R.P. Nettelhorst's Blog, page 100

Temptation

Temptation is a word that is used to describe the enticement to sin against God or another human being. One can be tempted to do only something that one wishes to do. That is, while I can be enticed to eat chocolate cake, I can never be enticed to eat liver. Temptation is not sin; only giving into the temptation is a sin. Genuine temptation requires that the enticement be for something that is desired, and that there is an actual opportunity to do it. Sin occurs only if you give in to the temptation.

James writes:

…but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. (James 1:14-15)

Sin is given birth to. It is sin when it comes out, not when it is, as it was, in the womb. Resisting temptation can be thought of as a kind of spiritual abortion.

Jesus, according to Hebrews 4:15, “has been tempted in every way, just as we are” but, says the passage, Jesus remained sinless.

And yet, it remains quite common in the Christian community for people to be condemned for being tempted: condemned for what they think. Passages will be quoted, such as: “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.”

However, as is too often the case, the context has been ignored, and the quotation is not quite exact, though it most closely resembles what appears in the King James Version of 1611. It comes from Proverbs 23:7. Let’s take a look at it in its full context, in a modern translation:

Do not eat the food of a begrudging host,

do not crave his delicacies;

for he is the kind of person

who is always thinking about the cost.

“Eat and drink,” he says to you,

but his heart is not with you.

You will vomit up the little you have eaten

and will have wasted your compliments. (Proverbs 23:6-8)

That’s from the New International Version. You’ll no doubt notice that the famously quoted phrase–or even anything like it in meaning–fails to make an appearance. So let’s take a gander at the same passage in the old King James:

Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye,

Neither desire thou his dainty meats:

  For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he:

Eat and drink, saith he to thee;

But his heart is not with thee.

The morsel which thou hast eaten shalt thou vomit up,

And lose thy sweet words.

Ah, so now the modern translation makes sense–and the way the phrase gets bandied about in the modern church–well, it just doesn’t say that, now does it? Although the phrase is in the passage, even in the King James, it obviously doesn’t mean what people have been taught to think it does. Context really matters. Yanking it out of context and ignoring what it is actually all about, well, that creates some problems, right?

But then there’s the old standby that gets trotted out if that passage in Proverbs doesn’t work:

But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (Matthew 5:28)

It is most commonly used to beat adolescents over the head, but is often generalized and applied to things beyond just sexual urges. The problem, obviously, is that it seems at odds with making a distinction between temptation and sin, at least the way it is commonly used: that if you’ve thought it, you’ve as good as done it. Which makes little sense when you, well, think about it. If you think about murdering me, that’s not at all the same thing as putting a knife through my heart, now is it? You won’t get arrested, and I will continue on my way, oblivious–alive and cheerful. Not at all the same as being six feet under.

But what I find especially interesting is the very next two verses after Matthew 5:28 (that whole context thing again):

 

If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.  And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell. (Matthew 5:29-30)

Oddly, while verse 28 will be taken absolutely literally so we can make adolescent boys feel guilty, most Christians–if they even talk about Matthew 5:29-30–will recognize that Jesus is using a common literary technique called “hyperbole.” As in such familiar phrases as “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times” or “He always does that” or “there must have been a million of them!” Very few Christians imagine that Jesus, in Matthew 5:29-30, is suggesting that people should maim themselves. But they insist in the previous verse that Jesus was being literal and is equating temptation–thinking about a woman, or whatever the temptation might be–with the sin that sometimes comes from it.

And see, that’s the actual point, I think: sin indeed has its origins in our thoughts. Elsewhere, both in Matthew and Mark, Jesus is quoted as saying the following:

But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them.  For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.  These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them. (Matthew 15:18-20; see parallel account in Mark 7:20-23).

While our thoughts may give birth to a variety of evils, the operative term here is “come out.” If the thoughts don’t come out, if they don’t escape, if you don’t give birth to them, then they are, in fact, resisted temptations. And only temptations. We shouldn’t be making folks feel guilty for being tempted and resisting . In fact, that’s kind of counterproductive: too often people–those adolescents I mentioned above–might think to themselves, “well, I thought it, so now I’m guilty, so I might as well have the fun of doing it.” or “I thought about eating that chocolate cake so I might as well chow down.”

See the problem? If you don’t eat it, it won’t put pounds on your thighs. Notice the difference between a thought and a deed: think about eating cake–you weigh the same as before you had the thought. Eat the cake–that’s when you gain weight.

