Tag Archives: Galatians 2:20

Who Am I? Part 4

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I spend a large portion of my Christmas holiday with three post-Christian women I’ll call Grandmother, Mother and Daughter because of their relationship to one another.  I call them post-Christian because they were all professing Christians at one time.  Grandmother still calls herself a Christian.  She means a non-Buddhist, non-Hindu, non-Jew, non-Muslim who believes in Jesus.  Her ex-husband was a Baptist Sunday school teacher who abused her, and Mother as a child.  Daughter is the most non-Christian, vocally pagan of the three with Mother falling somewhere between.  Their transformation began with a desire for a more feminine God.  I regret now not taking Mother’s question more seriously.  I didn’t understand at the time that this desire would lead through Mother Earth to a Mother Goddess and on to full-fledged paganism.

I pointed out that yehôvâh (יהוה) created male and female: God (ʼĕlôhı̂ym, אלהים) created humankind in his own image, in the image of God (ʼĕlôhı̂ym, אלהים) he created them, male and female he created them.[1]  I talked about the meaning of El Shaddai (ʼêl, אל; shadday, שדי) and a few other references to God as feminine.  But I emphasized that the general understanding of God as masculine was due primarily to the fact that we are all feminine in relation to the operation of his grace through Jesus Christ.

I am accepted among them as the kindly, odd, somewhat benighted, old man who studies the Bible in his spare time, so ordinary conversation—what’ve you been up to?—offers many opportunities.  A recent conversation with Grandmother and Daughter turned naturally to Jesus’ dying thoughts on the cross.  I read Psalm 22 aloud.  Daughter was visibly, tearfully moved and vocally overwhelmed that David could write such exact knowledge so many centuries before Jesus was born.

I spoke of God having mercy on whoever he chooses to have mercy and hardening whoever he chooses to harden.  I said I had been considering how, and told them the story of two prophets, Nathan and John the Baptist.  When Pharisees and Sadduccees, religious leaders, came to be baptized for repentance (Matthew 3:11, 12; Mark 1:4-8; Luke 3:15-17) John said, You offspring of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?[2]  And he challenged them to put their works religion to the test: Therefore produce fruit that proves your repentance…[3]

What I didn’t say but will record here for my own memory’s sake, whether these particular Pharisees and Sadduccees were directly responsible or not, John’s words were not secret and would have tended to harden the resolve of the religious elite to kill Jesus: the Lord (yehôvâh, ויהוה) desired to crush him (e.g., Jesus).  On the other hand yehôvâh desired David’s repentance and sent Nathan to that effect.

He was sent after King David had committed adultery with Bathsheba and then had her husband killed to cover it up.  Nathan told David a story (2 Samuel 12:1-6) about a rich man who had entertained a traveler with a meal.  The rich man hadn’t served up any of his own sheep or cattle, but the one ewe lamb he took from a poor man.  Then David became very angry at this man.[4]  You are that man![5] Nathan said to him.

“Did he kill him?” Daughter asked.  I was actually surprised that she had forgotten the story.

No, I answered, I have sinned against the Lord![6] David said and then he wrote the 51st Psalm.  I got to read Psalm 51 aloud to them.  When I finished Grandmother responded to a look on Daughter’s face at the line—Look, I was guilty of sin from birth, a sinner the moment my mother conceived me.[7]

“I don’t believe that either,” Grandmother said.

This is a point to concede by the way.  If it offends or hurts your feelings, welcome to the human race.  Being guilty of sin from birth, a sinner the moment my mother conceived me is equivalent to being born of the flesh of Adam (Romans 5:12-21; 1 Corinthians 15:42-58).  You do not want a relentless God who will pursue you with goodness and mercy all the days of your life to spend that time convincing you the hard way that you are a sinner instead (John 16:7-11).

Goodness and mercy, by the way is the NKJV translation of Psalm 23:6a.  In the NET it was translated goodness and faithfulness (chêsêd , וחסד).

chêsêd Hebrew KJV NET Tanakh Septuagint
Psalm 23:6a וחסד mercy faithfulness mercy ἔλεός[8]


Daughter informed me that my religion has a lot of guilt in it as she praised me for my adherence to it, and insisted that we, she and her pagan friends, desperately need a canon (i.e., of written scripture).

On Yule I learned that Mother had been taking drugs.  I wasn’t personally that aware of the winter solstice.  Daughter and Mother wished one another happy Yule in the car as I drove them to rehab.  It’s probably the only reason I knew anything at all.

I hadn’t known the night before that Mother had informed Daughter she was abusing drugs.  Daughter called me the next morning when Mother hesitated to actually commit herself to rehab.  In the car on the way Daughter was jubilant and excited that Mother was doing the right thing.  Yes, rehab is better than sitting home alone shooting dope, but I was much more somber and subdued.

At her home I had sat with her, held her and listened to her enough to convince myself that Mother had no interest in repentance.  Daughter was right.  My presence alone persuaded Mother to shower, dress and leave with us for the rehab facility.  But in the car I felt like I was delivering her up for more hardening.  In my admittedly limited experience I know no one who has returned to faith in Christ from the higher power mysticism of a twelve-step program.  I watched sadly the full realization of incarceration creep across her face as she was taken from us.  No matter what I say or how much I protest, Mother and Daughter believe I live a life of rules, while they are free.

I gave them My statutes, yehôvâh explained in the philosopher’s dream chapter of Ezekiel the prophet, and informed them of My ordinances, by which, if a man observes them, he will live.[9] I call it the philosopher’s dream chapter because yehôvâh explained so much of his own understanding of Israel’s history there.  Then the twelve-year-old Jesus had this chapter at his disposal to renew and refresh his now human mind.

The Hebrew word translated My statutes was chûqqâh (חקותי).  It was translated προστάγματά in the Septuagint.  The Hebrew word translated My ordinances was mishpâṭ (משפטי), and δικαιώματά, a form of δικαίωμα, in the Septuagint.  This was translated the righteous requirements in: Therefore if the uncircumcised man obeys the righteous requirements (δικαιώματα, a form of δικαίωμα) of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision?[10]

In the same chapter yehôvâh explained: I also gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not live.[11]  Here the Hebrew word translated statutes was chôq (חקים); chûqqâh is the feminine of chôq according to Strong’s Concordance.  It was still translated προστάγματα in the Septuagint.  And again, the word translated ordinances was mishpâṭ (ומשפטים) in Hebrew and δικαιώματα in the Septuagint.  I don’t think these are different statutes or different ordinances.

The commandment…was intended to bring life.[12]  The law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good.[13]  But if a law had been given that was able to give life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law.[14]  God achieved what the law could not do because it was weakened through the flesh.[15]  For sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it I died.[16]  For we know that the law is spiritual – but I am unspiritual, sold into slavery to sin.  For I don’t understand what I am doing.  For I do not do what I want – instead, I do what I hate.[17]

Also I gave them My Sabbaths, yehôvâh said in the philosopher’s dream chapter, to be a sign between Me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord (yehôvâh, יהוה) who sanctifies them.[18]

In practice many professing faith in Jesus do not believe that yehôvâh/Jesus sanctifies[19] them.  We trust Him for justification only, primarily forgiveness.  We believe our sanctification is a measure of our own good works, obedience accomplished in our own strength for our own glory.  We do not believe that here and now a Sabbath rest remains for the people of God.  For the one who enters God’s rest has also rested from his works, just as God did from his own works.[20]  I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.  So the life I now live in the body, I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.[21]  Thus we must make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by following the same pattern of disobedience[22] (ἀπειθείας, a form of ἀπείθεια; literally, disbelief)  Do we then nullify the law through faith?  Absolutely not!  Instead we uphold the law.[23]

I want to consider the movie The Host as a Holy Spirit metaphor for one who does not yet experience Him.  There are many spoilers here and as a metaphor the film is fatally flawed.  But in the hope of communicating some small portion of the Ineffable, here goes.

“The earth is at peace,” a resistance leader named Jebediah (William Hurt) narrates the beginning of the film.  “There is no hunger.  There is no violence.  The environment is healed.  Honesty, courtesy and kindness are practiced by all.  Our world has never been more perfect.  Only it is no longer our world.  We’ve been invaded by an alien race.  They occupy the bodies of almost all human beings on the planet.  The few humans who have survived are on the run.”

Then we are introduced to Melanie (Saoirse Ronan) fleeing her enemies: honesty, courtesy and kindness.  Following her earthly father’s example, she attempts suicide but lives, despite her best efforts, only to be possessed by Wanderer (also Saoirse Ronan).  Melanie’s old human survives to fight Wanderer for control of their body.

