R.P. Nettelhorst's Blog, page 125

Why Am I Here?

“Why am I here?” Am I simply a consumer? A channel for various manufactured goods? Something to whom money will be given in exchange for my labor?

In an average lifespan of seventy years, an average American will spend about twenty years sleeping, eleven years working, six years eating, and eight years watching television. He or she will own six cars, one house, and perhaps a hundred pairs of shoes. Is that all my life will mean when it’s over? Is my only purpose in life to contribute to a healthy American economy? When I die, will the most notable thing that can be said about my life be that I watched TV for eight years and saw every episode of Star Trek?

“Ah yes, he got up every morning, went to work, came home, and watched TV. Now he’s dead.”

Is the bumper sticker the best that can be said about life: “Life is rough. Then you die.”? Solomon had depressing things to say about life:

I denied myself nothing my eyes desired;

I refused my heart no pleasure.

My heart took delight in all my work,

and this was the reward for all my labor.

Yet when I surveyed

all that my hands had done

and what I had toiled to achieve,

everything was meaningless,

a chasing after the wind;

nothing was gained under the sun.

(Ecclesiastes 2:10-11)

This too is a grievous evil:

As a man comes, so he departs,

and what does he gain,

since he toils for the wind?

All his days he eats in darkness,

with great frustration, affliction, and anger.

(Ecclesiastes 5:16-17)

One of the points of Ecclesiastes is that life apart from God is truly meaningless, with no more value than a beer commercial. However, the account of creation in the book of Genesis tells us something about the why of life. The whole creation of the universe is described as if everything were designed for the use and benefit of humanity. Human beings are the centerpiece of God’s creation, the whole reason for the world existing is as a place for people to live (Genesis 1:28-30). God loves human beings. He expresses his love in the blessings of procreativity, land, and food. Some might question that love is a part of the creation account, but look at Deuteronomy 7:13-15, where the blessings inherent in the creation, as found in the Garden of Eden, are promised to Israel because of God’s love.

He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land—your grain, new wine and oil—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks in the land that he swore to your forefathers to give you. You will be blessed more than any other people; none of your men or women will be childless, nor any of your livestock without young. Yahweh will keep you free from every disease. He will not inflict on you the horrible diseases you knew in Egypt, but he will inflict them on all who hate you.

Or look at Isaiah 51:3, where God states that Israel will be like the Garden of Eden. The context of the Genesis account must be kept in mind: it was written by an Israelite to Israelites, who would see in the creation account and the description of the Garden of Eden the echo of the promised blessings of the Mosaic covenant—or rather, they would realize that the blessings of the covenant were faint echoes of an earlier age.

That God loves human beings is something Adam and Eve forgot. Eve was tempted in several ways by the serpent: she was tempted by pride—“to be like God”; but more importantly, Adam and Eve somehow developed a warped view of who God is, a view which persists to this day. In the best selling novel, Job: A Comedy of Justice, Robert A. Heinlein wrote:

“But notice carefully what I did say. I did not say that the world was created twenty-three billion years ago; I said that was its age. It was created old. Created with fossils in the ground and craters on the moon, all speaking of great age. Created that way by Yahweh, because it amused Him to do so. One of those scientists said, ‘God does not roll dice with the universe.’ Unfortunately not true. Yahweh rolls loaded dice with His universe…to deceive his creatures.”

“Why would He do that?”

“Lucifer says that it is because He is a poor Artist, the sort who is always changing his mind and scraping the canvas. And a practical joker. But I’m really not entitled to an opinion; I’m not at that level. And Lucifer is prejudiced where His Brother is concerned…”

Heinlein repeats one of the oldest lies in the universe: “God is not good. He is trying to withhold something pleasant from you.” Like any Big Lie, it finds an audience ready to believe it, and Adam and Eve were just such an audience. They believed the lie that God wasn’t good, and so they chose to disobey him—to acquire this good thing that God was trying to keep from them. They wanted to see what they were missing. How many Christians today are living with this same misconception? Consider a couple of amusing, if sad, stories from the book Humor in Preaching, by John W. Drakford:

The bride wore black!

The attractive girl coming down the aisle was accompanied by her bridesmaids, all in black, and in the front pews of the church, the relatives of the bride and groom all wore dark clothes as well. The dress for the occasion carried a special message.

This black-clad bride and groom were deeply committed people and meant serious business. In that year, 1839, they were about to depart on a six-and-a-half month trip across America to Oregon, where she and her preacher-physician husband, Dr. Marcus Whitman, would begin mission work. Narcissa, by wearing black on her wedding day, was indicating that her Christianity was no laughing matter. She was through with fun and frivolity.

In that day, the proclaimers of the Christian message were expected, above everything else, to be serious.

