Context

 Biblical context is the subject of this posting.  The dictionary defines context as “the whole situation, background, or events relevant to a particular event, personality, etc.”  The disgrace of most biblical understandings is the historical disregard for the whole context in favor of the minutia, which may or may not support a particular religious group think.  Biblical thinkers argue minutia.  This disgrace is validated in tens of thousands of books, by every religious structure from time immemorial to this very hour.  Few have ever cared about the big picture, preferring their religious givens.  The Bible, in my humble opinion, is not a religious textbook but seems to be a running account through history of the disparity of the power of religion and the power of raw spirituality, always in flux, intermingling and rocking back and forth.    

Moses climbed the mountain and came down to us with a pure spiritual message from God, written on stone tablets.  The people and by extension, we humans, vehemently rejected this pure message, preferring to write our own sorted futures.  Reacting, Moses got angry at his people, breaking the first stone tablets into a thousand pieces.  Returning to the mountain again Moses came down the second time with the revised religious version, shared in the Bible as the Ten Commandants.  The result being that there are now acceptable or forgivable excuses to deviate from the pure message of God.  “Thou shalt not” now becomes a discussable directive and the Mosaic Law is available for human debate.  The law in Moses’s time worked the same way it works today, having money and being politically connected always tips the scales of justice.  Exceptions in the name of God are now allowable, this new version turned Moses and we humans into terrorists, igniting our dark side.  As long as it is acceptable or excusable or forgivable to kill in the name of God and country, we qualify as a terrorist organization, at least, it would seem, according to God.

When I first began to read and ask questions of the Bible, I was perplexed because there seemed to be two different Bible characters named Moses.  The youthful Moses who killed in defense of his own people and subsequently ran scared for his life, spending the next 40 years hiding in the wilderness.  The second Moses, after his burning bush experience on the mountain top, finds the courage to accept an impossible mission back to Egypt and his old enemies.  God even took the voice of Moses from him but the Pharaoh got the message anyway, “let my people go!”  This impossible mission in human terms, was accomplished by relying exclusively upon faith in the power of the Spirit of God.  As a result, the history of the Spirit lead exodus from Egypt says that might does NOT make right, the powerless were victors.  The Moses who came down from the mountain the second time was again in a religious mode, this mode says that might does make right.  Moses and the people of God then invaded their promised land, embarking on a scorched earth campaign to kill every man, women and child that inhabited their prophetic inheritance.  All this killing was for the sake of supposed religious purity.

A second watershed moment occurred about 1500 years later when a wondering itinerant Galilean spiritualist named Jesus was noticed by the people.  The faith of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, which long ago was perverted to become a mere religion, had again, in this timeframe, as it does in every time frame, become irrelevant to the daily lives of the people.  This Jesus, who had no religious affiliation, no formal religious or secular education beyond family, spoke to the people listening with an otherworldly authority that attracted a growing following. For him, earthly boundaries seemed irrelevant and the unexpected became the expected, he gave orders to the spirit world, the natural world, the weather and even the finality of death itself.  Jesus spoke of the eternal kingdom of God beyond death but much to our surprise he demonstrated that a piece of God’s eternal kingdom and the consequent responsibilities are available to the living.   According to Jesus, this Kingdom reality can be trusted, win or lose.  Once again, earthly might does NOT make right when the Spirit moves.  

An angel spoke this truth to the prophet Zechariah, “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord Almighty.” How can we recognize the almighty Spirit of God as opposed to human bullying?  There seems to be a biblical pattern, the Almighty God acts in the moment of weakness, desperation and dependence upon His spiritual power and presence.  It’s not us. Much like a raging bull, all we have to do is get out of the way before we get trampled.  Getting out of the way of the Spirit of God is about getting our individual personhood out of the way.  Noah got himself out of the way, accepted the ridicule and built an ark.  Moses climbed the mountain to inspect a burning bush that surely must have been an illusion and then went on a mission in the power of the Almighty.  David walked with the Spirit as a young man, accepting the arrows of King Saul without malice and then when he became king, his ego with a religious bent got in the way.  You and I, all of us have similar stories to tell if we dared.  Most of us never let go of our stuff and let the Spirit move.  Spirit aware life is, somehow, exceedingly difficult for we manipulative humans insisting on looking good to gain the praise of others.  Getting out of the way of the Spirit is so difficult that most of us will never know it, religion or no religion.  I am no exception.

The Almighty Spirit chooses to act, or not to act, in certain desperate and precise moments when someone makes themselves vulnerable. The decision to act on our behalf is not ours, our only choice is to be vulnerable. Religion is easy.  Being vulnerable and allowing the Spirit of God to call the shots, not so much.  One might ask, why did the people revolt the first time Moses came down the mountain?  Why did the people put the fulfillment of God’s promise on their own shoulders?  Why did the people of Jerusalem praise Jesus riding into town on a donkey and within three days abandoned him to a cruel death on the cross?  It would seem that some of the people had false expectations or the wrong expectations and a lust for the power to have their immediate needs met.  When their needs were ignored, the people and the religious folk turned on Jesus who barely opened his mouth to defend himself, preferring to trust in the wisdom and power of the Spirit of eternity.

Jesus had told us all that we needed to know about living eternity wise in the Sermon on the Mount.  These are the most difficult words for we mortals to hear, far beyond any religious ethic.  Every religious ethic is about hedging these absolute words of Jesus.  Some are easier than others but some are exceedingly impossible.  We are to live defenseless in this dangerous world.  We are to live sharing our stuff whenever asked by anyone.  The most impossible is to turn the other cheek, to accept ridicule without taking the offense.  May I suggest that Jesus uses the simple and profound rational, if one truly believes in eternity, the priorities of this world should not matter.  We all should be asking, what American can live this way?  What human being has ever lived this way?  Jesus is one human who lived out to his death this God given mission or ethic.  Spirituality is above and beyond religion, it is about laying our earthy lives open to the whatever in this life in order to welcome eternity. 

Joachim Jeremias, a relatively modern biblical scholar and theologian wrote a little book called “the sermon on the mount”.  I like little books; most books are 80% fluff and footnotes.  This one asks the right question, how are we as Jesus believers to take these most difficult, if not impossible words?   Shall we cut off the hand that offends the Law? Shall we give our property to anyone who asks at any time?  How are we to relate to our evil enemies?  Shall we not object when the bullies of this world are inclined to push us around?  If taken literally, these are nonstarters in human terms so traditional Christianity has always had qualifiers to soften the impact of these most harsh words of Jesus.

