The flood story and theodicy.

As I said yesterday, when skeptics ask me about the flood story, primarily what they wanna deal with is the idea of a global flood. Earth doesn’t have enough water to cover all the landmasses, and the young-earth creationist explanations for whence and whither the water, generally sound stupid to them. Pointing out how Genesis states the land was flooded, not the world, quickly sorts that out to their satisfaction.

I have yet to run into a non-Christian skeptic whose problem with the flood story is that God flooded the world. I have met Christians who struggle with it though. Generally their problem comes from their Pelagianism.

Y’see, Pelagius of Britain believed humans are inherently good. ’Cause we were created good, y’know. Ge 1.31 But sin bollixed all that, and now humanity is inherently selfish and corrupt—but Pelagians can‘t believe that. After all, they know lots of good people. And optimistically figure all most people need is a nudge in the right direction, provide us good influences, and we’ll straighten right out. This being the case, nobody oughta go to hell; a loving God, if he’s truly loving, would universally save everyone. Right?

Wouldn’t that be nice. But ’tain’t so. Like I said, we’re inherently selfish and corrupt. We could have the best influences ever—like Judas Iscariot had Jesus of Nazareth—yet still figure we know best, rebel, betray, and die in despair and nihilism. It’s not that God doesn’t wanna save everyone; of course he does. It’s that people would rather go to hell than have anything to do with him.

So when Pelagians look at the people of Noah’s day, their issue is they don’t actually believe God when he declared humanity, except for Noah, was ruined.

Genesis 6.11-13 KWL

11 To God’s face, the land was ruined. The land was full of violence.

12 God saw the land. Look, ruin!—all flesh ruined its way in the land.

13 God told Noah, “To my face, the end of all flesh is coming:

They fill the land with violence before them. Look, the land is ruined!”

No, they insist, it wasn’t. A loving God could’ve unruined it… in some other way than flooding it.

To their minds, a loving God should’ve found another alternative than judgment and punishment. The problem—the dirty little secret of universalism—is the only way God could fix ’em without punishing them is to reprogram them. If rebellion is their freewill decision, all God needs to do is abolish their free will, and force them to love him. In so doing, God’s gonna destroy them—you know, like hell will. Only difference is, it’ll look like God never actually destroyed anything—but of course he did, just like a computer with a swapped-out hard drive. Looks the same; isn’t at all.

Y’know, replacing humans with Stepford humans is hypocrisy, and completely undermines God’s character. But universalists don’t care about that so much as they do their character, which they insist is inherently good. Better than God’s, too. (Not that they’ll ever say this. They’ll simply claim instead that the violent bits of the bible which they disapprove of, weren’t literal. Or inspired. Or otherwise count.)

The parent, master, or boss’s obligations.

Ephesians 6.1-9.

Properly, the command ypakúete! means “super-listen”—pay very close attention. So why do so many bibles render it “obey”? Cultural bias.

Parents want our kids to obey us. Isn’t that what honoring your parents Ex 20.12 means? Isn’t that therefore what Paul meant? And we assume slavedrivers also wanted their slaves to obey them too—and if they didn’t, they’d whip ’em to death. Heck, some parents beat the tar out of their kids when they won’t obey. Kids and slaves: Same boat.

But remember: Paul was comparing relationships between parents and kids, and slaveholders and slaves, to that of Jesus and his kingdom, or God and his adopted children. How does God treat his children? Or slaves?—’cause you do realize we’re both.

Yeah, I’ve heard various preachers claim we’re not slaves anymore; that we stopped being slaves as soon as God adopted us, or that our relationship with God changed in the New Testament era. That too is cultural bias: These preachers grew up in free countries, and don’t care to think of themselves as slaves, so they don’t. But note the apostles didn’t share their hangup, and called themselves God’s and Jesus’s dúloi/“slaves” or “servants” anyway. Ro 1.1, Pp 1.1, Jm 1.1, 2Pe 1.1 Referred to us disciples as that too. 1Co 7.22, 1Pe 2.16 God’s our LORD, and didn’t stop being our master just because he’s also our Father.

