Listen to the Feb 12, 2024 version of the post (3 minutes), author’s voice
First, here’s how Christians (and others) often define sin, righteousness, and judgment. The definitions are like those found in an English dictionary, but in no way do they capture the message Jesus brought:
Sin: Anything that is imperfect—and that’s a truckload of activities and attitudes,
Righteousness: The opposite of the above, (i.e. everything that’s perfect)—another truckload of things to do and be concerned about, and,
Judgment: The consequence of yielding to sin or slacking off on righteousness.
Note two things. First, the definitions make us and our failures the centerpiece—we are the agents of sin and righteousness, just as we are the recipients of justice. Second, as the following quotation from John shows, they are not how Jesus defined the terms. As always, his definitions deserve the final say, for in them is freedom and peace, not worry and fear.
His definitions should confuse us the first time we think about them. If we are not taken aback, we are not awake:
Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate [i.e. Holy Spirit] will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgement: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgement, because the ruler of this world has been condemned. (John 16:7-11)
Notice the departure from our habitual self-oriented thinking. His message involves no moral bookkeeping, finger pointing, or punishment for us. Instead, we find Jesus giving exclusive attention his identity as the true savior and to the “ruler of the world” as the ultimate foe. We are witnesses and recipients only, which is another way of saying we are put in our rightful place. Here’s the definitions Jesus provides:
Sin: Disbelief in Jesus—the one sin that rules them all,
Righteousness: To see Jesus is to see true righteousness, and now that he is no longer visible, only the Spirit can reveal that righteousness to us, and,
Judgment: Not against us, but against the “ruler of this world” (i.e. Satan)—who stands condemned.
How should we respond to this? Many ways, no doubt, but the obvious is to admit any disbelief, admire his righteousness (which he offers to give us by faith), and rejoice that the truly sinister force behind our wayward actions stands condemned.
Publishing Info This post was first published on: Feb 12, 2024 at 12:01. Revised: July 19, 2024. If this article is significantly updated, the publication date beneath the title may change in order to bring current posts to the top of the directory.
If you pay attention to Christian descriptions of God, they are quite varied and, frankly, at times disheartening. You may think, “If that’s what God is like, I’ll pass, please.” Whenever I’m confronted with a description of a violent/cruel/merciless God, I ask myself, “What would Jesus do?” or “Would Jesus do that?” In other words, Jesus is my touchstone for the true nature of his Father, the gold standard for divinity.
This post assumes that Jesus is the clearest representation of God’s character that we will ever have. Jesus himself says in the gospel of John: “I do only those things that I see my Father do” (John 5:19) and “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). Finally, Hebrews 1:1-3 states that, unlike the prophets, Jesus was the exact representation of God. And it states this in contrast to the prophets: “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.”
Can things be made any more clear? Hardly! No one will argue with that until they get to the corollary.
Here’s the corollary: the portrayal of Jesus in the New Testament often overrides and corrects representations of God, usually in the Old Testament but perhaps occasionally in the New Testament. If you are a fundamentalist, you were likely taught (or commanded) to take every scripture as being equally inspired by God. No progressive revelations of God allowed. So, when I demonstrate that Jesus sets the record straight, you must do acrobatics mentally, textually, and historically to explain how it’s all equally accurate stuff.
One evidence that Jesus came to set the record straight occurs in a string of statements in Matthew 5 (the Sermon on the Mount). We hear him say repeatedly, “You have heard that it was said,” followed by a quote from the Old Testament, and finally followed by “But I say to you….” And there he is, modifying the ancient scripture. This is how he came to “fulfill” “the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 5:17). Yes, the old statements stand, but they stand as pillars to hold up the clearer truth that Jesus brings. There are more ways to murder than by shedding blood, more ways to commit adultery than by sleeping with someone, fewer reasons to get a divorce than Moses allowed. Jesus makes it clear that what he has to say eclipses and surpasses many statements in the Old Testament.