Hmm. Didn’t James write something along those lines, though looking at it from the other end: that is, good thoughts versus good deeds:

Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? (James 2:15-16)

So let’s look back at Matthew 5:28 again. Perhaps Jesus is merely warning as clearly as possible, by using some hyperbole, that temptation is a slippery slope and the distance between thoughts and actions is very thin. I really don’t think he was arguing that thoughts and deeds are the same thing, or that you’ve sinned just by being tempted.

Remember: Hebrews tells us, Jesus was tempted, just like any other person–but he didn’t slip down the slope and sin.

So a bit of good news then: you, too, don’t have to move from temptation to sin.

And remember, there really is a difference between the two.

Learning How to Recover the First Stage of a Falcon 9

From SpaceX, regarding the September 29 launch of an upgraded Falcon 9 from Vandenberg AFB in California:

Though not a primary mission objective, SpaceX was also able to initiate two engine relights on the first stage. For the first restart burn, we lit three engines to do a supersonic retro propulsion, which we believe may be the first attempt by any rocket stage. The first restart burn was completed well and enabled the stage to survive reentering the atmosphere in a controlled fashion.

SpaceX then lit the center engine for a single engine burn. That relight also went well, however we exceeded the roll control authority of the attitude control thrusters. This particular stage was not equipped with landing gear which could have helped stabilize the stage like fins would on an aircraft. The stage ended up spinning to a degree that was greater than we could control with the gas thrusters on board and ultimately we hit the water relatively hard.

However, SpaceX recovered portions of the stage and now, along with the Grasshopper tests, we believe we have all the pieces to achieve a full recovery of the boost stage.

Other pictures and descriptions from the launch are available at SpaceX, Upgraded Falcon 9 Mission Overview.

Video from the launch (the first stage relight from the perspective of a camera on the first stage appears at about the 2:40 mark in the video):

Rockets to Scale

I had been wanting to compare the sizes of some of the various rockets that seem important to me. When I failed to find anything that satisfied me, I decided to create my own chart. I took images of the various rockets that interested me and tried to adjust them so that they matched one another on the same scale. I don’t think I was precise, but I do think I came close.

For those who might not recognize the DCX Delta Clipper, it flew a total of 12 times between August, 1993 and July 1996. It was built by McDonnal Douglas and was designed to test the possibility of creating a single stage to orbit rocket. It took off and landed vertically, just like today’s SpaceX Grasshopper. In fact, the DCX flew higher, further, and longer than Grasshopper, though obviously Grasshopper is considerably larger (39 feet tall for DCX versus 106 feet tall for the SpaceX Grasshopper).

Here is a video from The Learning Channel:

The sizes of the rockets shown above:

Space Shuttle – 184.2 feet tall

Falcon 9 – 180 feet tall

Falcon 9-R – 224 feet tall

Grasshopper – 106 feet tall

DCX Delta Clipper – 39 feet tall

Mercury Atlas – 94.3 feet tall

Gemini Titan II – 109 feet tall

Saturn V – 363 feet tall

Soyuz – 162.4 feet tall

Delta IV Heavy 203 feet tall

Well Done, Grasshopper

From SpaceX:

On Monday, October 7th, Grasshopper completed its highest leap to date, rising to 744m altitude. The view above is taken from a single camera hexacopter, getting closer to the stage than in any previous flight.

Grasshopper is a 10-story Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing (VTVL) vehicle designed to test the technologies needed to return a rocket back to Earth intact. While most rockets are designed to burn up on atmosphere reentry, SpaceX rockets are being designed not only to withstand reentry, but also to return to the launch pad for a vertical landing. The Grasshopper VTVL vehicle represents a critical step towards this goal.

Grasshopper consists of a Falcon 9 rocket first stage tank, Merlin 1D engine, four steel and aluminum landing legs with hydraulic dampers, and a steel support structure.

Grasshopper is about 106 feet tall–nearly the same height as the Titan II Gemini rockets (at 109 feet) that flew between the Mercury and Apollo flights.

This is what SpaceX intends to do:

And they are likely to successfully recover a Falcon 9-R first stage as early as the first half of 2014. Then they can start working on recovering the second stages. It is important to understand just how significant this is: it will transform the economics of spaceflight. It cost about 10,000 dollars per pound for the Space Shuttle to take something to orbit. The current, expendable Falcon 9 does it for about 1000 dollars a pound and once they start recovering the first stage, the cost will drop by half. Imagine the difference in cost if after every flight your aircraft was discarded, versus what it is now, with the plane being reusable. SpaceX is now bringing that to spaceflight. It will be transformative.

