The Sword Room

A reader commented on my last post with a response that really got me thinking about how I view scripture:

I see a third choice. The Bible is exactly what it is. A collection of writings and letters that were written for a specific reason to a specific people in a specific time in history, which a living God now uses through His Holy Spirit to teach me about Himself. The problems arise when I try to gather and apply universal truths on my own without His help.

Does the historicity of the Bible matter? In other words, did the events depicted in scripture really happen? Did God really speak the words to Abimalech (Genesis 20) that scripture attributes to him? Did Jephthah really do what scripture says he did Judges 11:39 (offered his daughter as a burnt offering to the Lord and is later listed by the Holy Spirit as one of the heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11:32)? I am trying to grasp the meaning of the above writer’s third choice. I see two obvious options when reading a biblical narrative: (1) It happened as written, (2) It didn’t happen. Would the third choice look something like this: (3) Maybe it happened, and maybe it didn’t; or maybe something happened, but the original story is so embelleshed with myth that we cannot really know for sure what actually occurred. But so what–it doesn’t matter whether it is fact, fiction, or a mixture of both.

According to this view the question of historicity is completely irrelevant. The Bible is not the word of God–Jesus is. We read the Bible and all that matters is that we encounter Jesus. This was the position of Karl Barth and Emil Brunner. Oh, Deitrich Bonhoffer too.

The problem is the Bible is written in such a way as to claim these events really happened as written. Jesus speaks of Noah as if he really built an ark and world was really flooded. He speaks of Adam in such a way as to suggest he was a real literal man who sinned in a real garden. He bases his prediction of resurrection on the story of a real man Jonah who was really swallowed by a great fish for three days.

So if it does not matter whether these things really happened, does it really matter whether Jesus was literally crucified and raised bodily, or whether the stories of his miracles are true? Maybe we cannot know any of this for sure, but so what? So in this event our epistemology becomes a theory of knowledge based on personal subjective experience–some kind of inner voice or witness.

But to me the issue of historicity is black and white. If scripture tells me that God did or said thus and such, then that is exactly what he did. The application of truth might be individualistic and subjective, but not the interpretation on which the application is based. The text as written tells me something concrete about what God is like. I do not need to pray or ask for some kind of special giudance from the Holy Spirit to know if God really parted the Red Sea or sent the angel of death against the firstborn of the Egyptians. Scripture says he did and that settles it. Moreover, since Jesus claims repeatedly to be Jehovah, then I attribute the acts of God in the Old Testament to him.

So I am not sure what the middle path–the third option–really is. Further, I am not sure what this help or assistance from the Holy Spirit is supposed to look like. If I see a verse or whole class of verses which teach the deity of Christ, do I need to wait for the Holy Spirit to help me deductively conclude that Jesus is God? That seems like a universal truth to me. A timeless truth, a truth that God to be sure laid down at a specific time and place in history.

It is true that God did give commands and regulations that were situation and culture specific. The ceremonial law of the Old Testament is an example. But the New Testament makes it clear that these types and shadows have their fulfillment in Christ and are now obsolete. But the underlying universal timeless truth is that God is holy and man is a sinner–without the shedding of blood there is no remission for sin. There are many capital offenses in the Old Testament; and although we no longer impose the death penalty on individuals for these crimes because we are no longer living under a theocracy, the fact that such behaviors are worthy of death tells us they are acts of wickedness God hates. I do not need to wait on the Lord for special guidance to arrive at these conclusions. All I need to do is compare scripture with scripture and the meaning is as clear as the nose on my face.

Emil Brunner, the famous German Neo-Orthodox scholar, used the following metaphor to desribe how scripture functions. He said that when he listened to a phonograph recording of his favorite classical music, what he heard was beautiful, but it was not the real symphony. Through the scratches on the vinyl disc and the distorted sound coming through the speaker he could hear a faint reproduction of the musicians, but this was not the same as hearing it live.

Bruner believed that because fallible men wrote scripture using propositional statements recorded on papyrus with ink, what they wrote could not have been the pure word of God. And yet through the literary styles, personalities, errors, and biases of the writers we hear a faint representation of the voice of God. To Brunner this was not the word of God but a signpost pointing us to the word of God–Christ. The Bible truly becomes the word of God when we are encountered by the living Christ through it. To Brunner the questions of inerrancy and historicity mattered not a whit, and he spent no time even discussing this. In fact he claimed to take a middle ground between the fundamentalists, who held to a high view of scripture and the liberals who relegated it to the realm of mythology. That debate was for Brunner largely beside the point. His approach was to stop arguing about the Bible and seek Jesus. (My question to Brunner would be, Which Jesus are you referring to? If not the Jesus literally depicted in the Bible, then who?)