The Seeker (Diane Kruger) interviews Wanderer to glean Melanie’s memories for knowledge of other old humans in the resistance underground.  When she decides that Melanie’s old human is too strong for Wanderer, she plans to put Wanderer in a more compliant host, search Melanie’s memories herself and then let Melanie die the death she wanted.  But Wanderer has begun to love Melanie.  They flee The Seeker together.

Melanie tricks Wanderer into the desert and leads her to Uncle Jebediah and the underground resistance.  Uncle Jeb uses all of his authority as a leader to keep others in the resistance from killing the obviously possessed Melanie/Wanderer.  Even Melanie’s lover Jared (Max Irons) has no sympathy for her at first.  In a get-to-know-you walk-and-talk Uncle Jeb shortens Wanderer’s name to Wanda.

Melanie begins to love Wanda as she witnesses Wanda’s concern for the people Melanie loves, even some she hates or is indifferent toward.  The metaphor breaks down, of course.  The holy spirits, called souls in the film, are many and varied, and some or not as holy as Wanda.  The Seeker ironically becomes almost human in her fears that she personally is losing control to her host Lacey (also Diane Kruger) and that the holy spirits may ultimately lose their possession of the humans.  In the end The Host becomes Satan’s wet dream as The Seeker’s fears become flesh: holy spirits collaborate with the resistance to rid humans of the holy spirits.

 

Mother is on the verge of bankruptcy.  I helped her in a similar position nearly twenty years ago.  She called me before I left for Christmas.  I offered to help again.  She accepted.  As I drove the hundred miles or so to my own mother’s house the evening after Mother committed herself to rehab I understood why we hadn’t met to review her finances yet.  I recalled the things I’ve said and done with Grandmother, Mother and Daughter, fretted over some things I hadn’t said or done and heard Darth Vader echoing in my head, saying, “Now his failure is complete.”

As far as I know I am the believer of record in their lives.  I will give an account of this stewardship before Jesus.  As the enormity of my failure to live a life that commends others to Jesus inundated me in crushing waves, the image of my mother scrubbing the basement floor on her hands and knees popped into my mind.  Of all the things she had said or done, of all the things I might have complained that she hadn’t said or done, this simple image stuck with me.

I had overdosed on some hallucinogen.  I had thrown up all night long on her basement floor.  My mother cleaning up after me became a living metaphor of my life.  I had returned to drugs because a simple taste a few days earlier brought back the feeling I had lost since my early days of trusting Jesus again.  I made many more bad decisions along the way.  But my mother never gave up on me.

As I drove through the dark hills thinking perhaps I had been spared from helping Mother again financially, the admonition of my penny-pinching father came to mind:

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

The words weren’t his but Rudyard Kipling’s.[24]  A man like me would be a fool to attempt Kipling’s vision of manhood apart from the Holy Spirit.  But the image of my mother’s loving persistence and my father’s words of counsel gave me some hope that I was there, the right person at the right place and time.  And that image and those words carried me through that dark night until the continuous infusion of the Holy Spirit’s love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and control took over again the next morning.

[1] Genesis 1:27 (NET)

[2] Matthew 3:7 (NET)

[3] Matthew 3:8 (NET)

[4] 2 Samuel 12:5a (NET) Table

[5] 2 Samuel 12:7a (NET) Table

[6] 2 Samuel 12:13a (NET) Table

[7] Psalm 51:5 (NET) Table

[8] In the Septuagint both chêsêd (וחסד) and ṭôb (טוב) were translated by the one Greek word ἔλεός.

[9] Ezekiel 20:11 (NASB)

[10] Romans 2:26 (NET) Table

[11] Ezekiel 20:25 (NASB)

[12] Romans 7:10 (NET)

[13] Romans 7:12 (NET)

[14] Galatians 3:21b (NET)

[15] Romans 8:3a (NET)

[16] Romans 7:11 (NET)

[17] Romans 7:14, 15 (NET)

[18] Ezekiel 20:12 (NASB)

[19] When I struggled the most with this concept my Pastor was from the Christian and Missionary Alliance.  Today, as I scanned their webpage titled “Sanctification,” nothing jumps out at me as problematic except my own spiritual tic.  My flesh and my religious mind hear obedience in step 3 “to A Spirit-Filled Life”—“We maintain a continuous relationship with Jesus through obedience to His Word”—as a trigger word, calling me back to a DIY works religion.  But now I just translate obedience back into Greek, ὑπακοή, attentive hearkening, and the trigger obey disappears.  I remain (μείνατε, a form of μένω) in Jesus through faith instead (which is the actual word used in John 15:1-11 the Scriptural source of step 3).

[Addendum 1/26/2017] I’m not so sure Paul would agree that 1 Corinthians 3:1-4 “clearly teaches that there are two kinds of Christians.”

[20] Hebrews 4:9, 10 (NET)

[21] Galatians 2:20 (NET)

[22] Hebrews 4:11 (NET)

[23] Romans 3:31 (NET)

[24] If, by Rudyard Kipling

Romans, Part 62

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As I continue to consider Rejoice in hope, endure in suffering, persist in prayer,[1] as a description of love rather than as rules to obey, I want to look at some more truth that love rejoices in along with some more ἀδικία that it does not.  What Luke called a parable (παραβολὴν, a form of παραβολή) Matthew presented as a rhetorical question in a discourse about child-rearing: If someone owns a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go look for the one that went astray?[2]

Matthew

Luke
See that you do not disdain one of these little ones.  For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.

Matthew 18:10 (NET)

 So Jesus told them this parable:

Luke 15:3 (NET)
What do you think?  If someone owns a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go look for the one that went astray?  And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he will rejoice (χαίρει, a form of χαίρω) more over it than over the ninety-nine that did not go astray.

Matthew 18:12, 13 (NET)

 “Which one of you, if he has a hundred sheep and loses one of them, would not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture and go look for the one that is lost until he finds it?  Then when he has found it, he places it on his shoulders, rejoicing (χαίρων, another form of χαίρω).  Returning home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, telling them, ‘Rejoice with me, because I have found my sheep that was lost.’

Luke 15:4-6 (NET)
In the same way, your Father in heaven is not willing that one of these little ones be lost.

Matthew 18:14 (NET)

 I tell you, in the same way there will be more joy (χαρὰ) in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need to repent.

Luke 15:7 (NET)

I should back up a bit and look at more of the context of Matthew’s Gospel narrative.  Jesus’ disciples had asked him, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?[3]

He called a child, had him stand among them, and said, “I tell you the truth, unless you turn around and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven!  Whoever then humbles himself like this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.  And whoever welcomes a child like this in my name welcomes me.”[4]

Then He began what I am calling a discourse about child-rearing: But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a huge millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the open sea.[5]  The Greek word translated causes…to sin is σκανδαλίσῃ (a form of σκανδαλίζω).  The definition in the NET reads as follows:

1) to put a stumbling block or impediment in the way, upon which another may trip and fall, metaph. to offend 1a) to entice to sin 1b) to cause a person to begin to distrust and desert one whom he ought to trust and obey 1b1) to cause to fall away 1b2) to be offended in one, i.e. to see in another what I disapprove of and what hinders me from acknowledging his authority 1b3) to cause one to judge unfavourably or unjustly of another 1c) since one who stumbles or whose foot gets entangled feels annoyed 1c1) to cause one displeasure at a thing 1c2) to make indignant 1c3) to be displeased, indignant

It comes from σκάνδαλον a snare or trap, translated stumbling blocks in the next verse: Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks (σκανδάλων, a form of σκάνδαλον)!  It is necessary that stumbling blocks (σκάνδαλα, another form of σκάνδαλον) come, but woe to the person through whom they (σκάνδαλον) come.”[6]  The necessity (ἀνάγκη, a form of ἀναγκή) of stumbling blocks is part of the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God,[7] how God has consigned all people to disobedience so that he may show mercy to them all.[8]  As I write this my daughter is essentially a witch, a neo-pagan.  My part in her defection from Christ was a decision made during my divorce from her mother.

My children wanted to stay with me rather than their mother.  I went along with it, hoping their mother would see reason.  She called my bluff and asked for money (to which she was entitled) to leave.  My biggest concern at that moment was the family’s financial survival.  I traveled for a living and would need to hire someone to care for them while I was away.  I had no legal rights to my children.  (I married into them and hadn’t adopted them because their biological father was still living.)  And there were a few more things.

Her care for those children had saved their mother from many (though not all) misguided mistakes.  To take that from her seemed dangerous and cruel.  Add to that, I was crushed in my own soul to be rejected again by yet another woman.  I had serious doubts that I could be a single parent of two teenage children.  Did I even want to be a single parent of two teenage children?  I wanted to make movies.

