Angry prayers.

IMPRECATE 'ɪm.prə.keɪt verb. Call down evil upon.

[Imprecation ɪm.prə'keɪ.ʃən noun, imprecatory ɪm'prək.ə.tɔ.ri adjective]

Yep, there’s a whole category of prayer which is all about people letting loose their rage as they pray. Not because they’re angry with God—although sometimes they might be! But commonly they’re furious at other people, at human behavior, or at Satan itself. So they call down God’s wrath, or put curses on people and things, or otherwise condemn ’em.

I started with a definition of the old-timey word Christians use to describe such things: Imprecatory prayer. (Not everyone knows how to pronounce it properly.) It’s a nicer way of saying “angry prayer.”

And lest you think God doesn’t allow, or listen to, angry prayer: Nope, he permits it. Angry prayers are in the bible. There’s a bunch of ’em in Psalms. ’Cause sometimes King David’s enemies would piss him off, so he’d declare God was gonna do all sorts of savage things to ’em. God didn’t necessarily, because God’s under no obligation to answer our prayers like a leprechaun grants wishes; he can easily tell us no, and often will. So any Christian who panics, “Don’t declare such things into the universe!—it might come to pass!” clearly hasn’t read their scriptures.

But yeah, angry prayers are in the bible. Including the New Testament, lest you get the idea it’s solely an Old Testament thing. Paul damned anyone who preaches another gospel than his, Ge 1.8-9 and damned anyone who didn’t love the Lord. 1Co 16.22 Jesus himself damned a fig tree, Mt 21.19 and warned several cities at the rate they were going, they were on the road to hell. Lk 10.13-15

Among those who have read their scriptures, one favorite imprecatory prayer is good ol’ Psalm 109. Many a partisan has joked about how it’s their favorite prayer for certain politicians. “Oh, I pray for the president every day; I pray directly from the scriptures—”

Psalm 109.6-13 KWL

6 Place a wicked person over him, with Satan standing at his right.

7 May those judging him return an evil verdict, and his prayers be offensive.

8 May his days be few, and another ruler supervise him.

9 May his children become fatherless, and his woman a widow.

10 May his children wander, wander, begging, digging through people’s trash.

11 May debt seize everything he owns, and strangers steal his labor.

12 May he never find love; his fatherless children never be given grace.

13 May his generation be the last one, and his family name be wiped out.

And so on. You get the idea. David wrote this because he wanted this guy thoroughly crapped upon, because this enemy and his friends had done likewise to David. David wanted karmic justice—for the evildoer to get what David felt was coming to him.

Now as I said, there are certain Christians who think imprecatory prayers are awful and wrong; that because anger is a work of the flesh, we ought never pray angry. And obviously there are Christians who think otherwise. Generally we’re of three minds:

• All for it. Evildoers need and deserve our condemnation.
• Wholly inappropriate for Christians: We’re ordered to forgive. Mk 11.25 Forgive friends, forgive enemies, forgive everyone, or God won’t bother to forgive our own sins. Mk 11.26 What’re we, of all people, doing calling down curses upon others?
• Only appropriate towards the devil and devilish things, bad behaviors, evil ideas, false thinking, corrupt institutions. We draw the line at fellow human beings. Never ask God to destroy women and men, no matter how bad they get. ’Cause God made them in his image, Jm 3.9 and wants to save everyone, 2Pe 3.9 not destroy ’em. Everybody’s redeemable.

Me, I lean towards the third category. And a fourth: If we’re angry, and we need to calm down and get ahold of ourselves, go ahead and pray while angry—and ask God to help you regain control; to help “gentle” you, as a horse-trainer might say. We need a healthy outlet for anger, and sometimes that outlet is to tell God you’re pissed off. Tell God what you’d really like him to do to all those people who’re frustrating you—and let him take that rage away.

Dark Christians, angry prayers.

In my experience the crowd who’s fondest of imprecatory prayer consists of dark Christians. Of course.

In life, humans get angry. Christians get angry. Yes, even Jesus got angry, Mk 3.5 and no doubt still gets that way. Anger’s a natural emotional reaction when we wanna see things happen a certain way and they don’t. It’s even appropriate when injustice takes place. In itself, anger isn’t necessarily evil. But we certainly use it as an excuse for every kind of evil. And a lifestyle of anger means we’re not following the Holy Spirit, who gives us peace. Angry Christians are fruitless Christians.

Their justification is the prophets prayed such prayers. And the apostles got a little outraged from time to time too. Even Jesus had his “woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” bits in the gospels. Mt 23.13-29 (They don’t realize “woe unto you” means “how sad for you,” not “damnation upon you.” They don’t really care either.) They figure they have a valid precedent for praying likewise.

But here’s the thing: When Jesus condemned cities, he didn’t do it maliciously. He doesn’t wanna destroy anyone! God wants everyone to be saved. 1Ti 2.3-4 Jesus is loving, patient, and kind, and that’s the attitude we have to read into everything he does. Even when he condemns.

We aren’t so loving, patient, and kind. We’re angry, spiteful, and cruel. We bring those attitudes into our prayers, and they’re the wrong ones. God doesn’t care to answer fruitless prayers. If our imprecatory prayers are borne out of anything but the Spirit’s fruit, we really have no business praying them.

Wait, so how do we kindly curse anything?

Really easy: When a loved one is sick, we have all kinds of compassion for the person, right? But none for the ailment. None for the virus. None for the bacteria making ’em puke. We want it out of them and gone. So we can easily condemn the illness: “I rebuke this illness, and demand it come out of you in Jesus’s name.” We never have to lose our heads in doing so.

Now if we can’t do that—if we always lose control of our emotions when we rebuke evil—we’d better hold off on the angry prayers. Maybe for a long time. Ask the Spirit for the self-control we’re clearly missing.

Dark Christians neither understand this, nor care. Like a gun nut who also has no self-control, they just keep indiscriminately firing away—unaware God swapped their ammo for blanks long ago, because he can’t trust them to pray right.

God doesn’t have to agree, y’know.

Now yeah, there’s the crowd who ban angry prayers of all sorts. Not just because Christians should forgive instead of cursing. Ro 12.14 A number of Christians are convinced curses stick; that when we call down evil, we actually have the power to make evil materialize out of thin air. Supposedly one of the ways God made us in his image, was to make us able to create ex nihilo/“out of nothing” like him.

No; God did no such thing. Everything we humans create is made of pre-existing material. Not even our ideas are created from nothing: Most are obviously based on something, and if its influence isn’t obvious to you, it is to the person who last had that idea. We can’t create anything out of thin air, much less evil. Humans need power to fuel our curses, and unless you’re colluding with devils, the power has to come from the Holy Spirit. But if the Spirit has no intention of empowering our angry demands (and he usually doesn’t), nothing’s gonna come of them. We have him under no obligation whatsoever.

Remember Saul of Tarsus? Violent persecutor, enemy of Christ? Ac 8.3, 9.1 Betcha plenty of Christians, at the time, damned Paul to the stinkiest parts of hell for what he was doing to Jesus’s church. Did God agree with any of these vengeful prayers? Absolutely not. Rather than destroy Saul, he flipped him. Jesus appeared to him, commissioned him as his apostle to the gentiles, and made him spend the rest of his life willingly undoing all the evil he originally. Ac 26.14-18 God knows better, and his plans are infinitely better than our curses.

We can curse a person up, down, and sideways, and add “In the name of Christ Jesus” as much as we wish. But if Jesus doesn’t approve, nothing’s gonna happen. Our imprecatory prayers come to nothing… for they don’t actually conform to God’s will. His will be done, remember? Lk 11.2

For there’s no fruit of the Spirit in angry prayer. There’s no love nor compassion; no kindness, forgiveness, grace, nor mercy. Take another look at Psalm 109: Regardless of the horrible things David’s enemy might’ve done to him, what business did David have in wishing horrible things upon his enemy’s children? What kind of twisted prayer demands that God make the innocent suffer? Obviously David’s prayer doesn’t reflect God’s mind at all.

Okay, so what’s it even doing in the bible? Well, it’s not to teach us it’s okay to wish evil upon the innocent. It’s to teach us it’s okay to vent to God. It’s okay to tell God how we honestly feel: We feel like being harsh, unforgiving, unyielding, loveless, and savage. None of this comes as any surprise to God, of course. He knows our hearts. (He’s heard way worse.) And it’s far better we express these sentiments to God, than ever act on them.

Learn from the angry psalms.

Seriously, some of the angry psalms are messed up. Some poet actually sat down, wrote these lines, set it to music, and for the past 25 centuries Christians and Jews have recited and sang these prayers. Sometimes several times a year.

Yes sang. Scottish Presbyterians, because they originally wouldn’t sing anything that didn’t come directly from the bible, translated the psalms and set ’em to music. And sometimes they’d sing this.

Psalm 137.7-9, Scottish metrical psalms

7 Remember Edom’s children, LORD, who in Jerus’lem’s day,

“E’en unto its foundation raze, raze it quite,” did say.

8 Oh daughter thou of Babylon, near to destructión:

Blessed shall be he that thee rewards, as thou to us hast done.

9 Yea, happy surely shall he be thy tender little ones,

Who shall lay hold upon, and them shall dash against the stones.

Pretty sick.

When we’re not frighteningly taking these passages out of context, Christians tend to treat ’em like we’d treat an embarrassing racist grandmother: We pretend she didn’t just say horribly offensive things. We blame it on her being old, out of touch, out of date. We don’t stand up to her. Not even sure we should, ’cause aren’t we supposed to respect our elders?

