The Science of Things Divine

A gif I'm sure i'll be using often in the future

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 20:32:16 -0800

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 15:00:19 -0800

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head:
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men.”

Till, ringing singing, on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime,
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Gay Pride

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 11:38:10 -0700

It is rather fitting that I am updating my blog this weekend. Yesterday was the gay pride parade in San Francisco and I spent a lot of the week digesting a new book I just finished reading. The book is called What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality. It was a refreshing read because it reinforced my own personal beliefs on the subject. Essentially, it states that the Bible is neutral on the topic of homosexuality, despite a small handful of texts that have been used to condemn it. It was written by Daniel Helminiak, a Catholic priest, who does not present original research on the topic but rather organizes and presents the latest research by the leading scholars on the subject.

Personally, I feel very strongly about this issue. It sometimes surprises me that I have such passionate feelings about it, especially because I’m not gay myself. There are reasons for it, but I won’t go into them now. But whatever the reason, I cannot stand the way that the LGBT community has been judged, bullied, condemned, and ostracized by the Christian church. I think books like this need to be read and discussed by people on both sides of the issue. Recently I went to a Christian internet forum and I was shocked to find that they had banned users from talking about homosexuality. What a horrible thing to do. How will this issue ever be resolved if we bury our heads in the sand and refuse to discuss and debate it? I like the way Helminiak puts it, “Indeed, when conventions are misguided, unreasonable, or oppressive, they ought to be changed, and change in these matters often entails heated debate and outright conflict.”

I don’t really want to go into all the specifics of the arguments, but I would definitely recommend this book to people on either side of the issue. I realize that where I stand on this issue is not where most of the Christian community seems to stand. It upsets me so much sometimes that I am tempted to distance myself from those who disagree with me. But I know that is the wrong move. I am committed to continuing and advancing the debate. I also want to send out the message to the LGBT community that the Bible is certainly not against them.

I’m considering piercing my eyebrow again. I had one in...

Sun, 13 May 2012 11:28:25 -0700

I’m considering piercing my eyebrow again. I had one in college for awhile but I took it out. Salander is strengthening my resolve to get another one. Question: should I pierce my eyebrow?

Reading

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 09:33:00 -0700

I’ve read quite a bit since my last post, not all of it theological in nature. I did finish N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God and I thought it was fantastic. It taught me much more than I could hope for on the subject, but I didn’t find it to difficult to access. Wright is a really gifted writer. I also started and finished another book by Wright called Paul: In Fresh Perspective. I started reading this earlier and found it way too dense for me, but after reading Wright’s other massive book, it wasn’t so difficult.

So now on to the secular reading I’ve been doing. On a friend’s recommendation I read The Hunger Games trilogy. I was hooked on those but finished in about a week. I definitely think the first one was the best and was disappointed that the film couldn’t do as well with characterization as the book did. The second and third books were entertaining, but didn’t move me emotionally like the first one did. I also read 1984, finally. I figured I should since it is my birth year and it was on sale at Target. That was a much much better dystopia than The Hunger Games and it genuinely freaked me out.

From there I went on to read The Millennium Trilogy. This came about when some friends of mine were talking about The Hunger Games and how disturbing the premise is. One of my friends said that The Millennium Trilogy was much more disturbing. This got my attention. For some reason, maybe it’s my inner hipster, I am really skeptical of things that are extremely popular. So I was completely uninterested in all the fuss about The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and the other books. I had no clue what it was about, I just wrote it off because I felt that too many people liked it. But, as soon as I found out it was really disturbing I immediately wanted to read it. Perhaps I should be concerned about that.

After devoting much of my spring break and a few days after completely engrossed in the books I have developed quite an unhealthy obsession with them, particularly with Lisbeth Salander. The fact that one of my favorite directors, David Fincher, directed the American version of the film should have perked my interest in the trilogy much sooner. But although I’m late to the party, I’m making up for it now. I loved the film and I thought Rooney Mara was absolutely perfect in it. I wouldn’t change a single thing about her character. I wish that I owned every article of clothing and jewelry that she wears in the film. I’ve seen the Swedish version of all three books as well and I loved Noomi Rapace’s Lisbeth too. I have to give a slight edge to Rooney’s Salander and overall I felt that the American film was much better.

So my secular readings have not had anything to do with theology but both trilogies have been really enjoyable reads for me. It was quite refreshing to read books with such strong female protagonists. I find those to be pretty rare. I can see the inherent problems with my idolization of Lisbeth Salander. My aim to live my life more like Christ is still priority for me. But there is something about her that spoke deeply to me and made me identify with her. I certainly do not want to model my life on a philosophy based on revenge and evil expelling evil. Even in the books, I don’t think those decisions took the character to good places, they tended to just make things much worse. But it is nice that so many people love a female character who is androgynous, introverted, socially awkward, has trouble showing emotion, and struggles to make friends except with people on the internet. I guess it makes me feel less freakish.

Plus I really really love her clothes.

Christian Meme

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 12:52:00 -0800

Christian Meme:

Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

-Melissa

Resurrection

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:04:17 -0800

The other day I said that I would post about what I’m currently reading, so I’m sticking to that today. As I mentioned, I’ve been reading this book:

It’s the second book by Wright that I’ve read. The other was called Simply Christian and was a much quicker and easier read than this one. This book is serious business. I’ve been reading it on the Kindle app on my iPad and I’m on page 294 of 738. And it is not a quick read, it is quite dense. But I’m loving it so far.

First, let me clear up the terminology so that people don’t think I’m talking about this:

Wright offers many definitions of resurrection, including “new life after a period of being dead” and he often refers to it as “life after life after death.” He also talks about there being a continuity between the life before and the life after death so that people retained (for the most part) the earlier life they had. So much for the zombie idea unless someone regularly went around eating human flesh before they died too.

In this book, Wright begins by talking about the Pagan beliefs about resurrection, mostly focusing on Homer and Plato. He then talks about the Jewish beliefs on resurrection, then the early Christian beliefs. Right now, I’m right in the middle of his treatment of Paul’s views on resurrection. He has shown thus far that Pagans outright rejected the idea of resurrection and the Jewish people in the second temple era (i.e. 516 BCE to 70 CE) had varied beliefs about it. Paul shares some beliefs about resurrection with the Pharisees (the Jewish sect that he was once a member of) but he looked at it differently since he believed in Jesus’ resurrection.

My own views of resurrection have had a somewhat varied belief as well throughout my life. For most of my life I wasn’t a very serious Christian. I didn’t disbelieve in it, I just didn’t really care much about it. I was essentially a Christian agnostic. I was also indoctrinated with a post-Enlightenment (Age of Reason) worldview that made it very difficult to accept miracles. I was glad to embrace a more liberal theology that deemed that you did not need to believe that the bodily resurrection of Jesus literally happened. I thought it was just fine to think that his “spirit” or “soul” or whatever had been raised, but of course not his physical body; that would be impossible.

So what’s the big deal? Does it matter if Jesus was literally raised from the dead? Of course it does! In short, if Jesus was not resurrected, Christianity would be false. That is how much it matters. Wright argues that it is the foundation for all of Paul’s beliefs. Without it, you can prove Christianity itself to be wrong (which may excite some of my atheist friends).

Thankfully, my recent interest in learning about who Jesus really was and is caused me to abandon the idea of Jesus not literally undergoing resurrection. I now believe that Jesus was physically raised from the dead and those who are his true followers will also be resurrected in the future, but this has yet to happen. All this I accepted as true before I started this book.

What this book is doing for me is giving me a more full and complete picture of early Christian beliefs on resurrection in contrast to the prevailing beliefs of the time. It is also teaching me quite a bit about Paul, a person I have been fascinated with recently. Before I undertook any serious attempt to study the Bible, one of the only things I knew about Paul was that he was sexist (my view on this has changed as well, but that’s another story). That stopped me from wanting anything more to do with him. But after I read Antony’s Flew’s book There Is a God and he said that Paul was a “first rate philosopher” I thought I better give him another chance. When I read his letters there were parts I loved, but mostly there was a lot that puzzled me. Wright is giving me new insights on Paul I would never have discovered otherwise.

The most amazing insight I’m picking up from Wright’s book is about Paul’s use of resurrection as a metaphor and as a literal reality. He does this brilliantly to create an overlap between this interim period after Christ’s resurrection and before the time of the future resurrection of all believers (also called the Second Coming of Christ). He is saying that all believers take part in the death and resurrection of Jesus on the metaphorical level through baptism. Our symbolic death is a death to the power of sin and our symbolic life is that of a new creation as a follower of Christ (hence why many Christians refer to their conversion as being “born again” to symbolize the new life). Yet this is metaphorical because we are still going to literally die someday because our physical bodies are corruptible.

The second sense of resurrection that Paul talks about is the future resurrection of the bodies of the believers. At that time, the new creation will literally be formed by the creator God and with it a new body that cannot ever decay (again, so much for the zombie apocalypse). The amazing part is how he bridges together these two. For Paul, our current existence should already be anticipating the future events of resurrection. His metaphor for this is a preparation for the dawn, even though it is still night. The metaphorical sense of resurrection should instill in us the behavioral changes that will carry through to the future resurrection era. The icing on the cake for me was the way this was used to parallel the exodus story in the Old Testament. I love it when things come full circle like that. Makes my little OCD side so content.

I’m sure I’ve not done this massive book any justice in my little post, and I hope I haven’t misunderstood Wright’s points too much. But I will carry on reading and if I have some other thoughts I might come back and post them.

-Melissa

Update

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 09:46:04 -0800

Well, I’m back after a pretty long hiatus. Since my last post I’ve moved to a new city almost 400 miles away and started a brand new job (my first ever full time salaried employment, by the way) so I’m chock full of good excuses for why I haven’t been blogging. I thought I’d give a quick update on my progress on “Trying to think straight about who God is.”

