The St. Veronica story.

by K.W. Leslie, 06 March 2018

One of St. Francis’s original stations of the cross was when St. Veronica let Jesus wipe off his bloody face on her veil. Some of you have already heard this story, or bits of it.

And others of you are going, “Where’s that found in the bible?” Well, it’s not found in the bible at all. It comes from Christian tradition. It’s a really old tradition, and a really popular story. So popular, it’s still in the traditional stations of the cross. And while I’m trying to discuss the biblical stations of the cross, I feel I still need to give a mention to St. Veronica… ’cause a number of Christians aren’t entirely aware this story’s not in the bible. Some of ’em even remember seeing it in a bible somewhere. But that’s a false memory. It’s really not there. I’m not kidding.

As for whether St. Veronica herself is in the bible… she actually is. She’s traditionally identified as the woman in this story:

Mark 5.25-34 KWL
25 For 12 years, a woman had a bloodflow, 26 and had suffered greatly under many witch-doctors,
spending everything she had, and never improving. Instead she was much worse.
27 Hearing of Jesus, joining the crowd behind him, she grabbed his robe,
28 saying this: “When I grab him—even his robe—I’ll be cured.”
29 Instantly her bloodflow dried up, and she knew her body was cured of its suffering.
30 And instantly Jesus recognized power had gone out from him.
Turning round to the crowd, he said, “Who grabbed my robe?”
31 His students told him, “You see this crowd swarming you, and you say, ‘Who touched me’?”
32 Jesus was looking round to see who’d done it,
33 and the woman, in fear and trembling, knowing what was done to her,
came and fell down before Jesus, and told him the whole truth.
34 Jesus told her, “Daughter, your faith saved you.
Go in peace. Be free from your suffering.”

Christian tradition named this woman Vereníki/“victory-bearer,” which in English becomes Bernice, but in Latin becomes Veronica.

The “six days” of creation.

by K.W. Leslie, 05 March 2018

Creationism is the belief God created the universe and life.

Creationism is an orthodox Christian belief: It’s found in the creeds. “I believe in one God… maker of heaven and earth, of all things, visible and invisible.” God initially created everything. He didn’t necessarily create everything since—fr’instance, he didn’t create evil. But he created their creators.

So yeah, technically all orthodox Christians are creationists. Problem is, the word “creationist” has been co-opted by the young-earth creationists (YEC for short), the folks who insist God created the universe only 6,000 years ago. Or if you wanna get specific, 6,021 years ago, in October. They’re the ones pushing the idea that if you’re a real Christian, if you’re truly orthodox, you gotta believe as they do.


A diorama from the Creation Museum of a primitive human and featherless dinosaurs. (Yeah, they’re a bit slow to keep up with the latest science. Be fair; so is Jurassic World.) Atlas Obscura

Of course young-earth creationism isn’t the only worldview Christians are allowed. I myself am an old-earth creationist (or OEC), who believes God created the universe 13 billion years ago, and the earth about 4 billion years ago. You know, like most scientists currently estimate. They tend to describe creation in terms of natural, physics-based processes, and they’re right to; that’s what science is supposed to do. Look at nature and make deductions based on the available evidence. Not, as the young-earth creationists do, start with a conclusion (“God made it in six literal days, precisely 4,000 years before Jesus was born!”) then bend what they observe in nature so it’ll fit the conclusion. That’s how you get superstition. Or, as some folks charitably call it, “junk science.”

I admit I’m biased in favor of my view, but lemme briefly list a few of the other views for your consideration.

  • INTELLIGENT DESIGN. Creationism of any and every kind, but it downplays which specific creator, so as to be more palatable to those who object to religion.
  • THEISTIC EVOLUTION. Much the same as regular evolution, but instead of being solely by natural selection, the Creator had a hand in it.
  • DAY-AGE THEORY. A form of OEC, where the six days are described as six eras, thousands to billions of years long, during which God achieved what Genesis 1 describes for each day.
  • GAP THEORY. Same as YEC believe, but instead of happening in six sequential days, gap theorists posit there are some billion-year gaps in the timeline.

Back during my Fundamentalist upbringing, when I was taught YEC was the only acceptable interpretation of the bible, I was also taught all these other views were forms of compromise: The only faithful interpretation of the bible was a literal one.

So why’m I in the OEC camp today? Because I read the bible without the YEC blinders on. Genesis 1 describes a physically impossible universe, inconsistent with the one nearly everybody recognizes to be true. Yes, nearly everybody. YEC followers included!

