The fear of God.

Humanity discovered pretty quickly that if you want to rule over others, you either have to get ’em to love you so much they’ll trust you and do as you say… or be worried about what you might do to ’em if they don’t obey you.

Love takes time and patience on the ruler’s part… and even then, the people might be too stupid to obey the ruler anyway, much like a two-year-old ignoring the warning, “Don’t touch the stove!” Or of course projecting their own corrupt impulses onto the ruler’s motives, and presuming the ruler’s selfish instead of benevolent. (Much like every president’s opposition party typically does.) Love ain’t easy. But speaking from experience, it works really well.

Most rulers don’t have that kind of time or patience, so they just go with fear.

Still do. Politicians warn of all the terrors that’ll take place if the people vote for the other guy; that you have to vote for them, and if you don’t it’ll probably trigger the great tribulation. Dictators take their enemies out and shoot them, or otherwise kill them in nasty ways, and while their fans might cheer, they also recognize they’d better never become the dictator’s enemy. And as dictators go mad with fear about what might be coming due to their bad karma, they get more and more murdery. Friends and fans regularly get killed too.

Because we humans like to justify our evil, ancient rulers grew to believe the people’s fear of them was a good thing. Their subjects should fear their ruler. After all, he was mighty, and could casually destroy them, so it was always best to stay on his good side.

Proverbs 16.14-15 NRSV

14 A king’s wrath is a messenger of death,

and whoever is wise will appease it.

15 In the light of a king’s face there is life,

and his favor is like the clouds that bring the spring rain.

 

Proverbs 19.12 NRSV

A king’s anger is like the growling of a lion,

but his favor is like dew on the grass.

 

Proverbs 20.2 NRSV

The dread anger of a king is like the growling of a lion;

anyone who provokes him to anger forfeits life itself.

 

Proverbs 24.21-22 NRSV

21 My child, fear the LORD and the king,

and do not disobey either of them;

22 for disaster comes from them suddenly,

and who knows the ruin that both can bring?

Since YHWH, the LORD, is Israel’s king 1Sa 12.12, Is 33.22 —regardless of the human kings who sat on the thrones in Jerusalem and Samaria, who supposedly worked for him, but didn’t always—the LORD’s various prophets used ancient kingly language to describe him. That includes statements to fear the king: Now it was to fear the LORD. It’s even in the commandments.

Deuteronomy 10.20 NRSV

“You shall fear the LORD your God; him alone you shall worship; to him you shall hold fast, and by his name you shall swear.”

 

Deuteronomy 6.24 NRSV

“Then the LORD commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our lasting good, so as to keep us alive, as is now the case.”

 

Deuteronomy 10.12-13 NRSV

12 “So now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you? Only to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13 and to keep the commandments of the LORD your God and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being.”

Lest you think all this fear-talk was only found in Deuteronomy, where Moses was explaining the Law to a new generation not wholly familiar with it, it’s not; we see it in Leviticus as well. “Fear your God” Lv 19.14, 23; 25.17, 26, 43 is a reminder that we’re to love our neighbors and not cheat or dishonor or disrespect ’em, because God disapproves of such behavior—and you’d better fear God.

But this fear-talk regularly bugs Christians. Because we were taught fear is a bad thing, and we ought not do it.

Matthew 10.31 NRSV

“So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.”

 

Luke 12.32 NRSV

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

 

Mark 4.40 NRSV

He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”

 

Matthew 14.27 NRSV

But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

 

John 14.27 NRSV

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

 

Revelation 1.17-18 NRSV

17 When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he placed his right hand on me, saying, “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, 18 and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and of Hades.”

If we’re not to be afraid; if fear is a liar, and makes us irrational, and God doesn’t give us a spirit of fear, 2Ti 1.7 for there’s no fear in love and perfect love drives out fear, 1Jn 4.18 what business do we who love God, have in fearing God? How is fear an appropriate response to God?

And yet even in the New Testament we’re instructed to fear God. 1Pe 2.17, Rv 14.7

So yeah, it feels like a contradiction. A big ol’ discrepancy. A paradox: We’re to fear God, yet at the same time we’re not to be afraid of him. Feels a little like the writers of the bible weren’t in sync on this one. And it certainly makes our preachers sound inconsistent when they talk about fearing God… then talk about how God is nothing to fear. Plus too many of ’em have the bad habit on going overboard in one direction or the other, depending on their own biases. We have the dark Christians who want us, and everybody else, to be absolutely terrified of God’s wrath. And on the other extreme we have Christians who refuse to even talk about the scriptures which say we oughta fear God, lest people get what they think is “the wrong idea.”

All right, so which is it?

The Major Finds Story. (Treasure in a Field, Pearl of Great Price.)

Matthew 13.44-46.

Jesus has two quick one-liner parables in Matthew which are about the very same thing. I don’t know whether he told these stories separately, and Matthew bunched ’em together, or whether he told them together so the repeated idea might sink in all the better.

Regardless, Christians have historically called ’em by separate names. One’s the Hidden Treasure, or Treasure in the Field, or Secret Treasure, or Clever Treasure Hunter, or whatever you wanna emphasize most in the story. The other’s the Hidden Pearl, Valuable Pearl, Pearl of Great Price, or Clever Pearl Merchant—again, whatever you wanna emphasize most.

Me, I bunch ’em together. Like I said, they’re about the very same thing, and they repeat the idea of finding something major, and selling all you have to get it. So I call them collectively the Major Finds Story. Heaven’s kingdom is like a major find. Really, heaven’s kingdom is a major find.

Take it away, Jesus:

Matthew 13.44-46 KWL

44 “Again, heaven’s kingdom is like a treasure hidden in the field.

When a person finds it, he hides it.

In his joy, he goes off and sells everything, whatever he has,

and buys that field.

45 Again, heaven’s kingdom is like a person, a merchant looking for good pearls.

46 Upon finding one extremely expensive pearl, going away,

he’s sold everything, whatever he has, and buys it.”

Christians are so used to telling this story, we never think about the problematic behavior involved by both of these guys who discover a major find.

The first one is a guy who stumbles across a treasure, hides it, then buys that field so he can possess the treasure—and obviously doesn’t tell the previous owners there’s treasure in their field. Um… shouldn’t they know? Maybe that’s their inheritance their father meant to give them, but died before he could disclose it to them. Maybe it’s stolen property, like pirate or drug lord treasure… although we probably shouldn’t go there, because I doubt Jesus had that in mind when he told the story. Regardless, the buyer’s behavior is such that any skeptical Pharisee (and many a skeptical pagan) would flinch. “Waitaminnit… is Jesus teaching ‘finders keepers’? Isn’t that a kind of theft?”

The second is a pearl merchant who finds a pearl worth all his existing fortune. Again, there’s the possibility he knows of the pearl’s true value and the seller does not, which is why the merchant’s so eager to spend all he has on it. But something which regularly skips most Christians’ notice: Pearls are something shellfish produce, and shellfish are ritually unclean. Is Jesus talking about an Israeli pearl merchant?—then he’s clearly talking about a secular Israeli, one who doesn’t bother to follow the Law, yet Jesus here uses him as an example of God’s kingdom. Or, which is a little less likely, and a lot more scandalous to his audience, is he talking about a pagan pearl merchant?

Yep, in both these stories, Jesus is talking about iffy, less-than-honorable, less-than-devout people. And comparing their behavior to God’s kingdom. And probably bugging devout Pharisees in so doing. Well, that’ll happen.

Evil spirits.

It’s odd: Lots of people believe in spirits. Christians do too, ’cause God’s a spirit, Jn 4.24 and angels are spirits. He 1.14 We also figure the spirits of dead loved ones exist in the afterlife—or heaven, as many people imagine.

Yet many of these very same people refuse to believe in evil spirits.

I used to say this mindset comes from Platonism. Plato of Athens taught if we could only escape this world of matter and decay, and just become pure spirit, all our self-centered impulses, greed, materialism, lusts, and so forth would simply cease to exist. We wouldn’t have ’em anymore; they were embedded in our flesh, but without that flesh we’d be nothing but good. Plato’s not the first to believe this junk; plenty of other cultures teach the same thing. Present-day folks who believe it, don’t necessarily believe it ’cause of Plato’s reasoning—heck, they don’t have any reasoning behind it. They simply believe all spirits are good… because it never occurred to them spirits might be bad.