Quoted

For those of you who might be keeping track, I have once again–for the sixth time–been quoted in a news article on The Blaze:

FACT CHECK: DOES THE BIBLE REALLY CONDONE STONING?

Reactions to Mental Illness

There remains an unfortunate stigma attached to any form of mental illness; the thought is widespread that if someone is depressed or suffering from mental illness of some kind it is the result of weakness or indicative of some moral and spiritual problem. The thought is that what the person needs to do is to simply “snap out of it” or “get a grip” or “grow up” or “stop whining” or pray more, or confess their sins.

None of these sorts of thoughts, no sense of shame, would ever accrue to someone who is diagnosed with cancer, or meningitis. No one tells a parapalegic that they are suffering for their sins, or that they need to “snap out of it.” No one suggests that a person with pneumonia needs to make a choice to be well.

But a depressed person, a suicidal person: “if only they weren’t so sinful” or “maybe it’s the way they were raised.” A child suffering from ADHD, well—“kids today are overmedicated” and “if they were just properly disciplined” and “its because kids aren’t being spanked today.” And so on.

Oddly, no one ever speaks that way to a child in wheelchair; no one goes to Children’s Hospital and berates the kids getting chemo and radiation or suggests if only they had been raised better, or maybe if their parents weren’t such bad people—because obviously they must be bad or their children wouldn’t be sick.

And so forth.

Yes, it annoys me; I have two children who suffer from mental illness. It is not their fault any more than it would be their fault if they had chicken pox. If I told someone that one of my children was in the hospital for pneumonia, they’d be concerned and pray and be very supportive. If I say my child is in the hospital because she was talking about committing suicide—the reactions are sometimes quite different.

There are many Christians who view mental illness as a spiritual problem. There are churches who preach that psychology is evil, that all that really needs to be done is for people to read their Bible’s more and get themselves right with God.

Such churches, such church leaders, remind me of this:

The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”

To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.

It was a common thought among many in Jesus’ day that if a person had leprosy, if they were blind, if they were deaf, then, they must be sinners. Few people today believe that illness is the consequence of a lack of faith or evidence of sin. Few people today judge someone because they caught the flu.

But when it comes to mental illness, many remain barbarians, both Christians and not.

Biblical Fables

Some people will say that the Bible is just a bunch of fables. In fact, there are only two that I can think of, both in the Old Testament, that fit the strict definition of fable:

But Jehoash king of Israel replied to Amaziah king of Judah: “A thistle in Lebanon sent a message to a cedar in Lebanon, ‘Give your daughter to my son in marriage.’ Then a wild beast in Lebanon came along and trampled the thistle underfoot. You have indeed defeated Edom and now you are arrogant. Glory in your victory, but stay at home! Why ask for trouble and cause your own downfall and that of Judah also?” (2 Kings 14:9-10; parallel account 2 Chronicles 25:18-19)

And:

When Jotham was told about this, he climbed up on the top of Mount Gerizim and shouted to them, “Listen to me, citizens of Shechem, so that God may listen to you. One day the trees went out to anoint a king for themselves. They said to the olive tree, ‘Be our king.’

 “But the olive tree answered, ‘Should I give up my oil, by which both gods and humans are honored, to hold sway over the trees?’

“Next, the trees said to the fig tree, ‘Come and be our king.’

 “But the fig tree replied, ‘Should I give up my fruit, so good and sweet, to hold sway over the trees?’

 “Then the trees said to the vine, ‘Come and be our king.’

 “But the vine answered, ‘Should I give up my wine, which cheers both gods and humans, to hold sway over the trees?’

 “Finally all the trees said to the thornbush, ‘Come and be our king.’

 “The thornbush said to the trees, ‘If you really want to anoint me king over you, come and take refuge in my shade; but if not, then let fire come out of the thornbush and consume the cedars of Lebanon!’

 “Have you acted honorably and in good faith by making Abimelek king? Have you been fair to Jerub-Baal and his family? Have you treated him as he deserves?  Remember that my father fought for you and risked his life to rescue you from the hand of Midian.  But today you have revolted against my father’s family. You have murdered his seventy sons on a single stone and have made Abimelek, the son of his female slave, king over the citizens of Shechem because he is related to you.  So have you acted honorably and in good faith toward Jerub-Baal and his family today? If you have, may Abimelek be your joy, and may you be his, too! But if you have not, let fire come out from Abimelek and consume you, the citizens of Shechem and Beth Millo, and let fire come out from you, the citizens of Shechem and Beth Millo, and consume Abimelek!” (Judges 9:7-20)

So what is the strict definition of a fable? It is a short tale designed to teach a moral lesson, often with animals or inanimate objects as characters. The most well-known examples of this would be the fables of Aesop. For instance, the story of the Ant and the Dove:

An Ant went to the bank of a river to quench its thirst, and

being carried away by the rush of the stream, was on the point of

drowning. A Dove sitting on a tree overhanging the water plucked

a leaf and let it fall into the stream close to her. The Ant

climbed onto it and floated in safety to the bank. Shortly

afterwards a birdcatcher came and stood under the tree, and laid

his lime-twigs for the Dove, which sat in the branches. The Ant,

perceiving his design, stung him in the foot. In pain the

birdcatcher threw down the twigs, and the noise made the Dove

take wing.

One good turn deserves another

However, we can’t help but notice that parables take the same basic form as a fable; the primary difference being that parables usually have people as the actors, rather than animals or plants. That said, some of what we call fables in the collection of Aesop are strictly about people, such as The Boasting Traveler:

A Man who had traveled in foreign lands boasted very much, on

returning to his own country, of the many wonderful and heroic

feats he had performed in the different places he had visited.

Among other things, he said that when he was at Rhodes he had

leaped to such a distance that no man of his day could leap

anywhere near him as to that, there were in Rhodes many persons

who saw him do it and whom he could call as witnesses. One of

the bystanders interrupted him, saying: “Now, my good man, if

this be all true there is no need of witnesses. Suppose this

to be Rhodes, and leap for us.”

He who does a thing well does not need to boast

Compare that with one of Jesus’ parables, from Luke 18:1-5:

 Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’ ”

Thus, a case could be made that Jesus’ parables could, at least sometimes, as easily be called fables; they differ from what we normally think of as fables only in this: that the actors in them are people rather than animals or plants that inhabit most, but not all of those stories we call fables.

It’s Not So Hard

What is necessary, little or much, for salvation to occur, for a person to become a Christian and enter the kingdom of God? That is, what is the lowest common denominator? The Bible is quite clear that salvation is by faith through grace alone (cf. Eph. 2:8-10). But what does that mean?

It means, that there are no pre- or post-requisites to salvation. Acts 2:21 should be our guide (it is a quotation of Joel 2:32):

And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Salvation is not the consequence of right doctrine, right knowledge, right behavior, right attendance, or any of the thousand and other lists and regulations and expectations set up by human beings to determine the validity of a salvation. Salvation is something God does, and he does it with the least bit of provocation.

To argue that right behavior or right doctrine is necessary or a part of salvation creates contradictions, scripturally. As an example, consider one of the individuals listed in Hebrews 11 as great men of faith: Jephtha. His behavior and understanding of theology was low, even given the level of special revelation available in his time period. Jephtha acknowledged the existence of gods other than Yahweh (cf. Judges 11:23-24) and wound up sacrificing his daughter as a burnt offering (Judges 11:30-31; 35-39). Certainly it would have been to both his advantage and the advantage of his daughter had his theology been straight and his ethics a little more enlightened, but neither of those things have anything to do with his relationship with God or his salvation.

Likewise, Lot, nephew of Abraham, is described by the author of 2 Peter as a “righteous man” (cf. 2 Peter 2:7-8); yet, when we examine the narrative about him in the Old Testament (Gen. 19), we find him reluctant to leave Sodom and having little influence on his family or his society. Then, we find him getting so drunk that he has sex with his own daughters (to say nothing of the questions raised about his parenting that they would have thought of such a thing). By even his own standards, he was morally bankrupt, let alone by modern standards. Yet, since salvation is by grace through faith, and since our righteousness is “in Christ” (cf. 1 Cor 1:30-31; Phil. 3:8-9; Gal. 2:20-21), we are reminded again that though it may be beneficial to be a “good Christian” (both for the sake of those around us, as well as to our own happiness), our behavior isn’t what makes us righteous and it’s not what’s going to get us (or anyone else) into heaven.