(Flat earthers are an obvious exception: They believe Earth is flat because they are striving to stay true to a literal spin on Genesis 1, despite being literally able to see Earth’s curve—and despite seeing Earth’s shadow during every lunar eclipse. Hey, if you’re gonna deny commonsense in favor of your interpretation of the scriptures, okay… but you’re doing it wrong. But enough about them.)

Okay. So how’m I reading Genesis 1 and coming to the conclusion it’s not meant to be literal? Glad you asked.

Shouldn’t we read it first?

Yes I did bother to read it in the original, then translate it. Here ya go.

Genesis 1.1-2.3 KWL
1 In the beginning, when God made the skies and land, 2 the land was unshaped and had nothing on it.
The ocean’s surface was dark. God’s Spirit hovered over the waters’ surface.
3 God said, “Be, light.” And light was. 4 God saw light, and how good it was.
God distinguished between light and dark: 5 God called the light day, and called the dark night.
It was dusk, then dawn: Day one.
 
6 God said, “Be, space in the middle of the waters. Be, distinction between waters and waters.”
7 God made space. He distinguished between waters which are under space,
and between the waters which are over space.
It was so. 8 God called the space skies.
It was dusk, then dawn: Day two.
 
9 God said, “Gather, waters from under the skies, to one place. Be seen, dry ground.”
It was so. 10 God called dry ground land. The gathered water he called seas. God saw how good it was.
11 God said, “Sprout sprouts, earth. Sow seeds, grass.
Fruit trees, make fruit which has seed in it, by species, on the land.”
It was so. 12 The earth produced sprouts, grass sowed seeds by species,
trees produced fruit which had seed in it, by its species. God saw how good it was.
13 It was dusk, then dawn: Day three.
 
14 God said, “Be, lights in the space of the skies, to distinguish between the day and night;
to be signs, seasons, days, and years; 15 to be lights in the space of the skies; to light the land.”
It was so. 16 God made two great lights:
The great light for ruling the day, and the small light for ruling the night. And the stars.
17 God put them in the space in the skies to light the land,
18 and to rule the day and night, and to distinguish between light and dark. God saw how good it was.
19 It was dusk, then dawn: Day four.
 
20 God said, “Swarm the waters, you swarming, living soul.
Fly, bird, over the land, over the face of the space in the skies.”
21 God created the great serpents and every living, crawling soul which swarms the waters, by species;
and every winged bird, by species. God saw how good it was.
22 God blessed them, saying, “Bear fruit. Be many. Fill the waters of the seas.
And bird, be many on the land.”
23 It was dusk, then dawn: Day five.
 
24 God said, “Bring out, land, living souls: Species of livestock, animal, and vermin, by species.”
It was so. 25 God made life on the land, by species:
the livestock by species, every dirt-burrowing animal by species. God saw how good it was.
26 God said, “We’re making humanity in our shape, like we’re like,
to rule the sea’s fish, the skies’ birds, all the land’s livestock, and every land animal.”
27 God created humanity in his shape; in God’s shape he created it: He created male and female.
28 God blessed them and told them, “Bear fruit. Be many. Fill the land and take it over.
Rule the sea’s fish, the skies’ birds, and all life—everything crawling on the land.
29 Look, I give you every single seeding plant on the face of the earth,
and every tree, and every seeding fruit in it. It’s for food.
And to every life on earth, to all the skies’ birds,
and everything crawling on the land with a living soul in it, every green plant is food.”
It was so. 31 God saw everything he did, and look, it was very good.
It was dusk, then dawn: Day six.
 
2.1 The skies, the land, and all the creatures were finished.
2 God finished the work which he did on day seven,
and stopped all the work which he did on day seven.
3 God blessed day seven and made it sacred,
because on it God stopped working on his creation.

Got all that?

The primary reason the author of Genesis wrote this creation story, was to correct the other creation stories of the ancient middle east. The pagan stories always began with a pre-existing universe. Not one their highest god, father god, or head god created: It was already there, and their gods spontaneously sprang from it. To their minds, God didn’t create the universe: The universe created God. So verse 1 totally turns that idea on its head.