Yep. Even though mythology, fairy tales, and horror movies are loaded with evil spirits. Monsters, boogeymen, fairies, ghosts, demons, elder gods which wanna destroy everything once they’re awakened. But for whatever reason, people imagine real-life spirits aren’t evil, and are nothing but benevolent. They’re on a higher plane than we are, and in getting there all the evil got purged from them.

To some degree this is because too many people have overdone their emphasis on evil spirits. Christians in particular. Wasn’t so long ago that everyone assumed every psychological disorder in the DSM-5 was the product of evil spirits. Years ago I had a roommate suffering from depression, but he was convinced he was demonized. Fortunately one of my pastors was a psychologist, and could diagnose him properly. But you’re gonna find very few pastors (even though they do a whole lot of counseling!) have had proper psychological training of any sort. In fact some of ’em claim psychology is devilish. And therefore people with psychological disorders are demoniac, and instead of meds they need an exorcism.

You’re gonna find a lot of dark Christians with this mindset. They insist evil spirits are absolutely everywhere. Everywhere. Pick a problem and there’s a demon behind it—a sinister intelligence using that problem to trick us into losing our salvation and going to hell. I’ve visited “deliverance ministries” which insist every temptation, no matter how minor, has a devil behind it. The leaders demonstrate how to cast out these devils, claiming everyone’s infested with at least one or two of ’em, like bedbugs in an old mattress. Christians included!—they claim we can’t be possessed by evil spirits (since we’re indwelt by the Holy Spirit), but the critters can certainly latch onto us like leeches, and tempt us whenever we’re weak.

Okay: If devils could infest absolutely everyone in this way, don’t you think they would? Our entire planet would be hopelessly demonized. But it’s not. It is full of selfish people, who’ll act more evil than Satan itself. But that’s way different than people puppeteered, or at least heavily steered, by evil spirits. Humans are plenty capable of inventing our own evil. Few of us need any devil’s help in being evil.

Let’s not go overboard when it comes to evil spirits. Nor underboard. Two things we need to bear in mind about evil spirits, as indicated in the scriptures:

• God made us humans able to resist and defeat them. The devil itself flees when resisted. Jm 4.7 So do its allies.
• They’re greatly outnumbered by God-following humans and spirits, and of course God can defeat them all by himself. So they’re only a threat when we’re ignorant of them, and dismiss what they’re up to.

This being the case, let’s not be ignorant of them!

Spirits.

SPIRIT 'spɪ.rɪt noun. A non-physical being; a supernatural being.

2. A person’s non-physical parts (such as emotions or character), which are considered a person’s true self, survives physical death, and possibly manifests as a ghost.

3. [capitalized] The Holy Spirit.

4. Qualities, characteristics, or emotions of a person or thing, which are considered their defining attributes, like “the spirit of the plan.”

5. Emotion or mood, usually positive, as in “This’ll lift your spirits.”

6. True intentions or attitude, as in “the spirit of the law, not the letter.”

7. Liquor or another volatile liquid.

8. [verb] Taken quickly and secretly.

The bible regularly refers to non-physical beings. We call ’em spirits. Our English word comes from the Latin spirare/“breathe,” and the Hebrew and Greek words for spirit ( ‏רוּחַ/ruákh, πνεῦμα/pnéfma) likewise literally mean “breath” or “wind”—in general, air molecules pushed by an outside force.

No, the bible’s authors didn’t call ’em breath and wind because they literally believed spirit is made of wind or air. (In fact if you look at various ancient and medieval sources, a lot of ’em thought spirit is made of fire.) They figured spirit is invisible, yet we can see how things are affected by it. You know, like wind.

Of course if we wanna get scientific, the simile falls apart. Wind is made of air, which is made of atoms, and therefore is matter. In a gaseous state, and we can freeze it till it’s in a solid state, ’cause it’s a material substance. Whereas spirit is not material. Not that we know what spirit’s made of; we just know it’s not matter. Nor energy.

Therefore we can’t measure spirit with machinery, no matter what certain paranormalists might claim. There’s no way to gauge them scientifically. Science can’t speak about spirits, and spiritual things, at all. Social scientists might talk about the effects of spirits—what people claim they’ve done—and certainly an individual scientist can give you their opinion about what spirits are and what they do. But those opinions aren’t gonna be based on science. They’ll be based on personal belief—either for it, or against.

And if you wanna know what spirit is made of, you won’t find answers in the bible either. The bible’s about God’s relationship with us, not biology. Nor spirit biology.

Thing is, we live in a scientific age. (Or we’d like to imagine we do.) If we can’t study it with science, plenty of people presume it doesn’t exist at all. Nontheists like to argue if spirits can’t be measured, quantified, examined, dissected… well, they’re not real. No more real than elves and sprites.

It may surprise you to know a lot of Christians think just the same: They don’t believe in spirits either. They might believe in God—and maybe the human spirit, if they hope to survive death—and maybe angels and devils. But they refuse to go any further than that. Sometimes they dismiss angels and devils too, like the Sadducees did. Like nontheists, they figure spirits are superstition, or the fakery of false religions.

But the bible refers to all sorts of spirits. Some appear to be good. Some benign, or they have duties which have nothing to do with us. Some are unclean, the sort Jesus threw out of people. Some are evil, like the devil.

If spirits exist in the bible, stands to reason they still exist. We may not be aware of them, nor can we detect them scientifically. We may find it irritating when certain individuals and other religions emphasize them so much, and not just ’cause we think those religions are wrong. But we need to understand what Christianity teaches about spirits, and stay consistent with the scriptures.

Pagan and proud.

Whenever I share Jesus with pagans—same as when I talk to anybody about any topic—I run into two types: The open-minded and the closed-minded.

The open-minded are fun. They’re curious. They have tons of questions. I may not get ’em to believe, or convince ’em to set foot in church, but that’s okay. There’s still lots of room for the Holy Spirit to work on them, because they’re open.

The closed-minded wanna tell me about Jesus, ’cause they’re entirely sure they already know it all. (They usually share some version of Historical Jesus, who sounds either like a nice guy but horribly misunderstood, or no fun at all. And either way, dead.) They suck all the fun out of the conversation, dismiss or mock anything we consider important, treat all our God-experiences as irrelevant or delusional, and don’t care how insulting and condescending they come across. Jesus compares them to swine, and you can see why this analogy is so popular.

Yeah, they’re depressing. Why do they get like that? Pride.

Like I said, they already know it all. They think they have God all figured out. Or at least they have God figured out better than we Christians do. Sometimes they grew up Christian, so they actually do know a few things. Sometimes they didn’t, but they heard about Historical Jesus from a friendly antichrist, so that’s what they believe now: They figure they know who Jesus really is, whereas we Christians just swallow all our religion’s myths whole, and believe whatever our pastors and priests tell us. They’re woke; we’re not.

And sometimes they didn’t just dabble in “facts” which confirm their biases, like an antivaxxer finding new favorite sites. They studied a bunch. They took a religion class. They visited churches and temples and mosques. They still read every religion book on the bestseller lists. They follow some guru, or a variety of gurus, who purports to tell ’em how religion really works. Sometimes they’re actually in a congregation or fellowship of some sort. More often I find they constructed their own religion; they have the corner on the truth, whereas Christians and everyone else are just sheeple. “I don’t believe in just one guy; every one of them is a little right and a little wrong. I make up my own mind.” Isn’t that clever of them.

After all their research, they figure they’re an authority on religion and Christianity. They’re the experts. They’re right and we’re wrong.

And if you’re one of those Christians who doesn’t realize we too are wrong, such closed-minded pagans are gonna be particularly distressing, ’cause your pride is gonna butt heads with their pride. I’ve been there. The discussions can get mighty ugly. Humility is always the way to go. But even when we are humble, or strive for it, the know-it-all pagan will still get mighty annoying. And too often pleased we find them annoying: Some of ’em wanna bug Christians. It’s evil fun for them.

How do we deal with ’em?

The Good Samaritan Story.

Luke 10.25-37.

This is probably Jesus’s best-known story, almost universally called the Good Samaritan. Which… is a problematic name, ’cause I’m not sure how many people realize the reason he’s called the good Samaritan, is because the usual Jewish and gentile presumption is he wouldn’t be good; he’d either be apathetic or outright evil.

