“Packaging” the Good News of Christ

In the marketing world, packaging is the “science, art, and technology of enclosing or protecting products for distribution, storage, sale, and use.”

I am sometimes hesitant to apply business principles and metaphors to the church, because I think that can lead to unhealthy practices, but in this case, the parallel easily applies. When it comes to evangelism or sharing our faith with others, all Christians, consciously or otherwise, take part in the process of packaging. We store our beliefs in a certain “package” which we can then share with others.

Unfortunately, on the whole, I think Christians have a major problem with packaging, and often fall into one of two problem areas:

The Not-So-Good News Package

(1) Honestly, I think some Christians don’t want the Kingdom of God to be as large or expansive as God Himself does. Of course, they will affirm that God loves all people and that Christ died for all, but by their actions they suggest that God’s grace is really only intended for the good, moral, “churchy” people. And so, perhaps to reinforce this idea, or to make the inherently appealing Good News a little less appealing, they wrap it up in a package of arrogance, self-righteousness, and hypocrisy. 

And sure enough, people of the world—those who are lost in sin and desperately need what the church is “selling”—take one look at the Not-So-Good News package and easily decide it’s not for them.

The “Better” News Package

(2) Some Christians have just the opposite problem though. Unlike the first group, they really, really want everyone to hear the Good News and accept the grace that God offers, made possible by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. But here’s the problem: Jesus and his disciples actually taught a lot of demanding, exclusive, hard-to-obey ideas, and a lot of the people in the world (and in the church!) don’t want to follow those teachings. So these good-hearted people, wanting to be as appealing to as many people as possible, water down the teachings of Jesus here and there and leave out some of the most objectionable material.

And for some people in the world, this Better News package (“better” because it involves little moral correction or personal sacrifice) looks really good, but when they buy it, they end up settling for a substitute rather than the real thing (which, when you think about it, isn’t good news after all).

The Solution

If we want to be faithful Christians, we need to avoid either extreme. To put it another way, Jesus was characterized by grace and truth (John 1.14), and so our presentation of the gospel should be too. The Not-So-Good News package emphasizes truth at the expense of grace, while the “Better” News package emphasizes grace at the expense of truth. Neither of these alternatives are acceptable. Instead, we need to “package” the Good News as Jesus Himself did—with grace and mercy and love, but also with clear teaching on the personal sacrifice required by real discipleship. 

Some people will look at that package and snatch it up immediately, while others will leave it on the shelf. But that shouldn’t surprise us—they did the same thing with Jesus. Ultimately, as a follower of Jesus, it is not my task to present Christianity in a way that tastes good to others. Rather, it is my task to present it faithfully, and let others decide if they want to swallow it or spit it out.

God and Government

I go back and forth quite a bit in my thoughts on the relationship between God, government, Christians, politics, etc. I read this yesterday in a journal article and found it helpful:

“Jesus lived in a conquered province in an empire whose imperialistic ruler stood for everything that was antagonistic to the revealed faith of the Jews. Jesus was not a revolutionary but instead conformed to the laws of civil government. Nowhere did he denounce the legitimate power of the state. Jesus paid his taxes (Matthew 17.24-27). He recognized the authority of Pontius Pilate, even when Pilate unjustly delivered him over to his enemies (John 19.11). Jesus reminded him, however, that his authority was not autonomous (John 19.10-11) but that it was delegated from the One who was above. Thus, in practice and precept Jesus recognized that the government under which he lived was ordained of God.”

–David Plaster, in Grace Theological Journal 6 (Fall 1985), p. 437.

Jesus: God In Our Neighborhood

Who is God? What is He like? What does He want from me? What does He expect of me? 

These are ancient questions, asked by countless people over thousands of years. But they are also modern questions which people still wrestle with today. We can get answers to those questions and can learn things about God by looking at nature, and by reading about Him in Scripture, but the fullest and clearest expression of what God is like was made available to us through the Incarnation of Jesus. 

The word “incarnation” comes from Latin and literally means “to make into flesh” or “to be made flesh”. The Incarnation is one of the central teachings regarding Jesus, and says that Jesus was the Son of God, but that he “became flesh” and lived life as a man. Jesus was both God and human. 