God created day and night. God created the שָּׁמַ֖יִם/šamáyim, the “skies, heavens;” it’s not the other way round. God created the seas and the sea creatures, whereas middle eastern myths usually had him battling some great sea serpent for supremacy. God created the sun and moon, whereas Genesis’s author doesn’t even use the words for “sun” and “moon,” since middle easterners thought of שֶׁמֶשׁ/šeméš and יָרֵחַ/yaréhakh, “sun” and “moon,” as Šeméš and Yaréhakh, the sun-god and moon-god. God created humans to supervise Earth, rather than as an afterthought—“Oh, I need worshipers”—or as slaves, to feed him with our sacrifices.

The seven-day structure was to explain the Hebrew week, to focus the readers’ attention on God’s intentional acts of creation, and present the origin of the Hebrew Sabbath:

Exodus 20.11 KWL
“For six days, I the LORD made the skies and the land, and everything in it.
Day seven, I stopped, so I the LORD blessed a day of Sabbath. I made it holy.”

We stop work because he stopped work.

Genesis 1 was written to counter false religious beliefs. Not to create a structure for bad science. But in the hands of young-earth creationists, that’s precisely what many Christians are doing.

So let’s do what the YEC adherents claim they’re doing… and take it literally. Let’s see how well it holds up.

The ancient middle eastern cosmos.

First of all, the idea God made the universe 6 millennia ago, on day one. Yeah, the first verses can imply God created the universe on day one. But it doesn’t have to.

Genesis 1.1-5 KWL
1 In the beginning, when God made the skies and land, 2 the land was unshaped and had nothing on it.
The ocean’s surface was dark. God’s Spirit hovered over the waters’ surface.
3 God said, “Be, light.” And light was. 4 God saw light, and how good it was.
God distinguished between light and dark: 5 God called the light day, and called the dark night.
It was dusk, then dawn: Day one.

When does day one begin? When God turned on the lights. When’d God turn on the lights? After he created the unshaped, dark land which had nothing on it. How much time took place between the beginning and day one? We don’t know.

Notice God created light, and day and night, before creating the sun on day four. Since we recognize days depend on sunlight, exactly how does that work? God was hanging some specially-created shoplights before he started construction? God needs light to see by? You do realize as a spirit, Jn 4.24 he doesn’t have physical eyes, right? He doesn’t see because photons hit his optic nerves; he didn’t have optic nerves before he became human. How do you have light without the sun?

Well, to the ancient middle easterner, the sun didn’t actually light up the sky. The sun just happened to hang in the bright sky—but the sky itself was lit. Well, half of it anyway: The sky rotated around the earth—’cause you could see the stars moving, but you weren’t moving, as far as you could tell. For half the day the sky was bright, and for the other half the sky was black.

After all, the sky was light on cloudy days when the sun wasn’t around… so it appeared to middle easterners that the sun was optional. Light didn’t require sun.

If all this sounds completely wrong to you, it’s because you grew up with a view of the universe based on western astronomical science. Ancient middle easterners didn’t. Theirs was pre-scientific, based on observation and guesswork. And Genesis was written to them. Not us. It was written to conform to their beliefs. Not to endorse them, of course; the flat-earthers are still wrong. But Genesis’s author didn’t see any cosmological problems with what he was writing: He didn’t know astronomy. Neither did his readers. He only cared about theology: The bright sky? God created that. The sun? God created that too.

This is why we read, on day two, about God creating a giant air pocket in the waters which made up Earth, and calling it “space”—

Genesis 1.6-7 KWL
6 God said, “Be, space in the middle of the waters. Be, distinction between waters and waters.”
7 God made space. He distinguished between waters which are under space,
and between the waters which are over space.
It was so.

—then putting sun, moon, and stars into that air pocket on day four.

Genesis 1.16-18 KWL
16 God made two great lights:
The great light for ruling the day, and the small light for ruling the night. And the stars.
17 God put them in the space in the skies to light the land,
18 and to rule the day and night, and to distinguish between light and dark. God saw how good it was.

Wait, what?

Yep. Again, ancient middle eastern cosmology: The back end of space, which all the stars are fixed to, is a firmament (which is how the KJV translates רָקִיעַ/raqíya, “space”), a massive wall which holds back all the water that used to cover the dry ground. The sun, moon, and clouds hover in the space between the waters above and the waters below.

Now. Whenever YEC adherents talk about the firmament, they never describe it on the far side of the stars. Even though the bible does. They always describe it on the far side of the clouds, holding back rain. That is, till the “windows of the heavens” dumped it back onto Earth for Noah’s flood. Ge 7.11

See, that’s the problem: Genesis doesn’t describe a universe any larger than a few miles up.