The story begins with a νομικός/nomikós, a person who specialized in the Law of Moses and its many, many Pharisee loopholes. The KJV translates nomikós as “lawyer,” and yeah, today’s lawyers are often just as expert at manipulating our laws so their clients come out on top. So I’ll go with that translation.

Luke 10.25-29 KWL

25 Look, a certain lawyer stands up to examine Jesus,

saying, “Teacher, what makes me inherit life in the age to come?”

26 Jesus tells him, “What’s been written in the Law?

How are you reading it?

27 In reply the lawyer says, “You’ll love your Lord God from your whole heart,

your whole life, your whole strength, and your whole intellect; Dt 6.4-5

and your neighbor same as yourself.” Lv 19.18

28 Jesus tells the lawyer, “Correctly answered.

Do this and you’ll live.”

29 Wanting to make himself righteous,

the lawyer tells Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Bibles tend to render what the lawyer was doing as “standing up to test Jesus,” as if he was trying to attack our Lord. In a way he kinda was: Pharisee rabbis taught their students the Socratic method. They’d make statements, and their students were trained to pick apart these statements every which way, to see whether they held up to serious scrutiny. Jesus must’ve made some statement, and this lawyer decided to pick it apart. It feels adversarial ’cause it kinda is, but it was an acceptable form of adversarial dialogue. This lawyer wasn’t doing anything culturally wrong. Or hostile—unless he chose to be hostile, and we’ve no real evidence from the bible that’s what he was up to.

So Jesus must’ve made some statement about what God’s kingdom will be like in the age to come, after Messiah takes over the world. The lawyer wanted to examine Jesus’s understanding of the kingdom; either to learn more, or to see whether Jesus believed what he hoped Jesus believed; again there’s no real evidence from the bible he was looking for something in Jesus to reject or condemn. If he, as a devout follower of God, is gonna inherit the kingdom, what ought he be doing in the meanwhile? Which is an entirely valid question—and one we Christians oughta be asking ourselves, because our behavior indicates we’re not asking it, and just taking our inheritance for granted.

Jesus asked him a question right back: “You know the Law, so you already know the answer. What’s the Law say you oughta be doing?” And the lawyer’s response is the very same that Jesus of Nazareth, Hillel of Babylon, and most Pharisees recognized were the two greatest commands:

Mark 12.28-31 KWL

28 One of the scribes, standing there listening to the discussion,

recognizing how well Jesus answered the Sadducees,

asked Jesus, “Which command is first of all?”

29 Jesus gave this answer: “First is, ‘Listen Israel: Our god is the Lord. The Lord is One.

30 You’ll love your Lord God with all your mind, life, thought, and strength.’ Dt 6.4-5

Second is, ‘Love your neighbor like yourself.’ Lv 19.18

No command is higher than these.”

Jesus singling out the greatest commands, wasn’t anything new. Really, it’s self-evident. Love God; love your neighbor. Once you recognize God is love, it stands to reason loving God and our neighbor is of greatest importance. Jesus knew it; this lawyer knew it. We should know it.

But this lawyer wanted to play around with what Jesus meant by neighbor. Most of us kinda skeptically interpret Luke’s statement that the lawyer was “wanting to make himself righteous” Lk 10.29 —we’re not sure he really wanted to be righteous, or that he was looking to do the bare minimum and still feel righteous. Same as us, there were no doubt certain neighbors this lawyer had whom he didn’t wanna recognize as neighbors. Just like racists do with people of other ethnicities, Americans do with ex-convicts and illegal immigrants and beggars, and Jews and Palestinians still do with one another.

I figure you already loosely know the Good Samaritan Story; we put the twist ending in the title, for crying out loud. Jesus doesn’t do loopholes, and makes it quite clear that “your neighbor” includes everybody in our homeland. Family members, strangers, the rich, the poor, the unwanted, the folks we imagine ought not be there. Everybody. We’re to love everybody. No exceptions.

So to teach this, Jesus tells a story. Let’s get to it.

“Jesus sightings” in the Old Testament.

From time to time I hear Christians claim Jesus makes appearances in the Old Testament.

And he does. All the time, really—because Jesus is YHWH. When God created the universe, when the LORD singled out Abram ben Terah and renamed him Abraham and relocated him to Canaan, when the LORD had Moses lead the Hebrews out of Egypt and give ’em the Law and covenanted to be their God and they his people: This is Jesus. This isn’t just the God the Father person of the trinity doing stuff, while the Son and Holy Spirit hid in the background, and peeked out once or twice, and made minor appearances. This is the triune God. And Jesus is this God.

John spelled it out in his gospel: It wasn’t the Father, and the Father alone, who created the universe; it’s God. And Jesus is God.

John 1.1-3 KJV

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

Because in the beginning God created the heavens and earth, Ge 1.1 a verse all John’s readers knew quite well; and stating the Word of God created everything means Jesus created everything. But no, this doesn’t mean God the Son alone created everything, instead of God the Father: Again, this is the triune God. The LORD God created everything.

So yeah, when you read about the LORD in the Old Testament, that’s Jesus. And when you read things into the LORD’s character and motives, which are inconsistent with Jesus’s demonstrated character and motives in the gospels, you’re misinterpreting the LORD. Jesus came to earth to show us what God is really like. Jn 1.18 He’s our lens. Don’t use others.

Okay, but back to these Christians who claim they’ve sighted Jesus in the OT. Rarely, if ever, do they mean they recognize Jesus is the LORD, and recognize Jesus’s character and motives in the LORD’s actions. Nope; they’re claiming one odd figure or another in the Old Testament is Jesus.

Fr’instance that one time the LORD had lunch with Abraham. Ge 18 That’s gotta be Jesus, they figure, ’cause he appeared as a human, and Jesus is human. (Nevermind that he hadn’t become human yet.)

Or the story of Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah… but since we’re gonna insist on using their slave names, okay; Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Daniel 3.23-25 KJV

23 And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell down bound into the midst of the burning fiery furnace. 24 Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonied, and rose up in haste, and spake, and said unto his counsellors, Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire? They answered and said unto the king, True, O king. 25 He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.

Oooh, we Christians respond, it was the Son of God. It’s Jesus!

Thing is, would this truly be what the pagan Nebuchadnezzar meant by his statement? The original Aramaic, בַר אֱלָהִֽין/var Elohín, can either mean “son of God” or “son of the gods,” which is how the ESV, NASB, and NIV chose to put it. The NLT has “looks like a god.” Remember, Nebuchadnezzar didn’t yet know God, much less Jesus, and had no clue what he was seeing.

But we have a clue as to what he was seeing. And let’s be fair; maybe it was God. He hadn’t yet become human, but same as he appeared to Abraham as a human, he appeared to Nebuchadnezzar as a human, ’cause he can do that of he so chooses. If it was God in the fire beside them, it’s Jesus, ’cause Jesus is God.

But more reasonably it was an angel. Same as God later sent an angel to rescue Daniel, Da 6.22 or sent an angel to rescue Simon Peter Ac 12.7 instead of showing up to the prison personally. Yeah Jesus could have done it himself, but he seems to delegate this duty to angels—all of whom were probably really eager for the job anyway. Wouldn’t you be?

Why must Christian apologists argue?

To argue means to give reasons or cite evidence in support of one’s ideas, actions, or planned actions. Like when you argue your case in court: You’re trying to convince the jury, judge, or justices to take your side, and giving good reasons why they oughta. Sometimes they’re gonna challenge those reasons with reasonable questions, and we oughta be able to reasonably answer those questions. If we can’t, we lose.

Then there’s the other definition of “argue”: To fight. With words, although in these types of argument, what they’re really going for is a win. By any means necessary. Reason has little to do with it; in fact they’d much rather hurt your feelings than offer a reasonable response.

The biggest problem in Christian apologetics is the temptation to stray from reasonable arguments, and start fighting. ’Cause once we do that, we lose.

Fighting turns the person we’re just talking with, just having a discussion with, into the enemy. Now we’re no longer trying to win them over. Now we’re trying to win. And when we do that, we stop caring about their feelings, stop displaying love and patience and grace, turn into those clanging cymbals Paul and Sosthenes wrote about, 1Co 13.1 and stop worrying about whether we might hurt their feelings. An opponent with hurt feelings is never, ever gonna agree. Oh, they’ll call a cease-fire; they’ll stop fighting for a time, when they think things aren’t going their way. But that’s only so they can retreat and come up with better arguments. They never surrendered, and never intend to. Because they’re hurt.