I decided that I could walk away with nothing but a paycheck, start over again and still help the family financially, and my wife could not.  And so I rejected and abandoned my daughter.

I’m grateful to Stephenie Meyer, Melissa Rosenberg, Catherine Hardwicke and Kristen Stewart for giving me two hours to be a teenage girl in love.  Randy Brown, Robert Lorenz, Clint Eastwood and Amy Adams have also helped me immensely in a more didactic way.  But both “Twilight” and “Trouble with the Curve” came too late to save me from making potentially the worst decision of a lifetime of bad decisions (Matthew 18:8, 9 NET).

If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire.  And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.  It is better for you to enter into life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into fiery hell.

If what I do with my hands, if where I go with my feet, if what I see with my eyes causes me to sin?

Causes you to sin has proven to be the worst of all possible translations of σκανδαλίζει (another form of σκανδαλίζω) for me.  It turns my thoughts inward to my sins.  My sins are forgiven!  Young’s Literal Translation—cause thee to stumble—allows me to see that Jesus was still talking about my real bumbling and stumbling, causing my daughter—one of those little ones who believed in Him—to sin, becoming a stumbling block to her, causing her to desert one whom she ought to trust.

Having watched her struggle through two drug-related psychotic breaks and a stroke, I agree with Jesus that it would have been better for me to kill myself.[9]  It is better for her, however, that I believe that I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.  So the life I now live in the body, I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God…[10]  And I continue to pray that his love, his joy, his peace, his patience, his kindness, his goodness, his faithfulness, his gentleness, and his firm control[11] are all she sees from me from now on, because if I cannot be forgiven…

And by forgiven I mean:  though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.[12]  An eternity in a fiery hell seems like overkill to me for masturbation or premarital sex or even stealing a gazillion dollars.  But if my daughter cannot be found again by the Lord Jesus, if I have condemned her to an eternity in hell, I’m not entirely convinced one eternity in one fiery hell will be sufficient for me.

And though I write like this I still have hope.  “I’ll always be here as your daughter,” she texted me as I thought and wrote about these things.  She has forgiven me, but not Jesus—not yet.  “Your sacrifice has made my education possible and I can never repay you but with love,” she texted.  Since faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word (ρήματος, a form of ῥῆμα) of God,[13] I pray that He will speak that word, “hear,” to her heart, so she will know Jesus and his Father who has given her so much more than a few dollars.  Now this is eternal life, Jesus prayed to his Father, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent.[14]

I didn’t intend this essay to be so confessional.  I intended to write about an incident in the history of Israel, when a Levite…acquired a concubine from Bethlehem in Judah.[15]  Actually, I wanted to write about what happened on their journey home, after she got angry at him and went home to her father’s house in Bethlehem in Judah,[16] after he retrieved her from there.  But in the KJV she didn’t get angry, she played the whore against him.  The note in the NET reads: “Or ‘was unfaithful to him.’ Many have understood the Hebrew verb וַתִּזְנֶה (vattizneh) as being from זָנָה (zanah, “to be a prostitute”), but it may be derived from a root meaning “to be angry; to hate” attested in Akkadian (see HALOT 275 s.v. II זנה).”

Ken Stone wrote in the Jewish Women’s Archive online:

The Hebrew text states that the woman “prostituted herself against” the Levite (19:2). Thus, it has often been assumed that she was sexually unfaithful to him. Certain Greek translations, however, state that she “became angry” with him. The latter interpretation is accepted by a number of commentators and modern English translations, including the NRSV, since the woman goes to her father’s house rather than the house of a male lover. It is also possible that the woman’s “prostitution” does not refer to literal sexual infidelity but is a sort of metaphor for the fact that she leaves her husband. The act of leaving one’s husband is quite unusual in the Hebrew Bible, and the harsh language used to describe it could result from the fact that it was viewed in a very negative light.

And though Mr. Stone mentioned “Certain Greek translations,” the Septuagint reads simply καὶ ἐπορεύθη ἀπ᾽ αὐτοῦ ἡ παλλακὴ αὐτοῦ (literally: “and went from him the concubine of his”).

I won’t comment about a Levite with a concubine, except to say that the Hebrew word pı̂ylegesh (פילגש), translated concubine, does not occur in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers or Deuteronomy.  It occurs in Genesis before God’s law was given and again after in Judges, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Esther, Song of Solomon and Ezekiel.  But the concubine is a foreign custom to God’s law.

The Levite and his concubine spent the night in Gibeah, in the land of the Benjamites, with an old man from the Ephraimite hill country, the place to which the Levite and his concubine were returning.  I made the following table to compare and contrast what happened next to the incident in Sodom the night before it was destroyed.

Judges, the Levite and his concubine

Genesis, Lot and the visitors
They were having a good time, when suddenly some men of the city, some good-for-nothings, surrounded the house and kept beating on the door.

Judges 19:22a (NET)

 Before they could lie down to sleep, all the men – both young and old, from every part of the city of Sodom – surrounded the house.

Genesis 19:4 (NET)

The note on good-for-nothings in the NET reads: “‘the men of the city, men, the sons of wickedness.’ The phrases are in apposition; the last phrase specifies what type of men they were. It is not certain if all the men of the city are in view, or just a group of troublemakers. In 20:5 the town leaders are implicated in the crime, suggesting that all the men of the city were involved. If so, the implication is that the entire male population of the town were good-for-nothings.”  The text is clearer regarding Sodom: Now the people of Sodom were extremely wicked rebels against the Lord (yehôvâh).[17]

Judges, the Levite and his concubine

Genesis, Lot and the visitors
They said to the old man who owned the house, “Send out the man who came to visit you so we can have sex with him.”

Judges 19:22b (NET)

 They shouted to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight?  Bring them out to us so we can have sex with them!”

Genesis 19:5 (NET)
The man who owned the house went outside and said to them, “No, my brothers!  Don’t do this wicked thing!  After all, this man is a guest in my house.  Don’t do such a disgraceful thing!

Judges 19:23 (NET)

 Lot went outside to them, shutting the door behind him.  He said, “No, my brothers!  Don’t act so wickedly!

Genesis 19:6, 7 (NET)
Here are my virgin daughter and my guest’s concubine.  I will send them out and you can abuse them and do to them whatever you like.  But don’t do such a disgraceful thing to this man!”

Judges 19:24 (NET)

 Look, I have two daughters who have never had sexual relations with a man.  Let me bring them out to you, and you can do to them whatever you please.  Only don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”

Genesis 19:8 (NET)

Chivalry as a moral code was invented much later.

Judges, the Levite and his concubine

Genesis, Lot and the visitors
The men refused to listen to him…

Judges 19:25a (NET)

 

 “Out of our way!” they cried, and “This man came to live here as a foreigner, and now he dares to judge (Septuagint: κρίσιν κρίνειν) us!  We’ll do more harm to you than to them!”  They kept pressing in on Lot until they were close enough to break down the door.

Genesis 19:9 (NET)
…so the Levite grabbed his concubine and made her go outside.

Judges 19:25b (NET)

 So the men inside reached out and pulled Lot back into the house as they shut the door.  Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house, from the youngest to the oldest, with blindness.

Genesis 19:10, 11a (NET)
They raped her and abused her all night long until morning.  They let her go at dawn.

Judges 19:25c (NET)

 The men outside wore themselves out trying to find the door.

Genesis 19:11b (NET)

The Benjamites who did this were not “godless Sodomites,” extremely wicked rebels against the Lord (yehôvâh, ליהוה), but sons of Israel living in the promised land.

Judges, the Levite and his concubine

Genesis, Lot and the visitors
The woman arrived back at daybreak and was sprawled out on the doorstep of the house where her master was staying until it became light.  When her master got up in the morning, opened the doors of the house, and went outside to start on his journey, there was the woman, his concubine, sprawled out on the doorstep of the house with her hands on the threshold.

Judges 19:26, 27 (NET)

 Then the two visitors said to Lot, “Who else do you have here?  Do you have any sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or other relatives in the city?  Get them out of this place because we are about to destroy it.  The outcry against this place is so great before the Lord (yehôvâh, יהוה) that he (yehôvâh, יהוה) has sent us to destroy it.”

Genesis 19:12, 13 (NET)

The woman was dead.  Dear God, I hope she was dead (Judges 19:29, 30 NET):

When he got home, [the Levite] took a knife, grabbed his concubine, and carved her up into twelve pieces.  Then he sent the pieces throughout Israel.  Everyone who saw the sight said, “Nothing like this has happened or been witnessed during the entire time since the Israelites left the land of Egypt!  Take careful note of it!  Discuss it and speak!”

