Faking the Spirit’s fruit.

So you know we Christians need to be fruity. If we’re following the Holy Spirit’s lead, his character’s gonna overflow into the rest of our lives, and out pours his fruit.

And you probably know lots of Christians who claim they’re producing this sort of fruit. And yet… there’s something just a bit off-putting about the sort of “fruit” they crank out.

The love? Not all that loving. Their joy is either too manic, or has a lot of sadness and resignation mixed in there. The patience feels like despair. The kindness is artificial—and skin-deep; turn your back and they’ll say some really awful things about the people they were just kind to a moment ago, and you can only imagine what they have to say about you.

Peace seems to only come about after an awful lot of strife. Forgiveness has tons of strings attached. Grace is only extended to popular people, not everyone.

What’s going on? Duh; fruitless Christians redefining fruit. If you don’t have any real fruit, substitute fakes. Paint those road apples red, claim they’re real apples, and see whether anyone takes a bite. See if anyone notices—and if everybody’s faking it, nobody ever will.

Because fake fruit is easier. It doesn’t require real change. It means we can look good enough for church, but outside the church building we can be the same [rhymes with “gas tolls”] we’ve always been. Hypocrisy is always the easier, more popular path, found among just about every Christianist.

No, it’s not a perfect simulation. When we aren’t practicing the real thing, there are plenty of cracks in the veneer. You should be able to identify the frauds… and if you can’t, here’s this article.

Gotta pretend to love.

Take a Christian who doesn’t have love. Paul and Sosthenes described love like so.

1 Corinthians 13.4-8 KWL

4 Love has patience. Love behaves kindly.

It’s not emotion out of control. It doesn’t draw attention to how great it is. It doesn’t exaggerate.

5 It doesn’t ignore others’ considerations. It doesn’t look out for itself. It doesn’t provoke behavior.

It doesn’t plot evil. 6 It doesn’t delight in doing wrong: It delights in truth.

7 It puts up with everything, puts trust in everything, puts hope in everything,

survives everything. 8A Love never falls down.

Naturally, fake love—the way ancient Corinth defined love, and the way popular culture misdefines it—lacks these characteristics entirely. Fake love behaves impatiently and unkindly. It’s wild, self-promoting, exaggerated, dismissive of anyone or anything else as lesser, provocative, scheming and conniving, willing and ready to shatter existing relationships and break every law. Over time, sometimes very little time, it fades away, and doesn’t persevere. Fake love rarely lasts without a strong helping of denial. Or liquor.

Among hypocrites, the absence of actual love produces people who don’t look at our fellow human beings as creatures to love. Just resources to tap. We’ll care about our friends and family, and be very loyal to them (although not always), but that’s largely because we think of them as extensions of ourselves, or possessions. But we won’t give a crap about strangers or neighbors. Depending on our politics, either the poor are nothing but a societal burden, or the rich are nothing but societal parasites. Either way, other people are inconvenient… till we need something from them.

Works the same way in relationships. We don’t date or marry people because we wanna self-sacrificially care for them. Oh, we’ll do that to a point. But we have ulterior motives: We want to bang them. We like the comfort and security of knowing they (or their wallets) will be there for us… even though we don’t guarantee we’ll be there in return. If we do stuff for them, they’ll owe us, and we can extract payment in all sorts of fun ways. And every time they object, we’ll claim, “But I love you”—and that makes everything all right, doesn’t it?… till we fall out of love, or find someone else to tap, and bail on them altogether.

Works the same way with parents or kids. If they do for us, we love ’em. If not—if the “but I’m your kid, and I love you” con won’t work anymore; we disown them. Maybe not in words, but we’ll just never be around any longer.

We won’t care to know the other people in our churches. At best it’ll be on a superficial level, and at worst the same parasitic relationship we have with our significant others. Always take, take, take. If someone in the church is too poor, too needy, has too many problems, we’ll unfriend ’em, and use the excuse, “He just can’t get his life together; it’s gotta be because of sin, and I can’t be around that.” That usually works. Successful people must be good Christians, right?—and they’re the only people worth knowing, so we’ll stick to those cliques.

Quite often you’ll see hatred. Hypocrites hate sin—so we claim. So we hate anything which has any whiff of sin to it—and that’s pretty much everything. Everything’s tainted. Anything other people enjoy, anything popular in the secular world? We’ll find something wrong with it. Anything popular in the Christian culture? We’ll find something wrong with that too. There’s nothing good under the sun, nothing. Especially when it outrages us personally. Depending on our politics, we’ll hate liberals and Democrats, or we’ll hate social Darwinists and Republicans. We’ll complain way too much about our least favorite sinners, and absolutely hate Satan. (What, you thought true Christians get to make an exception for the devil? No. Any hate corrodes the hater.)

Redefine every fruit.

INSTEAD OF JOY. Joy is actual happiness and optimism and hope. Those who fake joy will instead be unhappy, pessimistic (or “just being realistic,” we’ll claim), and hopeless.

We’ll claim it’s okay we’re joyless: Apparently joy in the bible doesn’t really mean joy. It means being content, despite our rotten circumstances. It means tolerance. I have joy because I put up with you and all your crap. Isn’t that magnanimous of me?

If the joyless have any sense of humor, it’s bent; it’s all about mocking and slamming others. Our so-called realism cynically dismisses any of the good in the world, as we only fixate on evil. We’re quick to find problems—in our families, churches, jobs, in the government, in society. We nitpick, not because we care, or are trying to improve things, but because that’s just what we do. We never expect anything, including our own lives, to get any better. Any Christians who do, we mock as naïve or idealistic—or of loving the world too much.

INSTEAD OF PEACE. Ever notice how many paranoid Christians there are? They constantly worry about what the devil’s up to. Not to mention its minions in the media, big business, the press, the government, other religions… We’re especially fond of conspiracy theories and End Times stuff. Any sign can mean the great tribulation is coming. So we’re fret about gun control, our constitutional rights, our personal data existing in any computer anywhere, or about other groups gaining on us. We’re scared.

And we make trouble: We like to create drama around us. Hey, life is boring when people aren’t fighting. So we’ll hang around fights, or pick one. We like to debate. We love apologetics and politics. If there’s an issue we can either fight over or forgive, we’ll never, ever pick forgiveness.

What about peace? Oh, we doubt it exists. Any time someone tries to make peace, we’re pretty sure that’s what’s fake.

INSTEAD OF PATIENCE. Impatience. We’ll complain whenever a worship chorus gets sung more than three times. We’ll give dirty looks to a parent who has a crying child in the service. We’ll get really angry when the pastor doesn’t get to the point, and the service cuts into lunchtime. We prefer quick fixes, easily summed-up theology, ideas easy to grasp, and people who don’t waste our time. We take it as a personal insult when people violate any of these things. We offer little grace. We don’t forgive or forget.

INSTEAD OF KINDNESS. Rudeness. There are two kinds of rude: Those who treat others like scum are obvious enough. Then there are those who are politely rude—the folks who don’t really care what people have to say, and just impose ourselves. These’d be the brainiacs in the bible studies, who never catch the leader’s hints to shut up and give someone else a turn. These’d be the people who drag people forward for prayer, without asking if they want or need prayer—or, just as bad, they ask, but never wait for an answer.

INSTEAD OF GOODNESS. Some Christians won’t even try to be good, but take full advantage of God’s grace. And full advantage of the Christians who extend us grace. We justify all our evil: We undertip and blame the waiter, or a society which expects us to tip all the time. We steal office supplies and blame the boss for underpaying us. We’re undependable, untrustworthy, unsympathetic, uninterested, ungenerous… we’re irreligious, and unchristian.

INSTEAD OF GENTLENESS. Out-of-control emotion. When we’re happy, upset, anxious, ecstatic, sad, whatever, you’re gonna know it. We don’t contain ourselves. We claim we can’t—“It’s just the way I am,” or “That’s just my personality,” or “That’s just my behavior quirk.” No, it’s not because we’re suffering from serious psychological problems, and we’re wandering the streets instead of being institutionalized or heavily medicated: We’re trying to rework the emotional environment around us in order to suit our mood swings. And because people don’t understand psychology (or what “gentleness” even means) they let us get away with it.

INSTEAD OF SELF-CONTROL. No control. Our lives are a mess and we don’t lift a finger to sort them out. We won’t grow as Christians because we refuse to give up sinful habits and minor idols. We figure one day we’ll magically wake up all better. Or since all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory, Ro 3.23 it’s too late to seek improvement—so we’ll try to not commit any of the mortal sins. But there’s grace, right?

Perhaps we oughta follow the Spirit.

