“Seek ye first”: Pursuing wealth via pursuing God’s kingdom.

Matthew 6.33.

In Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, he said the following:

Matthew 6.31-33 Peshitta

31 ܠܳܐ ܗܳܟ݂ܺܝܠ ܬ݁ܺܐܨܦ݁ܽܘܢ ܐܰܘ ܬ݁ܺܐܡܪܽܘܢ ܡܳܢܳܐ ܢܶܐܟ݂ܽܘܠ ܐܰܘ ܡܳܢܳܐ ܢܶܫܬ݁ܶܐ ܐܰܘ ܡܳܢܳܐ ܢܶܬ݂ܟ݁ܰܣܶܐ 32 ܟ݁ܽܠܗܶܝܢ ܓ݁ܶܝܪ ܗܳܠܶܝܢ ܥܰܡ݈ܡܶܐ ܗ݈ܘ ܒ݁ܳܥܶܝܢ ܠܗܶܝܢ ܐܰܒ݂ܽܘܟ݂ܽܘܢ ܕ݁ܶܝܢ ܕ݁ܒ݂ܰܫܡܰܝܳܐ ܝܳܕ݂ܰܥ ܕ݁ܳܐܦ݂ ܠܟ݂ܽܘܢ ܡܶܬ݂ܒ݁ܰܥܝܳܢ ܗܳܠܶܝܢ ܟ݁ܽܠܗܶܝܢ 33 ܒ݁ܥܰܘ ܕ݁ܶܝܢ ܠܽܘܩܕ݂ܰܡ ܡܰܠܟ݁ܽܘܬ݂ܶܗ ܕ݁ܰܐܠܳܗܳܐ ܘܙܰܕ݁ܺܝܩܽܘܬ݂ܶܗ ܘܟ݂ܽܠܗܶܝܢ ܗܳܠܶܝܢ ܡܶܬ݁ܬ݁ܰܘܣܦ݂ܳܢ ܠܟ݂ܽܘܢ

What, you thought he said it in English? But okay, lemme stop messing with you and go with English instead of Syriac.

Matthew 6.31-33 GNT

31 “So do not start worrying: ‘Where will my food come from? or my drink? or my clothes?’ 32 (These are the things the pagans are always concerned about.) Your Father in heaven knows that you need all these things. 33 Instead, be concerned above everything else with the Kingdom of God and with what he requires of you, and he will provide you with all these other things.”

Or as the King James Version has verse 33, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” Mt 6.33 KJV That’s the way I memorized it back in Sunday school. It’s a good verse to put in your brain. God first; let the worries of this world sort themselves out.

Problem is, when people only have that one specific verse in your brain, and aren’t wholly aware of the verses which come before it, nor what Jesus is even talking about… we’re gonna fill in the gaps in our knowledge with what we imagine Jesus meant by it. And some of those imaginations aren’t all that righteous.

One of the more frequent ways I’ve heard Christians misuse verse 33 over the years, is by not knowing what Jesus means by “all these other things.” By guessing at what Jesus means by “all these other things.” As if it’s all that hard to crack open a bible, read the Sermon on the Mount, and know what Jesus means; but yeah, they’d rather guess, and guess badly.

So among the Prosperity Gospel crowd, “all these other things” tends to mean wealth. If we “seek ye first the kingdom of God,” if we concentrate on growing Christianity and the church and its ministries and outreaches, if we put our resources towards all that first… then God will grant us “all these other things.” He’ll give us wealth. Riches. Health. Stable families. A state with an ethical, efficient government. A growing—no, booming!—economy. Wages going up, prices going down. Every hurricane pushed away from our state and redirected towards Florida… ’cause they know what they did. Taco trucks on every corner, with every taco more delicious than the last.

Yep, if we seek the kingdom of God first, God’ll grant us our own personal paradises on earth. Streets of gold before New Earth gets created. So let’s concentrate on that kingdom of God!

The Joshua generation.

When Moses first appeared before the pharaoh of Egypt to demand freedom for his people, he was 80 years old. Seriously. Eighty. Ex 7.7

I know; the Moses movies never depict him as that old. Never cast an 80-year-old guy to play Moses. Might put him in a long white beard, as they did with Charlton Heston, but dude was still only 33 years old when they filmed it.

I suspect it’s because movie directors look at all Moses achieved and simply can’t believe he was 80. They figure the bible has to have exaggerated his age. But I have no trouble with the idea. After all, the LORD does all the heavy lifting, and all Moses had to do was repeat whatever the LORD told him. And not hit certain rocks—but that’s another story.

People in American culture expect to retire, and sit on our keisters the rest of our lives, at 65. In Moses’s day, retirement wasn't a thing. At his age he was still sheep-herding. Then the LORD called him to shepherd Israel.

For help, Moses had his 83-year-old brother, Aaron—first as spokesman, then as head priest. Plus his 90-something sister Miriam, a prophet. Finally his assistant, Hoshea ben Nun, whose age isn’t stated but was likely about 40. Moses renamed him Joshua, Nu 13.16 and he occasionally led Israel’s militia. Like the United States Congress, that’s what we call a gerontocracy—a nation run by old people. Joshua, and Aaron’s sons who helped their dad lead worship, were the only “youngsters”—if you can call men in their forties, fifties, and possibly sixties, “young.” Younger than Moses, anyway.

But over time Moses and his generation died, and those who were left of Joshua’s generation had to step up and run the nation.

Certain Christians are very aware that at some point, we’re not gonna run Christendom’s churches and denominations anymore. Not gonna lead ministries, charities, Christian schools, Christian publishers, Christian media, humanitarian lobbies, and various businesses which like to imagine they follow biblical principles. We’re gonna retire, either because age or ailments catch up with us; we’re gonna die. We have to hand the reins over to a new generation. The next generation. The “Joshua generation.”

So we gotta get this Joshua generation ready for the job!

Put some bible in your brain!

There are certain bits of bible which need to be embedded in a Christian’s brain. Need to be.

No, this isn’t a requirement before God can save you. But it’s extremely useful to be able to quote various verses and passages which remind us of God’s love and grace and goodness, of Jesus’s teachings and commands, of the thinking behind God’s acts and our beliefs, and of promises, encouragements, and expectations. We need to put some verses into our memories.

So here’s how we get started.

Lots of Christians insist there are particular verses every one of us ought have memorized, like the Lord’s Prayer, or “the Lord’s my shepherd,” John 3.16, or Romans 6.23, or Romans 10.9. (People tend to refer to verses by their addresses. That’s sorta annoying for those of us who mix addresses up. I’m one of them, by the way.)

No, I’m not going to go through the entire list of Christians’ favorite memory verses right now. I’ll bring one or another up from time to time. If you’ve been praying the Lord’s Prayer, hopefully you’ve got it in your head by now anyway.

Me, I prefer this technique: It’s a little more natural.

Fundamentalists and cultists.

Because I grew up Fundamentalist, I’ve written a few things about my childhood experiences with it. They actually weren’t all negative! And some Fundies manage to avoid all the negative stuff I’ve written about. Even so, I gotta warn people about the negative things you might encounter among Fundies.

True, I’m not Fundie anymore. It’s not because of the negative experiences; I’ve had negative experiences in Christianity but haven’t quit the religion; I’ve had negative experiences in California yet I’m still proudly Californian; same with the United States. The reason I’m not Fundie has to do with Fundie theology. I have significant disagreements with how they develop it, how they define orthodoxy and heresy, the legalistic ways they tend to enforce their beliefs, and how these beliefs are the root cause of all the problems in their churches—the gracelessness, the isolationism, the totalitarianism, the abuse, the prejudice and sexism, the terror of devils round every corner. These churches regularly get cultish, and the bad theology is precisely why.

One could even argue Fundamentalism itself is a cult. But it definitely won’t be me making that argument, because Fundies don’t have to become cultish. I’ve known good Christian fundamentalists!—believe it or don’t, there are many. There are Fundies who push back against bad theology, legalism, gracelessness, fruitlessness. Fundamentalism in itself doesn’t generate these things; its whole point is to preserve “the fundamental principles of Christianity,” and encourage biblical literacy.