As Dr. Jeremias explains, some would say that the sermon on the mount is a call to return to the legalism of the Old Testament perfectionist rule book religion.  Some would say, the words of Jesus were given to us as an impossible goal that would at least improve our lives as we reach toward that goal.  Some would say that Jesus spoke these words because life as the people knew it was about to end.  On page 12 of the little book, the author states that all three understandings are about Old Testament Law making the rule book religion our entrance into eternity.  Summarizing the understandings, “The first conception makes him (Jesus) a teacher of the law; the second a preacher of repentance; the third an apocalypticist (an end time prophet).”  Were any of these understandings a full reflection of the words of Jesus?

Dr. Jeremias says no, replacing them with a fourth understanding, the new religion of the Christ.  No longer does the Old Testament flexible Law hold sway for Jesus has given us a new time of Jesus grace. The sermon on the mount is a teaching moment for the new faith which was and is both the right words and the right deeds. The author makes a solid argument by adding other words of Jesus and piecing them with the sermon on the mount but should we not ask, is there a real difference between a Jewish legal excuse and a Christian grace excuse?  Is there any excuse for living in our world but avoiding the harsh words of Jesus?  While everything seems to fit logically, the leap to another religion does not explain all the harsh words.  We are still left with a quandy.  

Explain your words Jesus.   How shall we resist the bullies of this world who rob and kill us?  Shall we not have the right to personal property and be willing to give up our stuff should anyone demand it of us?  What if they want our money, house or retirement account?  Are we to give them even more than they ask?  How can we love or even be kind to those who are our enemies and wish us dead?  How can we tolerate slander and the demeaning of our personhood?  The Christian religion does not ask or expect these hard choices to be laid upon us, why should you?  Could it be that for all time we have been barking up the wrong tree or howling at the moon?  Could it be that the harsh words were more about eternity, that dimension beyond death?  Maybe, Jesus, you were making eternity sense not religious sense.  Could it be that the long-foretold appearance of Jesus was not so much as a religious icon but more importantly an eternity prophet and evangelist? 

The prophets have always been among us.  Most of our prophets have been pied pipers leading us on to earthly conquest while ironically claiming to defend the name of the whomever.  They tell us to kill in the name of their God and their prophetic understandings.  Jesus was not that kind of prophet nor was Moses prior to smashing the stone tablets.  These two pivotal biblical men who lived and died, just as you and I, were eternity watchers in this life.  Jesus gave us a glimpse of eternity in the sermon on the mount and Moses saw a glimpse of eternity as he starred into the burning bush which was not consumed.  The Bible doesn’t say what he saw but he left the mountain out of character with his past human compromises.  One might ask, what did Moses see in the burning bush?   He did see something, right?  Does it not seem logical to assume that Moses saw a vision of eternity?  Could it be that Moses shared this vision at the very beginning of his writings, known to us as the Garden of Eden?  Both ends of eternity are illuminated for us in the words of these two biblical giants.

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA

 

 

 

The Voice of God to Abram

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.”   Genesis 12:1

The voice of God to Abram 4000 years ago was the beginning of biblical history as well as one of the most significant events in the history of the human race.  Historians are sloppy on the biblical documents as they fail to give them due consideration when they make their historical pronouncements. Our educators avoid teaching about the voice of God because they consider it to be irrelevant religious dribble whose proper venue is Sunday School. Both of these highly educated factions are wrong and they should rather judge events by the long lasting consequences these events set in motion.

Few events in history have had a greater impact on the life of more human beings than the voice of God. The importance of the voice should be at the top of the list with the taming of fire and the discovery of the wheel since these three events are with us to this very day. Why should the voice of God to Abram have a lesser value than a few spectacular pyramids that have proven to be the dry bones of a long ago dead civilization?  Why should we study the great empires of the ages that have risen and fallen like the desert sands in the winds?  The Roman empire had the longest run of 500 years but the impact of the voice of God to Abram has never and will never go away.

The family of Abram is from Mesopotamia somewhere in the delta region of the Euphrates River. There, in Ur of the Chaldeans, Abram heard from God as recorded in Genesis 12 : 1 and without giving us any details, the voice makes just a simple statement. We don’t know how old Abram was when he heard the voice, possibly a teenager. We do know, however, that the family of Abram was of the Arab peoples from present day Iraq.  At some point in the life of Abram his family migrated north settling in Harran which would be close to present day Mosul, Iraq.  There Abram raised his family in tribal fashion and amongst the greater family of his father Terah.

Migration is the wrong word for their journey from Ur for it was more than a casual relocation. God spoke to Abram and the word from God filtered through the entire family even influencing their father and tribal leader Terah.  We are told at the end of Genesis 11 that Terah gathered the family “and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan (11:31)”. That’s right, Canaan, “the land that I will show you”(12:1).  The journey toward the land of promise started as a tribal affair, “But when they came to Harran, they settled there.(11:31)”  The tribe lived comfortably in Harran for years, stopping short of the directions given to Abram by the Voice.  Abram was 75 when his stay in Harran came to an end.

As we live in the now and 4000 years removed from the voice of God to Abram, can we not relate to settling for less than the voice would have for us?  Have there not been times in our lives when settling was an easier path, when delay seemed reasonable?  Abram would say to us it is never to late for confession.  The memory of the voice of God and the direction to “Go” must have haunted Abram during these years in Haraan.  Leaving the supposed securities of this world is the starting line for this new monotheism that has broken upon this world.  It is a monotheistic voice that calls the people of the voice to step away from all other life supports, “to go from your country, your society (people, tribe or greater family), and your father’s household", anything less is but a polytheistic religion.

G.Goslaw
Landers

Voice of God in the Garden

Then the Lord God said to the women, “what is this that you have done?” ( Gen. 3:13)

The Garden of Eden is not history.  The biblical Garden of Eden is a literary device that says to us something so important that insisting on a factual garden misses the point.  The Garden of Eden is a message from the voice of God, a message that accurately summarizes who we are, it is our story and the story of every human being since the dawn of time.  It is our sorted story since all of us have taken from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and bitten down hard on the forbidden apple.  It is the story of our rebellion from God.  The self centered failure to respect God has mutated to our DNA so that each of us was born in rebellion, it is who we are.  As a result, even today, God asks each of us the timeless question  … what is this that you have done?

Also in our DNA is our unease with this question, we recoil to hidden places to avoid the voice of God. Adam and Eve tried to hide in the bushes so as not to hear the voice but there was and is no hiding from the certainty of our situation nor of our moral culpability.  Chapter three in Genesis is a tale of crime and punishment, it is our tale, so what is the crime?  The crime is Godless selfish living in this God given moral world. Our world is now amoral because of the self destructive choices we inevitably and consistently make in the midst of the good.  Prior to the apple there was no morality for all of creation was good, the world of plants and animals was good because there was no self centered behavior to excess within nature.  Death was only about the survival of the fittest so there was no killing to excess as has been the forte of the people of the apple.  The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil says that the human experience is most unlike all other life forms in that we are capable of extreme selfishness that puts us at war with God and his creation.