For many of us, that’s an idea that is pretty straightforward because it’s what we’ve been taught for a long time, but it’s an idea that was debated and argued about for a long time in the early church, and a lot of false teachings came up to try and explain who Jesus really was: 

• Adoptionism said that Jesus was an ordinary man who followed and obeyed the Law so carefully that he became the Messiah and that God “adopted” Jesus as His Son at baptism. So basically this view says that Jesus was a man, but was not really God—it stressed His humanity, but not His divinity. 
• Docetism said that Jesus was a divine being that took on human appearance but not flesh. It comes from a Greek word which means “to seem”, so basically this view says that Jesus seemed like a man but really wasn’t one. Docetism stresses the divinity of Jesus, but not His humanity. 
• Arianism said that Jesus was divine in some sense, but that He was created by the Father, so that He wasn’t an eternal being—He wasn’t God in the same sense that the Father was. 
• Nestorianism said that the Son of God and the man Jesus shared the same body, but were two separate beings within that body with different natures. Almost like Jesus had a split personality. 

That all might start to sound somewhat confusing, and that’s okay, because it is confusing, and I think it illustrates an important point—sometimes we get ourselves into trouble by trying to explain things that we really can’t explain. The Bible really doesn’t try to explain in detail how the Incarnation ‘worked’—how it was that Jesus was both God and human at the same time—it just affirms that that’s who He was. He wasn’t part human and part God, he was completely human and completely God at the same time. So while I can’t fully explain how the Incarnation worked, I can say that the ‘isms’ that we mentioned before are not true, because they deny that Jesus was both fully human and fully God. 

What I think is more important than completely understanding how the Incarnation worked is understanding what the Incarnation means to us as Christians—how Jesus living as a human shows us what God is like and what He expects from us.

The classic passage on the Incarnation is in John 1. There in v. 14 it says, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” 

A lot of times when speaking about the Incarnation, we talk about that first part, “The Word becoming flesh” and that’s an important concept (all of arguments and debates and ‘isms’ mentioned above are based on the first part of the verse), but I want to focus on the second clause, “The Word made his dwelling among us”. 

Here John is using Old Testament language from the time when the Israelites wandered in the wilderness and God dwelt in the tabernacle to explain how God, through Jesus, came down to be among His people in a new way. A more literal translation of the end of John 1.14 would be something like, “he put up his tent among us.” 

The Message, which is a paraphrase translation of Scripture in modern language, says in John 1.14 that the Word became flesh and moved into our neighborhood, and I love that idea—through Jesus, God is no longer Someone who is unknowable or impossible to figure out, because He lives right down the street from us—we can see what God is like for ourselves! 

Shah Abbas the Great of Persia

There’s an old story about Shah Abbas, the great king of Persia who came to the throne in the late 1500s. Shah Abbas was beloved by his people, and he loved them in return, and in order to understand them better, historically we know that he would often disguise himself as a common man and mingle among them. 

The story goes that one day, while visiting a bathhouse, Shah Abbas went down into the cellar and sat down next to the poor man whose job was to keep the furnaces burning to heat the baths. The king quickly struck up a friendship with this lowly laborer, who welcomed his company without having any idea who he was. They became friends and the king returned often to visit the furnace keeper. When mealtime came, the peasant would share his meager food with the king, and the two came to be close.

At last, one day the king revealed his true identity to the man. Shah Abbas expected the keeper of the fire to ask him for a special gift or some favor. Instead, when the man recovered from his shock, his request of the king was for neither wealth nor favors. He simply said: 

“You left your palace and your glory to sit with me in this dark place, to eat of my coarse food, to care whether my heart is glad or sorry. To others you may give rich presents, but to me you have given yourself, and all I can ask is that you never withdraw the gift of your friendship.” 

Like the Shah of the story, God put on a lowly disguise and through Jesus, moved into our neighborhood. From there, right down the street, He offers the gift of friendship and as our friend, we are never left to wonder what He is like, or what He wants from us. 

You want to know what God is like? Look at Jesus. You want to know how God wants you to live? Look at Jesus.

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Christmas 1914 and the Hope for Peace

British and German officers on the Western Front during the Christmas Truce of 1914.

The Christmas Truce of 1914 is fairly well-known; my brother once wrote about it here:

“The First World War broke out in August of 1914. Many rushed to war almost gleefully, confident in victory for their particular side. Many thought the war would be over by Christmas. But when Christmas came the war was still young. It would last another four years and claim the lives of some 8 million soldiers before it was through. 

In the midst of this bloodshed, though, a remarkable thing happened. In many places along the Western Front, particularly where the British and the Germans faced each other, unofficial Christmas truces were made in 1914. And here, for a brief few hours, the killing ceased.  

