Deaf ears aren’t opportunities.

Matthew 7.6, Luke 13.6-9.

Way back in my seminary days, I was at my home-away-from-dorm, a popular Capitola coffeehouse called Mr. Toots. (Figured I’d throw ’em a free plug.) I got to talking to some UC Santa Cruz students, ’cause they quickly figured out I was a fellow student and wanted to know which school I went to. Once they realized I was a biblical studies major—a “God expert” (in training, anyway)—they wanted to talk God.

A lot of pagans go through a phase when they head off to school where they question their faith. And rightly so, ’cause they need to question everything, and get rid of those things in their religions which don’t grow their relationships with God. But many will ditch their faith altogether—if they even had any. Some of ’em dabble in other religions; some of ’em even invent their own. And some of ’em flirt with nontheism—either because they honestly think there might be no God, or because they’re jerks and just wanna enrage theists.

That’s what our conversation quickly deteriorated into. These guys wanted to try out their freshly-learned anti-God arguments on the religious guy. Kinda like a kid who just learned a new judo hold, wants to fight everybody with it, and foolishly picks a fight with the taekwondo black belt. Not that I was a black belt in Christianity… and since argumentativeness is a work of the flesh, it’s really the wrong metaphor! But I had been studying Christian apologetics since high school, and since I went to seminary in my late 20s, I did have about a decade on these guys. It wasn’t hard at all to slap their commonplace arguments down.

Still, the arguing grew tiresome, as I realized it was never gonna go anywhere. These guys weren’t curious about God. At all. Didn’t care to learn anything new about him; didn’t wanna listen, repent, and become Christian. This was entirely an intellectual exercise for them. They were just killing time at the coffeehouse. I was just tossing pearls to swine.

Yep, just like in the Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew 7.6 KWL

“Don’t give holy things to the dogs,

nor throw your² pearls before the pigs.

Otherwise they’ll trample them under their feet,

and they might turn and attack you².”

So I called a truce. “Wanna talk about something different?” I said. “I mean, to you this is just light conversation. But to me this is something I take very seriously and personally. I’m having trouble not taking all your God-bashing personally. Wouldn’t you rather talk politics?”

“Yeah, okay.”

So we talked politics. And after a bit, they left.

Double standards.

Mark 4.24, Matthew 7.1-5, Luke 6.37-38, 41-42.

When people don’t wanna condemn anyone, “Judge not, that ye be not judged” Mt 7.1 KJV is a popular proof text they’ll quote. It’s not the best quote though. I already wrote an article about how people take it out of context. Jesus didn’t say it to forbid us from making any judgment statements whatsoever. It’s part of his instruction to make fair judgments.

This bit of his Sermon on the Mount comes right after Jesus teaches us not to worry. And while we’re not worrying, let’s also not prejudge people unfairly.

Matthew 7.1-2 KWL

1“Don’t criticize.

Thus you² won’t be criticized,

2for you’ll² be critiqued

by the very criticism you² criticize with.

The measurement you² measure with,

will measure you².”

Luke 6.37 KWL

“Don’t criticize,

and you² won’t be criticized.

Don’t judge,

and you² won’t be judged.

Forgive,

and you’ll² be forgiven.”

Obviously I translated κρίνετε/krínetë, “criticize,” differently than the KJV’s “judge.” Our English word judge includes a few additional ideas—specifically the idea of formal judgment, official judgment, binding judgment—which aren’t meant to be part of Jesus’s teaching. He’s talking about making up one’s indiviudal mind, not handing down a formal ruling for the community to follow. There’s a whole other word for that, and Luke uses it in verse 37: Κατεδικάσατε/katedikásatë, “pass sentence.” That word is what we nowadays mean by judging. Krínetë is really just about whether things are acceptable in our personal evaluation. Nothing more.