God does not actively punish our selfishness, he does not have to, hiding behind all the evil is a moral world that rewards the good and punishes the bad.  Each of us has asked for the rocky soils and the daily toils of life with the hope that we might learn from the direct results of our selfish choices, the stars and their courses are so ordered as to dissuade us from our self involved perversion.  We use denial in an attempt to put us beyond the reach of the voice of God but we are only deluding ourselves.  All of mankind has a history of compensating and excusing our extreme selfishness by conforming to the demands of religion, any religion will do.  We slow learners are intent on pushing the voice of God aside, ready to pay any price for our own short term personal gain.  The tragedy is that this gain will always be taken at the expense of others, others who are equally under the care of the Almighty.  It has been stated in our own cultural mindset, “the world is comprised of two kinds of people, we are either hammers or nails, so be a hammer”.  The third chapter of Genesis tells us that there are, hopefully, three kinds of people, hammers, nails and listeners to the voice of God.  Such listening persons respect God and his creation, the welfare of others and by extension, themselves.

Is this not plausible and simple?  The above understanding of the Garden of Eden makes sense to this dunderhead but the detractors will call it foolishness.  Detractors who insist on a historical Garden of Eden have make this biblical truth a humorous punch line for the disbelieving comedians.  Twenty first century man can only laugh at claims of historical accuracy and these claims are used to disembowel all believers, including those of us who look for truth behind the words of scripture.  A literary device is not the truth, the point being made by the literary device is the truth.  The disingenuous detractors who paint all believers with a broad brush of foolishness are only comedians who are themselves the joke.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca

Antithesis

This fancy word is one of my favorites, it means to be opposed to something, or to contrast with something or to be the direct opposite.  Religion is the antithesis of Jesus.  The Ten Commandments are the antithesis of The Beatitudes.  We are familiar with the rules of the Ten Commandments, these are the beatitudes.  This is the only way, a bottom up way but the only way to please God in this world. .

The Beatitudes of Matthew 5 : 3-12  (Today’s New International Version Bible)
  1. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
  2. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
  3. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
  4. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled.
  5. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
  6. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
  7. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.
  8. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
  9. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me, for great is your reward in heaven.
10. Rejoice and be glad, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

The Beatitudes of Matthew 5: 3-12   (The Message Bible, Peterson)   ( Goslaw amplification)
  1. Happy are those who are unworthy of God, for they have a future with him.
  2. Happy are those who grieve over their failures, for they will find the strength to try again.
  3. Happy are the powerless in their own circumstance, for God will provide powerful results.
  4. Happy are those who chase after the way of God, for that way is never ending.
  5. Happy are those who care about others, for they will find that same care.
  6. Happy are those who take the inward journey toward a right heart, for they will reflect God outwardly.
  7. Happy are those who do not demand their own way, for we then become a part of the God gathering.
  8. Happy are those who upset the normal folk by chasing after the way of God, for then you are sure of your destination.
  9. Happy are those who are attacked with insults, persecution and evil lies because of their faith in Jesus, for God’s gathering process is it’s own reward.
10. Happy are those who are attacked because they listen and speak for the Voice, for then you are in the good company of the prophets.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca

Speaking of Moses

The base line conflict in the Bible is between the religion of Israel and the voice of God.  Can all the books written explaining the theology of the Bible be summarized in this little sentence?  If it is possible, then the simplicity is frightening and marvelously freeing for the conflict is not between God and Satan or sinners and saints or cowboys and Indians, it is between men who usurp the throne of God and God himself.  God considers the height of arrogance the assertion that any man or woman can somehow adequately guide the rest of us to God.  God is God to every man, whether they know it or acknowledge it for themselves.

Each religion on the face of this earth is heir to this usurping arrogance regardless of their relative value.  Some of you by now are shouting unfounded anti Semitic accusations at this author.  The fact is that the religion of Israel has preserved a peoples identity and inherent character for over four thousand years.  There is no more significant an accomplishment in the history of mankind and God will always consider you, the Jewish people, his first born.  However, like all other religions, including Christianity and Islam, the voice of God is always drowned out by human effort.   In the context of the middle East four thousand years ago, Moses was the founder of the religion of the Old Testament and this is how it happened.  

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, the patriarchs of the faith, were only listeners who were blessed by the Voice.  Moses became a listener in the isolation of the desert, heard the Voice from the burning bush and with much trepidation, did as he was directed.  With God in charge freedom came to the children of the patriarchs.  After crossing the Red Sea, the traveling city of Hebrew peoples made camp at the foot of Mount Sinai and the Voice told Moses to climb the mount alone.  As the days passed waiting for Moses to return the people got bored so they did the human thing, they partied.  The going’s on were reaching a fever pitch when Moses reappears.

The partying infuriates Moses, the consuming anger that drove him to kill in his youth again ignites.  He raises the tablets of stone with a message for the people of God above his head and throws then into the rocks where they forever shatter.  Then he gathers the good guys around him and slaughters three thousand of the family with the sword.  The heart of Moses had turned dark for he had taken control of God’s people and this event gave birth to the religion of Israel and a top down human agenda.  There were tears and wailing in the camp that night, there was questioning, is this the way of God?  Are we to be driven to a positive spiritual place by threats and the sword?  Religion says yes and so it has always been.

One might ask, what message from God to his people was on the tablets of stone that Moses shattered?  After a fifty year familiarity with the Bible and the Church, that question was never asked by me or anyone else.  The assumption made by all was that the first tablets were the same as the second version that Moses would soon bring down from the Mount, a religious document, a list of rules that would become the founding legal document of western civilization.  However, what if we do not go to court with God?  What if we really don’t have to earn the love and acceptance of God?  What if the first tablets was a bottom up document, a promise that whatever negative experience we may have in this world, it is not God. Could the shattered tablets have been a bottom up document similar to the “Beatitude” of Mathew 5:3-12?  Jesus told us the way.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca.  

Abuse

John  14: 6     Jesus answered,  “I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the father except through me.”

These words of Jesus are used by dim witted Bible thinkers to justify an exclusive understanding of the grace of God.  These folk say that a seeker after God, to be worthy of the grace of God, must only come to a saving faith in God through Jesus Christ in this earthly existence.  All other searching after God or goodness will prove to be useless and ultimately damming to be punished in the pit of hell.  

If this Christian exclusivity is the will of the Father God, then there is no hope for the children of Israel, those who have never heard about Jesus, those who merely practice Christianity as a religious preference, those who have been insulted by the self righteous believers in Jesus and those who claim spiritual authority by following the tenants of any other religion.  Christian exclusivity will ultimately leave all of us out, it will damn all of us if damnation was or is in the heart of God.  This hell stuff is mere religious verbiage from the religious tyrants of this world.