Instead of firing bullets at each other, the mortal enemies sang Christmas carols to one another on Christmas Eve. German soldiers even decorated their trenches with candles and with Christmas Trees—tannebaum, they called them. On Christmas morning, soldiers from both sides met in no man’s land and exchanged what gifts they had: buttons and medals, candy and tobacco and liquor. Soldiers who had once been barbers gave free haircuts. One German soldier who had been a juggler in happier times gave a performance in no man’s land.  

The goodwill between enemies was only temporary. In a matter of days they were back to the grim business of trying to blow one another apart. But for a few brief hours, the influence of the Prince of Peace had been felt.”

Moments like these where the Kingdom of God breaks into the twisted and fallen world in which we live don’t seem to come often enough. But they are made possible by the fact that 2000 years ago, the Word became Flesh and the Son of God came to earth. The baby Jesus grew to be a man, lived a perfect life, and then died on our behalf, and for Christians, that is a source of great hope. 

A lot of times we don’t understand the concept of biblical hope very well, because in everyday usage, the word hope means something very different than what it means in the Bible. We use hope as a synonym for wish, as in “I hope I win the lottery”, or “I hope our economy gets better soon”—both of these are things that people wish would happen, but they don’t actually expect either of them to happen.

Biblical hope is something different though—it is a confident expectation of something that will happen because it has been promised by God. And the entrance of Jesus into the world and his subsequent death and resurrection are a source of great hope for Christians because they make possible a Day of Peace—a day when there will be no more suffering, no more disease, no more school shootings, and no more war. For those who have made peace with God, it is a day to look forward to—an everlasting day which will find the faithful in the presence of the Heavenly Father. That’s the hope—the confident expectation— that Christians have. 

And in the meantime, as we wait for that day to come, Christians have a lot to do to keep busy:

–We gather together to remind one another of that hope and to pledge our devotion to the cause of Christ…

–We work to instill the values of the heavenly Kingdom into our earthly surroundings, so that our friends and neighbors can taste the peace of God for themselves…

–And we celebrate the small down payments on the promise of peace that God has given us…such as the few blessed hours when the armies of the world ceased their strife and remembered the Baby of Bethlehem.

Merry Christmas to you and your family this holiday season! Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and good will toward men!

A God Who Is Not Far From Us

St. Paul Preaching in Athens, by Raphael

In a well-known passage in Acts 17, Paul addresses the Areopagus in Athens:

“Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.”

The Greeks were a very religious people—I can remember studying in school about the various Greek gods and goddesses—and Athens was filled with temples, statues, and idols in honor of them. Apparently, in addition to these deities, they even worshipped an “unknown god”, I guess to make sure they didn’t leave anyone out.

But the point that Paul tries to make to them is that they did leave Someone out—the most important Someone of all—the God who made the world and everything in it. The Greeks were ignorant of this God…

Being ignorant of God—what He is like and what He desires of us—is a problem that was not specific to the Greeks. It’s a recurring problem that has appeared throughout history. And when it’s up to us to determine what God is like and what He wants, sometimes we end up in some pretty dark places.

Chichén Itzá was a pre-Coumbian Mayan cultural center located on the Northern Yucatán peninsula in modern day Mexico. Today it is a popular tourist attraction and every year thousands of people go and visit the ruins.

The Yucatán is a dry area with no rivers above ground, but despite this, Chichén Itzá was able to thrive as a major Mayan city because of the existence of a certain type of geological formation called a cenote. A cenote is a sinkhole which had formed in the limestone foundation and contained groundwater. There are several cenotes throughout the Yucatán, and at Chichén Itzá, there were two cenotes which were substantial in size and would likely have contained adequate drinking water year round for the people of the city.

Cenote Sagrado, believed to be the home of the Mayan rain god,  Chaac.

However, of the two cenotes, only one was used for drinking water, because one of them was believed to be the home of the Mayan rain god, Chaac. In order to keep Chaac happy and the rain plentiful (and plentiful rain was a big deal in such a dry area), the Mayan people would offer human sacrifices. These sacrifices, often children, would be weighted down with gold and silver jewelry and then tossed down into the cenote where Chaac was thought to live. Hundreds of years later, when the area was excavated by archaeologists, many tiny skeletons, as well as the treasure that dragged them to their deaths, were found.

Senseless deaths…sacrifices made in order to appease a god they didn’t understand, whose will they had to guess at.