Cultural bias means when we think of slaves, we think of American slavery: Slaves were treated as property, as cattle, instead of as human beings. Which wasn’t how the ancients thought of their slaves: Slaves were a lower caste, and people are generally awful to members of lower castes. Slaves had few to no rights. But they were still human beings, and some masters were benevolent instead of despotic.

God in particular. Yes he’s the LORD; yes we subjects are expected to follow God’s will. Yet at the same time God wants our relationship to be closer—infinitely more benevolent and loving than you’ll see between a sovereign and those under his thumb.

Christians who didn’t grow up in free countries—like the early Protestants, who lived in nations with slaves, who themselves lived under absolute monarchs—seem to have lost sight of this. That’s why some of their views of God’s sovereignty are so distorted. Subjects were expected to “love” their king in a patriotic way; not actually love him in any way like agápi. Certainly their kings didn’t love ’em back. But God isn’t like that at all. He has nothing but agápi/“charitable love” in him, and for us. It’s his sole motivation.

And if parents had this sort of love for their children, and slaveholders for their slaves, what ought those relationships look like? Keep that in mind when you read Paul’s instructions regarding kids and slaves.

I should point out: Since Paul didn’t actually tell kids to obey their parents, and slaves to obey their masters, it seems wholly inappropriate for Christians to teach wives to obey their husbands. Just saying.

Christianity is under attack!

An acquaintance pointed me to a pro-Christianity group on Facebook. Four hundred members strong, ready to fight to the teeth for Jesus.

…Well, more accurately, they intend to fight for Calvinism. Jesus is in there somewhere. Though you’d never know it from their cage-stage rage, which is pretty far from Christlike. But don’t get the wrong idea; I’m not trying to single out Calvinists. Lots of Christians get this way. Doesn’t matter which -ism they’re promoting.

As I regularly gotta remind Christian apologists, one of the common pitfalls of kicking ass for Jesus, is it’s way more about ass than Jesus. It’s about fighting. Jesus is the excuse. We want a “righteous” justification for anger, for tearing people a new sphincter (metaphorically, I hope!), and what could be more righteous and noble a cause than Jesus?

Plus Jesus is under attack! Christianity is under attack! People wanna get rid of Christians, ban religion, drive us out of the workplace and government and everywhere. Push us underground so our moralizing and sermonizing never, ever comes up. (Particularly anything which condemns their favorite activities.) They want us gone.

So we’re in the fight of our spiritual lives. And you know how desperate, cornered animals get?—willing to fight with everything they have, rather than give up and die? Humans share that very same instinct. We’re willing to do anything it takes to defend Jesus. Anything.

Even if it dips into the human depravity we’re supposed to resist ever since we first started following Jesus. That is, assuming we ever bothered to resist it; assuming we haven’t put new Christianese labels on all our fleshly behavior, which is way easier than repenting and following the Holy Spirit. But because defending Jesus is so important, supposedly we gotta suspend all our efforts towards becoming more like him: Somebody has to get their hands dirty, and defending Jesus and his kingdom is far more important than obeying Jesus and living in his kingdom.

This is precisely why so many Christians go dark—or stay as dark as they were when pagan, and even get a little darker. Why so many Christians are so unlike Christ. It’s a neat little trick which permits us to be evil “for good reason,” because the ends justifies the means.

To these culture warriors, our battle is entirely against flesh and blood. (Scripture to the contrary. Ep 6.12) That’s why they take the fight everywhere they go. To the internet, the street corners, the coffeehouses, the office break rooms, the state legislatures, everywhere. Fight for Jesus. Meanwhile start stocking our End Times bunkers with jerky and rifles. Yeah rifles; in defending the Prince of Peace, certain dark Christians claim we might even need to shoot a few cops in the head.

Inconsistent? Problematic? Downright devilish? Of course.

Reason. And how faith interacts with it.

Faith and reason are only contradictions when you’re doing faith wrong.

Faith is complete trust and confidence in something or someone. When Christians talk about faith, we usually mean our complete trust and confidence in Jesus. (That or we’re using “my faith” to mean “my religion”; that or we’re using the word wrong. Which happens.) We put our faith in Jesus; we believe what he tells us about God; we trust his teachings, obey his instructions, and otherwise follow him.

