Personal Thoughts

Okay, I needed a comedic break from the narrative that is the “news.” So, I watched the “fun” version on cable when Comedian Jimmy Failla summarized in a most serious tone, “We’re living in the death of shame.” Or in the words of Bishop Robert Fastiggi,

“Perhaps the greatest sin in the world today is that men have begun to lose the sense of sin.”

The metaphor that someone is “coming out” used to imply a degree of secrecy or privacy associated with one’s activity or life-style. Perhaps, in someway, we all had a closet experience, that secret side of our desires that we would never mention in public. Who wasn’t used to living two different lives, one real and covered up and the other what society expected of us! Dad used to say, “When in Rome live as the Romans do.” “Dance to the tune being played” even clumsily or even if you’d rather sit this one out.

The stress of living in two different worlds, one culturally acceptable and the other who you really are, has become, most understandably, a chain of a tyrannizing hypocrisy. That metaphorical “closet” now (as I see Mr. Failla’s interjection) has been dismantled social brick by brick, shame by shame, until in the name of a social honesty modern life has been transformed into a civilization that no longer identifies with “sin.” And no sin means to need of a Savior… sadly.

Not everything one does in private or secret is sinful… Please! But, what we are saying is that, no one can live their entire life as the free exercise of their passions, if it isn’t natural, if it does not put on display their real self. There is no bigger lie than trying to convince yourself that some culture you find yourself in must know better than you what is in your best interest, to pretend to love what you detest, to publicly smile through private tears.

But “shame” is still a real thing, a really word, in our Bible. Actually, there is more than one word because there is more than one kind of shame. Shame can be the fear of being discovered, the fear of being disapproved by the social circle we move in. As Jeremiah 2:26 reminds us, “disgraced when … caught….”

But there is a Biblical word for shame meaning a reverence for the good as good. When this good is not honored in one’s actions, the sense of shame, like a faithful conscience, sounds the alarm. This has nothing to do with reputation. It has to do with honor—and to God that means “reverence.”

“…serve God acceptably with reverence” Hebrews 12:28

Scholarship tells us, “We may say that [a godly reverence] restrains a good man from an unworthy act, while [being found out] would sometimes restrain a bad one.” Shame is a friend if it can forewarn, but we live now in social change that prefers to disconnect altogether from any moral code God might be said to have inspired. Thinking this way, it seems best to destroy shame in social change (make it not against any moral law by getting rid of all talk of God). I leave it to honest faith to recognize the danger here.

There is a third term in our Bible which includes self-introspection. You, who know God because you walk with Him, should always see if the Spirit within, in whom you confide, would tell you that what you about to do or say, or where you are about to go, is out of character with the new you. Be advised!

Paul said it best:

Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. – 2 Corinthians 4:2

As I took my walk I was thinking about Peter’s response to the crowd that first Feast of Pentecost after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension [Acts 2:1].  Many in the crowd came under a conviction after hearing about Jesus’ crucifixion and they found this news difficult to balance against their own future interests. Taking two year old lambs to the Temple court seemed less an act of atonement now and more like an exercise in futility. [On that they were unknowingly right: Hebrews 10:1].

“Men and brethren what shall we do!? [Acts 2:37]” they gave vent to their anxiety (for these were “God-fearing Jews ” Acts 2:5).

I am singularly interested in Peter’s response,

“Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. [Acts 2:38]”

The straight forward theology here says that nothing happens until you repent ..and if you are serious about confessing your sinfulness, you will be water baptized as a public testimony that you intend to follow Jesus!

And then Peter said “you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

This word “gift” means gratuitously given, unearned, or another word for “grace.” I must assume they knew what that meant …or, if not, they took Peter’s words at face value and his explanation of what happened to him, according to Joel 2:28, would happen to them. …and they wanted this!

Or Peter like Paul later [Acts 19:2] meant, “Yes, trust me, you need this!!!  You need Him! You need the Spirit, else repentance stands alone in a wilderness of evil and temptation.” [King John interpretation.]

