Hearing check

I came across this in my reading this morning and it stuck in my mind like an American in a European round-a-bout. When we read the Bible, what do we hear? Can we hear? And how well do we hear--and I mean really hear?

"Whoever is of God hears the words of God."

Now, most of us will shrug it off thinking we are aware of God in the cosmos, but Jesus drives it deeper.

"The reason why you do not hear them (the words of God) is that you are not of God." (John 8:47)

Again, how well do you hear? As a former fighter pilot, I have a number of friends who cannot hear certain frequency ranges due to decades around jet engines. They hear nothing in that range. God's giving us a very plain hearing test, and it doesn't require sitting in a sound-proof booth and mashing buttons when you hear an imaginary tone.

Here's the test: open the Bible and read it. You'll fall into one of three categories:

1. You REJECT it. You won't even take the test. You probably don't want to stop back by this blog anymore.

2. You're PERPLEXED. As you read the pages of the Bible, you don't understand what all the falderol is about. It's like reading somebody else's mail. But if you'd like to understand, ask the Author. You might be surprised what he'll show you (see John 3). If you think it's stupid, go back to category #1.

3. You're TICKLED. You hear his voice pretty well (John 10:27).

It all hinges upon God's word. Can we hear it? It's either true or it's not. If it's true, the consequences are enormous. It's like learning of a hidden treasure. Would you not do all within your power to obtain it? If it's false, then Jesus of Nazareth and all of his followers are the foulest individuals for selling millions a bill of goods.

So the question still hangs there. How's your hearing?

Evidence

Amidst my ponderings of the continued ebb (just ebb, no flow) of Christianity's moral and cultural influence in the United States especially in light of Election 2012, I kept hearing folks quoting G. K. Chesterton in various contexts. He said in his usual blunt manner,

"Christianity has not been tried and found wanting;
it has been found difficult and not tried."

Makes sense. When I can scratch any itch in 50 million different ways and when my government will not hold me culpable for my bad decisions but will continue to provide me the sticks for my itch scratching, why should I consider a religion that appears to have run its course? Many folks still consider Jesus a pretty decent philosopher for his day, but did he really intend for Paul to go so far as to have wives submit to husbands? This is the 21st century, after all. And what did Jesus mean anyway when he suggested plucking our eyes over lust? Really? So rather than pursue and investigate, we're content to pluck passages from their contexts rather than our eyes.* Christianity is labeled ridiculous, and its adherents are painted as uneducated, flat-earth, science-damning hillbillies. It's much easier to dismiss someone with the sweep of an insult that to examine their arguments.

But here's the problem: the Bible is true.

Because of the easy dismissals and primary-colored caricatures, few today wade into the deep waters of biblical claims to investigate for themselves. Biblical study is unsettling. It's difficult. And like Augustine near 1700 years ago, the agony one encounters as he comes face to face with the truth becomes unbearable for he must answer the question "If it is true, shall I live the rest of my life in the delusion of my own will, or shall I pursue the One who has created me for his good purpose and given all that I might be restored in relationship to him?"

So let me throw out a few reasons you might consider that point to the cornerstone truth that, yes, Jesus Christ is your Savior, your God, and your King.

1) THE TESTIMONY OF WITNESSES. Matthew and John, two of the gospel** writers, were among the twelve of Jesus closest followers, and they recorded the relevant happenings of Jesus' life and ministry. The earliest extra-biblical testimonies credit these writings as those of these men despite the attempts of modern scholars to push the writings beyond the time of these men. Mark, while not a disciple of Christ, became a close assistant first to Paul and Barnabas and ultimately to Peter in Rome. If anybody knew Jesus, it was Peter. Lastly, as Paul emphasized the importance of the resurrection of Jesus to the church at Corinth, Greece, he indicated that there were 500 folks who saw the risen Jesus at one time and many of them were still alive to corroborate the account.

2) INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING. Luke was not a disciple of Jesus during his earthly ministry and perhaps never saw him. He was a physician by trade and from the manner and style of his writing, he was a well-educated man. In his bio of Christ, he scoured the testimonies of those still alive, he separated the wheat from the chaff, and attempted to present the most accurate account he could to a friend of his, Theophilus, that he might have certainty about the things he was taught (Luke 1:1-4). In the book of Acts, the book immediately following the four gospels, he provides one of the most geographically detailed accounts of the Mediterranean region and of first century seafaring in his account of the spread of the early church.

3) FULFILLED PROPHECY. To Blaise Pascal, this was the most compelling aspect of the entire Bible. No other religion so audaciously hangs its existence on things to come. It was a keynote to Israel that God had actually spoken through specific men.

Isaiah 45:21 - "Who told this long ago? Who declared it of old? Was it not I, the Lord? And there is no other god besides me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none besides me."
Isaiah 48:3 - "The former things I declared of old; they went out from my mouth, and I announced them; then suddenly I did them, and they came to pass."
Isaiah 48:5 - "I declared them to you from of old, before they came to pass I announced them to you, lest you should say, ‘My idol did them, my carved image and my metal image commanded them.’"

Because prophetic fulfillment is one of the most compelling aspects of the entire Bible as the previous verses show that God intended it to be so, scholars have gone through the contortions of a Chinese acrobat to move the writings of the Bible all centuries later than the Bible itself indicates. They believe that because prophecy ranks with the supernatural, it cannot be. Therefore what had to have happened is religious leaders took the events of the day, events that had taken place, and they wrote prophetic stories to make it look like they had been fulfilled, that God loves his people, and that he can see the end from the beginning. The gymnastics required to neuter prophecies pales in comparison with the lies required to post-write prophecies. Any child knows the difficulty of maintaining a single lie. Now imagine trying to maintain the thousand of fulfilled and yet to be fulfilled prophecies. Such deception cannot be historically substantiated.

As one reads through the gospel of Matthew, you can't help but notice his emphasis on the sheer number of prophecies that Jesus Christ's advent fulfilled, a few he could have tried to fulfill to try and make people believe he was the Christ (i.e. riding into Jerusalem on a donkey) but most he had no control over (his place of his birth, the means of his death, and the events surrounding that event to name a paltry few).

The evidence for the veracity of the Bible is overwhelming. But will we take the time to read and assess what it says for ourselves? As Chesterton notes, few are willing to wade in past the preconceptions and challenges to glean the truth. Perhaps today you might consider taking a challenge from the very lips of God, "Taste and see that the Lord is good" (Psalm 34:8). As Augustine discovered, it's a life-altering consideration.

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* I have to do it because some will take me out of context. I am NOT advocating eye-plucking for those struggling with lust. Hyperbole, people. Jesus had figures of speech mastered.

** Many do not know any longer what a "gospel" is. The word means good news. What have become known as the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) are the first four books of the New Testament of the Bible. Even "New" Testament is something of a misnomer. Rather than Old and New, consider them the first and second Testaments, or as we would say, Part I and Part II of the book. The gospels are in essence biographies of Jesus life. Some are more chronological than others, but all tell of the historical events of Jesus' life, ministry, death, and resurrection.

Hell, plain and simple

[WARNING: Robust doses of biblical information to follow]

I just finished teaching through a couple of weeks on Hell in my Adult Bible Class (the adjective "adult" takes on far different meanings when placed in front of different nouns, doesn't it?). Some things we broached in our discussions, I thought you might find interesting because Americans' ideas about Hell are as far apart as Bangor is from San Diego.

Consider, if you will:

• Your opinion doesn't affect reality. I might argue that Paris exists only in mythology. You see, I have never seen Paris. I have seen pictures, but how do I know that you didn't Photoshop the shots to make it look like everyone else's pictures of Paris. In all likelihood, folks only began speaking of Paris after Vic Hugo penned his Quasimodo epic. Despite my absolute denial about the existence of Paris, the city remains in north-central France. Many find Hell disagreeable and therefore, they deny its existence even though many others have the same argument about Paris.