God is not trying to keep people from getting into heaven. Rather, he wants as many as possible to get there, and he has done everything in his power to make it easy. He is not standing there, tapping his foot, waiting to see what someone will do, frowning and clucking and looking through the application, nitpicking to find something that will keep the applicant out.

Heaven is not an exclusive club not interested in letting “your kind” in, with St. Peter as a three hundred pound bouncer. God did and does everything he can to get people into heaven (he’s dying to let people into heaven, after all).

What about passages like “narrow is the way”….? Or “it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven”. Doesn’t that imply that getting to heaven is difficult and unlikely? That God in fact IS making it tough, that not just ANYONE can get in?

It would do well to keep in mind a distinction between cause and effect, prescription and description, and human choice versus God’s demands. Confusing such points is what creates the apparent contradiction.

But Does Today Need to Be?

This is the beginning of what I’m hoping will be a new novel; not sure of the genre:

Curled upon the blue bus bench like a comma, the middle-aged woman lay upon the metal with her eyes closed. Her head rested on a clear plastic bag. Dirty clothes wadded together formed a patchwork of colors pressed against the plastic barrier like child’s faces against a candy store window. Head wrapped in a red scarf, body wrapped in brown that covered her skinny body, no one would guess her age. Her black shoes were worn and dusty. She smelled of dirty clothes, dirty feet, and old beer. Next to the bus bench waited a shopping cart filled with the detritus of a life gone in an unexpected direction. One hand gripped the handle tightly, even as her breathing indicating slumber.

This morning she had sought the familiar bench after a night spent stumbling from sidewalk to sidewalk, the darkness folding her and clinging to her as the hours slipped past.

The rumble and vibration of the morning’s first city bus as it squeaked to a stop and spewed diesel fumes, sucking up three tired men before lumbering away, brought her back to consciousness. It was her daily alarm clock, telling her that daylight had arrived and she needed to get moving. Get moving.

Blinking at the light, her head pounded from the small bottle of cheap whiskey she’d managed to buy before the CVS closed up for the night. She planted her rag wrapped feet on the broken sidewalk and scrabbled her plastic sheet and small pile of clothing and slowly folded it all up.

She stuck the bundle carefully among the others that filled her shopping cart; then began the daily shuffle pushing it first toward the south, down Tenth East, until she got to Jackman, and then she crossed the street and headed north, up Tenth East, until she reached Avenue J. At which point she’d cross and repeat the process. It took her an hour and a half to make the circuit, sometimes more if she stopped to sit, or to beg—or turned aside to the AM/PM to get lunch and then maybe, if she was lucky, supper.

Today, she stopped for breakfast. Last night had been a good night. She’d scored an extra twenty dollars. He’d told her he wasn’t picky. He told her his name was Lincoln. Or maybe it was Ford. Or had that just been the car he’d been driving? It was kind of fuzzy. He had a beard and he’d smelled of musky cologne, maybe Old Spice, or something by Axe.

“You’re beautiful.” She remembered those words. She even believed them in the moment.

“Kind of early, aren’t you?” The store clerk chided as she walked in.

“Good night,” she muttered.

“Good morning, you mean, Becky.”

She nodded and turned her eyes toward the trays of warming blobs wrapped in paper and smelling something like breakfast: eggs, maybe, and bacon, and maybe cheese, crushed into what looked sort of like a biscuit if you took it out of the yellow paper.

* * *

The choices, small and large, of a life miss-lived; some choices innocuous, some result in significant consequences, though in themselves they are small: like a woman who decides to pull a stick of gum from her purse as she drives a twisty road. She looks down, loses control, spins off into a ditch, flips the car and snaps her neck. All because she chose at a certain moment to get a stick of gum, a choice she’d made hundreds of times before with no ill effects. How often had she been distracted driving, had close calls? This one moment, this second of decision, cost her life, far outside a reasonable cause and effect; the consequences did not naturally seem to follow from the choice. Do choices accumulate? Is this person a greater sinner and that’s why she died? No. And so, this story will be the story of Becky, whom we see in the first chapter is homeless and a prostitute.

My intent with this story is to structure it as a series of chapters, 20 vignettes of this woman’s life, each chapter a step backward and each story self-contained to some extent. Each chapter will detail a significant incident in her life–not necessarily something that anyone would imagine important, but combined with the other pieces of her existence, responsible for the person we find in that first chapter. As the reader plunges backward through the years toward her childhood, he or she will come to discover who Becky is and why she has become the person she became.

Book ends with her about to make a choice; the reader will see that if she makes it one way, then her life will become what we’ve seen in the book: she’ll become the woman of the first chapter. But if she makes it the other way, then her life will of necessity take a different path. Our choices have made us the people we are today. Different choices, and we’d have different lives, different friends, different acquaintances, different families and jobs. My thought was to show that in a story told backward.

I’m not sure it will work.

Satan and the Bible

One day Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath (see Luke 13:10-17). There was a woman in attendance who, for eighteen years, had been bent over and was unable to straighten up. Her deformity, as Jesus will later point out, was something Satan had done to her. Jesus noticed her plight and healed her.

The reaction of the synagogue leader was quick: he condemned the healing. Jesus had violated the prohibitions on working on Saturday, something the Bible was very clear about. In fact, it’s part of the Ten Commandments (see Exodus 20:8-11). There’s even the story from Numbers 15:32-36 of a person being stoned to death at God’s command for even so minor a violation of the Sabbath as gathering wood. The synagogue leader took the Bible seriously and believed it was to be obeyed always. Jesus was without excuse. The synagogue leader knew the Bible was the word of God and he knew what it said. He knew his position was unassailable.

So what would Satan do? Agree with Jesus? Or join the synagogue leader in condemning Jesus for breaking one of the Ten Commandments and ignoring the very word of God?

Satan believes the Bible is the word of God. He agrees with the bumper sticker, “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it for me.”

A popular pursuit in my high school days was hunting through the Bible to find a “life verse.” I never really liked that fad. Shouldn’t one’s life be based on the entire revelation of God rather than one small snippet? I thought limiting myself to a single passage, like a cliché inscribed upon the page of a calendar, was just silly. Likewise, it seemed to me that it would be so easy for such a verse to be pulled out of context.

Forced by my youth group to pick something, in my teenage rebelliousness, I wound up picking Ecclesiastes 10:19:

A feast is made for laughter,

wine makes life merry,

and money is the answer for everything

It seemed perfect for my purposes: ludicrous , devoid of context, and funny. People were appalled, but had difficulty criticizing my choice since it was, after all, from the Bible. And how can one criticize the Bible?

Satan has read and studied the Bible. He can quote it. Satan’s use of scripture in some ways may be similar to what I did with that passage.

In the story of Satan’s temptation of Jesus, we find Satan easily quoting a passage from the Bible at Jesus. What does his use of Scripture—and Jesus’ responses, using the Bible in retaliation—tell us about Satan’s beliefs about the word of God—and his understanding of it?

The story of the Devil tempting Jesus appears in Matthew 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13 and Luke 4:1-13. The author of Hebrews comments about Jesus’ temptation in Hebrews 2:18 and 4:15, but without specifying when or which temptation may be in view. Luke 4:13 comments that “When the Devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time” while John states at the end of his gospel that “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” (John 21:25) Combined, these passages suggest the possibility that Jesus faced other times of temptation beyond what is recorded by the New Testament authors.

The lone quotation that Satan makes from the Bible is recorded in both Matthew and Luke:

Then the Devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:

“ ‘He will command his angels concerning you,

and they will lift you up in their hands,

so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” (Matthew 4:5-6; Luke 4:9-11)

Satan quotes from Psalm 91:11-12. He does so based on his understanding of it as part of a messianic psalm. That is, like most scholars of Jesus’ day, Satan understands it as a promise given to God’s son in his incarnation as the Messiah. That’s why Satan begins the temptation as a challenge, “if you are the son of God,” before telling him to toss himself off the temple and demonstrate that fact.

But Satan is not a perfect biblical scholar. Paul writes, “None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8). Satan is understood, generally, as being the ruler of this age. Paul seems to so reference him in 2 Corinthians 4:4, where he also informs us that Satan blinds unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the Gospel.

Using the Bible like the Pharisees

According to the Gospel of John (John 8:42-44), Jesus describes the Pharisees as being the children of Satan in their beliefs and practices.

So how did the Pharisees interpret the Bible? Consider their conclusions about the Messiah: who he would be, where he would come from, and how he would act. They had created a well-developed character study. Like an author preparing to create a novel or screenplay, they’d made a list of things that the Messiah character must do and ways that he must behave. For example, he would be a stickler for the Law. He would condemn sinners. He would rail against the Roman government.

By their estimation, Jesus failed to live up to what they had decided they knew was necessary for someone to be the genuine savior of Israel. He was loose about keeping the Sabbath. He spent time with disreputable people. He was not overtly political.

Based on their list, Jesus did not match their most important character requirements and so they concluded what was only reasonable and obvious: that he could not possibly be the Messiah. Since Jesus could not be the promised savior, they had to find alternative explanations for those things in his performance that otherwise would seem to confirm his identity. Miracles were explained away as the works of Satan. What else could they be, since Jesus’ actions contradicted vital parts of their list? They could not imagine the possibility that their criteria was off in any way. They never entertained the thought that they might have misunderstood something. They were certain that what they had decided about the Bible’s meaning was identical to what the Bible actually meant.

When Jesus preached, “you have heard it said, but I say to you” they did not hear Jesus correcting their misreading of Scripture. Rather, they heard Jesus contradicting Scripture. In their minds, they knew what the Bible said and what Jesus was saying was different from what they knew it said. Therefore, he had to be evil, since there were no other possible interpretations of the Bible but those that they had already decided upon. Their interpretations were obviously, unassailably correct. No other reading was even imaginable, unless one wanted to twist the Bible like a pretzel—and that’s precisely what Jesus was doing as far as they were concerned.

Pharisees took the Bible seriously. They were committed to the Bible. The Bible was the word of God and must be obeyed without fail.

Satan takes the Bible just as seriously. He believed when he quoted the Bible to Jesus that he was making a powerful argument. If Jesus really were the son of God, then he would not be able to resist the Bible—the very word of God—and would be forced to obey it.

When he told Jesus to jump off the temple, he had every reason to expect that Jesus would have no choice but to do just that. He was doubtless surprised when Jesus said no, creating cognitive dissonance in the Devil’s mind. He forced Satan to consider an entirely different way of understanding the verses. Jesus opened an interpretation of Satan’s quotation that had never crossed his mind before. Satan had taken the passage in Psalms as a given, as a promise, as even a command. He hadn’t considered the possibility that it could not, in fact, be used as a blank check against God’s account.

To repeat: Satan is not infallible as a biblical scholar. His own biases get in his way as much as they did for the Pharisees—or, if we’re honest, with us. But Satan, like most Christians and like the Pharisees before them, believes the Bible and accepts it as the Word of God. He views it as authoritative. He is certain that if he can demonstrate something biblically, he has proven something, and that it cannot be argued against. This belief is also clear from the fact that Jesus, in responding to each of Satan’s temptations, quotes the Bible at Satan, because Jesus knows that Satan believes the Bible and accepts it as valid, truthful, and an authority that must be accepted.

When the serpent speaks to Eve in Genesis 3, the serpent does not deny the words of God that were given to her. Rather, he asks her a question about them—he suggests by his question, not that God didn’t say what he said. Rather he asks her if she has really understood what he said. Do God’s words mean what she thinks they mean?

In and of itself, such a question is not wrong. In fact, we will later find Jesus asking the Pharisees, his disciples, and others who are around him, just that sort of question.

So we can be confident that Satan believes the Bible and studies it. He wants to figure out just what it says.

However, Satan approaches it counter to something Paul says about the spirit of the law verses the letter of the law (see 2 Corinthians 3:6, Romans 2:29, 7:6). The Pharisees—along with those who think like them today—approach the Bible much as a lawyer might approach a deposition or the statements of a witness. They want the list that will tell them what to do in all eventualities; they want the rules laid out so they know what they can’t do, and so they can figure out what they can do without violating any of the other rules. Satan thinks like a lawyer–or an engineer—or the child who notices if you don’t play the game exactly right, or if you don’t read the familiar bedtime story exactly the same way you read it last night.

The essence of this sort of approach to the Bible, with its focus on discovering the rules, is that such readers get locked into thinking about those rules rather than on what’s right. They miss the whole point; they miss the stories; they miss the revelation of God. They forget that Jesus and Paul argue that the law—all laws—can be summed up by “love your neighbor as yourself” (see Matthew 22:34-40, Mark 12:28-31, Romans 13:9, Galatians 5:14). If one focuses on what’s best for others, remarkably one doesn’t have any inclination to harm them. Love fulfills all rules automatically, with not much thought needed. The details take care of themselves.

But of course Satan doesn’t see that, can’t imagine it matters, and thus misses the whole point of the Bible in his obsession with rules and regulations.

Want to learn more about how the Devil thinks? Buy my book, What Would Satan Do? The Devil’s Theology:

What Would Satan Do? The Devil’s Theology

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