At this, some of you will say that Jesus didn’t override the Old Testament, but only reinterpreted it. That’s not unreasonable.
A more abstract, yet more compelling argument contrasts the way Jesus behaves with the ways God is often reputed to have behaved in the Old Testament (as well as in the present, according to many Christians).
What do we find when we compare how Jesus treats people to the way traditional theology assumes God treats people? Here we find once again that Jesus presents a less violent, more merciful image. Jesus was fine with—and at times apparently enjoyed—spending time with sinners (tax collectors, sex workers, a thief on the nearby cross). True, he had a tough time with preachers and Bible scholars (pharisees and scribes). But none of his treatment of anyone approaches the violence and retribution often attributed to God. Many people allow ancient images of God to override the example Jesus relentlessly gives.
When we read the Old Testament with Jesus as our standard, we no longer need to juggle competing images of God. If the alleged behavior of God is the very thing Jesus came to save us from…then admit the representation is inaccurate. Here are some representations of God that, judged by the morality undergirding both the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus’ life, are bad business:
People of Babylon, you are sentenced to be destroyed.
Happy is the person who pays you back
according to what you have done to us.
Happy is the person who grabs your babies
and smashes them against the rocks. (Psalm 137:8-9)
This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’ (I Samuel 15:2-3)
Many, if not most, Christians will come up with justifications for both these passages. They were necessary for one reason or another. For example, the existing cultures were so rotten that they were going to infect the entire human race. Hypothetically, perhaps. But I cannot imagine Jesus doing any of those things (at all). Either the Father and the Son have a division of labor (I, the Father, destroy life, while you, the Son, repair it), or the ancient scriptures were colored by a projection of human violence onto God. Jesus never mentioned a division of labor, but instead said, “I do only those things that I see my Father do” (John 5:19).
If I’m doing violence to your interpretation of scripture, it may be because many interpretations are unjust by doing violence to the character of God. Such interpretations relegate Jesus and his Father to a long lineage of pagan gods who are vindictive and violent. The violence is on the human side. The cross shows that. I plead with you, brothers and sisters, let Jesus be your guide to how you view God. Do not let your theory of scripture mar the purity of God. Never forget that Jesus is the exact representation of God. He’s the final word and must have the final word. Everything will be better because we’ll have a better image of God!
Publishing Info This post was first published on: Jan 12, 2024 at 18:36. If this article is significantly updated, the publication date beneath the title may change, just as it might change in order to bring current posts to the top (or bottom) of the directory.
I was thinking about all the things Jesus told his followers to do. Me? I don’t do many of those things. Am I ok? Are you? Go through this checklist to the key at the bottom and see for yourself.
I’ll start the checkpoints with the less stressful and move up to the harder sayings (at least for me). In the end, it will feel like a trick checklist. But that’s because it is. By design it echos the paradoxical nature of grace: in our weakness God’s strength is made perfect (2 Cor. 12:9).
The Checklist
thisis anonymous & none of your choices is saved anywhere. Refresh the page to start over (don’t you wish life were that easy?)
How Do You Check Out?
Careful, here! If what follows were always accepted by all Christians, we may never have had the Reformation, including the bloody history that led up to and away from it. So you might find yourself disagreeing with what I offer. That’s ok. This checklist is to make us think, not to define us.
Click here for the evaluation key
The key for #1-8 is that most of us will have had to put down “Often, even Almost Often” or “Never or Almost Never” for several if not all of them.
If you have “Always” on most or all of them, I want to interview you!
Rarely do I give away what I am wearing and rarely do I lend to strangers (#7)—we know from the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus meant strangers. Frankly, I’ve never plucked out an eye literally and rarely figuratively (#8).
All of these pronouncements from Jesus are quite important, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that they are on his checklist (nor that he has one). Nor nor does it mean that they were spoken with the expectation that his listeners would painfully eek them out with all the self-righteousness they could muster. We saw what happened when Peter tried that.
Watchman Nee—among others—assures us that the reason Jesus could raise such a high bar was because he believed so fully in his ability to live his life through us by our faith.