• Most people are wrong. Jesus Christ made the audacious claim that "...wide is the gate and broad the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it," and at the same time "...narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it" (Matthew 7:13-14). He is speaking of Hell and Heaven, respectively. You'll be hard pressed to find anyone in the Bible who says more about Hell than Jesus. Said a lot more about it than he did Heaven. I suspect it is because he didn't want folks to end up there but understood that most were deluding themselves about their final destination. Matthew records that Jesus seems to be convinced that many are enroute to Hell and few are heading toward Heaven. Staggering, really.


• Most people are wrong, Part II. Start asking your church-going friends to describe Hell and like Bangor and San Diego, you'll find them all over the map. Some have followed the illusion of a pop-theology that God will eventually work it all out that none will be in Hell (personally, I'd be a bit bummed to find myself living next to Mssrs. Hitler, Stalin, or Manson on that street of gold). Others think that the death of the doomed brings annihilation. Again, one is left to wonder about justice if Hitler offs his six-million and Stalin offs his fifty-million and the only punishment is death in this life? We all die! How is that justice? No, the Bible's descriptors of a place of on-going torment and of justice meted out seem nonnegotiable.


• It's not going to be a party. You'll hear folks mention, usually at their DUI limit, "I'd rather go to Hell where I'll be with my friends so we can party!" Do these descriptions sound like a party?


• Likened to a fiery furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 13:42, 50)
• Darkness (Matthew 8:12)
• Anguish in the flame (Luke 16:24)
• Repayment, vengeance (2 Thessalonians 1:6, 8)
• The punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord (2 Thessalonians 1:9)
• Where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched (Mark 9:48)
  
  Those are just a few of the passages where Hell is described in the Bible. Most of the verses cited here and throughout this post also refer to this as an eternal (never-ending) condition.


• God and the Cross. Many have no idea that the literal place we call Hell, the Lake of Fire, was created by God for Satan and his angels (Matthew 25:41, Revelation 20:10). It becomes the final and eternal location of those angelic hosts that sought to supplant their Creator. Rather than savor their Creator and the position he gave them in his creation, they went their own way and God let them. The final consequence is eternal separation from him and eternal torment for the rebellion they unleashed in the cosmos.
  
  

  

  When man followed in rebellion, he consigned himself to that final destination as well (see again, Matthew 25:41, Romans 3:10-18, Revelation 20:15). God would have been just in the absolute to leave man with that sentence, but he "so loved the world that he sent his only Son" to pay the penalty and to absorb the full wrath and condemnation of God. In so doing, God is just and the justifier of mankind (Romans 3:26).
  
  When folks think Hell is overkill on the part of a vindictive God, they grossly misjudge two things. First, they do not comprehend the absolute purity and holiness, righteousness and goodness of Almighty God. Because we miss the boat on that point, we err on the second point and that is the serious nature of our sin and rebellion before the pure and holy God. To begin to fathom these two things, consider what took place when God was nailed to a cross. Perfect purity became supreme sin. Why would God the Son subject himself to so brutal a death as a human being and to the condemnation and wrath of God the Father if not to provide redemption from eternal condemnation and wrath for man?  Which takes us to my final rumination.


• Hell is optional. This is perhaps the most startling concept within the cosmos. Nobody has to go to Hell. People will be condemned to Hell because they chose to be condemned to Hell. God's not playing "I've got a secret." Psalm 8:1-4 and Romans 1:18-20 point out that the creation itself declares the Creator so much so that the Romans passage declares that men are "without excuse." Psalm 19 shouts the same thing about the creation in the first half of its lyric and spends the second half declaring the glory of God's special revelation, the Bible. Especially in America, if any do not know about Jesus Christ and what he did, it is because they have no interest in knowing. We do not comprehend the gravity of our willful ignorance.

You may well call me judgmental, but I will argue that all I am saying is what God's word says itself, what God says himself. Hell is real. It is a place of torment and punishment. It is for man's deserved rebellion. And man does not need to go there.

You do not need to go there. Consider where you stand before a holy God. He stands holding the free gift of eternal life because of the finished work of Jesus Christ (Romans 6:23). All you need to do is repent of your sin and rebellion and accept Jesus' finished work on your behalf. You would be relenting to his rightful lordship in your life. You as the creature would be submitting to your rightful place before your holy and good Creator.

Now is the day of salvation. It's your call.

Conspiracy theory: OBL and Jesus Christ

I have a friend who does not trust the government. At all. Power corrupts, the adage goes, and absolute power nudges it over the precipice.

So now the government--in fact its chief executive--announces that public enemy #1, Osama bin Laden, is fish food.  My friend wants proof.

Why now?

Where's the body?

Where are the pictures?

You get the idea. While not a fan of much that the current administration has done domestically or internationally over the past couple years, I have no reason to doubt the veracity of their comments about this. Two reasons.

First, if he's not dead, all he needs to do is strike the pose to a couple Vogue photographers and the US of A looks like a bunch of dopes. Nothing dispels a rumored death quite so quickly as a pulse.

Second, if there's been a cover-up or some deception, time will erode the camouflage. As Chuck Colson and the rest of the rabble involved in Watergate learned, keeping a lie secret for very long proves next to impossible. Someone's going to blow the whistle; there's just too much money and too much temptation floating about the stratosphere.

Me?  I think Herr bin Laden has joined company with Herrs Hitler, Stalin, tse-Tung (yeah, I'm old school), Amin, and Pot just to name a few.

As this whole "where's-the-body?" thing played out Monday morning, I couldn't help but think of Jesus' resurrection because the same two reasons to believe the Obama Administration work equally well for the first century witnesses who said Jesus rose from the dead. Either he did or he didn't. Pretty hard to fathom an in-between.

So, what happened to Jesus' body? Despite the dizzying array of conspiracy theorists, no evidence has come to bear against the resurrection as reported in the earliest manuscripts from that era (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).  Paul, the author of the Corinthian letter, has the boldness to tell them that there are many eyewitnesses to the resurrected Christ still alive at that time. You want to squash a resurrection story faster than a bullet through a Muslim terrorist's brain, all you need to do is show the body. Not something anyone ever did.

If the resurrection was a lie, a fabrication, someone would have talked.  Judas couldn't hack the pressure while Jesus was still alive, imagine any of the yellow-spined disciples when their amigos started losing their heads.  Someone's gonna turn states evidence.

"Well, the disciples stole the body."  Come now. What power would there be behind a made-up story about a dude we saw brutally butchered if he were nothing but a cold, grotesque corpse? You want a religion based upon that? You want to suffer a life of persecution and being ostracized from family and friends for that? You want to be martyred for that? Of all the silly theories, the disciples stealing the body is perhaps the silliest.

Paul goes on to argue how absolutely absurd Christianity would be if in fact Christ did not rise from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:12-19). Paul had a dizzying intellect and was a brilliant man. He understood quite well that if Jesus did not rise from the dead, he was a fool at best and a liar from the pit of hell at worst. "But," he declares, "in fact Christ has been raised from the dead" (15:20).

Conspiracy? What did Paul have to gain? He was executed for this conviction. He died penniless and alone. What did Peter have to gain? He suffered the same fate as did all of his apostolic compatriots save John. No conspiracy. They all saw the risen Christ and upon that fact and in that joy they lived the rest of their lives understanding that any pain in this life would pale in comparison to life with Christ here and in the next.

"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us."