Thing is, the way they go about it is almost exactly the same way Pharisees went at it in the first century BC. Their whole goal was to preserve the Law of Moses, biblical literacy, and a devout lifestyle. Of course, legalism and nationalism—and hypocrisy, and a ton of loopholes—also crept into their movement. The parallels between Pharisaism and Fundamentalism are crazy. But not surprising at all. Easily predictable.

Anyway, because of all the cultishness, whenever I tell pagans I grew up Fundamentalist, they immediately leap to the conclusion I used to be a cult member. All the Fundies they’ve met, or seen on TV, are mighty culty. True, TV writers choose all the worst-case excesses of Fundamentalism, ’cause it makes better drama. Crime documentaries are always gonna be about the worst-case excesses—’cause the good Fundies aren’t gonna commit crimes!—and if their churches foolishly endorsed or even tried to cover up their crimes, they’re definitely a cult. I once stumbled across a reality show which follows “regular, normal Fundamentalist folk,” but because reality shows aren’t all that real, they overemphasize anything weird… and Fundies, and for that matter all Christians, honestly don’t realize how weird we can sometimes get.

So yeah, if all you see are the wackadoos, stands to reason you’d assume Fundies are all like that. And I remind you, it’s not all. But… it’s many. Too many Fundies actually are like that.

The Prodigal Son Story, part 2.

Luke 15.20B-24.

I split up the Prodigal Son Story, Jesus’s parable about a son who squanders his wealth and returns, tail between his legs, to a forgiving father. Whoops, spoiled the ending. Oh well; you had the past 20 centuries to hear of it.

Part 1 dealt with the popular Christian myth that asking for one’s inheritance before your dad died was a grave insult; it was an acceptable practice first-century Jewish sons did when they moved to other parts of the Roman Empire for whatever reason. I also brought up the evil, underhanded attitudes people project upon the prodigal son, when Jesus tells of no such things. He did lose his inheritance on excessive living, but let’s not leap to the conclusion he’s irredeemable.

I borrowed some names from a really lousy movie about the parable, so the son is Micah, his dad is Eli, and his brother is Joram. Hope the names don’t confuse you.

So we’re at the part where Micah realizes he’s starving unnecessarily, ’cause he could go back home and beg a job off his dad. And that’s what he does.

Luke 15.20-25 KWL

20 “And getting up, he goes to his father.

 

“While he’s still far away, his father sees him coming,

and feels sympathetic.

Running to him, the father throws his arms round his neck,

and kisses him.

21 The son tells him, ‘Father, I sinned against heaven and before you.

I’m no longer worthy to be called your son.’

22 The father tells his servants,

‘Quick, bring out the best robe and clothe him.

Put a signet ring on his hand,

and sandals on his feet.

23 Bring out the well-fed calf. Kill it.

We who feast on it should celebrate!

24 For this, my son, is dead and alive again!

Had been lost, and is found!’

And they begin to celebrate.”

Part 3 is obviously about the other son. Jesus didn’t leave him out. There’s a lot to say to Christians about him and his attitude. But meanwhile let’s look at the father and his attitude. It’s meant to reflect God’s attitude, obviously. It should likewise reflect our attitude when the lost are found.

Grace and salvation in the present age.

Titus 2.11-15.

In Titus, Paul presents the Cretan apostle with instructions about how to choose Christian elders in the island’s churches—the mature folks who are gonna assume leadership roles, and guide the next generation to follow Jesus. It’s mainly about what sort of character these people are to have. They’re meant to be fruitful people—not necessarily talented people, educated people, or attractive people. Plenty of pagans put such people in leadership, and look where it gets ’em.

For that matter, plenty of Christians do it too, and this is why whenever pagans think of Christian bishops and pastors, they regularly think of cultish autocrats who charm their way into getting followers and money, but lack any good character. They think of nationalists, white supremacists, sexists who preach toxic masculinity instead of love, homophobes who preach persecution instead of love. They don’t think of people who follow Jesus, and love everyone like Jesus does; they think of hypocrites. And y’know, if we put people into Christian leadership despite anything Paul taught Timothy and Titus, these pagans aren’t wrong. Pagans may not know Jesus, but they like him—so they should like his followers when we’re trying to be like Jesus.

And when we have leaders who are serious about being like Jesus, and we have people who are serious about being like Jesus, we get a healthy church kinda like Paul described in today’s passage.

Titus 2.11-15 KWL

11For God’s grace is now obvious:

Salvation to all people!

12Educating us into renouncing impiety and worldly desires;

we should live soberly, fairly, and godly in the present age,

13patiently awaiting “the blessed hope,”

the appearance of the glory

of our great God and savior, Christ Jesus.

14He gives himself for us

so he might redeem us from all lawlessness,

and might purify his own unique people,

who are eager for good works.

15Speak these things.

Encourage and rebuke, with all authority.

No one is allowed to dismiss you.¹

We get people who preach that God wants to save everybody. Everybody. EVERYBODY. He’s not only interested in the elect; he’s not only trying to save Jews and—whoops!—gentiles somehow got included. He intentionally wants everybody. He created everybody; he wants everybody.

And he wants everybody as-is. “Cleaning up” first implies it’s “cleaning up” which saved us; it’s not. In whatever state you’re in, repent and come to Jesus. Just bear in mind once you come to Jesus, he’s not gonna leave us as-is. The Holy Spirit’s gonna try to grow fruit in us. We’re expected to change for the better. But that comes later. In the meanwhile: As you are. As-is.

And the Spirit will educate us into being like Jesus. Tt 2.12 Ditching impiety, our natural tendency to not give a rip about what God thinks, but only what we think; we gotta live a new lifestyle which submits to God’s opinion about everything. Ditching worldly desires, our natural tendency to get comfortable, please our taste buds, get stoned, entertain ourselves, feel self-righteous, and do all of it at the expense of other people—while, paradoxically, seeking their approval. Nope; the Spirit encourages us to be sober, fair, and godly. We’re meant to become good people—not just by self-righteous Christian standards, but by everyone’s standards. Woe to you when only Christians think you’re a good guy, but everybody else thinks you’re a dick… ’cause yeah, you’re a dick.

Works righteousness: Salvation through good karma.

WORKS RIGHTEOUSNESS 'wərks raɪ.tʃəs.nəs noun. A right standing (with God or others) achieved through good deeds.

Works righteousness is how the world works. We tend to call it karma: If we want people to think of us as good, upstanding, deserving, even holy, we’ve gotta publicly do good deeds. Like doing charity work, making big donations, rescuing needy people, doing stuff for the public good. Not just the stuff ordinary citizens do, and should do, like follow the laws and not be jerks. It’s gotta be actions which go above and beyond.

Or (and this is the much harder way, although many people prefer it ’cause it’s quicker and passive) we’ve gotta suffer a catastrophic loss. One which totally doesn’t seem to fit our circumstances. Like getting a deadly disease, surviving a disaster, losing all your stuff in that disaster, losing all your family in that disaster… basically, Job’s story. He was a really good guy, yet lost all his kids and stuff in a single day. Jb 1 Stuff that’ll make people sympathetic, or even cry.

See, people presume the universe oughta balance things out. Good things should happen to good people, right?—and bad things to bad. When circumstances expose the truth—that the universe is random and meaningless—people are outraged at this illusion getting shattered, feel things are just wrong… and frequently take it upon themselves to fix things. (Then claim, “See? The universe balanced things out.” Yeah, not without human help.) People pour out support to the needy… and y’notice it’s sometimes entirely out of proportion. More than once I’ve seen a news story in which someone’s in need, and the public donated so much money, 100 other people could’ve been helped by it. Sometimes the needy people pass some of that generosity along; sometimes they don’t, but that seldom makes the news.

But as you can see, the world runs on works righteousness. On karma.

The kingdom of God, by contrast, runs on grace. God’s people don’t get what we deserve, much less what people think we merit. Instead we get what God wants to give us, and that’s a lot. Way more than we can ever ask or think. Ep 3.20 He wants to give us his kingdom.