Where’d I get these descriptions? Simple: My own misbehavior. I used to be an awful hypocrite. Now I’m concentrating on being fruity. I still have a way to go. As do we all. Once we recognize these failings in ourselves, we can concentrate on letting the Holy Spirit get rid of them.

What I find works best is confession. I admit my past misbehavior—like the things I listed above. I talk about my less-than-noble motives for doing such things. I tell people it was sinful. I condemn it. And I ask ’em to call me on it if I repeat these old habits.

What if they’re practicing these things, ’cause they’re trying to fake the Spirit’s fruit instead of legitimately producing it? Well, some of ’em get convicted, and repent. And some of ’em pretend they would never, and praise me for being so transparent… and strive all the harder to hide their misbehaviors, ’cause they realize I’m on to them.

Every so often, a Christian has taken me aside and rebuked me for confessing. No, really. “You need to be careful who you confess this stuff to. You realize people might use it against you.” Um… how? I’ve already told on myself. It’s impossible to blackmail someone who’s publicly confessed the crime! The pure paranoid irrationality of their concern, exposes it for what it really is: They have sins to confess, and are terrified if they do, it’ll ruin them. So I need to stop it, lest my example ever become the norm. Darkness hates light.

If other people are doing the same things, and happen to be personally convicted because of my confession, that’s fine. I don’t try to figure out what sins other people are committing, nor customize my confessions to convict them. (I don’t bother with passive-aggressive behavior; I just go straight to aggressive.) I talk about myself, call a spade a spade, and confess I was self-centered instead of Jesus-focused. If they repent, great. If not, oh well; it’s between them and the Spirit.

But as for me, I’m gonna grow the Spirit’s fruit. I’m not gonna swap it for vastly inferior knock-offs.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

God doesn’t owe us anything for fasting.

I’ve pointed out fasting is a great way to focus our attention on God so we can pray better, hear him better, and develop our self-control.

But no, I don’t guarantee you’ll grow in all these ways when you fast.

All things being equal, you probably will. But as you know, there are lots of ways people can bollix our own growth. If we’re fasting, yet the rest of our lives are just as sinful as ever, why should we expect anything to change whatsoever? And yet Christians do: “I’m fasting! That should count for something.”

The Hebrews did it too, y’know. They’d fast, then make prayer requests ’cause they believed fasting would show the LORD they were serious, and it’d move him a little faster. It’s why Jehoshaphat told Jerusalem to fast so God might rescue them from invaders, 2Ch 20.3 and why Esther asked the Persian Jews to fast before she petitioned the king. Es 4.16 Since God apparently acted on the petitioners’ behalf in these stories, Christians get the idea fasting makes God move. They’ll claim this is “the biblical principle of fasting”: If you fast, God’ll answer prayer, and give you revelations.

But no it’s not a “biblical principle.” The idea’s based on works righteousness, the idea God we can earn God’s favor through good deeds and acts of devotion. So if we’re good, God supposedly owes us one; if we’re super good God owes us a lot. And supposedly religious acts and rituals can cancel out any evil deeds: If I’m stealing from my workplace’s cash drawer, saying a few hundred Hail Marys will work it off. What’s the going exchange rate, a buck per hail?

There is no biblical principle of fasting. Because in the bible, the LORD never commanded anyone to fast. Ever. The bible contains no teachings about what fasting does, why it’s important, and how often we oughta do it. The one teaching it does have on fasting is when Jesus tells us to not be hypocrites about it, and do it privately instead of publicly. Mt 6.16-18 The rest of Christianity’s teachings on fasting come from tradition: From fellow Christians’ experiences with fasting, and how it benefited them; and how it personally benefited us when we tried it.

But anyone who claims fasting unlocks God’s promises, and now he owes us stuff: They didn’t get that from bible. They got it from a corrupt Christian tradition, if anything. It’s not so. God owes us nothing. His kingdom runs on grace, not quid pro quo. He grants us grace and prayer requests and revelations because he loves us, not because we racked up enough heavenly frequent flyer miles to get a trip to Belize.

He tends to grant these things to active followers, not because we’re actively following, but because what good would they be in the hands of people who aren’t actively following? Such people will just squander his gifts, and be of little to no help to his kingdom. It’s not merit; it’s pragmatism.

So when we fast, is God obligated to do more for us than usual? Not at all. He tends to, but that’s only because Christians who fast, tend to love Jesus and follow him otherwise.

Fasting while you’re sinning.

Lots of Christians fast, but not really because they’re seeking God and his kingdom. They’re seeking wealth. They were told if they want a prosperous new year, start the year by fasting! If they want visions for a prosperous new year, deny themselves for a week or so; do a Daniel fast. (Supposedly it’ll also clean out your liver and kidneys. Based on what evidence, I dunno. I doubt any researchers are doing clinical studies on Daniel fasts.)

Likewise around Lent you get a lot of Christians who give up something till Easter. But they’re not always doing it for Jesus. They’re doing it because everybody else in their church is fasting, or because Mom is on their case about how they oughta give up something this year… so it’s peer pressure and legalism, and not so much love of God. Or they’ll give up a vice they oughta give up anyway: “This year I’m giving up hard liquor for Lent!” (Which is why they suddenly start buying so many four-liter jugs of wine: Seems they don’t realize chronic drunkenness is the real problem.)

In any event, fasting for ulterior motives means we’re gonna do it wrong. We’re gonna think of fasting as if it’s a heavenly punchcard, where you fast enough days and you earn a free sin. Instead of redirecting our focus towards heavenly things, fasting simply becomes a little personal devotion we’re doing on the side, and we never ever notice all the violations of God’s commands and love which we commit every day. And even when we do: Hey, we’re fasting! Shouldn’t that cancel some of the badness out?—just a little?

For too many Christians, fasting clearly doesn’t make us any holier. We don’t grow any different from the rest of the world; we look exactly like them, only hungrier. As demonstrated in Isaiah, when the LORD himself told Isaiah to rebuke the Israelis for fasting without transforming.

Isaiah 58.1-4 KWL

1 “Shout really loud. Don’t hold back. Your voice should be loud as a shofar.

Tell my rebellious people about the sins of Jacob’s house.

2 Day after day they seek me, ‘delighted’ to know my way—

as if they’re a righteous nation, who judges rightly and hasn’t abandoned their God,

asking me for righteous judgment, ‘delighting’ in God’s closeness.

3 But they ask, ‘Why do we fast and you don’t see us? Why do we oppress our souls and you don’t seem to know it?’

Look, on your fast day you seek pleasure. You oppress your employees.

4 Look, you argue and fight as you fast, punching with a wicked fist.

Don’t fast like you do today, and expect your voice to be heard on high!”

Same as Isaiah’s day, we have Christians who make a big deal of fasting on a regular basis, yet they think giving their employees Sundays off makes up for not paying them any more than they legally have to. Who will still pick fights on the internet. Who will still lie and break promises and cheat as usual… but think they’re doing pretty good ’cause they fast. Hey, look at all the Christians who don’t fast: They’re doing better than them, right?

And like the Israelis, sometimes they wanna know why God isn’t paying out. Well, the response the LORD gave through Isaiah, applies to us too. If we’re not really following God any, throwing a fast on top of our irreligion isn’t gonna get us anywhere. It’s just more hypocrisy.

Fasting doesn’t make up for anything. Jesus makes up for everything. 1Jn 2.2 Our good deeds, fasting included, don’t atone for jack squat. God doesn’t work on karma. So if we presume, “I’m fasting; that should count for something,” no it doesn’t. God is no more obligated.

But when we’re making a true effort, and fasting is part of that effort, God recognizes us as true followers. We’re something he can work with. Strive to be that.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Happy Martin Luther King Jr.® day!

In the United States, the third Monday of January is Martin Luther King Jr.^® Day. Due to the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, it doesn’t fall on his actual birthday of 15 January 1929, but it’s close enough. It’s a day to honor the life and acts of civil rights leader and Christian martyr, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.^® He was one of the principal leaders in the 1950s civil rights movement, and a pastor in the Progressive National Baptist Convention. (One of that denomination’s founders… after the National Baptist Convention, USA, ousted King^® and other activists for being too activist.)

One of the few photos of Dr. King^® in the public domain. Wikimedia

So… what’s with all the little registered-trademark symbols (®) next to his name throughout this article? It’s because Martin Luther King Jr.,^® his likeness, words, speeches, books, writings, and so forth, are owned by the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr. Inc., which is wholly owned by King’s^® children Martin III, Dexter, and Bernice. (Eldest daughter Yolanda died in 2007.) Use any of these things without the Estate’s permission, and when the Estate finds out they’ll sue you for infringement. I’m not kidding.