Jesus is the best, the divinely appointed earthly gate to spiritual wholeness but this wholeness will never be 100% pure for any of us while we are in this world.  Those who claim such purity are the victims of self delusion and most in need of the love of God.  The journey in this world is a beginning for all of us humans, some of us wake up to spiritual consciousness in our youth while some awaken in their old age.  Most of us never awaken in this life for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is that the awaking may not yet be in the time sensitive plan of God.

This verse does tell us that Jesus is the ultimate gate to spiritual wholeness for there is a little bit of Jesus in all human quests for spiritual awareness. We are all included in the plan of God.  Heaven or what we think of as heaven must be a “grand awakening” for all of us.  It is either a grand awakening for all of us or it will be a grand blank space for all of us.  In that case, hell may be more attractive.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca

The Method

Biblical interpretation or understanding is not the gathering of scripture to validate one or many perceived theological and social norms, it is the mining and gathering of spiritual truth.  This truth is to be followed to whatever ends to which it may lead, it is more akin to exploring an old mine shaft than constructing a great building of seeming monumental consequence.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca.

Judgment

I judge no one for judgment is about religion.  If the only way you can muster or defend a spiritual point is to judge another human being, you displease the God of the Bible.  Jesus knew no judgment yet he knew the hearts of everyone like no other.  He got angry at the religious Pharisees and Saducees only because they stood in the way of the rest of us sinners.

In spite of his anger, Jesus refused to place the self righteous beyond the grace of God even though their pride had earned them a short term rebuke.  Jesus practiced what he preached, in this life, “Do not judge, or you to will be judged. (Matthew 7:1)”.  This too is a promise of the Word of God.

G.Goslaw
Landers,Ca

Faith

According to Jesus we are to share this world’s advantages in order to do good for others as we all share in the advantages of the next world.  It is called faith and there is no faith if we expend this world’s advantages to manipulate for greater advantage in this world.  This is the sum of the gospel according to the Rev. Joel Osteen.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca.

Bible Gates

The Bible is composed of 66 books, 1,189 chapters, 31, 173 verses and 774,746 words, give or take a few.  Coming to grips with all this verbiage is almost impossible so it is not surprising that so very few of us can claim to have digested the Bible’s content.  Past generations have valued the pure reading of the Bible and being factually competent in the hope that that would lead us to understanding.  Lacking understanding these generations focus on a few specific verses or passages that allow a desired theology.

A theology is the same as an ideology in politics for they both serve a liberal or conservative constituency.  The political turf and the biblical turf are divided up and the fight is on.  The arguing over the political turf has gone on from the beginning of human gatherings.  For 4000 years the Judeo-Christian religious turf has been ripe with conflict and we never seem to tire of it.  Liberals and conservatives both use the Bible to fight the good fight, each is adamant that the Bible is their proof.  This being our human reality, why not offer another way?  Does the Bible allow another way?

A gathering theology is a better way.  A gathering theology assumes that the Bible is a record of divine interventions into our world and subsequently a record of our human response or reaction to these events. The human response is always to build a religion around the divine event and that religion always will turn inward for survival.  The Bible, then, is largely a religious document.  Religion is not God, all religions do good but all religions kill because they are a human function.  No scripture need be thrown out because of the influence of religion but it’s influence must be considered in the search for truth.

Does this sound complicated?  What is really complicated is to assert that every word in the Bible has equal authority or inspiration.  Some have claimed such an interpretation of scripture only to utilize their own way of elevating some of scripture to a really worthy status.  No one is consistent.  If such an extreme view of divine inspiration were even possible, the Bible would itself be God.  If, however, we are allowing spiritual truth to filter through the words of scripture something almost magical happens, our understanding inches forward.

The trick to biblical understanding is to identify the biblical gates that God has opened in human history.  If these gates are clearly identified and respected, the religious stuff will settle in it’s proper context.  The Bible gates are like unto being bombed with a glimpse of God.  They make us squirm so we invent ways to soften the blow by making God religious and he is not so inclined.  In fact, religion keeps God at bay and therefore religion is evil. Most of the Bible is God trying to pry us away from our human religious constructions.  Satan is a religious reality.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca.

Tick Tock

The best argument for the existence of the God of the galaxies is the revealed plan of God.  The plan is captured in the Bible, both the Jewish Scriptures and the New Testament.  There are many speakers giving their picture of the plan of God as they learned and experienced it.  Their takes are not identical but they are similar enough that the existence of a planned progression in history can not be avoided.  As with a movie, a plan requires direction, which means a Director.

In the second chapter of  Matthew’s movie we get a picture of the birth of Jesus from a Jewish mindset.  Matthew made it clear that Jesus was not the founder of a new religion but the fulfillment of a very old expectation.  The task before Matthew was to document that expectation along side the happenings in Bethlehem.  The Magi came to Jerusalem from the east, having no skin in the game, asking a question, where might we find the King of the Jews, for we have seen his star rise?  The Magi of an eastern country knew of the Jewish expectation as did the Jewish people who were asking for it’s fulfillment for a long time, where and when is our coming King to arrive?  Where is the king who will bring back the old days?

There had not been a king of all united Jews for eight hundred years, eight hundred years of turmoil.  King Herod the Great, to whom the Magi brought this question, was but a client king, paying taxes to Rome.  There were only three kings in Jewish history that could claim the title, King of the Jews.  King Saul was the first to be anointed as king and after a conflicted rule, his military commander and later adversary became king as recorded in 2 Samuel 5, 1&2.

All the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron and said, “We are your own flesh and blood.  In the past, while Saul was king over us, you were the one who led Israel on military campaigns.  And the Lord said to you, ‘You will shepherd my people Israel, and you will become their ruler.’ ”

The expectation was for a resurrection of these glory days in Jewish history when the nation was at it’s zenith.  King David united the religious and national interests of the nation of Israel. When he was old and frail, he passed the kingship to his son Solomon who reigned over a prosperity and influence unknown in the world to that time.  When he dies in 796 B.C., the kingship was passed to his son Rehoboam, who blundered national unity away in that same year.  Israel would never be a unity of twelve tribes again.

The startling question from the Magi disturbed or troubled King Herod and the religious establishment of Jerusalem.  Is he here?  They were scared, if the King of the Jews is here, our authority and possibly our lives will soon end.   King David’s father was named Jesse and the major prophet Isaiah predicts the coming expectation.

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him--the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord--
and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.  (Isaiah 11 - 3a)

King Herod asked the teachers and priests, if this is happening, where will he be born?  Bethlehem was the answer for the birthplace of this new King of the Jews is predicted by the prophet Micah, some seven hundred years before the time of Jesus.