For a whole lot of Christians this idea hasn’t entirely sunk in. When we come to Jesus, we bring our existing ideas, including our existing wrong ideas, with us. One of ’em is the idea we owe God big-time. After all, look how much he’s done for us! But we often conclude we gotta pay him back. You’ll even hear Christians claim this is why we’ve gotta do good deeds: We owe God. We’ll never ever be able to make it up to him; not even after a trillion years of good deeds… but we should try.

Which is simply nuts. And goes against everything God’s trying to teach us about grace. We’re supposed to give without expecting anything back, Lk 6.35 because that’s how our Father gives.

But karma is so pervasive in every human culture, even those of us who know God does grace instead of karma, try to make it up to him in big or small ways. We don’t always do stuff for God out of pure gratitude. We’re still trying to balance out our infinite karmic debt to an infinite God. Good luck with all that.

Nah. The reason we Christians are to be holy and good is because it’s what God instructs us to do. It’s not to earn anything, not to pay anything back, not for any other reason than love. If you love God, do as he says. Jn 14.15 If you don’t really, you won’t really. But forget about earning his love; you already have it. Forget about earning his favor; you already have it. That karma stuff only works on humans. Not God.

Holiness… versus goodness.

SANCTIFY 'sæŋ(k).tə.faɪ verb. Set apart as holy.

2. Have blessed, made legitimate through a religious sanction, or made to seem legitimate through custom and tradition.

3. Purify from sin.

[Sanctification sæŋ(k).tə.fə'keɪ.ʃən noun, sanctifier 'sæŋ(k).tə.faɪ(.ə)r noun.]

I bring up the popular definition of sanctify because I wanna point out what we English-speakers mean by sanctification, is not what the scriptures mean.

I’ve read loads of Christian books about sanctification. One in particular, which I read five years ago: The author went on and on and on about sin, how it taints humanity, and how Christians ought not do it. (And, well, duh.) But the more he wrote on the subject, the more obvious it became he was addressing his own particular hangups. Certain sins he found really nasty, so he spent a lot of time really pounding away at those sins like a carpenter trying to put thin nails into thick wood: Stop doing those things! You’re making baby Jesus cry.

Thing is, he wasn’t actually writing about sanctification. He was writing about goodness.

Christians mix the two ideas up all the time. Seriously, all the time. I challenge you to find a writing where the author recognizes there’s any difference between the two. And there is a difference. Holiness is about being set apart for God’s purposes. Holy means we’re not like anything else. That definition of sanctify I started this article with?—it’s definition #1, and only definition #1. The other definitions are the product of Christian popular culture. Christians are perfectly happy to settle for mere goodness.

But God tells us kids, “Be holy because I’m holy.” Lv 11.44-45, 1Pe 1.16 God’s different from everything else, and if we’re following him, the natural consequence is we would be different from everything else. And when the LORD said “be holy” in the scriptures, he wasn’t talking about goodness! Check out the context:

Leviticus 11.41-47 NASB

41 “Now every swarming thing that swarms on the earth is detestable, not to be eaten. 42 Whatever crawls on its belly, and whatever walks on all fours, whatever has many feet, in regard to every swarming thing that swarms on the earth, you shall not eat them, because they are detestable. 43 Do not make yourselves detestable through any of the swarming things that swarm; and you shall not make yourselves unclean with them so that you become unclean. 44 For I am the LORD your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, because I am holy. And you shall not make yourselves unclean with any of the swarming things that swarm on the earth. 45 For I am the LORD who brought you up from the land of Egypt, to be your God; so you shall be holy, because I am holy.”

46 This is the law regarding the animal and the bird, and every living thing that moves in the waters and everything that swarms on the earth, 47 to make a distinction between the unclean and the clean, and between the edible creature and the creature which is not to be eaten.

Yeah: God was talking about the kosher rules; about ritual cleanliness. Not goodness, not sins: Animals the Hebrews can eat, versus animals they can’t—because people of other nations eat any animals they please, with no thought to anything but their taste buds, and God didn’t want these particular Hebrews to be like any other nation. He wanted ’em unique.

He still wants us unique. Holy.

Christians who teach on sanctification, zero in on being good. That’s not nothing! We oughta be good. God is good, so we should be good like he is. When we’re not, we’re clearly not following him. I’m certainly not saying God’s okay with evil. But goodness is only a product of sanctification. It’s not the same thing.

So if we’re gonna be holy, we have to be more than merely good. We gotta be different.

What, you thought there were only 10 commandments?

Most Christians are familiar with the fact there are 10 commandments. Not so familiar with the actual 10 commands, Ex 20.1-17, Dt 5.6-21 but we do tend to know there are 10 of them, and it wouldn’t hurt to live by them. In fact the Christian nationalists among us think it’d be a good idea for the whole of the United States to live by them… although it’s a bit of a puzzler how we might simultaneously enforce “You’ll have no other gods before me” Ex 20.3 and “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Amendment 1

Some of us have also heard the idea there are 12 commandments. Where’d the extra two come from? Well, someone once asked Jesus his opinion on the greatest command.

Mark 12.28-31 CSB

28 One of the scribes approached. When he heard them debating and saw that Jesus answered them well, he asked him, “Which command is the most important of all?”

29 Jesus answered, “The most important is Listen, Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Dt 6.4 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. Dt 6.4-5, Js 22.5 31 The second is, Love your neighbor as yourself. Lv 19.18 There is no other command greater than these.”

Since these two commands aren’t among the 10, certain Christians tack ’em on at the end.

But there’s far from just 12 commands. There’s 613.

Technically there are even more than 613. But when you combine redundant commands—namely all the commands repeated in Deuteronomy, like the 10 commandments Dt 5.1-21 —you get 613 of them. Or at least that was the conclusion of Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon of Spain (1135-1204, also called Maimonides by westerners, Rambam by Jews). Moshe listed them in his book Sefer Hamitzvot/“Book of Good Deeds.” He had slightly different priorities than Jesus, which is why he put loving God at 3 and 4 in his list, and loving neighbors at 13.

These commands are mostly for everyone. There are many Levite- and priest-specific commands, which don’t apply to the general population. (Although Pharisees customarily practiced ’em anyway, figuring all Jews oughta be as ritually clean as priests.) There are also many gender-specific commands, which apply to men and not women, or women and not men.

And let’s be honest: There is a double standard in the Law. Women and men may be equal in Christ, Ga 3.28 but not under Law. Fr’instance there’s a test for a wife’s faithfulness, Nu 5.11-30 but no such thing for husbands. ’Cause patriarchy. Under that system, men could have sex with any woman in their household. The Law abolished many of patriarchy’s customs—no they couldn’t have sex with just anyone they wished. But though abolishing patriarchy was God’s ultimate goal, with only monogamous people in leadership, 1Ti 3.2, 12 with men loving their wives like Christ loves his church, Ep 5.25 he didn’t do this outright in his Law. Though certainly the test of a wife’s faithfulness under the Law was considerably better than the previous patriarchal custom… which was to kill her without a trial. Ge 38.24

The Prodigal Son Story, part 1.

Luke 15.11-20A.

Our English word prodigal means “wasteful.” But over time—after generations of average people never bothering to look up “prodigal” in a dictionary—people presumed prodigal has to do with the son in this story leaving his family. Hence prodigal has taken on a second definition, “a person who leaves home with the intent to be dissolute.” A prodigal son isn’t just a trust fund baby who recklessly wastes money; he’s fleeing his family so he can go to the big city and sin himself raw. Because that’s kinda what the prodigal son in Jesus’s story did.

But no, it’s not precisely what he did.

I’m gonna analyze half the story now, and the other half later. Lots of Christians have unpacked this story, and mostly (and rightly) just focused on the moral of the story: The father is overjoyed that his son came home, and welcomes him unconditionally, as will our heavenly Father when we repent. And sometimes they focus on the elder son’s bad attitude. And sometimes they spend way too much time speculating on what the prodigal’s various big-city sins were… kinda like the elder son. Funny how a lot of those sins have nothing to do with the text of Jesus’s parable; they’re pure speculation based on pure projection. They say an awful lot about what the preacher might do with a big pile of cash.