The committee of three men was waiting at the airport for the guest minister who was to preach in their church on the following day. They scrutinized each arriving passenger, for none of them had ever seen their visitor previously, and they were apprehensive lest they miss him. A tall gentleman dressed in a dark suit came walking up the jetway, and the spokesman of the group approached him.

“Are you our guest minister?”

The new arrival responded, “No, I’m not. It’s my ulcer that makes me look like this.”

Why is it that so many people believe that a close walk with God requires an absence of pleasure and happiness? Because so many Christians believe that and feel guilty if they are enjoying themselves. But do you really think that the God who invented sex wants you to be miserable? Or that Jesus’ first miracle, providing booze for a wedding party that had run out of it (see John 2:1-11), indicates that having a good time violates God’s will for your life? How does the idea that being miserable draws you closer to God ever gain followers? Or that so many people believe that our purpose is to “suffer for Jesus.” Does such an idea even begin to make sense given what the Bible actually says?

So why am I here? The entire Bible, according to Jesus, can be summarized by two commandments: love God, love people. (see Matthew 22:36-40). So that’s why I’m here–why we’re all here. That’s what it’s all about. To love and be loved. Are you fulfilling your reason for being?

The Boring Genealogies

The common assumption of many Christians that the first human couple, Adam and Eve, were white Anglo-Saxon Protestants is not only silly, but betrays an appalling narrowness and ethnocentrism. They could just as easily have been black and seven feet tall. The student of the Bible should be very careful not to allow his cultural prejudices to get in the way of proper interpretation; speculation is fine, only so long as he or she recognizes it is speculation. The minute interpretation becomes gospel, you’ve gone too far.

So let’s consider a popular interpretation of the boring genealogies in Genesis. Genesis 1:31 records that people were created on “the sixth day” of creation. Beyond that, we can’t be certain. The sixteenth/seventeenth century Bishop Ussher (1581 – 1656), basing his reckoning on the genealogies of Genesis, postulated that the world began in 4004 BC—in October, to be precise. If there are no gaps in the genealogical record of Genesis, then perhaps Ussher’s date is appropriate. But a gapless genealogy? I don’t think so.

When we compare the genealogies Bishop Ussher used in Genesis 5, 10, and 11 with genealogical lists in other parts of the Bible (and other texts from the Ancient Near East), it becomes obvious pretty quickly that we’re dealing with a selective list, whose purpose had nothing to do with creating a chronology for Bishop Ussher to play with. For instance, consider the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1.

We know for certain that Matthew’s Gospel contains a selective genealogy. In verse 17 of chapter one, Matthew outlines that: “thus there were 14 generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to Christ.” From this we know that his genealogical list artificially divides into three groups of fourteen names each. The selective nature of his genealogy is clear when we compare Matthew 1:8 and 1 Chronicles 3:10-12, or 1:12 and 1 Chronicles 3:18-19, or 1:13 and 1 Chronicles 3:19-20. So as to get the pattern described in verse 17–three lists of 14 names each–Matthew purposely left out several names. Why did Matthew want three lists with 14 names? It had nothing to do with chronology. In his case, it was because the name David, in Hebrew, is written with 3 letters–and the numerical value of those letters is 14 (dalet, the first and last letter in David’s name has the numerical value 4–think of how Roman numerals work; Hebrew used their letters in a similar way. And vav, the middle letter in David’s name has the value 6; so 4 + 6 + 4 = 14).

Since, in at least Matthew’s genealogical record, there are demonstrable gaps it is not unreasonable, nor without precedence, to suppose that gaps could exist in the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 10-11. It also demonstrates that our cultural expectations might be getting in the way of how we look at the genealogies; obviously, they are doing some things, that at least for us, seem unexpected.

So what other arguments are there for making me reject Genesis 5 and 10-11 as a strict chronology?

Well, if the list of names and ages in Genesis 10-11 has been given to us for the purpose of constructing a pre-Abrahamic chronology, it is strange that the author of Gensis failed to give the total number of years from the Flood to Abraham. The objection raised against this point (by those who disagree with me) is that the author expected the reader to do his or her own totaling, and therefore did not add unnecessary words. But, I then point out that the author of Genesis took nothing for granted in the reader’s ability to add just two numbers in the life of each antediluvian patriarch (take a look at them in Gen. 5) in order to ascertain their total life-spans. And if the time-span of the whole period was one of the reasons for giving the genealogy, how simple it would have been to give the total, as he in fact did in Exodus 12:40 for the time of Israel’s sojourn in Egypt.

A very important thing to notice about the genealogies of Genesis 5 and Genesis 11 is that they are perfectly symmetrical. This alone betrays their selective and artificial nature. You see, in each of the two genealogies, there are 10 patriarchs listed. And then the tenth patriarch has 3 sons. Consider the importance of the number 10 in Jewish thinking, as well as the importance of the number 3 (Trinity, much?) Given that the Hebrew alphabet can be read as both numbers and words, it is unsurprising that the ancient Jewish people played around with numbers as they composed their texts.