Of course when I talk about faith with pagans, I don’t always remember to clear up their misunderstandings about what faith is. Darned near all of them think faith is the magical ability to believe nonsense. As Mark Twain put it, faith is “believing what you know ain’t so.” If I have faith, as they define faith, I have the power to believe in Santa Claus—even as an adult, who should know better! If I have faith, I have the ability to believe completely unreasonable things. Indeed they should expect I believe completely unreasonable things.

This is why loads of articles, essays, and books have been written about faith versus reason. Because pagans firmly believe the ideas contradict one another. And y’know, a fair number of Christians agree the ideas contradict one another. “I know you think I should believe as you do,” I once heard one of us tell a pagan, “but y’see, I have faith.” Thus adding fuel to the pagans’ belief that faith isn’t reasonable.

I can say the very same thing as that other Christian: There are things I would believe if I were a pagan, but I don’t, ’cause I have faith. I do not mean by this that I have differing views because I have the magic ability to believe other things. Nor because I’m wishing otherwise so hard, I think I can make my wishes come true. The reason I believe otherwise is I trust Jesus. I trust him more’n I trust you. Way more than I trust your favorite authors, teachers, experts, politicians, and authority figures. If he said it, I take it to the bank. (Or try to; I’m still growing my faith. That’s a lifelong process, y’see.)

Trusting Jesus is the reason I believe otherwise. I don’t believe otherwise for no reason at all. If faith did mean the power to believe as I wish, it’d definitely mean I believe things for no reason at all; with no solid basis whatsoever. But that’s not the definition of faith I’m going with. I’m going with the one from Hebrews:

Hebrews 11.1 KWL

Faith is the solid basis of hope, the proof of actions we’ve not seen.

You may not believe faith is a solid idea, ’cause you don’t believe Jesus is a solid guy. But you believe your favorite authorities are solid guys, and trust them. Well it’s the same deal with me. We simply trust different people. We put faith in different people. Because in the end we’re all practicing faith—and it’s the reason we all believe as we do.

Well, unless you are trying to wish things into being. Don’t do that.

Alcohol and Christians.

On an internet debate club discussion group, I got into it with some fella who was insistent Jesus didn’t drink wine. He’d read my piece, “Jesus provides six kegs for a drunken party,” and was outraged, outraged, that I dare suggest Jesus drank wine. ’Cause no he didn’t.

It was a clear case of the guy projecting his beliefs about alcohol upon Jesus. And he’s got lots of support for his beliefs. Ever since the United States’s temperance movement began in the early 1800s—the movement which got us to ban alcohol in our Constitution (seriously!), Christians in that movement have invented and spread serious distortions of the bible’s historical background so that the folks in the bible didn’t really drink wine: Either they drank unfermented grape juice, or they watered down the wine so greatly, the alcohol content by volume was similar to that of non-alcoholic beer.

These false stories have been published for so long, anti-alcohol Christians simply accept ’em as truth. They’ve heard them all their lives, y’know. “In Edgar’s Commentary on John, published in 1855, it says right there Jesus only turned the water into grape juice. The best grape juice.” And because this book’s been around for 160-plus years, it must be true. Because it’s old.

Scientists regularly prove old does not mean correct. The ancients were guessing, but people guess wrong for all sorts of reasons, so there’s no substitute for empirical double-blind scientific studies. But people are so fond of folk wisdom and our favorite traditions, we regularly reject science in favor of those traditions. We might change our minds when desperate… but we don’t always.

And when it comes to the historical record, Jesus totally drank wine. Not non-alcoholic wine, not grape juice; wine. They didn’t water it down; that was pagan Greek religious custom, not Hebrew. We know this from then-contemporary records and archaeology. We know this ’cause the bible’s statements about wine and drunkenness make no sense if people were overindulging on grape juice!

The misinformation comes from American hangups about wine, alcohol, and alcoholism. And while alcoholism and drunkenness is a valid concern, and needs to be addressed in our churches—especially to those Christians who are overindulging, or who wanna go into Christian leadership—the issue isn’t served by lying, or misrepresenting what the scriptures really say about alcohol. We need to get over our hangups long enough to understand the truth, and speak soberly about it. Pun intended, but still.