries to follow Jesus. Loves him, loves his church, wants to do right by God. But for every time he interpreted bible properly, he likewise interpreted the bible questionably, or downright wrong. And because it was stuff the audience had never, ever heard before—which stands to reason; he was making it up—they were gasping and oohing and declaring “Amen” like he was reading golden plates fresh from heaven.

So they were impressed. The flighty woman from my church was impressed. Me, I know more bible than that. I make absolutely no claims of infallibility, but the preacher kept quoting verses that I’ve either researched, or at least know fairly well. And spun ’em in all sorts of directions with no respect at all for literary or historical context. I don’t know where this guy went to school, but wherever it was, he had a lot of fun.