If the purpose of the genealogies was to give us a chronology, why all the irrelevant extra details? Information is given concerning each patriarch that don’t help move along a strict chronology if that was what it was all about. Genesis 5:6-8 states that “Seth lived a hundred five years and begat Enosh: and Seth lived after he begat Enosh eight hundred seven years and begat sons and daughters: and all the days of Seth were 912 years: and he died.” Now if the purpose of this genealogy was to provide us with a chronology, all we would need is that “Seth lived 105 years and begat Enosh”. But the additional facts which are provided concerning each patriarch indicate that the purpose of these genealogies was to show us much more—for instance, how faithfully God guarded the Messianic line (Gen. 3:14; 9:26) even in ages of universal apostasy (Gen. 6:1-12; 11:1-9); or to impress upon us the vigor and grandeur of humanity in those old days of the world’s prime; to demonstrate the fulfillment of the curse of Genesis 2:17 by the melancholy repetition of the phrase “and he died”; to show by the shorter life spans of post-diluvian patriarchs and by the omission of their total years of life the tightening grip of the curse upon the human body; and to make the record end in terms of the command of 9:1, which was so vitally important in view of the flood, by omitting the words “and he died” in the genealogy of Genesis 11. Since, therefore, so many pedagogical purposes are evident in these two genealogies that have nothing to do with the actual length of the overall period, it is unnecessary to press them into a rigid chronological system.

Then there’s another odd thing that shows up if you start adding up the years like Bishop Ussher did. Based on how the story of the patriarchs after the genealogies is told, it seem improbable that Noah or his sons would have been contemporaries of Abraham–yet if the strict chronological interpretation of Genesis 11 is correct, all the post-diluvian patriarchs, including Noah, would still have been living when Abraham was fifty years old! Three of those who were born before the tower of Babel would have actually outlived Abraham. Eber, the father of Peleg, not only would have outlived Abraham, he would have still been living for for the first two of the seven years that Jacob worked for Laban in order to marry Rachael!

On the face of it, this seems very odd. Stranger still, Joshua reported that Abraham’s fathers, including Terah, were idolaters when they dwelt “of old time beyond the River” (Joshua 24:2, 14, 15). If the patriarchs Noah and Shem were still alive (as a strict chronological interpretation requires) then, as “Abraham’s fathers”, they had fallen into idolatry by then! That seems rather improbable.

As if all that weren’t enough, consider what we know of the chronology of the Near East. According to Bishop Ussher’s chronology, the Flood would have occurred about 2500 BC. Given that Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations have an unbroken chronology going back to nearly 4000 BC, it just isn’t possible for a Great Flood to have occurred in 2500 BC–or at any time in recorded history, for that matter. The parallel Near Eastern stories of the Flood that appear in Sumerian and Akkadian texts, as well as the Sumerian King List, place the flood in a very remote past, long before the rise of Sumerian and later civilizations.

The problem that those who insist on a young Earth must face is that while we would like to know how old the world and the universe are, the people of the Ancient Near East, including the authors of the Bible, simply didn’t care. That was not a question they were trying to answer and Genesis does not address the issue at all. Trying to impose such an answer on the biblical text is an example of eisogesis, not exegesis.

Darkness Warping

And yet another of my books is now available as an eBook for the Kindle: Darkness Warping.

What’s it about?

Samuel Drubmuss had a life that was orderly and predictable. He lived alone and spent his days in a routine verging on rut. Then, with the coming of Ted, the world warped and stood on the brink of destruction. In a world where magic exists and the Roman Empire never ended, Samuel has but thirty days to set things right.

With this book I now have seventeen eBooks available for the Kindle, three short stories available for the Kindle, and four traditionally published books: two paperbacks and two hardbacks.

I am finishing up the final drafts of two novels, one fantasy, one science fiction; I’m intending to try to sell both by traditional means. I’ve got two others that are in the middle of rewriting, at a stage prior to when I’ll let my first reader take a look at them.