“But you Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah,
out of you will come for me one who will become the ruler over Israel,
Whose origins are from old, from ancient times.” (Micah 5:2)

How old is old?  Was Micah referring to the three Kings of old Israel, Saul, David and Solomon?  Possibly the founding fathers of the faith, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were the ancients and antecedents of this new ruler.  Or older still, Micah may have been referring to the oldest possible father of all peoples, Adam and then God himself.  Micah believed that God will be faithful to his people and to his plan.   In any event, the questioning by the Magi was a big deal!

Upon getting false encouragement from King Herod, the star guides the Magi to the baby Jesus, whom they worshiped and gave gifts.  Then dreams figured large in the birth narrative.  After finding and worshiping the baby Jesus, the Magi are warned in a dream to avoid Herod and return home by another route.  In a dream Joseph is warned of Herod’s festering homicidal rage and told to escape with the family to Egypt.

The dark side emerges in the narrative as Herod realizes that the Magi were not coming back to inform on the baby.  He flies into a homicidal rage and orders the killing of all Bethlehem baby boys under the age of two,  he planned, “this new King of the Jews will surely die.”  From our supposedly civilized culture, we are shocked at the depth of evil hiding in the human heart, just waiting for the opportunity to kill. Imagine yourself  as one of those soldiers sent to chop off the heads of the Bethlehem babies.  One death would be grotesque but a few hundred Bethlehem deaths is obscene.

Matthew recognizes the slaughter as foretold in the words of the prophet Jeremiah, chapter 31, verse 15.

“A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.”

The horror is real, just as is the sorrow.  Human history is replete with such repeated tragedy.  It is easy to condemn the monster Herod but are we Americans guiltless?  Our American dark side has slaughtered millions of babies at the hand of their own mothers.  Our American dark side has slaughtered millions of babies at the hand of doctors who once took an oath to do no harm.  Our American dark side accepts a government and legal systems that condones the slaughter.  Compared to us, Herod was a choir boy!

In Egypt they stayed until the death of Herod, when in a dream Joseph is told to return home.  Matthew points to the words of the prophet Hosea, chapter 11 : 1.  “When Israel was a child. I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.”  The immediate context of this verse is God’s love and concern for his people, Israel, and their rescue at the hand of God from Egyptian bondage.  It is no surprise that a link is recognized between bondage of Israel and the forthcoming supposed mission of Jesus, a rescue from Roman bondage, both rescues emerging from Egypt.

Fearing King Archelaus, son of Herod, whose power was centered in the  vicinity of Jerusalem, Joseph, Mary and the toddler Jesus settled in the Galilean suburb of Nazareth.  Matthew says, “So was fulfilled what was said by the prophets,  ‘He will be called a Nazarene.’ (v. 23)”  Anyone with a literal interpretation of scripture would have difficulty with this verse.  The prophets never make the blunt statement that Nazareth will be the home of the King of the Jews.  The TNIV Study Bible makes a good guess, “Matthew may be alluding to the ‘Branch’ (Hebrew neser) of Isaiah 11:1, since the word also appears in the Targums, Rabbinic literature, and the Dead Sea Scrolls as a Messianic title.”  (p. 1610)

Are you convinced that Matthew has documented a connection between the faith of the Old Testament and Jesus?  This is a question for each of us to decide.  The evidence is multifaceted and after a multitude of providential turns, the flow of events seem to reveal the hand of God and a plan is seems apparent.  In some way,  this baby Jesus will take center stage in the life of Israel.  The question for our further reading is the character of this newly arriving King of the Jews.  Was Jesus to be the expected unifying warrior king?

Moments before his crucifixion Pilot asked him, are you the King of the Jews?  Jesus replies with an ambiguous, “So you have said”.  Jesus took his last breath with the title “King of the Jews” scrolled above his head.  The Romans who crucified him were making what was thought to be a joke while the religious leaders, who put the Romans up to the deed were ridding themselves of the number one threat to their power.

If you are convinced, the birth event means that his arrival was timely planned by the director God.  It took long enough but who is to say God is slow?  The God of the galaxies is all about timing, his timing, so check your watches.

GGoslaw
Landers, Ca.

History

History is not factual truth.  History is a collection of interpretations about what may have been past factual events.  Unless you were there and recording a past factual event for all to experience, you are just another human opinion.  Your opinion may be the majority opinion but it is still an opinion.

In itself, history has no power or authority and proves very little because it is simply a human concoction.  So why are there those who would relegate the Bible to mere fiction?

Could it be that we really don’t want to know the truth?

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

The One

Sunday,  November 24, 2013

Jeremiah  23 : 3 -6.
“I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them and will bring them back to this pasture, where they will be fruitful and increase in number.  I will place shepherds over them who will tend them, and they will no longer be afraid or terrified, nor will any be missing,” declares the Lord.

“The day is coming,” declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch,
a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land.

In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety.
This is the name by which he is called: The Lord Our Righteous Savior.”


Luke  23: 33 - 43.
When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals - one on the right, the other on the left.

Jesus said, “Father forgiven them, for they do not know what they are doing”.

And they divided up the clothes by casting lots.  The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him.  They said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One”.  The soldiers also came up and mocked him.  They offered him wine vinegar and said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself”.  There was a written notice above him, which read: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.

One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah?  Save yourself and us!”

But the other criminal rebuked him, “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence?  We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve.  But this man has done nothing wrong”.  Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom”.

Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise”.


Colossians 1: 19 & 20.
“For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.



Are we not all grateful for the “all” of salvation, a salvation given to us by the Chosen One,  a salvation that is in the process of reconnecting our two worlds?   The God of the galaxies has made a way for us all!
     

Doomsday

A Pulitzer Prize winning photo from the Vietnam War captures a Vietnamese general just before he puts a bullet to the head of a suspected Viet Cong  official on a Saigon street.  That picture gave added impetus to the growing antiwar sentiment at home.  Any religion that tries to scare and force the folk into faith is just as ugly, senseless and shortsighted.  Faith established under duress will not, in itself, bring long term spiritual depth.  The passage that we have been directed to examine this Sunday, November 17, is again in the Gospel of St. Luke, chapter 21, verses 5- 19.  Some have called this passage the doomsday scenario.

The premise of this supposed biblical theology is that God will, at some point in time, demand and instigate the complete destruction and annihilation of all things.  The exception, of course, is that this God will exempt the good guys who will be preserved for eternity.  These folk insist that this passage is one of the best biblical proofs for their doomsday scenario and that they, surprisingly, are the good guys.  It is so accepted as dogma within a certain sector of the Christian church that reputable scholarship is afraid to even consider publicly that these words from Jesus were not so intended.