We hear that and perhaps it’s easy for us to dismiss that example as being far removed from our own circumstances, but it’s not an isolated incident—people have often justified terrible actions because they thought they were doing what God wanted: fighting in the Crusades…buying and selling people based on the color of their skin…blowing up abortion clinics…flying airplanes into skyscrapers.

When it’s up to us to determine what God is like and what He wants, sometimes we end up in some pretty dark places.

But reading further in Acts 17, Paul says that it doesn’t have to be this way—we don’t have to be ignorant of God. He tells the people of Athens that God is “not far from each one of us”, and that we are His offspring.

And then, speaking of Jesus, Paul goes on to say that God “has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him [Jesus] from the dead.”

Paul’s claim that God is not far from us finds fuller expression in the classic passage on the Incarnation in John 1. There, in verse 14 we read, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”

A lot of times when speaking about the Incarnation, we talk about that first part: the Word becoming flesh. That’s certainly an important concept, but I want to focus on the second clause: the Word made his dwelling among us. Here John is using tabernacle language to explain how God came down to be among His people in a new and special way. A more literal translation would be something like, “He pitched His tent among us.”

In The Message, Eugene Peterson says that “the Word became flesh and moved into our neighborhood”, and I love that sentiment—through Jesus, God is no longer a mysterious stranger Whom we don’t understand, because He lives right down the street from us—we can see what God is like for ourselves! 

The wonderful news of the Incarnation is that the God who does not wish to be far from each of us put on flesh, and Jesus took up residence in our neighborhood. From there, He offers the gift of friendship, and as our Friend, we are never left to wonder what He is like, or what He wants from us.

Church Signs Revisited

I have previously shared my thoughts about church signs—you know, the ones where you can change the letters and put up (ideally) clever or inspirational messages.

Generally speaking, I’m not a big fan of them because I tend to think they have more influence in a negative sense than a positive one. In other words, people driving by are more likely to be turned off by a hokey saying on a church sign than they are encouraged by a thoughtful one.

Sometimes, though, a church sign goes beyond being hokey or lame and actually promotes bad theology. I saw an example of that this week. A church sign in my neck of the woods is currently displaying the following message:

RELIGION: A MIRAGE
JESUS: A REALITY

This is yet another manifestation of a common theme that you hear these days, where people are desperately trying to divorce Jesus from the church, or separate being religious (which is supposedly a bad thing) from being spiritual (which is supposed to be the ideal). There was even a YouTube video on this topic that went viral a while back (see this article which has the video embedded along with an excellent response).

Here’s the key point though: the whole Religion vs. Jesus thing is a false dichotomy because you don’t have to (and in fact, can’t) choose between them. Jesus himself was very religious (and spiritual!). Furthermore, the church was purchased with his blood (Acts 20.28), so it has great, great value to him.

End of rant.

Is God On Our Side?

Joshua and the Commander of the Army of the LORD

“God is on our side.”

It’s a phrase you hear often (or something like it) in Christian books, music, and teaching. It’s a popular notion, and why wouldn’t it be? Of course we like the idea of having God on our side! But is it biblical?

The Book of Joshua recounts the efforts of the Israelites (God’s chosen, set-apart people) as they work to accomplish their (divinely-appointed) mission to conquer the land of Canaan (the land which God had promised to give to them). If there was ever a time of God being on “our” side, you’d expect to find it here. 

As Joshua is about to lead the people over the first big hurdle of the Conquest, the defeat of the city of Jericho, he has an interesting encounter (Joshua 5.13-15):

“When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand.  

And Joshua went to him and said to him, ‘Are you for us, or for our adversaries?’ And he said, ‘No; but I am the commander of the army of the LORD. Now I have come.’ 

And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him, ‘What does my lord say to his servant?’ And the commander of the LORD’s army said to Joshua, ‘Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.’ And Joshua did so.”

It’s interesting to me: Joshua asks the man if he is on the side of the Israelites, or on the side of Jericho, and in response, he says, “Neither; I’m on God’s side, not yours.”

Later on in Joshua 24, Joshua, advanced in age, addresses the people. He knows that he is near death, and is concerned about what the people will do after he is gone (Joshua 24.15-20):

“‘…Choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.’ 

Then the people answered, ‘Far be it from us that we should forsake the LORD to serve other gods, for it is the LORD our God who brought us and our fathers up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight and preserved us in all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed. And the LORD drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will served the LORD, for he is our God.’ 