I wonder if this sounds anywhere close to the above writer’s third option.

To me the issue of whether it is me or memorex is settled by 2 Timothy 3:16. Scripture is God-breathed. It is as much the pure word of God as if God were speaking audibly to me face-to-face. I will not claim I always understand it aright or obey what God says. But the problem is on my end. In the Bible God says what he means and means what he says.

All of us as believers have passages in scripture that are problematic. Who really understands the book of Revelation or the later chapters of Ezekiel? The concept of the trinity is taught in the Bible, but it is hard to wrap our minds around. Same thing with the concept of eternal punishment. Then there are the clear statements forbidding female leadership in the church and headship in marriage, and in light of our egalitarian-minded popular culture such prohibitions can seem anachronistic and unfair. Still others are bothered by the exclusivity of the gospel–believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved; do not believe and you will be damned.

But for me none of these passages is as difficult to apply personally than this one:

The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands he has recompensed me. For I have kept the ways of the Lord, and have not wickedly departed from my God. For all his judgments were before me, and I did not put his statutes away from me. I was also blameless before him, and I kept myself from my iniquity. Therefore the Lord has recompensed me according to my righteousness, and according to the cleanness of my hands (Psalm 18:20-24).

Wait a minute! This is David speaking–hot-tempered, womanizing David, the murderer and adulterer. How does he get off talking like this to the Lord? I can much more easily identify with him when he speaks like this:

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your lovingkindness; according to the multitude of your tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin (Psalm 51:1-2).

How could a man so prone to sin speak in a manner that seems so boastful? I do not believe I have ever prayed a prayer even remotely like what David prayed in Psalm 18 for the simple reason that I have never been in a place where I thought God’s blessing was a reward for my own righteous behavior. Can I get a witness? And what are we to make of such statements?

David’s Words remind me of the story of the heathen king Abimalech of Gerar (Genesis 20). When Abraham was staying in Gerar he feared for his life on account of the beauty of Sarah his wife, as he had done years earlier in Egypt. So once again he passed her off as his sister, and Abimalech took her into his harem. The Lord appeared to Abimalech in a dream (v. 3) and told him he was good as dead for messing with another man’s wife. Abimalech, who had not yet come near Sarah, replied:

Lord, will you slay a righteous nation also? Did he not say to me, “She is my sister?” And even she herself said, “He is my brother.” In the integrity of my heart and the cleanness of my hands I have done this (vv. 4-5).

Now look at the Lord’s response:

Yes, I know that you did this in the integrity of your heart. For I also withheld you from sinning against me; therefore I did not let you touch her (v. 6)

So God in his common grace restrained the heathen king, but he also acknowledges some degree of integrity in his heart. In light of this I would have to conclude that any integrity or obedience on the part of any man is due to the restraining hand of God. We must understand the prayer of David through this lens, otherwise it makes no sense. Still I am a little uneasy about how David seems to boast in his own righteousness. Maybe he really knew it all came from God. I suspect so.

But all this raises another problem. In the story of Abimalech the Lord threatens to kill him, not for taking a beautiful young woman into his harem of concubines, but because she is another man’s wife. Abimalech’s intention was merely to take a woman whom he thought was Abraham’s sister into his harem as a sex toy–presumably against her will. On this basis he appeals to the integrity of his heart and the cleanness of his hands.

AND GOD AGREES WITH HIM!!!!!!!

At this point we have two options.

1. Conclude that the Bible is after all not inerrant. Whoever wrote this account got it wrong. God would never condone what Abimilech was planning to do. In other words the writer attributes statements to God that he never made. It flat didn’t happen.

2. God in fact did make the statement. But if that is true, what are the implications? Chew on that one awhile.

Today’s entry is about a comment made in response to my last post, Does God Have Faith (In Us)? To get the full context of that discussion I would suggest you go back and read my blog and the comments made in response to it before continuing here. Anyway, here is the part of the comment that got the gears turning in my head:

And for what it is worth – I think I only know one and have only known two women in my life that give a hoot about theological arguments or dogma of any sort. Many of those that don’t care put many to shame by their love and ceaseless prayer.

Two responses right off the bat. I don’t think I have met any women in my life who give a hoot about theological arguments or dogma of any sort. And I would agree that many women are great prayer warriors and show selfless love on a level that puts me to shame.

At this point we would do well to consider why women do not care about theology. Now when I talk about theology what I am referring to is biblical exegesis and the study of the great themes and doctrines that flow from studying to show oneself approved as an unashamed workmen, accurately handling the word of truth. Very few women have written and taught theology over the centuries, and I personally do not think sexism is at the root of it, although I think God-ordained gender distinctions do factor in.

Women are smarter than men in many areas. They are great multi-taskers and managers. They seem to be more in touch with their emotions and thus are better than men at listening and empathizing. For this reason they often make decisions based on the apparent practical or pragmatic value of the given choice, rather than based on some black-and-white seemingly abstract principle or concept. Men seem to like to have things laid out in a more cut-and dried linear and logical fashion. Men are much more likely to sit for hours arguing politics, religion, philosophy, etc., than women. I think men are more dogmatic in that once they have made up their mind that a certain idea is either right or wrong, pragmatic relational and emotional issues will usually not influence them to change their minds, although such factors will often cause them to not speak up (as a ploy to avoid drama, fireworks, and loss of the true remedy).

Which takes us clear back to the Garden of Eden. Why do women not care about theology? Because it is not their job or responsibility to care about it. When God put Adam in the garden there was no woman at first. At this time the volume on systematic theology was the shortest book in the world. God had given only one command and one prohibition: Eat whatever you want out of the garden; but do not eat of the one forbidden tree at the center of the garden. The implicit blessing was life and the explicit curse was immediate death. Very black and white, cut and dried, delivered verbally and verbatim. No wiggle room at all.

So when Eve came on the scene the serpent knew better than to approach the man, because he had a solid basis for absolute dogmatism. With the woman he saw an opportunity to undermine the man’s headship and work an angle. He first undermined the authority of God’s word with a flat denial. Then he rationalized that sticking to obedience based on sound theology would undercut her ability to reach her true potential and experience her best life now. Apparently Adam, who it seems had reiterated God’s commands to the woman, stood by passively as the woman got sucked into the devil’s deception. He should have taken a more vocal end even dogmatic role.

Don’t eat that fruit.

Why?

God said not to eat it, lest you die?

Did he really say that? I didn’t hear him?

Trust me, he said it.

But this serpent seems like a nice guy.

Trust me, not him. He’s lying.

Don’t you care about what I want?

Not if it means disobeying God’s word.

I thought you loved me.

I do, but I love God more. Don’t eat it.

How can you be so dogmatic? Look at how bright and coloful the fruit is. Look at the pretty shape of it.

No.

No? Just like that? Maybe we should think about it. Talk about it. Pray about it.

Why? God has spoken. NO!

You can’t talk to me that way! You’re not my father. (Takes a bite.) Mmmmm, this is sooooooo good. And look, I’m still alive. Here, you try some… And the rest is history.

Guys, listen up. It is not the job of women to care about sound theology. It is yours. As a husband it is my job to know what God says and to stand by it. If I reneg on this calling as a head of my marriage, I put my wife at great risk, because then she is operating in an area God has not equipped her to fill. God does not want women to assume headship in the home or in the church. Read 1 Timothy 2:11-13 and you will see why God does not want women in the pulpit–his appeal is to creation, not culture. As long as men are men and women are women, God’s pattern of functional male headship will apply. We as men do women a great disservice when we follow the example of Adam and stand by as they try to do what God did not design them to do. We are to be the warriors of the word and do battle with the serpent with the sword of the spirit.

The mess we men have allowed to pile up in the culture and church–shot through with effeminate feel-good teaching based more on self-help and psychobabble than the word of God–will be hard to clean up. But it has to start with truth, clearly articulated and spoken without compromise. Of course it will not be easy to do.

In the meantime what I will do is encourage my wife to do what she does best: function as a loving praying, empathetic wife and mom.

Honey, leave the theology to me, since you don’t really care about it anyway.

