The word χριστός/hristós is a loaded term. Nowadays we just translate it “Christ” and presume it means the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary. First-century Judeans figure it likewise meant Messiah, the king-like-David who’d conquer the Romans and the world and whose kingdom would never end… and we Christians believe that about Jesus too, although we figure all that takes place in his second coming, ’cause it clearly didn’t in his first. (Although he did conquer the Romans all the same.)
Thing is, hristós literally means “anointed one.” And you’re likely aware there are a lot of people nowadays who call themselves, or call their favorite gurus, Spirit-anointed leaders, or teachers, or prophets, or even politicians. People who follow those gurus as if they’re Jesus himself. People who worship those gurus, although they’d never, ever admit it: They claim they only worship Jesus, but y’notice how you’re never, ever allowed to dislike or criticize their gurus. Speak ill of them and their worshipers will call you heretic, or otherwise act as if Satan itself pooped you out.
When I was a kid and read this passage, I noticed how Jesus said these people would “seduce, if it were possible, even the elect.” Mk 13.22 KJV I actually found that hard to fathom. What Christian would be dumb enough to follow anyone other than Christ? But I’ve since lived and learned. All of us have witnessed Christians who let themselves get led astray—and if you’ve never seen any such thing, odds are you’re astray.
But like Jesus himself said, “But take ye heed; behold, I have foretold you all things.” Mk 13.23 KJV He gave us a heads-up. Don’t fall for the frauds! Worship only the actual Anointed One, and if anyone tries to tell you he’s pulled some kind of secret second coming, or is plotting some kind of secret rapture, tell ’em they’re absolutely wrong, and quote ’em these passages.
Mark 13.21-23 KWL
21“Then when anyone tells you, ‘Look here; it’s Messiah!’
‘Look there!’—don’t believe it,
22for fake Messiahs and fake prophets will be lifted up,
and will present signs and wonders,
to lead the chosen people astray, if doable.
23You watch out.
I have foretold you everything.”
Matthew 24.23-28 KWL
23“Then when anyone tells you, ‘Look here; it’s Messiah!’
or ‘There!’—don’t believe it,
24for fake Messiahs and fake prophets will be lifted up,
and will present great signs and wonders
in order to lead even chosen people astray, if doable.
25Look, I have foretold you.
26So when they tell you, ‘Look, he’s in the desert,’
don’t go out!
‘Look, he’s in the private room,’
don’t believe it!
27For just as lightning comes out of the east
and is visible all the way in the west,
thus is the Son of Man’s second coming.
28Wherever the corpse might be,
there the eagles will gather.”
Luke 17.22-24, 37 KWL
22Jesus tells the students, “The days will come
when you will long to see one of the Son of Man’s days,
and will not see it,
23and people will tell you, ‘Look there!’
or ‘Look here!’
Don’t go, nor follow.
24For just as lightning flashes from the sky
and gives light to all under the sky,
thus is the Son of Man in his day.
37 In reply the students told him, “Where, Master?”
Most American Evangelicals are conditioned to think Jesus’s Olivet Discourse is entirely about our future. Not his students’ near future; humanity’s future, specifically our own. It’s a combination of self-centeredness (“the bible’s speaking about me!”) and the fact there’s a whole lot of money to be made, and power to be gained, by keeping your people terrified of a scary future.
But it’s not. And if you don’t believe me, ’cause your churches have been really successful at convincing you otherwise, I recommend you read today’s Luke passage more than once. Really read it. Let it sink in.
Mark 13.17-20 KWL
17“Woe to those who have babies in the womb,
and those who are nursing, in these days!
18Pray lest it happen in the rainy season.
19For these days will be tribulation.
Unlike what’s happened to what God creates,
from the first creature until now,
it may never yet be this bad.
20If the Lord doesn’t shorten the days,
not all flesh will survive—
but because of the chosen whom he selected,
he will shorten the days.”
Matthew 24.19-22 KWL
19“Woe to those who have babies in the womb,
and those who are nursing, in these days!
20Pray lest your flight happen in the rainy season,
nor on Sabbath.
21For then will be great tribulation.
Unlike what’s happened
from the beginning of the world until now,
it may never be this bad.
22If these days aren’t shortened,
not all flesh will survive.
Because of the chosen,
these days will be shortened.”
Luke 21.23-24 KWL
23“Woe to those who have babies in the womb,
and those who are nursing, in these days!
It’ll be great calamity in the land,
and wrath upon the people.
24They will fall by the machete’s blade,
and be put into captivity in every nation.
Jerusalem will be trampled by gentiles
until the gentile era might be full.”
’Cause according to futurist End Times prognosticators, the Olivet Discourse is about a seven-year stretch of great tribulation which takes place just before Jesus’s second coming. It’s not about the Romans invading Israel in the year 70, destroying Jerusalem, killing 2 million Judeans, and scattering the rest of them all over the Roman Empire.
Even though Jesus is obviously talking about the events of the year 70.
Well… it’s obvious to people who know the history of the actual great tribulation. Not so obvious to American Evangelicals who know little to nothing about it—who know that’s how the Jerusalem temple was destroyed, but very little else. To them, this won’t be a great calamity in the land; it’ll be a great calamity all over the earth, like the English Standard Version implies.
Luke 21.23 ESV
“Alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! For there will be great distress upon the earth and wrath against this people.”
True, γῆς/yis can be translated “land” or “earth.” Or “dirt.” It means that kind of earth—the ground below us, not the planet. You want the planet, you’re more apt to use the word κόσμου/kósmu, “world”—although this can also mean all the people of the world, like when Jesus says God so loves the world. Jn 3.16 But you get the point. Translators who choose to turn yis into “earth” typically have an agenda—namely to make us think something’s global when it doesn’t have to be.
So in his Olivet Discourse, Jesus spoke about “the abomination of desolation,” as the KJV calls it: Something—probably something nasty and disgusting—which’ll make it impossible to worship in temple anymore. Something that’d ultimately happen when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70CE, although Jesus didn’t tell his kids specifically when all this stuff would happen—although he indicated it’d happen within their lifetime, and for a few of them, it did.
When that happened, Jesus said, run for the hills. Mk 13.14 Get out of there before you’re overtaken by it. And in the next two verses, he makes it clear he’s not kidding about getting out of there as quickly as possible. You can interpret these verses as hyperbole if you wanna, but I don’t think that’s wise. When you hear the tornado siren, you don’t go digging around for all your favorite photo albums; you get in the basement. Same thing here. Run.
Mark 13.15-16 KWL
15“One on the roof: Don’t come back in!
Never go inside, to take up what’s in the house!
16One who’s gone to the field: Don’t return to what’s behind,
even to take up your clothing.”
Matthew 24.17-18 KWL
17“One on the roof: Don’t come back in
to take up what’s in the house!
18One in the field: Don’t come back
to take up your clothing.”
Luke doesn’t include this warning in its version of the Olivet Discourse, but it does have this Jesus-saying elsewhere in the gospel… specifically when he’s talking about his second coming. That’s most of the reason a lot of Christians confound the Olivet Discourse warning about the destruction of Jerusalem, with the End Times and second coming: They think it’s all the same thing. It’s not. The Luke passage is indeed about the second coming, but the Mark and Matthew passage is about the destruction of Jerusalem. I’ll quote the relevant verse anyway:
Luke 17.31 KWL
“On that day, whoever’s on the roof
and their stuff is in the house:
Don’t come back in to take it up!
And likewise one in the field:
Don’t return to what’s behind!”
In the Olivet Discourse, the warning is to ignore your stuff and run from disaster. In Luke, the warning is to ignore your stuff and run to Jesus. In both cases, you’re not gonna need your stuff! But it’s for whole different reasons, and just because the verses are parallel doesn’t mean we’re to pluck them out of context and claim they’re all about the destruction of Jerusalem. Or the second coming.
6 January is Epiphany, the day which celebrates how Jesus was revealed to the world.
True, the Christmas stories depict that taking place on Christmas Day. With angels and sheep-herders, and frequently magi; with Jesus’s dad fully dressed as if he’s about to travel, either ’cause they’re gonna flee to Egypt really soon, or because he and Mary only arrived minutes ago, ’cause they didn’t know better than to travel when you’re heavily pregnant.
Well technically he was revealed to the world at his circumcision, and when those two prophets identified him as important. But really he was revealed at the beginning of his ministry—at his baptism, where John the baptist identified him as God’s son.
John 1.29-36 The Message
29 The very next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and yelled out, 30 “Here he is, God’s Passover Lamb! He forgives the sins of the world! This is the man I’ve been talking about, ‘the One who comes after me but is really ahead of me.’ 31 I knew nothing about who he was—only this: that my task has been to get Israel ready to recognize him as the God-Revealer. That is why I came here baptizing with water, giving you a good bath and scrubbing sins from your life so you can get a fresh start with God.”
32 John clinched his witness with this: “I watched the Spirit, like a dove flying down out of the sky, making himself at home in him. 33 I repeat, I know nothing about him except this: The One who authorized me to baptize with water told me, ‘The One on whom you see the Spirit come down and stay, this One will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’34 That’s exactly what I saw happen, and I’m telling you, there’s no question about it: This is the Son of God.”
35 The next day John was back at his post with two disciples, who were watching. 36 He looked up, saw Jesus walking nearby, and said, “Here he is, God’s Passover Lamb.”
In eastern churches which still follow the Julian calendar, Epiphany’s gonna wind up on 19 January, and sometimes it’ll be called Theophany.
The third-century Christians began to celebrate Jesus’s baptism in January. Why January? Two theories. One is Jesus’s baptism had to take place when the Jordan was in flood, otherwise there wouldn’t’ve been enough water to immerse him. January’s a good bet.
The other theory is the early churches divided up the gospels into a year’s worth of readings—and if you begin with Mark, you get to the baptism story in the second week of January. So since that’s when they always read the baptism story, stands to reason that’s when they’d celebrate Jesus’s baptism. This theory’s much less plausible: The ancient civic year began on 25 March, not 1 January… and why start with Mark when historically Christians start the gospels with Matthew?
Regardless of why, ancient Christians picked 6 January to celebrate Jesus’s baptism. And since Jesus was also sorta revealed as God incarnate at his annunciation, Epiphany celebrations began to include all his birth stories. Till the early Christians realized Jesus’s birth needed its own celebration. Thus the 12 days before Epiphany evolved into a separate celebration of Christmas.
Yep, that’s how it happened. I know; pagans like to claim we Christians took over all the pagan winter solstice festivals, and shoehorned Jesus’s birthday into that. Didn’t work like that. Any Christian can tell you: We didn’t swipe pagan holidays. We swipe Jewish ones. If they happen to line up with pagan ones (as Jewish equinox and harvest festivals naturally would) it still doesn’t mean we swiped pagan holidays.
Nope, we still don’t know when Jesus was born, or baptized. Does it even matter? We just need a day or two to celebrate. Or 12. And for the longest time Epiphany also lasted several days. Usually eight.
Epiphany also marks the end of Christmastime. Bummer.
In 2018 Trevin Wax wrote “Routine bible reading can change your life.” Another site changed the title to the clickbaity, “Why so many Christians start, but don’t finish a bible reading plan.” ’Cause that’s what it’s about: Why so many Christians start, yet don’t finish… you know.
Got my attention because at the turn of the year, I usually urge folks to start a bible reading plan. I plug mine, but any will do. I encourage people to do it in a month, in part because I’m convinced longer programs are needlessly so, and you’re more likely to give up on them because they’re longer. You gotta rigidly stick to it for so long—and you’re not gonna get as much out of a bible snippet as you will a whole book.
Wax gave another reason Christians quit on these plans, and it’s quite insightful for a lot of reasons. I’ll quote him. (But yeah, I edited out all his capitalizations to keep it consistent with TXAB’s styleguide.)
One reason may be that we have too high of an expectation of what we will feel every day when we read. We know this is God’s word and that he speaks to us through this book, and yet so many times, when we’re reading the assigned portion of scripture for the day, it all feels so, well, ordinary. We read a story, note a couple of interesting things, don’t see how it applies to our lives today, and then move on. By the time we near the end of the first books of the bible, we’ve gone through extensive instructions on how to build the tabernacle, or how the sacrificial system is to be implemented, or a book of Numbers that is aptly titled. We read the daily portion of scripture, put down our pencil or highlighter and wonder, “Why don’t I feel like my life is changing?”
I sympathize with Christians who feel this way. We’re right to approach the bible with anticipation, to expect to hear from God in a powerful and personal way. But the way the bible does its work on our hearts is often not through the lightning bolt, but through the gentle and quiet rhythms of daily submission, of opening up our lives before this open book and asking God to change us. Change doesn’t always happen overnight. Growth doesn’t happen in an instant. Instead, it happens over time, as we eat and drink and exercise. The same is true of scripture reading. Not every meal is at a steakhouse. Not every meal is memorable. Can you remember what you had for dinner, say, two weeks ago? Probably not. But that meal sustained you, didn’t it? In the same way, we come to feast on God’s word, recognizing that it’s the daily rhythm of submitting ourselves to God and bringing our plans and hopes and fears to him that makes the difference.
If you’re the “too long, didn’t read” sort… well first of all, what’re you doing on TXAB? I write yards of articles. But in summary, Wax correctly points out people read bible because we’re hoping it’ll transform us for the better. And it does! But we want it to change us now. Not gradually, not over the course of the year we take to read it, not as an effect of reading and following it for years: Right bloody now. And if we don’t see immediate results, we’re gonna ditch it like we did cardio. Seems the bible’s just another thing that’ll make us sweaty, tired, hungry, achey, and frustrated.
We already know Christians lack the patience to stick with bible reading plans; again, it’s why I encourage short little one-month plans. But like Wax said, some of this impatience comes from what we expected to get out of reading the bible, and what we want—what we really want—are powerful spiritual experiences. We want every daily bible reading to be an epiphany: “Great Thundering Moses, I can’t believe I never realized that before. Why, that upends everything I ever believed. Now I have the secrets of the universe! I… have… the POWER…” and now you’re quoting He-Man instead of bible.
Probably expect to be glowing like Prince Adam… when he tranforms into a guy who looks exactly the same, only shirtless and more tan.
This is why too many Christians read bible: We want secrets. We want revelations. We want visions. We wanna grow a brain full of profound truths which make us wise and infallible, and know God better than the smartest bible scholars. We wanna infallibly know God’s will, and use that knowledge to have the best possible life in the best possible timeline. The bible is our magic lamp, so start rubbing!
Of course none of this is why we oughta read bible, and all of this betrays many of the reasons people think we need to follow Jesus. We’re not following him because we love him and want to grow closer to him. We’re following him because he’s rich and powerful, and whenever he throws us a bone, it’ll be a golden bone.
Whenever I talk to people about fasting, their knee-jerk reaction is “No food? No food? No FOOD? You’re outa your [profane adjective] mind.” After all, this is the United States, where a 20-ounce soda is called a “small.” In this nation, the stomach rules.
This is why so many Christians are quick to redefine the word “fast.” My church, fr’instance, frequently does this 21-day “Daniel fast.” I’ll explain what that is elsewhere; for now I’ll just point out it’s not an actual fast. Nobody’s going without food. They’re going without certain kinds of food. No meat, no sweets. But no hunger pains either.
Fasting, actual fasting, is a hardcore Christian practice. The only things which go into our mouths are air and water. In an “absolute fast” you even skip the water. Now, we need food and water. If we don’t eat, we die. And that’s the point: Push this practice too far and we die. But God is more important than our lives. That’s the declaration we make when we fast: Our lives aren’t as important as God.
Why do we do such a thing? For the same reason Jesus did it, when he went to the desert for the devil to tempt him.Mt 4.1-2, Lk 4.1-2 Fasting makes people spiritually tough. It amplifies our prayer and meditation by a significant factor, which is why it’s a common prayer practice. When we deprive our physical parts, and shift our focus to the spiritual parts, those parts get exercised; they get stronger.
We reject our culture, which teaches us we shouldn’t deprive ourselves of anything. We recognize God, not food, is our source of life. Our minds get better attuned to God’s will. We hear him better, because our bodies physically feel our need for him. We detect spiritual things faster. We discern the difference between good and evil better.
Yeah, fasting does all that. That is, when we’re praying as well as fasting. If you’re fasting but not praying, it’s time wasted.
Don’t get me wrong. Other forms of self-deprivation do it too. Dieting for God, or going without certain beloved things and hobbies, because God’s more important than our desires, will also achieve the same things fasting can. Just not as quickly; not as intensely. The stakes just aren’t as high. Fasting is hardcore, remember? Going without bacon, as hard as that might be for you personally, isn’t life-threatening. (In fact it’s better for your health.) But though a small thing, it’s still a sacrifice, and part of the proper mindset: “God is more important than my palate.”
Yesterday I wrote about resolving to be religious, and how reading one’s bible and attending small groups simply won’t be enough.
Problem is, among American Evangelicals, that’s what we’re taught whenever we talk about getting more religious. “Oh, you wanna get closer to God? Then you need to read your bible and go to church.” And pray, but y’might notice not as many Evangelicals will bring up prayer—partly because they presume you’re already praying for more God; partly because they themselves do the bible thing and the church thing, but not so much the prayer thing. Usually because their prayers are still unidirectional… but that’s a whole other tangent, and best you just read the article on that.
But as you’re fully aware, plenty of Christians already read bible and go to church… for all the good it does ’em. You might already read bible and go to church, and you know firsthand it’s not doing it for you. You know more bible trivia and doctrine, but you want Jesus, and the fan club meetings are fun, but they’re most definitely no backstage pass.
The key, like I said, is obedience. You wanna grow closer to Jesus? Do as he teaches. Don’t just memorize it, then just find excuses for not doing putting it into practice. Do it. Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow him.
That said, you know how Evangelicals say we gotta read bible and go to church? They’re right. Read your bible. And go to church.
Because once you’re actually obeying Jesus, you’re suddenly gonna find bible and church become way more useful and profound. See, bible and church can be good in and of themselves, but if you wanna activate them, you gotta start living the Christian life. It’s like buying a microwave oven and refrigerator, but you never plug them in, and you’ve been using them as storage cabinets. “Why is my food never hot nor cold?” Um… y’know that electricity stuff you’ve been using for the lights?
Too many conservative Evangelicals have been fed the false idea religion is a dirty word—that it means dead religion, where we only go through the motions instead of loving Jesus. So here’s the obligatory paragraph where I remind you: Religion is all the stuff we do to facilitate loving and following Jesus. If loving Jesus isn’t the whole point, it’s bad religion; if following Jesus isn’t happening, stop doing it!
With this in mind, one of a Christian’s resolutions—not only for the new year, but for all time—is we oughta get religious. Or more religious. Where we are isn’t good enough. Nor should we ever think of it as good enough. We must always strive to follow Jesus better.
Yeah, lemme throw in this caveat for the Evangelicals who get all paranoid about works righteousness: I’m not talking about being good enough for salvation. I’m fully aware salvation is by God’s grace; it’s a free gift we don’t earn. The point of being more religious is not, and never should be, so we can rack up more good-karma points so when we stand before Jesus at the End, we can tell him, “See Lord?—I did this, that, and t’other thing. Jewels please.” Frankly this idea of doing good deeds only to earn heavenly rewards, is just a variant of Mammonism and needs to be denounced more often. We don’t practice religion so we can get stuff. We do it for Jesus—we love him and wanna be closer to him, and the only way to do this is by obeying him.
So we need to obey him! And obey him more often. Not just when we remember, “Oh yeah, didn’t Jesus say something about this somewhere in the red letters?” Not only when the pastor brings up a random Jesus verse in a sermon. Not solely when we already want to behave a certain way, but we need a bible verse to support the behavior, so we’re proof-texting a defense. Preferably we obey Jesus all the time.
But obeying Jesus requires self-control. Self-discipline. Which means we gotta develop self-control… which because it’s self-control, means we gotta do it. Won’t just happen on its own.
We gotta get disciplined about how we follow Jesus. We need to practice the things which encourage good fruit and goodness in general. We need to love our neighbors better; certainly better than the apathetic “Well I don’t wish them harm” we practice more often. Way better than the toxic “tough love” bullpucky which too many Christians fall into.
The usual way Christians encourage us to follow Jesus better, is by getting involved in a small group and following a bible-reading plan. As if going to bible study, and reading lots of bible, is gonna trigger goodness. While I’m all for interacting with fellow Christians and reading lots of bible—the better to get familiar with it!—of course it’s not gonna trigger good deeds. Plenty of Christians go to small groups and read bible… and are the same royal dickweeds they’ve always been. Didn’t make ’em better; it only made ’em think, “Well of course I follow Jesus, ’cause I read my bible and go to a bible study.”
Whenever the new year approaches, Christians resolve to read the bible. The entire bible, not just the parts we like best: Genesis to maps, as the old joke goes. (See, when you buy a bible in print, most of them have maps of Israel and the Roman Empire in the back. Yes, explaining the joke makes it less funny. Yes, deliberately making the joke less funny is ironically funny. Yes, this is metahumor. I’ll stop now.)
Christians tend to pick up a bible-reading plan of some sort, and most of the time it goes through the scriptures in a year. Which, I insist, is far too long. I prefer you do it in a month. Yes it’s totally possible; the bible’s a big fat inspired book anthology, but it doesn’t take an entire year to read. What book do you take an entire year to read?—unless you chop it into bite-size bits so small you’re spiritually starving. No wonder so many Christians lose track and lose interest.
Now if a month seems too extreme for you (especially if you don’t read), y’know what you could do: Read the bible at your own speed. Read it till you’re done. However long it takes you to get it done. Might be three months. Maybe two. Then again you might surprise yourself and finish it in one.
That’s where TXAB’s bible-reading plan comes in. It’ll help you read it at whatever speed you’re going.
Because the magi brought Jesus three gifts, Mt 2.11 people presume there were only three magi. We’ve no evidence of that. It seems way more likely there were a lot more magi than three. Three rich foreigners in Jerusalem would’ve caused a minor stir, ’cause rich people came to Jerusalem every day to go to temple. People therefore assume these guys came with massive entourages—dozens of camels per guy, hundreds of servants, as befit an oriental sultan. But again, these weren’t kings; they were magi seeking a king.
The actual king, Herod bar Antipater, wanted to know what this was all about, so he consulted his own wise men—the leaders of the Judean senate. This’d be the head priest, whom he appointed personally: Either Simon bar Boethus, Herod’s brother-in-law, who died that year; or Matthias bar Theophilus, who only served a year before Herod replaced him with Simon’s brother Joazar. The priests, whose field of expertise was the temple, not the Law, brought scribes with them.
Matthew 2.3-6 KWL
3 Hearing this agitates King Herod,
and all Jerusalem with him.
4 Gathering all the people’s head priests and scribes,
Herod is asking them, “Where’s Messiah born?”
5 They tell Herod, “In Bethlehem, Judea,
for this was written by the prophet:
6 ‘You, Bethlehem, land of Judah,
are in no way the least of Judah’s rulers.
For a leader will come from you
who will shepherd my people Israel.’ ” Mi 5.2
For centuries, Pharisees had been collecting bible passages which they considered Messianic prophecies, which they believed foretold a great king who’d take over Israel, conquer the world, and inaugurate God’s kingdom. True, some of these “prophecies” were great big stretches. This one, which comes from Micah, isn’t really a stretch. Yeah, there are gonna be people who insist Micah was really talking about King David ben Jesse, who was also born in Bethlehem; that was the leader—a literal shepherd!—who eventually shepherded Israel. But no, Micah wasn’t speaking of David. He was speaking of a king like David, who’d rule till the end of the world. Mc 5.4 A much greater king.
Pharisees believed in a coming Messiah, but Sadducees didn’t—and the head priest, his family, and the chief priests who worked under him, were almost entirely Sadducee. But they weren’t unaware of what Pharisees believed, so when Herod asked ’em about Messiah, they could easily tell him what the Pharisees claimed: “Oh, he’s gonna be born in the next town over. In Bethlehem.”