Same deal with the imprecatory psalms. We tend to skip ’em and pretend they’re not there. Or we admit they’re there… but just in this one case, we’re gonna borrow the Dispensationalist idea which figures they don’t count anymore: They’re from a past era, but God works all different nowadays. Even though we should know better than to nullify parts of the bible, solely because they make us uncomfortable.

Instead we need to take serious looks at these prayers. Understand where the author was coming from: Her homeland was just conquered by a horde of filthy, violent pagans. Her homeland was burnt to the ground. Possibly her kids and husband killed in front of her; possibly she was raped; now she was getting dragged to Babylon to become a slave. And the Edomites, their cousins who were supposed to be allies, supposed to be fellow worshipers of the LORD God: They rejoiced at Jerusalem’s destruction.

Along the way her captors, for sport, ordered her to sing a few Jerusalem worship songs for their entertainment. Ps 137.3 So how would you feel? More than likely, you’d want to compose a really sarcastic song in response—take advantage of their unfamiliarity with Hebrew—just to get back at them a little.

Well, here’s that song. “God, do vile things to the Edomites. Do nauseating things to the Babylonians.” The smashing-kids-on-rocks bit? Betcha the Babylonians had done it to her. And she wanted life for life, Dt 19.21 which seemed only fair.

Should she have forgiven the Babylonians? Well duh; of course she should have. The rage would eat her up inside if she didn’t. But here, we get to see how she, and the other survivors of Jerusalem, really felt. These were the emotions boiling in her, which she didn’t bother to hide from God. It’d be stupid to try.

That’s the point of these psalms. Total honesty with God. He wants this kind of integrity from us: What’s in our minds, oughta be in our prayers. He knows us inside and out, whether we admit this stuff or not. But if we can’t be honest with God, of all people, our relationship with him is simply gonna suck.

If we’re this kind of angry—if we want our enemies to burn in hell forever and ever—let’s just be honest and say so. Let God minister to our anger. Let him help us get beyond it.

Anger vented.

One thing you’re gonna notice in most of the angry psalms: By the end of it, the psalmist finishes by praising God. The anger’s gone. It was dealt with, and done with.

True of us too. Once we confess our anger to God, and put it in his hands, he tends to dissolve it. We give this emotion to God, and he casts it away. We vent, and he purges us.

But if we don’t do this—if we stamp our rage down, and pray only holy-sounding things which don’t truly reflect our state of mind—it damages us in two different ways. I already mentioned how our relationship with God’s gonna suck, ’cause we’re embracing hypocrisy instead of authenticity. But there’s also the fact that when we hold onto our anger it grows, and corrodes us. Turns into other evil things, like revenge, bitterness, joylessness, hatred, prejudice, argumentativeness, and violence.

We’ve all encountered angry Christians. They’re awful, aren’t they? They do such damage to everyone around them, and drive people away from Jesus. Let’s never unthinkingly become one ourselves. Give these emotions to God, and tell him, “God, I’m furious; help me.” Trust him with it. He can take it, and will. Submit to him, and let him free you.

The transfiguration of Jesus.

Mark 9.2-8, Matthew 17.1-8, Luke 9.28-36.

Jesus’s transfiguration refers to the day he took three of his students up a hill for prayer, and started glowing like a space alien, two Old Testament prophets showed up to chat with him, and the Father Almighty ordered the kids to listen to him—freaking them out, as it would pretty much anyone who saw such a thing.

It’s a story which confuses a lot of Christians. We teach Jesus is totally God, yet at the same time totally human. Problem is, Christians read this story and ditch all the ideas about him being totally human. I’ve even heard one pastor call this story “When Jesus took off his human suit”—as if his humanity is just a costume Jesus could unzip and climb out of, like aliens in certain Doctor Who episodes, or the devil in this one extremely stupid End Times movie.

Theologians call it “God incognito.” It’s not just a Latin word; we have incognito in English too. When you’re incognito, you’re going by a secret identity, like when Batman disguises himself as Bruce Wayne and pretends to be a silly billionaire so criminals won’t bother him in the daytime. (What, you thought Batman was the pretense?) And according to these Christians, Jesus was secretly God: He looked human, acted human, but underneath his human façade is the infinite Almighty God, whose face no one can see and live. Ex 33.20 They don’t believe Jesus really emptied himself to become human Pp 2.6-7 —because they certainly never would. He only feigned weakness, like a hypocrite, and kept his power secret.

Most of the reason they believe this, is because they wrongly equate divinity with power. If God’s no longer almighty, they figure he’s no longer God. They define him by his abilities. Which is a dangerous way to think. If God’s defined by his abilities, then of course we humans should be defined by our abilities… so what if we’re in any way disabled? What if we’re sick, infirm, born with birth defects, developmentally disabled? Well, that’d make us less than human… and make it easier for evil people to justify mistreating or euthanizing us.

God describes himself as almighty, but defines himself by his character. God is who he is, Ex 3.14 which reflects his personality, sinlessness, truth, love, joy, peace, patience, and so forth. His power is an optional trait, one he voluntarily set aside to become one of us. Still God though.

So no, Jesus’s transfiguration isn’t about taking a break from his human act. It means something very different—and its interpretation is based on Jesus’s statement right before the transfiguration story in each of the synoptic gospels:

Mark 9.1 KWL

Jesus told them, “Amen! I promise you some who stood here shouldn’t taste death

till they might see God’s kingdom has come in power.”

 

Matthew 16.28 KWL

“Amen! I promise you some who stood here shouldn’t taste death

till they might see the Son of Man come into his kingdom.”

 

Luke 9.27 KWL

“I truly tell you: Some of those standing here shouldn’t taste death

till they might see God’s kingdom.”

The authors of the gospels deliberately put this statement before the transfiguration story, because that’s what the transfiguration is about: Seeing a glimpse of God’s kingdom in power.

The story.

Mark 9.2-8 KWL

2 Six days later, Jesus took Simon Peter, James, and John,

and brought them up a high hill on their own—and transformed before them.

3 Jesus’s clothes became a brilliant, intense white, like no launderer on earth could whiten.

4 They perceived Elijah and Moses were with them, and they were speaking to Jesus.

5 In reply, Peter told Jesus, “Rabbi, how good it is we’re here!

We can make three tents! One for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah…!”

6 For he didn’t know what else to say; they were terrified.

7 A cloud began to overshadow them, and a voice came from the cloud:

“This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”

8 And unexpectedly, they saw nothing and no one as they looked around,

but Jesus alone with them.

 

Matthew 17.1-8 KWL

1 Six days later, Jesus took Simon Peter, James, and John his brother,

and brought them up a high hill on their own.

2 Jesus transformed before them, and his face shone like the sun.

His clothes became white like a light.

3 And look, they perceived Elijah and Moses were with them, speaking with Jesus.

4 In reply, Peter told Jesus, “Master, how good it is we’re here!

If you want, we’ll make three tents here! One for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah…!”

5 As Peter was speaking, look: A bright cloud overshadowed them, and look: a voice from the cloud saying,

“This is my beloved Son. I rejoice at him. Listen to him.”

6 On hearing this, the students fell on their faces in violent fear.

7 Jesus came and, touching them, said, “Get up. No fear.”

8 Lifting up their eyes, the students saw nothing but him—Jesus alone.

 

Luke 9.28-36 KWL

28 It happened eight days after these sayings,

Jesus took Simon Peter, James, and John, and went up a hill to pray.

29 During his prayer, the form of Jesus’s face became another,

and his clothes became a radiant white.

30 Look, two men were speaking with Jesus—

who were Moses and Elijah, 31 seen in glory,

speaking of Jesus’s departure, which was about to be fulfilled in Jerusalem.

32 Peter and those with him were heavy with sleep, but now they were awake,

and saw Jesus’s glory, and the two men standing with him.

33 It happened as the prophets were leaving Jesus,

Peter told Jesus, “General, how good it is we’re here!

We can make three tents! One for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah!”—not knowing what he said.

34 As Peter said this, a cloud came and overshadowed them.

The students were afraid as they entered the cloud.

35 A voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is my chosen Son. Listen to him.”

36 As the voice came, the students found Jesus alone.

They were silent, and in those days, reported nothing they saw to anyone.

Like most traumatic experiences (i.e. Easter), the stories don’t line up perfectly, and don’t have to. If you insist the bible has no errors, you can easily find commentators with complex explanations as to how these discrepancies aren’t real, but I won’t waste your time: Discrepancies aren’t relevant. This happened, and the gospels all agree about the basics: Jesus took his three best students up a hill, transformed, spoke with Moses and Elijah, and the Father told the students to listen to Jesus.

A revelation of the future.

Now, why’d Jesus show his students this? To show them the kingdom in its power. It’s not Jesus with his humanity burnt off; it’s a flash-forward.

In their near future, Jesus got killed. He warned ’em it was coming—and Simon Peter freaked out at the idea, and Jesus had to call him Satan to snap him out of it. Mk 8.33, Mt 16.23 But after killed, resurrected. Jesus’s previous human body was destroyed, and his new human body—which he still has, and each of us will likewise get a new body once we’re resurrected—sorta looks like our current human bodies, and sorta doesn’t.

Jesus, fr’instance, can glow. When he appeared to John in Revelation, his appearance there sounds a lot like his appearance at his transfiguration.

Revelation 1.12-16 KWL

12 I turned round to see the voice speaking with me,

and in so doing I saw seven gold lampstands;

13 in the middle of the lampstands, one like the Son of Man,

clad in a full-length robe with a gold belt wrapped round his chest.

14 His head and hair: White, like white wool, like snow. His eyes like fiery flames.

15 His feet the same: White bronze, refined in a furnace. His voice: Like the sound of many waters.

16 He had seven stars in his right hand. From his mouth came a sharp, double-edged saber.

His face: Like the sun, shining in its power.