In brief, since my last post I’ve read 12 books about theology, 4 of them by my favorite author, C.S. Lewis, and 5 of them covering my favorite topic, apologetics. So I have plenty to share about what I’ve been learning. I also finished reading the One Year Bible and I was very proud of the fact that I didn’t get more than a couple of days behind throughout the year. However, I’m not proud of the fact that at the end I didn’t do as well at studying and analyzing the texts as I did at the beginning. Honestly, I reached a point where I just wanted to get through it. I don’t blame the books themselves, it had more to do with my own attitude and perception. Basically, there were just other things I would rather be doing, so I got through it as fast as possible. Clearly, I have a long way to go in my discipline and maturity in my faith.

So now what? I would like to get back to blogging and spending more time studying the parts of the Bible that I sort of breezed through the first time. I’d like to use this blog as an outlet for sharing the new things I’m reading. I’m currently reading N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God which is an incredibly thorough treatment of resurrection and early Christian beliefs. I’d also like to share my experiences in my continued journey of trying to grow as a disciple of Jesus. But for now, I’ll just leave this as a somewhat quick update and overview of what I’d like to do from here.

-Melissa

Promo to A&E’s upcoming series of Intervention....

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 12:45:29 -0700

Promo to A&E’s upcoming series of Intervention. It’s a short clip but it has 2 examples of the what I was talking about in my earlier post:

“You’re going to die! You don’t have tomorrow anymore!”

“If we don’t do something drastic, she’s not gonna live.”

Is the Old Testament God Vengeful?

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 09:39:43 -0700

I originally started this blog to share my daily thoughts as I made my way through the One Year Bible. I struggled to keep up with the blogging, but I have continued to do the readings each day. Today, I wanted to take some time to share a bit of insight that hit me this morning as I was reading 1 Kings.

One of the main reasons I wanted to read the Bible in its entirety was to see for myself what was in it, especially in the Old Testament. I came to it with many preconceived notions that I was hoping would be clarified through study. One of the main ones involved the character of God in the Old Testament. I have heard many claim, both believers and non-believers, that the God of the Old Testament is vengeful and is constantly doling out punishments on people. To me it seems that this has become common knowledge and many of the challenges to this that I have heard from Christians still leaves me wondering. How could the same God that has this kind of vengeful reputation in the Old Testament be the same God that Jesus followed in the Gospels?

Today, I had a bit of insight. Now, taken completely out of context, how does this sound?

“I have bad news for you. Give your husband, Jeroboam, this message from the Lord, the God of Israel: ‘I promoted you from the ranks of the common people and made you ruler over my people Israel. I ripped the kingdom away from the family of David and gave it to you. But you have not been like my servant David, who obeyed my commands and followed me with all his heart and always did whatever I wanted. You have done more evil than all who lived before you. You have made other gods for yourself and have made me furious with your gold calves. And since you have turned your back on me, I will bring disaster on your dynasty and will destroy every one of your male descendants, slave and free alike, anywhere in Israel. I will burn up your royal dynasty as one burns up trash until it is all gone. The members of Jeroboam’s family who die in the city will be eaten by dogs, and those who die in the field will be eaten by vultures. I, the Lord, have spoken.’” 1 Kings 14:6-11

Sounds pretty vengeful, and it really struck me yesterday when I read it. I kept mulling it over in my mind and was unable to see how this wasn’t God exacting his vengeance on Jeroboam for his sins against God. However, today I read about the fate of Jeroboam and his descendants, and now it makes much more sense. Here is what happened:

“Nadab son of Jeroboam began to rule over Israel in the second year of King Asa’s reign in Judah. He reigned in Israel two years. But he did what was evil in the Lord’s sight and followed the example of his father, continuing the sins that Jeroboam had led Israel to commit.

Then Baasha son of Ahijah, from the tribe of Issachar, plotted against Nadab and assassinated him while he and the Israelite army were laying siege to the Philistine town of Gibbethon. Baasha killed Nadab in the third year of King Asa’s reign in Judah, and he became the next king of Israel.

He immediately slaughtered all the descendants of King Jeroboam, so that not one of the royal family was left, just as the Lord had promised concerning Jeroboam by the prophet Ahijah from Shiloh. This was done because Jeroboam had provoked the anger of the Lord, the God of Israel, by the sins he had committed and the sins he had led Israel to commit.” 1 Kings 15:25-30

Now, the best way for me to explain why I do not think God was being vengeful is with an analogy. One of my favorite television shows is Intervention on A&E. If you are not familiar with it, it is a reality program about addicts whose families and loved ones plan an intervention for them in which they lovingly plead with the addict to seek treatment to cure their addiction. Usually, the most heart wrenching moments on the show are when parents are pleading with their children, whom they clearly love, to get help.

Often, the parents will try to appeal to their children during the intervention by saying something like, “If you don’t get help now, soon you will be dead.” Would anyone interpret that as a threat? Does anyone hear the parent of an addict say something like this and think they should be arrested because they must be planning to kill their child? Of course not! Yet this is exactly the kind of plea that God was making through his prophet Ahijah to Jeroboam in the first passage I quoted. You would be mistaken to interpret this as God saying to him “You shape up or else I will punish you!” which is how we would interpret a vengeful God.