Romans, Part 63

Back to Romans, Part 64

[1] Romans 12:12 (NET)

[2] Matthew 18:12 (NET)

[3] Matthew 18:1b (NET)

[4] Matthew 18:2-5 (NET)

[5] Matthew 18:6 (NET)

[6] Matthew 18:7 (NET)

[7] Romans 11:33a (NET)

[8] Romans 11:32 (NET)

[9] Matthew 18:6b (NET)

[10] Galatians 2:20a (NET)

[11] Galatians 5:22, 23 (NET)

[12] Isaiah 1:18b (NKJV) Table

[13] Romans 10:17 (NKJV)

[14] John 17:3 (NET)

[15] Judges 19:1b (NET)

[16] Judges 19:2a (NET)

[17] Genesis 13:13 (NET)

Romans, Part 53

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So, how can I view—Do not lag in zeal, be enthusiastic in spirit, serve the Lord[1]—as a definition of love (ἀγάπη) rather than as rules?  Again, I’ve constructed the following table to help.

The Fruit of the Spirit

Galatians 5:22, 23 (NET)

love (ἀγάπη)
Therefore, since we have been declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of God’s glory.  Not only this, but we also rejoice in sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance, character, and character, hope.  And hope does not disappoint, because the love (ἀγάπη) of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.[2] Love (ἀγάπη) does no wrong (κακὸν, a form of κακός) to a neighbor. Therefore love (ἀγάπη) is the fulfillment of the law.[3] Knowledge puffs up, but love (ἀγάπη) builds up.[4]
Love (ἀγάπη) is…

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (NET)

 …not self-serving (οὐ ζητεῖ τὰ ἑαυτῆς; literally, “not seek itself”)…

1 Corinthians 13:5 (NET)
If someone owns a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go look for (ζητεῖ, a form of ζητέω) the one that went astray?[5]  But above all pursue (ζητεῖτε, another form of ζητέω) his kingdom and righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.[6]
This Love Without Hypocrisy…

Romans 12:9-21 (NET)

 Do not lag in zeal (σπουδῇ, a form of σπουδή), be enthusiastic (ζέοντες, a form of ζέω) in spirit…

Romans 12:11a (NET)

 …serve (δουλεύοντες, a form of δουλεύω) the Lord.

Romans 12:11b (NET)
But as you excel in everything – in faith, in speech, in knowledge, and in all eagerness (σπουδῇ) and in the love from us that is in you – make sure that you excel in this act of kindness too.[7] Now a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, arrived in Ephesus.  He was an eloquent speaker, well-versed in the scriptures.  He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and with great enthusiasm (ζέων, another form of ζέω) he spoke and taught accurately the facts about Jesus (KJV: the Lord), although he knew only the baptism of John.[8] Slaves, obey your human masters with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart as to Christ, not like those who do their work only when someone is watching – as people-pleasers – but as slaves of Christ doing the will of God from the heart.  Obey with enthusiasm (εὐνοίας, a form of εὔνοια), as though serving (δουλεύοντες) the Lord and not people, because you know that each person, whether slave or free, if he does something good (ἀγαθόν, a form of ἀγαθός), this will be rewarded by the Lord.[9]

In the previous essay it seemed to make intuitive sense to place cling to what is good[10]under that aspect of the fruit of the Spirit translated goodness.  Here it may seem like begging the question[11] to simply place—Do not lag in zeal, be enthusiastic in spirit, serve the Lord—under love.  In one sense love (ἀγάπη) is the master key that can stand for all aspects of the fruit of the Spirit.  I think John used ἀγάπη that way often, but I want to follow Paul’s thinking here.

Therefore, since we have been declared righteous by faith (πίστεως, a form of πίστις), he wrote.  By our own faith?  I think not, for πίστις[12] is an aspect of the fruit of the Spirit.  Since we have been declared righteous by faith we have peace (εἰρήνην, a form of εἰρήνη) with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.[13]  Again, peace (εἰρήνη) is an aspect of the fruit of his Spirit.  Through our Lord Jesus Christ we have also obtained access by faith (πίστει, another form of πίστις) into this grace (χάριν, a form of χάρις) in which we stand.  And by grace, though Paul may mean more, I think he cannot mean less than the credited righteousness of God, this very fruit of God’s Holy Spirit.  And we rejoice in the hope of our glory!  But that’s not what Paul wrote.  And we rejoice (καυχώμεθα, a form of καυχάομαι) in the hope of God’s glory.[14]

Though the NET translators chose rejoice for καυχώμεθα here and in the next verse, boast is a more obvious meaning.  I say again, let no one think that I am a fool.  But if you do, then at least accept me as a fool, so that I too may boast (καυχήσωμαι, another form of καυχάομαι) a little.  What I am saying with this boastful (καυχήσεως, a form of καύχησις) confidence I do not say the way the Lord would.  Instead it is, as it were, foolishness.  Since many are boasting (καυχῶνται, another form of καυχάομαι) according to human standards, I too will boast (καυχήσομαι, another form of καυχάομαι).[15]  By the way, according to human standards is κατὰ σάρκα in Greek, according to the flesh (NKJV).

It gives me the sense that Paul meant we boast in the hope of God’s glory.  We boast in the hope that God will be glorified by the lives we live in the flesh (not according to the flesh), crucified with Christ (it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me),[16] living by the Spirit,[17] not by the works of the flesh.[18]  Translated that way we might be less likely to gloss over it and boast in the hope of our own glory.  Not only this, Paul continued, but we also rejoice (καυχώμεθα, a form of καυχάομαι; or, boast) in sufferings.[19]  So where does Paul get off writing this wacko stuff?

If I must boast (καυχᾶσθαι, another form of καυχάομαι), I will boast (καυχήσομαι, another form of καυχάομαι) about the things that show my weakness (ἀσθενείας, a form of ἀσθένεια).[20]  There was method to Paul’s madness.  For the Lord said to him, “My grace is enough for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness (ἀσθενείᾳ).” So then, Paul concluded, I will boast (καυχήσομαι) most gladly about my weaknesses (ἀσθενείαις), so that the power of Christ may reside in me.[21]  And in Romans we find a similar method to his madness: we also rejoice (or, boast) in sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance, character, and character, hope.[22]  And here I get a beautiful glimmer of an understanding why the NET translators chose rejoice over boast.

We don’t rejoice or boast in our own suffering because of a rational understanding: knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance, character, and character, hope.  We can only rejoice or boast in our own suffering because we are filled with the joy (χαρὰ) of God, another aspect of the fruit of his Spirit.  And rejoice hearkens back to that fact better than boast ever could.  I am confident they chose rejoice for this reason because of a note on the next verse.

And hope does not disappoint, Paul concluded, because the love (ἀγάπη) of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.[23]  The note in the NET reads: “The phrase ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ θεοῦ (…‘the love of God’) could be interpreted as either an objective genitive (‘our love for God’), subjective genitive (‘God’s love for us’), or both (M. Zerwick’s ‘general’ genitive [Biblical Greek,§§36-39]; D. B. Wallace’s ‘plenary’ genitive [ExSyn 119-21]). The immediate context, which discusses what God has done for believers, favors a subjective genitive, but the fact that this love is poured out within the hearts of believers implies that it may be the source for believers’ love for God; consequently an objective genitive cannot be ruled out. It is possible that both these ideas are meant in the text and that this is a plenary genitive: ‘The love that comes from God and that produces our love for God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us’ (ExSyn 121).”

Here is one place I can say with confidence the NET translators really got what Paul was saying.  This love (ἀγάπη), which has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us, does no wrong (κακὸν) to a neighbor.  Therefore love (ἀγάπη) is the fulfillment (πλήρωμα) of the law.[24]  Pouring this love out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us is what Jesus meant when He said: Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.  I have not come to abolish these things but to fulfill (πληρῶσαι, a form of πληρόω, the verb from which the noun πλήρωμα is derived) them.[25]

I want to spend some time with κακὸν (a form of κακός) since this ἀγάπη does (or, works) no wrong (or, harm) to a neighbor.  The first time κακὸν occurs in the New Testament was from the mouth of the Roman governor.  Pilate said to them, “Then what should I do with Jesus who is called the Christ?”  They all said, “Crucify him!”  He asked, “Why? What wrong (κακὸν) has he done?” But they shouted more insistently, “Crucify him!”[26]  Though Pilate found no κακὸν in Him under Roman law the chief priests and elders of Israel had accused Him of many things: “Don’t you hear how many charges they are bringing against you?”[27] Pilate asked.  When Jesus was accused by the chief priests and the elders, he did not respond.[28]

Now, with 20-20 hindsight I can see Jesus consciously fulfilling Scripture: He was treated harshly and afflicted, but he did not even open his mouth.  Like a lamb led to the slaughtering block, like a sheep silent before her shearers, he did not even open his mouth.[29]  At the time in the moment, however, He appeared obstinate, belligerent and disdainful of authority.  Consider his teaching (Matthew 23:1-12 NET).

Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The experts in the law and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat.  Therefore pay attention to what they tell you and do it.  But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they teach.  They tie up heavy loads, hard to carry, and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing even to lift a finger to move them.  They do all their deeds to be seen by people, for they make their phylacteries wide and their tassels long.  They love the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues and elaborate greetings in the marketplaces, and to have people call them ‘Rabbi.’  But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher and you are all brothers.  And call no one your ‘father’ on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven.  Nor are you to be called ‘teacher,’ for you have one teacher, the Christ.  The greatest among you will be your servant.  And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

Even here there is a very rough edge that is disdainful of human authority.  More to the point, perhaps, Jesus did nothing that would inhibit his progress toward the cross.  My commandment (ἐντολὴ, a form of ἐντολή) is this, He also said, to love (ἀγαπᾶτε, a form of ἀγαπάω) one another just as I have loved (ἠγάπησα, another form of ἀγαπάω) you.  No one has greater love (ἀγάπην, a form of ἀγάπη) than this – that one lays down his life for his friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command (ἐντέλλομαι) you.[30]  Hanging on the cross, after thirty plus years of human experience, eating it, drinking it, pissing and shitting it, Jesus prayed what I consider the real prayer of salvation: Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.[31]

My point here, I suppose, is that the love that does (or, works) no wrong (or, harm) to a neighbor may not always appear to all the people all the time to be doing or working no wrong or harm to a neighbor.  By his own admission Jesus’ death on a cross was not his will but his Father’s.[32]  Like most human beings Jesus wanted to live; whoever is among the living has hope; a live dog is better than a dead lion.[33]  Perhaps I’ve overstated the case.  Jesus was not suicidal as He hung on the cross.

I want to follow this just a bit farther (Luke 16:25 NET).

Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things (ἀγαθά, another form of ἀγαθός) and Lazarus likewise bad things (κακά, another form of κακός), but now he is comforted here and you are in anguish.’

When I considered this in the light of the gospel I gleaned from my religion,[34] Abraham’s words seemed like karmic nonsense.  But in the light of the knowledge of God I’m compelled to reconsider.  God is love (ἀγάπη).[35]  Love (ἀγάπη) does no wrong (κακὸν, a form of κακός) to a neighbor.[36]  (And this is οὐκ the absolute negation, modifying ἐργάζεται [a form of ἐργάζομαι] apparently not κακὸν.)  So while I might be intellectually stimulated to wonder what role God’s love played in Lazarus’ life, the Holy Spirit reminds me that Knowledge puffs up, but love (ἀγάπη) builds up.[37]  All in all it is simpler then to assume that God’s love was revealed after Lazarus’ death.  This is in accord with Jesus’ knowledge of God: he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live before him.[38]  And it is prudent to accept that I do not dictate when God reveals his love to anyone (or, in anyone for that matter).

I’ll continue looking into—Do not lag in zeal, be enthusiastic in spirit, serve the Lord—as a definition of love rather than as rules in the next essay.

[1] Romans 12:11 (NET) Table

[2] Romans 5:1-5 (NET)

[3] Romans 13:10 (NET)

[4] 1 Corinthians 8:1b (NET)

[5] Matthew 18:12b (NET)

[6] Matthew 6:33 (NET)

[7] 2 Corinthians 8:7 (NET)

[8] Acts 18:24, 25 (NET) Table

[9] Ephesians 6:5-8 (NET)

[10] Romans 12:9b (NET)

[11] Fallacy: Begging the Question

[12] Galatians 5:22 (NET) translated faithfulness

[13] Romans 5:1 (NET)

[14] Romans 5:2 (NET)

[15] 2 Corinthians 11:16-18 (NET)

[16] Galatians 2:20 (NET)

[17] Galatians 5:16 (NET)

[18] Galatians 5:19 (NET)

[19] Romans 5:3a (NET)

[20] 2 Corinthians 11:30 (NET)

[21] 2 Corinthians 12:9 (NET)

[22] Romans 5:3, 4 (NET)

[23] Romans 5:5 (NET)

[24] Romans 13:10 (NET)

[25] Matthew 5:17 (NET)

[26] Matthew 27:22, 23 (NET)

[27] Matthew 27:13 (NET)

[28] Matthew 27:12 (NET)

[29] Isaiah 53:7 (NET)

[30] John 15:12-14 (NET)

[31] Luke 23:34a (NET) Table

[32] Luke 22:42 (NET)

[33] Ecclesiastes 9:4 (NET)

[34] “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ before you die or burn in hell for all eternity.”

[35] 1 John 4:8, 16 (NET) Table

[36] Romans 13:10a (NET)

[37] 1 Corinthians 8:1b (NET)

[38] Luke 20:38 (NET)

Condemnation or Judgment? – Part 7

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The third assumption I found in Richard Wayne Garganta’s attempt to eliminate “hell talk” from the Bible was: 3) Punishment is not merely consequential but effectual in purging or purifying sin.  I’ve selected a quote from “Bible Threatenings Explained”[1] that led me to consider this assumption as a major precursor of his views on hell:

What God is determined to destroy in the sinner is that which makes him a sinner.  Christ said He came to utterly destroy evil –  the works of the devil.  He said he came to save the world, not to destroy men.  God proceeds towards the wayward as a good parent must, to eradicate the evil by punishment.

While I must agree that God has proceeded “to eradicate the evil by punishment,” I am not convinced that He believes, or the Bible teaches, that punishment is the method that will “destroy in the sinner…that which makes him a sinner” or “utterly destroy evil.”

Before the flood the Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind had become great on the earth.  Every inclination of the thoughts of their minds was only evil all the time.  The Lord regretted that he had made humankind on the earth, and he was highly offended.  So the Lord said, “I will wipe humankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth – everything from humankind to animals, including creatures that move on the ground and birds of the air, for I regret that I have made them.”[2]  The earth was ruined in the sight of God; the earth was filled with violence.  God saw the earth, and indeed it was ruined, for all living creatures on the earth were sinful.[3]

Death by drowning is a kind of ultimate punishment.  I suppose it was effective for a time at purging wickedness, evil, violence and sinfulness from the earth, until Noah cursed Canaan for Ham’s witness(?)—Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness[4]—gossip(?)—Ham told his two brothers who were outside[5]—mockery, maybe?  Let’s be frank, wasn’t it Ham’s revelation of the frayed dirty edges of Noah’s righteousness that angered Noah?  Hadn’t Noah exposed himself, literally in a drunken stupor and figuratively when he cursed Ham’s son?  I should probably say figuratively in a drunken stupor and literally when he cursed Canaan, to keep the metaphor and reality straight.

My difficulty with Mr. Garganta’s third assumption is more personal and idiosyncratic to the path of righteousness I’m on than the others.  As the Holy Spirit convinced me that the Bible as a book of rules would never satisfy my God-given hunger and thirst for righteousness I needed a new understanding of Paul’s assurance: Every scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the person dedicated to God may be capable and equipped for every good work.[6]  One fruitful way of viewing the Bible is as a narrative of the tidal movement from human responsibility to God’s grace.

The highwater mark of human responsibility The highwater mark of God’s grace
Is it not true, God asked the murderer Cain, that if you do what is right, you will be fine?  But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door.  It desires to dominate you, but you must subdue it.

Genesis 4:7 (NET)

 I have been crucified with Christ, wrote the murderer Saul transformed as Paul the Apostle, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.  So the life I now live in the body, I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Galatians 2:20 (NET)
Cain killed his brother in a jealous rage.  If it weren’t so tragic, the image of God telling this murderer to subdue the sin that desires to dominate him is laughable. Saul tried to cover his motives with law and religion, but Paul eventually recognized it as the very same jealous rage.[7]

I don’t get the impression that Cain expected God to bless that jealous rage as righteousness.  Saul did, superficially at least.  Something in Jesus’ words must have rung true somewhere deep within Saul, since we have the writings of Paul the Apostle, and not Saul the blind Inquisitor who withstood the “temptation” of the “demon” disguised as an angel of light on the road to Damascus.  Saul the blind Inquisitor was crucified with Christ there, or later in the desert.[8]  Paul himself related this death to baptism: Or do you not know that as many as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may live a new life.[9]

I will suggest that the most distance covered from human responsibility to the grace of God in the shortest amount of time is most evident in the two covenants[10] separated by forty days[11] and the incident with the golden calf.[12]  But I don’t think I would ever have recognized that movement apart from Paul’s writings and the Holy Spirit’s leading and guidance.  Here I want to consider that movement as revealed in the writings of the prophet Hosea and relate it to the assumption that punishment is/was effective at purging or purifying sin rather than merely a consequence of that sin.

