Unbelieving Christian leaders.

Years ago I listened to a Christian podcast in which the host interviewed an ex-pastor, whom I’ll call Trophimus. (Honestly, I didn’t change his name to protect the innocent; or in this case guilty. It’s because I just forgot his name.)

Trophimus had retired from ministry a few years before. Now he was writing books; this interview was to promote his book. Not as part of a publisher’s book tour; he was self-publishing, so he was self-promoting. The subject of his book? How he led his church for a full decade… despite the fact he no longer believed in God.

He wouldn’t call himself atheist. He’d say agnostic; he wasn’t sure God exists. Couldn’t feel or sense him. All the warm fuzzy feelings were gone. Bible and Christian literature were no help. And those Christian friends whom he shared his doubts with…

Ah, there’s the rub. Trophimus shared his doubts with no one. No counselors, no mentors, no close friends, not even his wife. I’m not sure he even talked with God about it—“Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” Mk 9.24 KJV I mean, it’s not like unbelievers never ever pray, when desperate. Maybe he didn’t feel desperate enough.

In any event Trophimus hid his doubts as best he could, went through the motions, and stuck out his job till he was ready to retire.

“So,” the podcast host bluntly said, “you were a hypocritical fraud for 10 years. Just doing it for the money.”

You could hear Trophimus bristle at that description. Absolutely not, he insisted. He wanted to believe again; really he did. He didn’t stay in his pastorate just for the money; he was hoping something might reactivate his faith. Maybe he’d see a miracle. Or hear God, or otherwise have a God-experience.

“You ever try the Pentecostals?” the host said; “plenty of God-stuff happens there.”

“No,” Trophimus chuckled. I’m guessing he never considered them. I’m Pentecostal, and to be blunt, some of us are mighty weird, so I get it. Still, if you claim you’re desperate for a God-experience, I’m gonna suspect your claims are entirely B.S. when you absolutely rule out continuationist churches where such experiences happen. But I digress.

Nonetheless, Trophimus figured being in ministry gave him a better-than-average chance of seeing God stuff. He’s not wrong, but in my experience it depends on what kind of ministry you’re doing. Are you working with seriously needy people, or are you only interacting with fairly comfortable rich people? If your people don’t have real needs, how’re you gonna witness God meeting needs? But that’s another digression.

“Okay,” said the host, “but you didn’t even tell your wife? You couldn’t trust her with your secret? For 10 whole years? She has to feel so betrayed.”

Yeah, this wasn’t a comfortable interview for Trophimus. He kept trying to justify himself, and the host was having none of it, and kept calling out his hypocrisy. I found it memorable because it was mighty cringey—and not very gracious, unfortunately. It was probably the very same judgmental response Trophimus feared the moment he outed himself.

But to be fair to the podcast host: For 10 whole years Trophimus committed spiritual fraud.

The bible as a source of revelation.

Many Christians firmly believe the only way God reveals himself to humanity, is through bible. Which contradicts what we find in the bible.

In the scriptures, God first reveals himself to humans with a God-appearance: He hangs out with Adam and Eve. Ge 3.8 It’s special revelation through regular personal appearances. Now yeah, the humans ruined those visitations… but no, their sin didn’t drive God away; sin doesn’t do that, because God is infinitely mightier than sin. The scriptures tell us God still appeared to people from time to time. And of course he became human, and interacted with people that way.

Likewise there were other forms of revelation—all of which we see in the book of Genesis:

• We got creation, for those folks who insist nature’s a type of revelation.
• We got miracles.
• We got God having conversational prayers with people. (Including, of all people, Cain, the first murderer.)
• We got prophetic dreams. (And the first guy to have one is neither Abraham nor one of his descendants; he’s a gentile.)
• We got prophets.

And the bible is a product of all these sources of revelation. People interacted with God, recorded these things, preserved them as best we can, and that’s our scriptures. That’s bible.