So here are my published works:

Nonfiction, traditionally published

1. The Bible’s Most Fascinating People (Hardback, 2008 Reader’s Digest Association; 2012 Chartwell; also translated into 13 other languages: Dutch [2 editions], Estonian, Czech, Romanian, Danish, Hungarian, Norwegian, French, Slovakian, Russian, Swedish, Japanese, and German. Pictures of the covers can be seen on my Pinterest page. )

2. A Year with God (2010 Thomas Nelson)

3. The Bible: A Reader’s Guide (2011 Metro Books in US, New Burlington in UK)

4. A Year with Jesus (2011 Thomas Nelson)

Fiction, indie published eBooks

1. Antediluvian (2012)

2. Somewhere Obscurely (2012)

3. Inheritance (2012)

4. The Wrong Side of Morning (2012)

5. John of the Apocalypse (2012)

6. Chronicles of Tableland 1: All His Crooked Ways (2012)

7. Chronicles of Tableland 2: Twister (2012)

8. Chronicles of Tableland 3: Dark Waters (2012)

9. Chronicles of Tableland 4: Sail My Darling Lovely (2012)

10. Chronicles of Tableland 5: Behind the Wall (2012)

11. Chronicles of Tableland 6: Day Come (2012)

12. With a Rod of Iron (2013)

13. Warped Darkness (2013)

14. Clash Point (2013)

15. Narrow Gate (2013)

Nonfiction, indie published eBooks

1. The Complaint of Jacob (2013)

2. What Would Satan Do? The Devil’s Theology (2013)

I did not write these twenty-one books all at once (and, in fact, there are twelve more novels left that I still would like to rewrite, proofread and release as eBooks). Antediluvian was written in 1987 and I’ve been writing ever since. I was writing before that, too, of course. I wrote an episodic story about robots becoming indistinguishable from human beings and taking over the world when I was in Junior High School. It was followed and passed around by my classmates, who would ask me every day for more of the story. I took typing in Junior High because I decided I wanted to be a writer. In high school, I wrote my first full novel. I started it at the end of my sophomore year and finished it at the beginning of my junior year–I wrote the first three drafts longhand, before typing the final draft. I didn’t let anyone know I was writing it until I had finished it. My parents were somewhat startled.

It was in high school that I began my practice of doing ten pages of original writing each weekday, taking the weekends off. I continued writing novels through the rest of high school and then continued while I was in college. My practice was to do ten pages of original work in one novel, while doing another ten pages of rewriting in another novel. As I look back on it, I wonder how I managed, since I did this all through college and even during the two summers I worked on a kibbutz in Israel (I actually carried a small portable typewriter with me to Israel). Somehow I survived all that writing and did well in college–I was a history major with a minor in Bible and I graduated with a 4.0 GPA, only the third person in the history of that college til that point to have done so. From when I started at 16 until the end of my senior year, I wrote daily, producing about twelve novels. Jerry Pournelle is quoted as saying that if you want to be a writer, you need to be willing to throw away your first million words. Those twelve novels, written between when I was 16 and 22 are tucked safely away in a box somewhere in my garage where they will never, ever be seen by anyone. They amount to closer to 1.5 million words, but that’s okay; they really, really need to be thrown away.

During my graduate work at UCLA I stopped writing altogether. I was taking a full time load, learning four languages at a time–I was majoring in Semitic languages–and working forty or more hours a week, while commuting on LA freeways three hours a day. I don’t really know how I survived, except to say that I was young and didn’t know any better. And it was during those years at UCLA that I met my wife, actually went out on dates (many of which were us drinking coffee and eating french fries at Denny’s while we studied). I completed my graduate work a week before I got married and spent the first two weeks of the honeymoon sleeping–well, mostly. That was in 1983.

I did not begin writing books again until 1987, after leaving my position at The Master’s College (when they eliminated their upper division Bible and Hebrew classes and replaced them with Sports Ministries). And the list of books above is what I’ve been doing with myself ever since, besides helping to found Quartz Hill School of Theology and then teaching Bible and Hebrew and such, as well as adopting three daughters. Two are in high school and one is in college studying psychology.

I apparently like to keep myself busy.

Clash Point

And once again I have another new novel available as an e-book on Amazon.com. The title of this one is Clash Point. What’s it about? It tells the story of first contact between humans and a sentient race on a distant planet. The inhabitants belong to a society that is stagnant and uninterested in anything new; all the questions that need to be asked have been–and the answers have been given. When one of the inhabitants is accidentally rescued from being ritually sacrificed, the scientific crew of the survey ship are confronted with whether to send her back to be sacrificed, or not. Conflict arises among the scientists as to whether their interference will be destructive to this primitive society. So: are all cultures equally good and valid? Or are some bad and deserving of being changed or destroyed? Is it always a bad thing for the more backward society when it comes in contact with a more advanced civilization? Will it just be Cortes conquering the New World all over again?

Everything Will Be Okay

If we read Romans 8:28 and think that it means a happy outcome tomorrow for the problem of today, we misread the intent and ignore the context. Worse, we miss the perspective that we need to have and the help that the passage can actually offer us. Paul goes on, after the famous verse and writes:

For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is al-so interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The context of the famous passage about everything working out for good is the full plan and purpose of God. The promise God gives us, the hope that we have, is that in the end, we are redeemed and will live with God in paradise forever. Oddly, this seems not to be what people want. Why is that?

They want their heaven now. And by that, I mean they want an absence of pain and trouble here and now. Who doesn’t?

Yet, the reality is that heaven is now. Luke records in his gospel that “Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, ‘The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.’” (Luke 17:20-21)

Peter writes, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.” (2 Peter 1:3).

Could our lack of perspective be a consequence of our failure to believe that God’s plan and eternity-yet-to-be are fully real and a part of our lives today, with actual impact for when we get a dreaded phone call late at night that a loved one has died?

If a famous rich man came to you and told you that a year from Saturday he would deposit a billion dollars into your checking account, how would you feel? Would you be happy? Would you think to yourself, “life is good and everything is going to be fine?” Would the lack of money, the financial hardships of today bug you much after that? Would you think you even had financial hardship any more?

And yet God has promised us far more than a billion dollars. But we let ourselves be miserable. He has told us that the people we love who have died will be raised back to life and that we will live with them, and with God, happily ever after, forever and ever and ever, in paradise. And yet we’re still miserable.

Jesus said something once that we’ve heard so often it becomes a cliché and we are robbed of its power: “If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

It is hard to have an eternal perspective before we are in eternity. After all, we cannot see eternity. But as the author of Ecclesiastes wrote, “God has set eternity in our hearts.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11) God promises us a happy ending, but more than that, he promises us “I am with you to the end of the world.” He is with us now, not just in the by and by. The kingdom of God is today, not just tomorrow. Certainly we do not experience the lack of pain or the lack of death today. But it’s not just a grin and bear it until the end, either. There is relief now. It is based on how you choose to perceive stuff based on the eternal perspective, the eternity that God has given us today, in this moment. Then, when the flat tires come, you will have the strength to fix them.

Book Making

The author of Ecclesiastes, traditionally thought to be Solomon, when commenting on the overall futility of existence wrote, “of the making of many books, there is no end.” (Ecclesiastes 12:12) He saw the abundance of books as a further illustration of futility: one can never read all the books that one would care to read, and no matter the number of books written, there are always more questions to answer and stories to tell.

As an author, I find myself overwhelmed by the number of books I am currently working on, as well as those that are hopping up and down in my head demanding to be written, like excited third graders in my wife’s classroom, shouting “pick me, pick me” upon being told that one of them will get a Popsicle.

I have two books that are substantially done and are in the hands of my first readers—only one of whom has reported back to me, and then on only one of the two books. I’ve incorporated the recommended changes and found a few other bits and here and there that needed adjustment that I noticed in correcting the flaws my reader found. But I have two other novels, one science fiction, one historical fiction, that are in need of some serious rewriting before I’ll allow my first readers to gaze upon them.

On top of that, I’ve got books that I’m processing for publication as e-books, which require proofreading and formatting before they’ll be ready, not to mention the designing of the covers. So far I’ve made fifteen books available for purchase as e-books on Amazon. Currently, I’m averaging about one book sold per day, which works out to about a hundred fifty dollars per month. Not a huge amount, admittedly, but more money than they were generating sitting on my hard drive. And, theoretically at least, the numbers are supposed to go up as time goes on—if those who encouraged me to do this are right. Based on their experiences and the experiences of the many, many other authors that they know who have done this, my books appear to be falling into the predicted pattern, given the number that I now have available on Amazon: 15 e-books.

So far I’ve allowed three of the books to go on promotion as free downloads, each for about two or three days at a time. The number that went for free ranged from a high of 440 to a low of 95; one book ended up number one for “sales” on Amazon during those two days—though in an obscure subcategory. I don’t get any royalties for the books when they are going for free; but it seems an inexpensive method of advertising, since it doesn’t cost me anything out of pocket. So far, the experiment in indie publishing seems to be working.

Consequently, from Solomon’s perspective, I’m certainly guilty of “the making of many books.” But I also think about his words from the standpoint of a reader. In my

Questions

This posting is mostly just me rambling tonight; the structure is poor. I am one of those annoying sorts of people who is rarely wholly satisfied with an answer–since most answers don’t really take care of all the questions I have. All too often, I see problems and I don’t find good answers. Telling me simply, “well, that’s the way it is” ain’t enough. Nor do I take kindly to being told to just sit down and shut up and stop wondering about stuff that no one should be wondering about. We already know the answer, so just accept it. I am not one to be told: “see that fenced off area? You can go in there, but don’t touch anything; most certainly you are not allowed to move any of the patio furniture, and don’t ask about the recipe for the potato salad.”

Frankly, when it comes to pursuit of the truth, I don’t think anything should be off limits.

Admittedly, for many, theology is merely a matter of learning rote doctrine. All too often it is simply a set of beliefs clung to without thought or wondering. And you’re certain to get in trouble with some people if you ask too many questions or challenge any of the sacred cows. A certain institution that I taught at briefly viewed theology as a list that the students were expected to memorize. Asking hard questions, or really, any questions at all, or offering alternative viewpoints, or leaving some questions as unanswerable was simply not acceptable. At all.

If you doubt anything that “everyone” has “always” believed, then you are a heretic for sure. The thing is, in science, in engineering, in most disciplines, asking questions, doubting pat answers, focusing on the problem areas and picking at the loose threads is, at least, theoretically praiseworthy. Of course, in real life, challenging pet dogmas in any realm of human knowledge can cause problems.

This is not to say that all questions are necessarily equally worthwhile or reasonable. If you question the spherical nature of the Earth, or cast doubt on well documented historical events, or posit insane conspiracy theories, you can expect to have the weight of more knowledgeable people descending on your stupidity. Your questions must be knowledgeable and face the actual data. Of course, if you’re seven and you wonder about how the earth can be round, that’s not quite the same as if you’re thirty.

And so, I get myself into trouble sometimes over the things I ponder.

For instance, I have a lot of questions regarding this thing called Hell. I know a great number of Christians who have no questions at all about it and are quite happy with the concept. I know a few who seem rather gleeful about it–which I find a bit disturbing, to be honest.

And so, here are my questions–questions that I believe need to be faced regardless of where you finally end up in your concept of Hell. Some of these questions are more easily answered than others, of course:

If salvation is by grace, and if Jesus died for the sins of all, then why are not all then saved? Is atonement limited to only those who are elect? What about the status of those who never hear, or cannot hear (those who die in infancy or before, the mentally handicapped, and so on)?

So, is it possible that the purpose of spreading the gospel, and getting people “saved” is not to rescue them from eternal Hell, but to rescue them from the “hell” of a life not lived in freedom from the burden of guilt and the law? Isn’t it enough to bring enlightenment and joy? The gospel after all is considered “good news.” How good is it if the message, as commonly proclaimed throughout history, is “believe or go to Hell forever?” And come to think of it, where in the Bible do we see anyone preaching like that?

When Jesus says that he is the way, the truth, and the life, is he describing what he has done, or demanding a prescriptive act on our part? If the latter, how is that consistent with the notion of grace? But then why the call to repent, to believe, and the importance of faith in all of this? What about the clearly expressed “judgment of God” both in times past, in a temporal sense and the seeming more significant “cosmic” and eternal sense that is apparently indicated by several passages?

How do we put all this together and make sense of it? If salvation is universal does this mean that truth is relative and you can and should believe any fool thing you want, do anything you want, because in the final analysis it doesn’t matter what you do, think, say or believe, in the end you’ll get to go to heaven? If knowing the truth matters only if it keeps us from hellfire, then what’s the point of all the schools that we have to educate young people? Why bother? Do we correct stupid notions, fight ignorance and insist on accuracy only because it benefits us in the afterlife?

Another problem with the traditional notion of Hell: if Hell is as we have generally believed it, then why is there no fire and brimstone preaching in the Bible? Why did God wait until the NT to let people know about the danger? Are we to assume that in OT times people willy-nilly went to Hell in huge numbers, but in God’s progressive rollout of information about himself and his ways, he didn’t think that was important enough to bother mentioning to anyone until about 2000 years ago?

Does this make any sort of sense at all? Does it work with our notions of God being loving? I may not be able to explain clearly to my two year old about the dangers of playing in the street, but he sure as hell gets warned about it really quick.

Certainly on the face of it, there are several New Testament passages that seem to best fit a more traditional notion of Hell. My question is: are we reading these things correctly? Or is there another way of looking at it? And so this is the source of my puzzlement on the whole issue of Hell. The Bible seems to me clear in indicating the reality of Hell; but reconciling all these questions, making sense of the whole thing–that’s a bit more difficult. So if there is a Hell, what really is it like? What is it’s purpose? How does it work? Given that discipline in the Bible is generally redemptive in purpose, are we certain Hell is merely and only punitive?

I think it is important to realize something here. Theology is mostly about asking questions. It’s not mostly about dogma. As the preceding paragraphs illustrate (I hope): we know much less than we think we do, and things are not always as easy as we may at first think them to be. And I think it would be good, especially at the academic level, that people be able to discuss questions such as this without being afraid that they are going to have rocks tossed at them, or that they will be chased out of town on a rail and denounced as a heretic. Academic freedom should mean something even for those who happen to be theologians. We should be able to travel anywhere in the pursuit of truth, without worrying about getting in trouble.

If you believe something only because someone told you to believe it or else, do you really believe it at all? Shouldn’t we know why we believe what we believe? Shouldn’t you be able to wonder?

Kibbutz Massada in 1977

During the summers (mid June-mid August) of 1976 and 1977 I was a volunteer worker on Kibbutz Massada. This video was made the second year I was on the kibbutz, but I’m guessing at least a month or two after I had left since they are harvesting the bananas. When I worked in the bananas it was before they were ready to be harvested. I remember setting out poles to help prop up the trees and trimming the leaves with a curved knife. Toward the end of the video, when you see people putting blankets on the grass in front of some long house-like looking buildings, those were the places where the volunteers lived. I was in the building on the left, if I recall correctly.

When I was on the Kibbutz, besides working in the bananas, I also got to work with chickens (from about 1:30 AM until around 8:00 or so, if I remember right), the olive trees, the alfalfa, and the date palms. Normal working hours were from about 4:00 AM until noon, with a break at 8 for breakfast. We stopped work for the day at about noon. After that it was so hot that no one did much of anything; typically it was above 104 by 10 AM. We ate hard cookies and drank strong coffee in clear, handle-less Pyrex cups at 4:00, before we went to work. Breakfast and lunch were in a communal dining hall; the meals were mostly the same, every day, morning, noon and night: hard bread, plain yogurt, boiled eggs, lettuce and tomatoes, olive oil, date jam (with the huge seeds in the jam that you had to pick out. Water, tea or coffee to drink. Sometimes at lunch or supper there was chicken and once in awhile we had pasta noodles and chocolate sauce. I do not know why they liked that. They had a place behind the cafeteria where you could fill water jugs with either plain water or carbonated water. There was a store on the kibbutz where we could buy things like Coke, ice cream and bubble gum: the Bazuka Joe comics were in Hebrew and just as dumb as they are in English.

We worked six days a week, with Saturday’s off, when we would take trips around the country. Kibbutz Massada is located in the Jordan Valley, just south of the Sea of Galilee on the Yarmuk River. We were right on the border with Jordan; I remember working in the date palms, up in the top of the palms tying the bunches of dates to the leaves so they wouldn’t fall off before they were ripe. I could see the barbed wire, the warning track, and the minefield; beyond that was the Yarmuk river. One day a wild bore hit one of the mines. Pigs can fly in that case.

This video brought back a lot of memories.

You Have It All

The author of 2 Peter writes at the very start of his epistle:

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.

Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:3-11; emphasis added)

Peter reminds his readers that God has given them everything they need for life and godliness (vs. 3). This cannot be overemphasized. We already have everything we need. There is nothing else to find, nothing to add, nothing to build. There is no mystery waiting to be solved before you can live a powerful Christian life. No door to be unlocked. No secret handshake. No special prayer, no special diet. Nothing at all: because God has done it all for you already.

Remember, Jesus paid everything on the cross. You’ve got nothing else to buy. You don’t owe a thing. Even the tip is covered. There’s nothing left that you need to do. You don’t even need to wash the dishes. You don’t contribute to your salvation in anyway and nothing you do can add to your tab. Recall what Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans:

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5:1-11)

And yet Peter speaks of growth. How does that work? Perhaps an analogy might be useful. Imagine that a friend has given you a fully equipped and crewed airport, a Boeing 747, a stack of instruction manuals, unlimited jet fuel, and flying lessons. You now have everything you need to fly anywhere in the world. But it might take you awhile to figure out how to do it. That’s what it is like to be a Christian. You have everything you need, the Holy Spirit is indwelling you and is your constant companion. And yet you have the potential for growth. How does that work?

Spiritual growth is NOT a matter of memorizing rules and filling in boxes. Spiritual growth will NOT lead to health and wealth and happiness.

There are no shortcuts. There is no magic elixir. You’ll still get flat tires, the flu, and your kids will probably mouth off to you now and then. The path to maturity is long and arduous (Matthew 7:13-14), requiring a lifetime of trials. And again: you’ve got everything you need already. God’s Holy Spirit lives inside of you. Think of the implications. How can you have God inside of you without that having a rather profound impact on how you live? It is heretical to imagine that you need some person to lead you to a right relationship with God. You already have a right relationship with God! Remember: Jesus already paid the ultimate penalty. Paid it in full. No book or speaker, no pastor or teacher, can take the place of God in your life. Each of us must relate to God individually, and each one of us will grow whether we have some human being guiding us or not. As the Apostle John wrote: “you do not need anyone to teach you.” (1 John 2:27)

In a biological sense, growth is spontaneous and inevitable; without it, death just as inevitably results. The writers of scripture did not lightly choose the word “growth” for describing the process of the Christian life. For instance:

He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.

Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.” (Mark 4:26-32; see also 1 Corinthians 3:6-7; 2 Corinthians 10:15; Ephesians 4:15-16; Colossians 1:6-12, 2:19; 2 Thessalonians 1:3; 1 Peter 2:2-3; 2 Peter 2:2-3; 2 Peter 3:18)

So, at the beginning of his letter, Peter lists eight processes that are linked intimately to one another in spiritual growth.

They are:

1. Faith

2. Goodness

3. Wisdom

4. Self-control

5. Perseverance

6. Godliness

7. Brotherly Kindness

8. Love

Sounds remarkably like something Paul wrote:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23)

Since God the Spirit lives inside of you, you’ve already got all that. Nothing you need to run out and buy. You’ll never run short. So again, never forget:

 This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel

after that time, declares the Lord.

I will put my laws in their minds

and write them on their hearts.

I will be their God,

and they will be my people.

No longer will they teach their neighbor,


or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’

because they will all know me,

from the least of them to the greatest.

For I will forgive their wickedness

and will remember their sins no more. (Hebrews 8:10-12)

You really, really do have everything you need. Metaphorically, stop hopping about looking for your glasses. They’re right there, on top of your head.

Culture and the Bible

God is interested in communicating to his people and he chose to do so through literature. And he chose to do it through a specific culture. Sometimes, that culture is very, very alien and hard to comprehend. Consider this peculiar passage from Genesis:

He also said to him, “I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.”

But Abram said, “Sovereign LORD, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?”

So the LORD said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”

Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. 11 Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.

As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. 13 Then the LORD said to him, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. 15You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”

When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. 18 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates—19 the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, 21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.” (Genesis 15:7-21)

Thus, when Abraham asks in Genesis 15, “how do I know I’ll inherit this land”, God answers his question in a way that makes no sense to modern readers: he tells Abraham to split some animals in half and lay them in parallel rows. Then, God appears as a smoking firepot walking between the animal pieces.

A modern reader will look at this and go “huh?”

But for the original readers living in ancient Israel, it made perfect sense. You see, Abraham had asked for a guarantee, and what God did was sign a contract. Take a look at Jeremiah 34:18-19:

The men who have violated my covenant and have not fulfilled the terms of the covenant they made before me, I will treat like the calf they cut in two and then walked between its pieces. The leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the court officials, the priests and all the people of the land who walked between the pieces of the calf…

Sometimes the culture shock from reading the Bible hits us square in the face and we’re forced to confront the alien situation. Too often, the way we confront it is to duck and move on–nothing to see here–and just shrug and forget about it. Other times we see a situation in the Bible and we interpret it through the lens of our own culture and thus entirely misunderstand the point. I leave you with just a few things to consider when you read the Bible:

1. Monarchy is pretty much the norm in the Bible, along with tyranies of various sorts. Western democratic ways of governing are completely alien. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the President of the United States is the equivalent of a monarch or emperor. When the Bible talks about obeying the king, the closest thing in the U.S. that matches that is the Constitution. “We the people” are the actual source of power and governing; our elected representatives are just that: our servants who work for us. We can criticize and fire them if we feel like it.

2. There is no concept of the separation of powers in the Bible. The executive, legislative and judicial branches are usually all embodied in a single individual. For instance, we call Deborah, Samson and Gideon, for example “judges” and speak about the “Book of Judges.” The English word “judge” is actually a poor translation, though now traditional. Instead, think of them as warlords, like the tribal warlords in Afghanistan.

3. Cities of Refuge for those guilty of killing someone to flee to; avenger of blood hunting them down to kill them in vengeance. There is no such thing as police, jails, or juries. Instead, there was blood vengence. Think the Hatfields and the McCoys, or rival gangs. Or the classic line from the movie, Princess Bride: “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

4. Concepts of marriage and sexual relations are a bit different in the Bible. Polygamy is common and is never prohibited. There are such things as “concubines” which are secondary wives, primarily used for sex. (see Exodus 21). If a man dies childless, his brother or next closest relative was obligated to marry the widow and make babies in order to carry on the dead man’s name.

These are merely a few of the major cultural differences between 21st century America and ancient Israel. Consider: the people in the Old Testament were mostly either farmers or shepherds. Very few modern Americans live or work on farms today. During the time of Saul, we witness Israelite culture transitioning from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. The Bible predates the industrial revolution by thousands of years. Clocks, the necessity of precision in measurement were all unknown concepts to the people of the Bible. There comprehension of the workings of the universe were very limited. Only after about 600 BC was it common knowledge that the Earth was a sphere. No one knew about electricity. Travel was on foot, by carriage, or on the backs of animals. Communication was slow.

Of course most people reading the Bible today understand these things; but it’s very easy to forget and to impose our modern sensibilities, concepts and values. Additionally, consider that the questions you have, the issues that are vital to you, may not at all be what troubled and concerned the authors of the Bible, or their original audience. In fact, the Bible may not answer your questions at all. The Bible is God’s sufficient revelation to the human race. It is not his complete revelation to it. If you want to know how to fix your car or install a new printer, to pick obvious things, you’ll have to look for the answers elsewhere. Likewise, if you want to know what Jesus looked like, you have to accept the fact that the people at the time didn’t care. They had other questions instead.