[The people of the northern kingdom of Israel] consult their wooden idols, the Lord spoke through Hosea, and their diviner’s staff answers with an oracle.  The wind of prostitution (zânûn) blows them astray; they commit spiritual (tachath) adultery (zânâh) against their God [Table].  They sacrifice (zâbach) on the mountaintops, and burn offerings on the hills; they sacrifice under (tachath) oak, poplar, and terebinth, because their shade is so pleasant.  As a result, your daughters have become cult prostitutes (zânâh), and your daughters-in-law commit adultery (nâʼaph) [Table].  I will not punish (pâqad) your daughters when they commit prostitution (zânâh), nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery (nâʼaph).  For the men consort with harlots (zânâh), they sacrifice (zâbach) with temple prostitutes (qedêshâh).[13]

Ephraim [another name for the northern kingdom of Israel] has attached himself to idols, the Lord continued.  Do not go near him [Table]!  They consume their alcohol, then engage in cult prostitution (zânâh); they dearly love their shameful (qâlôn) behavior [Table].[14]  I assume that this was πορνεία (that zâbach was used facetiously, they offered sexual intercourse to God under shade trees with qedêshâh).  And I assume that this was essentially what was going on in the church at Pergamum:  But I have a few things against you, Jesus said: You have some people there who follow the teaching of Balaam, who instructed Balak to put a stumbling block before the people of Israel so they would eat food sacrificed to idols and commit sexual immorality (πορνεῦσαι, a form of πορνεύω).[15]  It is clearly what was going on with the Moabite women after Balaam prophesied for, rather than against, Israel (Numbers 25:1-3 NET):

When Israel lived in Shittim, the people began to commit sexual immorality (zânâh) with the daughters of Moab.  These women invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods; then the people ate and bowed down to their gods.  When Israel joined themselves to Baal-peor, the anger of the Lord flared up against Israel.

The “Children of God” called it flirty fishing.[16]

I also assume this kind of πορνεία was practiced in the church at Thyatira:  You tolerate that woman Jezebel, Jesus said, who calls herself a prophetess, and by her teaching deceives my servants to commit sexual immorality (πορνεῦσαι, a form of πορνεύω) and to eat food sacrificed to idols.  I have given her time to repent, but she is not willing to repent of her sexual immorality (πορνείας, a form of πορνεία).  Look!  I am throwing her onto a bed of violent illness, and those who commit adultery (μοιχεύοντας, a form of μοιχεύω) with her into terrible suffering, unless they repent of her deeds.  Furthermore, I will strike her followers with a deadly disease, and then all the churches will know that I am the one who searches minds and hearts.  I will repay each one of you what your deeds deserve.[17]

This is essentially the same punishment He brought upon Israel when they joined themselves to Baal-peor—Those that died in the plague were 24,000[18]—unless plague here is a euphemism for the men arrested and hanged[19] (not to mention skewered[20]).  But to the northern kingdom of Israel, He said, I will be like a lion to Ephraim, like a young lion to the house of Judah.  I myself will tear them to pieces, then I will carry them off, and no one will be able to rescue them!  Then I will return again to my lair until they have suffered their punishment (ʼâsham).[21]  Then they will seek me; in their distress they will earnestly seek me.[22]

He continued to prophesy what Israel would say after they were punished (Hosea 6:1-3 NET):

Come on!  Let’s return to the Lord!  He himself has torn us to pieces, but he will heal us!  He has injured us, but he will bandage our wounds!  He will restore us in a very short time; he will heal us in a little while, so that we may live in his presence.  So let us acknowledge him!  Let us seek to acknowledge the Lord!  He will come to our rescue as certainly as the appearance of the dawn, as certainly as the winter rain comes, as certainly as the spring rain that waters the land.

If I stopped here punishment would appear to be overwhelmingly effective at purging or purifying evil.  The Lord didn’t stop here so neither will I (Hosea 6:4 NET):

What am I going to do with you, O Ephraim?  What am I going to do with you, O Judah?  For your faithfulness is as fleeting as the morning mist; it disappears as quickly as dawn’s dew!

There is a refrain in Deuteronomy: In this way you must purge (bâʽar) out evil from within.[23]  In this way you will purge (bâʽar) evil from among you.[24]  …in this way you will purge (bâʽar) evil from Israel.[25]  …in this way you will purge (bâʽar) evil from among you.[26]  All refer to capital punishment, stoning primarily.  If that is all that Mr. Garganta meant by his assertion that “God proceeds…to eradicate the evil by punishment,” I concede the point.  But it seems clear that the survivors of punishment of lesser consequence than death, or those who merely fear punishment, are encouraged to hypocrisy by such punishment and fear.  They become actors, not poets or doers of the law.  They are devoid of the love that fulfills the law.  The Lord’s judgment was swift and severe (Hosea 6:5 NET):

Therefore, I will certainly cut you into pieces at the hands of the prophets; I will certainly kill you in fulfillment of my oracles of judgment; for my judgment will come forth like the light of the dawn.

The time of judgment is about to arrive, the Lord promised through Hosea.  The time of retribution is imminent!  Let Israel know!  The prophet is considered a fool – the inspired man is viewed as a madman – because of the multitude of your sins and your intense animosity.[27]  And it happened to them as He promised.  But there is still hope for them (Hosea 11:8, 9 NET):

How can I give you up, O Ephraim?  How can I surrender you, O Israel?  How can I treat you like Admah?  How can I make you like Zeboiim?  I have had a change of heart!  All my tender compassions are aroused [Table]!  I cannot carry out my fierce anger!  I cannot totally destroy Ephraim!  Because I am God, and not man – the Holy One among you – I will not come in wrath!

This sounds like grace, God’s unilateral decision, not something effected in any way by the punishment of death the inhabitants of the northern kingdom of Israel suffered.  It seems to me then that the failure of punishment to purge wickedness, evil, violence and sinfulness in the living is part of the justification for God’s unilateral grace: Let God be proven true, and every human being shown up as a liar, just as it is written: “so that you will be justified in your words and will prevail when you are judged.”[28]

 

 

 

As I worked on this essay my daughter suffered a stroke.  That is definitely things not going my way.  When I had the chance to consider if God was punishing her, me, or us for something, praying that her sins have more to do with me and mine than hers, making no real sense, just a jumble of thoughts…take it out on me not her…the Holy Spirit brought Scripture to my mind:  “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.”[29]

I don’t take Him to mean that this man and his parents lived lives of sinless perfection.  I don’t even take Him to mean necessarily that the parents’ sins in this case had no causal relationship to their son’s blindness.  I take Him to mean that He wanted his disciples to concern themselves with the revelation of the works of God rather than establishing blame.

[1] Richard Wayne Garganta, “Bible Threats Explained”

[2] Genesis 6:5-7 (NET)

[3] Genesis 6:11, 12 (NET)

[4] Genesis 9:22a (NET)

[5] Genesis 9:22b (NET)

[6] 2 Timothy 3:16, 17 (NET) Table1

[7] Acts 9:1; 26:9-11; Romans 10:19; 11:11, 14; 1 Timothy 1:13 In the past I was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a violent man (ISVNT).  The NET translators chose arrogant for ὑβριστήν, but acknowledged in a note that they might have chosen violent or cruel.