Once in a while it is good to set aside form and ritual (not always because these play a role in a Christian’s experience). It is good to forget preaching just for today and save the song list for next week and, if the community can handle it, this time should be set aside especially for prayer and worship, if our Lord cares to use it. Jesus instructed us to

“wait for the gift my Father promised” (Acts 1:4)

Each of us needs to find the time and get alone with God without watches and smart phones.  Each of us, as individuals, needs to understand the “gift” of the Spirit as more than a confirmation of salvation, a spiritual status symbol, or an unseen Divine act that we accept only by faith.  The Spirit’s work in us is a work of sanctification: conforming us to the image of Christ [Romans 8:29] , dealing with the sin question in our life [John 16:8], emboldening us for God’s service [Acts 4:31], and making our witness “pop” even when life seems ordinary [Acts 1:8]. God’s Spirit in us is life changing and He will keep us on the straight and narrow no matter how passionate the enemy of our soul is about rerouting us back into our old life!

If you have not received this gift of God, you just must discover what I am talking about!

I have come to perceive that a christian’s sense of truth is only seeded by what is undeniably from Scripture. The kernel of truth that actually promotes faith, is often encumbered with—what I might risk calling—chaff, the chaff of ideas we wish the Bible expounded, but, alas, does not [not clearly, not undeniably, not irrefutably and not indisputably].

Truth is seeded by what is written in the Word of God but overwhelmingly dependent on a trust in the God of the Word. Not everything we desire to know is knowable, at least not yet in this life—about heaven and hell or why Jesus had to die, to name a few.

We have, with denominational approval, embellished the Biblical account with those reasonable answers our many questions have required. Logic has played a great part in our sought after understanding of Calvary’s story, clothed now by this church or that church, in mystical phrases [as: weak or strong faith, sacramental, anointed words, rapture], words from other languages [like propitiation, the persona of Christ, much Latin and Greek] and invented terms [like atonement, liminality, inclusion, original sin, “the Fall”]. We are more philosopher than theologian since so much of belief has little to do with a study of God through His Word and more the formulating of our desired creed.

There is clearly a center to Truth, a Christ-centric Scriptural base, as it were, that is the core enlightenment of true faith, that speaks of a bona fide relationship with the Savior of which Paul spoke:

For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. – Romans 10:10

God in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ, died a natural death to rescue us from the trappings of a spiritual death is the clear theme of the Biblical narrative, and together with the account of His resurrection, we have been told what God wants told. We accept it simply by faith or, as Jesus said just before His journey to Golgotha,

You believe in God; believe in me. – John 14:1

But we ask for more. We need to understand how church ritual should represent this truth, how faith should be expressed. We wonder what part hope plays, what can we expect from God. Does our faith depend at all on what we do or don’t do? And how do we “follow” Jesus?

We may not have created an image like paganism to worship, but have we created a god after our own thoughts and interests? Have we confused our own longings with God’s—perhaps, because we have not been in communion with Him enough to know the difference. As Dorothy Sayers wrote, “The question ‘What think ye of Christ?’ lands the average man at once in the very knottiest kind of dogmatic riddle.”

Justification as a Biblical term ends bifurcated into what God promises and what He is actually perfecting in us. Water Baptism and Communion are given varying weights of importance and value depending on how great a role each plays in what makes us christian. “Giving” when it is absent or too little can amount to a spiritual crime. Sin, in general, becomes a useful idea to persuade christians to cooperate with pastoral vision.

Some of what we believe as consistent and biblical exemplifies a cognitive dissonance which is conveniently overlooked because no one challenges what gives them a personal sense of spirituality even if it does not represent what is written in God’s Word. And the LGBTQ+ community think it hypocritical of the church to condone divorce as a means to honoring monogamy while marginalizing their spiritual needs—and they might be on to something!

There is nothing wrong with ‘creed’ or “denominationalism’ or ‘private faith’ if it represents a hunger after righteousness, a longing to get closer to the God we love, a heart after the Savior that simply keeps us “pressing in.” All the while, our faith is alive and well … and that is what counts! But my understanding of some Bible verse might not be yours!