But Joshua said to the people, ‘You are not able to serve the LORD, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions or your sins. If you forsake the LORD and served foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm and consume you, after having done you good.’”

In response to Joshua’s concern, the people basically say, “Don’t worry about it Joshua—we’ll serve the LORD. After all, He’s always been on our side.”

But Joshua isn’t convinced; he believes that the people won’t be faithful to God and that then they’ll find that He isn’t on their side at all—where He once provided for them and fought for them, He will now withhold blessings and actively fight against them.

And how well Joshua knows his people! Within a generation, they will fall away from following God and as a result, will experience a long period of turmoil and suffering as God allows their neighbors to conquer and oppress them (the Book of Judges, which recounts this time period, is one of the lowest points in all of Scripture!).

So, having said all that, back to the original question: is God on our side? I’d have to answer with a qualified “no.”

First, the qualifications:

I’m not doubting God’s love for us, His interest in our condition, or His saving work on our behalf. I’m not doubting that we can cast all our anxiety on Him, because He cares for us (1 Peter 5.7). I’m not doubting that God is “for us” in a Romans 8 sort of way, or that God doesn’t root for us to be successful (where success is defined in terms of faithfulness).

So what am I saying? Here’s my big point:

Jesus didn’t come to earth to live and die for us because God was on our side. He came so that we could be on God’s side. 

Maybe it sounds like I’m just arguing semantics, but really, I think there’s more to it than that. One perspective is centered on mankind, while the other is centered on God: if God is on our side, then all the focus is on us, instead of on God. But the focus should be on God, not us.

This helps to explain the Israelites in the Old Testament. When they were on God’s side and followed Him faithfully, He blessed them with prosperity and victory over their enemies. When they ceased to be on His side, the blessings ceased as well.

This also helps to put the Incarnation into proper perspective. The Incarnation wasn’t about Jesus becoming a man because humanity is the focus of everything; the Incarnation was about God becoming a man in order that men could become more like God, because God is the focus of everything!

So, with this God-centered perspective in mind, let’s ask the question one last time: is God on our side? According to Scripture, we don’t even have a side; we have to choose a side! The real question is, are we going to choose to be on God’s side, or will we side with the world?

Pardon, not Acquittal: Jesus and the Woman Caught in Adultery

The woman caught in adultery as portrayed in The Passion of the Christ¹

One of my favorite passages in the Bible is generally referred to as “Jesus and the Woman caught in Adultery” and is found in the beginning of John 8:²

“Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. 

The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” 

This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. 

Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. 

But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. 

Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 

She said, “No one, Lord.”And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”

There are several aspects of this passage that make it stand out to me.

The True Colors of the Pharisees

Here the Pharisees, the supposed keepers of the Law, slip up and show themselves to be less concerned with the integrity of the Law than they are in trapping Jesus in a difficult situation. You see, the Law of Moses did require that a woman caught in adultery be put to death, but it also required the same punishment for the man (Leviticus 20.10; Deuteronomy 22.22).

Since the woman was “caught in the act of adultery,” the Pharisees clearly knew who the other guilty party was, and by not bringing him forward for punishment, showed that they weren’t too concerned with what the Law said. Instead, they were trying to trap Jesus between a rock and a hard place, forcing him to either disregard the Law of Moses, or be the one who pronounced the woman’s death sentence (and thus, likely cause problems for him with the Roman authorities).

Writing on the Ground

Twice in this passage, it specifically mentions Jesus stooping down to write with his finger on the ground. It’s an interesting detail that is included, and helps the scene come to life for the reader. Scholars and commentators have pounced on this little detail over the years and offered various interpretations of it.

Some have suggested that Jesus was writing out the 10 Commandments; others have argued that this was an explicit reference to Jeremiah 17.13, where those who forsake God are “written in the dust”, and that Jesus is making a specific judgment against the Pharisees. I once read a short story called Las Palabras in la Arena (Words in the Sand), in which the words Jesus writes are actually the specific sins of the scribes and Pharisees who have brought the adulterous woman.

All of these suggestions (and others have been made as well) are interesting and, I guess, possible, but ultimately, we aren’t told what it is that Jesus writes on the ground. Personally, I’ve always been inclined to think that perhaps Jesus didn’t write anything of consequence on the ground at all, but just the act and the pause it produced helped to diffuse the energy and volatility of the situation and made the Pharisees more prepared to hear and respond to what Jesus says.