When Genesis was written in the 1400s BC, the ancients really had no idea how big their universe was. Eventually the Greeks got a better idea: Around 240BC, Eratosthenes of Cyrene accurately calculated out how big the earth is. Around 140BC, Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria inaccurately speculated the stars (which he assumed were attached to the firmament, and all equidistant from Earth) were about 3 trillion kilometers away. True, that’s only a third of a light year, but it’s a way better guess than only a few miles up.

Still, say the firmament is 3 trillion kilometers away—and only holding back a millimeter of water. That equates to about 113 sextillion liters of water. Earth only has about 1.26 quintillion liters on it. So there’s 90 million times as much water above as below? Well, that’d definitely flood Earth….

Oh, and let’s not forget God put plants on the earth a day before he put the sun in the sky. Ge 1.11-13 But I won’t get into that.


The universe… when we take Genesis literally. NIV Faithlife Study Bible

Nobody’s a literalist.

You see the diagram above of the ancient middle eastern cosmos. I’ve shown it, and similar diagrams, to young-earth creationists. Every one of them balks at it: They don’t believe the universe looks like that at all.

Nor should they! But that’s the universe as ancient middle easterners imagined it. The universe Genesis 1 affirms. As for the stuff beneath the earth—the foundations, the great deep, sheol—that’s confirmed by the rest of the Old Testament.

Nope, the diagram doesn’t look at all like the hourly photos which come back from our weather satellites, nor the views from the International Space Station.

My point is: Unless we’re willing to deny the work of every astronomer since Nikolaus Copernicus, deny the images from our satellites which provide our weather forecasts, deny the experiences of every astronaut and cosmonaut, deny the existence of the Global Positioning Satellite networks which make our electronic maps work… not one of us can describe ourselves as a biblical literalist. Our daily lives deny a literalistic interpretation of Genesis 1.

And as I’ve demonstrated, young-earth creationists, for all their zeal, aren’t hewing to it all that closely either. They’re only picking and choosing the interpretations they like… ones which provide them a fun idea of cavemen and dinosaurs frolicking together. Which ain’t bible; it’s The Flintstones.

So what are we to do? Make the flat-earther mistake and deny reality in favor of a literalistic interpretation? Of course not. We simply recognize a literalistic interpretation is incorrect. It’s not the reason Genesis 1 was written. It’s not the reason a lot of bible was written; don’t get me started on the “prophecy scholars” and how they mangle God’s apocalypses.

The proper interpretation of the scriptures requires us to look at the motives of the authors, and recognize what they were trying to say… and not trying to say. Genesis’s author wasn’t trying to teach science. He was trying to teach theology. Treat Genesis 1 as a scientific text, and you wind up with bad theology: One which claims God made a universe which deceptively looks older than it really is, and implies God himself is deceptive.

Leading people to suspect God is a liar: That’s as bad as bad theology gets.

Is faith a gift?

by K.W. Leslie, 02 March 2018

Mixing up the types of faith, is why a lot of Christians don’t develop their faith.

Oh, I won’t bury the lead. Is faith a gift? Well, supernatural faith is a gift. The other types of faith? Nah.

I know why various Christians claim faith, all faith, is a gift. It’s usually ’cause it says so in their church’s catechism. Fr’instance the Heidelberg Catechism:

65. It is through faith alone that we share in Christ and all his benefits: Where then does that faith come from?

A. The Holy Spirit produces it in our hearts by the preaching of the holy gospel, and confirms it by the use of the holy sacraments.

Various scriptures indicate that people have faith after hearing the gospel, Ro 10.17 and the writers of the catechisms kinda stretched these verses to imply it was the gospel, and God granting us the ability to understand the gospel, 1Co 2.10-14 which generated the faith in us. It wasn’t our ability to trust what we heard; it was God sorta flipping a switch in us so that now we had the ability to understand and believe.

Um… no. I can see how you’d get that by reading your own pre-existing deterministic philosophy into the bible. But I’m pretty sure if it all comes down to God dropping faith into us, and nothing else whatsoever, Jesus wouldn’t command people to believe or have faith. Mk 1.15, 11.22, Jn 10.38, 14.1, 20.27, 1Jn 3.23 If there’s any truth to the idea God grants us faith, he shouldn’t have to order us to use it: It should just be there, and we should just believe. But we don’t. Some of us struggle. Sometimes we cry out to God for extra help. Mk 9.24, Lk 17.5 And the reason we struggle is because it’s not just there. It’s a trait we have to develop. It’s fruit.