The doomsday folk accentuate the frightful conditions listed in this passage, wars and uprisings, earthquakes, famines, pestilence and eclipses in the sky.  These recurring events are, indeed, frightening but they have constantly nagged our days.  The doomsday message for this world is not what Jesus is giving to his disciples.  The prophecy is about the end of religion, all religions, beginning with the Jewish religion as then practiced.  The temple is doomed.  This central focus of the Jewish religion will be flatted in the year 70 A.D, some thirty years after the crucifixion of Jesus.

Going forward, who or what is to replace the temple?   The God of the galaxies was about to destroy the religion of the men of Israel and that through Jesus he would restore the ancient simple faith of the fathers, Abraham, Issac and Jacob.  There are times in scripture when I would like to advise the authors, in this case St. Luke, “quit beating around the bush” and just say it!  Maybe it is humility or a writing style that avoids the first person at all costs, but why can’t Jesus just say in Matrix language “I am the one”.  In this passage we are left to assume as much but the assumption has been grounded in all that has gone before in this gospel.

Without wasting time on the obvious, for the time is short, in a matter of hours religion would orchestrate a plan to rid their world of this Jesus and seemingly succeed.  The God of the galaxies, however, has a better, bigger plan for Jesus who will return to earth again one grand day.  This passage again assumes we know this expectation for all the words of Jesus are about having life patience into the future.  Don’t believe every Tom, Dick and Harry that comes along to say, “I am he”, this my return will take time.  Time aplenty for persecutions, imprisonment, political trials, betrayals, hatred and death, all of which have been and continue to be the history of the faith.

So what will the return of Jesus look like, how will it change our world?  The answer is not in this passage of scripture.  The doomsday folk must "prove" it elsewhere in scripture, if they can.  In the short term, blowing it up may seem justified but ultimate control is not ours, thank the Lord!  The ultimate decision remains with the God of the galaxies and one might ask, who does the Bible say he is, how is he portrayed every Sunday morning to we folk who desperately need a Savior?  What event should we expect?

Where in scripture is the dark side of God?

G.Goslaw
Landers, CA

be healed

Matthew 17: 19,20&21   Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, "Why couldn't we drive it out?"  He replied, “Because you have so little faith.  Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

Every difficulty is solvable if one has faith in the God of the galaxies.  That seems to be the message that Jesus spoke to his disciples who failed to heal the boy with seizures.  Matthew, who records these words, says that Jesus rebuked his disciples, to rebuke is to level “blame or scold in a sharp way”.  The disciples must have cringed in embarrassment,  both from the failure to heal the boy and then the lack of understanding from their teacher.  Are not some of our meager exercises in faith just as lame as those of the disciples?  One should ask, does “every difficulty” mean every?  Are there no impossibilities with God?

This is one of those perplexing questions that can only be answered with a “yes” and a “no”, the soup contains neither absolute.  In the New testament the power of Jesus to heal the sick is not an absolute.  There is no record of any spectacular healing in the first thirty years of his life.  During his three year ministry, Mathew, Mark and Luke record how the faith of Jesus could not override the cynicism of the people in his hometown, Nazareth.  The people heard the news of the healing in Capernaum and marveled at the teachings in the synagogue but when Jesus claimed spiritual authority from a God who was bigger than their religion, they tried to kill one of their own.

Could it be that the God of the galaxies is less a spectacular God and more of a God who works through his creation?  Look around, how often do you recognize the spectacular activity of God?  That is not to say that God does not operate in a spectacular fashion, we can list the supernatural recorded in Scripture and in our world.  But by comparing the subtle activities of God and the spectacular activities of God, we must conclude that the God of the galaxies is most comfortable operating through his creation.  All of life is His creation and the natural world is inclined to reflect the will of God.

Operative faith depends upon us but it is also a shared experience.  It is shared with others and with the creative process.  The message that Jesus was sending with the over the top ridicule is that as far as you and I are concerned, there are no limits to what God can do, should he so choose.  After all, through his creative process, mountains have been raised and others washed into the sea.  Deserts have been turned into great bodies of water and jungles have become deserts again.  Look around, look what the mustard seed has produced!

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca

Five

The following are at least five life lessons from the Bible.  Lessons that we all prove out in our days, at the expense of others and our own well being.  A few of us, a very few of us, are quicker studies at life. Only one human being has ever been morally perfect.

1.   There is no such thing as something for nothing.  ( all things come with an earned history)

2.   If you respect the little things, you will be trusted with bigger things.  (if you value the smaller things, larger things will come your way)

3.   Treat other people the way you want to be treated.  (do unto others as you would have them do unto you.)

4.   What goes around will come around. ( what we dish out to others will come around to bite or bless us)

5.   All is either positive or negative, nothing is neutral.  (our moral universe makes every choice a search for what is good for us and others)

 All of us are moral failures, the question being, are we becoming aware and accepting of life’s lessons?

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca.

The Hell Scenario

Religious people are boring.  We take pleasure in attaching to a religious social structure that provides some significant level of cultural security.  We self identify with a particular group expecting to be blanketed with that groups supposed acceptableness.  One would hope that this is not the only motivation but in most cases it is the principal factor as some folk relate to the church or to religions in general.  There is no more arrogant an assumption than the Christian small business person who advertises their trustworthiness by claiming to be Christian.

Assumptions are just as dangerous when seeking to understand the ways of God as outlined in the Bible.  As children, we learn the “spiritual truth” from preachers and teachers appointed by a church to give instruction as to what the Bible says.  These leaders, from a wide variety of religious and theological spectrums, already assume they know the ways of God.  The game is to pick out those scriptures that prove their assumptions, knowing full well that it is possible to proof text almost anything somewhere in scripture.  One can be a highly educated and an adult person to live their lives playing this game.

These learned assumptions, to some degree, depose and supplant the ways of God as the intended spiritual food for the church and the individual. It is laughable that the modern church of the 21st century has no clue as to why we are losing credibility with our culture.  In short, we teach mental assumptions about God not the Bible.  The modern critical mind recognizes the charade and compensates by rejecting all that comes from the church, including a lot of good stuff.

A variety of theological assumptions not directly supported  by a consensus of Scripture, have always been with the church.  There are old assumptions and faddish new assumptions that pop up from time to time that feed our desire for perceived exclusivity.  Some can hold sway for centuries and some loose traction in a few short years. One assumption that has always been with the church, is hell as a God appointed place of eternal punishment and banishment for the many.   Three mental assumptions dictate our understanding of the hell scenario.
Assumption # 1    Physical earthly death seals our eternal fate.
Assumption # 2    God is the sadistic ruler of eternity for most of humanity.
Assumption # 3    The love of God is meant only for the few right living persons.

At the time of death, so these assumptions state, God is obligated to deal with those of us unworthy of eternity, as the sadistic ruler God of the torture chamber called hell.  This warlike God has been preached right along side the good news of God’s forgiveness, grace and compassion.  After growing weary of both sides talking past each other with supposed scriptural backup, I would like to say how I have settled the issue.