And this kind of personal judgment is something we all do—and should. Everybody evaluates stuff. Daily. It’s part of our ordinarly decision-making processes. We judge which shoes to wear, which breakfast cereals to eat (or not), which coffees to drink (or not), which movies to watch, whether to read TXAB on a daily basis… Life is choices. Every choice involves weighing our options, and critiquing those options. Jesus doesn’t just expect us to do it; he designed us to do it. It’s why he created you with a brain in your skull. It’s not just for memorizing pop lyrics and baseball stats!

This is why he follows up “Don’t criticize” with “you’ll be critiqued by the very criticism you criticize with.” It’s a warning: When we apply our criticisms to others, we’re gonna be held up to the very same standard. As we should. We set that standard fairly, right?—we didn’t make ourselves an exception to the rule, right?

Well… maybe we did. ’Cause that’s human nature. It’s to always selfishly consider ourselves the exception. When we critique other people, we decide whether they meet our approval—and when we do the very same things they do, our standards suddenly change to favor ourselves. If your dad tells a lame “dad joke,” it means his sense of humor is defective; if we tell the very same joke, we’re having ironic fun. If the neighbor cheats on her husband, it’s adultery and awful; if we do it… oh you just don’t understand the circumstances; we’re in love. And so on. We grant ourselves a free pass. Others, not so much.

But Jesus makes it clear we don’t get a free pass. If we ordinarily recognize a behavior is offensive, wrong, or sinful, it’s still just as bad when we do it. We’re not beyond similar criticism. Are we doing right? Because we’ve no business setting ourselves above criticism, like a king who figures he alone has the power to do as he pleases. We aren’t exceptional. Especially when we fall short of our own judgment.

This does not mean the proper response is to critique ourselves more harshly. Jesus says as much in the Luke version of this teaching: “Forgive, and you’ll be forgiven.” When others slip up, forgive. And when we slip up—and people are gonna fairly hold us to the same standard we set for others—our behavior will reflect the Spirit’s fruit more so than yet another self-righteous a--hole. We’re gonna receive grace instead of condemnation. As Jesus intends.

Don’t you worry ’bout a thing.

Matthew 6.25-34, Luke 12.22-32.

Right after Jesus stated in his Sermon on the Mount how we can’t have both God and Mammon as our masters, he gets to the core reason why we humans tend to slide away from trusting God, and instead put our trust in our wealth:

When it comes to basic daily needs, we first look to our wallets. Not God.

We first ask whether we can afford it. Not whether God even wants us to do these things, much less pay for them. We don’t submit our wishes and intentions to God for his approval; we don’t even think about his approval. Either ’cause we presume we already have it… or because we think this is one of those areas in our lives where the decision is totally ours, and ours alone. Jesus is not the Lord here.

I make this mistake too. When I shop for groceries, I don’t think, “Does God even want me to buy those chocolate bars?” then ask him, and find out. I think, “I want those chocolate bars, and they’re within my budget.” Nevermind that I need to cut back on sugar; nevermind that the cocoa beans were likely picked by slave labor; nevermind that I can control my taste buds and other such urges when I choose. I don’t consider God’s will as often as I should.

And this is a much harder lesson for rich Christians to learn. In wealthy countries, we have crazy standards for what denotes our “basic daily needs.” It’s not just food, drink, and clothing, as Jesus addresses in the following teaching. It’s having a roof over your head. A bed. Electricity and gas, for the central heat and air conditioning. Oh, and since we have electricity: A refrigerator to keep the food in. Internet and wifi, and some kind of streaming service so we can watch TV and movies. A phone. An email address. Probably a car, ’cause you can’t expect us to just walk everywhere.

Food and drink is no longer just grains, vegetables, and water: We gotta have meat and dairy. If we’ve learned about some special diet we really oughta be on—whether our doctors tell us so or not—we want that accommodated too: Gluten-free grains, keto-friendly vegetables, vegan dairy products. Oh, and we gotta have coffee and beer and sugary and salty snacks. We expect a variety of good foods. And enough money to sometimes go to a restaurant.

Clothing is no longer a single loincloth, tunic, robe, and sandals, with maybe an extra change just in case: We gotta have at least two weeks’ worth of outfits. And they gotta be fashionable, so we won’t just fit in, but stand out as especially good-looking. Plus an extra-nice outfit for important occasions, like church or parties.

If you only have the basics and no more, in a rich country you’d be considered poor. Not comfortable; not okay; poor. But in a poor country, like ancient Judea… wealthy.

That’s something to keep in mind whenever Jesus talks about not having enough. Ancient Israel, where Jesus lived, whether in the Galilee or Judea, would be what Donald Trump would call a s---hole country. It was poor. The largest part of the population survived on less than $2 a day. The families who ran the Judean senate had money, but that was old-family wealth, or they got it by collaborating with the Romans, same as the taxmen. The rest of them were subsistence farmers, or day laborers like Jesus’s dad and later Jesus himself: Scratching to get by. Legitimately concerned about daily needs.

The folks Jesus preached to? They had way less than we who live in rich countries. They’d be what we consider destitute. Near-homeless. They didn’t imagine themselves so, but hey: Different countries, different millennia, different standards.

Yet in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told ’em to quit worrying. Because worry wasn’t getting them anywhere.

Matthew 6.25 KWL

“This is why I tell you²:

Stop worrying about what your² soul would eat {or drink},

or what your² body would wear.

Isn’t your² soul more than food?

—your² body more than clothes?”

Luke 12.22-23 KWL

22Jesus told his students, “This is why I tell you²:

Stop worrying about what your² soul would eat,

or what {your²} body would wear.

23The soul is more than food;

the body more than clothes.”

Try to wrap your brain around this idea: One set of clothing. Maybe three days’ worth of food in the pantry. Water comes from the creek or well. No electricity nor gasoline. No money; you gotta barter for everything. This isn’t because there’s a dire recession: This is life. This has always been life, as far as you or your parents or grandparents knew. Every day’s a struggle. And here Jesus is, telling you to stop worrying about food or clothing, because God has your back.

The typical American response to this? “Are you nuts, Jesus? I’m poor!”

Yeah, you are. Poor in faith. That’s why it’s easier to shove camels through needles than get rich Christians into God’s kingdom. Mk 10.25 We just aren’t always aware Jesus was making that statement about us.

Worshiping Mammon instead of Jesus.

Matthew 6.24, Luke 16.13

Some years ago there was a meme going round social media, warning folks what might happen if society went cashless. Some of the memes claim Dave Ramsey wrote it; he didn’t. Like most memes which go viral quickly, it’s meant to frighten people—and this one played right into many a Christian’s fears about the End Times, so Christians helped spread it. That’s how I came to see it.

My comment after yet another friend posted it on Facebook: “Isn’t it funny? The first thing Christians worry about when the Beast comes… is Mammon.”

Jesus used the Syriac word ܡܳܡܽܘܢܳܐ/mamoná once in his his Sermon on the Mount—and in its parallel verse in Luke—to describe wealth. It got transliterated into Greek as μαμωνᾷ/mamoná (and the Textus Receptus adds a letter μ/my, so “mammoná”); then into Latin as mamonæ. John Wycliffe translated it “riches,” as did the Geneva Bible, but the King James Version turned it back into “mammon.”

Matthew 6.24 KWL

“Nobody’s able to be a slave to two masters.

Either they’ll¹ hate one and love the other,

or look up to one and down on the other:

Can’t be a slave to God and Mammon.”

Luke 16.13 KWL

“No slave is able to be a slave to two masters.

Either they’ll¹ hate one and love the other,

or look up to one and down on the other:

Can’t be a slave to God and Mammon.”

Why’d the authors of the gospels go with “mammon” instead of the usual Greek words for wealth, πλοῦτος/plútos or χρῆμα/hríma or εὐπορία/evporía? Or, because this verse is so often translated, “You cannot serve both God and money” (GNB, NIV, NLT), why not the word for money (literally “silver”), ἀργύριον/argýrion?

Well, we don’t know. It’s likely because the ancient Christians first memorized this Jesus-saying with the Syriac word deliberately kept in it. The original-language word was important to them, and if Jesus is the one who made ’em memorize the saying, it’s likely important to him too. He wants us Christians to pay more attention to this word.

So we did. In fact when the ancient Christians preached on mamoná, they Grecianized it—they tacked on a Greek noun-ending, turning into not just a Greek word, but a Greek name. That’s why so many Christians, myself included, capitalize it. They treated Mammon like a person, ’cause Jesus said you can’t serve Mammon as well as God—and it must therefore be a competitor god. Obviously a false god, but still.

And since mamoná is a cognate of the Hebrew word מַטְמוֹן/matmón, “secret riches,” people imagine Mammon is therefore be a god of riches, wealth, or money.

In Luke, Jesus speaks of Mammon right after his Shrewd Butler Story. Maybe you remember it; maybe not, ’cause pastors hesitate to teach on it, ’cause Jesus straight-up praises an embezzler. In it, a butler makes friends by undercharging his boss’s debtors. Lk 16.1-9 Jesus’s moral: “Make yourselves friends with your filthy lucre,” Lk 16.9 or as the KJV puts it, “the mammon of unrighteousness.” And the Pharisees in his audience responded by rejecting it—’cause they were φιλάργυροι/filárgyri, “silver-lovers.” Lk 16.14

So… is Mammon the pagan god of money? Or simply Jesus’s personification of money? Or a mistranslation?

Sucking up to God.

All my life I’ve heard Christian prayer leaders instruct me that before we start asking God for things, it’s only proper to begin with praise. Tell God how great he is. How mighty. How awesome. Supposedly that’s how Jesus demonstrated we’re to start in the Lord’s Prayer, with “Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done…” Because we wanna make his name holy and embrace his will.

This attitude reminds me way too much of the sycophantic prayer we find in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life:

CHAPLAIN. “Let us praise God. Oh Lord…”

CONGREGATION. [ritually repeating] “Oh Lord…”

CHAPLAIN. “Oooh you are so big!”

CONGREGATION. “Oooh you are so big.”

CHAPLAIN. “So absolutely huge!”

CONGREGATION. “So absolutely huge.”

CHAPLAIN. “Gosh, we’re all really impressed down here, I can tell you!”

CONGREGATION. “Gosh, we're all really impressed down here, I can tell you.”

CHAPLAIN. “Forgive us, O Lord, for this dreadful toadying.”

CONGREGATION. “And bare-faced flattery.”

CHAPLAIN. “But you are so strong and, well, just so super!”

CONGREGATION. “Fantastic.”

The problem with it? It’s not what the Lord’s Prayer means… and to a large degree it’s hypocrisy. When we come to God with legitimate prayer requests, small or serious, and begin with the fawning adulation, how is this significantly different from a teenager telling her dad “I love you so much” before she asks him for money? I kiss God’s boots; I earn his favor. Now he owes me. Right?

Of course it’s wrong. Yet it’s what we see: Christians figuring the more we praise God, the better he thinks of us. Or as pagans would put it, the more karma they’re generating. The more apt he is to give us what we ask, even when we really shouldn’t ask for such things ’cause our ulterior motives are bad. Jm 4.3 But we’ve deluded ourselves into thinking this is how prayer should be done. It’s not honest praise; it’s a quid pro quo.

In reality prayer requests are about grace. They’re about God giving us what he wants to give us, only because he loves us, and not because we merit or earned it.

Likewise praise is about appreciating God, about reminding ourselves of his greatness. If you wanna do a lot of that, I direct you to Psalms. But the Lord’s Prayer doesn’t actually include praise—unless you’re using the Didache version which includes, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory.”

And in that case it follows the examples shown in Psalms: The psalmists tended to pour out their heart to God first. Express their woes, state their problem, ask for help. Then—after God talked ’em down, or told them he’d take care of it—then they ended their prayers with praise and gratitude. Honest gratitude.

Generosity and stinginess in God’s kingdom.

Matthew 6.22-23, Luke 11.34-36.

Some of Jesus’s teachings tend to get skipped entirely. Sometimes because they’re too hard to understand—and they’re not really; we just need to learn their historical context. Today’s Sermon on the Mount passage is one such example.

And sometimes because we just don’t like them. Libertines hate what Jesus has to say about still following the Law, ’cause they don’t wanna. Hypocrites hate what Jesus has to say about public acts of devotion, ’cause it’s way easier to do that than produce good fruit. Ingrates hate what Jesus has to say about loving the “unloveable,” forgiving the “unforgivable,” and going the extra mile. Mammonists hate what Jesus has to say about money—and today’s passage is about money, so it’s likewise one such example.

Yep, it’s about money, not opthamology. But because people are unfamiliar with what ancient middle easterners meant by “good eye” and “evil eye”—and presume they’re about what Romans and westerners mean by it, and think they have to do with all-purpose blessings and curses—we interpret this passage all kinds of wrong. Or claim it’s too obscure, and skip it, and focus on the verses we understand, and like better.

Well. In Matthew, right after saying we oughta keep our treasures in heaven, Jesus says this:

Matthew 6.22-23 KWL

22“The body’s light is the eye.

So when your¹ eye is clear,

your¹ whole body is illuminated.

23When your¹ eye is bad,

your¹ whole body is dark.

So if the light in you¹ is dark,

how dark are you?”

Luke 11.34-36 KWL

34“The body’s light is your¹ eye.

{So} whenever your¹ eye is clear,

your¹ whole body is illuminated too.

Once it’s bad,

your¹ body is dark too.

35So watch out

so the light in you¹ isn’t dark.

36So if your¹ whole body is illuminated,

without having any parts dark,

the whole will be bright—

as if a lamp could shine lightning for you¹.”

In both gospels the King James Version uses these words to describe the eye:

• Ἁπλοῦς/aplús, “all together,” is translated “single.”
• Πονηρὸς/ponirós, “bad,” is translated “evil.”

Why? ’Cause that’s how William Tyndale translated it, and that’s what the Geneva Bible went with. It was tradition. The translators were simply following the tradition handed down by the Vulgate, which turned aplús into simplex/“single,” and ponirós into nequam, “wicked.” Thanks to St. Jerome’s inaccurate interpretation in the 390s, Christians misinterpreted this passage for centuries, and continued to misinterpret it this way even after they learned ancient Greek for themselves and tried to retranslate it into English.

These are middle eastern idioms. Jerome translated those words literally, and thought he was right to; and a lot of translators likewise think they’re right to translate idioms literally. They’re not. Idioms need to be interpreted. Literal interpretations of idioms always give people the wrong idea. If I describe an eager student as “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” then have that phrase translated into Chinese, my poor Chinese friend would be stunned to hear she has a tail at all, much less a bushy one. And wait, doesn’t she have brown eyes?…

By aplús and ponirós, Jesus meant how I translated it: A clear eye. One with neither blurry vision nor cataracts. Or a bad eye; not an evil one, though it might certainly feel evil to you when your eyes don’t work. When your eyes are cloudy, vision’s a problem, and you’re gonna be in the dark. When your eyes are healthy, you see just fine: Light could enter your body “as if a lamp could shine lightning for you,” Lk 11.36 which interestingly is exactly how 19th-century arc lamps worked.

But even so, Jesus isn’t trying to teach anatomy. “Clear eye” and “bad eye” aren’t literally about eyes. They’re about generosity and stinginess. This is, as I said, a teaching about money.

Biblical judges: Ancient Israel’s chiefs.

When the Septuagint translated the Old Testament into Greek, it translated the Hebrew word שֹׁפֵט֙/šofét, “decision-maker,” into δικαστής/dikastís, “judge.” From there the Vulgate turned it into judex, “judge”; John Wycliffe turned it into juge, “judge”; and the Geneva Bible made it “judge,” and that’s what we have in our bibles today.

But yeah, it’d be better translated “decision-maker” or “decider.” Judges nowadays are quite different civic leaders than the biblical judges. Thanks to the separation of powers, which most governments have adopted to a certain degree, judges handle criminal and civic court cases. They don’t run the country—unless they either leave the bench and run for office, or lead a coup and take over the country. And once they become the country’s chief executive, they leave the judging to other, full-time judges—again, unless they’re dictators who decide they’ll take over the powers of the country’s supreme court, and maybe hear cases themselves.

Biblical judges, in contrast, were ancient Israel’s chief executives. They ruled the country. Although there are some commentators who aren’t sure all of ’em ruled the whole country; some judges might only have led their tribe. But the judges of the book of Judges are all described as judging “Israel,” not individual tribes. They all appear to be national leaders. Or, in some cases, comtemporary leaders—judges whose lifespans overlapped, who briefly led Israel alongside fellow judges.

And no, these weren’t kings. More like dictators. They took power, then ruled for life. Their kids usually didn’t succeed them.

A list? Sure, I’ll make a list. No, I have no exact dates; no one does. We have rough dates.

1. Moses ben Amram, Levite, circa 1440s BC. Ex-Dt
2. Joshua ben Nun, Ephraimite, ca. 1400 BC. Js
3. Othniel ben Kenaz, Judahite, ca. 1350 BC. Jg 3.7-11
4. Ehud ben Gera, Benjamite, ca. 1300 BC. Jg 3.12-30
5. Shamgar ben Anath, ca. 1220 BC. Jg 3.31
6. Deborah wife of Lappidoth, Ephraimite, ca. 1200 BC. Jg 4-5
7. Gideon Jerubbaal ben Joash, Manassite, ca. 1190 BC. Jg 6-8
8. Tola ben Puah, Issacharite, ca. 1140 BC. Jg 10.1-2
9. Jair ben Segub, ca. 1110 BC. Jg 10.3-5
10. Jephthah of Gilead, Manassite, ca. 1110 BC. Jg 10.6-12.7
11. Ibzan of Bethlehem, Judahite, ca. 1090 BC. Jg 12.8-10
12. Elon the Zebulunite, ca. 1080 BC. Jg 12.11-12
13. Abdon ben Hillel, Ephraimite, ca. 1070 BC. Jg 12.13-15
14. Samson ben Manoah, Judahite, ca. 1110 BC. Jg 13-16
15. Eli the head priest, Levite, ca. 1120 BC. 1Sa 1-4
16. Samuel ben Elkanah, Ephraimite, ca. 1060 BC. 1Sa 7-12, 15-16

Most lists only include the judges named in the book of Judges—Othniel through Samson. Hence no Moses nor Joshua, no Eli nor Samuel. Nothing against those guys, but the list-makers only wanna include the judges in that one book. That way you get 12 judges, and hey, God loves the number 12—maybe that means something! But nah.

Some lists include Abimelech ben Gideon, Jg 9 but not legitimately. More about him in a minute.

Samuel makes reference to a rescueer of Israel named Bedan. 1Sa 12.11 We don’t know who that is. There’s a Bedan ben Ulam of Manasseh, 1Ch 7.17 KJV but we’ve no idea if that’s him. The Septuagint changes him to Barak, so some translations do too. 1Sa 12.11 ESV And some lists include Barak ben Abinoam, Deborah’s general, as one of the judges. But that’s mainly because the lists are written by sexists who despise the iea of a woman judge, and wanna mitigate Deborah’s existence by saying she co-judged along with Barak. But the bible never calls Barak a judge. (To be fair, it actually doesn’t call Ehud or Gideon judges either.) Yes Barak rescued Israel; yes he’s a hero of faith. He 11.32 Nothing against him! But elevating him to judgeship is for the Holy Spirit, not these guys who think testicles grant them innate authority.

And sometimes people don’t include Moses and Joshua in this list because they’re only counting people who became judge as part of the cycle.