The Estate got serious about defending their copyrights in the 1990s. On 28 August 1993, USA Today honored the 30th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, by publishing King’s^® 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech in its entirety. Sounds nice… but the Estate quickly sued the newspaper, which settled in 1994 for $10,000 in attorney’s fees and court costs, plus the standard $1,700 licensing fee. Yep, that’s how much it cost to publish the speech in the ’90s.

The Estate also sued CBS for including video of “I Have a Dream” in their 1994 documentary series 20th Century with Mike Wallace. They also sued producer Henry Hampton for including it in his 1987 PBS civil rights series Eyes on the Prize. Hampton paid $100,000, and PBS didn’t broadcast the series again till 2006; it first had to purchase the rights to include the King^® footage. Whereas CBS fought the Estate in court till 1999, arguing this was a newsworthy public speech. A lower court agreed, but the U.S. Court of Appeals overturned it: Giving the speech in public doesn’t count as giving it away to the public.

King’s^® children routinely claim they’re not trying to profit off their father’s legacy: They’re only trying to keep opportunists from sullying his image. Which is a valid concern.

Problem is, everyone knows this argument is utter rubbish.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Time wasted on bad theology—and its temptations.

When I was a teenager I wanted an audio bible. At the time I couldn’t afford one. This was back when they were on cassette tapes, and cost about $150. No foolin’. So I decided the only alternative was to do it myself. I cracked open a six-pack of blank cassettes, cracked open my bible, and started recording. Started with the New Testament. Got as far as Acts. Definitely took more than six cassettes!

Then I came across an audio New Testament for $20. (Narrated by James Earl Jones, too.) For a brief moment there I thought about not buying it. After all, I’d spent a lot of time making one on my own. I didn’t wanna consider it time (and cassettes) wasted. But what made more sense?—buy the superior product, or persist in doing it myself?

Yep, I bought the audio bible. Years later I finally got the Old Testament too, ’cause someone put Alexander Scourby’s narration on the internet, and even though I only had a dial-up modem, I patiently downloaded every single tinny file. I’ve since bought proper audio bibles.

What’s the point of this story? To single out the reason I almost didn’t buy that first audio bible: I put a lot of time into my do-it-yourself audio bible. Time gave value to that piece of junk. Oh let’s be honest; it was junk. But it was my junk.

In the very same way, probably the most common reason Christians cling to our incorrect beliefs, bad theology, and heresy, is a rather simple one: We put an awful lot of time into our wrong ideas.

Some of us spent years on these ideas. Went to school and studied ’em in depth. Wrote articles and books. Taught ’em in class after class, Sunday school after Sunday school. Defended doctoral theses on the subject. Kinda made it our subject, the idea we’re best known for.

We really don’t want all the time and effort to turn out a giant waste. And for some of us, there’s a great deal of professional pride wrapped up in them. So, better to defend the bad idea, than drop it and embrace the better one.

And if the Holy Spirit himself is trying to get us to doubt our misbegotten certainty? Easiest to block him out and pretend he’s not talking. Worse, to reject him and claim that’s not him talking; it’s the devil. Claim it’s Satan when it’s really God. You know, blasphemy.

Yeesh.

Expecting credit for wasted hours.

On occasion a student of mine wouldn’t read the directions, and wound up doing their assignment wrong. Sometimes a little wrong, sometimes entirely wrong. Either way, they weren’t getting an A. Really frustrated them too. I know the feeling; I’ve made that mistake myself once or twice.

Every so often, despite going so wrong, one of these students would try to talk me into giving ’em a good grade regardless. Because, they argued, at least they put in the time. That should count for something, right?

Um, no.

I taught bible, science, algebra, grammar, and history; not P.E. (True, some P.E. teachers actually grade their kids for achievement instead of participation… but I haven’t worked with any.) Yes there are plenty of situations in life—and plenty of jobs—where they pay you regardless of how productive you are with your time. But that’s not true in every arena, and y’better learn that. Make hay while the sun shines.

Still, there are a lot of kids—and just as many adults—who still think this way. They put in the time, so they should get something for it. Some sort of karma, recognition, respect, even praise, for all their hard work—even when it honestly wasn’t all that hard. They want us to highlight the few things they got right and inflate their importance, and ignore all the stuff they got wrong, even if most of what they did was wrong.

I’ve seen many a Christian produce an error-filled bible study. To keep others from going astray, I’ve been obligated to point out the errors. And these mistaken teachers regularly, foolishly excuse themselves with, “You gotta give me some credit for putting all this stuff together.” Same as my wrong-headed students.

No I don’t gotta give you credit. Didn’t give my students credit either.

I do have to be kind. I gotta forgive you. I’m Christian; I believe in grace. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you didn’t mean to teach error. (Well, usually I will. Certain fruitless souls deserve our skepticism.) But when you study wrong, you waste your time. And when you present the results of your wrongly-done study as if it’s true, you waste everyone’s time. Nobody, not even God, gives us credit for wasting time on error and evil, Calvinist beliefs notwithstanding.

But this mindset of “I put in the time, so it must count for something” gets applied to way too many things in Christianity. Like time spent in a ministry which accomplishes nothing, but Christians justify the wasted time by imagining God’ll turn it into something. Like time spent trying to preach to antichrists, and this practice of throwing pearls to pigs Mt 7.6 is defended by saying, “I’m planting seeds” or “God’s word won’t return void.”

Bad theology. But time was invested, and God would never let our investment wholly go to waste, right?

Time and idolatry.

At its core the reason we believe we should get something for misspent time, or figure there should be some credit and value we can gain despite misspent time… is idolatry.

Yep, idolatry. Time is valuable. “Time is money,” as Benjamin Franklin aptly put it, and many people see the two as interchangeable. We won’t always agree on the exchange rate, but we generally agree there is one. If I put time into something, I put value into it.

And if I put that value ahead of God? That’s the very definition of idolatry.

Yep. So just as money is something we need to be wary of, so is time. If I put a lot of time into a wrong idea, it’s still a wrong idea. Time contributed nothing. Time redeemed nothing. Time justifies nothing. Wrong is wrong.

I’ve wasted lots of time on bad ideas before. Businesses which went nowhere. Books and articles which weren’t accepted. Relationships which went bust. It’s frustrating… but it’s life. Things don’t always work out. Hey, we don’t know any better; we’ve gotta learn better. Time is a teacher, provided we treat it like one.

And the same is true of theology. We can spend an awful lot of time studying a theological idea, getting really familiar with it, making it a part of our understanding of God… only to have the Holy Spirit undo it with a few well-placed words. So we gotta determine right now how we’re gonna respond to his correction: Faith? Or a massive crisis of faith, followed by years of a hobbled relationship because we don’t wanna listen to him tell us we’ve misused our time?—and that we’re still misusing our time?

I find it helps when we keep in mind the first principle of theology: “I’m wrong. Jesus is right.” I expect to find I’m wrong. Even if we’re talking the beliefs I’ve held for a good long time, and invested loads of time in: Maybe I have the wording right, but I’ve mixed up something about the concepts. Or maybe I’m prioritizing them when Jesus wants me to prioritize something else. (Or maybe he’s okay with my prioritizing them for now, but he wants me to grow out of it.) Hey, I’m following his lead; however he wants to correct me, I’m game. He’s the only one I cling to tightly.

If that’s not stable enough for you, may I submit you’re perhaps putting your faith in more shaky things than you realize. Time spent should not be one of them.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

The usual substitutes for being fruity.

How do you know someone’s Christian? Duh; by their fruit.

But sometimes I hear this very question—“How do you know someone’s really a Christian?”—not just from newbies, but from longtime Christians. People who’ve been Christian all their lives. We’re not talking brief lives either; I got this question from a seventy-something Christian a few years ago. He says he grew up Christian, and I don’t doubt it. Yet he didn’t know how to tell a Christian from the real thing.