Recently an old friend of mine posted a youtube video of a song called God Believes in You. Here are the lyrics:

God Believes in You lyrics

by Geoff Moore

When you start to doubt if you exist
God believes in you
Confounded by the evidence
God believes in you
When your light burns to dim
And when your changes seem so slim
And you swear you don’t believe in Him
God believes in you

When you rise up just to fall again
God believes in you
Deserted by your closest friends
God believes in you
And when you’re betrayed with a kiss
And you turn your cheek to another fist
It does not have to end like this
Cause God believes in you

Oh everything matters if anything matters at all
Everything matters, no matter how big,
No matter how small
Cause God believes in you
Oh God believes in you

When you’re so ashamed that you could die
God believes in you
And you can’t do right even thought you try
God believes in you

Blessed are the ones who grieve
The ones who mourn and the ones who bleed
In sorrow you sow but in joy you’ll reap
God believes in you
Yea blessed …

Oh everything matters if anything matters at all
Everything matters, no matter how big,
No matter how small
Cause God believes in you
Oh God believes in you

This song seems to be saying that when we do not believe in ourselves or Him He believes in us. The emphasis is more on us as doubting hurting victims in need of healing than guilty rebellious sinners in need of regeneration and forgiveness. The “everything matters…line” seems to be saying that no matter how small or insignificant we feel in our pain and unbelief, we are significant to the God who believes in us.

I listened to the song and thought hmmm…how biblical is this? So I wrote my friend and asked him to explain to me what it means that God believes in us. One of the lines in the song says that when we swear that we don’t believe in Him He believes in us. That implies to me that He believes in us in the same way we are supposed to believe in Him. There are perhaps hundreds of commands and examples in the Bible where we learn that we are to place our faith or trust in or on the Lord. But I can’t find a single verse in the Bible where humans–saved or unsaved–are ever depicted as the objects of God’s trust or faith.

My friend responded as follows:

Simple answer, though I could write you a book, He believes I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

You see Pete a fundamental difference in the way we think (and neither of us is wrong) is that you are a sinner is half empty (or possibly all empty) kind of guy, while I am a sinner is half full kind of guy. Depravity does not mean worthless, but rather “unable to help himself.” God finds us of great worth, and I do too.

If God is for us, who can be against us. . . What is that, if it is not “God believes in me?”

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; YOU ARE WORTH MORE (emphasis mine) than many sparrows. . . .Pete. . .Tell me when to stop. . .

Here is my response to him:

OK, so God loves us. He enables us. He is on our side as believers. He will faithfully finish what he started in us. Is that what it means? Just curious. When I think of believing in someone it means I trust them implicitly based on their character and past behavior. If someone has proven to me that they are not trustworthy, I might still love them and value them, and I would probably help them in any way possible, but it doesn’t mean I trust them. We are told hundreds of times in the Bible to believe in or trust God, but nowhere does it tell us that we are the objects of God’s faith.

From here it became a sidebar via personal email. He told me I was basically nit-picking around semantics. Long story short, the discussion became a bit heated. I told him he is lacking in discernment, and he accused me of being arrogant and being led by my flesh rather than Christ. (We have had these debates for years and remain good friends!)

Later I was trying to think of any possible Bible verses or passages that refute the idea of God believing in us. All I could come up with:

Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name when they saw the signs which He did. But Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men, and had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He knew what was in man (John 2:23-25).

In the original Greek the verb pisteuo (the standard NT term for believing) is used both of the Jews and Jesus. It is literally saying that they believed in Him but He was not believing (trusting Himself to) them. The reason is telling–there was no ground or basis for such trust! We trust Christ because He is faithful and worthy of belief. We are sinners. God cannot and further does not need to trust us. I consulted with one other respected pastoral friend and he is of the same mind with me on this one point: There is no way the biblical construct of believing in or on can be construed to say that we are the objects of God’s faith or belief.

But this is the kicker. Even though I have a total and complete righteousness deficit, Christ loved me enough to send His Son to save me. His reason was not based in anything in me that was lovely or desirable. On the contrary, even though there was nothing inherent in my character whereby I might commend myself to Him, He saved me in spite of my wretched condition for His own purpose and glory. That, my friends, is the grace of God.

I suppose what bothers me most about this whole story is the flippant attitude toward biblical truth and sound doctrine that seems to be the mainstay in the modern church. We live in a day where the Bible is de-emphasized enough and embellished with ideas gleaned from pagan self-help and psychobabble. Why write songs that at best are naive and ignorant attempts to to commit one’s gushy feelings about Jesus into words. At worst they are downright heretical. I know and understand that many people are sincere and do not mean to twist and distort truth. But we need to remember that music is a powerful vehicle for communicating ideas and values. We need to strive for accuracy in our lyric writing because words have meaning, and God has chosen to communicate His truth propositionally in words.

Bottom-line: Some people should open their Bibles before they pick up their pen.

Let your conduct be free from the love of money; be content with such things as you have, for He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So that we may boldly say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear. What can man do to me?” (Hebrews 13:5-6).

