R.P. Nettelhorst's Blog, page 54
January 12, 2015
Vengeance
The men of the town demanded of Joash, “Bring out your son. He must die, because he has broken down Baal’s altar and cut down the Asherah pole beside it.”
But Joash replied to the hostile crowd around him, “Are you going to plead Baal’s cause? Are you trying to save him? Whoever fights for him shall be put to death by morning! If Baal really is a god, he can defend himself when someone breaks down his altar.” So that day they called Gideon “Jerub-Baal,” saying, “Let Baal contend with him,” because he broke down Baal’s altar. (Judges 6:30-32)
Gideon’s father was right about Baal. And it also applies to Yahweh. He doesn’t need his followers to “avenge” him. He can take care of himself.
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January 11, 2015
The Kingdom
“In those days, after that tribulation:
The sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not shed its light;
the stars will be falling from the sky,
and the celestial powers will be shaken.
Then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. He will send out the angels and gather His elect from the four winds, from the end of the earth to the end of the sky.
“Learn this parable from the fig tree: As soon as its branch becomes tender and sprouts leaves, you know that summer is near. In the same way, when you see these things happening, know that He is near—at the door! I assure you: This generation will certainly not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away.
“Now concerning that day or hour no one knows—neither the angels in heaven nor the Son—except the Father. Watch! Be alert! For you don’t know when the time is coming. It is like a man on a journey, who left his house, gave authority to his slaves, gave each one his work, and commanded the doorkeeper to be alert. Therefore be alert, since you don’t know when the master of the house is coming—whether in the evening or at midnight or at the crowing of the rooster or early in the morning. Otherwise, he might come suddenly and find you sleeping. And what I say to you, I say to everyone: Be alert!” (Mark 13:24-37)
We shouldn’t get our exercise by jumping to conclusions. Jesus quoted the book of Isaiah to describe the destruction that the Romans would bring against Jerusalem and its temple only forty years later. Isaiah had been describing what it was like when the Babylonians had come.
Since Rome was a new Babylon for the Jewish people, his disciples would have understood Jesus’ words as a prediction of a Roman invasion of their homeland. When Jesus told them that they would see Jesus coming “in clouds with great power and glory” they thought he meant that unlike when the Babylonians invaded, against the Romans the Messiah would prevail.
Jesus’ disciples misunderstood Jesus. Until they were enlightened by the Spirit at Pentecost, they looked only for a physical kingdom. They didn’t understand that Jesus spoke of a spiritual kingdom in the hearts of believers everywhere. Someday Jesus will come back and rule the earth physically, but that time was not then and it is not yet. But we can comfort ourselves with the knowledge that with God in our hearts today, we already experience that kingdom of God.
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January 10, 2015
Perspective
Steven Pinker writes in his book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, in chapter 6, The New Peace (location 6712 in the Kindle version of the book):
“This period [the first decade of the 21st century], even with thirty-one ongoing conflicts in that mid-decade (including Iraq, Afghanistan, Chad, Sri Lanka, and Sudan), enjoyed an astoundingly low rate of battle deaths: around 0.5 per 100,000 per year, falling below the homicide rate of even the world’s most peaceable societies. The figures, granted, are lowballs, since they include only reported battle deaths, but that is true for the entire time series. And even if we were to multiply the recent figures by five, they would sit well below the world’s overall homicide rate of 8.8 per 100,000 per year. In absolute numbers, annual battle deaths have fallen by more than 90 percent, from around half a million per year in the late 1940s to around thirty thousand a year in the early 2000s. So believe it or not, from a global, historical, and quantitative perspective, the dream of the 1960s folk songs has come true: the world has (almost) put an end to war.”
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January 9, 2015
Hell
“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed, rather than having two hands, to go to hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched—where
‘Their worm does not die
And the fire is not quenched.’
And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame, rather than having two feet, to be cast into hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched—where
‘Their worm does not die
And the fire is not quenched.’
And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, rather than having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire—where
‘Their worm does not die
And the fire is not quenched.’
“For everyone will be seasoned with fire, and every sacrifice will be seasoned with salt. Salt is good, but if the salt loses its flavor, how will you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace with one another.” (Mark 9:42-50)
Jesus used Hell to warn believers, not condemn sinners. Did Jesus think that it was a good idea for his followers to maim themselves. Of course not. They understood his point as easily just as a modern reader understands the phrase “raining cats and dogs.” Literalizing a metaphor is as big a mistake as allegorizing something that should be taken at face value.
And what was Jesus point? That the Kingdom of God was so wonderful, that missing an eye or a foot was far better than the alternative of Hell. What does the odd phrase, “their worm does not die” and “their fire is not quenched” refer to? It is a quotation from the very end of the book of Isaiah. The word translated “hell” comes into Greek from a Hebrew phrase that meant “the Valley of Hinnon.” Located just outside of Jerusalem, it was where King Ahaz had worshiped Molech by sacrificing his children as burnt offerings. Since then, it had become an ever burning garbage dump. The picture of worms and fire is therefore one of perpetual uncleanness. It stands in sharp contrast to the wonders of God’s kingdom. Our choice is stark and therefore not hard to make.
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January 8, 2015
January 7, 2015
Feeding 5000
When Jesus heard about John, He withdrew from there in a boat to a secluded place by Himself; and when the people heard of this, they followed Him on foot from the cities. When He went ashore, He saw a large crowd, and felt compassion for them and healed their sick.
When it was evening, the disciples came to Him and said, “This place is desolate and the hour is already late; so send the crowds away, that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” But Jesus said to them, “They do not need to go away; you give them something to eat!”
They said to Him, “We have here only five loaves and two fish.”
And He said, “Bring them here to Me.”
Ordering the people to sit down on the grass, He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up toward heaven, He blessed the food, and breaking the loaves He gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds, and they all ate and were satisfied. They picked up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve full baskets. There were about five thousand men who ate, besides women and children. (Matthew 14:13-21)
Were the five thousand that Jesus fed late one afternoon, as the sun set and twilight came, better people than those whom he hadn’t provided such a meal for? Those who received a miracle from him, were simply those who had come to him. When someone came, Jesus never drove them off without providing for their needs. He healed the sick, he cast out demons, he raised the dead.
Five thousand were fed that evening. It was a miracle, a “free lunch.” But when those people woke up from their slumber the next day, what did they have? Their bellies were empty once again. Those that Jesus healed, sooner or later got ill from something else. Eventually, they all died. Those he raised from the dead eventually ended up in a cemetery. We can’t travel to Israel and have tea with Lazarus.
Why did Jesus perform miracles that lasted such a short time—satisfying hunger for a few hours, or relieving pain and death for a few years? What was the point since none of that lasted.
Relieving someone’s suffering, easing a burden, wiping a tear, binding a wound, offering a drink, giving a gift—certainly none of those things last for long. But yet, each momentary blessing is still a blessing. Even a momentary improvement is still an improvement. If you’ve helped today, you’ve helped.
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January 6, 2015
Two Sides
There are always two sides to any conflict. But sometimes that doesn’t mean that both sides have a point. Sometimes one side is flat out wrong.
“There are two sides to every story” has become something of a mantra for journalists. It is not uncommon to be told the sad stories of our enemies, how much they’ve suffered, how miserable their lives have been. The downtrodden, impoverished young minority member languishing unjustly in jail; “nobody knows the trouble” he’s seen. As if that makes robbing the liquor store and gunning down a couple of customers (who are rich and not minority) a reasonable reaction to his state, or at least makes it comprehensible.
This “two sides to every story” is not held to with consistency and rarely is the lack of consistency recognized, because in the echo chamber, there is no inconsistency, ever. The one in the right, the one who is justified is always the minority member who is poor and who has endured hardship. The one who is not poor, is not a minority, and is not downtrodden in that special way deserves to suffer at the hands of the victim who rose up and struck a blow against inequality.
But, despite the narrative that is always true regardless of the facts or reality, I have yet to see “the other side” of racism ever presented, or “the other side” of pedophilia, or the other side rape. Thankfully I have yet to see a story trying to justify the perpetrators of child abuse or rape. But that failure to give the other side of the story of rape demonstrates that the “two sides to every story” is a cliché and widely misapplied by journalists and pundits. The unexpressed thought that “the other side” whatever that other side is, must have legitimate grievances or reasons. And that unexpressed thought is where the flaw is centered.
The operative term being “legitimate” grievances or reasons. And of course we know that while yes, there probably is a point of view that the Nazis and child molesters hold that for them justifies their actions, we really aren’t so interested in knowing what those might be because we know that they cannot possibly justify their reprehensible actions. Even the most feckless journalist and pundit knows on a fundamental level that sometimes the other side is simply wrong or insane or evil. Everyone understands that there really are bad guys in the world.
There is the world that we wish for and then there is the world that is. We would do well to develop our philosophy to match the world that is, rather than the ideal we wish could be. As we think about improving the world, we would also do well to keep in mind reality. The worldview of too many strike me as beautiful sentiments that fit reality as well as the hobo song, Big Rock Candy Mountain:
On a summer day in the month of May a burly bum came hiking
Down a shady lane through the sugar cane, he was looking for his liking.
As he roamed along he sang a song of the land of milk and honey
Where a bum can stay for many a day, and he won’t need any money…
Nice people will say things like, “why can’t we just all get along” or “why can’t we just live in peace?” As if the sentiment alone will fix the problem, as if people would “just wake up” and “give peace a chance.”
Unfortunately, there are monsters out there. A serial killer is not interested in your pleasant sentiments. The members of the drug cartels in Mexico and other places south who kill people with regularity, cut off heads, and do other horrific crimes are not going to be swayed by us holding hands and learning to sing in “perfect harmony.” Hashtags #givepeaceachance or #endviolence repeated on Twitter, pretty memes reposted and “liked” on Facebook will not change the behavior of the evil and putting a flower in the barrel of a thug’s gun will not slow down his bullets in the slightest.
When it comes to the situation in the Middle East, there are fundamental things to understand about the conflict, the first being that the Israelis are not the ones standing in the way of peace. The Israelis are not the problem. Blaming Israel is like blaming a rape victim.
So who is to blame? Bottom line: Israel’s enemies: those who shoot rockets indescrimately into Israel, those who kidnap children and murder them, those who walk into markets and detonate bombs, those who board busses and machinegun the passengers, those who compare Jews to pigs and apes, those who make Mein Kampf a bestseller throughout Gaza, the Palestinian territories, and the Arab world, those who believe that Jews kill gentile children so they can drain their blood and use it as an ingredient in Passover matzas. Those who teach their children to hate Jews, whose textbooks and teachers teach the children that Jews are an infection on the world that needs to be eradicated, parroting the same language the Nazis used in the 1930s. Those who publish newspapers, print books, broadcast on radio and television the daily instruction, the calls for the destruction of Israel from its politicians and religious leaders, who cry for jihad and the murder of Jews. Few who blame Israel for the lack of peace in the Middle East care to think about inconvenient little details like Mein Kampf remaining a perennial best seller in the Palestinian territories, together with the infamous forgery called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is accepted as true by most Palestinians. Or when the wide-spread anti-Semitism is mentioned, it is explained away using language remarkably similar to someone trying to blame the rape victim because of how she was dressed: they brought it on themselves.
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January 5, 2015
Acting on the Words
“Everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.”
When Jesus had finished these words, the crowds were amazed at His teaching; for He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.
When Jesus came down from the mountain, large crowds followed Him. And a leper came to Him and bowed down before Him, and said, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.”
Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus said to him, “See that you tell no one; but go, show yourself to the priest and present the offering that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” (Matthew 7:24-8:4)
When Jesus said that we should act on his words, what words were he talking about? Jesus had just given the beatitudes, spoken about what it really meant to love others, and he had warned against worrying. Those were the words upon which a life could be built.
Jesus spoke as the prophets of old had: “thus says the Lord.” He backed up his words with miracles seen only in the lives of those prophets. Just as the prophet Elisha had cleansed Naman of leprosy, so Jesus cleansed a man of leprosy. That was the authority that made Jesus stand out from the scribes and other religious leaders.
A few years ago, our foster baby died of SIDS and we were sued for 31 million dollars for wrongful death. Three years passed before the lawsuit was thrown out. If you have built your life on the truth of the Gospel, rather than on the lies of wishful thinking, then you will stand secure against that sort of storm, knowing that whatever happens, you are not alone and God will see you through. If you can stand to lose everything, if you can give up your life for Christ and not feel cheated, if you believe God loves you even when the world crashes around your ears, then you have built your life on Jesus’ words.
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January 4, 2015
Are We There Yet?
“I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?
“So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
“Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. (Matthew 6:25-34)
Some people live their whole lives in the future. The triumphs and tribulations of today slip away without notice, so concerned are they with tomorrow.
God has given us the strength we need for today. So why expend that strength on tomorrow and thus wear ourselves out today? And why do we assume that tomorrow will be a problem? If we’ve got to think about tomorrow, then at least we should have happy thoughts about it.
And what are the happy thoughts we can have? That God will take care of us. God knows our needs as much as we do. He cares about us as much as we care about ourselves.
So we shouldn’t keep asking, are we there yet, like some child on a trip with her parents. Instead, we can simply enjoy the time with our parents: we can focus on God with us now and trust God to take care of what we need when we need it. We don’t even have to think about it. We can use our minds for more important things, like enjoying God today, this very moment, in this bright shining instant.
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January 3, 2015
Fear Not
Paul left Athens and went to Corinth, where he met Aquila, a Jewish man from Pontus. Not long before this, Aquila had come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Emperor Claudius had ordered the Jewish people to leave Rome. Paul went to see Aquila and Priscilla and found out that they were tent makers. Paul was a tent maker too. So he stayed with them, and they worked together.
Every Sabbath, Paul went to the Jewish meeting place. He spoke to Jews and Gentiles and tried to win them over. But after Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia, he spent all his time preaching to the Jews about Jesus the Messiah. Finally, they turned against him and insulted him. So he shook the dust from his clothes and told them, “Whatever happens to you will be your own fault! I am not to blame. From now on I am going to preach to the Gentiles.”
Paul then moved into the house of a man named Titius Justus, who worshiped God and lived next door to the meeting place. Crispus was the leader of the meeting place. He and everyone in his family put their faith in the Lord. Many others in Corinth also heard the message, and all the people who had faith in the Lord were baptized.
One night, Paul had a vision, and in it the Lord said, ‘‘Don’t be afraid to keep on preaching. Don’t stop! I am with you, and you won’t be harmed. Many people in this city belong to me.” Paul stayed on in Corinth for a year and a half, teaching God’s message to the people. (Acts 18:1-11)
It’s easy to tell someone not to be afraid. It’s harder to do it. When Paul reached Corinth, he supported himself by making tents. Paul soon faced serious trouble and opposition in Corinth. Paul was human, and just like any of us, it was easy to become discouraged, to wonder whether things would work out, to second guess ourselves or to think perhaps we’ve made a mistake. But Jesus appeared to Paul and told him not to be afraid, and to just keep doing what he was doing.
Just as God told Elijah, when he despaired that he was the last prophet, so Jesus told Paul that the city of Corinth was filled with many of God’s people. Jesus knew that Paul needed the comfort only other people could give.
When we get discouraged, not only should we pray to God, we should also make a point to spend time with other believers so we can share with them our burdens. We’ll feel better when we’re not by ourselves. Jesus knows we need other people.
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