Why do the catechisms get it wrong? Mostly it’s ’cause their authors suck at grammar.

Jesus confuses Antipas Herod.

by K.W. Leslie, 01 March 2018

Luke 23.4-12

All the gospels tell of Jesus’s suffering, but only in Luke do we find this bit about Jesus being sent to Antipas Herod. The other gospel authors skipped it ’cause it didn’t add anything to their accounts. Doesn’t add much to Luke either. But it’s interesting.

It begins right after Pontius Pilatus, at the time Judea’s Roman prefect, was presented with Jesus for crucifixion. Pilatus didn’t see any reason to crucify him, ’cause as John related, he figured Jesus’s kingdom wasn’t any political threat to Rome. (But it did take over Rome all the same.) So he didn’t feel like crucifying Jesus… and a loose comment the Judeans made, gave Pilatus the idea to hand off the problem to Herod.

Luke 23.4-7 KWL
4 Pilatus told the head priests and the crowd, “I find nothing of guilt in this person.”
5 The crowd prevailed over Pilatus, saying this: “He riles up the people,
teaching throughout Judea—having begun such behavior in the Galilee.”
6 On hearing this, Pilatus asked whether Jesus was Galilean,
7 and realizing Jesus was under Antipas Herod’s authority, sent him to Herod,
Herod himself being in Jerusalem on that day.

Now let’s be clear. There was no rule in the Roman Empire which said if you had the subject of another province under arrest, you had to extradite him to that province’s ruler. No custom either. In fact, knowing Romans, they wouldn’t wanna extradite their prisoners, lest it be considered a sign of weakness. So there were only two possible reasons for Pilatus to send Jesus to Herod:

  1. Passing the buck.
  2. Making nice with Herod.

Because they hated one another, Lk 23.12 and we’re not told why. Possibly because Herod figured he oughta be Judea’s king; possibly because Pilatus treated him less than royal, because Herod’s official title tetra-árhis/“tetrarch” Mt 14.1 doesn’t mean “king,” but “ruler of a fourth,” namely a quarter of Israel. Or maybe it was some other silly reason. Whatever; they didn’t get along. But Herod had always wanted to meet Jesus, Lk 23.8 and if Pilatus knew this, it was a significant gesture on his part. More likely, I’m guessing, Pilatus stumbled into this gesture by a combination of dumb luck and procrastination.

“…But God knows my heart.”

by K.W. Leslie, 28 February 2018

The way I share Jesus is pretty basic: I talk with people. They ask what I’m doing. My answer is nearly always Christianity-related… ’cause that is what I’m doing. Sometimes they have hangups about religion, in which case I change the subject. But far more often they’ll talk about it. Frequently it turns out they’re Christian.

But there are Christians, and there are Christians. Some of ’em are devout. Some of ’em only think they’re Christian. Most often they’re just irreligious: They don’t pray. Don’t go to church. Never read their bibles; wouldn’t know were to begin. (Somehow they found out the bible doesn’t have to be started at the beginning—and ever since, they’ve used this as an excuse for why they never started. Sounds like the options simply stymie them. Maybe we’d better stop telling people they don’t have to start at Genesis, and tell ’em they totally do. But I digress.)

One of my shortcuts for finding out how religious they are, or aren’t: I ask where they go to church. And even though they should totally go, and know they should totally go, a lot of ’em just don’t. “Oh, I went to [big local church] all the time. I admit I don’t now; not as often as I ought to.” Seldom do they ever try to give the rubbish argument Christians don’t need to go. They kinda know that’s heresy.

But recently I bumped into someone who gave this excuse for skipping church.

ME. “So you’ve not gone recently?”
SHE. “No, I admit it’s been a while. But it’s okay; it’s a relationship, not a religion. And God knows my heart.”

It’s far from the first time I’ve heard the “But God knows my heart” argument. It’s really popular in the Bible Belt. “Yeah, I fully admit I [insert heinous sin] on the regular. But God knows my heart.”

Yes, God knows we have good intentions! Buried in us somewhere, deep down… ’cause they’re clearly not visible for anybody to see, or even deduce. But they’re in there, and that counts for something, right?

Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that. It’s how people eventually find themselves in this predicament:

Matthew 7.21-23 KWL
21 “Not everyone who calls me, ‘Master, master!’ will enter the heavenly kingdom.
Just the one who does my heavenly Father’s will.
22 At that time, many will tell me, ‘Master, master! Didn’t we prophesy in your name?
Didn’t we throw out demons in your name? Didn’t we do many powerful things in your name?’
23 And I’ll explain to them, ‘I never knew you.
Get away from me, all you Law-breakers.’

Except it’s even worse than Jesus describes it.

Yeah, worse. Read it again. Jesus is chiding people who prophesy in his name, throw out demons, do miracles. In other words, they do stuff. They minister to others—or try to. Problem is they’re “Law-breakers”—they don’t do what Jesus tells us to when it comes to loving God and our neighbors. They presume they have a relationship ’cause they’re ministers. They don’t, ’cause they’re not at all religious about their relationship.

Now these folks who figure God knows their hearts? Not even ministers. They don’t do miracles. Might not even believe miracles happen any more, or imagine God only grants such power to the super-devout, which they’re not. They got any evidence of any relationship with Jesus at all? Super nope.

God knows your heart? Yes indeed he does. And he knows it’s full of crap. Same as most of the Christians around you. You’re not really fooling anyone.

Jesus gets flogged.

by K.W. Leslie, 27 February 2018

Mark 15.15 • Matthew 27.26 • Luke 23.16 • John 19.1

Jesus’s flogging was definitely part of his suffering. But it’s actually not one of the traditional the stations of the cross. I know; you’d think it was, considering how much time Mel Gibson spent on it in The Passion of the Christ, where they beat the hell out of Jesus—as if there was anything of hell in him. But nope; traditionally the stations of the cross began with Jesus getting his cross, ’cause they’re the stations of the cross, not Jesus’s pre-cross sufferings. They’re part of St. John Paul’s list though.

And no, there’s no historical evidence that the Romans beat Jesus more than usual. The only details we have about his flogging is that he had a flogging. Takes up only a sentence in all four gospels.

Mark 15.15 KWL
Pilate, wanting the crowd to stop it, released bar-Abba to them.
He handed over Jesus, who’d been flogged, so he could be crucified.
Matthew 27.26 KWL
Then Pilate released bar-Abba to them.
He handed over Jesus, who’d been flogged, so he could be crucified.
John 19.1 KWL
So then Pilate also had Jesus flogged.

Fraghellósas/“who’d been flogged” Mk 15.15, Mt 27.26 is in a verb tense called aorist: It happened, but it’s not past tense, so we don’t know when it happened. It didn’t necessarily happen after Judea’s prefect Pontius Pilate sent Jesus to his death; it might’ve happened before. Probably did, considering John records Jesus getting flogged and crowned with thorns before he was sent to be crucified, not after.

Jesus doesn’t actually get flogged in Luke, but Pilate implied that was the plan:

Luke 23.16 KWL
“So, once punished, I will release him.”

’Cause flogging was how Romans “punished” criminals… unless their crime was considered so grievous, the Romans would just crucify them. And they were pretty quick to crucify people too. Yep, flogging was the lenient punishment. Whereas in our culture, flogging is illegal, for obvious reasons.

Christian leadership and age discrimination.

by K.W. Leslie, 26 February 2018

If your church lacks young people in leadership, it’s gonna lose all its young people. Just you wait.

Arguably Timothy of Lystra first met Paul of Tarsus when he was a teenager; old enough to come along with the apostles on their travels, but young enough for Paul to think of him as a son. Pp 2.22 When Timothy became the leader of a church in Ephesus in the 60s of the Christian era, Paul would’ve been in his 50s and Timothy in his 30s—certainly old enough to lead, but certainly not the oldest guy in that church. Quite possibly not even the one who’d been Christian longest, since Paul had evangelized Ephesus years before he ever met up with Timothy.

In any case being in your thirties meant it was necessary for Paul to make this comment in his first letter to Timothy:

1 Timothy 4.12 KWL
Nobody gets to look down upon your youth!
Instead become the faithful Christians’ example in word, lifestyle, love, faith, and purity.

Because people will look down on your youth.

I know from experience. When I was in my thirties, I was asked to run the church’s preservice bible study. Our head pastor felt I was up to it. Others not so much, ’cause they wanted to run it. Yep, all the participants were older than me. But I had three advantages over them:

  1. I became a Christian in my childhood. The rest became Christians as adults. So set our physical ages aside: I’d been Christian about 10 years longer than most. There was only one fella who’d become Christian in 1975, same as me. Of course you can be spiritually mature at any age… but when you get so worked up over something as minor as the youngster leading the bible study, y’ain’t showing any such maturity.
  2. Trust me: When you’re leading a bible study, it helps when you can actually do bible study. I’d been to seminary, so I knew how. The others knew how to do bad word studies, and quote popular Christian authors. For all the good that does.
  3. Our pastor did after all ask me to lead the group.

Admittedly, I didn’t let their hangup bother me any. I figured if it bothered them badly enough, they’d quit the group. They didn’t, and stuck with me for a year and a half. So no, don’t get the idea I was wringing my hands over their disapproval, and constantly meditating upon 1 Timothy 4.12 to keep my spirits up. My spirits were fine. Studying to prepare the lessons was teaching me all sorts of useful stuff. Hopefully teaching them this stuff too.

But as Paul stated elsewhere in his pastoral letters, the main qualification for Christian leadership is good character. They gotta be trustworthy people. Hence his advice to Timothy: Become an example in word, lifestyle, love, faith, and purity. Be a solid Christian. Be of good character. If you’ve got that, age won’t matter to anybody but people who lack good character.

Yeah, I know. Lots of Christians lack good character. That’s why young people aren’t often put in charge of things. Either they themselves lack character, or they have plenty but the other leaders don’t.

Yahweh. (Or Jehovah. Either way.)

by K.W. Leslie, 19 February 2018

Because our culture is largely monotheist, even when we refer to the lowercase-G “god,” we nearly always mean the One God, the Creator, the Almighty. Other gods, like Baal or Thor, haven’t even crossed our minds; if we do mean them, we have to spell out they’re who we meant. Most of the time, if you say “god,” you aren’t even thinking about them. (Nor thinking of the One God either, but that’s another issue for another day.)

Totally wasn’t the case 3,400 years ago, when “god” was more of a generic word for any being who was mightier than mere humanity. Heck, some kings even claimed they were gods. So when you said “god,” you had to spell out which god, and that was the issue when God sent Moses to go rescue the Hebrews from Egypt. Which god was sending Moses?

Exodus 3.13-15 KWL
13 Moses told God, “Look, I go to Israel’s sons and tell them, ‘Your ancestors’ god sends me to you.’
They’ll tell me, ‘What’s his name?’ What do I tell them?”
14 God told Moses, “EHYÉH ASHÉR EHYÉH.”
He said, “You’ll tell Israel’s sons this: ‘EHYÉH sent me to you.’ ”
15 God further told Moses, “You’ll tell Israel’s sons this: ‘The LORD is your ancestors’ god.
Abraham’s god, Isaac’s god, Jacob’s god. He sent me to you.’
This is my name forever, to remember me by from generation to generation.”

Ehyéh/“I’m being” was a familiar word to the Hebrews, although it’s more a word you use with an adjective to describe yourself: “I’m being silly,” or “I’m being aggressive.” God went with “I’m being what I’m being” because the names and titles we choose for ourselves tend to define us—and God reserves the right to define himself any way he chooses. God is who he is. We don’t get to decide what he is.

The related word YHWH also means “I’m being,” but you’ll notice the bible never, ever uses it in that generic way. It’s only used to identify the One God. That’s his name. That’s the one he chose for himself, until he became human and chose to go by the Aramaic name Yeshúa/“YHWH saves” in the New Testament. Different name, but same being.

The reason I spell YHWH in all capitals is because we don’t actually know how to pronounce it. “Yahwéh” is an educated guess, based on the word ehyéh. And you might notice most Americans don’t even pronounce “Yahweh” correctly: We put the accent on the first syllable, American-style, and make it “Yáhweh.” We’re supposed to pronounce it like in the U2 song.

Of course the usual English translation of YHWH is “Jehovah,” which doesn’t even try to pronounce it correctly. Although originally it did.

“Efficacious grace”: When God’s grace turns dark.

by K.W. Leslie, 13 February 2018

Because popular culture tends to define God by his power, not his character like the scriptures describe him, 1Jn 4.8 a lot of Christians do it too. The result is a lot of bad theology, where God’s love, grace, and justice unintentionally (but hey, sometimes very intentionally) take a distant second to his might and glory.