Pardon, Not Acquittal

The story of Jesus and the Woman caught in Adultery ends on a high note, as Jesus’ response to the Pharisees leaves them speechless and causes them to leave the scene, one by one:

Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 

She said, “No one, Lord.”And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”

What Jesus says here is incredibly important—Jesus pardons the woman, but He doesn’t say that her sin doesn’t matter or that it isn’t a big deal. Instead, he specifically addresses the sin—by telling her to “sin no more,” He indicates that He knew that she was indeed guilty of adultery and that she needed to change her life.

Which leads to an important idea that is central to the Gospel—Jesus offers us pardon, not acquittal. He doesn’t come to us and say, “Your sin is not a big deal; no crime has been committed, you are innocent.” Instead, He says, “Your sin is significant; it must be paid for, but you don’t have to pay the price.”

Our sin is such a big deal that Jesus paid the price for it on the cross; because of that sacrifice, pardon can be offered to the adulterous woman, and to the rest of us as well.

• • •

1The Passion of the Christ portrays the woman caught in adultery as the same person as Mary Magdalene. This is depicted often in Christian art and church tradition, but there is no biblical support for it.

2This might seem like an odd statement, since a lot of early New Testament manuscripts do not contain the story of the woman caught in adultery at all (most modern translations either set the passage off in brackets or include it in a footnote), and some scholars would argue that this story should not be in the Bible at all. It seems likely to me that this story wasn’t originally in the Gospel of John, but I agree with this author who believes it belongs in the Gospel of Luke.

Guts Enough Not To Fight Back: Jackie Robinson

Jackie steals home against Yogi Berra and the Yankees in the 1955 World Series.

As a general rule in college and professional sports, teams retire the jersey numbers of the all-time greats who played for them. For example, no Chicago Bull can wear number 23, because that was Michael Jordan’s number and it has been retired. No New York Yankee can wear number 3, because that was Babe Ruth’s number and it has been retired. If you play Major League Baseball, regardless of what team you play for, you can’t wear the number 42, because that was Jackie Robinson’s number, and it is the only number to be retired by Major League Baseball.*

Sixty-five years ago yesterday, on April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson donned that number 42 Brooklyn Dodgers jersey and appeared in his first regular season Major League game, breaking baseball’s racial color barrier.**

Robinson’s Hall of Fame career and handled himself on and off the field opened doors for other black athletes in professional sports (and ultimately many other fields as well), and it has been said that only Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. accomplished more for the American Civil Rights Movement than did Jackie Robinson.

Before he signed a contract to play for the Dodgers, Robinson was called into the office of Team President and General Manager Branch Rickey. To give him a taste of what it would be like to be the only black player in the Big Leagues, Rickey spent three hours taunting and insulting Robinson, calling him every racial slur he could think of. Rickey then told Robinson that this is what he would face every day on the field, and that if he wanted it to work out, he would have to promise not to fight back or respond to insults of any kind for the first three years of his career.

Robinson, who possessed a fiery temperament and was very outspoken, was put of by this and asked, incredulously, “Mr. Rickey, are you looking for a player who is afraid to fight back?”

Branch Rickey replied, “No, I want someone with guts enough not to fight back.”

After some deliberation, Robinson agreed to Rickey’s terms, and he lived up to them on the field. When opposing baserunners tried to spike him when sliding into second base, he didn’t fight back. When fans and players yelled and cursed at him and even questioned his very humanity, he showed them how wrong they were by taking the moral high ground.

He had the guts not to fight back.

What Branch Rickey told Jackie Robinson reminds me of Jesus’ words in The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:

“But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.”

The world tells us to stand up for ourselves when we are treated unjustly. It tells us to have the courage to fight back and not let others push us around. On the other hand, Jesus tells us to have the courage to show that we are different from the world because we don’t fight back, and He tells us to forgive others when they mistreat us.

Jesus wants followers with guts enough not to fight back.

•   •   •

* Yesterday, to commemorate the anniversary of Robinson’s first game as a Dodger, this prohibition was temporarily lifted as representatives from each Major League team wore number 42 in his honor.
**Contrary to popular belief, Robinson was not the first African-American to play in the Major Leagues. That honor goes to Moses Fleetwood Walker, who played for the Toledo Blue Stockings in 1884. Regardless of this, Robinson was the first African-American to play Major League Baseball in the 20th century, and it was his breaking of baseball’s color barrier that led to the permanent integration of the Major Leagues.

Why Non-Christians Don’t Like Christians

For the purposes of this post, I am using the term “Christian” in the broadest sense. After all, many of those who aren’t Christians don’t understand the (significant) differences within Christianity anyway.

Generally speaking, I think there are two main reasons why a lot of people don’t find Christians to be very likable:

(1) It can be hard for people to like Christians when they don’t resemble Christ. Another way of saying that is people can’t stand it when Christians are hypocrites:

–When it turns out that famous televangelists have been cheating on their wives for years or embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from their viewers, it turns people off of Christianity.

–When Catholic priests who are supposed to be caring for the members of their parishes turn out to be pedophiles who prey on innocent children, it turns people off of Christianity.

–And perhaps a little closer to home, when Christians spend their Sundays worshipping God and the rest of the week denying Him by lifestyles of materialism, gossip, judgment, and immoral behavior, it turns people off of Christianity.

Non-Christians aren’t the only ones who are turned off by such people—God has never been pleased with people who honor Him with their lips but have hearts which are far from Him (Isaiah 29.13), and Jesus would prefer that such Christians quit pretending to follow Him and get out of the Church (Revelation 3.16)!

Mahatma Gandhi famously summed it up this way:

“I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

On a fundamental level, we as Christians are supposed to resemble Christ. Certainly all Christians fail to do that from time to time, but when we do so repeatedly as a way of life, we invalidate what we claim to be most important.

(2) It can be hard for people to like Christians when they do resemble Christ. This point might be harder for some to understand, so bear with me.

When trying to peg why the world doesn’t like Christians, I think a lot of people easily identify hypocrisy in the church (after all, we hear this reason all the time) and think that the way of Christ is only unappealing to people because we fail to live it correctly.

The thing is, sometimes when we do live as Jesus calls us to, people still don’t like Christians. A good example of this today would be Tim Tebow—although he has a ton of fans, he also gets a lot of negative attention and a lot of people say terrible things about him, not because of his play, but because of his Christianity.*

It might be surprising to us that a lot of people don’t like us for living the way Christ has called us to, but it really shouldn’t, because Jesus Himself explicitly said that it would happen!

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.” (John 15.18-20)

It’s hard for us to remember this sometimes, but when Jesus was on earth, a lot of people didn’t like Him at all—they disliked Him so much, in fact, that they conspired to have him killed! If we seek to exemplify Jesus in our daily lives, a lot of people won’t like us any more than they did Him.

So, if some people won’t like us if we don’t act like Christ, while others won’t like us if we do, where does that leave us? Basically, there will be people in the world who dislike us no matter what. As Christians, we need to make sure that if the world doesn’t like us, it’s because we do look like Jesus, not because we don’t.


*Certainly people criticize Tebow for his quarterback play as well (and that might even be the main source of the criticism), but some people criticize Tebow specifically for his character or his faith. All of this despite the fact that Tebow uses his fame and wealth to help those who are less fortunate, by all accounts is a genuinely nice guy, and doesn’t at all seem to be hypocritical about his faith.

Jesus as the New Bethel

“Jacob’s Dream at Bethel,” 5th Century, Unknown Artist

The Gospel of John is one of my favorite books in the Bible, and one of its special characteristics is that, more than any other, it emphasizes the divinity of Jesus. This is done over and over again and in many different ways, but one interesting way it does so is through an allusion in John 1.47-52.

Here, Jesus calls Philip to follow him, and then Philip subsequently goes and recruits a man named Nathanael as well. Nathanael is skeptical that Jesus, from the lowly town of Nazareth, could be the Messiah whom Moses and the prophets had proclaimed, and so Philip invites him to go and see Jesus for himself:

“Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, ‘Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!’ Nathanael said to him, ‘How do you know me?’ Jesus answered him, ‘Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.’ Nathanael answered him, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’’ 

Although Nathanael was really impressed that Jesus knew what he had been doing before they had even met, Jesus basically told him that he hadn’t seen anything yet:

“Jesus answered him, ‘Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.’ And he said to him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.’”

If you know your Old Testament, then the imagery of heaven opening up and angels ascending and descending is probably very familiar to you, and it almost certainly would have been familiar to Nathanael. It likely was an allusion to Genesis 28, where Jacob, while on a journey to Haran to stay with his uncle Laban (and ultimately get married), stops to sleep for the night, using a stone for a pillow:

“And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it!”