~ Romans 8:18

Bin Laden is dead. If our government has falsified that in any way, either someone will show a body, living or dead, or time will erode away any veneer and bring the truth to light. The conspiracy theories will be manifest as true or fade away for lack of evidence.  In time.

Neither time nor twenty-first century hubris has dented the evidence for the resurrected Messiah. It is because of the fact that God the Son has been raised to eternal life confirming his sacrifice on the cross as payment for my (our) sin that we can be restored in his relationship to God.

OBL. A dead zealot. Many will hail him as a martyr for their cause and do horrifying things in his name, just as he did in life. Many will be enlisted to follow his path to destruction.

Jesus Christ. A living King. Many have laid down their life for him that others might have life through him.  Today, many can come to know Him and follow him to eternal life.

That's a big difference.

QotD: The Passion & Hollywood

In looking at past Oscar snubs, Brian Cherry came up with this assessment of filmdom's disdain for "The Passion of the Christ:"

This powerful and moving film depicted what many believe was the most important moment in the history of the world. Had the Roman historian, Tacitus, seen the film, he probably would have said, “Yup, that’s exactly what we did to him.” Seeing as Hollywood rejects Christianity in much the same way that the human body would reject a heart transplant from a water buffalo, the Academy chose to pretend this film, the near billion dollars in revenue it generated, and the millions of people who loved it, simply didn’t exist.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Nothing sweeter than Linus Van Pelt taking center stage and explaining what Christmas is all about:



Here's the entirety of the Christmas story from Luke 2. Savor the Savior on this most historic of days!

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.


And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them, "Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger." And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,

"Glory to God in the highest,

and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!"

When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us." And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

Luke 2:1-20

Two-dozen words

From the rainbow-wigged guy in the endzone to Tim Tebow's eye black (now banned by the NCAA), football has given John 3:16 more hype than most churches north of the Mason-Dixon.  While most Americans have heard of John 3:16, most couldn't tell you what it says nor its significance.

If you want the Bible in a nutshell, if you want all of life in a nutshell, you can find it in John 3:16.

So what is "John 3:16?"  The statement is excerpted from a conversation that Jesus is having with Nicodemus, an esteemed Jewish teacher who, unlike his peers, became intrigued with Jesus' teaching and his ministry.  It's the conversation of a man wondering and a God revealing.

Here's what Jesus said to Nicodemus as reported by his friend, John:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Why is this "life in a nutshell?" Let's break it down.

GOD LOVES HIS CREATION 

Let's focus it tighter.  God loves mankind because only man did he imbue with his image.  The rest of his creation serves as the wondrous backdrop for God's relationship with man.  Earth.  The breath-taking home that he provided for the pinnacle of his palette.  God had no need to create man.  What a blessing to us that he did that we might know him.

So what purpose man?  To glorify God and enjoy him forever, says the Westminster Catechism.  The wonder of it all, to borrow from George Beverly Shea, is to think that God loves me.  God loves mankind.  Humanity should glorify and enjoy the God who so deeply loves it.  It's the power behind the point.

MAN IS A REBEL 

Hollywood glorifies the rebel.  In real life, the four-year old pitching a tantrum in Wal-Mart better exemplifies the rebel than James Dean.  Because of the Fall (Genesis 3), man broke his perfect relationship with God and now enters a broken world in a broken state himself.  He remains created in the image of God (hence the sanctity of human life), but the infection of sin within his soul impels him away from God and toward deeper rebellion against his Creator.

The rebellion has earned a sentence, a righteous sentence, a just sentence.  It is death.  That is what the verse means when it highlights why God sent Christ (that man should not perish).  Apart from God's intervention, man's natural state and man's natural conduct have earned him the wages of death, eternal separation, and eternal punishment.

GOD INTERVENED

God, without need, moves to show his glory in an extraordinary act of creation.  He creates a being with volition and dignity, he creates a being "in his image" upon which he might lavish his oceanic love.  In short order, man gums up the works, despite the warning from God, and receives due sentence for his rebellion.  "There is none righteous.  No, not one"  (Romans 3:10b).

It could have ended there, a horrifying cosmic tragedy.  No, it does not end there.  A Hero intervenes.  The One who has been slapped in the face decides to take upon himself the punishment for such an afront so that the justly condemned party might live.  God the Son condescended to become man, a real man, fully God and yet fully man, that he might suffer the righteous penalty of death so that mankind might live.

MAN HAS HOPE

With natural man being in rebellion against the God who created him, it is no wonder the world teems with such horrors.  And yet there is hope. 

Because Jesus Christ, God the Son, bore the full fury of God's wrath toward sin and rebellion, because he bore the just punishment due to all mankind, God will then transfer the righteousness of Christ, the perfect and sinless life he lived, upon all who believe upon his name.  Jesus took my sin and gave me his righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21).

That gift, a free gift to man but oh, so costly to Christ, guarantees man eternal life.  What is that really?  It is a restored relationship with Almighty God.  While we are still under the physical effects of the curse (pain, suffering, death), that broken relationship, that intimate relationship which Adam enjoyed with God in the Garden, is now healed.  We have fellowship with him once again through the finished work of Jesus Christ.  One day, either when Christ returns or when we die our physical death, we will see him face to face and abide with him forever, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and with those who have called upon his name.  Eternal life.

Though the bannerman no longer haunts NFL endzones and though collegiate athletes can no longer highlight it on their eyeblack, Jesus' plain statement to Nicodemus nearly 2000 years ago remains the single most important message for man today. 

John 3:16 is the message of the Bible.  It remains the reality of 21st century man .

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Up from the grave?

I have a friend who believes we did not set foot on the moon.  Ever.  Before he challenged me to reevaluate, I'd never given it any thought.  I trusted the photos.  I trusted the testimonies.  Surely someone would have blown the ruse had there been one.  I thought the suspicion a bit daffy and continued to trust. 

While the veracity of the moon landing has never had any bearing on my comings and goings, it had a huge impact on the other dudes that landed on the lifeless rock.  Either they became partners to the lie or they actually went there.  Mythbusters took on the moon landing a few years back.  Bottom line, Neil and all his rocket-riding bros. danced along the lunar landscape.

Another point of history begs examination.  A few weeks ago, Christendom celebrated an event that would stir the soul if it were mere fiction.  The Creator of a realm so loved that realm that after his minions so botched everything at every turn, he had to step in to right the mess.  He sent his equal.  He sent his Son.  The rabble hoped the Son would clean up the corruption and overthrow the oppressors.  Instead, the Son spoke of getting cleaned up from the inside out, and he pointed to his execution as the means by which that cleansing would come.  His followers didn't follow what he was saying.

The oppressors had nothing for this upstart and seized him.  The folks who fell in behind him fell away when things seemed to be returning to normal.  When they butchered the Son beyond recognition, the movement died an equally hopeless death. 

Or did it?  Three days later, the one disfigured in so horrifying a fashion, rose from the dead.  His pure blood had been shed that the soured sin of man's rebellion might be atoned for, that justice be meted out.

Then a most peculiar thing happened.  That band of followers that had fallen away and that was a few hours from returning to their homes and putting this embarrassing past behind them became the most extraordinary advocates -- for what? -- for the Son rising from the dead as proof that the broken relationship between the people and the Creator of the realm had been restored!  Love divine, all loves excelling.

But is it a fiction or did it play out in history?  This event, far more significant than the moon landing, deserves the scrutiny of every person for our existence hangs in its balance.