The difference between bible and other forms of revelation, is the bible’s been repeatedly confirmed as reliable. In its day, and many times since. Yes, even Revelation—even though its apocalyptic visions talk about the very end of history, plenty of it is about its then-present day, and that stuff came to pass. It’s why ancient Christians kept it. I can’t help that “prophecy scholars” make tons of wild claims about what they think it means, that people buy their books and believe ’em, and that their wild claims regularly don’t come true. They know not what they do, and their fans are wasting their time and money on ’em.

The fact the bible’s been confirmed is why we kept its books: Why keep supposed “revelations from God” which were unproven or disproven? Why seek similar God-experiences for ourselves? But since we’ve sought those experiences and found ’em valid, and since we’ve thus far confirmed many of the bible’s historical events in history, we Christians consider the scriptures faithful and reliable revelations of God. If you wanna fact-check it again, go right ahead; we’ve found it can stand up to scrutiny. Archaeologists still keep digging up stuff which confirms it—sometimes in ways they never expected, ’cause their discoveries put a whole new spin on the scriptures.

Now, with every other source of revelation, we still have to confirm them. We gotta watch miracles to see whether they produce the sort of good fruit we oughta see in God’s handiwork. We gotta confirm prophecy, prayer messages, and dreams, lest people were mistaken, or were tricked, or are lying. But with bible, not so much. From the time the very first books were written, all the way to today, God’s followers have confirmed and re-confirmed and re-re-confirmed the scriptures are solid. Trustworthy. Relevant. Consistent with who God is.

Postmillennialism: Conquering the world for Jesus.

POSTMILLENNIALISM 'poʊst.mɪ'lɛn.i.əl.ɪz.əm noun. Belief the second coming of Christ Jesus takes place after a thousand-year period of blessedness.

[Postmillenarism 'poʊst.mɪ'lɛn.ər.ɪz.əm noun, postmillennial 'poʊst.mɪ'lɛn.i.əl adjective.]

Most historical resources will tell you postmillennialism became the dominant way Protestants understood the End Times in the 1800s: We Christians were gonna evangelize the world! Roman Catholics would fire the pope, the Russians and Greeks would fire their patriarchs, the Turks would quit Islam, the Indians would quit Hinduism, the Jews would turn to Jesus. and everybody’d become Protestant. And once we’d done so, we’d enter the millennium.

Now, Christians of that era weren’t that naïve: All this stuff of course sounds extremely unlikely. It’d be a lot of work, and take years, to convince all these groups to become Christian. Centuries maybe; Congregationalist evangelist Jonathan Edwards, who promoted his belief in postmillennialism during the Great Awakening revival of the 1730s, figured it might not be achieved till the year 2000. It’d take an extraordinary work of the Holy Spirit—but, Edwards firmly held, it’ll happen. It’s inevitable.

And when it arrives, it’ll begin a thousand years of grace, peace, and prosperity. No more war, no more inhumanity towards one another; Christians will follow Jesus wholeheartedly, and work together to solve all humanity’s problems. With the Spirit’s help and power, we’ll the earth into a utopian paradise.

And then Jesus returns—and it’s the end of the world, and off we go to New Heaven.

This postmillennial worldview is why you’ll see a bevy of reform movements in the 1800s. Christians, spurred by their postmillennialist preachers, realized it was time to get started! Gotta ask ourselves, “What would Jesus do?” and do that. Gotta seek and save the lost. Gotta lay the groundwork for the new Christian world we’d help bring about. Gotta encourage the culture to get more Christian, more humanitarian, more righteous. Onward and upward!

Three things wrong with this description.

First and most obvious, Christianity historically teaches us Jesus can return at any time. But postmillennialism holds off that return for a thousand years after the millennium starts. So, because we obviously haven’t been working on it, if we can’t get the millennium started till the year 2265, Jesus isn’t returning till 3265. He’s a thousand-plus years away; not near.

Second, this particular postmillennial trend was largely an American Evangelical thing. Yes, there were Evangelicals outside the United States who were postmillennial… but more often they were amillennial, same as the Orthodox and Catholics. They figured the millennium of Revelation 20 represents the Christian Era, i.e. right now. Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father, Ro 8.34 reigning right now. And when he returns, it’s to end history and the world, and take us to New Heaven. There’s no special utopian millennium coming; Jesus is coming. Again, he can return at any time, y’know.

Third, the people who not only held a postmillennial view, but promoted and pushed it really hard, weren’t only doing it to further the cause of Christ. Weren’t always primarily doing it for Christ Jesus either. A significant segment of their plans were—and still are—political.

’Cause if Jesus isn’t coming back to personally reign over the millennium… who’s gonna do that? Who’s gonna be in charge of the novus ordo seclorum? Well, Christians. Which Christians? Well… them; the postmillennial proclaimers. Or at least those fellow Christians who absolutely agree with them about how the new world order’s gonna be run.

What you’re regularly, invariably gonna find just beneath the surface of postmillennialism, is a political plan for a theocracy, a government by and for Christians. Not by and for every Christian; it’s gonna favor one particular branch, sect, or denomination of Christianity. If the leader of a particular postmillennial group is Baptist, it’s gonna look mighty Baptist. If he’s Catholic, very Catholic. If she’s Presbyterian, super Presbyterian. If he’s involved in the New Apostolic Reformation, it’s gonna be riddled with NAR teachings and terminology.

And if she’s a white nationalist, it’s gonna very much be that. Doesn’t matter that God’s kingdom is described in the scriptures as including “every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;” Rv 5.9 they figure those other peoples are gonna be conquered subjects, second-class citizens who get grudgingly included in their millennial kingdom, but certainly can’t be granted any real power within it. Like blacks in the United States during the Jim Crow era, or Indians under the British Empire.

Yeah, the dirty little secret of postmillennialism is the more we look at the way these folks plan to run the millennium, the less Christian it gets.

The street-corner show-off.

Matthew 6.5.

Since I’m going through Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, and these next passages have to do with prayer, I’m gonna discuss them in lieu of my usual posts on prayer. Beginning with the first of Jesus’s teachings on the topic, in chapter 6:

Matthew 6.5 KWL

“And whenever you pray,

you’ll not be like the hypocrites,

because they love standing up to pray

in synagogues and street corners

so they might be seen by people.

Amen! I promise you this

is the compensation they receive.”

Throughout history, people have prayed publicly for various reasons. Some noble, some not. Today, Jesus gets into the not. They’re not legitimately trying to speak with God, nor publicly calling upon him for help and inviting everyone else to join their prayers. (And even these prayers can be done hypocritically.) This is purely so they can be seen praying. They wanna look religious. Usually more religious than they actually are.

Nothing annoys Jesus like hypocrisy, which is why he tries to discourage his followers from doing anything which smacks of hypocrisy. But you know some of us do this anyway.

Now the way the ancient prayed, typically, was standing up, heads and eyes and arms and hands raised to the sky, and praying aloud. They didn’t kneel, bow their heads, fold their hands, and pray mentally but not audibly. That practice arose in the middle ages. That was the posture European kings demanded of those who approached them—and since Jesus is King, people figured it’s appropriate. But the ancients faced the sky where they imagined God is, lifted their hands to get his attention, and spoke with him. This posture made it really obvious they were praying. Don’t need to get loud; just assume the position.

Jesus singles out the people who prayed in really public places. Like synagogue. Which is not a Jewish church like it is nowadays; it’s a Pharisee school. You went there to hear rabbis teach, and ask ’em questions. Prayer times took place throughout—before, after, and during the lesson—and they’d be short. But often people would stand right outside the building and make a public display of prayer, “getting right with God” before they went in. Or similarly praying this way after the lesson, ostensibly to thank God for the wisdom they just received… or maybe to ask him to straighten out some wayward rabbi. Whatever; the point was they were making it nice ’n obvious they talked with God. Presumably a lot.

Jesus also brings up ταῖς γωνίαις τῶν πλατειῶν/tes yoníës ton plateión, “the corners of the [wide] streets,” the most important busy intersections in town. Plenty of people walking past; plenty of people to witness you praying, nice and loud so God could hear you over all the other noise. (As if he’s in any way hard of hearing.)

In both cases, people might not have had the time, nor interest, to listen to the petitioner with his hands in the air. That wasn’t the point anyway. It’s not about being heard—not even by God!—but seen.

The way Christians pray nowadays, typically doesn’t assume the ancient posture. Usually our heads are bowed, eyes closed. Sometimes hands get raised, if the folks in the group have any Pentecostal influences in their background. But generally we’re not as noticeable when we pray. Unless we get loud… or unless there are a lot of us, like when a bunch of people pray in front of public buildings, around a flagpole, or in Congress.

But in these places, same as with the people Jesus critiqued, the point was to be seen and noticed by other people. Not so much God. And that’s what Jesus objects to.

For whom are you doing charity?

Matthew 6.1-4.

The second chapter of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount begins with this teaching, only found in Matthew:

Matthew 6.1-4 KWL

1“Be careful to not do your righteous deeds

in front of people for them to see.

Otherwise you certainly get no compensation

from your heavenly Father.

2“So whenever you do for the needy,

you ought not trumpet it out before you,

same as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and the streets

so they might be praised by people.

Amen! I promise you this

is the compensation they receive.

3Now when you do for the needy,

don’t let your left hand know

what your right does,

4so your works for the needy

might be private.

And your Father, who sees what’s done in private,

will pay you back {in the open}.”

“In the open” in verse 4 was added to the text in the fourth century, and found in the Codex Washingtonianus and the Textus Receptus. It’s not in the oldest copies. Yet since Jesus is described as bringing us our compensation at his return, Rv 22.12 he may very well repay us in the open.

Superficially, Jesus’s teaching appears to contradict what he said about us being the world’s light—“that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” Mt 5.16 KJV But the obvious difference between that and this, is motive. As Jesus says in verse 1, watch out lest your good deeds are “in front of people for them to see,” i.e. done for public acclaim, not out of goodness, and definitely not for God. Done out of hypocrisy, not actual devotion. If you’re doing ’em for public praise, bad Christian!—human praise is all the compensation you get. That’s the context.

Jesus’s word “compensation” (Greek μισθὸν/misthón) means something we earned; “the worker is worthy of his misthú/wages.” 1Ti 5.18 Yet lots of bibles, following the KJV, translate it “reward,” which’ll give people the false idea this is something we didn’t actually merit, like when we get a reward for finding a lost item or missing person. When the King James was published in 1611, “reward” still meant compensation for your troubles. Workers don’t win their wages; they earn ’em.

Various stingy Christians claim God owes us nothing when we do good deeds. ’Cause we should be doing ’em anyway, right? And yeah, we should. True. But they’ve got a really lousy attitude about how God’s grace, and therefore our grace, should work. We’re not just God’s kids, who work for him for free. We inherit his kingdom. We have a stake in it; it’s also our kingdom. We should want to see it succeed, and the only way for that to happen is for us to follow the Boss’s vision. And God doesn’t skimp on our wages.

Unless of course we’re not working for God, but for our own gain. Unless we’re not making him any profit, but swiping all that profit for ourselves. This is what Jesus addresses in this lesson: Hypocrites who only do good deeds to make themselves look good. Ostensibly they work for God, but really they’re growing their own little fiefdoms instead of his kingdom.

There are three hypocritical practices Jesus objects to in the Sermon: Self-serving public charity, self-serving public prayer, and self-serving public fasting. Today I deal with the charity.

Civic idolatry.

CIVIC IDOLATRY 'sɪv.ɪk aɪ'dɑl.ə.tri noun. Worship of one’s homeland, its constitution, its government, or its leaders.

[Civically idolatrous 'sɪv.ɪk.(ə.)li aɪ'dɑl.ə.trəs adjective, civic idolater 'sɪv.ɪk aɪ'dɑl.ə.tər noun.]

In 1776 the Parliament of the United Kingdom, insisting they had every right to tax the British colonies of North America to fund the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), violated the colonies’ charters which had guaranteed them self-governance under a common king—much like the British Commonweath nowadays. It’s as if the UK Parliament of today taxed Canada, Jamaica, or the Bahamas.

By that point, after the Glorious Revolution, the British kings were largely ceremonial, same as today. King George Hanover 3 didn’t have the political might to do a thing about the situation. So he of course sided with his Parliament; but he went further and declared the colonies outside his protection. The Americans’ Continental Congress, colonial delegates representing 13 of the colonies which later became the United States, interpreted this to mean they were now independent states. On 4 July (or 2 July, depending on which founder you talk to) they officially declared themselves independent.

So today’s Independence Day in the United States. This week, Americans are gonna set off tons of fireworks, eat a lot of barbecue, and express a whole lot of patriotism. American Christians included. As we should.

However, many American Christians regularly cross a line between the proper familial love of one’s homeland, and descend into outright worship of the United States. Yep, full-on idolatry. We also call it civic idolatry. It’s when love for our country stops being reasonable and fair-minded: We treat it, its symbols, its values, and its institutions as sacred and holy. It’s when we treat contempt for it, or even fair-minded constructive criticism of it, as heresy and blasphemy. Civic idolaters might call it other things, like “unpatriotic” or “subversive” or “seditious” or “treasonous” or “traitorous,” but yeah, they mean blasphemy. ’Cause how dare we speak poorly of the United States?

Civic idolaters are also gonna do their darnedest to say they worship God, and God alone; not the United States. But y’notice they too often confound God and country, and blend ’em together as if they’re the same thing.

• When we attribute things to the United States which are only legitimately true of God, we got idolatry.
• When we claim things about our country which are only legitimately true of God’s kingdom (“This is a Christian nation!” or “Jesus reigns over this land, and American laws should reflect this!”) we got idolatry.
• When our nation or our politics take precedence over the actual growth of God’s kingdom, we got idolatry.
• When our political principles actually defy Jesus’s teachings, we got idolatry.

Hey, sometimes in our dual citizenship with God’s kingdom and the world, we gotta pick a side. But every time we choose the world, it’s idolatry.

Special revelation: God’s gotta tell us about himself.

Last week I posted a piece on general revelation, the idea we can deduce God, and what he’s like, by looking at his creation. And, of course, why that’s largely rubbish: Every religion tries to deduce a bit of what God’s like by looking at nature. In so doing, every religion gets God wrong. In a thousand different ways.

Yeah, I know, “The heavens declare the glory of God,” etc. Ps 19.1 might be one of your very favorite verses. You’ve got framed posters of photos from the Hubble or Webb telescopes on your wall, captioned with that very memory verse. Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy about how you can love both science and God. And… big whoop. The glory of the heavens suggest the glory of their Creator… and that’s all.

Nothing about the Creator’s motives. Nor his character. Nor his love. Nor whether the mighty power he used to make the Big Bang go bang, has any limits on it. Obviously it’s vast, but how vast? Many a Christian will insist the infinity of space clearly reveals an infinite God, but… does it? ’Cause it’s empty infinite space; the Creator apparently didn’t put anything in it! Does empty space—truly empty, containing nothing whatsoever—even properly count as a thing God created?

True, the heavens declare a mighty Creator. Yet more than one pagan myth actually claims the Creator expended all his energy in the act of creation, and completely burned himself out. He created the universe… then ceased to be. Faded away. Is no more. Leaving behind his creatures; the mightiest of which, whom the pagans called gods, warred over who might rule everything the Creator left behind. Again, in these myths, nothing about the Creator’s motives for creating. Nor character, love, anything. His only purpose in these stories is to make the cosmos, then vanish.

Or, according to the 18th-century deists, God made the cosmos, then went away. Didn’t die… but he’s not around anymore, for he’s chosen not to interact with humanity (or at least they’ve rejected all the testimonies of those who had God-experiences). We might encounter him in the afterlife, but they were entirely sure we oughtn’t expect to in this life.

Bluntly, creation tells us what God made, but we know no more about his person than we know about Thomas Edison from incandescent light bulbs. So how are we to learn about God?

Duh—he’s gotta tell us.

And that’s what we Christian theologians mean by special revelation—the stuff God deliberately, personally reveals to humanity. What we know about God does not primarily come from looking at his handiwork and making (really, jumping to) conclusions. It comes from God himself.