[8] Galatians 1:17 (NET)

[9] Romans 6:3, 4 (NET)

[10] The Two Covenants: The second “covenant,” however, is much more like a unilateral declaration, a promise, than a contract between two parties.  Why then was the law given?  It was added because of transgressions, until the arrival of the descendant [Jesus the Son of God] to whom the promise had been made.  It was administered through angels by an intermediary.  Now an intermediary is not for one party alone, but God is one [Father and Son].  Is the law therefore opposed to the promises of God?  Absolutely not!  For if a law had been given that was able to give life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law.  But the scripture imprisoned everything and everyone under sin so that the promise could be given – because of the faithfulness of Jesus Christ – to those who believe.  Galatians 3:19-22 (NET)

[11] Exodus 24:18 (NET)

[12] Exodus 32 (NET)

[13] Hosea 4:12-14a (NET)

[14] Hosea 4:17, 18 (NET)

[15] Revelation 2:14 (NET)

[16] xFamily.org, “Flirty Fishing”

[17] Revelation 2:20-23 (NET)

[18] Numbers 25:9 (NET)

[19] Numbers 25:4, 5 (NET)

[20] Numbers 25:6-8 (NET)

[21] NET note: “The verb יֶאְשְׁמוּ (ye’shemu, Qal imperfect 3rd person masculine plural from אָשַׁם, ’asham, ‘to be guilty’) means ‘to bear their punishment’ (Ps 34:22-23; Prov 30:10; Isa 24:6; Jer 2:3; Hos 5:15; 10:2; 14:1; Zech 11:5; Ezek 6:6; BDB 79 s.v. אָשַׁם 3). Many English versions translate this as ‘admit their guilt’ (NIV, NLT) or ‘acknowledge their guilt’ (NASB, NRSV), but cf. NAB ‘pay for their guilt’ and TEV ‘have suffered enough for their sins.’”

[22] Hosea 5:14, 15 (NET)

[23] Deuteronomy 13:5 (NET)

[24] Deuteronomy 17:7; 22:21 (NET)

[25] Deuteronomy 22:22 (NET)

[26] Deuteronomy 22:24 (NET)

[27] Hosea 9:7 (NET)

[28] Romans 3:4 (NET)

[29] John 9:2, 3 (NKJV)

My Reasons and My Reason, Part 3

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“I was really hoping that I could, um, move back in here for a while,” Linda probed her mother.

“Here?” her mother asked.

“Yeah.”

“No, you know that’s not possible.”

“Why not?” Linda asked.

“How would it look for a married woman to move in with her parents apart from her husband?”

“He hits me, Ma.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” her mother sighed.  “What did you do?”

“What do you mean, what’d I do?”

“What did you do to make him angry?  He didn’t just hit you out of the blue.”

Linda fought off her instinctive reaction to her mother’s judgment as she searched for a diplomatic answer to keep the conversation going.  “I guess I didn’t do what he wanted me to,” she said finally.

“You took a vow, a very serious vow.”

“Can’t I just stay, like, a few days, Ma, please?”

“And then what?  You gonna get a divorce?  What do you think we are, Protestant?”

“Ma, you just don’t understand.”

“Linda, I was…I was 18 years old when I had your sister. Unmarried…and all alone…before I met your father.  I’d suffered long and hard.  How dare you come here and tell me I don’t understand.  I understand.  Now, God gave you a husband…who provides for you.  And you…Look at me.  Go home to Chuck.  Be a good wife.  Listen to him, and obey him.”

Linda’s mother thought she was sending her daughter home to be a particular kind of submissive masochist,[1] Mrs. Chuck Traynor (or a “normal” woman, accepting his “implicit” right to hit her as she learned to “submit to his stronger will,” all while she took no pleasure in it whatsoever).  She assumed that Chuck was, what I am calling, a dominant masochist (fig. 4), someone with Linda’s best interests at heart.

fig. 4

fig. 4

She knew what a handful Linda could be.  She had no way of knowing that Chuck was much closer to a sadistic top than a dominant masochist.  And she certainly had no way to know that she was sending her daughter out to become Linda Lovelace of “Deep Throat” fame.

This scene from “Lovelace,”[2] affected me deeply.  Linda’s mother, written by Andy Bellin and played compassionately by Sharon Stone, is compellingly authentic.  Though her how-would-it-look line sounds crassly self-serving today, it was the effective meaning of one of the “laws of Paul” in the seventies: Abstain from all appearance of evil.[3]  Her refusal even to “appear” to support divorce by allowing her daughter to return struck home.  We didn’t drink, dance or smoke to prove how much better we were than Catholics.  At least that’s what I learned, which is not the same as saying that is what I was taught.  (It should be obvious by now that I learned many things I wasn’t necessarily taught.)

Linda, played by Amanda Seyfried, was lying to her mother.  Her line, “He hits me, Ma,” though objectively true wasn’t the reason she showed up at her mother’s door.  But I understand completely why she didn’t say, “He pimps me out for money, Ma,” to the woman who became so righteously indignant when the tie-strap of Linda’s swim top was undone to avoid tan lines.  And I honestly don’t know how her mother would have responded if Linda had told her the truth.

I didn’t see this film because I was interested in Linda Lovelace, but because Amanda Seyfried chose to play her.  (And now I’ll have to pay more attention to Sharon Stone.)  I’ll follow any actor who gives me aesthetic moments like the mother-daughter confrontation in “Mamma Mia,” especially one who can go toe-to-toe with Meryl Streep.  Sophie, the daughter played by Ms. Seyfried, was troubled about the mess she had made inviting three possible fathers to her wedding.  Her mother, played by Ms. Streep, thought (hoped) she didn’t want to marry.  Poor Linda Lovelace thought “Deep Throat” might be her stepping stone to becoming Amanda Seyfried (or, Meryl Streep).

I’ve never seen “Deep Throat” or anything else Linda Lovelace has done.  Clips I’ve seen in documentaries, and now recreations in “Lovelace,” don’t recommend the film to me.  I’ve never read her book Ordeal.[4]  I do recall sneering and scoffing when I heard about it.  The mother-daughter scene in “Lovelace” made me question, why?  The only answer I came up with is that I had seen pictures of Ms. Lovelace smiling.  I supposed she took some pleasure in sex and public attention.  Thinking and writing about my own masochism I had to repent of that sneering and scoffing.

Part of me (perhaps the submissive masochistic part) would like to tell a different story, a story about an innocent boy who rescued a stash of porn from a dumpster, hid it in the woods, read it, returned again and again to look at its pictures, and became corrupted.  That’s a story I could sell to my fundamentalist Christian friends.  And it’s based, at least, on a true story.  It’s just not mine.  It was another boy’s story when he brought that stash of porn to me and asked me to keep it away from him.  He lived next door while I worked on “The Tripartite Rationality Index.”[5]

It was summer.  I had no air conditioning, not even a fan.  I stayed up late until the apartment cooled down enough that I could sleep.  This boy came over and sat with me at night while his mother was out, or even if she was occupied at home.  She wasn’t exactly a prostitute.  She got all dressed up, went out to a bar or club, picked up a man, brought him home and lived with him as long as he paid the bills.  “You should marry her,” the boy said to me more than once.  “She’s pretty.”  She was pretty, especially when she went out to hunt.  I didn’t marry her.  I only talked to her once, long enough to convince her I wasn’t a child molester.

I didn’t have access to porn as a child; I was quarantined.  I use that word because of a story my mother told me recently on a different topic.  After I was born she spent many lonely days in the hospital at Christmastime.  She heard about another woman whose baby was born in the car on the way to the hospital.  She asked a nurse if she could visit that woman and see her baby.  The nurse told her that neither was in the general hospital population, having given birth (and being born) in such unsanitary conditions.  Though it seemed harsh to my mother at the time, it became her rationale for hell, God “quarantining” the righteous from the evil.

My mother was twenty-two-years-old.  She had just given birth to her first child.  And this was the authoritative word of medical science.  Suddenly my childhood made sense to me.  I was quarantined, not to keep me in hell, but to protect her “innocent” baby from the evil world.  It was 1953; discrimination was still a matter of good taste.  The problem was, the porn was already in me.  And I am truly sorry that I infected the pristine female world she constructed for me with my dirty male mind and desires.  (I know a Freudian would have a field day with that, but I’m being as sincere as I know how to be.)

My mother, however, was not alone in her germ theory of sin, sin as an infection from without.  “I feel dead inside, no, something worse than death,” reads an excerpt from nineteen-year-old Hannah’s diary, the main character in the film October Baby.  “I am still a child, a child trying to find a place in this world.  I have so many unanswered questions, questions I feel but can’t even begin to speak because there are no words to express them.  Something is missing.  Why, God, do I feel unwanted?  Why do I feel I have no right to exist?  Why do I spend more time wanting to end my life than live it?”

Knowing that this was a Christian film, a pretty girl who didn’t have a boyfriend, take drugs or drink or smoke and yet felt as Hannah did, seemed to recall Paul’s letter to the Romans (Romans 3:10-18 NET):

There is no one righteous, not even one, there is no one who understands, there is no one who seeks God.  All have turned away, together they have become worthless; there is no one who shows kindness, not even one.  Their throats are open graves, they deceive with their tongues, the poison of asps is under their lips.  Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.  Their feet are swift to shed blood, ruin and misery are in their paths, and the way of peace they have not known.  There is no fear of God before their eyes.