Well anyway. Off to the story. Which is usually called “the Prodigal Son,” or by people who wanna avoid the ambiguity of what prodigal means, either “the Wasteful Son” or “the Lost Son.” Or if they wanna focus on the happy ending, “the Loving Father” or “the Forgiving Father”—or if the focus is on the disgruntled brother, “the Two Brothers” or “the Prodigal Son and the Unforgiving Brother.” Clearly I don’t have a problem with the original popular title.

Luke 15.11-20 KWL

11 Jesus says, “A certain person has two sons,

12 and the younger of them tells his father,

‘Father, give me the part of the property coming to me.’

So the father divides his living between them.

13 After not many days, gathering everything,

the younger son journeys to a distant land,

and there he squanders his property in excessive living.

14 Once he’s spent everything, a severe recession hits that land,

and he begins to be in need.

15 Going to stay with a citizen of that land,

the citizen sends him into his fields to feed swine.

16 He longs to gorge himself on the husks the swine eat,

and no one gives him anything.

 

17 “Coming to his senses, he says,

‘How many of my father’s employees abound in bread

while I’m being destroyed by this recession?

18 I will get up and go to my father.

I will tell him, ‘Father, I sinned against heaven and before you.

19 I’m no longer worthy to be called your son.

Make me like one of your employees.’

20A And getting up, he goes to his father.”

How elders must encourage fellow Christians to behave.

Titus 2.1-10.

Throughout ancient literature, sages would put together a list of rules for how every person’s meant to fulfill their role in a family. Husbands act like this, wives act like that. Sons do this, daughters do that. Male slaves do this, female slaves do that. Scholars call them household codes. We find a few of them in the bible too. Like today’s passage.

The list in Titus likewise includes slaves, because slavery was legal in the Roman Empire. But God forbade people from treating slaves like animals instead of people, and Greco-Romans generally shared that attitude about their slaves: They’d become slaves because they lost a war, or were dirt poor and sold themselves (or were sold by family members) into it, or they were criminals and slavery was the punishment. American slavery was entirely different: It was based on white supremacy, regularly ignored scripture (as Americans do, ’cause we love to imagine we’re exceptions to the rules), and was rightly abolished. But if we were to port these household codes into the present day, the instructions to slaves would sorta apply to household employees—housekeepers, groundskeepers, nannies, maids, butlers, contractors. With the obvious caveat that employees can quit or be fired. Slaves didn’t have those freedoms.

Popular American culture has their own household codes. Most of ’em have to do with authoritarian men trying to establish their own little despotic patriarchies—they want their wives and children to submit to them, instead of mutually loving one another as is taught in the scriptures. A lot of toxic masculinity is mixed into today’s household codes, as men try to insist “only real men” behave certain ways. (And men who reject these ideas somehow aren’t real men. Yet this doesn’t mean they get to identify as women!) There’s a lot of sexism, vulgarity, and inconsistency in the way they teach it. It’s all very fleshly and graceless. Denounce it wherever you see it, and stick with the bible.

Titus 2.1-10 KWL

1Speak out, Titus, about whatever comes up,

with healthy teaching.

2Elders ought to be in their right minds.

Well respected. Self-controlled.

They should have healthy faith,

healthy love, healthy consistency.

3Women elders likewise with devout behavior.

Not backstabbing.

Not enslaved to heavy drinking.

Teachers of good things,

4so they might train the new Christians

to love their men,

to love their children.

5Self-disciplined. Clean.

Good at running a household.

Submitting to their own men,

so God’s word won’t be slandered.

6Teenagers likewise:

Help them in self-discipline.

7In everything present yourself¹

as an example of good works.

In teaching, integrity and honesty,

8a healthy, irrefutable word,

so those from the opposition might respect it,

having nothing evil to say about us.

9Slaves are to obey their own wardens

in every acceptable way.

Not to argue.

10Not to embezzle.

Instead demonstrate all good faith

so God our Savior’s teaching will decorate everything.

Now y’notice Paul’s list began with instructions to Titus about the sort of traits we oughta see in as church elders. The men are to behave thisaway; the women are to behave thataway. But then, in 2.4, as Paul’s explaining what the women elders oughta be teaching the newbies… it mutates into a household code. Verse 5 arguably applies to either the elders or the newbies; I would say both. Verses 6-8 are obviously about Christian teenagers; verses 9-10 are obviously about Christian slaves.

So yeah, this passage didn’t begin as a household code. But it became one. Because every Christian oughta become an elder. All of us should aspire to Christian maturity. Therefore every man and woman should become an elder in our churches, and contribute to its leadership and upkeep.

How the “elders” of Crete 𝘥𝘪𝘥 behave.

Titus 1.10-16.

Epimenides of Cnossos was a shepherd, living on Crete. He claimed one day he took a nap in a cave that’d been dedicated to Zeus, and woke up 57 years later with the gift of prophecy. Meh; I figure he was just an old guy who decided to finally publish his youthful poetry. Next to none of it has survived to our present day, but in Paul and Titus’s time it was still pretty famous. Paul even quotes a line from his ode to Zeus, called the Cretica:

…having built you [Zeus] a tomb, holy one, great one.

Cretans always lie, the evil beasts. Lazy stomachs.

But you aren’t dead! For you live, and live forever!

For in you we live, move, and have our being.

Yep, Paul also quoted it in Acts 17.28. Epimenides meant Zeus, but Paul repurposed it to mean the LORD. It more accurately describes the LORD anyway.

I don’t know whether the Cretica prejudiced Paul against the people of Crete when he finally met them in person. Acts doesn’t tell of him spending a lot of time there; at most a week, ’cause his ship was anchored there due to foul weather. Ac 27.7-13 Likely he visited again at another time. In any case he encountered many people among the Christians who were just awful, and the very last thing he wanted Titus to do was put such people in positions of authority. It’d ruin the church.

Titus 1.10-16 KWL

10For many people do refuse to submit to others.

They’re all talk, and misleading.

Particularly those of the circumcision faction.

11It’s necessary to muzzle them—

whatever teachings knock down whole houses,

which they ought not teach,

but do to gain an immoral advantage.

12A certain one of their own—a prophet!—says,

“Cretans always lie, the evil beasts. Lazy stomachs.”

13This witness is true.

For this reason rebuke them quickly,

so they might have a healthy faith,

14paying no attention to Jewish myths,

and human commands which turn away from truth.

15Everything is ritually clean to clean people.

To contaminated people, and unbelievers,

nothing is clean—

instead it contaminated them, the mind, and the conscience.

16They claim they know God,

and their works deny it—

being disgusting and disobedient,

and worthless in every good work.

Don’t mince words Paul; how d’you really feel about Cretans?

How the elders of Crete oughta behave.

Titus 1.5-9.

Paul left Titus in Crete because its churches had a leadership vacuum. I mean, there might’ve been people the Christians imagined were leaders, but Paul considered them inadequate, as we can tell from what he had to write to Titus. They lacked spiritual maturity. Titus didn’t.

Here, Paul reminds Titus that maturity—good fruit and good character—correctly defines a person who’s considered an elder of the church. You’re not an elder without it, and ought not be a leader without it.

Titus 1.5-9 KWL

5This is why I have you¹ remain in Crete:

So you¹ might organize the things we leave there.

So you¹ might designate elders for each city,

as I commanded you.¹

6If a certain person has no controversy about them,¹

a one-woman man,

has believing children,

has never been accused of excessive living

nor of being unsubmissive

7—for a supervisor has to be uncontroversial,

being like God’s butler.

Not arrogant.

Not quick-tempered.

Not drunk.

Not picking fights.

Not greedy for “prosperity.”

8Instead, loves strangers.

Loves goodness.

Sound-minded.

Fair.

Pious.

Self-disciplined.

9Holds tight to what’s consistent

with the message of faith as taught,

so they¹ might be able to help in the sound teaching,

and in rebuking those who contradict it.

A number of Christians claim Paul’s only describing pastors, ’cause Paul mentioned “a supervisor” in verse 7. (Greek ἐπίσκοπον/epískopon, KJV “bishop,” NIV “overseer.”) This is a word the New Testament tends to use to describe bishops and head pastors; it’s not just any church leader. Thing is, the elders of a church do supervise all sorts of things in a church, whether they have the title “pastor” or not. And really everyone in church leadership should be qualified to step up when the pastor or bishop isn’t available; everybody should meet these ground-floor qualifications, no matter what title they have. Got it?

The apostle’s job.

Titus 1.1-4.

Okay, tackling Titus this week. Paul wrote this letter to Titus during his last missionary journey of 63–66. That journey isn’t told of in Acts, but it took place after Paul stood trial before Nero Caesar in 62 and was acquitted; and took place before Paul was arrested again, stood trial before Nero again, and that time was beheaded in the year 67. Nicopolis, Epirus, Greece was one of the cities on Paul’s itinerary, and where Paul expected to see Titus again. Tt 3.12

Titus was a member of Paul’s apostolic team, a Greek Ga 2.3 originally from Crete (Greek Κρήτη/Kríti), the largest of the Greek islands, about 160km off the coast of the Greek mainland, and 100km southwest of Türkiye. There were Cretans at the first Pentecost, Ac 2.11 and for all we know Titus was among them.

But since Paul calls Titus his son in this letter, Tt 1.4 Christians figure Paul likely introduced him to Christ Jesus. Though elsewhere in the scriptures Paul calls him a brother 2Co 2.13 and partner; 2Co 8.23 so if Paul had led Titus to Jesus, these descriptions indicate Titus had quickly matured to a point where Paul considered him an equal in Christ. Paul occasionally sent Titus to help out churches and deliver his letters. Corinth, fr’instance. 2Co 2.13

In this letter, Paul states he’d sent Titus back to Crete to organize Jesus’s church there. Tt 1.5 From what little we know, that’s where Titus served till he died, either in the 90s or early 00s. The Church of St. Titus in Heraklion, Crete, still has his skull.

Titus, along with 1–2 Timothy, are called the “pastoral epistles” because, duh, they were written to pastors. Naturally they contain a lot of advice from Paul to these two pastors about how to best do their jobs, and it’s served as useful advice for every other Christian about how to be in leadership. That’s why we study it.

As usual, Paul’s introductions were done Roman-style, so you could unroll the scroll a little bit, quickly read the author and the recipient, and roll it back up. Paul’s introduction in this letter is a little wordier than usual, ’cause he’s trying to slip some theology in there.

Because certain scholars try to make a name for themselves by challenging everything, some of ’em have tried to argue Paul didn’t really write this letter, and Titus wasn’t really the recipient. Few take these scholars seriously. I don’t.

Titus 1.1-4 KWL

1Pávlos, God’s slave

and Christ Jesus’s apostle,

consistent with the faith of God’s select,

and consistent with the recognition of the truth—

consistent with piety—

2in the hope of life in the age to come,

which the never-lying God promised

before the time of this age.

3He made his message of this eternal life known

through preaching in our own time,

which was entrusted to me

according to the command of our savior God.

4To Titus, my genuine child

according to our common faith:

Grace and peace from God the Father,

and Christ Jesus our savior.

Notice it took four verses to get to the typical Christian greeting of “Grace and peace from God and Christ.” Let’s unpack that, shall we?

Pride Month.

A Gallup poll released in February 2022 revealed 7.2 percent of Americans identify themselves as queer—by which I mean something other than heterosexual. Either lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, or any other categories not covered by the first four. The four make up the acronym LGBT, and while other letters have been added to it so as to include every possible shade of queerness, most folks stick to LGBT, ’cause it’s the acronym which has been around longest.

Anyway. The younger the adults are, the more these percentages go up.

• Generation X (people born between the mid-1960s and 1980, which’d include me) is about 3.3 percent non-hetero.
• Gen Y, the millennials (1980 to the mid-’90s), is at 11.2 percent.
• Gen Z, the zoomers (mid-’90s to mid-2010s) is at 19.7 percent.
• Gen Alpha wasn’t polled. They’re still kids, y’know.

I didn’t include the stats for baby boomers (mid-1940s to mid-’60s) and silents (late 1920s to mid-’40s) because—let’s be honest—a bunch of them are still “in the closet,” hiding their non-heterosexuality. Or they’re in denial.

And I question those Generation Z figures. Because—let’s keep being honest, shall we?—some of the younger adults don’t know what they are. Young people are still figuring it out! Some of them might legitimately be queer. Some might not be, but they’re trying out queerness, because being straight hasn’t really worked out for them. I’ve got one coworker who figures he’ll try anything once, and that includes gay stuff, because who knows?—maybe he’s gay. He doesn’t know, and aren’t parents always telling their kids about food, “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it”? So he’s trying it.

Yeah, I can already hear my conservative readers from here, wailing and wringing their hands: “Woe is us; our nation is going to hell.” Relax folks; it was always going to hell. Isn’t that what your favorite End Times prognosticators have always taught? (Or were you paying more attention to your favorite politicians than them?)

But lemme leap back to that previous comment I made about baby boomers and silents. ’Cause if you think I was just making a joke about ’em, no I wasn’t. If you think I was just being facetious, I’m really not. There have always been queer people. They’ve been hiding. Those low numbers in those older generations do not mean there used to be fewer of them, but their numbers are growing. They mean many of ’em are still hiding.

Because not too long ago in America, you could get murdered over it. Still can. All it takes is someone with hate in their heart, who thinks nobody’s looking, who thinks God’s actually okay with murdering people over it. ’Cause you can certainly get that idea when you quote certain anti-gay scriptures.

Leviticus 20.13 KJV

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

There are other countries, like Russia and Uganda and Saudi Arabia, which have made laws based on such scriptures, and will jail and execute you for being gay, and think they’re righteous for doing so. And when you listen to certain conservatives in the United States, they think those countries are absolutely right to do it… and wanna know why we won’t do it too.

Well duh; because we’re not the nation of ancient Israel. Because their covenant with God is not ourcovenant with God. We don’t even have a national covenant with God. True, one idiot or another claims the Mayflower Compact, or the U.S. Constitution, or the Bill of Rights, is a covenant with God… and of course these things absolutely aren’t. Likewise some Christian yutz might cobble together a statement or declaration or creed, and claim they’re establishing a national covenant with God, and of course they don’t speak for all American Christians any more than I do. No Christian nor church does.

Our Constitution (specifically article 6 section 3, and amendment 1) establishes no religion, nor religious system, over this country. The United States may be predominantly Christian, but because it was founded at a time when open warfare between Christian sects was still going on in Europe, it was deliberately made a pluralistic society. As such we can have among our citizens and residents Christians and pagans, Jews and Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus, Wiccans and nontheists, and no covenant is in violation. God’s not gonna smite us with tornadoes because we harbor gay people. Nature will, because we won’t stop polluting.

So all those conservatives who imagine God’s gonna be very, very cross with America unless we purge every queer person from sea to shining sea? Man have they got God wrong. There’s an awful amount of projection in their interpretation of God: They are upset and hostile towards non-heterosexuals, so they imagine God shares all their frustration and rage. After all, they imagine they’re tight with God; surely he’s at least as pissed and murdery as they.

And that’s where we are this LGBT Pride Month.

When pagans believe they’re Christian.

In the United States, roughly seven out of 10 people believe they’re Christian. I live in California, where it’s six of 10. I’m not pulling these numbers out of my tuchus; the national stats and state stats are from the 2019 Pew Forum study. Those numbers might’ve gone down a bit since the pandemic.

But generally they match my experience. Whenever I share Jesus with strangers, about two out of three tell me they’re Christian already. They don’t necessarily go to church; that’s another issue. But they definitely figure they’re Christian. For all sorts of reasons:

• Personal experiences with Jesus. Even personal appearances.
• They said the sinner’s prayer once.
• They’re a regular at their church. (How regular varies. Many figure twice a year counts.)
• They got baptized.
• They were raised Christian. Or their family’s Christian.
• They consider themselves spiritual. And when they contemplate spiritual matters, Jesus is in the mix somewhere.

Now, let’s explode that last reason: They’re “spiritual”—by which they nearly always mean they believe in supernatural things like God, spirits, and the afterlife. And for the most part, they have happy thoughts about it. If they identify as Christian, Jesus is included in their spirituality. But once we analyze their spiritual beliefs, we find what they really believe looks a lot more like this:

• There’s a God. Jesus is his son (but not God though, nor God’s only son) and the holy spirit (note the lowercase) is God’s power (but not God though).
• God loves everybody and wants us to be nice to one another.
• Death means we go to heaven, and probably watch over the living somehow.
• Organized religion is unnecessary, and just confuses things.

Basically it’s what pagans typically believe. Of course there are exceptions, but generally that’s it. It’s the belief system of popular culture. It’s not Christianity.

Nope, these folks aren’t Christian. They’re Christianists.

They’re a subcategory I call incognito pagans: They honestly think they’re Christian! After all, it’s how popular culture loosely defines Christianity. They like Jesus! They believe he’s a good guy. They have their weddings and funerals at churches. If you deny Jesus it’ll actually offend them. If their kids decide to become Muslim or Hindu (or tell ’em they’re gay) suddenly they really get Christian—usually to the surprise of their kids, who usually thought their parents didn’t believe anything.

But no, they’re not Christian. They have no Holy Spirit within them. Which is why they produce none of his fruit. As far as their knowledge about Christ is concerned, they couldn’t tell a Jesus quote from a Benjamin Franklin proverb. Since they figure they’re saved, they’re good; why bother to learn about their Savior? That’s for clergy to worry about. For theologians; for academics and experts. Meanwhile they have bigger things to worry about.

Speaking as one of these experts, our religion has to have a living and active relationship with Christ Jesus at its core. They don’t have that. At all. So they’re pagan.

Which they don’t realize. And will totally object to, when you call ’em on it. It’s the one area of knowledge they refuse to concede to the clergy and experts.

Tell ’em they’re not Christian, and they’ll loudly insist they are so: “Who are you to tell me I’m no Christian?” Doesn’t matter if you’re a pastor, professor, bishop, or pope: Suddenly they get to define what “Christian” means. And it’s not based on fruit, nor orthodoxy, nor even Christ Jesus and the scriptures. It’s based on their best judgment. Which is simply more proof they’re pagans.

We Christians recognize we don’t define what a Christian is: Jesus does. That’s why we look for fruit and orthodoxy. Simple combo. Heretics let the orthodoxy slide, and hypocrites and cultists let the fruit slide. The rest of us realize we can’t just claim the title “Christian” without the faith and good works: We gotta actually follow Jesus. Pagans don’t realize this, and think all it takes to be Christian, is they gotta name it and claim it.

As a result, there are a lot of the people showing up on surveys as “Christian” who aren’t really. It’s how they self-identify. Not how Christ identifies them. They’re not truly his.

Fake Christians.

I used to write about fake Christians a lot.

Probably too much, which is why I went cold turkey for a few years. It was getting a little graceless of me. I mean, based on my criteria, 15-year-old me would’ve been a fake Christian. And I wasn’t! Yeah, there was a lot of hypocrisy in my life. But I was legitimately Christian. A lousy one, but an authentic one.

So lemme ’splain what I mean by fake Christian: Somebody who claims to be Christian, or gets mixed up in Christian activities or the Christian subculture. But knowingly, deliberately, isn’t.

• Like a politician who goes to church to win votes, or meets with pastors to get their approval. But in private he thinks Christians are easily-fooled idiots. After all, he just fooled ’em.
• Like a business owner who puts a Jesus fish on her business cards to get Christians as customers. But she never goes to church. Privately, she has a lot of contempt for those who do.
• Like a husband who goes to church with his family because he approves of the moral guidance religion can provide. But he never follows its guidance. Doesn’t think he needs to; he’s good! And would think you’re a fool if you ever seriously suggested it to him.
• Like a woman who wants her neighbors to think she’s a good Christian woman, because they appear to be good Christian women, and she’d like to fit in, and not be rejected as the neighborhood heathen.
• Like a man who’s offended because his coworker is living with his girlfriend “in sin.” Who’s offended when anyone’s gay or lesbian or bisexual, because “that’s a sin.” Who’s offended when someone figures they're nonbinary or trans, because “that’s a sin” too. But when anyone calls him out on his regular practice of sleeping with skanks every weekend, suddenly “what I do in my private time is none of your f---ing business, and who are you to judge me?”

Fake Christians aren’t interested in Jesus. They’re only interested in the fringe benefits of Christianity. And in predominantly Christian countries and communities, there are plenty of benefits! You fit right in.

• “Fellow” Christians will automatically accept you!—’cause even though we Christinas are supposed to love everyone, loads of us suck at it.
• “Fellow” Christians will unquestioningly endorse you!—’cause even though we’re supposed to test everything, loads of us suck at it.
• “Fellow” Christians will often show you abundant grace!—’cause even though we’re supposed to show grace to everyone, loads of us suck at it. And don’t really extend grace to our own as much as we should.
• Plus you can be as bigoted as you like, but say it’s really because you’re offended by “sin.”

If you're a con artist of any level, we Christians are easy pickings. Too easy.

The flood story.

In Genesis there’s a story about a massive flood. Rain for a month and a half; waters which covered every hill in the area, and killed every living thing. It was, states the author of Genesis, God’s way of getting rid of the violence in the land: He got rid of everybody except this one righteous (well, righteous enough) family.

Starts like this.

Genesis 6.11-21 KWL

11 To God’s face, the land was ruined.

The land was full of violence.

12 God saw the land. Look, ruin!

all flesh ruined its way in the land.

13 God told Noah, “To my face,

the end of all flesh is coming:

They fill the land with violence before them.

Look, the land is ruined!

14 Make yourself a box of cypress trees.

Make living spaces within the box.

Plaster it from the inside to the outside with asphalt.

15 This is how you’ll make it:

A box 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, 30 cubits high.

16 Make a window in the box, a cubit from the top.

Make a doorway in the box’s side.

Make bottom, second, and third floors.

17 Look at me: I bring the deluge of waters on the land

to destroy all flesh on it,

the breath of life under the heavens:

Everything on the land dies.

18 I raise my relationship with you.

Come into the box.

You, your sons, your woman, your sons’ women with you.

19 All living things, all flesh:

Two of all comes into the box to live with you.

They’ll be male and female.

20 From the bird to its kind,

from the animal of its kind,

from all which swarms the ground of its kind,

two of all comes to you to live.

21 Take with you all the food you can eat.

Gather it for yourselves.

It’s for food, for you and them.”

22 Noah did everything God commanded him to do.

So God has this man, Noah ben Lamekh, build himself a big black box…

Yeah, black box. What d’you think an ark is, a boat? What, were the Hebrews carrying around the Boat of the Covenant through the desert for four decades? Did Indiana Jones excavate a Nazi-killing gold boat, or am I remembering that movie all wrong?

But you’d be forgiven if you made the mistake of thinking a תֵּבַ֣ת/tevá is a boat. After all, American popular culture has the image of a boat cemented in everybody’s brain. Noah built a boat, they say—and on dry land! How the neighbors must’ve laughed and jeered at Noah and his kids for building a boat on dry land. Then when the floodwaters came, boy did they get their comeuppance.

Except it nowhere says in the bible, nowhere in Genesis, that Noah built a boat. That bit about the jeering neighbors? Not in the bible either. I know; you’ve been told this story so many times, you half remember it being biblical, don’t you? Nope. Go read Genesis 7 again. Isn’t there. Never happened.

Wait, what about those people in Kentucky who made the Ark Encounter, the life-size Noah’s Ark which they claim is totally based on the bible? Again, read your bible. Read that bit of Genesis 6 I just translated, in any translation you please. But remember, “ark” means box. God told Noah to build a box. Covered in כֹּֽפֶר/kofér, “bitumen,” or asphalt, so it wasn’t be bare or stained wood, like the Ark Encounter depicts it. It’d be black as the roads outside your house.

Arguably log-cabin style, ’cause it’s made of עֲצֵי גֹ֔פֶר/ačé-gofér, “trees of cypress.” God didn’t say planed wooden planks. I know!—you imagined Noah building a boat, so of course you imagined him building it out of planks, but there’s nothing in the bible to describe what Noah did with the trees once he chopped ’em down. Now, figuring a cubit is half a meter (or half a yard, if you’re American like me), Noah was instructed to make it 150 by 25 by 15, square. Not with a curved bow to easily cut through water, and certainly not with a rudder—who’s gonna steer it? What’s its destination? Why would Noah presumptively assume his box would even float?—for all he knew, it might stay where it was, underwater, watertight, waiting for the floods to pass.

The Kentucky monstrosity is entirely based on popular Christian culture, based on what generations of American preachers and their art have speculated about Noah’s box. Something which actually requires less faith in God than Genesis is describing. ’Cause they imagine Noah built something seaworthy, that could survive on its own—instead of something God would have to miraculously preserve, and did.

So whenever skeptics ask me whether I believe the bible’s flood story, I can’t give them a simple yes. I do believe the story. But the story I believe is the plausible one we find in the bible. Not as it’s told by young-earth creationists, who turned it into Christian mythology… then turned that into junk science.

Do you have friends in your church?

Christians tend to go to church for five reasons.

• MUSIC. We love music, and the church has good music. It’s like going to a weekly rock concert! And if we never help fund the church, it’s free!
• TEACHING. We wanna learn about God, Christianity, and the bible. We want a good informative sermon. We want good informative bible studies. We wanna know more.
• SERVICE. We feel a great personal reward in ministering to the needy, and the church has some ways to do that, and encourages us in it.
• SACRAMENT. We gotta stay connected with God, and what helps are the rituals we can only do as a group. Like praising together, praying together, holy communion, and so forth.
• FELLOWSHIP. We wanna see our friends.

Churches tend to focus primarily on sacrament, sermon, or music. Today I’m gonna bring up the fellowship thing. It’s a way bigger deal than a lot of Christians realize.

Well, some of us already realize it’s a big deal. It’s why certain churches structure things so people can interact a lot. They have a lot of small groups, and promote ’em constantly. They have a “meet ’n greet time” in the middle of the service, which can go on for as many as ten minutes. (I used to take advantage of my church’s meet ’n greet time to go get another cup of coffee.) They have potlucks and pizza parties and movie nights and other social functions—sometimes monthly, sometimes weekly. And they refuse to create a church café, ’cause they know the way people tend to run ’em, it’ll ultimately discourage fellowship.

This fellowship activity isn’t for any ulterior motive. That’s the motive. They want the people of their church to make friends with one another. Jesus ordered us to love one another; Jn 15.12 they’re trying to make it happen. You’re not gonna love one another when you don’t know one another. You’re not gonna make friends with your fellow Christians when they’re nothing more than the other people who go to your church.

Yeah, there are fringe benefits to the people in your church making friends with one another: They’re gonna come to church to see their friends. Or, to put it shorter, they’re gonna come to church.

That’s what got me coming to church, back in my young-hypocrite years: My friends were there. I could do without the church services themselves: The music sucked. The sermons were shallow. (Coincidentally, I and my faith were also sucky and shallow, so more likely this was just me.) I would’ve had no problem with sleeping in Sunday mornings, like every other pagan. But I looked forward to sitting in the back of the church auditorium, quietly goofing off with my buds, whether it was Sunday morning or Thursday night youth group.

I grew out of the hypocrisy, but it’s still true: Lotta times I don’t feel like going to church. But if I have friends there, and I wanna see them, I go. If I find out my friends are gonna be absent—they gotta work, they’re on vacation, they’re out sick, and so forth—there goes my motivation to attend.

or they’re on vacation, or otherwise won’t attend—sometimes I’ll attend anyway, and sometimes I won’t. And I’m far from the only one.

In fact one church I went to, I had really spotty attendance because all my friends left. I used to have lots of friends at that church, including some of the pastors. Some left for work-related reasons, some for ministry-related reasons. Lots because they were college students and graduated. Some because they just decided they were done with that church. My final year there, before I moved away, I had no friends there. Just acquaintances. Nice people, but not friends. So some weeks, when I felt like going to Noah’s Bagels instead of church, that’s precisely what I did.

Later I moved, it was time to go church-shopping, so I visited one church—we’ll call it “Mars Hill.” Went to the morning services; went to the evening services; said hi to loads of people. One evening, about a month in, the head pastor finally said hi, and we chatted a bit. He was the only one who bothered to chat a bit. He was also, sad to say, going through a severe health crisis at the time, so he couldn’t make any other time for me. But none of Mars Hill’s other leaders bothered to fill in for him, and none of Mars Hill’s other people cared to venture outside their cliques. I really patiently hung around three months, but just didn’t make connections. So I didn’t stay.

The next church: Made friends immediately. Guess where I did stay.

Why I went to an all-white church.

When I was 11 years old, my family moved to a city in California which was about 60 percent white, 40 percent Latino, 10 percent every other ethnicity combined. Same as much of California south of Sacramento.

New city means new church. Mom went looking for churches which’d be a good fit for young children; I’m the eldest of four. We tried a few. We ended up at a certain church; in another article I referred to this particular place as “Maypole Church,” and I don’t see any point in changing its name again. Maypole was very Fundamentalist, very dispensationalist, and very sexist—all of which I no longer am. But the folks there did make sure we kids got to know our bibles, which is the important thing.

Oh, and Maypole was super racist. Which we didn’t know at the time… but the fact they happened to be 100 percent white should’ve tipped us off.

Every so often, Maypole would be 99 percent white: A black, Latino, or Asian family would visit. There’s an Air Force base nearby, and white airmen would invite their nonwhite friends to come worship with them at Maypole. But within a few months, these nonwhite friends would stop attending. They’d go elsewhere.

I never knew why. Never thought to ask why. Never assumed it was about race. Never thought to ask. Yep, I was a clueless white kid.

Never gave the racial issue any thought at all… till I started to invite my high school friends to Maypole’s youth group. My high school was right next to the Air Force base, and was just as integrated as the U.S. Air Force. I’ve always been raised in multiethnic neighborhoods, and (other than a brief stint in the country) always lived in multiethnic neighborhoods. I never solely made friends with white kids. And most of the high school kids were fellow Christians, and if they didn’t have a youth group, I invited them to mine. So they came—for a few weeks. Then stopped. Found excuses not to come along.

ME. “Why don’t you wanna go?”

THEY. “That group ain’t right.”

ME. “Ain’t right? What ‘ain’t right’ about it?”

THEY. [uncomfortably] “It just ain’t right.”

I assumed it had to do with doctrines. Like I said, Maypole was very Fundamentalist. Maybe more so than they were comfortable with. My church wouldn’t compromise, but maybe theirs would, like the rest of all the other churches. You know; typical Fundie paranoia.

Then I finally invited a white high school friend to church. He wasn’t Christian; he was a pagan who was open to the idea. He didn’t stop attending after two weeks; he stuck around. Largely because he really wanted to have sex with one of our youth group’s girls. I never saw him make a decision for Jesus, but I did see him invite a number of his other friends to the group. He did a better job recruiting kids than I did. So that’s a win… I guess?

First he invited a white friend, who stuck around a month… till he realized Christian girls weren’t quite as loose as he’d prefer. Then a Latino friend, who stayed three weeks. But yep, as you could guess: Left because “That group ain’t right.”

Every Spring Break our youth group took a “mission trip” to Baja California Norte to pitch in at a Mexican church’s Vacation Bible School. There, I saw for myself how many of our kids were super racist towards Mexicans. Our youth pastor cracked down on it as best he could. (Well, considering how certain Maypole parents would get him fired if he ever kicked their kids out of the group.) Still, this was finally when I realized just what my nonwhite friends meant by “That group ain’t right.” Indeed they weren’t right.

And as we know, kids don’t become racist in a vacuum. They get it from their parents.

I’m not accusing the leadership of Maypole Church of racism. Not the pastors; probably not their deacons. But obviously there were just enough racists in my youth group to block any outreach I did—or anyone did—to nonwhites in my high school, in our city, everywhere. I presumed my church was a safe place, as all churches should be. It wasn’t.

I stopped going to Maypole in 1991. Last I checked, they’re still predominantly white.

Jesus’s last words, in 𝘓𝘶𝘬𝘦.

Luke 24.44-53.

After Jesus demonstrated to his students he’s alive—actually alive; he’s not a ghost, nor did he switch places with someone at the last second and get him killed (which is actually what Muslims believe). He showed ’em his hands and feet; he had ’em, unlike middle eastern ghosts, and clearly he’d been a victim of crucifixion, but was fine now. He ate fish. He breathed on them, in another gospel. He’s real. Solid. Alive.

This being the case, it’s time to have yet another little talk about what’s meant to happen to Messiah. The Pharisee beliefs which were still tangling up Jesus’s students, in which Messiah descends on Jerusalem, conquers it, conquers the Romans, and conquers the world? Yeah, he’s not conquering the world that way. Jesus’s initial victory had to be over death, not the government. He had to defeat sin, not some political party. Still true, no matter what Christian nationalists might claim.

Luke 24.44-53 KWL

44 Jesus tells the students, “These are my words,

which I speak to you while I’m with you:

All which was written about me

in Moses’s Law, the prophets, and the psalms,

has to be fulfilled.”

45 Then Jesus opens the students’ minds

so they can understand the scriptures.

46 Jesus tells them this: “This is what was written:

Messiah is to suffer,

and to rise from the dead on the third day,

47 and to preach of repentance in his name,

of forgiveness of sins,

to every people-group,

starting in Jerusalem.

48 You are witnesses of these things.

49 Look, I send out my Father’s promise with you!

Stay in the city till you’re clothed

with power from on high.”

 

50 Jesus leads the students as far as Bethany.

Lifting his hands, he blesses them.

51 This happens as Jesus is blessing the students:

He’s removed from them, and is carried into heaven.

52 The students, falling down to worship Jesus,

return to Jerusalem with great joy.

53 They’re always in the temple,

praising God.

I should point out these last four verses seem to conflict with what Luke later wrote in his Acts of the Apostles. In Luke Jesus took ’em way out to Bethany and was raptured from there; in Acts it was Olivet, less than 2,000 cubits away. Ac 1.12 In Luke it looks like Jesus was raptured really soon after Easter, but in Acts Jesus hung out with them for more than a month. Ac 1.3 Certain people who hate the idea of any discrepancies in the bible will try to explain these bible difficulties away: “Well Jesus only led them in the direction of Bethany, but stopped at Olivet; and it only looks like it was really soon after Easter, but doesn’t say it was.” Yeah yeah, whatever. I don’t think minor discrepancies matter. The important thing is Jesus is alive, but the reason we don’t see him still walking the earth is Jesus was raptured.

On to the last words.

Changing God’s mind.

If you know your bible—heck, if you’ve seen The Ten Commandments movie with Charlton Heston—you know the Hebrews had a major lapse in behavior when they were at Sinai.

The previous month, the LORD handed down his 10 commandments, then Moses hiked back up the mountain to get further instructions, and while gone the people decided they wanted an idol. Whether this idol was meant to represent the LORD or some other god, we don’t know. What we do know is the idol violated the very command the LORD handed down last month. Ex 20.4-6 Understandably, the LORD was pissed.

Exodus 32.7-14 NRSVue

7The LORD said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; 8they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” 9The LORD said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. 10Now let me alone so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, and of you I will make a great nation.”

11But Moses implored the LORD his God and said, “O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? 12Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. 13Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’ ” 14And the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

That’s right. The LORD changed his mind. That LORD. The Almighty backed down. A lowly human got him to do it.

It’s far from the only passage in the bible where God changes his mind. There are dozens. Here’s a few notable instances:

• God regretted making humans. Ge 6.5-7
• God regretted making Saul king. 1Sa 15.11
• God relented from destroying Jerusalem with plague. 2Sa 24.16, 1Ch 21.15
• God showed Amos two visions that he immediately took back after Amos protested. Am 7.3, 6
• If a nation repents, God takes back the disaster he had planned for it. Jr 18.8, 26.3, 26.13, Jl 2.13-14, Ps 106.45 Like Judah Jr 26.19 and like Nineveh. Jh 3.10
• If a nation goes rogue, God takes back the good he had planned for it. Jr 18.8, 10 And gets really tired of doing this. Jr 15.6
• We used to be God's enemies, but now we're his friends. Ro 5.6-11

Problem is, these changes in God’s intent flies in the face what many Christians believe. Because these folks don’t believe God changes his mind. Ever. At all.

King David’s utter trust in God.

When I translate psalms, I try to make ’em rhyme. I borrowed the Scottish psalter’s 8·6·8·6 iambic meter, but you’ll notice it’s different. Asterisks indicate where David put סֶֽלָה/seláh; nobody knows what it means, so I skipped ’em.

Psalm 4 KWL

0 For the director. For strings. David’s psalm.

 

1 When I call out to you, my God,

my righteous one, reply!

You widen narrowness for me.

Show mercy! Hear my cry!

2 Oh sons of men, how long will my

successes bring you shame?

Why do you all love empty things?

Why follow lies? How lame.*

3 Know this—that for himself, the LORD

the pious ones he’ll choose.

The LORD, when I call out to him,

will listen, not refuse.

4 So shake in awe, and don’t trespass.

Make mute your hearts in bed.

*

5 Present more righteous offerings,

and trust the LORD instead.

6 The great might say, “Who knows what’s good?

And who will show the way?”

LORD, lift your face, your countenance,

and light our path each day.

7 You give joy to my heart, my God.

I’m thinking of the time

my heart was full because it had

a lot of grain and wine.

8 In peace, together, I lie down

and off I go to sleep.

Because of you alone, oh LORD,

I live in safety deep.

There are a great many things taught about David ben Jesse, the third king of Israel. Like people who teach he’s only the second king of Israel—’cause they don’t count Ishbaal ben Saul. (The Deuteronomistic historian, who wrote 2 Samuel, calls him “Ishbosheth” ’cause he objected to the suffix -baal, ’cause Baalism.) Samuel ben Elkanah didn’t anoint Ishbaal king, so many a Christian will insist he doesn’t count. Same as they tend to skip presidents they don’t like, even if they legitimately were president. But I digress.

The LORD refers to David as “a man after mine own heart,” Ac 13.22, 1Sa 13.14 because David did whatever the LORD told him. Whatever else David was—and he was a lot of good things, but also a lot of bad—he was bananas for God. And the LORD honored him for it.

Problem is, a lot of Christians are bananas for David. Particularly Christians who like to teach about leadership, whether church or business leadership. They tend to hold David up as the best example of a successful CEO. And he’s really not; Jesus is. But these folks find it way easier to put words in David’s mouth, and assign him motives which—conveniently!—sound exactly like their motives. There’s an awful lot of sock-puppet action going on there.

As a result of trying to focus only on David’s successes, victories, and positive enthusiasm, these teachers frequently skip or skim over the parts of the psalms where David’s just frustrated, angry, struggling, lamenting his situation, just railing against his enemies, or dealing with the consequences of his own sins. Like I said, he did a lot of bad things. He was a lousy father, a horny womanizer, an impatient and short-sighted judge, and a straight-up murderer. Not traits you want in a successful CEO, do you?

These teachers whiff past David’s real difficulties, and treat ’em as if God quickly mopped them up, and David leapt from success to success. They fail to realize the psalms contain David complaining about his problems a lot. Because it’s not easy being king! Plus, y’know, the lousy fathering, the horny womanizing, the sloppy judgment, the murdering.

But being bananas for God means he did totally trust God to get him through every single one of his problems. Even though he had ’em. Just like we do.