Kris Komarnitsky (among a myriad of others) dismisses the event.  Compelled, as all should be, to examine the event, he concluded,

When I study the evidence, the answer seems to be just what Bishop (John Shelby) Spong suggested -- a ground burial, probably in the Kidron or Hinnom valley, with nobody attending except for an indifferent burial crew who only cared to mark the site with chalk or a pile of loose rocks to warn of uncleanness. As Jesus' dejected followers made the journey back to their homes in Galilee, instead of a discovered empty tomb, the founding event of Christianity may have simply been "the discovery of a new and positive way in which to speak of Jesus' death and of Jesus after his death, that is, a new way of perceiving Jesus." This may have been the event of Easter.

Kris offers no overwhelming reasons for rejecting the histories included in the Bible.   Another writer, Jewish PhD Ed Gurowitz, also had to examine the resurrection himself.  Why?  He states,

Unfortunately as I study theology, and particularly the works of Christian theologians I respect, from C.S. Lewis to Walter Wink, say, there is an issue I cannot avoid so easily. This is the issue of what these theologians call "the Christ event," the resurrection and post-resurrection activities attributed to Jesus in all the Gospels and by Paul in his account of the event on the road to Damascus.

He goes on to wrestle, saying,

...both as a psychologist and as a student of history I cannot escape the thought that something must have happened. Like the parallels between the story of the Biblical flood and other myths, e.g., Gilgamesh, the similarities are too great to be coincidental. Oh sure, we can say that the Gospel writers colluded, but that's a bit too Oliver Stone for my taste. There is too much evidence in a comparative reading of the Gospels that the writers did not always give the same account of events and often blatantly disagreed - why collude in this one area?

And in full disclosure, Dr. Gurowitz does not come away a knee-bending Christian (here).  With the enormous amount of evidence that exists for Jesus rising from the dead--from the testimony of the apostles in Acts (2:29-32, 13:28-32 for starters) to the testimony of the gospel writers to the earliest creed given to Paul within a half-dozen years of the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:3-8) to the glut of circumstantial evidence--the resurrection of Jesus Christ demands a look by 21st century man.  But that's not what drives my post today.

1960 years ago, Paul emphasized to the church of Corinth (just west of Athens along Greece's isthmus) the centrality of Jesus' resurrection.  The most rational Greeks struggled with the supernaturality of the resurrection, but Paul, a few verses after the creed cited above, listed some insurmountable problems if the resurrection is a mere fairy tale.  Consider

• If there is no resurrection, then Christ could not have been raised (15:13).  Stands to reason.
• If Christ hasn't been raised, Paul's preaching is foolish (v. 14).  During the early days of the church, the apostles appealed over and over again to the resurrection as the defining point of what they proclaimed.  God restored the broken relationship between God and man and to prove the point, he raised the sacrifice from the dead.  If Jesus is not alive, lots of men are blowing hot air on Sunday mornings across the globe.
• If Christ hasn't been raised, your "faith" is stupid (v. 14).  If Jesus is not alive today, the billions who have ordered their lives believing him to be alive have believed a lie.  They're betting their future on a ruse, a deceit, a falsehood.
• If Christ hasn't been raised, then Paul is misrepresenting God (v. 15).  So, too, the millions who have proclaimed the resurrection.  Actually, Muslims declare that Christians misrepresent God by asserting Christ raised from the dead (among other things).
• He emphasizes for a second time that if the dead are not raised and will not be raised, then Christ himself could not have been raised (v. 16).
• If Christ hasn't been raised, you are still at odds with God (v. 17).  Why?  Read Romans.  All of it.  Jesus bore in his flesh the penalty due to all humanity for its collective and individual rebellion against a holy and righteous God.  The resurrection puts the exclamation point on God's just satisfaction.  If Jesus is dead, there has been no satisfaction.  Man still stands in rebellion against God.
• Many hope to see their loved ones again someday.  A painful fact:  If they did not know Christ as Savior, you will not see them again.  Another painful fact:  If they did know Christ as Savior and you don't, you will not see them again.  Paul emphasized that if Christ hasn't been raised, those who have died in Christ are worm food (v. 18).
• Lastly, if Christ hasn't been raised from the dead, Christians are the stupidest people in the world and deserving of pity (v. 19). 

Harsh words.  Paul knew and understood the ramifications of what he proclaimed.  He proclaimed that which he had seen and heard.  He also understood how stupid "Christianity" would be if Jesus had become one with the dust of the earth.  That's why v. 20 is so profound.

BUT IN FACT Christ has been raised from the dead...

"In fact."  Just like the moon landing.  The evidence staggers the mind.  Paul's recognition of the implications if Jesus had not been raised is hard to get around, too.

Not believing the moon landing has no bearing upon your life today.  My friend functions just fine in society.  His tomorrow does not depend upon the Sea of Tranquility.  Not believing in the resurrection has serious implications.  Being wrong on that point might not seem to have any bearing upon your 5 p.m. Tuesday, unless of course you don't see 5 p.m. Tuesday. 

Leaves one to wonder why so many refuse to examine the evidence, or if they do, why they still choose to believe Christ is dead?

Saturday

It's a beautiful day here in north Texas.  Warm sun.  Cool breeze.  Rambling kids.  Greening trees. 

If you followed any of my posts from yesterday, you know the execution of God has consumed my thoughts.  This takes me to a Saturday some 1,990 years back.  What was that Saturday like for Jesus' most intimate followers.

Let's recap.  Less than a week prior, it seemed the whole region would install the Galilean as the foreordained messianic king of Israel, but the week wore on and contention grew between him and the leaders of the nation.  One of the inner circle who had been growing disillusioned turned to those leaders in an act of betrayal of the One who called him by name.  We never get Judas' rationale though film-makers and authors have speculated ever since.

A special seder.  Intimate.  Just the twelve and the Master.  Judas leaves.  Where's he going?  Foot-washings.  Songs.  Vines and branches.  Preparing a place?  It's late.  Pray for me.  Sleep.  Pray for me!  Sleep.  Betrayal.  Clubs.  And then he's gone.  Gone.  Into hiding.

Then the news.  They what?!?  Crucified him.  Despair.  Terror.  All is lost.

Saturday.  Eleven.  They had gotten word that Judas' had hanged himself, that his body had fallen from its perch and ruptured on the rocks below.  A few of the women who followed their Master were with them.

Okay.  What do we do now?  We can't just let the last three years be all for nought.  What are we going to do?  They killed him.  What will they do to us?  I thought something great was going to come about at the hands of the Master.  Do we try and fold his teaching into our lives back home.  But didn't he say he was going to die?  Yeah, but he couldn't have really meant the butchery that took place!  He's DEAD!

Was it a blue-sky day in Jerusalem?  Did the late afternoon sun give the temple constructed by the long-dead Herod a more golden hue that it normally had?  Were they making plans to head back to Galilee?  Were they figuring out how to get out of Jerusalem before anyone saw them?  Peter had been spooked by a little girl.  No doubt they huddled in that room scared to death.  Like sheep without a shepherd and wolves howling in the trees all around them.

Maybe we can get out of here tomorrow.  The women want to go take care of the Master's body.  Okay, but after that, let's put this city far behind us.  Maybe tomorrow things will quiet down.  Maybe tomorrow things can start to get back to normal.

Maybe not.

Not quite the Easter Bunny

My flesh trembles for fear of you,

and I am afraid of your judgments.

Psalm 119:120

That's sure not the palatable 21st century God we've crafted for ourselves, is it?  No, we'd prefer one who will bring healing when we are sick, comfort when we are sad, provision when we are in need.  We wouldn't mind too much if a wee bit of judgment got spread about upon those hostile to our cause or our way of life.

But that's not the God who is.  That's the god of our mind, the god of our invention.  The preceding verses thunder,

You spurn all who go astray from your statutes...

All the wicked of the earth you discard like dross...