And if they’re never gonna surrender, we’re never gonna win them over. So we lose.

That tendency to fight, to do battle for Jesus instead of share the gospel, is argumentativeness. It’s a work of the flesh. Ga 5.19-21 Unfortunately it’s a common reason why Christians get into apologetics: They wanna fight. They wanna “do spiritual warfare,” and think it means fighting skeptics instead of resisting temptation. Not study and share good reasons for why we believe as we do, and answer skeptics’ doubts; to fight them and defeat them and win.

There’s a proper form of arguing your case, and a wholly improper form, and too many Christians don’t realize there’s any difference. And don’t care either. Hey, Christian apologetics lets us indulge our fleshly desires to beat people up—and use words and scriptures to do it! Nice.

So why must Christian apologists argue? To offer reasonable explanations for why we believe as we do. And only that. Any other form of argumentation is unacceptable. If you catch Christians doing it, rebuke them.

And yeah, they’ll claim, “But I’m doing it for Jesus!” as if it makes the fleshly behavior all right. Does not; never does. So call ’em out on their fruitlessness. The unloving, joyless, angry, impatient, graceless, out-of-control, intemperate, and vengeance-seeking behavior is a sign they’ve gone way off the path, and are fighting for their own honor instead of for the gospel and God’s kingdom.

Eventually everyone will understand Jesus’s parables.

Mark 4.21-25.

When Jesus explained to his students how parables work and why he uses them, he told them this.

Mark 4.21-23 KWL

21 Jesus told them, “Does the light come in so it can be put under a basket or under the couch?

Not so it can be put on the lampstand?

22 It’s not secret except that it may later be revealed.

It doesn’t become hidden unless it may later be known.

23 If anyone has hearing ears, hear this.”

Too often Christians quote this passage as if it applies to every secret: Everything we say in secret is gonna eventually come out in public.

And y’know, Jesus did say something like that, in Matthew and Luke. But he did so in a different context. There, it was part of his Olivet Discourse, his last talk to his students before his arrest and death. At the time he spoke about when people persecute Christians for proclaiming the gospel, and how their evil would become public, in time. And all Jesus’s other, private teachings would also become public, in time. Everything becomes public… in time. The truth will out.

Matthew 10.26-27 KWL

26 “So don’t be afraid of your haters, for nothing has been covered up which won’t be revealed.

Nothing is secret which won’t be made known.

27 What I tell you in the dark, say in the light.

What you hear in your ear, proclaim from the roofs.

 

Luke 12.2-3 KWL

2 “Nothing undercover exists which won’t be revealed.

Nothing is secret which won’t be made known.

3 As much as has been said in the dark about it, say in the light. It’ll be heard.

What was spoken in your ear in an inner room, will be proclaimed from the roofs.”

But that’s a whole ’nother lesson, and today I’m only discussing Jesus’s parables. And in Mark’s context, Jesus was only talking about his parables. Not everything.

Yes, Mark’s wording is the same as when Jesus taught about the light of the world:

Mark 4.21 KWL

Jesus told them, “Does the light come in so it can be put under a basket or under the couch?

Not so it can be put on the lampstand?”

 

Matthew 5.15 KWL

“Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket,

but on the lampstand, and it shines on everything in the house.”

 

Luke 8.16 KWL

“Nobody who grabs a light covers it with a jar, or puts it under the couch,

but puts it on a lampstand so those who enter can see the light.”

 

Luke 11.33 KWL

“Nobody who grabs a light puts a cover on it, nor under a basket,

but on the lampstand so those who enter can see the light.”

And again: Whole ’nother lesson. Jesus had no trouble using the same metaphor to teach a bunch of different things. The problem is we presume he’s teaching the same thing; that parables are secret codes. They’re not. Context, folks; the parables are always properly interpreted in context, same as the rest of the bible. There is no cryptography key which unlocks all the codes the very same way. That’s gnosticism, not to mention lazy thinking.

Nope, the reason Jesus said these things in Mark was ’cause he wanted his students to know that this bit—

Mark 4.11-12KWL

11 Jesus told them, “God’s kingdom’s mysteries were given to you.

To those outside, everything comes in parables.

12 Thus seers might not see—and realize.

Hearers might not hear—and be forgiven things.” Is 6.10

—is meant to be temporary. In time, outsiders get to understand what everything means. But when Jesus first shared these parables, it wasn’t yet the right time. His hour had not yet come.

Love one another.

John 13.34-35 KJV

34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. 35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

Lest we miss the point, Jesus says “Love one another” thrice. It’s not unimportant to him. It is unimportant to Christians however. We’ve really pooched this one. On a global level.

We don’t love our fellow Christians in our churches. They’re family, and sometimes we acknowledge they’re family… but they’re kinda like the family we barely tolerate for family reunions. We don’t interact with them outside our church buildings. We don’t know what’s going on with their personal lives. We don’t care, either. We’re too busy.

We don’t love our fellow Christians in the other churches. In many cases we convinced ourselves half of them aren’t real Christians anyway. Their denominations teach weird, inappropriate things. They’re too legalistic to really love Jesus, or they’re too loosey-goosy with God’s righteous standards to really love Jesus. They’re not Spirit-filled enough… or they think they’re more Spirit-filled than we are, but really they’ve just confused their weird fleshly impulses with the Spirit.

We don’t love our fellow Christians in far-off lands. If the nearby Christians aren’t Christian enough for us, foreign Christians definitely aren’t. Their customs are too bizarre. Their people are dirt poor, and we wealthy Christians are so unconsciously used to social Darwinist and prosperity gospel thinking, we suspect they can’t have a proper relationship with God if he’s abandoned them to their poverty like that. We assume their so-called Christianity is really their country’s version of Christianism: It’s a cultural and ethnic thing which everybody does by rote. It’s not a living relationship, but dead religion. Shame they’re getting persecuted though… which can’t possibly be because they really do know Jesus, and would die for him.

We barely love our neighbors anyway. And besides, we’re busy! We have jobs. We have kids to raise, and drive to their afterschool activities. We have dates to keep, buddies to stay connected with, movies to watch, teams to support, video games to play… We “have lives.” Jesus understands; he knows all, and knows how busy we are. We haven’t time. We’ll do it once we finally have time, like when we retire, or after we’re resurrected.

Angels.

I get asked about angels a lot. A lot. Probably too much. People have a great interest in ’em. Sometimes it’s unhealthy; namely when they’re far more interested in angelology than in Jesus.

But to a point it’s understandable. I mean, here are these spirit beings, and—from what we’ve been told about ’em—they’re around us all the time. People figure we have guardian angels, who are watching us constantly… and shaking their heads in disapproval every time we sin. Others imagine they have a shoulder angel, who’s constantly whispering correction in their ear (and no, that’s the Holy Spirit, and he’s not on your shoulder either).

Far too commonly, they think angels are dead people. Yep. Ghosts. Usually dead family members; usually beloved dead family members, ’cause they certainly don’t wanna imagine their creepy uncle has become an angel and can now watch ’em shower. Ghosts, but not ghosts; they’ve had an upgrade, and popular art imagines ’em with wings and halo and a bright nightgown, even though we usually figure yeah, they don’t really look like that. But we imagine they look down on us, approvingly or not; and come down to intervene from time to time.

Despite what the Mormons tell you, angels are not dead humans. They were never human. Whole different species. In fact, from the scriptures, there appear to be several species of angel. Medieval Catholics referred to these differences by the Latin word chorus, “character”—which evolved into their word choir, and left most westerners with the false idea angels are bunched into different singing groups. Kinda like the various a capella groups at an Ivy League school. But yeah, that’s why various music pastors insist angels are primarily interested in singing. No; that’s them projecting their favorite form of worship upon angels. Some angels sing. Some don’t.

Our word angel comes from the Greek >ἄγγελος/ánghelos, “agent” or “messenger.” It translates the Hebrew מַלְאָךְ/malákh, which also means “agent” or “messenger.” In the Old Testament, God uses both humans and spirits to share his messages. We tend to call the humans prophets, and we just assume all angels prophesy. ’Cause whenever they appear to us, that’s typically what they do.

There are angels in the bible, and because the bible’s about the LORD and his relationship with humans, it doesn’t go into any detail about what an angel is, how it works, how many eyes it has (for some of them, lots), how many wings it has (if any!), and what they do for fun. Because the bible’s not about angels. They exist, so they’re in there, but most of the “information” humanity has about angels comes from personal experience, if they’ve had any; or fiction. Arguably more Americans “know” about angels from the old TV shows Touched by an Angel or Supernatural than from scripture—and those shows, regardless of how much data they tried to pull from bible (and Supernatural didn’t even try), are fiction.