Here are the final two checkpoints:
When we get to #9 and #10, faith kicks in. Believe that Jesus already offered his life to you so he could live through you, and you are on the road. You can admit to him that you need help with everything. It’s his ability and not yours that makes the good news good. My wish is that we would all be able to put “Often, even Oftener than Not” for #9 and #10.
If the checklist has any value, it is to remind us to rely on Jesus, to learn to be quiet and trusting, to give thanks in all things, to make our requests known to our Father, to cast all our cares on him, knowing that he cares for us.
Publishing Info This post was first published on: June 3, 2024. If this article is significantly updated, the publication date beneath the title may change, just as it might change in order to bring current posts to the top (or bottom) of the directory.
Assume you can have only one account at the Bank of Morality. You can have the account in your name or in the name of Jesus, as a co-signer. You choose how you will be identified.
The account in your name would go something like this: sometimes you’d have a positive balance of moral assets, sometimes negative. When positive, you’d feel pretty good about yourself. You might even look down on others who were in the negative. You would undergo stress at times, fearing you’d somehow compromise. When you did begin to lose your ground, your stress and anxiety would increase considerably. If you lost too much ground, you’d suffer insufferable guilt—and that’s too much guilt to be sure.
The account in Jesus’ name would go something like this: everything you need would have been paid for (note the past tense). His account offers no pride for being righteous, nor guilt for past sins. It is his account, not yours or mine. We are purely beneficiaries. Receiving the gift of a completely new identity is a humbling thing. It is also a peaceful, joyful, loving thing.
Need forgiveness? Done, first from before time in the heart of God and later in history made unforgettable while Jesus was on the cross. Need redemption? Already done. Need better behavior (also called sanctification)? It’s yours! Really? Yes, the Account Holder has already lived a perfect life and will live it again, in you, step by step as you trust him. The entire account is yours by faith. Faith or trust is the only thing you are asked to contribute and even that’s a gift! No room for boasting, plenty of room for gratitude.
One can piece all these things together easily by reading the letters of Paul and others in the New Testament. But one statement from Paul says it all: “But it is due to God that you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption” (I Corinthians 1:30). In Jesus’ account there can never be a negative balance. It’s all too good to be true in this world, but it is standard fare for the kingdom of God.
What, then, are the downsides of signing on to the account of Jesus? First downside: it’s invisible. Being invisible, it takes faith, something many of us discount in favor of our feelings. One will never have faith without listening to the revealed words of God and allowing the Spirit of God to reveal their meaning. This happens to me over time, not over night. Second downside: there’s no boasting, no pride. Any sense of one’s importance must be replaced by one’s sense of being loved. No more judging others, no more taking credit for one’s successes—everything shifts to relying on Jesus’ accomplishment. When, on the cross, he said, “It is finished”—he meant it in the broadest sense. The redemption of humanity was finished.
The upside of the second downside is that when pride and boasting are ruled out, guilt and fear also disappear. One is defined no longer by one’s track record but by the success Jesus possesses as a redeemer.
Which will it be, this day and every day? Are we so significant that we somehow are too bad or too weak for Jesus to save? Must we open an independent account just in case he fails or in case he needs assistance?
God forbid.
God bids us to be redeemed not redeemers. Let’s trade in our worry and anxiety for gratitude and thanksgiving. Close that independent account, you, fellow beneficiary of the life of Jesus!
Publishing Info This post was first published on: Dec 6, 2023 at 16:48. If this article is significantly updated, the publication date beneath the title may change, just as it might change in order to bring current posts to the top (or bottom) of the directory.
Listen to the old version of this post (10 minutes, 16 seconds)
Sitting on my couch, I looked at the name of a woman written on a piece of paper. We will call her Beautiful. It was a reminder to pray for her healing because her cancer had returned. I thought of all the people who were praying for Beautiful. Probably a hundred or so.
Beautiful died about a year later. And so I revise this post, soberly.
When I re-read the gospels, I never see Jesus begging, nor, when it comes to healing, hoping. When he announces the death of Lazarus to his disciples, he says, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up” (John 11:11). He does not, for example, say to the disciples, “and I hope to wake him up.” Nor when he is at the grave site does he say, “Father, I’d really like it if you raise Lazarus from the dead.” No, what does he say? “Lazarus, come forth.” And it happens.
Now I know this is a sensitive subject because when we pray for a healing (or a resurrection, which I have done with no success), the disappointment of someone or ourselves remaining sick is compounded by the disappointment of prayer or our faith being inauthentic. When that happens, we might doubt God’s existence, his character, or the accuracy of the New Testament. In the end of this scenario, we are left with a sickness (or death) and an imaginary God.
At that point, we often backpedal, and there are plenty of Christians and agnostics to help us do so. Because of my low opinion of this kind of help, I’ll deliver some of their consolation in a rambling sentence.
Healing miracles are rare because medical science has rendered them unnecessary, and you can’t expect to pray like Jesus, especially since all those miracles were to introduce the world to the gospel, not to be part of it, I mean, they symbolized our spiritual healing and nothing more, so we should be satisfied with inner healing and leave the rest up to God who, after all, would heal if he wanted to … look at the apostle Paul whose prayer for healing wasn’t answered and who concluded that in his weakness God’s strength was made perfect … who do we think we are to expect any more than Paul?
If you’ve been exposed to intelligent people of faith—or have read the New Testament with an eye on how faith and prayer are expressed—you’ll know the entire ramble is not in the scriptures.
Here are the counterpoints.
Medical science is in its adolescence; many diseases including cancer are often fatal, the blind to not have their sight restored, those with withered limbs do not, in a moment, regain a fully functional limb, and deafness is only partially addressed medically
Jesus never suggested that he was the only one with God’s ear; in fact he said, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12)
The miracles did introduce Jesus and his disciples to their world with a bang, yes, but nothing in the New Testament suggests the miracles were destined to stop at any point in time; the Book of Acts was apparently written 50 or so years after Jesus left the earth, and nothing in it suggests that the divine show of healing had ended or would end
It’s always suspicious when any miracle of God—any show of the supernatural in Christianity—is watered down to something humans can do, something that no longer requires a miracle; thus, saying “spiritual healing is all that Jesus was trying to point us to,” or saying “inner healing is more important than physical healing” is, what shall I say, suspicious? so suspicious that the people who say such things would do better to publish self help books
My ire is raised by the idea that God would heal if he wanted to: who in this world would say the vast amount of sickness, let alone violence, is what God wants?
Finally, for the low hanging fruit, Paul’s unanswered prayer: if you read the passage in II Corinthians 12, where Paul asks three times for God to remove the thorn from his flesh, you see that in the previous paragraphs, he listed the persecutions he endured (much more frequently than his fellow apostles), that it makes sense that persecution was the messenger from Satan that humbled him since he had received so great a revelation of Christ…besides, in light of those revelations, even if Paul were talking about his alleged bad eyesight, how many sick people have ever needed humbling because of the greatness of the revelation they had received?
Back to my couch and to Beautiful. She had many (many) people praying for her. She did live a year longer, but left the world too soon. If the number of people praying worked like addition, the healing power would be great, but faith is not like arithmetic. One plus God is a majority. One person with faith can be in a crowd and God will look over the crowd to find that person (2 Chronicles 16:9a). When Jesus went to raise the little girl from the dead, he allowed only three disciples the the girl’s parents into the room…and he healed her.
I have no idea what kind of prayers were spoken on behalf of Beautiful. I do know the kind of prayer I received when I was about to be diagnosed for cancer. Going up to “the prayer team” after a lively service at a large Evangelical church, I explained my concerns to the mature couple who were appointed to pray for me. As soon as I expressed my desire for healing, the man said, “Well, we all have to die sometime.” And that was followed by his wife telling me about a motorcycle accident that injured her in a way she has never recovered from.
As soon as I could get away from their aura of disbelief, I headed to the parking lot and called my sister in another state in order to shake off the bad vibes from the prayer team. My sister speaks words of faith—and did that night. My healing came through successful surgery (not what I had hoped for, but a heap better than having to die sometime soon).
This post focuses on what prayer is not. When I write a sequel, by God’s grace, it will express, at least in part, what Jesus-inspired prayer is. I surmise it will involve the classic verse from Mark: “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” Until then, be well, speak well, pray from the heart and believe God knows what you need before you mention it.
Publishing Info This post was first published on: July 30, 2022 at 22:46. If this article is significantly updated, the publication date beneath the title may change, just as it might change in order to bring current posts to the top (or bottom) of the directory.
Anyone who has given Jesus more than a moment’s thought has a personal version of Jesus in his or her mind.
To some, he’s a literal king, to some an ideology (socialist, Marxist, fascist, you name it), to some an avenger who came as a lamb the first time but will return as an angry lion the next. He may be a friend, and some tame him to “my buddy,” the offspring of “the man upstairs.” At the other extreme, he is in his glorified state beyond description, beyond language—one before whom a person can only be filled with awe and silence (a safer extreme). In my early faith, he was a supernatural counter-culture rebel who would both give meaning to my life and remove meaning from the establishment, including the versions of him that churches had fixed beneath their stained glass and steeples.
The sneakiest version is the one assumed by the fundamentalist to be perfectly accurate and adequate. By fundamentalist, I refer to a person who equates literalism with truth and thinks he or she has an unmediated, direct knowledge of the real Jesus, a version infallible and unquestionable. Once one is sure one is right, there’s no need to look further. It’s hard to discuss matters with this person. For years I had a hard time discussing matters with myself.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with constructing a version of Jesus in our minds. It is unavoidable, being the way the human mind works. We are always and only constructing a knowledge of others from a mixture of facts, fallacies, reasoning, feelings, experiences, and imagery. Because the process is both universal and fallible, most good novels depict a main character as being disabused of assumptions about one’s world and its population. If it is hard to admit we are wrong about others, it’s often harder to admit we are wrong about ourselves. As a friend of mine quotes Lord Jim: “it is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.”
Misconstructions of others and ourselves can be comical, irritating, inconvenient, or fatal (think of Othello). Misconstruction of Jesus, or, rather, stubborn adherence to our misconstruction, may be disastrous.
How disastrous? The Sermon on the Mount provides an extreme example. It is extreme because the image of Jesus is held by someone who seems to know better, someone whose experience comes replete with signs and wonders:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” (Matthew 7:21-23)
We are not told how the evildoers perceived Jesus. They certainly had whatever it takes to prophesy, drive out demons, and perform miracles. On on hand, these are the will of Jesus’ Father, clearly. So something else went awry.
Perhaps the evildoers were living double lives, doing the right thing by day and then indulging in pride or carnality by night. In that case, they saw Jesus as someone impressed by the supernatural without consideration of character. Perhaps they simply followed supernatural fireworks and were devoid of love (as in St. Paul’s, if I have not love, I am nothing). In that case, they saw Jesus as a divine stuntman, not understanding in the least his Father’s motivation—and his cooperation—behind his coming to earth.
If my life has meant anything down these lines, it has meant year after year of having assumptions and presumptions pressed out of me, reducing me to the person I’ve always been: partial, clumsy, pretentious, and needy. In turn, more than ever, I see Jesus has more capable, wise, enigmatic, and deserving of my attention than ever. Let me add trustworthy, quite in contrast to myself.
He is the head of body (the real church), the first-born from the dead, the visible image of the invisible God, the source of all mercy, truth, and grace, the one who is no person’s fool and yet seems always willing to lower himself to those who find themselves lowly.
Publishing Info This post was first published on: Apr 30, 2023 at 15:56. If this article is significantly updated, the publication date beneath the title may change in order to bring current posts to the top of the directory.