John could identify this vision as Jesus because he’d seen him look like this before. Apparently he keeled over both times. Mt 17.6, Rv 1.17

Next we have Moses and Elijah. Interpreters are a little bit flummoxed by this: We understand Elijah never died, because God had him ascend to heaven in a whirlwind. 2Ki 2.11 Moses however did die, Dt 34.5-7 and if this isn’t a vision of the future, it means Jesus was talking to Moses’s ghost. Which is, as most Christians understand it, a really problematic idea: We’re not to consult the spirits of the dead. Lv 19.31 Even if you believe, as Roman Catholics do, that the saints are already resurrected and alive in heaven, they teach this resurrection of the saints didn’t happen till after Jesus died… which means Moses would still be a ghost. Elijah was still alive, so no problem there; Moses was dead, so big honking problem. Historically Christians have either tried to ignore this problem, or weasel around it by pointing out it’s Jesus, so this must be a special case. But if we’re to truly say Jesus never sinned, 2Co 5.21 we can’t go having him violate his own Law. Not even in “special cases.”

Back in the first century there was a popular Jewish novel called The Assumption of Moses. In it, God resurrected Moses before the End, just like he did Jesus. But Satan claimed Moses for its kingdom, pointing out how Moses had once murdered an Egyptian. Michael, the head angel, claimed Moses for God’s kingdom. Jesus’s brother Jude actually refers to this scene to make a point. Ju 9 And some Christians imagine Jude’s reference means The Assumption of Moses literally happened—Moses was raised from the dead, and was as alive as Elijah. So, problem solved! Except this defies common sense. When I refer to Doctor Who, as I did earlier in this article, I know the Doctor is a fictional character; in no way am I claiming he’s not. And I don’t presume to claim Jude believed Satan and Michael really did fight over Moses, and Moses really was resurrected.

But he will be resurrected. At the End, when we all are. And that’s what Jesus’s students saw: Moses, after the resurrection, in God’s kingdom. Moses of the future. Which is why Elijah and Moses, like Jesus, were also glorified. Lk 9.31 Elijah, though he hadn’t died, will be resurrected while still alive, same as we will be if we’re still alive when Jesus returns. 1Co 15.51-52 That’s why the three of them could talk about what Jesus was about to do in Jerusalem. For them, it had already happened.

Peter’s crazy reaction.

Let’s be kind to Simon Peter. Very few of us would have said anything reasonable when we’re suddenly confronted with a vision which seems to defy reason.

More than likely, Peter thought the End had come. (And about time, too!) He suddenly got to see Jesus come into his kingdom, and be glorified, and famous Old Testament prophets had come to hang out with him. And Peter got to hang out with all of them! What’ll we do first? Well, if you guys are gonna be here a while, we’ll need shelter. Let’s build tents!

Mark points out Peter didn’t know what to say, and Luke said he didn’t know what he was saying. The kids were all scared to death. After all, it looked like the End had come. And while plenty of Christians claim we’re totally ready for Jesus to return—we’re all prayed up, and trust Jesus to get us through it—the reality is when it happens, a lot of people, Christians included, will be soiling our shorts in fear. All this stuff we’ve only been talking about, discussing academically, discussing hypothetically, will be real. It’s one thing to talk about heavenly armies invading the earth. It’s another to find yourself in the middle of one.

Peter often gets mocked here for being foolhardy. I say he was being brave: He assumed whatever was gonna happen, even though he was on the verge of falling over in fear, he was gonna contribute to it. He, at least, was willing to build tents. Good for him. Totally wrong interpretation of what was happening, but right attitude. We need to adopt Peter’s attitude. We might want learn from Peter’s mistake, and sit on our interpretations a bit until God weighs in, but this willingness to help out in whatever God’s doing: Spot on.

But—unless we really are talking about the End—all good things must end, and God decided to end this vision. A cloud shadowed it, God told the students to listen to his Son, and when the cloud lifted there was no one but Jesus. And Jesus told them to be quiet about what they saw.

So. Why’d he show this to them? Encouragement, of course. He wanted them to see what they were working towards. Most of us have been working all our lives in one thing or another, and never yet got to see the fruits of our labor. I’ve worked with kids, and in some cases I got to see them grow up and make something of themselves. And in other cases, they made more of a mess than anything else. But that was years later. At the time I was working with them, it would’ve been nice to have a hint my hard work was gonna pay off. And sometimes, God was kind and gave me such hints. So that’s how I see Jesus’s transfiguration: Rough times were coming, but this would be the conclusion.

So how often did Peter, James, and John cling to this memory in order to get them through the rough times? Don’t know. Hopefully it was often. When God gives me hints, I cling to them a lot. I’ve known other Christians who were, so they claim, given similar hints—but I saw no evidence that they believed or trusted them, for they were still gloomy and pessimistic and joyless. That’s why I wonder whether they really did hear from God. You’d expect the fruit of such a vision to be joy and peace, right? Or perhaps they did hear from him, but don’t know how to trust him, and so their lack of spiritual fruit has turned God’s spiritual blessings into useless trivia. 1Co 13.1-3 How sad for us when that’s us.

Well, Jesus wanted things kept quiet until he was resurrected—until people could see one of the things in this vision had been fulfilled, and that Jesus could shine brighter than the best-bleached clothing. Nope, it’s not a vision of Jesus with his mask off. It’s of Jesus in the glory which he intends to share with his followers.

Orthodoxy: Getting our theological ducks in a row.

ORTHODOX 'ɔr.θə.dɑks adjective. Correct; conforms to what’s commonly or traditionally believed true; generally accepted as right.

2. Usual, conventional, normal, customary.

3. [capitalized] Of the ancient churches originating in the eastern Roman Empire, which formally split from the Roman Catholics in 1054.

[Orthodoxy 'ɔr.θə.dɑks.i noun.]

Christianity is primarily about trusting and following Christ Jesus. We read what he taught, agree with him, and do as he said; we join his kingdom, with him as our king.

An important secondary thing (and you just know people miss the point and turn it into the primary thing) is what we believe about Jesus. How we understand him, and who we understand him to be, are mighty important things. ’Cause when we misunderstand who Jesus is, we follow him wrong. Aren’t even following him at all, in many cases: We’re following an imaginary Jesus who looks a lot more like us, and our biases and prejudices… or who looks more like the cult leaders who got us to believe in their imaginary Jesuses.

Obviously people had wrong ideas about Jesus while he was still walking the earth. Definitely didn’t stop after he left: There were Pharisees who were pretty sure his kingdom couldn’t include gentiles, or Greeks who were pretty sure Jesus can’t have come to earth in a physical body, ’cause animal matter is icky and gross. There were Egyptians who objected to the idea Jesus is God, and said he’s gotta be a lesser god, not the God. Don’t forget all the con artists inventing new religions, who decided to throw bits and pieces of this new middle eastern religion into their mixtures to make themselves sound more exotic. (Nope, it’s not a new practice. Humans have always been doing that.)

So… what’s correct and what isn’t?

Who decides orthodoxy?

Well, here’s where things get tricky. How do we determine which Christians, and Christian beliefs, are orthodox, and which of ’em are wrong, heretic, or even evil? How do we sort the wheat from the weeds, the good from the dumb, the gold from fool’s gold, the kosher hot dogs from the pure pink slime?

Well, every church in Christendom claims they have the solution: They’re orthodox. Believe ye in their doctrines, and ye shall be saved. Believe ye not in their doctrines, and out you go. Either they’ll kindly ask you to go elsewhere, or they’ll formally excommunicate you, and hand you over to Satan, 1Ti 1.20 ’cause they’re pretty sure God won’t have you.

I agree every church’s leadership has the ability to decide for themselves what they believe, and how firm they’re gonna emphasize those beliefs. Fr’instance one of my previous churches believed Christians shouldn’t drink. No, the bible mandates no such thing; it only recommends we don’t get drunk. Ep 5.18 But that church ministered to a lot of alcoholics, and the leaders felt those who could drink might mislead those who can’t. So it’s more important to protect weaker believers. Ro 14 Makes sense, right? But is this a make-or-break issue, where you’re going to hell if you drink? Absolutely not.

…Except one of the church’s leaders believed strongly and vocally that if you drank, you probably were going to hell. Drinking meant you thought so little of your fellow Christians, you were so selfish as to do your own thing without taking other people into consideration, that you were essentially an antichrist. He doubted thoughtless people like that were even saved. To his mind, people whom God truly saved people would never, ever do that. To him this was a make-or-break issue. Drink, and you’re heretic.

Now who died and made him God?

But that’s how it works when individuals get to decide what’s orthodox and what’s not. All of us have our favorite beliefs, and most of us will turn ’em into priorities and absolutes—and not just for us personally, but for everyone. Every Christian has to think and believe as we do.

Or we’ll go the opposite extreme: We’ll dismiss and permit all sorts of things. We’ll call it “generous orthodoxy.” But our liberalism will allow things we really shouldn’t. Paul had to rebuke the church of Corinth for not just including a guy who was banging his stepmother, but for being proud of how inclusive they were. 1Co 5 Look, we gotta be gracious and embrace sinners, and forgive them everything, same as God forgives us. But Jesus expects us to turn from such sins, and stop doing ’em, not make accommodations. A church which doesn’t teach likewise isn’t following Jesus.

So while churches are free to set a standard—and really oughta—do they set a universal standard, true for every Christian everywhere? Well, some of us think we do. Fundamentalists in particular. Disagree with their doctrines and they’ll insist you’re not a real Christian. In fact some of ’em are mighty sure they’re the only real Christians, and when the rapture happens the only ones we’ll find in heaven are Fundies, the first apostles, and Ronald Reagan.

But realistically though: Who sets the ultimate standard? Who gets the final word?

I say Christ Jesus. Should be Jesus, right? I mean, why’re we calling ourselves “Christians” otherwise? If we’re gonna be judged in the End by him, obviously he determines what’s correct and what isn’t. That’s the whole point of his teaching, “You’ve heard it said… but I tell you” Mt 5.38-39 —he defines Christianity. Not me. Nor my favorite Christians. Nor my favorite church. Nor my favorite beliefs, faith statements, creeds, or anything else. We don’t get to the Father except through Jesus, Jn 14.6 and that’s true of our beliefs as well: We don’t “get” God unless Jesus interprets him for us. He sets the standard—and he forgives us when we fall short of it, as we will.

Beyond Jesus, we got the ancient creeds. And this part gets controversial for Fundamentalists, who insist they get to define orthodoxy; not some ancient “Catholics.” (Even though the creeds were written long before the Roman Catholic Church came into existence.) Whenever heresy became a serious issue in the Roman Empire, the emperor would call a council of every leading Christian and have ’em sort it out. I believe their conclusions are consistent with the scriptures, and so has nearly every Christian since. Their conclusions aren’t comprehensive—there are still a lot of wrong ideas they never got round to addressing!—but they got to all the important ones, all the Christianity-defining ones. So they defined orthodoxy too.

Misusing orthodoxy.

Two common mistakes Christians make about orthodoxy.

First, faith righteousness: Many Christians think we’re only saved when we believe all the right things. That if we get any of our beliefs wrong, Jesus’ll say, “Whoops, you didn’t pass the orthodoxy test,” and it’s off to hell. This is what they mean by “saved by faith”: If you put your faith in the wrong beliefs, it doesn’t save! It condemns.

It’s absolutely wrong, of course. We’re saved by God’s grace alone. The Protestant slogan sola fide, “faith alone,” refers to how we’re justified, not how we’re saved. We trust Jesus, Ga 2.16 the one whom the Father sent us, Jn 6.29 and it’s through this faith God grants us grace. Ep 2.8 Not through our individual orthodox beliefs; it’s through trusting Jesus.

The reason Christians teach faith righteousness is pretty simple: They don’t understand grace. As we can tell by how utterly graceless they get, and how quick they are to condemn. Much as they correctly point out we’re not saved by works, they somehow wanna slip into the mix, without anyone really noticing, the hard work of sorting out our beliefs and becoming orthodox Christians. And convince us if we don’t do it, we’re not really saved—because they don’t believe, can’t believe, God might extend his grace to heretics. They’re not gracious, so they wanna remake God so he’s ungracious too.

Second, the idea since orthodoxy doesn’t save, it’s not important. Or not that important. Hence many a Christian figures we can believe as we like, since all roads lead to God anyway, and God’ll forgive everything and sort us all out.

Look, the reason God saves us is so we can do good works. Ep 2.10 Not so we can sit on our growing behinds and bask in his salvation. Now that we’re saved, we got work to do! And just so we get cracking on the stuff God actually wants us to do, instead of the busywork our Christianist culture does instead, it just makes sense to get to know the actual God, instead of the Christianist interpretations which con us into doing anything and everything else—preferably things which get their candidates elected. Stand back and look at what they expect us to do. Now, if Jesus is just gonna overthrow all these works once he returns, stands to reason it’s a colossal waste of our time, effort, money, and passion.

If we want a growing relationship with God—heck, if we want a relationship with him period, instead of just taking him for granted—it only makes sense we’ll try to get to know him as he really is, and not just embrace whichever interpretation of him is most convenient. We’ll trust him enough to actually tackle the things he tells us to do, instead of preemptively assuming they’re impossible, unfathomable, too righteous for unrighteous humans to approach (sola fide notwithstanding), too perfect for imperfect humans to do without ruining everything. We’ll embrace God instead of embracing cop-outs.

After all, Jesus came to earth to reveal God to us. Jn 1.18 Dismissing Jesus’s mission as irrelevant doesn’t strike you as the most Christian of behaviors, does it?

Evangelism… in a “Christian nation.”

There’s a myth going round the United States that we Christians are a tiny, oppressed minority, shrinking all the time thanks to the insidious forces of paganism and nontheism in our secular culture.

It’s rubbish. And I know; Christians don’t wanna believe it’s rubbish. A lot of us are deeply invested in the idea the world’s only getting worse… and they believe Jesus will intervene once it’s the worst it can be. (Whereas I don’t believe he’s forced to wait for us to get depraved enough; he’ll return whenever he wants.) But statistics don’t confirm their deeply-held beliefs. True, the percentage of Americans who identify as Christian is going down. The Pew Research Center pegged it at 65 percent in 2019. But that’s just pagans who believed themselves Christian, recognizing they’re really not. They’re coming out of the closet.

As for me, I share Jesus with people, like every Christian should. Most often by chatting with strangers in coffeehouses, but sometimes I’ve gone door to door. You wanna find out how truly secular your community is, try tabulating them like a census worker: Go from house to house, and meet ’em where they live. What you’ll find out is Christians are hardly a minority. We’re the vast, overwhelming majority.

Some towns are more pagan than others. In more devout towns, 99 out of 100 figure they’re Christian. In more pagan cities (i.e. San Francisco or Portland), it’s still more than half. On average I’ve found two out of three identify as Christian… so yeah, about the same as the Pew Center’s findings.

So when you go forth and share Jesus with people, you’re largely gonna find they know him already. Or at least think they do.

There’s not just one list of the Spirit’s fruit!

When we Christians wanna list the Spirit’s fruit, most of the time we go off the Paul’s list in Galatians.

Galatians 5.22-24 KWL

22 The Spirit’s fruit is: Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness.

Goodness. Faith. 23 Gentleness. Self-governance.

The Law isn’t contrary to any such thing.

24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus, crucify our flesh with its impulses and desires.

We might go with alternate translations of some of these words, like longsuffering and temperance and faithfulness (which is a really inaccurate interpretation of πίστις/pístis, “faith”). But generally yeah, that’s the proof text we memorize, wear T-shirts of, tattoo on our wrists… and don’t follow ’cause we think fruit grows spontaneously.

But I gotta keep reminding people it’s not a comprehensive list. The Spirit produces more fruit in us than that. And elsewhere in the bible, you’re gonna find other lists of his fruit.

Colossians 3.12-15 KWL

12 So like God’s chosen and beloved children, put on:

Compassionate mercy. Kindness. Humility. Gentleness. Patience.

13 Supporting one another and forgiving our own,

when one of us might have a disagreement with another:

Like the Master forgives us, you forgive too.

14 Over all these things, love, which joins the whole together.

15 Have Christ’s peace, into which you were called as one body, govern your minds. Be thankful!

Because Paul and Timothy didn’t bluntly say this was a list of the Spirit’s fruit, Christians quibble about whether it really is. And of course the reason we wanna dismiss it… is because we don’t care to do it. Bad enough we struggle to show any evidence of the list from Galatians; now there are four more behaviors—mercy, humility, forgiveness, and thankfulness—we gotta fake!

And of course there’s the command the apostles used at the top of the list: Ἐνδύσασθε/endýsasthe, “put on.” The NIV renders it “clothe yourselves,” ’cause yeah, the ancient Greeks used this word to describe putting on clothing. So these traits don’t automatically come from within, as Jesus pointed out. Not unless we, with the Spirit’s help, first put ’em there.

But we’d rather imagine humans are inherently good, or that the Holy Spirit within us has fixed all our selfish impulses—and therefore we need do nothing but sit back and let the goodness flow out of us. And of course it’s rubbish, but it’s popular rubbish, and why so many Christians produce no fruit, and instead highlight any substitutes for fruitfulness we can imagine.

References to individual fruits.

The Spirit’s fruit is God’s character. It describes his personality. It describes Jesus’s motives: This is what he thinks of us, and how he behaves towards us. And if we’re following Jesus, and are letting the Spirit guide us, this is how we’re gonna come to think and behave. We’re gonna adopt God’s attitudes. Our character is gonna become his.

So that’s how we define fruit—and how we immediately recognize when the scriptures refer to the Spirit’s fruit. We don’t need the Colossians list to state, “This is the Spirit’s fruit”—we know it’s the Spirit’s fruit, because we know these traits are part of who he is. We recognize him. We realize, “I gotta be this way too”—not “Aw crap, more stuff to do.”

And we can easily identify when other bible verses refer to fruit. Like this one.

1 John 3.17 KWL

Whoever might have worldly wealth, and might see their fellow Christian in need,

and closes off their sympathy for them: How is God’s love abiding in them?

God’s gonna be sympathetic to his needy kids; therefore we need to be sympathetic towards his needy kids. That’s his fruit. Lacking it suggests we lack other fruit, if not the Holy Spirit himself.

God’s gonna be gracious. Fair. Forgiving to a level we’re just not gonna see in many humans. Generous to a level we’re especially not gonna see in many humans. Honest and truthful; he may not tell us everything, but he’s never gonna lie. Jesus demonstrated how much he hates hypocrisy, so integrity’s a fruit too.

Face it: The list of fruit is pretty darned near unlimited. God has all sorts of great character traits, and there’s no reason his kids can’t share them! Our list of his fruit certainly isn’t limited to Paul’s list in Galatians. Anyone who claims so, is obviously trying to evade their own character development.

And yeah, there are lots of those people in the world. I’ve seen ’em be mighty proud of it on social media. “This is me; this is who I am; I’m not gonna change; take it or leave it.” You notice it’s never the kind people who post such things; it’s always the a--holes. Those memes are their fruit.

God calls us to far, far better. We gotta be like Jesus. 1Jn 2.6 We might start working on that with our actions, but what’s really gonna bring about permanent, transformative change is our character. So we gotta get cracking on that, and get fruity.