Getting Christian capitalization right.

We Christians have invented a lot of petty and stupid ways to judge our fellow Christians for how devout they are. That’s what these Expectations articles are about, y’know. We don’t look for fruit of the Spirit. We look for this crap. So from time to time I get judged for not meeting my fellow Christians’ expectations. So do you. Isn’t it tiresome?

One of the little litmus tests is how we do on Christian capitalization. I get rebuked for this on a frequent basis: I don’t capitalize Christian things enough. I don’t capitalize “bible”—as if people aren’t gonna know I’m talking about the bible when I do so. I don’t capitalize God’s pronouns. I don’t capitalize “church” and “liturgy” and “sacrament.” I do capitalize Satan.

Because I follow the rules of 21st century grammar. I know; it’s a dying practice. I read a lot of news, and regularly catch reporters misusing apostrophes. People love to use ’em for plurals. Love love love. Even though they shouldn’t. When in doubt, don’t. But I digress.

Now under the rules of 16th century grammar, you capitalize everything you wanna emphasize, which is why the U.S. Constitution and our Declaration of Independence are full (or to do it 16th-century style, Full) of capitalizations. But we stopped doing that in the 19th century, and the only reason Christians kept it up is because we liked old books. We oughta still like old books… but that’s another digression.

Under 21st century grammar, we capitalize proper names, and titles when we address people by ’em. We capitalize Jesus, of course; we capitalize Lord when we address him as such, but when we refer to him as our lord, we needn’t. Christians will, ’cause they don’t realize there’s a difference, and figure you always capitalize lord. And yeah, when we’re referring to YHWH, the LORD, yeah we do. But “lord” is his title, not a proper name. “God” is his species, not a proper name; calling him “God” is like when he refers to Ezekiel as “Son of Man.” Ek 2.1

Like I said, Christians don’t realize there’s a difference, and get all bent out of shape when people refer to “god,” as in “The guru claims to be an expert on god.” (Y’realize if the guru is Hindu, of course you wouldn’t capitalize “god,” ’cause we could be talking about any of their gods.) To the Christian’s mind, it doesn’t matter if “god” is only God’s species: You capitalize it! Always. It’s not lowercase-G “god,” and lowercasing God’s title disrespects him, doesn’t it? Just like how it disrespects us when people won’t capitalize “human,” right?

Just like how disrespects us when other people won’t capitalize our names, right? …Wait, do people do this as a way to disrespect one another? I mean, unless they’re being a little creative with graphic design, like movie credits which put everything in lowercase: Who lowercases people’s names so as to insult them? And when we see it done to our own names, who among us is so sensitive we identify this as a slight? Does it ever occur to anybody to consider this a big deal? Or an insult?

Yet you’ll actually find Christians do this to the devil. Seriously.

Now the things we call it—“devil” and “Satan”—are actually both titles. We don’t know its proper name. (No, it’s not “Lucifer.” That’s a misinterpretation… and another title, while we’re at it.) As titles, we don’t actually need to capitalize ’em either, unless we’re addressing the devil by its title—“Listen, Devil,” or “Listen, Accuser”—but Christians traditionally treat “Satan” as this particular satan’s proper name. Yet Christians, just to stick it to Satan a little, like to lowercase it where inappropriate. Yeah, like this gets it back for convincing people to use lowercase-G’s on God. It’s petty of us.

It also freaks Christians out when people capitalize “God” to refer to another religion’s god. Like Aten or Wotan or Vishnu—we don’t refer to these beings as “Gods,” but “gods.” Zeus isn’t a God, but a god. Properly, YHWH is a god too, but to honor him we insist on making him always, always an uppercase-G God, ’cause he’s the God.

Mix any of these customary rules up, and people are gonna doubt your salvation. Even if it’s an honest mistake, or a pagan editor removing all our sacred capitalization.

Yeah, it’s already kinda silly. But it goes further. A lot further. Follow me down the rabbit hole, will you?

The Fruitless Fig Tree Story.

Luke 13.1-9.

Two stories before Jesus presented the Mustard Seed Story in Luke, he told the Fruitless Fig Tree Story in response to then-current events. Let’s start with the events, since they’re relevant.

Luke 13.1 KWL

Some were present among Jesus’s listeners at that time, who brought news

of the Galileans whose blood Pontius Pilate mixed with the sacrifices.

We don’t know the actual story behind this. We just have guesses. Most of ’em presume Pilate put down an uprising, and in so doing killed some Galileans in the temple area, either close enough to the ritual sacrifices to splatter blood on ’em… or at least close enough for the Israelis to object it was just as bad, and hyperbolically claim he may as well have splattered their blood on their sacrifices. You know how people can get.

But again: We don’t know this is what happened. The Romans are pretty good at keeping records about such things, and we have no record of such an uprising. It’s certainly staying in Roman character to indiscriminately kill people in order to keep the peace, and certainly staying in Roman character to kill people even in sacred spaces. The whole concept of claiming sanctuary is a Hebrew thing 1Ki 2.28-34 and later a Christian thing. Not a Roman thing.

Popular songwriter Ephrem the Syrian (306–73) told an interesting story. Remember when Antipas Herod had John the baptist executed? Ephrem claimed this outraged Pilate—’cause the execution was illegal. After all, John hadn’t done anything wrong; he only pointed out it was against the Law of Moses for Herod to marry his sister-in-law. Lv 18.16 Which is true after all. Anyway because Pilate couldn’t do anything to Herod, he decided the next best thing was to arrest and execute anybody else who was present. He found ’em in the temple, killed ’em as they were offering sacrifice, and that’s the backstory. Commentary on Tatian’s Diatesseron 14.25 But Ephrem lived three centuries after it happened, so again: We don’t know this is what happened.

What we do know is Luke kinda expected his readers—or his main reader, Theophilus Lk 1.3 —to know this backstory. And maybe Theophilus did. But we don’t.

Anyway, back to Jesus.

Disasters and karma.

Luke 13.2-5 KWL

2 In reply Jesus told them, “You think these Galileans were sinners.

Worse than all the Galileans, because they suffered such evil things.

3 No, I tell you.

But unless you repent, everyone will likewise be destroyed.

4 Or those 18 killed when the tower in Siloam fell on them:

You think they were worse debtors than all the people inhabiting Jerusalem?

5 No, I tell you.

But unless you repent, everyone will likewise be destroyed.

We know of a pool of Siloam in Jerusalem, Jn 9.7 but not a tower. Probably because it fell. Possibly while it was under construction; it fell, killed the workers, and was never rebuilt. Possibly it was poorly made—or well-made, but an earthquake took it down. Again, we don’t have the backstory. But it was likely another then-current event. One Jesus brought up for two reasons.

First, both Pilate killing the Galileans, and the tower falling on people, were disasters. One was the deliberate product of human will. The other was an accident. But if you’re planning to highlight this difference, don’t bother. Jesus treats ’em exactly the same. A disaster’s a disaster.

Second, Jesus didn’t want anyone in his audience getting the idea that Galileans needed to repent but Judeans didn’t. Disaster strikes Galileans and Judeans alike. Disaster strikes Jews and gentiles alike as well. Everybody needs to repent. Everybody’s a sinner.

The problem was the ancient Israelis—and present-day Christians, and really everybody—had and have the bad habit of leaping to the conclusion every disaster is a consequence. They don’t have any apparent, visible reason, but they happen because these people need to die. ’Cause karma. The universe needs to balance out good and bad karma, and destroy evildoers one way or another. Christians might credit God for balancing things out; determinists certainly do. But they act as if God is beholden to follow the laws of karma. He is not. He does grace. Always has.

So the Galileans were sinners, and the Jerusalemites were debtors (a popular synonym for sinner). So they deserved to die; and since everybody sins we kinda all deserve to die, as determinists love to uncharitably point out whenever disaster strikes. But as Jesus points out, everybody’s gonna die—unless they repent.