Take grace.

Properly defined, grace is God’s generous, forgiving, kind, favorable attitude towards his people. It’s what reaches out to people who totally don’t merit God’s attention whatsoever, loves us anyway, turns us into daughters and sons of the Most High, and grants us his kingdom. It’s amazing.

But when you imagine God’s single most important attribute is his power… well, grace looks extremely different. It’s no longer an attitude. It’s a determination. You will receive God’s grace, become his child, and be on the track for heaven. Or none of these things will happen, because God’s grace will never touch you, because God doesn’t want you. No we don’t know why; he just doesn’t. No you can’t change his mind; piss off.

I know: Under this redefinition, God’s grace is still amazing… but only for its recipients. For everybody else, God seems arbitrary, and downright cold. Because only a third of the planet considers themselves Christian. (Figure some of them aren’t really, and figure there are those, like Abraham ben Terah, whom God’s gonna save despite their inadequate knowledge of Jesus. I think it’ll still come out to be a third.) This means God’s perfectly fine with two-thirds of humanity going to hell. If so, he created an awful lot of unwanted people… and is deliberately making hell more full than heaven.

Yeah, that’s the usual problem when you make God out to be deterministic: Suddenly his plans for the universe are mighty evil. But hey, determinists don’t care: God wields all the power they could ever covet, and they’re going to heaven. They get theirs.

Calvinists tend to call this deterministic form of grace irresistible grace. Although lately a number of ’em realize just how rapey “irresistible” sounds, so they prefer the term efficacious grace—that if God decides to be gracious to us, this grace is so powerful, so mighty, it will have an effect upon us, and will do as God intends. ’Cause to their minds, the Almighty doesn’t merely want things, or wish for things: He determines things. And since he’s almighty, what force in the universe could possibly stop him from getting his way?

Has God predetermined everything in the universe? Evil too?

by K.W. Leslie, 05 February 2018
DETERMINISM di'tər.mən.ɪz.əm noun. Belief every event is fixed in place by external causes other than human will.
[Determinist di'tər.mən.ɪst noun, deterministic di'tər.mən.ɪst.ɪk adjective.]

I first bumped into the idea of determinism when I was a kid, ’cause my parents let me read Mark Twain. A lot of people assume, thanks to Tom Sawyer, that Twain was a children’s author. Not even close. And in his later years, after so many of his family members died and Twain became more and more cynical, some of the things he wrote were mighty disturbing. What are the chances I read that stuff? Yep, 100 percent.

In Twain’s novella The Mysterious Stranger, some 16th-century German boys encounter a young angel named Satan (named for his uncle—yeah, that uncle) who takes them on adventures. At one point, young Satan introduces the boys to the concept of determinism.

“Among you boys you have a game: you stand a row of bricks on end a few inches apart; you push a brick, it knocks its neighbor over, the neighbor knocks over the next brick—and so on till all the row is prostrate. That is human life. A child’s first act knocks over the initial brick, and the rest will follow inexorably. If you could see into the future, as I can, you would see everything that was going to happen to that creature; for nothing can change the order of its life after the first event has determined it. That is, nothing will change it, because each act unfailingly begets an act, that act begets another, and so on to the end, and the seer can look forward down the line and see just when each act is to have birth, from cradle to grave.”

“Does God order the career?”

“Foreordain it? No. The man’s circumstances and environment order it. His first act determines the second and all that follow after.”

The idea of being locked into a fixed future depresses the boys. But the angel Satan cheers them up by pointing out how, because he’s an angel and exists outside this chain of cause-and-effect, he can interfere, and change their futures for the better. To the boys’ dismay and horror, Satan’s idea of “better” doesn’t look at all like theirs: Some die prematurely, some go mad, and in one case a person lives a long, happy life… but goes to hell.

Later in life I discovered Twain, or Sam Clemens as he was known in his private life, grew up Presbyterian. Must’ve been paying attention to all the Calvinism taught in those churches. Because Calvinism is pretty big on determinism.

Determinism, the belief we’re all victims of circumstance—and that even our free will is bound to do as circumstances have conditioned it to do—wasn’t invented by John Calvin and the Calvinists. Nor even St. Augustine of Hippo, whence Calvin first got the idea. It predates Christianity, predates the Hebrew religion, predates the written word. Humans have believed in it since they first saw one rock topple another, and thought, “What if all of life works like that?” Every religion has its determinists.