So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves. – Romans 14:22

I reread the 10 plagues on Egypt that preceded the first Passover (Exodus 7:14-11; Psalm 105:27-36). There is an observable progression to these events I didn’t see until I studied them in the original—primarily because the KJV and most English translations don’t emphasize them.

1. The first one (water to blood) was replicated by the Egyptian magicians; so, obviously, Pharaoh was not that impressed. (Exodus 7:21) says that the water stank, but
2. heaps of dead frogs through Egypt was a more intense stench, not just at the shore of the Nile but now in their homes [Exodus 8:2].
3. The third plague was (perhaps) a species of mosquito native to Egypt. Some say, the gnat or a flea or lice—something that attacks both man and beast. The magicians called this “the finger of God” [Exodus 8:19].
4. These were followed by swarming flies [the mosquitoes did not swarm]. These “flies” could sting. Ps. 78:45 “He sent among them swarms of flies, which fed on them.”
5. According to Exodus 9:2 this next divine strike is the first “plague” as we understand the word. A “disease” hit the Egyptians’ flocks and livestock which was [CSB] “very severe.” This phrase (“very severe”) is not used of the 4 plagues already listed. [but going forward the plagues will be “very severe”!]
6. The 6th plague is a condition that now affects the Egyptians’ person. They are describes as “running blisters or boils spreading or breaking out all over the body” [Exodus 9:9 CSB, “festering boils”].
7. “Hail” now pellets Egypt [Exodus 9:18, the worse ever in Egyptian memory to date]. But God warns the Egyptians to bring their animals inside. This was more of a “shock and awe” event for those Egyptians who believed Moses and Aaron. Unbelievers would die if they stepped outside. We might have thought this to be first but hailstones destroy crops ready for harvest.  The locust (the 8th plague) will glean these fields completing the judgment.
8. The eighth plague of locust is very revealing of God’s mind in this matter. Exodus 10:2 “I have made a toy of Egypt.” [RSV I have made sport of the Egyptians]. The word is used in Numbers 22:29 meaning [CSB] to “look like a fool.” This is what it reads: God was mocking the gods of Egypt, gradually increasing the severity of each divine strike against them (Exodus 12:12).
9. Now, a “dark darkness” [Exodus 10:22 a thick gloom] envelopes the land for three days, so much so that, “they could not see one another nor move about” …so dark, they could “feel” it [vs. 21] , like a depression. (Only God knew it was to be a 3 day event.) When Jesus died darkness was upon the earth for 3 hours [Luke 23:44] and Jesus was in the grave for 3 days [Matthew 27:63].
10. We all know the 10th, the death of all first born (Isaiah 43:3 “I gave Egypt for thy ransom”).

At each stage, God sees Himself as the reason for Pharaoh’s hard hearted obstinacy because God knew in His omniscience that Pharaoh was not going to give in easily. God told Moses there would be signs and wonders [plural]. Increasingly things grew worse until the worst thing happened that could happen, the death of the oldest child in each household—which had to fill God with thoughts of His own Son.

But this wasn’t about the Pharaoh! Is it not obvious that God was mocking the gods of Egypt and for this needed to solicit Pharaoh’s cooperation? [Exodus 12:12 “I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD.”]  God wasn’t mocking the Egyptians, nor Pharaoh.  He was, in truth, revealing the utter futility of devotion to their gods. His salient point was that He alone was God. He was making a fool out of the Egyptian gods.

Jesus made a rather startling and “seemingly” rash statement in His celebrated “Sermon on the Mount.” Luke (6:20), the journalist, informs us that Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor.” And “poor” means “poor.” This word is distinguished in the New Testament from the word meaning to earn your daily ‘bread’ by labor. This last (2 Corinthians 9:9) lives from paycheck to paycheck. He is not impoverished as our word “poor” indicates. Our word, Jesus used, means to beg for it, or in our case, to pray for it, to trust God for it: “give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6: 11).

Blessed are those who trust God for their daily sustenance!

I am reading Schweizer’s work, “Red-Handed” which highlights the effort of people in power (both sides of the isle) to get—not rich but— richer. It represents the biblical idea of “greed’ which Paul called a form of idol worship (Colossians 3:5). Paul called it an ‘impassioned evil’. The Greek word, according to scholarship, designates “the fiercer and ever fiercer longing of the creature which has forsaken God, to fill itself with the lower objects of sense.” Trench calls it “the monsters of lust” [Trench, “Synonyms” pg. 83]. Cicero called it a “rapacious avarice” [Pro Coel. 6].

It is more than a “love of money” which is its offspring and which may even attract the most religious (Luke 16:14) . Money for money’s sake is not greed. It is its toady. The lover of money only wants to hoard it; the greedy are consumers who use it for what they can purchase—even if money is purchasing more money—or worse, power. Beware consumerism for consumerism’s sake!

Happiness, Jesus cautioned, is not in the Best Buy or in purchasing power. Happiness is a reliance on our Lord to sustain us! (2 Corinthians 9:10)

Schweizer’s book is about “the families of congressional leaders and how they “secured hundreds of millions of dollars in lucrative deals. … How the biggest names on Wall Street … get the inside track on billion-dollar deals.” Think what you will of Schweizer, the point was poignantly made by the Savior, “God said to the greedy, ‘Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be!” (Luke 12:20).

When I began a study of the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the mount, “Blessed are the poor” included the words from Matthew’s account “… in spirit” (Matthew 5:3) which some copyists of the Greek text sought to, in error, include here in Luke’s account. But now I keep them separate believing BOTH ideas carried a great importance for the Savior.

There is no shame in trusting God for all our needs; in fact, it is the circumstance of the blessed! The last thing any believer should want is a winning lottery ticket which brings with it a multitude of woes! The last thing we want is to discard our Lord’s interest in our lives for the pursuit of temporary pleasures.

When your bank account dwindles, your stock options lose worth, your favorite toy is broken, you struggle to make the mortgage or rent or you are down to the jar of peanut butter for food for you and the children, remember God!

Learn to trust Him!  He won’t let you down.  You’ll find real happiness!

Blessed are the poor!

I am reading Matthew Hockenos’ biography of Pastor Niemöller, “Then They Came for Me: The Pastor Who Defied the Nazis.” There might be growing similarities between the erosion of religious freedoms a Lutheran pastor and their congregation endured in Nazi Germany of the 30’s and early 40’s and the insidious undermining of those freedoms in the civilized “woke” world we find ourselves in. When I warned my small Zoom Bible study group that wokeness is invading the church, they exploded in unison, “Pastor, it has been happening for the last few years, already!”

As the title suggests (“Then They Came for Me”) German Christians were suddenly awakened by an alarm, occasioned by the imprisonment of many of their leaders, alerting them to commit or not to commit totally to the message that a thousand peacetime sermons joyfully proclaimed. Eventually, a totalitarian autocracy, gone mad with power and hate, awakened the church to its true and only mandate from God: Keep the Gospel message pure, not besmirched or compromised by ideological interests that would silence the singular voice of Scripture. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an anti-Nazi dissident, and key founding member of the Confessing Church was boldly outspoken against Facism. He was hung for his faith. (I was one day old.)

Are we here again? The first amendment rights are being circumvented, as Rachel Campus-Duffy on Fox & Friends compared it, “like Nazi Germany.” “It’s the biggest story you’re not hearing about,” she disclosed. Whereas she was more focused on political rights, there can be no rights at all if our worship of God is in any way impinged upon or diminished. Like Pete Hegseth on the Sunday Fox & Friends reminds us, “Go to church!”

All of Christianity is threatened, Catholic and Protestant faiths alike. Niemöller, a Lutheran, in solitary confinement (two years in and feeling—the word was—“morose” with a growing sense of “futility and hopelessness”) was given a Catholic breviary (for him, a daily devotional of sorts) which he found to be “so refreshing… everything is unambiguously focused on … the Lord Jesus Christ.” “In contrast to Protestantism’s pious impulses,” Hockenos explained, “in Catholicism he [Niemöller] found ‘the living incarnate Word of God.’” Many thought this Lutheran pillar of the Faith was converting to Catholicism but that wasn’t the point.

The point was—and is—that the single message of the Cross, of salvation through Christ, the Savior’s ongoing ministry to the Church, is always alive with inspiration and hope. When we collectively focus on this “common” faith, united as one Body of Christ, the differences—like soldiers in war discover about their ideologies, political affiliations, and religions—are laid aside in a common fight—“the good fight of faith” (1 Timothy 6:12).

I grew up thinking only the “Faith” of the church I attended was the “Full” and only Gospel message and that other “Faiths” were deceptively misleading. We need to rethink this inclination to marginalize other brothers and sisters in Christ because they worship elsewhere. When they come for me, they are really coming for us.

One church I pastored years back (it seems another lifetime ago)—well—the ruling boards sought my removal on doctrinal grounds. When I left, one trustee, in an honest and friendship sort-of way, asked me to consider teaching in a seminary or religious school because he recognized my passion for teaching God’s Word.

I left, however, to pastor another church where one elder was disturbed because I appeared too intellectual, quoting various authors in my sermons and, seemingly, minimizing theology to an “overemphasis” on “living the Word.” A denominational leader—and I must say, caringly—asked me to consider pastoring in a denomination more in line with my beliefs.

It was time for a career change. It seemed a serious education in what is written in God’s Word and an open inquiry into its value threatened denominational autonomy. It seemed that doctrines explained, beyond what was necessary to keep parishioners faithfully coming, posed a quintessential challenge to the church’s very existence. Don’t mention glossolalia in a Baptist church or explain Martin Luther’s fears that led him to a “faith without works” belief. Don’t give a serious rationale to the “confessional” to a non-catholic.

But now, in retirement, I am rethinking all this. Have we not “dumbed downed” a passion for God’s Word among His people in the interest of denominational distinctives, doctrines that support the “mother” church at the detriment of an honest and open understanding of the Word of God?

What bothers me most is a congregant that cannot explain their faith well enough to be convinced of its importance in their own life. I fear some of the laity within Christianity are ill prepared to defend the very message they have been priding themselves on over the years. We have naively been memorizing scriptures not substantiated in real-life. We have depended on raw ritual to sustain us while, I fear, we are entering a time when we must depend on the strength of our faith to steady the helm in a raging sea of opposition to biblical truth—a faith we have neglected. We have organized our religious experiences around doctrines little equipped to keep us faithful in a time of persecution, which just might be afoot.

The church—any church, every church—needs teachers to educate God’s people in the clear, simple, and emphatic message of scripture: in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, in the witness of an Ezekiel and the outcry of the rich man from the beyond to send someone to tell his brothers how wrong he was. We need teachers that are not afraid to step on a few theological toes for the sake of a genuine faith, a living faith, stirred to life within each listener. We need teachers that are not puppets of pet ideas or visionaries of personal achievements, but who will humbly let the Spirit of God do His thing among His people. We need teachers that are less scholars of finance and more scholars of Divine truth, that are willing to sacrifice their own reputations and lives for the same message Jesus sacrificed His!

When I write, I sense, that often my reader’s theological sensitivities are rattled if not offended. But in my defense, it’s not my fault but the language of Scripture that often nuances a word differently from how we are prone to interpret it. Preachers often translate Scriptural thoughts in a way slanted to make more sense to the occidental mind, to the way we think or understand things, even though most Scripture was written to the oriental or (semitic) thinker.

Case in point: There is no Hebrew, Old Testament, word for “promise.” The word “promise” is used five times to translate the Hebrew word into Greek in the Bible but  these leave room for doubt as to the accuracy of the translation. Nowhere does the Old Testament Scripture use the phrase “the promises of God.”

Twice in Esther 4:7 the Hebrew states simply the Haman said to the king. The Greek translation interpreted this as his promise to the king which the English translations kept.

In Psalms 56:8, the New King James Version seems closest, “You number my wanderings; Put my tears into Your bottle; Are they not in Your book?” The Greek is a rather free interpretation of the Hebrew which adds the words, “even according to Thy promise.”

Proverbs 13:12 in the Hebrew, according to the NIV, reads “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” But the Greek reads, “Better is he that begins to help heartily, than he that promises and leads another to hope; for a good desire is a tree of life.”

Amos 9:6 in the Hebrew says, “He [God] builds his lofty palace[unsure of word] in the heavens and sets its foundation[unsure of word] on the earth; he calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out over the face of the land— the LORD is his name.” The Greek says, “He …establishes His promise on the earth [words not found in the Hebrew]”.

In seven different verses the King James uses our word “promise” in the translation. Numbers 14:34 “breach of promise” speaks of God’s opposition. [interesting that the Hebrew word is spelled “NO” In 1 Kings 8:56 the Hebrew talks about God’s “good words.” I can begin to see way the translators might like the word “promises” I will leave you to look up the rest. In each case the English word “promise” interprets the Hebrew word “Word” which in the Greek is the well known theological term “logos.” We know the “Logos” of God is Jesus Himself (John 1:1)! Think about it.

A recognition of God’s Word as His promises to us is best explained in 2 Peter 1:4 “Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises [the actual Greek word], so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.” Jesus was sent as the incarnate or the embodiment of “The Word of God” to bring about our “participation” in His holiness freeing us from a world of “evil.”

What else did He promise? What else should He have promised?

Family was everything in ancient Judean society. Cultural norms as well as laws or policies were inaugurated by God through Moses to safeguard a family’s inheritance from abject and austere poverty where a family had to sell the homestead and their land or even, become another’s servant to pay off debt.

A most noteworthy example of this arrangement is the story of Ruth (Ruth 2:20) in which Boaz, a kinsman of Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law, fulfilled the law in marrying Ruth (Ruth 4:4-5, 9-10). The idea behind this legal provision was to restore a family’s wealth, rescue a family member from poverty or slavery, or to repurchase their possessions to maintain the inheritance and preserve the legacy of another family member. An interesting example is Jeremiah purchasing his uncle’s field, knowing that in 70 years, they will be able to re-own it (Jeremiah 32:6-8).

The language of the Bible had a special word for this arrangement not found in other cultures of the time. The word is redeemer. Clearly, this right of a kinsman [a blood relative], who had the resources, the money, to repurchase the homestead of a family member who has fallen on hard times is peculiarly Scriptural. One could argue that God had another redemption in mind in giving us such a culturally outspoken and unique Old Testament covenantal idea. “I, the LORD, am your Savior and Redeemer” (Isaiah 60:16).

Every Sunday morning, in the church I attended as a lad, we closed the AM service with Psalm 19:14 (it was KJV back then): “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.” At the time, I had no idea how sacred, how special, how very biblical, were these words, ”Lord, my kinsman redeemer.” It is not enough to say, as we have been, Jesus’ death and resurrection redeemed, freed, us from the slavery of sin. He did this as our elder brother (Romans 8:29). He did this as family (Matthew 12:50).

“In Israel, family members were redeemed from a variety of social situations such as debt, captivity, slavery, exile and liability to execution. In the New Covenant, the new arrangement that was validated in Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus is not called our redeemer but our redemption because reference is being made to the method by which He purchased our salvation. “He (Jesus) entered the most holy place once for all time, not by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption.” (Hebrews 9:12) He purchased us with Himself for God! Again, we are family, which explains why through the writings of the apostles we are repeatedly called His brethren, brothers and sisters. [Evangelicals have carried this theme to the present day.]

He is our redemption. He has freed us from a spiritual bondage to sin. “that we may no longer be enslaved to sin” (Romans 6:6). Paul called us, God’s family (Romans 8:15). Peter called us, collectively, a special race of people, a special nation of saints, the kids of the King of kings. We are His possession, His family! “But you are a chosen race [of people], a royal priesthood [saints all, members of the Royal family of heaven], a holy nation, [citizen’s of heaven], [God’s] people, belonging to Him, so that you may spread far and wide how glorious a redemption He gave, [of Him] who called you out of [spiritual] darkness into the incomprehensible light of His glory” (1 Peter 2:9).