We Christians usually assume Jesus means we’re gonna die in our sins, and go to hell, unless we repent and follow him. And yeah, maybe Jesus means that too. But on a more historical level, in about four decades after Jesus taught this, the Romans came and destroyed Israel—and only the Christians among the Israelis were forewarned, fled, and survived. Unless these literal people repent, follow Jesus, and hear from his apostles to flee for the hills, they’re literally, in their present era and not the End Times, gonna die. Jesus might be talking about humanity’s need to repent, but he’s definitely talking about Roman-era Israel.

And karma really has nothing to do with it. We Christians need to ditch these karmic ideas. They’re not of God; they’re not his idea; they’re ours. They’re how humans imagine the world should work; how people explain things away when bad things happen to good people. But Jesus tells us no. Twice.

Not every disaster is God smiting the wicked, nor balancing out the cosmos. Some events don’t mean anything. Stop trying to find meanings in them, and connecting cosmic dots which aren’t there. Focus on what we properly oughta focus upon: Our lifestyle of repentance. On following Jesus, and pointing others to him. On loving God and our neighbors. On his kingdom come.

Now for the fig tree.

The Fruitless Fig Tree Story doesn’t follow the previous lesson for no reason. It’s definitely connected.

Luke 13.6-9 KWL

6 Jesus was speaking this parable: “Someone has a fig tree,

planted in his vineyard, and comes to check for fruit on it, and finds none.

7 He tells his vinedresser, ‘Look, it’s been three years;

I come checking for fruit on this fig tree; I find none.

Cut it down. Why should it waste the soil?’

8 In reply the vinedresser tells him, ‘Master, leave it be this year,

till the time I can dig round it and can throw manure on it.

9 If it produces fruit, it can stay.

If not, cut it down indeed.’ ”

Historically Christians have interpreted this story thisaway:

• The vineyard represents the church, or the world.
• The tree represents a Christian.
• The vineyard owner is the Father, who’s lost patience with this fleshly Christian.
• The vinedresser is Jesus, who talks the Father down.

The reason we know this is a problematic interpretation is ’cause Jesus somehow has more patience than his Father. “The Father” might insist, “Times up; we should see fruit by now; cut it down,” but “Jesus” sees our potential and talks his Father out of it.

Thing is, the Father shares Jesus’s attitude of wanting to save the world. Jn 3.16, 1Ti 2.3-4, 2Pe 3.9 Saving the world is their idea. Patience is a trait they have in common ’cause they’re God, and not in unequal amounts. Pitting them against one another presumes they aren’t One God.

So there are a few problems with the traditional interpretation. Something’s amiss.

What’s amiss is Christians interpret this story without looking at the previous passage. Jesus’s audience was talking about disasters, and Jesus brought the discussion round to disaster coming for ancient Israel. This story is likewise about disaster coming for Israel. The tree represents ancient Israel. Contrary to the Pharisees’ intentions, Israel wasn’t adequately producing fruit.

The people knew this already, and not just because John the baptist had said so.

Luke 3.7-9 KJV

7 Then said [John] to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of him, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, That God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. 9 And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: every tree therefore which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

Yep, Jesus is talking about the very same thing John did. Even used a tree, and cutting it down, to make his point.

Jesus brings up one tree, and John many. One can argue each tree represents an individual person, and I’m inclined to say it’s an individual nation. Either way we know God judges both individuals and nations—that sometimes unrighteous people like Jeconiah and Zedekiah get what’s coming to them, and righteous people like Jeremiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel get caught up in the disasters that befall their nation. It’s why we all need to be forewarned.

In his story Jesus’s landowner says he’s seen nothing for three years. No this isn’t a secret code for how many literal years Israel had gone wrong. Too many Christians are trying to crack a code which isn’t there. Don’t fall for that. The three years in this story doesn’t represent literal years, but a length of time where a farmer should reasonably expect fruit. It doesn’t secretly represent three “weeks” of years, i.e. 21 years; the LORD took a lot longer than that to smite Egypt for its sin of Hebrew slavery, and to smite the United States for its sin of African slavery.

The Father and the Son have the same mind about salvation, and if the vineyard owner and the vinedresser represent them, they represent a discussion the LORD has within himself about what to do with his fruitless people. It’s not one person debating another person; it’s an inner monologue within the godhead. It’s the LORD determining what he’s gonna do, same as he does elsewhere in the scriptures.

Genesis 18.17-18 KJV

17 And the LORD said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; 18 seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?

Who’s he talking to? Himself. He does that. We now know God is a trinity, and while we don’t fully understand how he works, we know there are persons of the One God who have different wills, Lk 22.42 yet agree because he is One. The vineyard belongs to Jesus, the king of kings who conquered the world, Jn 16.33 who may decide, “Okay, this fruitless tree of mine oughta come down.” Yet the Holy Spirit says, “But I want some more time to work on it first. And if I don’t get results, then it’ll come down.”

So this is what God’s up to. Disaster was coming. (Disasters are always coming.) God sees his fruitless tree, wasting soil, and knows it oughta come down… and also knows if he pushes the tree just a bit more, he can wring fruit from it. He wants to save everybody he can. He’s still trying to.

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Holiness versus solemnity.

Years ago I taught at my church’s Christian junior high and elementary school. We had yearly “staff retreats,” which took an inservice day and required us to go do something together. Sometimes an actual retreat at a conference center; sometimes just a dinner. (I think most of us appreciated the dinners most.)

Anyway, one year our principal decided it’d be neat if we visited the Friday night service at Bethel Church in Redding. We’d check into a hotel, go out to dinner, go to the service, return to the hotel, and go home in the morning. The reason for the overnight stay was ’cause Bethel services might, “as the Spirit led,” go past midnight. She thought it was a great idea—and was really surprised at the backlash she got from the teachers.

Y’see, Bethel’s a New Apostolic charismatic church. Their beliefs and teachings aren’t mainstream—and are therefore controversial. I don’t know how aware she was of this; I think she wanted to go to Bethel because she loved their music. (They do have great music.) Whereas some of our Fundamentalist teachers were worried they’d be taught heresy, and were really bothered by the idea of a mandatory staff retreat which’d teach ’em heresy.

So one day in the staff room, I heard my fellow teachers express their worry our principal was trying to convert them. I figured I knew her well enough to explain no, she really wasn’t. It was a simple case of her being really earnest… and kinda tone-deaf.

“All right,” said one of our more conservative teachers. In this article I’ll call her Rachel. She attended an independent Baptist church; one of those churches which only do hymns. Bethel’s guitar-driven music, dancing in the aisles, hands waving, flags flapping, tambourines, wild enthusiams: This was way out of Rachel’s comfort zone. (Not mine; I’d been Pentecostal for years.) But Rachel figured she’d take a look, and if she didn’t like it, she’d just go back to the hotel. Fair enough. And the other teachers decided to follow her lead: See it for themselves, at least.

So off we went. It was nothing I hadn’t seen before. Heck, my church’s Friday night services were similar. (Probably ’cause our music pastors were already big fans of Bethel songs.) Rachel kept asking, “Does your church really do all this stuff?” and yeah, it did. I go to a much smaller church now, where don’t have so much space for dancers and flags, but we still have a lot of fans of Bethel music. To her credit, Rachel stayed for most of it, and left only because it was getting way past her bedtime.

“I dunno,” she told me afterwards. “It’s not what I’m used to. I like my worship to be holy. You understand? Holy.”

At first no I didn’t. Exactly what’s unholy about it?

I grew up Fundamentalist, so I know exactly what kind of music Rachel’s church does. And as she described why she preferred that style of music to Bethel’s revivalist style, it dawned on me: By holy she means solemn. Serious. Sincere. Formal.

Because God, explained Rachel, is a holy God. Meaning he’s serious, sincere, and formal.

The fruit of holiness: Let’s get weird.

Holiness is a fruit of the Spirit. And every time I point this out, there’s always some numbnut who says, “It is not. Holiness is good, and Christians oughta be holy, but it’s not in Galatians 5, so it’s not a fruit.”

Okay, three things. First, Galatians 5 isn’t a comprehensive list of the Spirit’s fruit, and was never meant to be. Jesus and his other apostles talk about fruit from time to time as well. Simon Peter’s the guy who brought up holiness, in his first letter.

1 Peter 1.13-16 KJV

13 Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; 14 as obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance: 15 but as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; 16 because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy. Lv 19.2

God expects his kids to be holy. It’s one of his traits that’s gonna inevitably flow into dedicated followers and make us holy.

Second, y’notice how tons of Christians regularly confuse holiness with goodness? So if you claim holiness isn’t a fruit of the Spirit but goodness is, and you think holiness and goodness are the same thing, what’re you doing claiming holiness isn’t a fruit of the Spirit? Although here’s where briefly I point out holiness is not goodness; it’s a different thing, and I’ll get into that, ’cause it’s the point of this article. But I won’t digress further.

Third and last: Fruit of the Spirit is empowered by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. Who is—duh!—holy. It’s in his name. It’s bizarre to imagine the Spirit won’t try to push us towards holiness.

But back to how holiness isn’t goodness. It’s not, y’know. Holy means we stand out separate from the rest of the world. We’re unique. We’re trying to act like Jesus. We’re trying to be better people than we were, and that includes not being jerks about it. We have higher and better standards for our lives.

We live in the world, in the wider culture around us, all the way into the world. We don’t isolate ourselves like hermits or cultists, because that’s what Christians do when they don’t get how holiness works. Jesus never isolated himself; even the bible’s “isolationists” like John the baptist didn’t isolate themselves. How’re we gonna reach the lost if we don’t go out and find ’em? But despite how immersed in the world we get, we don’t conform to the world, because we know the world doesn’t know what it’s doing or where it’s going. The Spirit does, and we follow him.

Yep, holiness means we’re different. Or as the world more often calls it, we’re weird.

Which is fine. I don’t mind being called weird, so long as we’re talking good weird. There’s good weird and bad weird. Dark Christians are bad weird. That’s fruitless and honestly meant to alienate people, because they figure offending people is the best way to purge the hypocrites from their ranks. Problem is, fleshly Christians make the best hypocrites, so what it really does is alienate Christians and recruit hypocrites. That’s why I try to keep people away from ’em; I’d much rather convert hypocrites and get ’em to follow Jesus.

Anyway we’re looking for good weird. God calls us to be unique. What’s that look like?

God’s holiness, our example.

As I wrote yesterday, when Christians talk about holiness we usually mean goodness. We figure what makes God holy is his perfection: He’s good, he’s pure, he’s worthy of honor, he’s so… well, clean. Whereas we humans get awfully dirty.

And yeah, God is all these things. But these are symptoms of his holiness. They’re the fruit. Let’s not confuse ’em with holiness itself.

The Old Testament Hebrew word קֹדֶשׁ/qodéš, “holy,” means separate—set apart from everything else. The New Testament Greek word ἅγιος/ágios means the same thing. God’s separate and set apart from everything else. Not because he’s removed himself; he deliberately got himself right in the middle of our situation. ’Cause he’s here to help if we’d just let him. But God still stands apart from everything else, because he’s unlike everything else. He’s unique. He’s diffrent. He’s holy.

No surprise, people tend to confuse the symptoms with the underlying condition. We think how we get holy like God is we gotta be perfect. Gotta be good, pure, worthy of honor, and clean. That’s how holiness is achieved. God’s holiness, and the serious emphasis the scriptures put on his holiness, must be all about his moral perfection; when the angels call him “holy holy holy” Is 6.3, Rv 4.8 (’cause repeating a word in ancient Hebrew, like “holy holy place,” means it’s a most holy place, He 9.3 and three holies means God’s even holier) they’re really making a big to-do about his perfection.

Here’s the catch: If God’s all about holiness, and holiness means pefection, he must really hate it when we sin. It either drives him away or drives him to get all wrathful.

Really, this interpretation comes from people who really hate it when we sin. And really hate sinners. And project their attitude upon God, and claim he hates sin and sinners just as much, and push us to “be holy” and sin not. Be perfect like God is perfect. Don’t trigger him.

Okay yes: God hates sin. He’s mighty clear about that. He’s good; he created the universe and called it good (and we fouled that up); and the entirety of salvation history, the whole point of God’s kingdom, has to do with God cleaning up our mess.

But to listen to certain dark Christians, God isn’t cleaning up our mess with kindness and grace. He’s pissed. He’s quite happy to fling millions into hell, and if we get on his bad side by not meeting his standard of perfection, we’ll head for hell along with them.

To such Christians, any statements about God’s grace and mercy and kindness and goodness has to be followed up with “But God is just, and God is holy.” To them, God’s holiness is all about his impatience, rage, and destructiveness. Not his actual character; not the fruit he wants to bring out of us. To them, his perfection requires him to purge us with fire, and the way they describe him, he’s eager to rage on the wicked. It’s gonna be an orgy of death and destruction. Then afterward, for eternity, he’s gonna be friendly and benign, and that oughta neatly make up for seven years of widespread slaughter.

See what happens when we get our definitions wrong? Bad theology.

Holy and sanctified.

Whenever Christians talk about holiness, we’re usually talking about goodness. When we talk about sanctification, the practice of being holy, again we’re usually talking about being good: Gotta resist temptation. Gotta stop sinning. Gotta get rid of anything in our lives which might tempt us to sin. Gotta get rid of anything “worldly,” because we’re striving for heavenly. Gotta shun evil… and in many cases gotta shun evildoers, i.e. everybody else, which is why in the past, those who sought holiness frequently became hermits, or cloistered with fellow holiness-seekers in a monastery.

Thing is, this isn’t what holiness means. Nor what sanctification means.

Holy means dedicated to God and his service, and not just for ordinary common use. If we’re gonna be holy, we’re not gonna be ordinary. We’re gonna be different. We’re gonna be weird, in most cases. People are gonna notice we’re different; we don’t live like or act like everybody else. Not even like fellow Christians—who, to be honest, are often following cultural trends of what “Christian” means rather than the Holy Spirit.

But since Jesus expects his followers to produce good fruit, we’re not gonna be bad weird, nor creepy weird, nor offputtingly weird. We’re not gonna alienate pagans. Nor should we; we’re trying to lead ’em to Jesus! They’re gonna notice we’re different, but they’re not gonna flinch because we’re antisocial or anti-them. They’re gonna be drawn to us because we love people like Jesus does. ’Cause we’re gracious and kind like God is. ’Cause we’re patient and even-tempered and peaceful like Jesus teaches. Good weird. Refreshingly weird.

We’re gonna develop reputations among the pagans as “good people,” not “holier-than-thou.” Safe people, not condemning people. Kind, not jerks.

It’s gonna strike ’em as weird because, sad to say, Christianity doesn’t have this reputation in our culture. Too many jerks. Too many articles on sanctification which only zero in on how God wants us to be good, but spend way too much time on not sinning, and way too little time on being like Jesus—who didn’t sin, but that’s not his defining characteristic. God is love. “Be holy, same as I am holy” Lv 11.44-45 is about love. Not so much goodness… although if we just focus on loving God and loving people, we’re gonna wind up following all the other commands. Mt 22.36-40

Sanctification is our process of seizing control of the corrupt parts of our human nature, and adopting a Jesus-style human nature. He never stopped being human, y’know. He simply showed us what it’s like when a human has God’s character traits instead of selfish ones. Goodness is a part of it, ’cause goodness is the Spirit’s fruit, but again: Holiness isn’t just goodness! It’s being different same as God is different: Unlike the rest of the world, we strive for love, joy, patience, kindness, and temperance. Unlike the rest of the world, we go after truth and beauty instead of provocation and self-justification. We’re not just being different ’cause it’s fun to be different: We’re being different because these qualities matter.

The Yeast in Dough Story.

Matthew 13.33, Luke 13.20-21.

Jesus gave this short one-liner parable right after his Mustard Seed Story in both Matthew and Luke. It’s quick.

Matthew 13.33 KWL

Jesus told them another parable: “Heaven’s kingdom is like yeast.

A woman who had it, mixed it into 43 liters of dough till it leavened it all.”

 

Luke 13.20-21 KWL

20 Jesus said again, “What’s God’s kingdom like? 21 It’s like yeast.

A woman who had it, mixed it into 43 liters of dough till it leavened it all.”

It follows the Mustard Seed Story because it’s presenting a similar idea about the growth and spread of God’s kingdom. The kingdom’s like a tiny seed which grows into a vast tree. Or like yeast which a woman mixes into an industrial-sized amount of dough.

The original text of both gospels has σάτα τρία/sáta tría, “three sátons.” No, not Satan; sáton. It’s Greek for the Hebrew unit of measurement סְאָה/çeá (NIV “seah”) which is a third of an אֵיפָה/eyfá (KJV “ephah”). No, that doesn’t clear things up any. Sorry.