How often ought we pray?

Ask any Christian, and we’ll likely admit we don’t pray as often as we ought.

Well, nuns, monks, and the people who staff prayer rooms, might be exceptions. Yet even some of them will admit they oughta pray more. Why is this? Well, some of it is because it’s true: We could pray more than we do.

For a lot of folks, other than saying grace, they don’t pray daily. Or they pray maybe two or three minutes a day… then beat themselves up for not praying 10 minutes a day. Or 30. Or an hour. Or even longer.

Okay. For a moment, let’s stop doing that and seriously think: How long does God reasonably expect us to talk with him?

Why should every Christian prayer become as long as the longest phone conversations you could possibly have with your friends? (And considering how much of these conversations consist of really dumb, frivolous, irrelevant stuff, should our prayers ever become that dumb?)

Much of the reason a lot of Christians have this idea of prayer as a marathon race, comes from this simple little two-word verse—

1 Thessalonians 5.17 THGNT

ἀδιαλείπτως προσεύχεσθε·

—and if you don’t know ancient Greek, that’s adialeíptos proséfhesthe, “unstoppingly pray.” Or as the KJV puts it, “Pray without ceasing.” Or the NLT, “Never stop praying.”

Never stop? Never ever stop? Is that even possible?

How do we physically do that? Don’t we need to take the odd break for, say, sleep? Should we band together in some prayer organization, like a “prayer watch” or monastery, which makes certain every day, 24 hours a day, someone is talking with God?

See, this is the traditional way “pray without ceasing” has been interpreted: Constant, unrelenting, unending prayer. We got the idea no matter how much we do pray, God isn’t satisfied. He’s like a helicopter mom who won’t be satisfied till we get a phone surgically implanted in our head so she can talk at us 24/7. Because God loves us so much, he wants us to talk to him all day long. Hence all the prayer centers and monasteries.

Is this what God meant by “Pray without ceasing”? Of course not.

You might recall the Genesis story of Eden, where the LORD used to personally hang out with the first humans. Was he with them all day long? Clearly not, ’cause the humans apparently had enough free time to go talk to serpents, and get talked into sinning. If chatting with us all day long was God’s original plan for humanity, we should see some of that in the Eden story, wouldn’t you think? Same as when Jesus more fully explained God to his students: Did he instruct them to have nonstop prayer gatherings?

Certainly there are times for nonstop prayer meetings. Like when the first Christians met to pray for the Holy Spirit to come to them. Ac 1.13-14 Sometimes we expect the Spirit to do something big, so we pray for that. The rest of the time, we pray as usual. And that’s what the apostles were instructing the Thessalonians to do in 1 Thessalonians: Pray as usual. And don’t quit praying as usual.

Dialíptos means “[one who] falls down, takes a break, drops the ball, skips, slacks.” It doesn’t mean “[one who] stops.” It’s an instruction to keep up our prayer life. Don’t take a break from it. Don’t skip it. Don’t slack on it. Don’t quit your regular practice. Keep it up.

When the apostles wrote to Thessaloniki, their readers were Christians who were overly concerned about the End Times. (Sound like anyone you know?) The Thessalonians were so fixated on End Times paranoia, they dropped the ball on various things we Christians oughta do. Like care for the needy. Like obey God’s commands. ’Cause why follow commands when the End is near? Start digging out that End Times bunker!

Likewise they slacked on their prayers. And that’s never gonna help. If you don’t stay in regular contact with God, you’re gonna go heretic on him.

So no, it doesn’t mean to constantly, never-endingly pray. Talk to God as long as you talk to God. If you need to speak with him more, do. If you don’t… well, pray the Lord’s Prayer at least. Check in with him. Keep an ear open in case God has anything to tell you. You’re not the only one who talks during prayer, y’know.

Don’t feel so guilty about not praying as much as other Christians. Honestly, you’re probably praying more. No, I’m not kidding. A lot of the people who talk a lot about their strong, devout prayer lives are giant hypocrites. And a lot aren’t—but it’s not your duty to play “Spot the Hypocrtite.” Just concentrate on yourself, and pray without slacking.

Those who do pray without ceasing.

However, some Christians are called to pray a ton. No, not everybody. Ignore those folks who insist it’s everybody.

Certain women and men dedicate their lives to prayer and good deeds, and function as professional prayer teams. In older churches they’re called monastics, or individually, nuns and monks. And prayer is their job. Yeah, they do other things, but those other things are side duties: Prayer is their job. Several times a day (and once in the middle of the night, ’cause they believe prayer is more important than sleep) they drop what they’re currently doing, and go pray together. They frequently live together in a prayer community, called an abbey, cloister, convent, friary, nunnery, priory, or monastery. But that’s not all of them; many groups live in their own homes, and only get together for prayer.

No, these monastics aren’t just not found in older, liturgical churches. Newer charismatic churches have rediscovered the idea, but don’t call themselves monastics, and put their own spin on what their prayer teams look like. Many of them have day jobs. Their prayer sites are either at churches, or special prayer centers, houses, rooms, or towers. They pray the very same things monastics do, but in a more contemporary style. More recent worship music, fr’instance.

All these groups pray several times, even 24 hours, a day. They pray formal prayers or off the top of their head; they pray the psalms and other scriptures; they pray for all the requests they have, or the requests others make of them. Anything and everything.

It’s a lot of prayer. And that’s not counting all the other prayer functions we Christians get involved in: Prayer-based small groups, the church’s prayer teams and prayer chains, vigils, and watches. Sometimes five times a day, sometimes more. Some of us Christians pray a lot.

And God might want you to pray just as often, and devote your life to prayer. That’s fine. But it’s not a ministry for everyone. Like I said, ignore those folks who insist everybody must pray that often. Pray as you can, when you can.

If you don’t pray five times a day, relax. God doesn’t require you to. It’s a nice habit to aim for, but first we need to start by praying once a day. Don’t run marathons when you’re winded after jogging round the block once. Start with once a day. Don’t push yourself beyond that till you feel ready.

Candlemas: Remembering when Jesus got presented in temple.

In Leviticus the LORD told Moses the following.

Leviticus 12.1-8 KWL

1 The LORD told Moses, 2 “When you speak to Israel’s children, say,

This is about a woman who conceives and bears a male.

She’s ritually unclean seven days, just like she’s unclean during the days of her period.

3 On the eighth day, circumcise the flesh of the baby’s foreskin.

4 Have the mother sit 33 days, for purification from blood.

She mustn’t touch anything holy, can’t come to sanctuary, till her purification days are full.

5 If she bears a female, she’s unclean two weeks, like her period;

have her sit 66 days, for purification from blood.

6 When the mother’s purification days are full, for a son or daughter,

she must bring a lamb, born that year, for a burnt offering,

and a pigeon chick, or dove, for a sin offering.

Bring them to the meeting tent’s door, to the priest.

7 The priest offers it to the LORD’s face, to cover the mother.

She’s now ritually clean from her bloodflow.

This law is for any woman who begets male or female.

8 If the mother can’t find enough at hand for a lamb, bring two doves or pigeon chicks;

one for burnt offering, and one for sin offering.

The priest covers her, and she’s ritually clean.”

2 February marks 39 days after Christmas—representing the week after Jesus’s birth, then the 33rd day after that. This’d be the day Mary finished her ritual purification after giving birth, so off she and Joseph went to temple.

Luke 2.22-24 KWL

22 Once the days were fulfilled for Mary’s purification, according to Moses’s Law,

they took Jesus to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord,

23 just as it’s written in the Lord’s Law:

“Every male who opens a womb will be called holy to the Lord.” Ex 13.2, 12

24 And giving a sacrifice, according to the saying in the Lord’s Law:

“A pair of doves, or two young pigeons.” Lv 12.8

So that’d make today Candlemas, the Christian holiday which remembers Jesus’s presentation in temple. It’s called Candlemas because traditionally, Christians bring certain candles to church to have ’em blessed, then use these sacred candles the rest of the year for various customs, rituals, and religious practices. The candles are a reminder Jesus is the world’s light—and when we follow him, so are we.

In some countries, Christmas decorations don’t come down till Candlemas. (I know; plenty of western Christians put ’em away before New Year’s Day.) Because now the Christmas and Epiphany season is over. Tomorrow we go back to regular time—the period between Christmas and Easter, or Easter and Christmas. (Which, in 2020, ain’t long. Ash Wednesday is on 26 February.)

Churching new mothers.

Childbirth is a dangerous time. Our survival rate nowadays is really good… but in prescientific days, this wasn’t the case. Any complication would turn fatal, for either the mother, or child, or both.

So a lot of cultures developed the custom of celebrating new mothers. Believe it or not, this includes the 39 to 72 days the LORD set aside for ritual purification. During the time women were ritually unclean, they were expected to stay home—to not interact with anyone else, lest they make others ritually unclean. But most importantly, they didn’t have to perform any tasks outside the house, didn’t have to go back to work, and weren’t obligated to go to temple or synagogue: They could stay with their newborn baby, and concentrate on their little one. Or, if childbirth didn’t go so well, they could otherwise recover. Or mourn.

Since Christians don’t really bother with ritual cleanliness anymore (the Holy Spirit indwells us, so when are we ever ritually unclean for worship?) it often meant the end of this rest time for Christian women after childbirth. But various Christian leaders recognized the need for some form of maternity leave, and this evolved into the custom of churching new mothers: Forty days after giving birth, the mother was expected to come to church and be publicly blessed.

But till then, she wasn’t expected to come to church. She could stay home and recuperate. (And Irish folk tradition added if she didn’t stay home, the fairies might get her. Disney movies have really sanitized how people imagine fairies; in folklore they’re evil spirits, so… not good.)

Some churches mixed together some of their churching traditions with their Candlemas traditions, so new mothers might bring candles and get ’em blessed. Other churches might have the new mothers take 40 days off, but not hold a blessing for them till Candlemas itself, and then bless all the new mothers at once. And if churches believed in baptizing babies, sometimes they’d do that too.

Of course, churches which aren’t liturgical don’t always hold special times of blessing for new mothers. Which is a shame. New babies are a big deal! Motherhood should be recognized. So if it’s not a formal part of your church, see if you can get something started.

Proselytism: Don’t force Jesus upon people!

PROSELYTIZE 'prɑs(.ə).lət.aɪz verb. (Try to) convert someone from one belief to another.

[Proselyte 'prɑs.ə.laɪt noun, proselytism 'prɑs(.ə).lət.ɪz.əm noun.]

From time to time, when we Christians share the good news of Christ Jesus with other people, we get accused of “proselytizing.”

It’s one of those words which, to quote Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride…

Giphy

Properly, to proselytize means as we see in the definition above: You’re trying to convert someone. And you’ve not made it an option: They must become Christian. They will become Christian. You’re gonna try every tactic you can to make it so. You’ll promise outrageous things, you’ll fudge a few details, you’ll threaten ’em with hell. Whatever it takes.

Forced conversions, hard sales pitches, and death threats (and hell threats) are all definitely forms of proselytism. Is that really what we’re doing?

Well… sometimes it is. And it should never be. God’s kingdom runs on grace, and if our presentation of the gospel ever turns into proselytism, it means we took the grace out of it. And a gospel without grace arguably isn’t even the gospel.

I know, I know: Certain dark Christians love to bring up hell. Largely because it terrifies them, so they’re pretty sure everybody needs to be warned about it, and warned away from it: You don’t want to go there! I get that. And it was probably a huge motivator for them, when they first turned to Jesus. But the result is they put it front and center when they preach the gospel, and now their gospel is about hell-avoidance instead of love, joy, grace, forgiveness, and other fruit of the Spirit that we’re gonna find in the kingdom in abundance. Worse, they don’t care about these things: “Get off that lovey-dovey crap and warn people away from hell!” Which just goes to reveal their own fruitlessness—a serious character defect which makes them the very worst people to share the gospel.

Still, when pagans encounter that kind of hostile, negative, fearmongering gospel presentation, in which the good news is very, very bad, they think it’s proselytism: It made ’em feel bad. They define proselytism based on whether it made ’em feel bad. On whether they didn’t like it.

Nope; proselytism is determined by pressure. Was the gospel forced upon you? Then it’s proselytism.

Doesn’t matter whether it was forced upon you in a hostile way or a kind way. I got the kind version: Mom was determined to raise her kids Christian, so church wasn’t optional. I was going, period, whether I wanted to or not. This was never an issue because unless I was sick or exhausted (i.e. valid excuses), I wanted to. In other families it was a huge issue: I had high school friends who absolutely didn’t wanna be there, and left church as soon as they were no longer under their parents’ rules. But parents have every right to raise their kids under their religion; really, they suck at religion if they don’t.

It’s just proselytism has a serious danger built into it: Because it’s not optional, it’s deficient in grace. Which means there’s a very real chance it’ll turn into legalism, or hypocrisy and dead religion. Or, once the kids grow up and leave the dead religion, they may presume all religion is like that… and we wind up with apostasy and nontheism.

So pour on the grace! And when you evangelize, for the love of God don’t proselytize.

Proselytizing Christians.

As I said, it’s okay to proselytize your kids. But if you were proselytized as a kid, or proselytized by an evangelist when you got older, you’re gonna wrongly think it’s okay to proselytize everybody else.

Seriously, everybody else. Certain political conservatives like to imagine the United States is a Christian nation, and as such everybody in it oughta be Christian. So they push Christianity upon everyone. We made “One nation under God” our official national motto (regardless of whether we get under him any), and put it on our money and our pledge of allegiance: If people balk at the motto, we don’t just accuse ’em of being godless, but unpatriotic.

Such people also insist we should be allowed to put up Ten Commandments monuments, crosses, and other religious iconography, in public parks, public schools, or public buildings. Texas even changed the science textbooks so they state God created the universe about 6,000 years ago, and who cares if actual science suggests otherwise.

So when we share Jesus, we don’t ask people whether they’d like to hear about him. Don’t have time for that. We just corner ’em so they can’t go anywhere, and tell ’em—whether they have the time, the curiosity, the interest, the receptivity. Because they need to hear it: They’re going to hell otherwise. Now is their hour of salvation. Now is not the time for kindness, patience, self-control, or grace. Fruit of the Spirit? Only gets in our way.

And instead of fruit, one of our substitutes becomes “evangelism.” You’ve seen these Christians at work: They leave tracts instead of tips for their waiters. They correct us in the workplace break room whenever we do or say something which isn’t Christian enough for them. They who won’t leave our front porches when we insist, “No thank you.” They’re the reason people believe evangelism and proselytism are the same thing.

Jesus doesn’t teach proselytism.

When Jesus first sent his Twelve to practice evangelism on their fellow Jews, he taught ’em to share. Not push. Bless, not condemn. Give, not collect offerings. Do for people, not demand they only receive the gospel from you, ’cause you worry if you give ’em free stuff, they’ll only turn to Jesus for the handouts. (As if the kingdom runs on stinginess, not grace.) You know, like proselytizers don’t do. Like so.

Matthew 10.7-15 KWL

7 “Preach as you go, saying this: ‘Heaven’s kingdom has come near!’

8 Serve the weak. Raise the dead. Cleanse the leprous. Throw out demons.

You received it free. Give it free.

9 Don’t accept gold, silver, or bronze into your moneybelts.

10 No bag on the road. Nor two tunics. Nor sandals. Nor cane.

For the respectable worker merits their provisions.

11 Inspect whatever city or village you enter: Who’s the most respected in it?

Stay with them till you leave, 12 and when you enter the house, bless it.

13 When the house is respectable, your blessing has to go into it.

When it’s not respectable, your blessing has to go back to you.

14 Whoever doesn’t accept you, nor listen to your words:

As you go out of their house or town, shake their dirt off your feet.

15 Amen, I promise you: It’ll be more bearable on Judgment Day

for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than that town.”

Evangelism is about effectively communicating the good news: The kingdom’s near. Jesus is its good and benevolent Lord. He wants us to join his kingdom and be our Lord. Because ultimately he will be Lord, whether we embrace him or not. It’ll be way better if we embrace his rule willingly, than live outside it in misery when he finally takes his throne. Plus there are the many benefits of living under our King early.

True, we want people to come to Jesus. But after we’ve shared him, we’re done. We did our duty. They accept him, or they don’t. And we need to stop thinking it’s our responsibility to keep pushing them to accept him. It’s not. We need to shake that off. It’s why Jesus told his apostles to do so literally: Shake the dirt off your feet when you leave. Leave ’em behind. Not because we don’t care about them anymore, but because we’re done. Hopefully God will give them another chance, as he tends to. But we’re done.

We simply share. Inform. Convey information. That’s all. There’s a place and time for going directly up to people and asking them point-blank, “Do you know Christ Jesus personally?” When our goal is to share good news, to make sure people are informed, and can make rational decisions to follow Jesus, there’s everything right about it. That’s all our job consists of.

Everything beyond that is the Holy Spirit’s job.

• Quelling nervousness or hesitation: His job.
• Dealing with objections and concerns: His job.
• Getting obstacles out of their way: His job.
• Making sure people come forward at an altar call: His job.
• Numbers of converts: His job.
• Making sure the commitment is serious: His job.
• Finalizing decisions for Christ: His job.

It’s not like we have no job. But as you can see, our job isn’t as big and stressful as your average proselytizer makes it sound.

“But we have to preach the gospel!”

I’ve heard Christians say, “Well, there’s a fine line between proselytism and evangelism.” There is not. Evangelism shares information. Proselytism demands, ignores the Holy Spirit’s timing, and insists the time is now. It takes salvation into our own hands instead of leaving it in God’s. It’s loveless. It’s faithless. It’s wrong.

If a person says no thank you, proselytizers aren’t done. They don’t trust the Holy Spirit enough to leave them in his capable hands. They’re not gonna be patient. They’ll insist on “closing the deal”—on badgering them to say some form of sinner’s prayer, some sort of half-hearted commitment (which usually doesn’t pan out) just so they can put another notch on their belt. Or get another jewel in their crown. Whatever way they keep score.

’Cause that’s what it’s really about: Keeping score. Numbers. Getting converts. Growing their cults. Success rates. Which, because they’re willing to fudge the numbers a bit, tend to be reported as way higher than they really are. But few of their “success stories” are real. Those folks have no plans to follow Jesus in the day-to-day, and were often coerced into making a purely contractual relationship with him: “I said the sinner’s prayer, so I did my part; you just get me into heaven. Okay? Amen.” Don’t have to be religious ’cause they’re under God’s grace. Which means they’re fruitless… which implies they’re not under grace.

Now, had the Holy Spirit actually been involved at all—where he convicts ’em, gets ’em to repent, points ’em to Jesus—you’d see a whole lot more enthusiasm on their part. Without having to manipulate their emotions, play on their fears, promise them things Jesus never would (“Turn to him and all your problems will go away!”) and other sales pitches which spread Christianism instead of God’s kingdom.

Quite often the Spirit will actually lead someone to Jesus despite the sales-pitch tactics. But the fact the Holy Spirit cleans up our messes, is no defense for fruitless, unkind behavior and thinking.

And quite often, the reason a lot of Christians balk at practicing or learning about evangelism, is because of these yutzes and their morally questionable behavior. I don’t blame ’em for being disturbed. They should be. Any form of trickery, misdirection, wordplay, hidden flaws, false arguments, false promises, confusion, anger, hypocrisy, misquoted scriptures, false urgency, bribery, emotional blackmail, threats, temptation, or coercion, has no God in it. Justifying any of this evil, because they might “win souls,” is calling good evil, and evil good. Is 5.20 When people turn to Jesus, when the Spirit has been successful and enters their lives to fix and regenerate them, it’s a miracle. The very last thing Christians should be involved in, is faking miracles.

Some pagans have never met a proper evangelist. Or they have, but they’ve been burned by dark evangelists, and assume all Christians are like that. And to be fair, some pagans are just plain hostile towards Christianity altogether. So they accuse everyone who shares Jesus of proselytism, just to make us go away. All the more reason we need to avoid proselytism. Give them no ammunition.

Wisdom: Use your head!

WISDOM 'wɪz.dəm noun. Having experience, knowledge, and good judgment. Being wise.

2. The biblical genre which explains and teaches how to think and practice good judgment.

In the Old Testament, חָכְמָה/khokhmáh, “wisdom,” basically means the ability to think. To have a working brain. To use the sense God gave us, instead of passively letting stuff happen to us, and then blaming all the bad stuff on the government or the Republicans or the devil.

You know all those Christian ninnies whose lives are an utter mess, who complain all the time about Satan trying to steal their victory, and try to ward it off with incantations by claiming their blessings? Yeah, that’s not the devil; that’s them. Their own lack of wisdom will create all that chaos just fine without Satan lifting a finger.

Khokhmáh is the ability to understand cause and effect: When you do this, it produces that; when you don’t do this, it produces something else. You’ll notice a lot of biblical proverbs follow that format.

Proverbs 10.4-5 KWL

4 You create poverty with slack hands. Diligent hands create wealth.

5 The wise child gathers in summer. The embarrassing child sleeps through harvest.

The authors were trying to teach good sense: Human psychology, ethical behavior, clever planning, and all the stuff our culture typically associates with wise people. Actions have consequences, and all things being equal, these are the consequences, so bear them in mind. (And, because wisdom covers its bases, Ecclesiastes points out sometimes all things aren’t equal, and there are exceptions to these rules. Because life isn’t fair. Not that we should therefore be a dick about it and refuse to be fair either.)

Various bible commentators figure khokhmáh doesn’t just refer to good sense, but smarts of all sorts. For their proof text they point to when the LORD singled out Bechalel ben Uri and Oholiav ben Akhisamakh as the craftsmen who’d design all the stuff for his tabernacle. He told Moses he filled the both of ’em with khokhmáh, with wisdom. Ex 31.1-6 So these commentators figure, “Oh, wisdom also means skills and talents.” Nah. Wisdom is still wisdom. God gave Bechalel and Oholiav ability, but they needed the wisdom to use their ability well.

• They needed time management. Israel needed these things built as soon as possible.
• They needed people skills: They had to work with other artists, who built other things. And they’d have to deal with nitpicking people who thought they knew better what the tabernacle might need.
• They needed the good sense to not obsess about getting their stuff “perfect”—as people do when they have a really important client to impress, and who’s more important than God?
• Conversely they needed to not be so fixated on what they were doing, they forgot their work was meant to facilitate worship. Unlike certain music pastors… but let’s not go there today.
• They needed to be appropriate: “Come on guys, don’t put penises on the cherubs!”

Artistry itself isn’t wisdom. But artists definitely need wisdom! Same as everyone.

However. There are plenty of folks, Christians included, who don’t care to be wise. Usually it’s because we figure we already know everything we need to know, and needn’t add any “useless trivia” to it. We figure we know best. Or that the laws of cause and effect don’t apply to us, ’cause “I claimed my victory.” Or we don’t like what someone’s saying, and figure it therefore can’t be true—as if truth is only gonna be what we like. (I run into this attitude all the time. Occasionally people claim it’s a recent trend, but it’s really not. Wishful thinking has always been hardwired into humanity.)

The writers of the scriptures have a lot of choice words for such people.

• אֱוִיל/evýl, “silly” or “twisted.”
• כָּסַל/kasál, “dense.” Literally “fat,” in reference to one’s heart (which they imagined we thought with), which they figured was too surrounded by fatty tissue for anyone to get through to.
• נָבָל/navál, “empty.” Like a wineskin, deflated ’cause there’s nothing in it. Or like an empty brain, which is why Hebrew-speakers used it to indicate a moron.

Translators kindly render these words as “foolish” and “folly.” But let’s not sugar-coat things: The proper term for this thinking is stupid.

When I use the word “stupid,” a lot of young people flinch. A lot of ’em, unless they were raised by awful parents, were taught “stupid” is a bad word; that you never call somebody stupid. Because they assume (again, as they were taught) stupidity is a condition you can’t change. Some people were born without smarts, without intelligence, without the ability to use their commonsense. And can’t help it if they’re stupid. Likewise if you call someone stupid you’re sorta cursing them, and they’ll think they are stupid, and give up hope of ever doing better.

But anyone can do better. Stupidity is a choice. So’s wisdom.

That’s why the scriptures describe fools as getting punished for their stupidity:

Proverbs 26.3 KWL

You take a whip to a horse, a bridle to a donkey, and a cane to an idiot’s backside.

Because they choose to shun wisdom. They deliberately make bad choices and refuse to listen to reason or sense. It’s not just because they’re deficient, or because life is unfair. Stupid is a decision.

Throughout the bible’s wisdom writings, wisdom gets compared to stupidity. The scriptures teach it’s far better to be wise than dumb. Far better to know how the world works, than passively let things just happen, or to guess wrong and come to ruin. We see examples of this all the time: If you don’t care about gravity, your poorly-built house may cave in on you. If you don’t care about fairness, your neighbors and coworkers will avenge themselves upon you when they feel you’ve wronged them.

Wisdom is found all over the bible. Most of it is concentrated in the wisdom literature, and found in the form of proverbs, brief wisdom sayings which are usually true.

Usually true?

Proverbs and biblical wisdom regularly gets misinterpreted: People assume if something’s in the bible, it’s always true, never fails, works in every situation. These, they claim, are God’s promises.

Let’s be clear: The scriptures are infallible. But that’s when we use them correctly. When we misinterpret them of course they’re not gonna work the way we claim. If you think Psalm 91 means we can jump off tall buildings and angels will catch you, man are you stupid. The devil’s temptation of Jesus would’ve totally worked on you, and it’s gonna have a lot of fun tripping you up. But obviously that’s not what that psalm’s about! As Jesus knew when Satan misquoted it. Lk 4.9-12

When the LORD commands something, when Jesus teaches something, when the apostles give their interpretations, these are absolute statements. They’re always true; circumstances don’t change ’em; take ’em to the bank. And in the case of prophecies these are conditional statements: If you meet the conditions, they’ll happen, otherwise not. If Jerusalem stops sinning, God’ll bless them; if Jerusalem keeps sinning, God won’t. Prophecies have catches, and they’re based on how we humans respond to the prophecies. God stays consistent, but we’re the variable. Fill in the correct variables, get the correct answers.

And proverbs are circumstantial statements: For them to be true, the circumstances have to be right. Circumstances change things. Generally God permits the wise and righteous to prosper, and the foolish and lawless to come to ruin. But not always. There are, like Ecclesiastes points out, cases where that’s not so. The proverbs are what tend to be true, all things being equal. But life and nature aren’t consistent. Circumstances change things.

How can I claim proverbs aren’t absolute statements? Simple: Some proverbs contradict one another. Deliberately so. I like to use this pair of proverbs on answering a fool as an example:

Proverbs 26.4-5 KWL

4 Don’t respond to a fool’s stupidity, lest you be compared to them.

5 Respond to a fool’s stupidity, lest they become wise in their own eyes.

If you were raised to believe the bible never, ever contradicts itself, are you in for a rude awakening. It’s much of the reason Christians tend to ignore Ecclesiastes. In Proverbs we’re taught wisdom pays off and stupidity doesn’t; in Ecclesiastes we’re taught the stupid might prosper, the wise might go without, and none of this means a thing. Those who love to quote Proverbs with impunity, absolutely hate how Ecclesiastes undermines it. So they either pretend Jesus undoes Ecclesiastes, or imply Solomon wrote it after he started to dabble in idolatry. Or otherwise illegitimately impugn its wisdom.

And yet we see a contradiction smack dab in mid-Proverbs. Its editor intentionally put 26.4-5 next to one another. Both proverbs are credited to Solomon. And both were composed to fit different circumstances. With some fools, follow verse 4, ’cause they’re too stupid to take correction. With other fools, correct ’em as verse 5 instructs, ’cause they’re still able to receive it. Sometimes verse 4 is true, sometimes verse 5.

Same with every other contradictory proverb. Like these.

COMME ÇI	COMME ÇA
Wisdom will make you happy. Pr 3.13	Wisdom will make you miserable. Ec 1.18
Discipline is wasted on fools. Pr 16.22	Discipline fools. Pr 19.29
The godly have food and the wicked go hungry. Pr 13.25 The godly have treasure and the wicked have trouble. Pr 15.6	Sometimes the wise go hungry. Sometimes the skillful aren’t rich. Ec 9.11
The wise inherit honor. Pr 3.35	Qohelet watched wicked people get buried with honor. Ec 8.10

How do you sort out which one applies to your circumstances? Duh: Wisdom.

You need wisdom to study wisdom.

I know. There are Christians who teach, “If the bible ever contradicts itself, we’ll have to throw the entire thing out, because we can’t trust it anymore.” The Fundamentalists who taught my childhood Sunday school classes never tired of saying this.

And they’d be fools. Because anybody who seriously studies the wisdom portions of the bible knows there are contradictions in there. That’s what happens when you teach ethics! Life is messy and complicated, and there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to some problems—as Ecclesiastes regularly points out. Sometimes you gotta answer fools in their folly, and sometimes you’re the fool if you don’t keep your mouth shut.

So those who wanna turn off their brains and just quote Proverbs in every situation, are being the very sort of fools Proverbs warns against. We’re not to read the bible’s wisdom so we can stop thinking and quote proof texts. We’re to read it so we can learn: Okay, in these circumstances it’s best to think like so. In other circumstances it’s best to think another way. In life there’s a time for this, and a time for that. Ec 3.1 So we gotta judge which circumstance we’re in. We gotta think. It’s why God gave us our brains.

True, our motives are corrupted by our selfishness. This doesn’t mean, as many brain-dead Christians presume, we can’t be trusted, so stop thinking and just quote bible. We humans might be flawed, but we’re learning better, and growing good fruit. We’re learning to recognize our biases and undo them. It’s why we’re encouraged to pray for wisdom. Jm 1.5 It’s why we’re instructed to judge righteously. Jn 7.24 Grow wisdom.

Honestly, some Christians don’t wanna do this. They’re really bugged by the idea we get to deduce right and wrong; humans aren’t trustworthy! They don’t trust themselves to do it right. They certainly don’t trust others. It’s way more comfortable to not think at all, and follow blind basic instructions from the bible.

Which is why such people tend to treat Proverbs as if it’s not just situational guidelines, but biblical commands. Which is why they invent “biblical principles” based on Proverbs, and foolishly treat the wisdom as if one size does fit all. In so doing they utterly miss wisdom. We’re to grapple with wise sayings, not just swallow ’em whole. Pr 1.5-6 We’re to understand, not just accept. We’re to see beyond the proverbs, and grow to understand the God who inspired them.

This is why foolish Christians misquote proverbs as if they’re commands or promises. Whereas wise Christians recognize ordinarily the race is to the swift, and the battle to the strong. But sometimes it’s not. Ec 9.11 It’s stupid to treat proverbs as always, universally true. (And particularly stupid to quote certain friends of Job, considering how the LORD stated nothing they said about him was correct. Jb 42.7 Context, folks.)

So… do you know Jesus?

I know better than to assume everyone who browses TXAB is Christian.

I learned better on other blogs I’ve done. ’Cause nonchristians piped up. There’s a certain personality type—the class clown, the noisy guy in the theater, the guy in the nightclub who wears way too much musk, the Facebook friend who over-comments on everything (which, I gotta admit, is sometimes me) —who can’t go anywhere without making their presence known. If you prefer to go unnoticed, these are the people you never wanna befriend; they’ll always embarrass you. And on blogs, they’re the sort who wanna make sure the blogger (i.e. me) knew they visited. Sometimes with a polite note, and sometimes by flinging poo like a chimpanzee.

On blogs, sometimes they’re the troll who comments, in case any Christians are reading, “You suckers do realize all this religious stuff is [synonym for dooky]: Jesus is dead, the bible is science fiction, and churches are scams to separate the feeble-minded from their money.” Or the guy who emails me 10 pages of out-of-context or non-sequitur “corrections” to the article I posted. Or the pagan who instant-messages me about how she’s struggling to reconcile my statements with the superficial Buddhism which she’s convinced she can practice alongside Christianity.

I get all sorts. If they’re truly interested in Jesus, I’m not gonna drive ’em away. On the contrary: I’m always gonna try to drive ’em towards. Namely towards Jesus.

Years ago I participated in a multifaith synchroblog. (A synchroblog is where a bunch of bloggers write on the same topic. Then most of us read each other’s pieces to see their take on the topic. Or not; some of us only want more people to read our blogs, and are using it to get clicks.) In my piece I stated upfront I was trying to introduce my pagan visitors to Jesus. I didn’t want any of ’em thinking I had a hidden, ulterior motive; plenty enough Christian phonies out there already. My motives are gonna be nice and obvious.

Still are. If you don’t know Jesus, let me introduce you.

Good news, everybody!

Sometimes it’s called the gospel; sometimes the evangel. Both words mean “good news”—either in ancient English or ancient Greek. ’Cause you should consider it good news. If you don’t, either we Christians did a crappy job of presenting it to you, or we taught you some other thing’s the gospel. Or you don’t believe us. Or all three.

The good news, according to Christ Jesus, is God’s kingdom has come near. Mk 1.15

What’s God’s kingdom? (Or heaven’s kingdom?—the terms are interchangeable.) In short, God wants to be our king. He wants a personal, individual relationship with every person on the planet. He wants us to be his people, and he our God. Ex 6.7 He wants us to be his children, and he our father. Yep, exactly like he’s Jesus’s father: He wants to be tight with us, same as Jesus is tight with him.

Most of us humans seriously doubt we can have any such relationship with God. Mostly ’cause we figure God’s so cosmic and alien. He’s an almighty spirit, the creator of the universe, and so absolutely good—most of us figure if we actually encountered God’s power and goodness, it’d blow us up like a hamster in a microwave. Jg 13.22 And y’know, it actually might. Ex 33.20 So we assume we’re too unworthy to interact with him, and go through a whole bunch of convolutions to get ourselves righteous before we dare approach him. Before we pray, we do a bunch of acts of penance. Or we promise a ton of good deeds. Or we vow togive up bad habits, or give up beloved things, or otherwise try to appease God first. We believe we just can’t go to him as-is. We’re too messed up.

So when Jesus tells us the kingdom has come near, what he means is we actually don’t have to bridge the gap between God and us. God already did that. He became human—namely Jesus—and lived among us humans. Jn 1.14 And they didn’t die!

Nope, God’s not distant from us. He’s right here. If you want him, here he is.

“But we’re not worthy!” Not a problem. God forgave you.

Yeah, our evildoing, our sins, mean we owe him big time: He’s had to clean up our messes, and put right what we’ve bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated. We oughta make up for our sins—and we’ve racked up so many. Really, we deserve death, for sin kills. Ro 6.23 But actually, God took care of that. After becoming human, he got killed. (Seems people couldn’t handle how he kept acting as if he’s God or something.) So—in a way we Christians still don’t entirely understand, and debate about—he applies his death to our sin, and considers our debt paid. We might still have to make things right with one another, but with God… we’re good. Having a relationship with him no longer has any hurdles.

Seriously. And it’s a fact that’s hard for lots of people to accept. Including Christians. Across the board, humanity believes in karma, the idea we only receive good (or only should receive good) if we’ve merited it with our good deeds; otherwise the universe is out of whack, and will eventually balance things out. Christians believe in karma too, and some of us still try to make ourselves worthy of God… as if that’s even possible. After a lifetime of buggering up, we’re gonna amend things with God? Not remotely possible.

That’s why we need God to do it for us. It’s where faith comes in: We gotta trust Jesus when he says God really, truly wants relationship with us. If we don’t trust Jesus, it’s our own fault when our relationships with God suck: He’s not the one with the hangups. That’d be us.

So since we can have relationships with God, he can empower us to live productive, fruitful lives. Not materially fruitful, i.e. rich, although in certain cases that’s a side effect. But spiritually fruitful: We become better people. We sin less. We’re more loving, more kind, more patient, more joyful. We can tap God’s supernatural power and perform miracles. No, really. Hang out with the right Christians and I guarantee you’ll see some.

What’s more, by taking out sin, Jesus also took out death. He proved this by himself coming back from the dead: He’s alive. Temporarily in heaven, there’s gonna be a day Jesus comes back to earth, to rule God’s kingdom in person. Not metaphorically; for real. And the day he does, every Christian, every God-follower throughout history, is getting raised from the dead just like Jesus was. 1Co 6.14 And we’re not dying again: This is eternal life.

This is the good news.

Hard to believe? Okay.

Yeah, in order to believe the gospel, there are certain things we gotta believe in the first place. Like God’s very existence: If you don’t believe in any such being, the rest will be pure myth. It’s the world’s nicest bedtime story, with the world’s biggest happy ending, but you won’t believe a word of it.

Likewise resurrection. This was the ancient Greeks’ hangup: Their philosophy, which they were steeped in since childhood, taught ’em matter is bad (it decays, y’know) and spirit is good. So when you die, you become pure spirit—and that’s good. You wanna be pure spirit. You wanna live in Elysium (the good Greek afterlife) forever. And plenty of people nowadays believe the very same thing: When you die, you go to heaven and live with God and the angels. Maybe even become an angel yourself. (Actually you don’t; they’re another species. It’s like imagining you go to heaven and become ponies. I know; now you wanna become a pony. Stop that.) But the last thing people want is to get put back in a body—it sounds so limiting.

Likewise in Jesus being God. Most people easily accept the idea of Jesus being a great man, or moral teacher. Some are okay with him being divine—but only if it’s true we can become divine just like he did. Actually we can become perfect like him, and that’s one of God’s goals. But Jesus didn’t become God; he was God long before he ever became human. Jn 1.1 But if we can’t believe this, it’s hard to accept the rest.

This is where faith comes in. Faith is simply another word for trust: We trust Jesus. We take his word for it that everything he teaches is true. We figure, “I’m not sure I believe all of this. Or any of it. But I’m gonna try it and see what happens. If there’s anything to it, stuff’s gonna happen. I’ll hear God talk to me. I’ll see him do miracles. If there’s not, if it’s all rubbish, nothing will happen, nothing’ll change; it’ll fall apart. So here goes nothing.” And we take the leap.

And stuff happens. Try it. You’ll see.