“Hannah, I believe that what you’re feeling is normal and is even expected,” wasn’t counsel from her Baptist minister, but from her doctor.  For it was not sin that caused her to feel as if the sentence of death had been passed against[6] her, rather it was a quasi-mystical intuition that she was a failed abortion, the truth her parents had hidden from her.  They hadn’t even told her she was adopted.  Once I got over that hump, it was an okay movie about a young woman dealing with an extraordinarily painful reality.  And Rachel Hendrix as Hannah is a delight to watch.  When the filmmaker’s finished the pro-life-message-film their financial backers paid for, Hannah, back where she started, visited a Catholic priest.

“I can’t figure out how to let go of the fact that I feel hatred for myself and others,” she told him.  Another secret she had learned along the way was that she was a twin.  Her elder brother was more damaged in the botched abortion and died three months after their birth.  “And I feel guilty,” Hannah continued her confession.  “Part of me feels like he should be alive and I shouldn’t.  I wonder if he would have been a better person than me, what he would have been like.  I just hate myself for feeling this way.”

So Hannah came very close to actually confessing the sin in her flesh.[7]  The priest told her about Jesus’ forgiveness, and her ability through Him to forgive others.  And I should probably remember that a Christian film is intended for Christians as an audience.  I’ve already written that most Christians I know don’t see themselves as “great sinners who were forgiven much and were called by God to forgive lesser sinners than themselves.”[8]  And who am I to see things so differently?  For who concedes [me] any superiority?  What do [I] have that [I] did not receive?[9]

In the previous essay I quoted, “If O is willing to sustain her devotion all the way through to her own destruction, so be it.  She wants to be ‘possessed, utterly possessed, to the point of death,’ to the point that her body and mind are no longer her responsibility.”[10]  To my religious mind this would have sounded (and sounds) absurd.  I kept my own masochism from my first wife as a shameful secret as I resolved to follow God as Moses instructed Israel (Deuteronomy 30:15-19 NET).

Look!  I have set before you today life and prosperity on the one hand, and death and disaster on the other.  What I am commanding you today is to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to obey his commandments, his statutes, and his ordinances.  Then you will live and become numerous and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you are about to possess.  However, if you turn aside and do not obey, but are lured away to worship and serve other gods, I declare to you this very day that you will certainly perish!  You will not extend your time in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.  Today I invoke heaven and earth as a witness against you that I have set life and death, blessing and curse, before you.  Therefore choose life so that you and your descendants may live!

Preoccupied with my attempt to obey him in my own strength, I didn’t hear, I also call on you to love the Lord your God…and be loyal to him, for he gives you life and enables you to live continually…[11]  So I did not love the Lord my God, walk in his ways, or obey his commandments, statutes and ordinances.  And my first wife divorced me for my religion.  “I don’t want to read the Bible,” she exclaimed.  “Everyone who reads the Bible turns out like you!”  That’s when I began to feel as if the sentence of death had been passed against[12] me.  And that’s when I began to hear, and perhaps began to choose, death instead.

For if we are out of our minds, Paul wrote in his second letter to the Corinthians, it is for God; if we are of sound mind, it is for you.  For the love of Christ controls us, since we have concluded this, that Christ died for all; therefore all have died.  And he died for all so that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised.[13]

I began to perceive in Scripture a diminished responsibility for righteousness for one led by the Spirit: For who concedes you any superiority?  What do you have that you did not receive?  And if you received it, why do you boast as though you did not?[14]  I have been crucified with Christ, Paul wrote the Galatians, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.  So the life I now live in the body, I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.[15]

I sat silently in an adult Sunday school class as a woman was reprimanded for quoting this verse, because she hadn’t earned the right to say it by her own works of righteousness as Paul had done.  And I was the one who had whispered it in her ear the night before as a possible path of righteousness.  I never expected her to shout it from the rooftops in Sunday school!

But Paul wrote, I do not set aside God’s grace, because if righteousness could come through the law, then Christ died for nothing![16]  Or do you not know that as many as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may live a new life.[17]  How may we live a new life? …through the glory of the Father…just as Christ was raised from the dead.

I began, tentatively at first, to perceive a diminished responsibility for sin for those led by the Spirit: Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer me doing it but sin that lives in me.[18]  But my religious mind (and not mine only) thinks this is a cop out.  It confuses confessing sins with taking responsibility for them, though it knows full well that if we deliberately keep on sinning after receiving the knowledge of the truth, no further sacrifice for sins is left for us, but only a certain fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume God’s enemies.[19]

“‘What does a Christian seek,’” Carmela Ciuraru quoted the author of Histoire d’O in her article ‘The Story of the Story of O,’ “‘but to lose himself in God,’ Aury, a devout atheist, once said. ‘To be killed by someone you love strikes me as the epitome of ecstasy.’”[20]  While it is still somewhat difficult for me to grasp exactly what Dominique Aury meant, I agree that to be killed by, or through, Someone I love and yet live by and through Him is the epitome of ecstasy.

I know these things because I have received them from his Spirit.  But it is impossible for me to determine or to gainsay how much I feel these things through my masochism.  And if my masochism is the wrath of God revealed from heaven, that is truly amazing, that the wrath of God…revealed from heaven against all [my] ungodliness and unrighteousness[21] is also an aid in my enlightenment to, and salvation from, that very ungodliness and unrighteousness.

So, do I whip myself into a euphoric state of submission to obey God?

It’s a fair question, given what I’ve written.  The primary meaning of the Greek word translated subdue is “to beat black and blue, to smite so as to cause bruises and livid spots” in Paul’s confession: Instead I subdue (ὑπωπιάζω)[22] my body and make it my slave, so that after preaching to others I myself will not be disqualified.[23]  Frankly, I have no idea if I should take this literally, nor do I care.  Paul also wrote (Colossians 2:20-23 NET):

If you have died with Christ to the elemental spirits of the world, why do you submit (δογματίζεσθε, a form of δογματίζω)[24] to them as though you lived in the world?  “Do not handle!  Do not taste!  Do not touch!”  These are all destined to perish with use, founded as they are on human commands and teachings.  Even though they have the appearance of wisdom with their self-imposed worship and false humility achieved by an unsparing treatment of the body – a wisdom with no true value – they in reality result in fleshly indulgence.

I have pondered this question idly from time to time: if Paul engaged in self-flagellation as a spiritual exercise before he wrote to the Romans and the Colossians, did he continue it as a fleshly indulgence after realizing it had no true value spiritually?  But I don’t know the answer to either component of that question, or even how to know how to search out an answer.  I suppose I could consider it the thorn in Paul’s flesh (2 Corinthians 12:7b NET):

Therefore, so that I would not become arrogant, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to trouble me – so that I would not become arrogant.

My elderly Pastor thought that thorn was failing eye sight, my Catholic friend thinks it was masturbation and Bishop Spong[25] thinks it was latent homosexuality.  I feel a little ridiculous pronouncing it self-flagellation, though I’m intrigued by the possibilities for self-acceptance the Holy Spirit created by being non-specific here (e.g., Paul could have said precisely what he meant).  I’ll probably wait and ask Paul.

But no, I don’t whip myself into a euphoric state of submission to obey God.  I believe (I believe; help my unbelief![26]) the death He has given me in Christ Jesus and the fruit of his Spirit.  I have whipped myself at times as a lonely fleshly indulgence.

 My Reasons and My Reason, Part 4

Back to Condemnation or Judgment? – Part 9

[3] 1 Thessalonians 5:22 (KJV)  It might still be what Paul meant.  Though the NET translation is—Stay away from every form (εἴδους, a form of εἶδος) of evil—the Greek word εἴδους was also used in 2 Corinthians 5:6, 7 (NET): Therefore we are always full of courage, and we know that as long as we are alive here on earth we are absent from the Lord – for we live by faith, not by sight (εἴδους).

[6] 2 Corinthians 1:9 (NET)

[9] 1 Corinthians 4:7a (NET)

[11] Deuteronomy 30:20 (NET)

[12] 2 Corinthians 1:9 (NET)

[13] 2 Corinthians 5:13-15 (NET)

[14] 1 Corinthians 4:7 (NET)

[15] Galatians 2:20 (NET)

[16] Galatians 2:21 (NET)

[17] Romans 6:3, 4 (NET)

[18] Romans 7:20 (NET)

[19] Hebrews 10:26, 27 (NET)

[20] “The Story of the Story of O,” Carmela Ciuraru, Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics http://www.guernicamag.com/features/ciuraru_6_15_11/

[21] Romans 1:18 (NET)

[23] 1 Corinthians 9:27 (NET)