The following biblical passages clearly convey the hell scenario. To qualify as a relevant scripture, it must teach that there is a place, a place that God has designed, a place of unending torment and that God will choose or judge those of us who will be banished to this place.  There are those theologians who want us to believe that our eternal souls are merely snuffed out if we fail to qualify for paradise but this is the most offensive of all assumptions.

Daniel 12.2  (Old Testament prophet Daniel)
Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake; some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.

St. Matthew  25.46  (Jesus)
“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

2 Thessalonians  1: 5-10  (St. Paul)
All of this is evidence that God’s judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering.  God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well.  This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels.  He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.  They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed.  This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you.
                                                                                                                                     
Rev. 14. 9- 12  (St. John)
A third angel followed them and said in aloud voice: “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives its mark on their forehead or on their hand, they, too, will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which he has poured full strength into the cup of his wrath.  They will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb.  And the smoke of their torment will rise forever and ever.

Rev. 20: 11 to 15  (St. John)
Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it.  The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them.  And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne,  and the books were opened.  Another book is opened, which is the book of life.  The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.  The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and everyone was judged according to what they had done.  Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.  The lake of fire is the second death.  All whose names were not written in the book of life were thrown into the lake of fire.


Are you startled, there are only five?  The entire Bible has 31,103 verses, minus these five, leaving 31,098 verses which do not speak directly to this point.  The hell scenario would seem to be a minority opinion.  I am not a biblical expert so I may have missed a couple, but would you not concede that this minority assumption has minimal merit?  Of course there are hundreds of others that give us pieces of the puzzle, still, the five are not the overwhelming biblical evidence claimed by those who believe the hell doctrine.  One may ask, with such limited biblical foundation, how did such a hellish doctrine come to be the norm in the Christian Church?  Why has the Church so tragically defined biblical orthodoxy on such skimpy biblical clarity?

In my opinion the simplest and best answer is that this doctrine was and is intended to frighten the folk into submission to the Church.  The damnation motive, through the centuries of Church history, was front and center because this doctrine enabled the reign of the institutional church.  The doctrine is institutionalized fear mongering.  There are plenty of reasons to discount my largely personal opinion but the qualified are strangely yet understandably silent.

May I suggest the following post death scenario?  We all die, we all will be judged by God, all of us, except Jesus.  We all will experience temporary discomfort until we wake up, accept and surrender unconditionally by asking for the control of God.  The severity and duration of the discomfort is the only question that this life may influence.  The invitations are out for all of humanity but until we ask to be included, on this side of death or the other side, death will be an unpleasant yet glorious experience.

This scenario is in sync with the hundreds of scriptures that allude to our eternal destiny.  Biblical words such as sin, the judgment of God, the wrath of God, righteousness, the lake of fire, the mercy of God and eternal life need not ignite our human assumptions of the hell scenario.  Just the mention of such words is not enough evidence for anyone to construct a hell theology.

In an attempt to be fair, the Old testament prophet Daniel, Jesus himself, St. John and St. Paul made the above five statements that clearly state the hell scenario.  The Bible reader and thinker must make a choice to ask of these verses, are they intended to fully describe eternity?   Rather, are they not true statements spoken in the context of this earthly life and using the language very recognizable in New testament times.  The hell scenario was popularized by the theology of the self righteous Pharisees.

The fear factor alone has never given birth to true disciples.  Modern man is even less motivated to make positive change when threatened by the damnation doctrine because we are not so easily frightened.  Our place in nature without a faith in God is as tenable as it has always been but there are fewer obvious threats that breed insecurity in the short term.  Five centuries ago a theologian, scientist, mathematician and inventor, on the fringes of the church, recognized the limits of fear as a religious (spiritual) motivation.

“The way of God, who disposes all things with gentleness, is to instil religion into our minds with reasoned arguments and into our hearts with grace, but attempting to instil it into hearts and minds with force and threats is to instil not religion but terror.”  Pascal,  F 172  “Three Outsiders”, Diogenes Allen, Wipf and Stock Publishers, Eugene, Oregon, 2006, p. 34.

Since there is an eternal divine party, the loving, forgiving God, being who He is, will always open the door to those who ask.  The celebration will be ours to enjoy forever!  Joining the party in this life is it’s own reward.

G.Goslaw
Landers, CA

Hi Adam

I’m reading this book about a possible 21st century understanding of God.  The following quote may help us as biblical interpreters.

“This approach (what he calls the constitutional method) if you haven’t realized it yet, defies both conservative and liberal categories.  On the one hand, the conservative constitutional view claims to put us “under” Scripture’s authority, yet I’m sure I’m not the only one who has noticed that some of the most pompous and defensive people anywhere are found among those who stand and shout,  “The Bible says!” Nor am I the only one to notice that before the Bible can serve as a constitution, it must be interpreted as one, which renders amazing authority to those interpreters.  The Bible they want to put us “under” tends to be the Bible as they have interpreted it, which unsurprisingly means we are under their authority as they stand over us with the Bible in hand.

On the other hand, the liberal view reacts strongly against all this conservative slight of hand and largely resists using the language of authority at all when it speaks of the Bible.  The liberal view ends up bequeathing a great deal of authority to liberal scholars who deconstruct the Bible, just as the conservative view does to the scholars of its tribe who constitutionalize it.”
Brian D. McLaren,  “A New Kind of Christianity”, 2010, p. 96.

A middle ground is, indeed, rare air!

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca.

A Book Report

The repetitious use of the “I” pronoun is offensive in others and to be avoided in any discourse.  I shall take the risk.  The following is my reaction and reflection upon the book by Richard H. Bell, entitled, “The Irrevocable Call of God”, 2005.  I stumbled upon this book investigating the pro’s and con’s of Christian universalism which maintains that all of mankind, past present and future, is being gathered together by Christ to rest for all eternity in the arms of our father God.  About four years ago I equated such a hypothesis with the pagan cults and was certain that the Bible would never support such an intellectual pipe dream.

I am an amateur biblical theologian and an amateur Christian who has embraced a life long romance with the Bible.  Having read three or four more popular books about this subject, the title of Dr. Bell’s book intrigued me.  If God had an eternal destiny in mind for the people of Israel, the people who have rejected the Messiah for over 2000 years, could not this same destiny await all peoples?  Paying over $100 for a book gave me a few moments pause but I was curious enough to take the plunge.

The author was a complete unknown to me so I began reading as if in the dark.  The Greek, Hebrew and German is way above my pay grade but it is sprinkled through the text so that it allowed frequent skipping without loosing the train of thought.  There are footnotes galore, probably close to half the text, citing mostly current biblical scholars of the last fifty years.  Dr. Bell contrasts the work of recent systemic theologians and biblical scholars with a sprinkling of theologians of historical note.  The text is 422 pages with another 130 pages of reference material in the back of the book.