Instead, God is the parent of a drug addict. God loved Jeroboam and he sent a prophet as an intervention. He did not coerce him, he ultimately let Jeroboam decide for himself if he would accept treatment for his addiction or not. Jeroboam chose not to, even after his own son died, and his addiction was passed on to his other son, the next king. Since God is not an enabler, he could not make good on the promise he made to many of his followers since Abraham in securing Jeroboam’s family line. If treatment is refused, there are consequences. But God did not destroy the descendents of Jeroboam, Baasha did. Jeroboam was merely left to his own devices and left to the mercy of the world, which at the time was certainly not a merciful place.

If a drug addict who refuses treatment ultimately dies of a drug overdose, that is a logical conclusion. Few people would argue that this was not a likely result of that kind of risky behavior. The fate of Jeroboam was just as likely. I’ve been watching Game of Thrones on HBO and I’m seeing many parallels here. In that show, as in this book, there are many people who are fighting over the right to be the king. And, in order to secure your rightful place as king, it is necessary for you to destroy every relative of the previous king since that is the way power was transferred at that time. So it is a likely conclusion that Nadab and the descendents of Jeroboam would meet this fate. It’s one of the risks of being king.

David was not immune from this risk either, even though he was faithful to God. Before his reign he faced many attacks from the previous king, Saul. During his reign, his own son led a rebellion against him. However, the difference between David and Jeroboam is that David was in recovery. He was still an addict, his actions toward Bathsheba and Uriah are proof of that (see 2 Samuel 11:1-17). But, he accepted God’s gift of treatment for his addictions. As a result, God lived up to his end of the bargain by securing David’s family line (which is a good thing since it is the line of Jesus!).

As far as God’s anger, the way I see it, God has anger the same way that the parent of an addict has anger. Both the parent and God deeply love their child and they deeply detest the addiction that is ravaging them and sending them closer and closer to death and despair. It is because God loves us that he gets angry. He does not get angry at us because something we have done has damaged his ego or vanity. He gets angry at our addiction behaviors and our refusal of treatment because he knows how much they will hurt us. Like any good parent, he wants what is best for us and it is agonizing for him to see us in pain and suffering. That is why he is angry. God’s anger burns with love not vengeance.

-Melissa

From There is a God to The Divine Conspiracy

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 13:59:05 -0700

Hello again. I just read back my previous posting from April. Since then, I’ve continued to search for answers and I wanted to take a moment to share where my search has taken me up to this point.

After posting my previous entry, I read this book:

And excerpts from this book:

Both satisfied for me a love for apologetics (which wikipedia says means, “the discipline of defending a position (usually religious) through the systematic use of reason.”). I like to read arguments, both for and against theism and these books helped fuel that passion for me. The former was quite an easy read as it included many beliefs that I share. The latter was more challenging. I didn’t read it all, in fact I read very little of it.

The first thing I read was the introduction by Hitchens. I also read an article by Shelley because a friend of mine recommended him to me awhile ago and I’ve been meaning to read him. Finally, I read an excerpt of The God Delusion and another article by Richard Dawkins. What struck me when I compared the contemporary works to Shelley is that they have a totally different tone. Both are arguing their cases passionately, but Shelley does so in a much more respectful and dignified way. The others, however, have a much more argumentative and aggressive tone. Now, I think it would be unfair to cast blame solely on Hitchens and Dawkins for this. I don’t think they are entirely to blame for this. To me, this seems to be the trend of today. Just look at what any political pundit or blogger, or even film, television, and music critics write. Or perhaps, if you dare, take a look at the comments that people anonymously post to just about anything that you can have an opinion about. We seem as a culture to be extremely argumentative lately. It was refreshing, however, to read something from a time when this wasn’t the case.

Flew’s book led me to place a library hold on this book:

In the appendix of Flew’s book, there was an excellent piece written by Wright so I naturally wanted to read more of his writing.

While I was waiting for the hold to come through (all the way from Pacific Palisades, I soon discovered), I looked around my bookshelves for another book to read. Fortunately for me, my husband went to seminary for awhile and my father-in-law is a Methodist pastor. So we have many great books about the topics I am most interested in right now. One book stood out to me so I picked it up:

The title sounded appealing and the excerpt from the foreword on the back cover sold me on it. I went into reading this hoping that I would get some more fuel to add to my apologetics passion, but I got a lot more than I bargained for.

I think the best way to put would be to say that I underwent a paradigm shift.

In my quest for answers, and reading back just now my thoughts from several weeks ago, this book provided me, by far, with exactly what I was looking for, but that I didn’t even know I was looking for. I’m not sure if that makes sense, but that’s what happened. Essentially what it did was change my entire outlook on Jesus, Christianity, and my life itself.

Now, I don’t want to make it seem like this is the most important book in the world or that if you read it then your life will be changed. I’m sure that if I would have read this book at any other time in my life, I probably would not have thought much of it. It is just the right book for me at the right time.

So what is this book about then? I’ve built it up so much at this point that I’ve probably stirred some curiosity about it. Just to clarify, the author is clear at many times in his writing, this book does not contain new ideas. It doesn’t have anything that was not found and supported by the writings in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. But what it has done for me, is to explain Jesus and his mission in a way that clears up misconceptions (and there are many) and gives practical steps for achieving a place for me in his mission.

So what is the divine conspiracy? The divine conspiracy is Jesus’ plan to overcome evil in this world by using goodness. Considerable attention is given to Jesus’ gospel message (i.e. what is the good news that he came to share). Now, I operated under some misconceptions about this message before reading this. I thought the good news had to do with Jesus saving us from sin so that we don’t have to be punished by God and we can get to go to heaven. And heaven, to me, was some destination that we can go to after we die.

I was way off.

Jesus’ good news is that the Kingdom of Heaven is here now!

Mind = blown

The Kingdom of Heaven, it seems, is not an afterlife, it’s a place we can be in right now. Ever since I grasped this I feel kind of silly because it is so obvious when you read anything Jesus said in the gospels (the first 4 books of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, that give the account of Jesus’ life and teachings). Although, I still see the misconception rather clearly when I look to our culture as a whole. I even see many Christians who do not see this.

So where does this leave me? Well, after reading the entire book and giving it a considerable amount of time and thought, I was led to make a significant decision. I have decided to be a disciple of Jesus. This is different from my decision to be a Christian, a decision I made about 13 years ago. This decision is to go much beyond accepting Jesus as a savior. It is to take him on as a mentor and teacher. It is to try and live my life the way Jesus would live it if he were me. This is no easy task and I did not come to this decision lightly. I have to go all in, hold nothing back.

Of course, I am still in the infant stages of this decision. It was only one week ago that I made it. I am very much still a creature of my 26 years of habits. To break those is going to take discipline and help, not just from God, but from those around me. I appreciate so much the help that I’ve already received. Bryan, my husband, has done so much and I know he will continue to do more. He’s been so great at being patient with me while I keep insisting on having deep theological conversations, sometimes to the point of irrational crying on my part, when he’s tired and drained after getting home from work.

Also, I am grateful for the help of Dennis Wadley, a pastor from a church I used to attend. When I emailed him about this decision for discipleship he was so supportive and provided me with some great resources to help on my journey.

I have a tendency to try and do everything on my own and it’s really difficult for me to ask for help. But I want to take the time to ask anyone who can or is willing to help me to do so. This is not an easy thing for me, and I feel really strange asking, but I know I can’t be alone in this. Please help in any way you can. Even if it’s just a kind word or an encouragement, I’ll take whatever I can get.

-Melissa

What I Think it Means to be a Good Christian.

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 11:33:26 -0700

I decided to start this blog thing up again, but I wanted to re-tool it a bit. Yesterday I read this article from my comedy hero, Ricky Gervais. While I love the work of this funny man, I am in deep disagreement with him about theology. For anyone who is not aware, he is an outspoken atheist. Since it is near the Easter holiday, he has written an article about Christianity where he claims that he is a better Christian than most. Of course it is tongue in cheek, since he is a self-proclaimed atheist. But it made me think about the perceptions of Christianity in the secular world and I thought I would take a minute to offer my own take on what makes someone a good Christian.

Now, of course, I am no authority on this subject. I have not studied theology; I have no degree from a seminary and no experience in ministry. To borrow a term from Philip Yancey, I am a pilgrim. I am a follower of Christ who is searching out my own answers to the deeper questions of life. Ok, just wanted to get that disclaimer out of the way, and if anyone can help guide me in where I may have mixed something up, please do so.

To me, understanding what makes a good Christian has to go back to what Jesus said and did. He often discussed the Ten Commandments. In fact, in Mark’s gospel, a wealthy man approached Jesus and asked him how he could earn a place in heaven. Here is the text:

17 As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
18 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’”
20 “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”
21 Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
22 At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.

The first time I encountered this passage and tried to study it closely it confused me. Why did Jesus give this man such a difficult task? Is that what we are all required to do? And why did Jesus leave out the first 4 commandments? When I read Ricky’s article, this passage immediately popped up in my mind. Along with it came all of my confusion over its meaning. So I searched out some answers.

In my search I encountered this website. It offers an excellent study of the passage in a way that I had never thought about before, but makes perfect sense and really helps to answer my questions. To quote some key portions, here is what it says:

“Jesus was not giving the rich man a different way to salvation than relationship with Him, but rather He was demonstrating the futility of attempts to find an alternative to the truth.”

“Directly before this encounter we see a vast difference in attitude toward Jesus: the innocence of children. Jesus rebuked His disciples for turning the children away, and He then used them as an example of who can enter the Kingdom of God. Children are completely dependent. That seems to be a major characteristic Jesus was conveying here. The rich man, however, was independent. He did not view his riches as gifts from God but as his own and as also his foremost priority. He depended on his abilities, works and possessions for all he needed.”

“The rich man asked the wrong question-a question of self-reliance proceeding from a works-based belief system. The same wrong question that the rich man asked was the question Jesus answered.”

“The man arrogantly believed in his own personal righteousness. So, Jesus followed the arrogant statement of the rich man with another command: to sacrifice all his earthly belongings. In doing so, Jesus was not adding to or taking away from the real plan of salvation. He was not saying that in order to inherit eternal life, the rich man would actually have to give away everything he owned. Rather, he was once again responding to the wrong question that was asked him.”

To me this seemed to have some similarities to Gervais’ article. It is certainly not uncommon for people to feel that Christianity is a works based religious system, that is how this man views it and it is how Gervais views it. As far as the question I had about the first commandments being excluded from Jesus’ list, I want to take a minute to explain what I feel the first 4 commandments mean.

As I have continued to make my way through the One Year Bible, I have also been reading some commentaries to help me understand some of the more difficult passages. In one commentary, I learned of the different levels of the Ten Commandments. I also heard an excellent sermon in church about these levels as well. The way my pastor put it, the first 4 commandments (or 3, depending on how they are divided) are about our relationship with God or our duty to God. The final six commandments are about our duties to ourselves and other people.

So Jesus deliberately left off the commandments about duty to God when addressing this rich man. Why? I think he left them off to give the man a hint about where he was going wrong. It would have been interesting if the man had asked Jesus why he did not mention those commandments, but he didn’t get it, obviously. Jesus could see that this man’s relationship and duty to God was totally wrong, because, as the study I quoted earlier suggested, the man was too self-reliant and did not have enough dependence on God.

This takes me back to Gervais. He also has asserted that he follows all of the first four commandments that refer to a relationship with God. Now how can that be true of a self-proclaimed atheist? At this point, I wanted to get some other perspectives on what these commandments actually meant.

Martin Luther’s Small Catechism (read it here) has a lovely and simple description of each commandment. Here is what he says about the first commandment:

“The First Commandment.
Thou shalt have no other gods.
What does this mean?—Answer.
We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.”

By that meaning, Gervais is certainly not following the commandment. How could he possibly love fear and trust an entity that he doesn’t believe exists?

As far as the second commandment, Gervais has taken a very literal approach to it. I used to do this as well when I was a child. I read that commandment and thought, “Hey, that’s an easy one. Why would anyone break that one?” However, I have since learned the spirit of this law and the way it is applied in the modern age where we do not often have pagan idols around to tempt us. The nature of this commandment has to do with objects that divert our attention from fully worshipping and honoring God. If we were re-wording this commandment in today’s language we might replace false gods and idols with iPhones and Xboxes. I can’t say for certain where Gervais stands on this, but I’d say he doesn’t focus much of his attention at all on God since, as I have said earlier, he doesn’t believe in his existence.

Now, for the third commandment, Gervais has interpreted it in a way that I have never heard used before. I can’t comment on whether it is accurate or not, as I said before, I’m no expert on the Pentateuch. However, I have heard an interpretation that considers the denial of God’s existence to be taking the Lord’s name in vain. Sorry Ricky, I know you are guilty of that one.

For the fourth commandment, I have to go back to Martin Luther for a good, brief explanation:

“Thou shalt sanctify the holy-day.
What does this mean?—Answer.
We should fear and love God that we may not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred, and gladly hear and learn it.”

Like Gervais, as a child I also thought that this command merely meant that we get a nice little holiday each week; that the only requirement was not to do any manual labor or other work. But that is not the right interpretation, and I have heard countless times the meaning that Martin Luther has succinctly stated. The Sabbath day should be HOLY, meaning that it should be spent in meditation on the Word (the Bible) and worship to God. I would be very surprised indeed if Gervais spent one day each week doing these activities.

Don’t get me wrong; I get that Gervais is trying to poke fun at Christians by saying that the rules are arbitrary and incomplete. I just think he is playing a bit fast and loose with his interpretations and he is not recognizing the spirit of the laws, only the literal letter of the laws. He is then trying to use his own interpretations to try and make a point about the Bible being inconsistent or wrong, and I do not think that is fair. Sure, if you pretend the commandments mean whatever you want them to, then you can make that point. But that is not their true meaning. Getting to their truth requires you to look deeper at them, beyond the letter of the law to the spirit behind them. Gervais may not feel that following these commands can make you a better person, and perhaps he is right if you look at them on the surface level and not to their deeper spiritual meanings.

To understand more about what Jesus thinks about the spirit behind the Ten Commandments, I think of the Sermon on the Mount. This is a great passage that clearly lays out Christian ethics. I wonder how many people have actually read this sermon in detail. If you’re reading this and you haven’t yet read all of the Sermon on the Mount, take a moment to read it for yourself. I’ll even link to it for you here.

Controversial, isn’t it? Take the 6th Commandment for example, the one forbidding murder; another easy one for us to tick off, right? Not according to what Jesus said. He said you are guilty of breaking this merely by getting angry with another person. Or how about the 7th commandment forbidding adultery, another one to tick off, right? Not if you look at a woman (or man in my case) with lust in your heart. Wow, that’s pretty extreme.

But Jesus was making a point in the Sermon on the Mount about the spirit of the law behind the Ten Commandments. He points out early on “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” He also charges us to go further (i.e. to look deeper at the law) than the Pharisees and teachers of the law. Pharisees were legalistic. They interpreted the 4th commandment so strictly that they admonished Jesus’ disciples for picking a few heads of grain on the Sabbath, citing that they were “working.” So Jesus wants us to be more righteous than they are, by not following just the letter of the law, but the underlying spirit.

And what is the spirit of the 6th and 7th commandments? As I said earlier, they refer to our duties to our fellow human beings. Sure, they say not to murder or commit adultery but where do those crimes begin? They begin with thoughts and planning. Jesus is trying to help us by getting us to stop those behaviors before they can ever become actions. It’s brilliant, really. And I firmly believe that to live up to this would make someone a better person.

I know I rambled on a lot here, and I doubt anyone read all of this, but I just want to sum it up a bit. So what makes someone a good Christian? Well, it’s a bit of a loaded question. I’m sure it’s not by being the one who follows the most rules. There are countless New Testament passages that negate that notion. However, remember what’s important and what separates Christianity from all of the other religions. Ephesians 2:8-9 spells it out pretty well, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” Now, Gervais and many others may not like this idea that faith in Jesus as your savior is the only way will get you access to heaven, but that is what it means to be a Christian.

I know that a childlike dependence on God is critical as well as an acknowledgement that you cannot ever do enough to earn your salvation; the debt is just much too high. Fortunately, grace comes in the form of a mediator, Jesus Christ, who helps you cancel the debt and can make you the person you should be.

Gervais is rather critical of Christians based on a notion he has of what it means to be a good Christian. But he is wrong. He is wrong about what makes a Christian a Christian. Following rules and doing good works are good things, but they are not what is crucial to being a good Christian. There is something more important that lies as a basis to Christianity; something that, if we possessed enough of it, would help us to inherently do good works and be better people.

Therefore, he is not wrong that we have fallen short as Christians (I am sure to include myself in this, because I am just as guilty as any other Christian) but he has cited the wrong reason. We have failed because we think we don’t need God. We think we can follow the rules on our own and, if we can’t, we can just make it seem like the ones we do follow are the important bits and the ones we don’t are not important. It’s no wonder the secular world is confused by this. But the reason we are doing this is not because the religion is flawed; it is because we are flawed. We are absolutely incapable of meeting the Christian standard of ethics by ourselves. That much I know is true. Yet we keep trying to do it anyways. What we need in Christianity today is not more rules and regulations. We need more dependence on God. We need to be completely broken down. We need forty years in a desert relying only on God for our basic needs.

Quick Update

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 11:21:48 -0800

So, I’ve fallen off the wagon a bit lately as you may have noticed. Posting every single day got to be a bit overwhelming for me. I am still reading everyday, despite having a nasty viral infection and work piling up by the day. So, starting this week I think I’ll begin to do a weekly post to discuss the entire week’s readings. Check back later to see how Leviticus has been going thus far.

Days 44 and 45

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 10:49:36 -0800

Read here and here.

Exodus 35:10-38:31

More details, this time in the building of the Tabernacle. I like that the craftsmen came from the tribe of Judah, the genetic line of Jesus. It is also significant that they took only as much riches from the people that they needed to build it to the right specifications. They were not tempted to take any of the extra riches for themselves. Women give generously though, unfortunately, they are not included in any of the rituals.

Matthew 27:32-28:20

So, after all that work building the tabernacle and making those curtains, they get torn in two the moment Jesus dies. I love the symbolism of that event; the breaking down of the barriers that separate humans from God as a result of Jesus’ death.

Finally, women get something special. They have been described as degraded second class citizens throughout the readings thus far, but every gospel account has women being the first ones to learn of Jesus’ resurrection. About time for women to get some good stuff here.

Psalm 34:1-22

Meh.

Proverbs 9:7-10

Bored of the wisdom descriptions again.

-Melissa

Days 42 and 43

Sat, 12 Feb 2011 14:32:13 -0800

Read it here and here.

Exodus 32:1-35:9

So after all that care and detail that is given to making the tabernacle and describing Aaron’s priesthood, they screw it all up by making a false idol. Nice job, Israel, you broke your covenant just after you made it…

And this after they witnessed countless miracles performed in Egypt and during their deliverance and after they even heard the voice of God themselves. Idiots. But they get another chance, luckily they have Moses arguing their case for them. So let’s try it again. I wonder how long they’ll last before they mess it all up again.

Matthew 26:69-27:31

We’re getting into the parts that are really difficult to read. I don’t much like to read about the details of Jesus’ betrayal, torture, and death. But I understand the importance of doing so. Grace is amazing because of the high cost to the person who is giving it. Without Jesus giving up all, the gift wouldn’t be as wonderful as it is. Plus it is crucial to understand the consequences of sin and how much must be sacrificed to make it alright.

It’s crazy to think about the earlier verse where Jesus said that if anyone denied him, he would deny that person to his own Father. However, Peter does it 3 times and yet he gets to be the rock that the church is founded on and he gets the keys to the Kingdom. It’s comforting to remember that although we are held to the highest moral code, we can still find redemption for when we don’t measure up to it.

Psalm 33:1-22

A good, happy one.

Proverbs 8:33-9:6

We’re back to personifying wisdom again.

-Melissa

Day 40 and 41

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 13:32:10 -0800

Read here and here.

Exodus 29:1-31:18

I had a really hard time reading this. It is so detailed in its descriptions of every little thing related to the tabernacle. I just couldn’t follow it.

Matthew 26:14-68

The story is moving forward quickly now. We have the last supper…

…all the way through to Jesus’ appearance before Caiaphas, resulting in his death sentence.

What’s crazy to me is that they would not have been able to sentence Jesus without his willing cooperation. They didn’t have a case against him until he told them he would be seated at God’s right hand, thus claiming to be equal in status to God. Since Caiaphas didn’t believe him, then of course it must have been blasphemy. I’m surprised that many people have a middle of the road attitude about Jesus. He didn’t leave any room for a middle ground. Either he is God, or he is a blasphemer for claiming to be God when he really wasn’t.

Psalm 32:1-11

I like this one a lot. It gives a really good image of the guilt associated with sin and how freeing it is to let it go.

Proverbs 8:27-32

I feel like he’s said all this stuff about wisdom already.

-Melissa

Tired today so I’m posting a song in lieu of a post. This...

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 19:21:49 -0800

Tired today so I’m posting a song in lieu of a post. This song popped in my head when I read the Matthew passage today. Find out why here.

Day 38

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 20:00:30 -0800

Read here.

Exodus 26:1-27:21

They sure are specific about making this tabernacle. The whole time it described the curtain, I was just thinking about it being torn the moment Jesus died.

Matthew 25:1-30

Parables about preparing for the Kingdom of God. It follows nicely from all the apocalypse talk and forms a warning about not getting caught off guard by it. Jesus is coming, so look busy ;)

Psalm 31:1-8

I really enjoyed reading this one today, actually. I’m dreading a meeting tomorrow and this brought some comfort. That’s good, I think this is what they are meant to do.

Proverbs 8:1-11

If it’s not about immoral women, it must be about WISDOM.

-Melissa

Day 37

Sun, 06 Feb 2011 19:39:15 -0800

Read along here.

Exodus 23:14-25:40

Amazing that the Israelite leaders got to see God. Yet the only thing they could describe was what he was standing on.

So now there is a new covenant formed with Israel. Previously there was the covenant under Abraham, where all they had to do was get circumsized, but now there’s more. And this covenant was written out and placed in a gold chest. I think the gold is significant because of its permanence and value. The Israelites would have needed to sacrifice a substantial amount of their wealth to build it. No wonder Indiana Jones wanted it.

Matthew 24:29-51

More about the apocalypse. Not good times. Here we have the Left Behind stuff, too. “Two men will be working together in the field; one will be taken, the other left. Two women will be grinding flour at the mill; one will be taken, the other left.” But I still hold by what I said yesterday, you can’t pick this one bit out of all that he said and ignore all the rest. I’m in the camp who thinks that Jesus is implying that everyone will suffer at that time.

Psalm 30:1-12

Another thankful Psalm. I like it, especially this: “Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning.”

Proverbs 7:24-27

Immoral woman again.

-Melissa

Day 36

Sat, 05 Feb 2011 16:10:55 -0800

Read it here.

Exodus 21:22-23:33

Like yesterday, there were some things in the laws that confused me and seemed really out of place. Mostly the laws about slavery, again. Other than that, it seems like a fair, but very strict set of laws. It’s fair in that each punishment must be repaid according to the damage that was done, but this means that someone who kills must be killed himself, which is very harsh. Good thing Jesus changed the rules on that whole “eye for an eye” law.

Another thing I know about this law is that it is meant to set the Hebrews apart from the Pagans around them. Now, I don’t know what the laws and economic system of the Pagans at the time was either, so I’m totally clueless as to how these laws actually do this. Clearly, I’m pretty ignorant on this whole subject and there are not many hints in the text to help.

I liked most of the laws about justice, especially the one that says that justice must not be denied for the poor. The law about helping your enemy’s ox and donkey seems like something Jesus would have included in his new law.

Matthew 24:1-28

Jesus talking about the Apocalypse. Not pleasant talk and not something I like to think about. One thing that stands out is where Jesus warns against false prophets. He’s saying not to trust anyone who claims to be him and then he reassures that when he does return, it will be apparent to everyone. There won’t be any doubt who it is.

I read Left Behind several years ago and the thing that bugs me about it, is that it is implying that anyone who believes in Jesus will be excluded from any suffering in the end of days. But that isn’t what Jesus said here: “Then you will be arrested, persecuted, and killed. You will be hated all over the world because you are my followers.” Hmmm, doesn’t sound like everything is going to be honky dory and folks are gonna just, poof, vanish from thin air now does it?

Psalm 29:1-11

Meh.

Proverbs 7:6-23

Oh good, more immoral women talk :|

-Melissa