Psalm 119:118a, 119a

The historical resurrection of Jesus Christ, the verifiable event we celebrate this Sunday, gets painted with Hallmark pastels and fuzzy edges.  We morph the risen and still-scarred Messiah into the Easter Bunny, toting chocolates and trinkets to all the good little boys and girls (in which of course we are included).

But the resurrection should make us tremble.  No longer can we say we don't get it.  Our destiny, the destiny of every life ever conceived, now hinges upon that singular event.  He's the fork in the road of eternity.  All who come to him and will not bow will be spurned and discarded.  "The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing" (1 Corinthians 1:18a)  This should make the believer tremble, too, because we all know those who have rejected that word.

No, we don't like to talk about judgment, but it is the message of our humanity.  We have each rebelled against an absolutely righteous God.  All of us. 

Yet here is why the cross should give us great joy and hope.  God himself took the just and fierce punishment for humanity upon himself.  The pure and right wrath of God was poured out upon the willing and pure sacrifice, God the Son, Jesus Christ.  "To those of us who are being saved, it is the power of God" (1 Corinthians 1:18b), and "to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become the children of God" (John 1:12).

Easter is a phenomenal season for those who know the punishment for their rebellion has been dealt with, for those who have submitted their lives to the Lord of lords.  At the same time, it's a terrible time because it provides no middle ground, no maybe.

That's why the same psalmist who trembled before a holy God could write a half-dozen verses earlier

You are my hiding place and my shield;

I hope in your word

To some he is the aroma of life.  To others he is the stench of death.  There is no other alternative. 

Consider Jesus. 

It is the Easter season, after all.

Would you like a side of fries with your Jesus?

If you want to dip your toe into the shallow end of American culture, pick up the Parade Magazine found in most Sunday papers.  You won't make it to the base of the nail before you touch bottom. 

This last weekend, Miley Cyrus treated us to her pole-dancing version of Christianity.

Let me make it clear, though—I am a Christian. Jesus is who saved me.

Okay. Sounds good, but 90% of America would consider themselves in that same canoe. Could you give us a little more?

He’s what keeps me full and whole.

Hmmm.  Cheeseburgers keep me full and my skin keeps me whole, but that statement plumbs the same depths as Parade.  Anything else?

But everyone is entitled to what they believe and what keeps them full...it is not my job to tell people what they are doing wrong.*

There it is!  The Burger King Jesus of 2010.  Have it your way!  Aren't your shorts a bit short?  You're too uptight.  But a Christian doing a pole dance?  It was right for the song.  Change the channel.  But aren't you a role model?  Well, Christians don't live in the dark.  I have to participate in life.

Ah, but what does Jesus say, Ms. Cyrus?  (Cricket...cricket...)  Ms. Cyrus?  So, suddenly I'm a slut (her words) because I wear short shorts.  That's so old school.

You could chalk her responses up to adolescent immaturity except that the theology of Miley Cyrus mirrors that of most of America.  We want a palatable Jesus.  We want a modern Jesus.  We want a Jesus whose waistband doesn't bind.  When people start to describe Jesus today, they do not cite the biblical evidence.  They cite what they feel.  That way I can morph him comfortably into my image.

A few weeks back I wrote a post about the unconstitutional mess that is the pending health care law (here).  On Facebook, an individual avered that Jesus would certainly support the legislation.  I countered that the government was stealing by taking money from one people group and giving it to another people.  They do it under the auspices of legislation, but it was nonetheless stealing (Fredric Bastiat termed it "legal plunder").  Since Christ could not act contrary to his nature, he being the source of "Thou shalt not steal," he could in no way support the legislation.  The individual attempted to return volley with "Well, oh yeah!"  She suggested that a) we already redistribute wealth, so what's a little more gonna hurt, and b) "I think Jesus would agree with me."  No support.  No chapter.  Not a verse.  Not even, "I think it says somewhere..."

The Jesus of the Bible is not the soft, fuzzy image held by so many.  No, he was quite prickly.  And quite real.  And quite intolerant.

I had the honor these past months of listening to one who knows articulate the clarity of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.**  Here are a couple of uncomfortable statements from said discourse:

• "Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few."

By Jesus' own words, many are on the highway to destruction but few on the way that leads to life.  The former is easy.  The latter, not so much.  Many on that easy way.  How many in America think we are in like Flint?  Many. 

Number two:

• "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves."

They look good.  They don't disturb the water.  They blend in nicely.  They intend destruction and Jesus suggests that their end is "the fire."  Oh, how their words salve our delicate ears. 

Last and perhaps most sobering:

• "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'

Ouch.  How many today will say they believe in Jesus?  James, Jesus' brother, went so far as to say the demons believe in God, too, and tremble (James 2:19).  It's not just recognizing Jesus for who he is.  The message isn't just positive and encouraging.  Many who believe Jesus to be the Son of God will hear from his lips, "I never knew you; depart from me."  There will be no return for the one who hears those words.  No words can capture the agony of that horrifying moment.

While Jesus walked the earth, he poured his lavish grace upon those who were broken in spirit, upon those convicted by the foulness of their sin before a holy God (John 4:1-42, John 8:2-11, Luke 13:9-14), but to those giddy because they set their own mark and hit it every time, he was most uncompromising (Matthew 19:16-23, Matthew 23).

Jesus knew that many people said many things about him.  What they thought did matter, but it went beyond what they thought.  Jesus confronted his twelve.  "Who do you say that I am?"  They answered, Peter actually, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."  That was the correct answer but one of them, the son of perdition, ended up betraying Jesus. 

What are we to do with Jesus?  Do we live the Miley Cyrus life, partying on the broad highway and pole-dancing our way to our own destruction?  Or do we believe the pages of the Bible, falling broken in repentance upon the Rock rejected by men and thereby entering into the narrow gate?  Will we have it our way or will we have it his way?

It's time to consider.  It is the Easter season after all.
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*The rest of her insight into things of Christ reflects that same equivocating, tepid mumbo-jumbo.  You can read the interview here if you'd like; my sons couldn't stomach it.

**You can access an excellent teaching series on the Sermon on the Mount here and under Sermon Series filter "Sermon on the Mount."  If you'd like to access the messages directly, click on the two paths, the false teachers, or "Lord, Lord."

The failure of "Christianity"

Once again the Roman Catholic church finds itself up to its clerical collar amidst a flood of institutional sexual abuse.  As a victim of this torrent, I'll not use silly terms like "alleged" or "allegations."  It is very real.  Because of the moral failings of many within clerical Catholicism, many who have never looked into Christianity have ample reason to never do so.

Please, no spears.  My language in the preceding paragraph makes plain that not all Catholic priests are pedophiles.  It also does not absolve Protestant pastors of similar abuses.  Do you remember Ted Haggard?  All such failures within that which calls itself "the Church" or a "church" becomes another check against Christianity for those who have never tried it.

The repugnance that many show toward all things Christian stems not only from its failures.  This past summer, my eldest son had the opportunity to witness in the front row the heresy that is Benny Hinn.  My son attended because he was doing mission work in Kenya and with the talons of the "Prosperity Gospel" embedded within impoverished Africa, he wanted to see it first hand.  What did he find? 
You can read more about Hinn and his ilk through my son's posts here, here, here, here, here and here.  My son is not the only one from within the church railing againt the peddlers of prosperity.  John MacArthur, one of our nation's finest expositors of the Bible, speaks with great passion against that which masquerades as part of the church in a lengthy article here.

"To go to Uganda and see Benny Hinn and Company steal roughly $800,000 from the poorest people in the world made me furious, and still does. Even more heartbreaking was how ready these people were to give their money under the lie that God would return to them a hundred times what they had given."

Who's going to want to become part of a community where the successes pillage impoverished peoples and where the failures take horrifying liberties with those entrusted to their care?  Were I atheist or agnostic today, I don't know that Christianity would be where I would turn if all I knew of it consisted of pedophiles and used-car salesmen, not that strapping C4 to one's chest seems a much better worldview.

Here's where getting back to basics comes in.

When assessing what Christianity has brought to the world in terms of charity, hospitals, education, civilization, stability and rule of law, it has much to commend it.  Even those things are superficial.  From what do these things come?  Now we're getting somewhere.  What do the founding documents say?  How does the Bible compare to those who so grotesquely misrepresent it?

Biblically, sexual immorality has no place among those who call themselves Christians (Matthew 5:27-30, Ephesians 5:3, 1 Corinthians 6:18-20).  How does the Bible speak of those who falsely teach what God has said?  Paul suggests that such folks are accursed.  So riled did this get the preacher that he spit it out twice (Galatians 1:6-10).  Jesus referred to them as false prophets and likened them to wolves in sheep's clothing (Matt. 7:15, 20), suggesting that many will believe themselves to be part of the church ("Lord, Lord") but will find that on the Day of Judgment, Jesus did not know them (vv. 21-23).

So why the disparity between the pure teaching of the Bible and what has become of the Church today?  Two key issues.  One would be entropy.  Whoa, hey, don't go physics on me!  Sorry.  We live in a fallen world.  Sin holds sway.  That natural state of man is to move further and further away from God's designs and to kick all the harder against God's rules.  The Bible makes plain that becoming a Christian does not suddenly make one pure in heart never to sin again.  It does give the believer the power NOW to overcome sin in their lives.  That's why Paul kicks the church at Rome with such passion to live their lives as slaves to righteousness vice slaves to sin (Romans 6).  Whereas before Christ, a person cannot be expected to live in a godly fashion (Romans 3:10-18), one whose life has been bought from the pit by the blood of Jesus Christ ought to live their lives in devoted obedience to the One who saved them (Romans 12:1-2).

The second reason the Church today bears little resemblence to its ancestors is because it no longer holds to the Word of Truth that birthed it.  Paul warned against those creeping into the church and distorting its message (2 Timothy 3:1-9, esp. vv. 6-9).  He later prompted Timothy in the same letter to be careful to preach the word properly (4:1-4).  Peter also testified to the importance of the written word of God (2 Peter 1:16-21).  I referenced the infection of the Church that began in Europe under the guise of Higher Criticism in my last post.  Through nothing much more than whim, scholars began to declare the Bible as unreliable with regard to history and unreliable concerning things supernatural.  If the Bible is false and is not authoritative, then Jesus becomes anything we want him to be.  To Benny Hinn, he's a cash cow.  To pedophile priests, he's the condoner of their sin.  After all, God is love, right?

When the Church fails to fight internally against the sin of a fallen world and when it rejects the only standard of truth by which it can right itself, it becomes irrelevant to a world in desperate need of salvation.  The lost reject the Christ, the only avenue for wholeness, because his ambassadors have failed at their task.

To those who have never dipped their big toe into Christianity, please do not think you know the Christ because a few of those who claim to be his followers have corrupted his image and misrepresented him.  Go to the source of Christianity.  Go to the Christ made known to the world today in the pages of the Bible.

It is the Easter season after all.  Taste and see that the Lord is good.  And so is his church...as it honors him.

A spring challenge

This deep into 2010 your New Year's resolutions have either withered into ten more pounds around your mid-section or posterior (depending upon your predispostion) or you've developed the new habit that you'd hoped to develop in the final days of 2009.  Since we're at a time of year when many already have their noses to the grindstone as they focus upon spring cleaning or getting ready for finals, here's another challenge, an easy challenge in terms of initial investment but a most significant challenge in terms of final results.

Consider Jesus.

That's it.  Consider Jesus.  Consider his claims.  Consider what he said.  Consider what he did.

Not Dan Brown.  Not Rudolf Bultmann.  Not Richard Dawkins.  Just Jesus.

It is the Easter season, after all.

Why do I offer this challenge?  From the time of the 1800's, modern scholarship has done everything in its power to deconstruct Jesus Christ.  This eruption grew from the likes of Astruc, Semler, and Eichorn, European theologians, who believed that the Jesus of the Bible could not possibly be the same fellow that actually walked the earth.  What evidence did they have?  None.  No objective evidence on which to anchor this notion.  Just a gut feel.

The movement blew into a wildfire in Europe and spread across the Atlantic to set the American religious scene ablaze.  It has gutted what many believe to be Christianity with the same intensity as a housefire, but a  housefire cannot destroy the building's foundation.  The foundation of Christianity is Jesus Christ, the Jesus Christ of the Bible.

So is he substantial or is he a phantom?  Ah, there's the rub.  The New Testament Gospels, the biographies of Jesus written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, intend to provide its readers with historical evidence about the historical Jesus so that those who were not there when he walked the earth would have evidence by which to determine for themselves what they would do with this Galilean.

Consider how Luke opens up his narrative of Jesus.

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

It would sure seem that his intention is to provide evidence. While Luke starts his narrative in that manner, John reveals his intention toward the end of his bio of Jesus.

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

John raises an interesting point.  He links belief to evidence.  Signs.  Many see faith in Jesus Christ as completely unsubstantial and without foundation.  On the contrary.  Belief in Jesus Christ must be substantial and upon a sure foundation or it is nothing. 

In the verses before John's declaration, Jesus confronts the doubter, Thomas.  Thomas had heard about Jesus' resurrection from the other disciples who had seen him.  Consider that eyewitness testimony.  He had no reason to doubt the testimony of his friends, but skeptic that he was, he wanted further evidence (a sincere skeptic and not a cynical skeptic).  So Christ appears to him eight days later and says, "Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe."  In other words, "Here's a bit more evidence for you.  Touch me."

Now, catch Jesus' response to Thomas after he declared him to be Lord and God.

Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

For those who have not seen Jesus, in what have they believed? Was it mystical, fantastical stories? Or was it coherent, substantive historical narrative?  Was it the signs they had seen during his life coupled with the testimony of these convinced fisherman.  Consider, too, that the Christian movement did not spring up in the Balkans or in Central America.  It grew up in the very town that executed him for being a threat to the religious and political order.  If the claims of Jesus' followers were false, wouldn't those hostile to him have squelched the movement before it began?

God never intended folks to tie themselves to a vapor.  He is willing for people to prove him.  He declared to his creation, "Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!"

It is the Easter season after all.  Take a couple minutes each day and read through one of the Gospels (or all of them) and consider Jesus.
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UPDATE:  The God who calls his creation to consider him is not an after-the-fact God.  Through the Bible, God says something and then God does something.  It's not as though he points back to something that happened and says, "I did that," and we're left to think, "Yeah, sure."  The plagues upon Egypt were Pharaoh's first hand look upon the God who is there.

Many believe that the plagues were just natural events that befell the nation (must have been a bad year) and only later did folks attribute it to the "hand of God."  That might be the case if the Bible were not full to the brim of instances of God saying and then doing. The most stunning aspect of this is prophecy, events that God says will occur in one place and it is fulfilled in vivid detail in another place.  A most striking example would be the execution of Jesus Christ and why it came about.  It's played out in the Gospels but its foretold hundreds of years before in excruciating detail in Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22.

Is it any wonder that in the first thirty-nine chapters of Ezekiel God challenges Israel with "then you will know that I am the LORD."

The Look

Many are familiar with John Newton, a slave trader whose life changed from darkness to light when he met Jesus Christ and became confronted by the wretchedness of his own life.  Most know him through his most famous poem, a lyric we sing as Amazing Grace.

I did not realize Mr. Newton penned other poems as well.  Tonight, for the first time, I heard The Look.  Here it is.

THE LOOK

In evil long I took delight
Unawed by shame or fear;
Till a new object struck my sight
And stopped my wild career.
I saw One hanging on a tree
In agonies and blood;
Who fixed His languid eyes on me
As near His cross I stood.

Sure never till my latest breath
Can I foget that look;
It seemed to charge me with His death
Though not a word He spoke.
My conscience felt and owned the guilt
And plunged me in despair;
I saw my sins His blood had spilt
And helped to nail Him there.

Alas, I knew not what I did
But now my tears are vain;
Where shall my trembling soul be hid?
For I the Lord have slain.
A second look He gave which said
"I freely all forgive;
This blood is for thy ransom paid
I died that thou mayest live."

Thus while His death my sin displays
In all its blackest hue;
Such is the mystery of grace,
It seals my pardon too.
With pleasing grief and mournful joy
My spirit now is filled;
That I should such a life destroy
Yet live by Him I killed.

Wow.  "Yet live by Him I killed."  Oh, my.  Grace.  Amazing grace.

Luke 7

Of late I have anchored myself in the physician's account of Jesus, the man from Nazareth.  His historical garnishes provide insights into first century Judea like no other writer.  John MacArthur recognized Luke's penchant for detail by noting his account of Paul's imprisoned cruise to Rome gives nautical historians more information on ancient seafaring in the Med than any other written work (Acts 27).

Anyway, back into the gospel, I was blessed this morning by a number of morsels that I'll be savoring throughout the day.

1. Centurions.  This whole section (Luke 7:1-10) blows the mind in so many ways.  The mutual love between the Roman for the Jewish community he oversaw.  He built a synagogue for the Jews.  His extraordinary faith in Jesus' authority.  What I was left wondering as I feasted upon this section, did he ever get a chance to formally meet his Savior this side of paradise?  They didn't meet in this section.
   
2. The Baptizer.  When Jesus first enters the ministry scene, John the Baptist, Jesus' cousin, heralds the Lord's identity and his authority.  As Jesus' fame grew and John's crowds waned, the baptizer accepted this and rejoiced in this (here).  In Luke 7, John has been imprisoned for some time by Herod Antipas.  As he languished in a dank jail, doubts began to creep into his mind.  Was Jesus really the Messiah?  Maybe I was wrong.  So John sends some disciples to ask him.  Jesus didn't rebuke their questioning his identity.  John struggled (as I sometimes do).  He wanted to know (as I sometimes do).  So the Christ provided physical evidence in fulfillment of prophecy and told John's disciples to go and report what they had seen.  As they turned to walk away, I imagine a smile of deep pride cross the Savior's face knowing the love of John, knowing the baptizer would soon die a martyr's death, knowing that he too would soon follow, as he said to them, "Blessed is the one who is not offended by me."
   
3. The Drunkard.  Much of the biblically Christian world has an erroneous view of alcohol.  That's somewhat ironic considering their high view of the word of God and of teaching and understanding it aright.  Oddly, man seems to think Jesus did not consume alcohol during his earthly ministry or that the "wine" spoken of in Scripture was so diluted with water as to have no inebriating effects.  That's not the way Scripture reads.  And I haven't seen that born out historically, except among those asserting alcoholic prohibition.
   
   All that aside, it seems plain in Luke 7 that Jesus did consume wine and wine that could make drunk if improperly consumed.  Christ compared and contrasted his ministry with John's and how they had both been received by the religious of their day.  He said,
   

   For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, 'He has a demon.' The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, 'Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!'
   

   Jesus admits to drinking (it was no big deal for that was a normal beverage of the day).  What he drank was of such a quality as to be able to cause drunkenness because his enemies indicted him for being a drunkard because of what he drank.
   
   Am I encouraging you to go out and buy cases of the finest Cabernet?  No.  Just wanting to make sure we're on the same page.
   
4. Love.  The last section of Luke 7 tells of a harlot who lavished the Lord with love.  Real love.  Deep affection.  Heart-broken adoration understanding her filth and the mercy of the One whom she anointed.  After skewering his unloving host, Jesus says,
   

   Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much.
   

   A couple eye-poppers on this one.  Jesus didn't deny or ignore or rationalize her rebellion against God.  Notice his qualifier about her sins, "...which are many."  You can imagine him nodding in concession with his host that, yes, she was a bad woman.  If we simply had this verse, we would think that her actions earned her forgiveness.  That was not the case.  Notice Jesus' words as he turned to the whore.
   

   Your faith has saved you; go in peace.
   

   She knew she had no merit.  She could only trust in the man who reclined at the table.  Her trust in him was manifest in her acts of love.  Her weeping and anointing were the vehicles of her faith.  She could not purchase or procure her right standing with God through her actions.  It was trusting him alone with impoverished hands that established her aright before God.
   

Time to sign off and travel my day in the peace obtained for me by the One who could obtain it.

Supernatural loathing, supernatural love

Let's do word association but let's use names instead.  Ready?  What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the name:

Abe Lincoln.  Honesty?  Emmancipation?  Slavery?  Civil War?  Funny Beard?  Stove-pipe hat?

That was easy.  How about this one:

Bob Hope.  USO?  Viet Nam?  Troops?  Slapstick?  Golf?  Ski-sloped nose?  Actor?

Or how about:

Ted Bundy.  Horror?  Execution?  Serial killing?  Capital punishment?  Pornography?

Ick.  Sorry.  Something a little lighter.

Laura Ingalls Wilder.  Stories?  Wonder?  Beauty?  Goodness?  Family?  Pioneers?  Half-pint?

Really it's extraordinary what names can evoke in our hearts and minds.  They are more than words, more than labels.  Our name becomes our identity.  You can change your name to Ochocinco, Prince or some bizarre symbol, but you can't escape escape the "dork" that is associated with it.  Your name plainly identifies you.

Here's another name.

Mohammad.  Islam?  Prophet?  Peace?  Jihad?  Allah? 

Mention the name Mohammad around most folks and you'll not likely get a viceral reaction.  Perhaps a yawn.  Some may say something about of terrorist activities.  Some suggest he's prophet of peace.  Others identify him as the founder of the world's largest cult.  Does his name illicit hatred?  Maybe in Israel.  Maybe among a thin fraction of Americans.  Most just shrug him off as a religious guy not of their flavor.
One more name.

Jesus Christ.  God?  Teacher?  Rabbi?  Man?  Madman?  Myth?  Epithet?  Savior?  King?  Delusional?

Do you know of any other names used as curses and exclamations?  You might find Pete and his sake much further down the list.  Samuel Hill would be even further down stream.  Mom's a fan of Judas Priest, and not the rock band.  No, Jesus Christ ranks among the top curses out there.  Not Mohammad.  Not Buddha.  Not Davey Koresh.  Jesus.

Apart from man's affinity for slurring Jesus' name, there exists no more unwelcome name in serious conversation than Jesus Christ's.  Drop his name and you'll not get a dispassioned shrug.  In fact, I surmise that a fractional minority would shrug at the name.  You'll get eyes that well with tears of love and eyes that flame with primal hatred.  The world witnessed the latter a few weeks back when Brit Hume suggested that a relationship with Jesus Christ would be just the ticket for Tiger Woods to cure the hellish slice that had become his life.

Wow.  Had Hume suggested that Woods undergo a sex change to solve his problems, we would likely have heard nothing of it.  Had the journalist encouraged Mr. Woods to anchor himself in his Buddhism, we could have heard the yawns from Yakima.  Nobody would have noticed had Hume advocated for the general God, that nameless unknowable deity who many presume to be the one behind the curtain of all religions, but Brit Hume got specific.  No, worse.  Brit Hume went Christian.  In public.  On a news program!