This man is a thinker with multiple degrees in science, theology and he teaches philosophy.  One would think that scholarship at this level would make this book difficult to follow but this is not the case.  I was hooked within the first few pages.  Everything is an argument, everything is a collection of contrasting opinions from familiar minds that force the reader to think right along with the author.   Most impressive is  the way he handles scripture, his is a hermeneutic for the 21st century.

A case in point is the tension in the writings of St. Paul regarding the religion of Israel and the spiritual destiny of the Jew.  The author uses the word “development” to describe the unavoidable change in Paul’s thinking between his early letters and the last letter to the Romans.  How can one with a narrow static hermeneutic account for this obvious difference, one should ask, which Paul is correct?  I would guess that the author would say they are both correct but that the more mature Roman perspective is the way forward.  Possibly, all scripture is true but all scripture must be weighed as if on a scale.  The Roman perspective on the future of Israel is a 10 while the Galatian perspective is an immature 3.  Please don’t blame this methodology on the author.

This is a book that meticulously details the relevant scripture, particularly in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans.  You may find an answer to the biblical question of our time, does “all” mean “all”?  Did the apostle Paul mean "all"?

You may read this book and at least have an informed opinion.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca.

The Chaff

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Acts 8: 14-17
When the Apostles in Jerusalem had heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to Samaria.  When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come on any of them; they had simply been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus.  Then Peter and John laid hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit.

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in there hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah.  John answered them all, “I baptize you with water.  But one who is more powerful than I will come, the thongs of his sandals I am not worthy to untie.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather his wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

The Chaff

The Holy Spirit is the arm of God in this world.  His presence, power and priority is acknowledged as center stage in every worshiping congregation.  The Holy Spirit is the soul of the church.  The Holy Spirit gives the priesthood the power to forgive sin.  The Holy Spirit is Christ with us.  The Holy Spirit enables speaking in unknown languages.  The Holy Spirit is an ethical life enabler.  The Holy Spirit is a guide to making right life decisions.  The Holy Spirit is the power that draws all men toward God.  The Holy Spirit is the executioner in Christian conversion.  The Holy Spirit blesses prayer as more than mere words.  The Holy Spirit is the giver of Christian assurance.  The Holy Spirit is the giver of biblical wisdom and truth.  The Holy Spirit is an ally in times of trouble and heartache.

The job description of the Holy Spirit may be extended further and further but does it not seem that we, the church, have become immune or overly familiar with the rhetoric?  Every believer in the Christ wants his or her life experience to be impacted by the actions of the Holy Spirit, in theory at least nothing is more important.  These two passages this Sunday announce a change, the working pattern of the Holy Spirit is to be different with the arrival of Jesus upon the human horizon.  It might help our understanding of the Holy Spirit if we explore these words of scripture.

At it’s best the faith of Israel had a reverence for God and for others to include the forgiveness of spiritual and ethical error but this faith at the time of Jesus had degraded to mere rule keeping.  Most of the folk believed that they were incapable of doing these many rules and regulations.  They also believed that their disenfranchisement mattered little to the leaders of the Temple.  They were correct for the prevalent spiritual motif of the time was the self righteousness of the Pharisees.  This sect of believers in the God of Israel were all about rule keeping and not about people.  The people, however,  flocked to hear the open invitation of John and were eager for a new beginning by being baptized in water.  The preaching of John the Baptist was the best of the old way.

John saw into the future and believed that the long expected Jewish Messiah would bring a new way marked by the preeminence of the Holy Spirit.  “But one who is more powerful than I will come, the thongs of his sandals I am not worthy to untie.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”  This is not to say that the Holy Spirit was not an effective advocate for God in Old Testament times but his actions seemed to be available mostly for the few.  The Spirit was directing and leading the people only as they followed those few who were in touch with the Spirit.  According to John, the coming Messiah would now make the Holy Spirit available to all seeking believers, who wished to implement the ways and power of the Holy Spirit into their lives.

As the centuries passed in the history of the church this universal availability of the Holy Spirit was at times withdrawn into the hierarchy of the church to be properly dispensed.  This withdrawal was always marked by an overwhelming lack of spiritual integrity among the people, some would characterize these times as the church in darkness.  The Reformation of the 15th century again gave back to the people the Bible and an awakening sense of the availability of the Holy Spirit.  This revival evolved into the understanding to be known as the priesthood of all believers.  If each believer is gifted with the Spirit of God, then the priest or the preacher is not the lone spiritual authority in the church.  Clearly, Peter and John could not envision the proper operation of the new church in Samaria without the blessing of the Holy Spirit gifted to the people.

Today’s church seems to be in turmoil and loosing credibility with the people beyond the church walls. The secular culture is making new converts everyday.  What are we to do?  The first step is repentance as in John’s baptism in water.  Instead of blaming liberal theology, irreverence for the Bible as we understand it and sin parading through the culture, we should question the language we are sending out.  Our impotence is not to be blamed on someone or something else, it rests upon the church to rephrase how the gospel message is communicated to the 21st century.  This creeping change will happen but only as the pain becomes unbearable.

If the goodness of God is what the church represents, then that God must be so superficial.  Much as was the religiousness at the time of Jesus, today’s Pharisaical church is seemingly content to construct it’s own Christian culture and then defend the walls.  Defending the walls means condemning and consigning that sinful world, all those liars, thieves, murders and promiscuous persons to the fires of hell.  Of course we tell them about Jesus but do we really care about such people?  The bigger question is how does god feel about these people?  That question will be answered according to how we understand the mission of the Holy Spirit.

Chaff is the unusable, worthless outer shell of the wheat grain.  The old way to separate the chaff from the grain was to throw the whole grain into the air letting the wind carry the worthless chaff away.  The grain would fall onto the threshing floor to be gathered for storage.  John the Baptist goes on to say that the coming Messiah, who will bring the Holy Spirit, “he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire”.  Does John equate people with chaff so that this is a warning or a threat of hell toward whomever may be considered a sinner?  There is a segment of immature, yardstick Christians who think this way.

They are wrong!  The chaff of our lives is the hard outer shell of selfishness and self indulgence that hides the man or woman God intended us to be from the beginning.  This chaff, when separated from our lives by the winds of the Holy Spirit, will be burned, never again to cloud our God given dignity.  That is what the life, death and resurrection of Jesus accomplished and this assurance of salvation is to be carried to us in our generation by the Holy Spirit.  Since and because of our gifted faith in the Christ, the believer has been judged perfect, at least in the eyes of God.  The unconditional love of God the father will accept us into eternity.

May those yardstick Christians be carried to hell, if there was such a place.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca