God doesn’t have a dark side.

1 John 1.5-7.

The thing about gnostics is they’ve always prioritized weirdness over Jesus. After all if these were commonsense teachings we could learn from the bible, be guided into by the Holy Spirit, or figure out on our own, we wouldn’t need to pay the gnostics a fistfull of money for their secrets. We wouldn’t need to buy their videos, attend their seminars, or pay tuition to their unaccredited universities.

Well, some of the gnostic ideas have leaked into Christendom. Some of them were affecting the first-century church. Hence the apostle John’s first letter, correcting his church. Something we still gotta read, because loads of these ideas are still around—either held over from the first century, or new gnostics came up with them independently. Still misinforming Christians.

Some of ’em are outright heresy. Others aren’t technically heresy… because heresy is defined by the creeds, and for whatever reason the creeds didn’t get to that particular error. Often because the ancient Christians figured, “Well of course that’s wrong; haven’t you read a bible?” But, then as now, people don’t read. (So read your bible!) Their favorite teachers did all the reading for them, and they blindly followed these teachers without double-checking any of their proof texts. It’s how gnostics have always got away with it.

And one of the more popular errors, still commonly believed, is about God having a dark side.

It’s based on determinism—the belief God is so sovereign, he controls absolutely everything in the cosmos. God’s the “unmoved mover” of Aristotle of Athens, the first cause of everything, and nothing in the universe happens without his permission. Really, determinists insist, if he isn’t wielding total control of everything, we can’t legitimately call him almighty.

But if God’s in charge, what about sin? Why is evil, chaos, and death part of our universe when God’s pulling every single string of our cosmic puppet show?

If you’re not a determinist—and I’m not, and neither is St. John—there’s a really simple answer: He’s not pulling every single string of the show. He’s not so inept a creator that he built the universe, yet constantly has to fiddle with it lest it go awry. Imagine a clockmaker who, instead of building a clockwork that effectively keeps time, always moves the arms himself. It’d make him the worst clockmaker. Likewise a micromanagerial creator would be an incompetent creator, not a masterful one.

So when creation goes wrong, God’s not at fault. He made it profoundly good, Ge 1.31 but he granted his creation free will. It can legitimately make its own decisions—and choose to do either what God told it to, or its own thing. That’s the cause of evil, chaos, and death. Not God.

Determinists insist no, God’d never cede control of his domain like that. (Certainly they never would, were they God.) And since he doesn’t stop or mitigate the evil (again, not like they would, were they God) he must’ve determined this evil, chaos, and death oughta happen. He wants it to. It’s not the fallout from our bad choices; it’s part of the plan. A plan full of evil, chaos, and death—so much so it’s really an evil plan—but it’ll all turn out in the long run. It’s just in the short run, God sovereignly decrees evil, chaos, and death.

You’ve seen this in sitcoms and superhero movies, like The Incredibles: Somebody wants to look like a hero, so he creates a disaster, fully intending to “solve” the problem himself so everybody can laud him as a hero. This is exactly the same way determinists describe God. He’s gonna solve all the evil in the world, and as a result receive all the glory. But wait… didn’t he create the problem in the first place?

And y’notice in the sitcoms and superhero movies, the mastermind gets exposed as creating the crisis in the first place. And universally denounced as a fraud. ’Cause he totally is. Yet for some reason, determinists think it’s way different with God: Even though God’s totally behind the evil, he’s not evil. He can’t be; he says he’s not!

Eventually their blasphemous explanations get a little too incredible for even them to believe. Which is why so many determinists quit Christianity or turn atheist. And y’know, if God really were the way determinists claim, I can’t blame people for rejecting him: That’s not a good God!

But I would counter that’s not God. The true God doesn’t have a dark side. Doesn’t have a secret evil plan. Far be it from him to even imagine a secret evil plan. And yes, he’s still sovereign and almighty; just not deterministic.

The second creation story.

Genesis 2.4-17.

Back in college I took a Pentateuch class—πεντάτευχος/pentátefkhos being Greek for “five cases,” i.e. the five boxes in which the five “books of Moses,” the Torah, were kept. It was a fun class; our professor got us up to speed on what current bible scholars, both conservative and liberal, taught about the Torah. And occasionally he’d drop facts on us which we’d never noticed before. Like how Genesis has two creation stories: The six days of creation, Ge 1.1 – 2.3 and how Adam and Eve came to be—then be banished from paradise. Ge 2.4 – 3.24

Yep. First he had us read the first story, then stop; then pointed out how the first story never refers to God as the LORD—but this next story does, throughout. And is more of an answer to the question, “Why didn’t God, who’s such a good, wise, benevolent Father, make the earth a suffering-free, death-free paradise for us?” Well… it turns out he did. But we completely f---ed it up.

The six days of creation are a rebuttal to ancient middle eastern myths about creation. This second story has a whole different point. Same as the first story, it’s not a scientific explanation for creation; it’s not about how God did it, but that he did it, and why. We can figure out how with research and experiments—and by avoiding the Creation Museum, which only wants your loyalty to their anti-evolutionary theories, and of course your money.

Because the second story refers to יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהִ֖ים/YHWH Elohím, “the LORD God” throughout, and not just Elohím, “God,” like the first story, many biblical scholars figure it was obviously composed by a different author than the guy who wrote the first story. Probably. But one guy assembled all those stories into Genesis, so that’d be the author of Genesis—who wrote the book after there were kings in Israel. Ge 36.31 So, not till the 12th century BC… so definitely not Moses ben Amram, who lived in the 15th century. But I usually call the author “Moe” anyway.

And here’s where Moe tells the second creation story.

Genesis 2.4-17 KWL

4These are the stories of the skies and the land

in the day of their creation.

The god YHWH made land and skies,

5and every domestic plant before it was in the land,

and every domestic herb before it sprouted.

For the god YHWH didn’t yet bring rain to the land,

and no human to work the soil.

6Instead a water vapor came up from the land,

and gave a drink to all the surface of the soil.

7The god YHWH shaped the human

out of dust from the soil.

He breathed into the human’s nostrils a breath of life,

and the human was now a living soul.

8The god YHWH planted a garden in Eden,

in the east,

and there he put the human

which he shaped.

9The god YHWH sprouted from the soil

every pleasant-looking tree, good for food.

And the tree of life in the middle of the garden—

and the tree of knowing good and bad.

10A river flowed out of Eden to give the garden a drink.

It divided from there to be four heads.

11One is named Pišón.

It surrounds all the land of Havilá, which has gold.

12The land’s gold is good.

Fragrant resin and onyx stones are also there.

13The second river is named Gikhón.

It surrounds all the land of Cuš.

14The third river is named Khiddeqél.

It flows in front of Assyria.

The fourth river is Perát.

15The god YHWH took the human

and rested him in the garden of Eden,

to work it and watch it.

16The god YHWH ordered the human,

saying, “Eat, eat of every tree in the garden!

17Don’t eat from the tree of knowing good and bad.

For the day you eat from it, you die, die.”

Needlessly long and wild prayers.

As I’ve written previously, ain’t nothing wrong with praying short prayers. Y’might remember the Lord’s Prayer is a short prayer. I remind Christians of this and they respond, “Oh! Yeah, that’s true.” Somehow it never occurred to them. Obviously Jesus had no problem keeping it brief, and has no problem with us keeping it brief. His example shows us it’s okay.

Problem is, we don’t follow Jesus’s example. We follow those of other Christians who blather on, and on, and on.

The usual justification I’ve heard, is these long prayers are following Jesus’s example. Remember when he’d go off and pray for hours?—seriously, hours. One evening he sent his students off ahead of him, climbed a hill to pray, Mt 14.22-23 and by the time he caught up with them (walking across the water, but still), it was “the fourth watch of the night,” Mt 14.25 KJV meaning between 3 and 6 a.m. Even if we generously figure Jesus stopped praying and started walking two hours before the fourth watch began (so, about 1-ish), this means he prayed from sundown till 1 a.m. Easily six or seven hours.

Okay, there’s nothing wrong with aspiring to be able to pray that long. But it needs to come naturally, like it does to Jesus. Can you talk six or seven hours with your best friend, or a beloved family member? Well some of us can. Others of us simply don’t talk that much, to anyone. Yet so many Christians have this unrealistic idea we’ve gotta engage God in prayer marathons every single time.

And okay, we can’t pray (especially aloud) for six hours. But we figure we can do six minutes. Sounds reasonable, right? Except most of us really aren’t able to talk for six minutes; we have two minutes’ worth of material. Two minutes altogether, of praise, thanksgiving, and requests. Followed by four minutes of repetitive, meaningless fluff to stretch the prayer out for a bit. Two minutes of authenticity, four minutes of hypocrisy.

Yes, hypocrisy. Who are we trying to impress? God? He didn’t ask us for long prayers. Others? Ourselves? Well, yeah.

Jesus’s 𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘳 commission.

Mark 16.15-18.

In the Long Ending of Mark, Jesus gives his followers some instructions. Sometimes Christians refer to these instructions as the great commission. Often they capitalize it—the Great Commission—but they really don’t have to. But it’s not actually Jesus’s great commission. It’s certainly a commission; it’s something he expects all his followers to do. (Yes, us present-day Christians included.) But the great commission is given in Matthew after his resurrection. This is Jesus’s lesser commission. Lesser in that it’s from the Long Ending; it wasn’t written by Mark himself; Jesus may have said it, or something quite like it; it at least accurately expresses his sentiments. But it comes from tradition instead of a unimpeachable apostolic eyewitness account, so it’s always gonna have that against it. Hence “lesser.” And no, I’m not gonna capitalize it either.

The lesser commission goes like yea:

Mark 16.15-18 KWL

15Jesus tells them, “Go into the world

and proclaim the gospel everywhere to every creature.

16Those who believe and are baptized will be saved.

Those who don’t believe will be judged.

17Miracles will accompany the believers:

In my name, people will throw out demons.

People will speak in new tongues.

18People will pick up snakes in their hands,

and if anyone drinks poison, it won’t injure them.

People will lay hands on the sick,

and they will be well.”

Various Christians are fond of saying πορευθέντες/porefthéntes “Go,” as stated in both this and the great commission, Mt 28.19 isn’t properly a command. It’s not an imperative verb; it’s a participle. One could also translate it, “While going into the world,” or “As you go into the world.” Thing is, the verb which follows, κηρύξατε/kirýdzate, “preach ye!” is a command, and it turns all the participles in the sentence into commands. Preach—and go. It’s not about passively doing your thing, and while you’re at it, sharing Jesus. Go find people to share Jesus with.

The lesser commission shares that in common with the great commission: Go share. The great commission instructs us to teach every people-group what Jesus teaches, and baptize ’em in the trinity’s name. The lesser commission instructs us to proclaim the gospel to every creature. Lots of overlap; so much so people will mix the commissions up and say the great commission is about preaching the gospel. No; that’s the lesser commission. Do that too. But the great commission is about sharing Jesus’s teachings. Which includes the gospel—

Mark 1.15 KJV

And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.

—but Jesus teaches a lot of other great things, like the Sermon on the Mount, and the great commission tells us we oughta share that too. Preach the gospel! But definitely not just the gospel.

Gnostics.

1 John 1.1-4.

Y’ever noticed somebody on the internet who claimed they knew stuff? Secret stuff? Stuff where, if you click on this link and read their blog, or buy this book, or watch this video, or attend this seminary, or buy any their other products, you too can learn these secrets?

• Better career, bigger income, more money, more leisure time?
• Better health? Conquering disease, especially without Big Pharma or the healthcare industry enriching themselves at your expense, or even maliciously keeping you sick?
• Better nutrition? All the stuff the food industry’s replaced with chemicals, or is manufacturing in substandard ways for a quick buck?
• More freedom?—’cause the government’s not telling you stuff, or big business doesn’t want you to know what rights they’re exploiting?
• Better sex?—which you don’t know about ’cause of various cultural taboos?
• Other secrets “they” don’t want you to know?

People love the idea of having exclusive information, of knowing stuff the general public doesn’t. And we’ll get really irritated “they” don’t want us to know such things. “How dare ‘they’ not want me to know about nutrition!” Plays right into all our paranoid fears about class warfare.

But hey, we frequently see Christians doing it too.

• God’s secret plan for your life!
• God’s hidden plans for the End!
• Mysteries of Ezekiel—revealed!
• Seventy-six promises of God “they” don’t want you to know!

How dare those [NOT-VERY-CHRISTIAN EXPLETIVE]s not want me to know God’s promises!

Okay, calm down there little buckaroo. Again, it’s about playing into people’s fears and the things we covet. It’s about trying to grab our attention with the word “secret,” or suggesting there’s forbidden knowledge which we really oughta have access to. You know, same as the serpent tempted Eve. It’s all clickbait.

And many of these things aren’t really secret. They’re just not widely known. Or they are widely known, but either you’ve never heard ’em before, or didn’t believe them (and still kinda don’t).

Problem is, often Christians will claim to have access to secret knowledge. And if you want those secrets, it’ll cost you.

Well, God’s about revelation, not secrets. He’s about sharing the mysteries of salvation and his kingdom to everyone with ears to hear. God wants everyone to know Jesus is Lord: Who he is, what he teaches, and how to follow him and be saved. Jesus told us to tell everyone: “Go make disciples of all the nations” and all that. Mt 28.19 “All nations” means all. (Of course if your ears are closed, that’s on you.)

Yet throughout human history, even predating the bible, there have been folks who specialize in secret knowledge. The Greek word for knowledge, γνῶσις/gnósis, is where we get our own word “know.” And if you’re someone who knows things, it means you’re a γνωστικός/gnostikós, a gnostic. (The opposite of agnostic, someone who’s entirely sure they don’t know things.) Today’s gnostics don’t always call themselves that, ’cause the word tends to only be used with religion (and agnostic with non-religion). Still, it’s the same idea.

The Lᴏʀᴅ takes a day off.

Genesis 2.1-3.

The first creation story doesn’t end at the end of Genesis 1. It continues three verses into chapter 2, with day seven—the passage which establishes the sabbath.

Genesis 2.1-3 KWL

1The skies and the land

and all their armies

were completed.

2God completed on day seven

his handiwork which he made.

God stopped on day seven

from all his handiwork which he made.

3God blessed day seven

and made it sacredly unique,

for in it, he stopped from all his handiwork,

which is all the creation God did.

Unique holy days weren’t anything new to the ancients. But they weren’t as frequent as the Hebrew holy day of sabbath, which arrived every seventh day.

The ancient Sumerians had a five-day week. But in certain months—in Elul (roughly around August) and Bul (roughly around October)—they set apart the 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st, and 28th days of the month. On these days the kings, priests, and witch doctors had to be particularly careful to not enrage their head god, Enlil. No eating cooked food, no dressing in nice clothes, no riding in chariots, and so forth. Now like I said, they had a five-day week, but y’notice they were careful to observe every seventh day. Plus the 19th day—which was the 49th day after the previous month began, so seven sevens.

In contrast, the Hebrews didn’t only observe seventh days for two months a year: This was all year long. Their week had seven days, not five. And the special behavior the Hebrews had to practice was not because it’d anger God and he’d start a-smiting them. It’s because he wanted his people to stop working. To take a day off, same as he took a day off. It’s not a warning; it’s for our benefit. Like Jesus put it, “Sabbath is made for people, not people for sabbath.” Mk 2.27

“Prayer’s about changing us.”

From time to time I hear people claim, “Prayer’s not about prayer requests; not about getting what we want from God. Prayer’s about changing our attitudes. About learning to accept, and be content with, our circumstances. About learning to trust God’s will.”

Okay. I don’t disagree that prayer’s gonna change us. I don’t disagree that it’s a good thing for us to develop better, less greedy, less covetous attitudes; that a lot of things we pray for, aren’t really things we should pray for. Like Jesus’s brother James said,

James 4.3 NLT

And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.

Obviously that’s not true of our prayer requests in every instance; sometimes we are selfless in our requests. Sometimes we are interceding for others, or are asking for God’s help to be more fruitful and to follow Jesus better.

This changing of our attitudes is a good and noble thing. It’s gonna come as the result of praying God’s will be done. Growing to be more content in our circumstances, or even despite our circumstances, is also gonna come as a result of seeking God’s will. And hopefully we do seek God’s will in every prayer we pray, ’cause that’s how Jesus taught us in the Lord’s Prayer.

However. Most of the time when someone’s teaching us “Prayer’s not about prayer requests,” it’s not about encouraging us to become more selfless, nor to seek God’s will more often, nor to develop good fruit. It’s about discouraging us from expecting results.

Nine times out of ten, the person teaching it does not believe God answers prayer anymore. Either they’re full-on cessationist, and think God stopped doing miracles back in bible times, and because you’re asking for a miracle—because you’re asking for something so improbable it’d take a direct, personal act of God’s intervention, and these people are dead certain God doesn’t do that anymore—get ready for disappointment. He’s not gonna do that. Get used to him not doing that. Get used to an absent God.

Or they’re full-on determinist: They think God’s already got a plan in mind, and things are gonna unfold exactly according to plan. And our prayers, for the most part, violate that plan—and how dare we expect God to deviate from his good and perfect plan for our convenience—or worse, our selfish, fleshly motives? Nope; God’s never gonna change his mind, nor his plan, for us. We have to change our plans for him. Get with the program, and stop asking for stuff.

Or, let’s be blunt, it’s because they don’t really believe in God. They’re not Christian because they seek a personal relationship with our Creator and Savior. They’re Christian because they find it personally useful to be Christian. They like the culture, like the interaction with other Christians, don’t wanna alienate Christian family members, don’t wanna be ostracized from their predominantly Christian culture, don’t wanna outrage Christian nationalists, find they can make more money or gain political ground when they identify as Christian—any other reason than that personal relationship with Jesus. They don’t want that personal relationship with Jesus; not really. They’d have to change far more than they care to. And like I said, they don’t really believe in him anyway.

So when any of these groups talk about prayer, they’re absolutely not talking about any personal interaction with our Lord. It’s ritual. They’re making declarations into the heavens because that’s what Christians do—but they don’t believe anyone’s listening, and certainly don’t believe anyone’s gonna respond. And because all you’re really doing is talking to a heavenly brass wall, you need to adjust your expectations accordingly… and have none.

Nope; don’t expect to get any of your prayers answered. God doesn’t do that. Instead, focus on you. Focus on the attitudes you oughta have, as you pretend you’re actually talking to your heavenly Father. How would he want you to posture? What feelings would he expect you to have? Humility?—yeah, that’s a good one. Submission?—yeah that’s good too. Despair?—well let’s not call it despair; that sounds horrible. How about “surrender”?

Other than the pure faithlessness of it all, the reason I object most to this teaching about prayer is because Jesus clearly tells us to ask the Father for stuff. And to not despair. Persistent Widow Story, anyone?

Luke 18.6-8 NLT

6Then the Lord said, “Learn a lesson from this unjust judge. 7Even he rendered a just decision in the end. So don’t you think God will surely give justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8I tell you, he will grant justice to them quickly! But when the Son of Man returns, how many will he find on the earth who have faith?”

Well he won’t find faith in the folks who think prayer’s not about prayer requests. Only in the people who, like the widow, keep praying and never give up. That’s the attitude Jesus expects of us. Lk 18.1 Yes humility, yes submission—and yes, determination. Don’t give up!