What’d he think was the litmus test for Christianity? Same things most people in popular Christian culture imagine:

• RELIGION. Regularly reading your bible, praying, and going to church.
• FAITH. Believing really hard that Jesus is gonna save us.
• SINNER’S PRAYER. Believing because we said the sinner’s prayer once, at some point in our lives—however long ago that was, and regardless of how much growth we’ve done since—Jesus is gonna save us.
• ORTHODOXY. Believing all the correct things about God. Get anything wrong, and it means you’re heretic and not saved.
• CONFORMITY. Doing as all the other Christians in our churches do: If they don’t wear jeans to church, neither do we; if they shun alcohol and profanity and makeup, so do we; if they never listen to anything but K-LOVE (and maybe country & western, ’cause a lot of those musicians are Christian) so do we. Act like them, ’cause that’s how Christians oughta act.
• ZEAL. If we’re on fire for Jesus—if you really wanna be Christian, and get really amped up about all of the above, and are willing and eager to fight anyone on his behalf—then you’re obviously Christian. No fire? No Holy Spirit in you then.
• INNER PEACE. When we come to Jesus, supposedly he erases all our worries, fears, doubts, and every trouble. That’s what the evangelists claim, so that’s precisely what a lot of Christians point to: “I have peace. So I’m obviously Christian.”
• NO MORTAL SINS. We can be Christian and commit minor sins, but if we commit really huge sins, like murder or rape or voting for the wrong party, we’re not really Christian. Can’t be. Real Christians don’t do that.
• BAPTISM. If we got baptized (and confirmed, and never renounce that baptism… well, not in words; deeds kinda don’t count) we’re Christian.
• SELF-IDENTIFICATION. If people claim they’re Christian, no matter how antichristian they might behave… well they just are. That’s how they self-identify, and no one has any business claiming otherwise. They know themselves best. And we gotta deal with that.

Various Christians accept at least one, and often many, of these litmus tests. If you can pass two of the tests, you can be extra sure you’re Christian. It’s just like using two different brands of pregnancy tests… even though most of ’em are using the exact same chemicals.

But what’s the litmus test in the bible? (The only litmus test, I might add?) Fruit. We gotta be fruity.

And when I give this answer, people’s usual response is “Oh. Well duh.” Somewhere in their brains they already knew fruit’s the right answer, but there’s some kind of mental block which kept ’em from thinking of it. We can blame the devil for it, and many do, but myself I blame irreligion. It’s way easier to take the other litmus tests than work on actual fruit… and you grow fruit by seriously following Jesus, i.e. religion. Good religion, where we do as Jesus tells us; it’s more than merely going to church and reading bible.

It’s something we gotta do.

The seventy-something even knew the proof text in the “original,” by which he meant the King James Version: “The tree is known by his fruit.” Which is a really odd choice of pronoun by the KJV’s translators; male trees produce pollen, not fruit! But stands to reason a bunch of theology profs know bupkis about agriculture… so let’s read that verse in the NKJV instead.

Matthew 12.33 NKJV

“Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for a tree is known by its fruit.”

Notice that word in the verse, make. The original is ποιήσατε/pihísate, the command “do” or “make.” Because fruit is something we gotta do and make. Because we have the Holy Spirit within us, every true Christian has the potential to produce fruit… but if we never listen to him and never practice the fruit, it’s not gonna grow! It’ll stay little and barely noticeable.

And because it’s barely noticeable, Christians are gonna have to resort to looking for other things which prove we’re Christian. Like adopting our church’s beliefs, or looking back at the first time we asked for salvation, or checking out our fellow Christians and saying, “Well I’m no worse.”

We figure if we score 100 on a Christian aptitude test, we’re all right. So when we stand before Jesus at the End, and he asks us why he oughta let us into heaven, we can point out we’re one of the “whosoevers” in

John 3.16 KJV

That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

We figure we can say, “Why yes you should let me into heaven. I held up my end of the bargain: I believed.”

Whereas Jesus will be looking for fruit:

Matthew 25.41-46 KJV

41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: 42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: 43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. 44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? 45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. 46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

It’s not the feeding and clothing the needy per se. It’s the fact fruity Christians will feed and clothe the needy… and fruitless Christians will figure they needn’t bother, ’cause we don’t need to do good works to be saved. Fruity Christians wanna help others. They wanna be generous, kind, compassionate, loving, patient, and gentle. Fruitless Christians would rather tell such people to get a job. Whose hearts best reflect that of the Holy Spirit within ’em? Duh; the real Christians.

Wait! What about grace?

Whenever I talk about fruit as something we gotta do and make, I invariably get pushback from people who don’t wanna do and make. Who point out, “Aren’t we saved by God’s grace, not our works?” Ep 2.8-9 Is my fruit talk just a pretense to slip some works-righteousness into our Christianity?

Okay, grace. Yes, we’re saved by God’s grace. We can’t save ourselves at all; God had to do it. And he does, for no other reason than that he’s gracious. We don’t deserve saving, and can’t earn it. It’s totally true we’re not saved by our works.

But if God truly saved us, there’s some evidence he saved us. A far more reliable evidence than passing a standardized test which any demon could ace. Jm 2.19 In every Christian, God deposited the Holy Spirit to lead us and help us. Ep 1.13-14 And if he’s in there, he’s rooting through our junk, tossing out the bad, upgrading us, producing fruit. Those who have the Spirit, act it. They’re fruity.

Conversely, those who don’t have the Spirit, for God hasn’t saved them, don’t produce fruit. They have no relationship with the Spirit. It’s why Jesus will respond to them, “I never knew you, you lawbreakers; get away from me.” Mt 7.23 Or worse, “You damned people, off with you.” Mt 25.41 Where there should be fruit—charitable actions of the most basic, elementary sort—there’s nothing. There’s only outrage, entitlement, pride, arrogance—they feel they deserve to be included!—and Jesus tells them to piss off.

Harsh? Sure. But Jesus makes it fairly obvious in the gospels: Produce fruit. Real Christians will. How can you call yourself Christian, Christ-follower, student, disciple, or servant, yet do absolutely nothing Jesus commands? or have a character which looks nothing like Christ’s? It should be self-evident. And would be, if there weren’t all these cheap-grace preachers running amok, telling us we needn’t do a single thing for Jesus, and he’ll save us anyway.

Don’t think it is self-evident? Read your bible.

Luke 3.9 KWL

“Plus, the axe lays at the root of the tree right now.

So every tree not producing good fruit is cut down and thrown into fire.”

 

Luke 6.43-46 KWL

43 “For a good tree doesn’t grow rotten fruit, nor a rotten tree grow good fruit:

44 Each tree is known by its own fruit.

You don’t gather figs from thistles. You don’t reap grape bunches from thornbushes.

45 The good person brings up good things from the good treasury of a good mind.

The evil brings up evil things out of an evil mind.

From the mind’s overflow, their mouth speaks.

46 Why do you call me, ‘Master, master’?

You don’t do a thing I say.”

 

Matthew 7.15-23 KWL

15 “Watch out for the fake prophets, who come to all of you dressed as sheep,

but underneath they’re greedy wolves. 16 You’ll recognize them by their fruits.

People don’t pluck grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles, do they?

17 So every good tree grows good fruits, and a rotten tree grows bad fruits.

18 A good tree doesn’t grow bad fruits, nor a rotten tree grow good fruits.

19 Every tree not growing good fruit is cut down and thrown into fire.

20 It’s precisely by their fruits that you’ll recognize them.

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 mighty things in your name?’

23 And I’ll explain to them, “I never knew you, you lawbreakers; get away from me.”

 

1 John 1.5-7 KWL

5 This is the message we heard from him and proclaim to you:

God is light. To him, darkness is nothing.

6 When we say we have a relationship with him yet walk in darkness, we lie; we don’t act in truth.

7 When we walk in the light like him, who’s in light, we have a relationship with one another,

and his son Jesus’s blood cleanses us of every sin.

Got the idea?

If we’re not fruity, we have no proof of our Christianity. None. Oh, people will claim otherwise, and try to convince us and themselves. But none of their proofs prove a thing. Many a fruitless Christian (and false prophet) has used miracles to justify their bad behavior. And as Jesus said, many will point to those miracles, claiming a relationship with him which he won’t recognize.

Many a fruitless Christian will point to orthodoxy, to church membership, to the charitable organizations they give money to. Or they’ll point to traits which they claim are forms of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control. There are fake versions of these things, y’know. Usually out-of-control desire, mania or euphoria, tight-fisted control, dismissal, tolerance, apathy, wishful thinking, quietness, and hypocrisy. If we have no evidence of a relationship with God, we’ve gotta invent something to take its place.

But why? Follow God, and fruit virtually grows on its own. And if you lack fruit, turn to God! Repent. Ask him to grow some fruit in you.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

How to study your bible.

When I was a kid, I went to a Fundamentalist church. Say what you will about these folks: They’re big on studying the bible. Not all of ’em know how to do it properly—and they definitely didn’t teach me how to do it. (Man alive was I over-dependent on the notes of my Scofield Reference Bible!) But I gotta give ’em credit for making a serious, earnest effort just the same. They really wanted to know what was in there, and rightly believed every Christian should.

Yet even while I was in that church, I discovered I knew way more about the bible than others. Not ’cause I’m a genius or anything, although I do have a really good memory. I knew more simply because I read the bible. I read the commentaries in the bible, plus everything about the bible I could get access to: I studied.

And most Christians honestly don’t. Most humans don’t. As soon as we get out of school—whether high school, university, or grad school—we figure we never, ever have to study again, and don’t. We quit. We’re done. We might make exceptions for something important, like our contractor’s license, but we’re done. Study the bible? Nah. We’ll leave that for experts; pastors can study the bible. When we wanna get something profound out of the scriptures, we only expect to get ’em one of three ways.

1. Somebody else has to say it. Like a favorite preacher or author, whom we trust to say reliable things. (Trust based on what? Well, that’s another discussion.)
2. It’s gotta be a clear, obvious statement in the bible. Something anyone could find, like a penny on the sidewalk.
3. It’s a God-inspired idea which unexpectedly pops into our heads, like a bolt of lightning from a blue sky, as we’re reading the bible. Illumination, some call it.

But study? Go digging out truths from the text? Never gonna happen.

There’s a common but false assumption God’s kingdom, because it runs on grace, arrives by grace: We don’t have to make any effort. Just take the talent God gave us, bury it in a field, and it’ll grow like an acorn into a tree filled with shiny metal discs. Wisdom will just come to us naturally. After all, there’s no shortage of people posting pithy platitudes on Twitter.

Here’s the quandary: Which of these platitudes are true, and which of them are merely clever… but wrong?

’Cause I’ve heard loads of platitudes. So have you. I’ve been a Christian for more than four decades, and listened to sermons every Sunday morning, many Sunday and Saturday and Friday and Wednesday evenings, many mini-sermons by bible study leaders and prayer group leaders and college professors, many sermons in chapel at schools I’ve gone to or taught at, and of course sermons on the radio or podcasts. I have no idea how many Christian books I’ve read, both before and after seminary. Or how many posts on Christian blogs.

There’s a lot of advice out there. Most of it looks like good Christian advice. But it only looks good: Much is junk, is misinformed, is misleading, is foolhardy, is ignorant, is dark Christianity, is heresy, or is hypocrisy disguised under thick Christianese.

And some of it is pure Christianism: It’s pop psychology, godless politics, Mammon worship and social Darwinism, ulterior motives disguised as devout Christianity. It’s totally wrong—but sounds good. Sounds wise, familiar, benevolent… and totally appeals to our bratty inner child, so we repeat it.

How do we know the difference? Well, unless we have the supernatural gift of discernment (which in my experience, the Holy Spirit uses to point out false teachers, not bad theology), we gotta discern stuff the old-fashioned way: We gotta know our bibles. And not just superficially. We gotta study our bibles. We gotta buckle down and do our homework.

But we don’t wanna.

“But I’m not a bible scholar!”

Embracing ignorance is a childish thing to do… and you’ll notice there are a lot of childish people out there. Christians included.

And they’re gonna stay childish. When they refuse to study their bibles, they’re not gonna grow as Christians. They’re not gonna grow the Spirit’s fruit. They’re not gonna become spiritually mature. They’re content to be the least in the kingdom… ’cause hey, they made it into the kingdom! They assume maturity comes with age. Lemme tell you, it so doesn’t. I’ve met many who think Christian senior citizens should automatically become church elders. But some of these seniors have only been Christian a few years, so they know no better than anyone who’s only been Christian a few years. Others, after a lifetime of refusing to grow, have no kindness, no patience, no goodness: They’re old brats.

No, bible study isn’t how we grow the Spirit’s fruit. There are a lot of fruitless know-it-alls. I’ve been one. But one of the traits of a person who is growing the Spirit’s fruit, is they’re gonna want to know God better. And they realize how we get to know God better is by studying the bible he inspired. Study what his prophets and apostles wrote. Study what Christ Jesus taught. Study.

If we wanna grow in Christ, we can’t solely depend on other Christians’ interpretations. It’s just not good enough. It makes us dependent on them for our spiritual growth; not Christ. And when they’re wrong (and they will be; we all are), not only do we stay wrong: We’ll have no clue we’re wrong, for we’ve never learned to tell the difference. It’s why people stay in cults for decades.

Other Christians can, will, and should supplement our knowledge. But each of us needs to step away from the secondhand sources, and go firsthand. All of us have to become bible scholars.

No, it’s not just for pastors and academics. It’s for every Christian. Just like prophecy. If, in order to understand the bible better, we research its original text, the ancient history behind it, the Christian philosophies (there are more than one) about the bible, we count as bible scholars. Doesn’t matter if we’re paid to do it. Doesn’t matter what our day jobs are. (Does to academics, but only because they’re trying to keep their day jobs.)

Doesn’t matter whether you’ve gone to seminary either. I have, but many of my pastors haven’t. And didn’t have to: They do their homework. When they put together sermons, they use many of the same resources I do, and do just fine—better than the vast majority of preachers I’ve heard. A seminary degree definitely helps, but anybody can study the bible once they learn how.

Yes, you’re gonna need to start buying books. Yeah, you’re gonna have to dabble in biblical languages. (Relax; you don’t have to learn the whole language, although you do need to learn enough to know how to use the languae appropriately.) Thanks to the internet, you have access to way more bible study resources than has any generation in history. What used to cost scholars a fortune (and I know, ’cause it cost me a fortune before this stuff went online) anyone can call up on their phone, even in countries which heavily censor the internet. Study is far easier and faster than it’s ever been. Lack of resources and lack of time: No longer an excuse.

It’s not gonna make you popular with the willfully ignorant.

One of the negative side effects of democracy—the correct belief all people are politically equal—is the incorrect belief all people oughta be equal in everything. Like wealth and prosperity: Everyone oughta be equally rich or equally poor. Or like knowledge: If you know more than me, for some reason that’s wrong of you, and you need to be taken down a few notches. What, you think you‘re better than me? You ain’t better.

This is the attitude bible scholars constantly, regularly get from non-scholars. People figure anyone who knows more than they, by default, is a know-it-all. “Knowledge puffs up,” Paul said once, 1Co 8.1 and they take it upon themselves to deflate such people. So expect backlash.

One of our duties as bible scholars, is to explain what the scriptures mean. Which I do. Either here on TXAB, or in one of my church’s small groups, or when people pick my brain one-on-one. And occasionally I butt heads with people who hate my interpretations. They grew up believing otherwise. They didn’t ask my opinion because they want to know something; they just want me to confirm what they already believe.

And when I challenge their beliefs, many go into fight-or-flight mode, and choose fight: They wanna debate. They wanna ruin me: Or ruin me: Get me publicly rebuked, get me fired, get me excommunicated; the only reason they don’t try to get me whacked is because they still think that’s a line you don’t cross. For now. The people who killed St. Stephen didn’t have any such line, and some people wonder if there should even be such a line.

Plenty of Christians claim they appreciate constructive correction. This is a lie. They absolutely hate it. They don’t wanna be wrong. (It’s human nature!) They’ve invested a lot of time and effort in their ideas, and don’t want it to be time wasted. If you don’t believe in miracles, and spent your whole life avoiding charismatics and our churches, it will blow your tiny little mind when God drops an honest-to-Him miracle upon you. You’d barely accept him—much less me.

So they won’t surrender their cherished false beliefs without a fight. Humility ain’t that common. And I blunder into such fights when I least expect it: I’ll state something which I figure is a very simple statement, and just my luck: Someone in the room believes just the opposite, decides she’s right and I’m Satan, and it’s time to do holy war. (Nope, I’m never given the benefit of the doubt: “He made a mistake somewhere.” People jump directly to “He has a demon.” Did it with Christ too, y’know. Jn 10.20) Doesn’t matter if I can point to bible verses: She’s believed this her entire unexamined life, loves this belief, never heard otherwise, and therefore I must be Satan.

Or it’ll blindside me this way: Somebody else will state something, figure I’m the token bible scholar in the room and turn to me for affirmation: “Isn’t that right?” Oh, I hope to God it is. I hate being put on the spot this way. ’Cause sometimes it’s not! And sometimes it’s really not the right time for correction. I once had a pastor single me out and ask “Isn’t that right?” in mid-sermon. He wasn’t. But in our congregation that day was a kid whom I was trying to lead to Jesus, and I didn’t want my pastor’s train of thought derailed by this minor error. So I mumbled something non-committal, corrected him privately later, and he’s the kind of guy who’s so humble he emailed everybody in the church and apologized for his minor mistake. My point though: Learn when to be right, and when to shut up and be right later.