The response came swiftly.  If Fox is the place you'll hear folks chat with normality about Jesus Christ, MSNBC sees the name as far more subversive than some Islamic loon trying to detonate his underpants.  From the mouth of stellar sportscaster gone rancid, Keith Olbermann, we get this peek into the heart of what one camp thinks about introducing folks to Jesus Christ (the entire schtick is here -- yikes!):

"This crosses that principle “Keep religious advocacy out of public life” since the worst examples of this are Jihadists not to mention guys who don’t know their own religions or other people’s religions like Brit Hume."

Wow.  I could spend the next few blog posts pondering the Orwellian creepiness of Mr. Olbermann's opinion.  For example, when did religion get relegated to privacy?  Why can one's convictions about God not influence his life outside his home and/or church?  A Christian telling an unbeliever about what Jesus said about heaven and hell is equivalent to lopping off the head of Daniel Pearl or blowing up the USS Cole or razing military barracks in Lebanon or Dhaharan or 9-11?  Let me anchor for a bit on knowing other people's religions and hating Jesus Christ.

If Mr. Olbermann had a working knowledge of Christianity he would know the mandate Jesus gave to his followers to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them, teaching them to observe all his commands. 

If Mr. Olbermann understood Christianity, he would know that Jesus and his disciples seemed to think that man was a broken mess through his own rebellion against God and that the only way solution was Jesus alone.  Two verses after John's famous third chapter, sixteenth verse, he states, "Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God." 

Ooh.  That's not a very Jack Black Jesus.  He sounds downright condemnatory.  Peter, one of Jesus' closest friends, had the gall to assert, "And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved."  That's not the stuff of MSNBC.  Jesus claiming that no man gets to the Father but through him is not very all inclusive, it's not very open-armed to Islam or Zorastrianism.

But you know what?  He knew he wasn't going to make friends.

"Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.  For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."

He told his disciples, "You will be hated by all for my name's sake."

Why?  Why this absolute loathing?  Olbermann wouldn't hemorrhage if Hume advocated Pilates, so why so with the Prince of Peace?  Why is it adoration or acrimony and not apathy?

Is it because, as the Bible indicates, that man stands opposed to God, hostile to the commands of the One who created him?  Paul indicated that one day every knee would bow and acknowledge the lordship of Jesus Christ.  If man is not willing to so acknowledge in this lifetime, the sobriety and tragedy of the next will make all too plain the truth behind what Christ proclaimed. 

And therein lies Olbermann's loathing.  His reason does not reign supreme.  How dare anyone suggest that there is a God to whom we are accountable, to whom we are answerable?  How dare one declare that apart from God's solution, we will spend eternity condemned and separated from God in a state of everlasting torment?  How dare we?  Because that is what God himself declares throughout his word.  And so the Brit Hume's of the world offer up what Jesus told us to offer up, the solution to man's sin problem.  Him.  Jesus Christ himself.

Really, his name is wonderful.  It is the name upon which life hinges.  Should that be repugnant?  Not really.  It's not surprising that it's vile to so many, but it doesn't have to be that way.

What Child is this?

As grown-ups, we set aside childish ways.  Some parents will play "tooth fairy" with their children, but I suspect few adults who lose a tooth put that bicuspid under their pillow in exchange for a quarter or dollar. 

Some parents do the same with Santa Claus.  Yes, there lived a historical St. Nicholas (great story, by the way), but most parents don't lay that on their kids.  They sell the guy in the red suit, Rudolph and company, elves, North Pole, that's the schtick the kids get.  Do parents buy into it?  Despite Elf, I would have to say, no, Virginia, they do not believe in Santa Clause.


So what gives with baby Jesus, God incarnate? 

Really, I don't think many adults give it much thought.  Most believe it because it's what they have always believed while many that dismiss it do so because of its apparent patent absurdity.  Neither camp feels it necessary to examine the historicity and veracity of what took place in Bethlehem a couple millenia ago.  For the established Christian, the events of the nativity would prove a source of wonder and amazement at what God really did do.  For the skeptic an objective examination of Christmas might give them a new appreciation for the biblical accounts at the very least and might introduce them to the God who loves them at best.

The accounts of the advent of God the Son come from the pens of Matthew and Luke, the former being one of Jesus' twelve closest followers, the latter being a physician who very likely never met Jesus during his thirty years on earth.  He did take his passion for science and applied it to historic narrative.  So when he came to understand what God had done to eradicate his sin-debt through Jesus Christ, he sought to document accurately the account of those events for a friend of his, Theophilus.  How do I know this?  Luke said so.

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

How did he do this?  Notice what he said above.  He examined all these things over a period of time.  He seems well acquainted with eyewitnesses.  We do know that from the book of Acts, that Luke (also the author of that work) joined Paul in his travels during his second missionary journey.  As they traveled throughout Greece, Asia Minor, and Judea, Luke had ample opportunity to meet those who walked with Jesus Christ and saw the events that transpired.  I would seem he was well-suited to document these events.

Notice his account of Jesus' birth as memorably recited by Linus van Pelt from Luke's second chapter.  Look at the historic detail. 

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.

Does anyone today care that Quirinius was governor of Syria? Does he come into play anywhere else in the gospel story?  Not really, but it does anchor the specific time of the events to those who were familiar with the region.  It would be like someone today writing, "During the time that Gerald Ford served as President of the United States."  He did so for so limited an amount of time that your mind would immediately travel to the mid-1970's.

It's also significant because Joseph and the very-pregnant Mary lived in Nazareth, 100 miles north of Bethlehem.  Rome had dominion over the Mediterranean and therefore, over Judea.  When the emporer gets an itch, his subjects scratch.  Augustus wanted some idea about the extent of his territory and so he introduced his census with little concern for the pregnant Nazarene woman.  The Roman had no idea that his itch would have a hand in fulfilling a prophecy given hundreds of years earlier.  Micah wrote,

But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days.

The Messiah would come from one of the most obscure towns in all Israel.  Because Joseph was of the lineage of David, he would have to be registered in the city of David, Bethlehem, he and all his family which would include his betrothed, Mary, great with child.  A God-thing?  Coincidence?  Regardless,  it would seem to be valid history in contradiction with nothing we know from archaeology or extra-biblical history.

The last thing I'd like to highlight from Luke's account is something unique to him in his gospel, something not found in Matthew, Mark, or Luke.  After telling about the shepherd's arrival to see the babe, Luke notes that "Mary treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart."  It wasn't the only time Luke would highlight that tidbit.  Later in chapter two, after the young boy, Jesus, had remained behind in the Temple as his family headed home, Luke writes, "his mother treasured up all these things in her heart."

So what's the big deal with Mary?  How would he know that Mary treasured these things?  Could Luke have gotten this by divine revelation?  Yeah, I guess so, but that's not what he said at the outset of his history.  Eyewitnesses, he told Theophilus.  During Paul's two year imprisonment at Caesarea on the coast of Israel starting in AD 58, is it possible that Luke traveled throughout Judea and spoke to folks who knew Mary and told him about how those events had stuck with her?  Or is it possible that Mary was still alive?  Were she a teen as most surmise, say fifteen, when Christ was born, that would have put her in her 70's.  It is quite possible that Luke got his narrative of the Christmas story directly from Jesus' mom.

Unlike the Tooth Fairy and unlike Santa Claus, we have much that we can believe as historic regarding the story of the babe in a manger.  What we do with that is up to us. 

Merry Christmas!

political cartoon by Gary Varvel, copyright 2009