Medieval rabbis believed measurements in the bible were based on the בֵּיצָה/beychá, “egg.” Six beychím made a לֹג/log, (pronounced loʊg, not like a block of wood). Four logím, or 24 eggs, made a קַב/qav (KJV “cab”). Six qavím, or 144 eggs, made a çeá. Three çeaím, or 432 eggs, made an eyfá… and I could go on, but your eyes would glaze over even more than they already have.

Whose eggs? Ah, that’s a whole other debate the rabbis had. Not that it mattered; some of them insisted eggs were smaller today than they were in bible times. But if we’re using chicken or duck eggs as a rough estimate, we get about 14⅓ liters per seah. Jesus said three of ’em, so that’s 43 liters.

Westerners tend to measure dough by weight, and figuring 1.18 pounds per liter, you’re talking roughly 50 pounds of dough. Which is what the translators of the CSB calculated; the translators of the NIV figured 60 pounds.

But most translators skipped the math and followed the KJV’s cop-out of translating sáta as “measures.” What’s a measure? You don’t know. Most people presume it’s the volume of a measuring cup; a quart, maybe. Three quarts. Three loaves of bread. Which is not what Jesus was thinking. Think much bigger.

KJV “…three measures of meal…”

CEB “…three batches of flour…”

ESV, ISV, NET, NLT, NRSV “…three measures of flour…”

GNT “…a bushel of flour…”

GNV “…three pecks of flour…”

ICB “…a big bowl of flour…”

NASB “…three sata of flour…”

NCV “…a large tub of flour…”

NLV “…three pails of flour…”

VOICE “…a huge quantity of flour…”

I used to work in a kitchen which had an industrial-size mixer for when we’d make lots of baked goods. I think we could fit a çeá’s worth of dough into it; might be pushing it. Yet Jesus described a woman mixing three of these volumes. Back in his day, it’d obviously be done by hand. Maybe with a really large spoon. Whenever I’ve had to mix a barrel’s worth of stuff by hand, I used an oar. It’s not light work.

This kinda begs the question: Why would this hypothetical woman be mixing 50 pounds of dough? The way they made bread in the ancient middle east, that’d make maybe 250 flatbreads. Enough for 100 people.

But like I said, these two parables are about impossibly large amounts. And Jesus is right about how yeast works: Given enough time, even a very small amount of yeast will work its way into every last milliliter of that dough. His kingdom’s like that. Little bit of gospel spreads everywhere.

“You don’t know his heart.”

I got a coworker who loves to talk about End Times stuff, ’cause he’s kinda obsessed with it. (No, this article’s not on the End Times.) He likes to bring up any little thing which might be an End Times harbinger, just to get my take on it. Most of the time I tell him he’s worried over nothing. Yeah, some of those things are evil. Racism’s evil, slavery’s evil, pandemics are evil, wars are evil. And they’re the same evils humanity’s had since the very first humans. Wars happen. Plagues happen. Evil people take power. ’Tis nothing new. It’s new to him; he doesn’t know enough history. Which is the usual reason people claim, “Oh it’s so the last days; things have never been this bad.” Yeah they have. And worse.

In 2020 he asked me if I thought then-President Donald Trump was the Beast. Of course I told him no. Because I checked. Just because Trump still acts mighty beastlike on a frequent basis, and just because he’s managed to sucker a lot of partisan Christians into supporting him, doesn’t make him any more the Beast than Richard Nixon, Warren Harding, Woodrow Wilson, James Buchanan, Andrew Jackson, or any of the other various immoral men we’ve elected to govern the United States. Plus, I pointed out, we should never really be surprised when someone who’s not Christian doesn’t act Christian.

At this another coworker, whom I’ll call Yanni, butted in: “Trump is so a Christian.”

Yeah, no he’s not.

We got into a minor back-and-forth, where Yanni offered the usual arguments for why Trump’s a Christian. Like how he says he’s Christian. As do lots of people who aren’t really. Which is why I responded it doesn’t matter what Trump calls himself; he could call himself a unicorn if he so chose; doesn’t make him one. Calling yourself Christian means you think you’re Christian, but it’s really what Jesus thinks that counts.

“Who are you to say?” Yanni insisted. “You don’t know his heart.”

If you didn’t grow up Christian, “You don’t know his heart” is an old bit of Christianese which means “You can’t read his mind.” The ancients believed humans think with our hearts, and that’s what “heart” means in the bible. The medievals believed humans feel with our hearts, and from the middle ages to today, Christians have mixed up the medieval definition with the ancient one. So when many Christians say “You don’t know his heart” some of ’em mean, “You don’t know how he feels, deep down, inside.”

Either way, Yanni claimed there’s no way for me to know Trump’s true relationship with Christ. An argument, I might point out, which works both ways: Yanni doesn’t know his heart either, so there’s no way Yanni could know he is Christian.

But “You don’t know his heart” is false. Jesus told us how we can identify his followers: Fruit. If you’re Christian, you got the Holy Sprit within you. If you follow the Spirit—as you should!—you produce fruit. And if you resist the Spirit, you produce bad fruit; you’re fleshly. And back before he was banned from Twitter, what did Donald Trump tweet all day long? Hatred. Anger. Partisanship. Rabble-rousing. Separatism. Envy. Divisiveness. Unethical behavior.

Luke 6.43-45 KJV

43 For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 44 For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes. 45 A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.

You wanna know whether a person is Christian? Look at their character. Low character, no Christian.

Fleshly Christians.

Jesus wants his followers to produce good fruit. Fruit of the Spirit, typically. It’s proof of our salvation: If we really do have the Holy Spirit within, if we really do abide in Christ, if we really have a relationship with our Father, we’re gonna be fruity.

No, not automatically, despite what some Christians claim. I know; I’ve heard their testimonies. “All of a sudden I just stopped sinning! It’s amazing!” No; at most the Spirit broke some addictions, but you chose to listen to the Spirit instead of your flesh. You chose to resist temptation instead of getting deterministically reprogrammed to follow God instead of your id. Fruit doesn’t spontaneously happen. It’s the product of a relationship—the one we often claim we have instead of religion—in which the Spirit leads and we follow. Most of the time it’s way easier than we ever expected (’cause the Spirit empowers us), and the more we do it the easier it gets, but still: Both of us do it.

And then there are the Christians who aren’t fruity. They’re fleshly.

No doubt you’ve met a few. Are related to a few. They aren’t loving. They’re joyless. Quickly irritated, angered, outraged, offended. Impatient. Out-of-control emotions. They do all sorts of evil things, ranging from white lies to full-on criminal activity, and justify it all sorts of ways. They claim they trust God, but more often trust their wallets, friends, political parties, media, and some stranger they found on the internet who tells it just the way they like it. They know it all; you can’t tell ’em different. They have no self-control, as you can tell from their debts, waistline, constant tardiness, and inability to let others reply, or have the last word. They haven’t crucified the flesh; Ga 5.24 in many cases they’re even saying God wants them to indulge themselves, because didn’t he make this world for us to enjoy?

Fruit isn’t their litmus test for Christianity. They came up with substitutes. They’re looking for orthodoxy, conformity, niceness, zealousness, baptism, whether you said the sinner’s prayer, whether you’re in a bible-believing church, the right politics, the right vocabulary. And sometimes they’re looking for nothing, and accept you’re Christian entirely because you say you are.

They get outraged when I suggest certain self-described “Christians,” who nonetheless demonstrate none of the Spirit’s fruit soever, are not.

As I said, fruit isn’t their litmus test. I claim it is; they claim it can’t be. Because they’ve never remotely thought of fruit that way. Fruit’s just a nice idea; the Galatians verses are just a nice passage to memorize; and when Jesus talked about fruit he was only talking about false prophets, Mt 7.15-16 and not all of us are prophets. Their churches claim one of the other unscriptural litmus tests, like a sinner’s prayer, and denouncing Satan at one’s water baptism.

And hey, what about newbies? If a person’s just become Christian a month ago, or six months ago, should we expect a “baby Christian” to exhibit the Spirit’s fruit to the level of a mature Christian? That’s ridiculous. They’re too new! Besides, even the spiritually mature Christians they know are occasionally, if not frequently, deficient in love, joy, peace, patience, and grace.

And whenever they point to the “mature Christians” they know with frequent lapses of fruit, you begin to realize exactly why they never remotely thought of fruit as evidence of one’s Christianity.