I heard a really great sermon on this text this morning. As I thought about this text I noticed a few logical connections I had never seen before. Notice that after the command against the love of money the conjunction for connects the command to the promise of the Lord’s presence. In other words the fact that the Lord will never leave nor forsake us is the stated reason why we should obey the command to not love money.

But what sense does that make: Let your conduct be free from the love of money because the Lord will never leave you nor forsake you? But stop and consider what is inferred here. Such a statement would have no force unless it was written to people who saw wealth as a sign of God’s presence. In other words, God is really with the one who has lots of money and less with the one who has less.

It is not stretch for us to see how people could get sucked into such fallacious reasoning. Recently  attended a service in a large packed out church with a huge budget, large paid staff, beautiful building, and oodles of programs for all age and demographic groups. A man I know to be a wealthy local businessman commented to me that God is really blessing this church! Well perhaps, but by so much we might also draw the same conclusion about the local LDS ward a few miles away. More money does not automatically mean God is with us. Someone needs to explain this to those who select board members for most evangelical churches.

Now think of the ramifications of this passage for the thousands in this country who have lost jobs and homes and are struggling just to keep their financial heads above water. It is so easy when things are going well to feel like God’s hand is at work. But when the bottom falls out the first question on our minds is: Where is God? A passage like this can serve as a comfort when times are tough: the money might be gone, but God is still present.

Another thing the passage implies is that people with less money fear those who have an abundance of it. So what’s new? Money=power, and the wealthy often use their money to push others around to get what they want. Here we are told not to fear those who self-righteously act as if their poop doesn’t stink by reason of the size of their wallet.

There is no virtue in poverty in and of itself, even as wealth is no foolproof sign of the Lord’s presence in one’s life. As believers we must keep in mind that ultimately nothing is ours. It all belongs to God–our time, our talent, and our treasure. It is all on loan to us from God. Therefore love the giver, not the gift.

There is a part of me (and you) that craves sin like a depressed woman on a rainy day craves chocolate. This component of our being is called the flesh in the New Testament. When we read about Paul’s struggle in the seventh chapter of Romans we see him describing the flesh as an entity, like a spiritual cancer, that both is and is not really him: So then, it is no longer I who do it but sin tha dwells in me (v. 17). While his flesh savored sin, at the same time he could say,  for I delight in the law of God according to the inward man (v. 22).

The inward man is really us and the flesh is really us too. Before we are regenerated believers the flesh is the only force at work within us, and we are spiritually dead as far as God and righteousness are concerned, so that we are capable of nothing whereby we might commend ourselves to God–or to even want to. When  God saves us he actually makes us alive. At the same time we are dead to sin (Rom. 6:11), which means we have the ability to choose to resist sin’s desire to rule in our bodies (Rom. 6:12-13). It is nonsense to claim, as do the proponents of higher life thinking, that the self is totally evil and helpless to do anything but get out of the way and wait on the Lord to work through the believer in an unmediated way.

But although all this is clearly true from a biblical perspective, why is it that in so many instances the flesh seems to dominate that part of us which desires to love and glorify God? True, we can blame no one but ourselves when we refuse to take the way of escape God always provides (1 Cor. 10:13). Instead of putting the deeds of the flesh to death as we are commanded to do (Rom. 8:13), thereby experiencing the resurrection life of Christ here and now, we like Esau choose to roll over and die for the flesh and fart away precious time and energy for a lousy bowl of soup.

At the end of the day I conclude that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. I like Paul cry out, O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? (Rom. 7:24) Yes, I technically could choose righteousness over sin, even as Peter could have chosen to stay awake and pray with Christ in the garden instead of snoozing. But at the end of the day we fall to the desires of our flesh.

When I first was saved in 1971 I would go out to a bluff overlooking the Kent Valley and sit on a huge rock, praying and reading my Bible. It was a time of great conflict of soul for me. The regenerate part of my being longed for the reality of fellowship with Christ, while at the same time my flesh craved sin. I can remember very clearly those times when I cried out to God, begging him to deliver me from those habits that entangled me and slowed my walk. That inner hunger and thirst was so real that I not only remember it now, but it is still the deepest desire of my heart–to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

And yet even now I stupidly choose to trade away that which is lasting and ultimately fulfilling for that which can never truly satisfy the deepest longings of my soul. I have long since given up trying to figure it out beyond the fact that my spirit is willing and my flesh is weak.

Thank God it still matters and that the desire to serve God is as present and as real as ever.