Immature people always attack the messenger. So don’t be surprised when immature Christians do likewise: “I reject your ‘head-knowledge,’ because I’m speaking from ‘heart-knowledge,’ which is true knowledge.” No, that’s truthiness: Stuff you feel is true, and wish were true, but you have no facts and reason to back you up. Certainly no in-context bible verses. By “head-knowledge” these folks mean cold, hard, heartless facts. True, facts oughta be spoken in love and compassion. Ep 4.15 But without love, facts don’t become nothing: I do. 1Co 13.2 Facts are still facts—and truth isn’t in those people.

Christianity isn’t, and never has been, about what we wish were true. Wishful thinking ain’t faith. Christianity is actual truth God revealed through Christ Jesus: True whether we like it or not. As bible scholars, we gotta find it, regardless of what the wider Christian culture likes better, and recasts as truth. That’s why we study the bible: To find truth. The scriptures point to it. We wanna know it. God offers to give it. And a superficial reading of the bible only provides it superficially. You want deeper truth, you get deep.

It takes diligent study. It takes showing God we mean business. It means demonstrating to him we can handle his revelation. It means we study the historical context of the scriptures, study Greek and Hebrew were necessary, and no playing connect-the-dots like a conspiracy theorist, hoping to extract truths about the bible by treating meaningless coincidences like they’re profound revelation. They called this λογομαχέω/logomakhéo, “word-slicing,” back in bible times, and Paul brought it up to Timothy:

2 Timothy 2.14-19 KWL

14 Remind them of these things, objecting (before God) against overanalyzing words.

It profits no one; it’s a catastrophe for listeners.

15 Push yourself to stand before God as worthy:

A worker who doesn’t embarrass himself, who uses the word of truth properly.

16 Stay clear of unholy talk or foolishness,

for it’ll grow more ungodly behavior, 17 and their words will spread like rot on a field.

Yménaios and Fílitos are examples, 18 who went way off center about the truth,

saying the resurrection already happened, overturning certain people’s faith.

19 Still, God’s solid foundation stands, having this seal: “The Lord knows who’s his,” Nu 16.5

and “Get away from wrongness, everyone who names the Lord’s name.” Is 52.11

Steer clear of the temptation to embrace “new facts,” which are often just old heresies in new packaging. Stay away from angry teachers, scholars who are trying to get famous by being extra controversial, preachers who like to get into fights, anyone with iffy fruit. Look for teachers with good character. Read their stuff first.

Finally, how to study a bible.

It’s really not that hard. Here’s a general outline of the steps to take. This’ll get you started.

PICK YOUR BIBLE PASSAGE. If you wanna study an entire book, great. But unless we’re talking a really short book (and sometimes even then; some of John’s shorter letters are awfully deep) it’ll take time. Break it down into segments which are small, manageable, and reasonable. Study ’em one at a time.

Me, I prefer a paragraph at a time. (Meaning original-language paragraphs, not the way different bible translations put ’em into paragraphs. But relax: You don’t need to learn biblical languages. They really help, but they aren’t mandatory.)

Pick the bit you wanna study. Got it? Good.

RESEARCH ITS BACKGROUND. Before you study any book of the bible, or even just a passage of the book, you really oughta know about the whole book: Who wrote it? Why’d the author write it? What’s its point? Who’s it to? What’s it about? What type of literature is it?

When you read a Civil War novel, it really helps when you know a little about the Civil War. Helps more when you know more. Same with Victorian-era novels: Learn a bit about the Victorians. Same with autobiographies: When you read Julius Caesar’s Commentaries, you oughta know about the Roman Republic (and how it’s not the same as the Roman Empire). And same with the bible: Know enough bible history for your book to make sense.

Christians assume, because these books are translated into 21st-century English, we’re reading about people who speak our language and live in our culture. They didn’t. These books were written between 34 and 20 centuries ago, almost entirely in the Middle East, in foreign languages, to foreign cultures, who knew absolutely nothing about us and our way of life. We gotta learn about them.

So… what’s the historical background of the people in the book? How about the historical background of its readers? What’s their popular culture like? What sort of things might they know, or be expected to know?

Yeah, there’s a crazy amount of detail we can study in learning the background. It’s why bible scholars never figure our job is done: We keep learning about biblical history. Historians and archeologists are always discovering new stuff. We try to keep up.

But if you want a brief introduction to any book, get a decent bible commentary on that book. Read its introduction.

READ IT IN AS MANY TRANSLATIONS AS YOU CAN. Look at every way other scholars have rendered this passage into English.

Lots of people skip this step, and stick to their favorite bible translation. Or they think the solution is to get a translation which is as literal as possible, like the NASB or ESV; or stick with the Amplified Bible ’cause they figure it includes every possible translation option. (It doesn’t.) Or they embrace a crazy doctrine that their translation is the only one infallible. No no no. This is the 21st century: There are dozens of translations at your fingertips on the internet. Read as many as you can.

This is not a search for “the best translation.” Nor for a translation which best suits your idea. A lot of Christians make this mistake, and don’t realize what they’re doing is bending the scriptures to suit them. We do just the opposite: Bend ourselves to suit the scriptures.

What we’re doing is looking for the general consensus: In what ways do all the translators agree? What do all the translations have in common? Which ideas are exactly the same, in every version?

Some verses are ridiculously easy to translate. So every translation will agree. Other passages are controversial, so you’ll find half translate it one way, half another. Look at both options. Or there will be three or four or 20 options; compare all of them. Don’t forget the footnotes: Certain bibles include “Some translations have…” followed by another way it could read, and that’s another option to consider. Sometimes there are textual variants.

So… do these differences significantly change the meaning of the verses? Or are they just extra words?—like referring to Jesus as “Christ Jesus” instead of just “Christ” or “Jesus.” Most variants are really nothing more than that.

In doing this, you’re gonna get really familiar with your passage. Good. You need to. Meditate on it too, when you meditate.

You may find different translations split your passage into different sentences and paragraphs. Again, look at the consensus. (And maybe you’ll have to adjust where your passage starts and stops.)

Once you have a good idea of what most translators think the passage means, pick the translation which does the best job. If no single translation does the best job, go ahead and put it together yourself: Pick one sentence from the NIV, one from the NKJV, a clause from the ISV, a word from The Message. Yes, it’s okay to do this, but you need to be able to defend every clause you include: “Most translations use the word ‘propitiation,’ and so did I.” Not “I just liked that word way better.”

LOOK UP ANY SIGNIFICANT WORDS. And here’s where we bust out the Hebrew and Greek: If there’s a significant, theologically-loaded word in your passage, look it up in the original language.

No, don’t look it up in an English-language dictionary. When preachers tell you how the American Heritage Dictionary defines a word in their bible passages, they’re doing it wrong. God help you if they start quoting Webster’s. Which Websters? Any dictionary can call themselves Webster’s. The name isn’t copyrighted, y’know. But all an English dictionary does is say we mean by that word. Not what the bible’s authors meant by it. An original-language dictionary does the job. Again, bible software and bible websites will help you out.

When preachers tell you how Strong’s or Brown Driver Briggs or the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament defines it, then we got a bible scholar. Assuming they’re not misusing the dictionary. The point isn’t to discover secret, unknown-before-now meanings to the bible. It’s so we understand this passage better with these words’ proper meanings.

NOTE HOW IT FITS WITH ITS BOOK. Another common mistake is people study a passage, then immediately interpret it for what it means to them, not for what the author was trying to say to their audience. They don’t care about the author. Nor the intended audience. They wanna get stuff out of it. (Sometimes stuff they can beat others over the head with.) It’s very selfish.

Where’s the verse fit within the big picture of its book? If it’s a gospel, how does the verse point to Jesus or his kingdom? If it’s one of the Prophets, how does it point to God? If it’s a New Testament letter, how does it teach the church to think and behave? If it’s a psalm, how’s it praise God? Those are general concepts: Each book will have its specific agenda, and you need to look at how each verse furthers that book’s agenda.

THEN LEARN FROM IT. Once you understand what your passage means, and what it said to its original audience, then you can look at what lessons you can take from it.

I’ll warn you now: After all the time you put into your study, you might expect to get something really profound out of it. And you usually will. But sometimes it’s really not all that deep. I know; people assume all scripture is weighty, and can inspire thousands of sermons. “God is love” 1Jn 4.8 sure can. But “Abraham lived between Kadesh and Shur” Ge 20.1 not so much.

(Well, yet. If you ever go to Israel, and you’re traveling between Kadesh and Shur, being face-to-face with the physical context of the scriptures might knock you flat. But this’ll only be true after you’ve studied your bible and have the verse in you. If you don’t, it won’t.)

And that’ll do ya.

If you want a more thorough outline on how to study the bible, one of the best books I’ve come across is Gordon Fee’s New Testament Exegesis, a thin little book which’ll show you, in detail, how to take apart a passage from the New Testament. The same principles apply to the Old Testament too. Lots of colleges use it for good reason. Mine didn’t, but my professors obviously read it, ’cause they taught all the same ideas.

And of course I’ll go into more detail in future articles. Stay tuned.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

We’re wrong about God, y’know.

One of my favorite Peanuts strips goes a little something like this. (I liked it so much I used to include it in the Theology banner.)

Peanuts, 9 August 1976. Peanuts Worldwide

Theology is the study of God. If we’re gonna follow God we gotta study him. Gotta find out what he wants, what he expects of us. Heck, gotta find out if he’s even a “he,” and we’re not using the wrong pronoun. (Fastest way to yank the chain of certain Christians: Use a different one. But let up after you’ve freaked them out a few minutes. Be nice.)

Square One of theology is humility, the recognition of who we truly are. And who are we?

Well the most common Christian response to that question is “Um… nobody really.” Which isn’t entirely true. That’s the answer we give ’cause our fellow Christians expect it of us… and it’s hypocrisy, because we don’t really have that low an opinion of ourselves. It’s false humility: Pretending to be what we deep down know we’re not. If we truly thought we were nobody, we’d figure ourselves totally unworthy of God, and never bring ourselves to study him. There are actual Christians who do have such a low opinion of themselves, and they don’t study him, which ain’t good.

So let’s set the B.S. aside and get honest: We suspect we can know God, or at least know him better. And that’s good! God wants us to know him better. It’s why he sent us Jesus. To answer that “Who are we question definitively: It’s why he made us adoptive daughters and sons of the most high God. Jn 1.12 That ain’t nothing. We’re precisely the people who should study God.

Theology is the birthright of every Christian. Any Christian who doesn’t bother to investigate our Father is destined to have a really sucky, substandard, dysfunctional relationship with him. Which surely isn’t what he wants. Hope you don’t either.

So yeah, we need to get into theology. We need to study God. All of us. You included.

Right standing versus right knowledge.

Here’s the problem: Too many of us Christians presume we already do know God.

No, not comprehensively. God is huge. God is significantly different than we are. God is spirit instead of physical, so forget about sitting him down in a lab and taking his blood pressure: He’s impossible to study through the physical sciences. Absolutely everything we know about God, he’s had to tell us through Jesus and his prophets. And considering how massive and mighty he’s revealed himself to be… well, we may know a whole lot, but in proportion to the hugeness of our almighty Subject, we know next to nothing.

Even so, way too many of us think we do have his number: We know God. We know how he’d think on nearly every subject. He’s easy to deduce and predict, and many a Christian will presume to speak for him: “God hates that.” “God would never allow that.” “God is gonna punish people for that.” “God prefers this.” “God’s will is for you to do this.” “God’s best is this.” “God is like this.”

How do these people know what God wants and doesn’t want? Well, some of ’em actually do practice theology. They do their due diligence and find out what God says on the matter.

The rest of them have no idea. They’re guessing. They’re projecting. But they sure do look like they know, don’t they? Comes from years of winging it—and nobody ever calling them on their subterfuge.

Those who are winging it, who make “educated” guesses about God and usually get away with it, are usually following the Christianist crowd: They repeat what they heard, and liked, from other Christians. Whether it’s true or not is a whole other deal: They like it. It suits them. It fits within their worldview. It appeals to their personal desires. It sounds correct.

If they’re lucky, it might actually be correct. Loads of us stumble ass-backwards into truth because the Holy Spirit graciously keeps us Christians from going too far afield. But following your gut, by definition, means you’re not following Jesus.

Why do these people nonetheless think they’re on the right path? Partly because the Spirit keeps ’em on a short leash, so they haven’t stumbled into the sort of catastrophes their sloppy thinking oughta produce. And partly because, despite wild error, they justify themselves: “Once I turned to Jesus, he made me right with God. So I’m right. God made me right.”

Yeah, they’re using that word wrong. Justification is the idea Jesus makes us right with God once we put our faith in him. Ro 10.10 But being made right with God, means he’s not gonna let our sins and failures and wrong thinking get in the way of a relationship with him. It doesn’t mean we don’t still have sins, failures, and wrong thinking. “Right,” in this situation, doesn’t mean correct. Two different things. I might have a fantastic relationship with my wife, yet be totally wrong about how she takes her coffee. (“I thought it was cream and two sugars. Since when did you start drinking it half whiskey?”) God forgives all. It doesn’t mean he automatically reprogrammed us with the infallible knowledge of his will. If it did, no Christian would be wrong.

So, back to Square One. Who are we? Daughters and sons of God. But do we know God? Not yet. Not enough. Gotta fix that.

Who does know God? Well, there’s only one person who does. That’d be his one and only Son, who came from the Father. Jn 1.18 He knows God. Where we’re wrong, he’s right.

So that’s the first principle of Christian theology: We’re wrong. Jesus is right. Follow Jesus.

Total depravity, and totally depraved theology.

Various Christians object to my saying “We’re wrong.” They’ll concede we were wrong—but Jesus straightens us out. Now that we have the Holy Spirit, isn’t he correcting us, fixing us, getting the error out of us? Aren’t we getting better? Aren’t we becoming more right?

Sure. But there’s still a buttload of wrongness to overcome.

Y’see, when God originally created humans, we were good. Ge 1.31 Sin undid this. It corrupted us profoundly, warping both us and the world we live on. Instead of being naturally good, we’re naturally self-centered. The self-preservation instinct, which is supposed to simply keep us from giving up and dying, now focuses only on what makes us feel good, all the time—and whatever it takes to get there, even if it means lying, stealing, defrauding, murdering, destroying. True, some of us are gonna balk before going all the way towards sin; we gotta justify it to ourselves first so we still feel good about ourselves. (More self-preservation instinct, y’know.) But all of us are like this. Hence all of us sin.

Christians call this corruption total depravity. Since “depravity” nowadays means “perverted,” people get the wrong idea—“You think every human is a pervert?” No; every human is selfish. Every human looks out for number one. Since some people generously look out for others too, we don’t always recognize their self-centeredness: We don’t realize generosity makes ’em feel good about themselves, or makes ’em justify all the evil they do, or makes ’em think they’ve restored their karmic balance. Most religions do recognize this core selfishness. And some philosophies not only recognize it, they embrace it. Ayn Rand claimed selfishness is good, and many a libertarian has used her thinking to defend their self-worship. Survival of the fittest, you know. It’s the law of nature.

It’s called total depravity because it’s everywhere. Humans aren’t just partially depraved—selfish in some places, selfless in others. Nor did Jesus magically cure us of selfishness when he saved us, much as we might wish he did. On the contrary: He has to command us to love one another. Jn 13.34 ’Cause our thousands of denominations prove we don’t really.

And the Holy Spirit has to grow love in us. And compassion, and self-control. We humans are so bent, the only thing which can unbend us is God.

Provided we truly follow him. Problem is, people don’t bother.

When we first turn to God, we already have some idea of what he’s like. We didn’t come to God with a blank slate: We had our biases and prejudices. “God works like this, not that.” You know.

A lot of these biases aren’t based on God. They’re based on how we wish God is. They’re based on the sort of God we’d like to follow. He likes what we like. He hates what we hate. Really, he’s like the perfect and almighty version of us. But that’s not the real God. It’s imaginary.

Once we buckle down and study the real God, too often those self-centered ideas still pervade our thinking. We always choose an interpretation of God which pays off for us. God tends to still like and hate what we do. If we’re politically conservative, how about that: So’s God! If we’re politically liberal, it just so happens God is too. If we hate the rich, if we don’t approve of homosexuality, if we believe women need to know their place, if we think the needy are victims of society, if we’re furious at sin and lawlessness, or if we wouldn’t want to see anyone go to hell—conveniently enough for each and every Christian, our God, and our churches, think and teach precisely the same things. What good followers we must be!

Hogwash of course. But to be fair, there are people who go to the opposite extreme: They choose to believe God’s their exact opposite. If their knee-jerk reaction is to ignore a panhandler, they figure, “That must be my total depravity. God wants me to be generous to everyone.” So they give to everyone, even though they don’t wanna. And they feel righteous, because they think resisting their flesh is how to automatically deduce God’s will. Thing is, sometimes those impulses aren’t wrong. Yeah, they may be done with wrong motives, or (if we’re lucky) we actually were raised to do the right thing instead of the wrong one. So following God as if every day were Opposite Day is no guarantee we’re following him correctly either.

Okay, so where does that leave us?

Remember, we’re wrong.

Back to the first principle: “We’re wrong. Jesus is right. Follow Jesus.” Personalize it: “I’m wrong. Jesus is right.”

The reason Christians split ourselves into a thousand different denominations is because we don’t think this way. Instead we fight one another. It’s why Christians believe so many very different things about Jesus. It’s why we find Christians in every political party, who figure every “so-called Christian” in the opposition party isn’t really Christian. It’s why we don’t get along, and aren’t unified like Jesus wants. It’s why we don’t follow Jesus to the degree we should. We’re not right. Jesus is right, but we are very, very wrong.

So the first step in the right direction is to admit this. We’re wrong. Make it your mantra: “I’m wrong. Jesus is right.” We aren’t experts on Jesus. If any human being had a valid claim to be an expert on Jesus, it’d be Jesus’s mother, and she didn’t understand what he was up to half the time. Next would come the guys who followed him up and down Israel, taking notes—and they blew it too. His family didn’t get him either. And these folks lived 20 centuries ago. Yet loads of Christians, 20 centuries (and 10 or 11 cultures) removed from these people, who follow him two hours a week instead of all 168 hours, actually have the arrogance to claim we get him. Yeesh.

It’s possible to understand Jesus as well as his first followers eventually did. But this requires two things of us. Humility, of course—knowing we’re wrong—and infinitely more important, the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit is God. Not a part of God, or a lackey of God, or a force of God, but God. The Spirit is as God as God gets. Once we became Christians, the Holy Spirit sealed himself to us, and he’s trying to guide us, comfort us, encourage us, and fix us. We’re wrong, but the Holy Spirit is working to make us right. We just have to stop assuming we already are right, stop fighting the Spirit, and work with him instead of against him.

When we learn truth, the Spirit encourages us to embrace it and make it a part of us. And sometimes we resist him—we don’t like the truth, or find it impossible to believe, or it goes against our politics, or we’re even under some bizarre delusion Christians aren’t allowed to think that way. (Happens a lot.) When that happens, fall back on our mantra: “I’m wrong. Jesus is right.” We need to be more skeptical of ourselves. We’re not infallible: We’re depraved. We’re getting better, but still.

Left to my own devices, I’m selfish, apathetic, looking for the easy way out, looking for the way that gets me the most with the least amount of effort, and looking out for number one. That’s how we humans are. All of us. Christians no exception. If we actually behaved otherwise, do you think our churches would have any of the problems we do? (Other than persecution, of course.) Of course not; we’d act like Jesus wants. But we don’t. And it all comes back to selfishness, to total depravity, to the view, “I’m right. They’re wrong. [Do something biologically disagreeable to] them.”

We have to stop this cycle of arrogant jerk-like Christianity which we see in so many of our fellow Christians—and which they see in us. This starts with humility, the Spirit, and “I’m wrong. Jesus is right.” With that, then we can start looking at theology.

So. Your homework assignment is to memorize that mantra. (I know, “mantra” is a Hindu word. I don’t care. I’m Christianizing it. We get to do that, you know.) Put “I’m wrong. Jesus is right” in your brain. Say it whenever you feel like you know it all. This’ll help us develop the kind of humility God can work with. It triggers growth. So recite it—and grow.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Instead of spiritual warfare… a culture war.

Spiritual warfare is about resisting temptation. It’s about fighting our own self-centeredness, our tendency to produce works of the flesh, and anything which tempts us to choose ungodly, evil behavior. Tempters might be evil spirits, but more often it’s just our own corrupt nature. Regardless, we gotta fight it and follow Jesus.

But to many Christians, spiritual warfare doesn’t look like this at all. It’s about being a “prayer warrior” and praying really hard for things. Because our prayers somehow provide energy to the angels fighting the demons in the clouds above. Or so the Frank Peretti novels tell us.

And to Christianists, spiritual warfare has nothing to do with praying away the demons, nor self-control. Spiritual warfare is solely about fighting Satan and its evil plan.

What’s its evil plan? To take over the world. Didn’t Satan tell Jesus it already ruled the world?

Luke 4.5-8 KWL

5 Taking Jesus up, Satan showed him every kingdom in civilization in a moment’s time.

6 The devil told Jesus, “I’ll give you all these powers and their glory: It’s been surrendered to me.

If I want, I can give it to anyone. 7 So once you worship before me, all will be yours.”

8 In reply Jesus told it, “It’s written you’ll worship your Lord God and serve only him.”

Thing is, Satan’s a dirty liar Jn 8.44 and we can’t trust a thing it tells us, so why should we believe it when it claims to rule the world? Especially since Jesus states he conquered the world, Jn 16.33 and he’s eventually coming back to take possession of it. But meanwhile we run things… and we’ve made a mighty mess of things, and since humans don’t care to take responsibility for our mess, we blame Satan. It wrecked the world; not humans who exploit one another and vote for morons.

Anyway, blaming the devil for everything, and presuming spiritual warfare is about fighting the devil, means logically these Christians think they’re at spiritual war with everything. Seriously, everything. They’re fighting the world—however they define “world.”

In practice, this usually means the things they personally don’t like. Like the opposite political party. Like all the forms of entertainment media they don’t like: Television, movies, music, video games, and certain sections of the internet.

And if they’re bigots, it includes all the people they don’t like. Like foreigners. Coloreds. Rednecks and white trash. The poors. The one-percenters. Queers. Incels. Hippies. Millennials (which they still think means “college students,” ’cause they don’t realize millennials are in their thirties now). Non-Christians. People of other churches, whom they’re pretty sure aren’t real Christians. People who live in liberal enclaves on the coasts, or conservative enclaves in the “flyover states.” Anything “other”—meaning other than them.

However tightly they define their circle, their spiritual warfare consists of fighting everyone else, leaving ’em all alone in the world. It’s just them and Jesus.

Well… Jesus left to join all the people they’re persecuting. But they don’t wanna hear it.

Yep, this is some dark Christian stuff. It’s how Christian terrorists get developed: They think they’re right to even descend to violence in the fight against “evil.” So they build bombs, shoot “bad guys,” and imagine themselves righteous. Hey, didn’t people in the bible kill bad guys? Why not them?

And in so doing, they utterly lose the real spiritual battle. And think they’re victorious as they become less and less like Christ Jesus every day.

Your politics don’t matter.

You may presume I’m writing specifically about people on the Christian Right or Christian Left. Certainly you can think of more examples in the opposition party.

I’m not. I know bigots on both sides. I grew up conservative, so I knew plenty of people who think the entire reason we join God’s kingdom is to become his culture-war foot-soldiers. That’s all they focus on. Meanwhile they make excuses or cover up their own temptations and sins, they don’t develop any fruit of the Spirit, and they don’t rid themselves of their old bitterness, hatred, and anger. Why should they?—they can use ’em to fight the devil!

But in the workplace I’m largely surrounded by progressives, and man do they hate conservatives. Mostly because they’ve got conservative relatives who are jerks, and they imagine all conservatives are like that. (To be fair, many are.) But same as conservative Christians, progressive Christians figure the battle’s with the forces of evil without, not within: They don’t concentrate on overcoming their own selfish impulses, but on political victories, large and small.

So this isn’t a political problem. It’s a human problem. Politics are the distraction. They’re the means by which we figure we can conquer the world… forgetting, ignoring, or even dismissing, the fact Jesus already has conquered the world. (To their minds, he’s simply not conquered it enough. Not to their satisfaction!)

I’ve heard a number of Christians claim politics is the way the devil gets us to miss the point. Ugh… again with the devil. Yeah, I’m entire Satan gets a kick out of the way we self-righteously tear at one another, and enjoys tempting people to join in. But the devil doesn’t have the power to fuel all that rage and bile. That’s humanity. That’s all us. We don’t need a lot of provoking to do what comes, thanks to our fallen nature, naturally. We just need to take our eyes off Jesus.

So don’t.

Our duty is to fight our own sins. Quit being distracted by other people’s sins: Look at your own. Stop getting so angry at their misbehavior that you feel the urge to fight them: Fight your own misbehaviors. Stop putting all your energy into changing the world, and put it into changing yourself. Because until we’re able to conquer our own sins, we’re in no position to tackle the sins of the world. We’re just hypocrites.

Yeah, the sins of the world frustrate me. The misbehavior of my elected government officials outrages me. But what should outrage me is my own misbehavior—the stuff I know better than to do, and you’d think I’d’ve stopped doing it by now! Resisting temptation is a constant fight, and one we can’t let up on. But that’s the battle we must win first. Till we do, we simply contribute to the world’s problems.

Read the whole thing! ➡️