At the top of the ladder, the Lord appears, and basically reaffirms to Jacob the same promises that He had previously made to Abraham and Isaac. When Jacob awakens from his sleep, he realizes that something significant has happened:

“‘Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.’ And he was afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’”

The next morning Jacob takes his stone pillow and sets it up as a monument, naming the place “Bethel,” which means “house of God.”

The language of Genesis 28.12 and John 1.51 is so similar that it seems clear that Jesus was intentionally alluding to Jacob’s dream. So what does the connection mean?

In Jacob’s dream, a ladder connected earth (where Jacob is) and heaven (where the Lord is), and angels ascend and descend upon the ladder. Jacob is awed by what he sees. In John 1, Jesus paints a similar picture for Nathanael: the heavens open, and the angels of God are ascending and descending. The difference is that now, instead of ascending and descending upon a ladder, the angels are doing so upon the Son of Man—Jesus himself.

The implication is that Jesus is the New Bethel. This is the greater thing that Nathanael will get to see: just as Bethel was the place where the heavens were connected to earth, so Jesus is the medium through which heaven and earth, and God and man, are brought together.¹

The Gospel of John affirms here as it does elsewhere that Jesus was unique—as the Son of God, his roots were in heaven, but as a human, he also put down roots on earth. This enabled him to carry out the work of reconciling the world to its Creator (cf. 2 Corinthians 5.18-19).

• • •

1F. F. Bruce, The Gospel of John, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 62: “In this application of Jacob’s vision, however, the union between earth and heaven is effected by the Son of Man: he is the mediator between God and the human race.”

Book Review: Jesus and Jonah by J.W. McGarvey

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I wanted to do a better job in 2012 of writing about some of the books I read. I’m not sure how well I will stick to that goal for the year, but here’s a brief review of one book I read last month.

Jesus and Jonah was published by J. W. McGarvey in 1896, and was actually a compilation of several articles he wrote in The Christian Standard. McGarvey is a well-known author and scholar within the Restoration Movement (and close associate of Robert Graham), and was one of the first conservative scholars to actively oppose the trends of liberal theology and higher criticism that were growing in popularity around the turn of the 20th century.

In Jesus and Jonah, McGarvey argues against a ‘symposium’ of scholars who had denied the historicity of the biblical account of Jonah. 

The book isn’t exactly a page-turner—McGarvey spends the majority of the book examining the arguments of the scholars he disagrees with, and as those scholars basically all use some form of the same 2-3 arguments, McGarvey’s responses quickly become repetitive. Nevertheless, McGarvey’s argument is sound—since Jesus certainly seems to consider the Jonah account to be historical in Matthew 24.38-39, those who argue that it isn’t are basically forced to hold to one of two positions:

• Jesus spoke of the events of Jonah as if they were historic when He knew they were not, in which case He was being deceptive (McGarvey makes this point especially well).
• Jesus spoke of the events of Jonah as if they were historic because He thought they were, but was mistaken. This position raises lots of questions about the nature of Jesus and the knowledge He possessed while on earth (these are questions which are easily dismissed by a lot of liberal scholars today who question or reject the divinity of Christ, but would not be as easily dismissed by the less radical scholars McGarvey was addressing in Jesus and Jonah).

All in all, Jesus and Jonah was a worthwhile read—a short book which, in my opinion, successfully achieved its aim (refuting the argument that Jonah wasn’t historical) and also provided an interesting analysis of the biblical Jonah story.

Living From Jefferson’s Bible

If you know much about Thomas Jefferson (beyond the fact that he was instrumental in the crafting of the Declaration of Independence and later became the third President of the United States), you’re probably aware that he is well-known for his unorthodox religious ideas.¹

Among other things, Jefferson’s worldview was heavily influenced by Enlightenment thought, and caused him to dismiss the miraculous elements of Christianity as unbelievable. Corresponding to his beliefs, Jefferson created his own version of the New Testament, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. Using a razor, Jefferson literally cut out the parts of the Gospels that he didn’t like (things such as the incarnation, miracles, divinity, and resurrection of Jesus) and created a new book that was more palatable for him.

Christians today who claim to live according to the teachings of the Bible find this to be absurd—obviously you can’t just pick and choose which biblical teachings you wish to follow. After all, at the point when you start dismissing certain teachings because you don’t like them, you’ve basically ceased to follow the teachings of Scripture altogether and have turned yourself into the ultimate source of authority.

And yet…

For all of our insistence that we live based on the teachings of Scripture, if you look at the lives of Christians from a broad perspective, I would suggest that we, too, are guilty of creating our own versions of what the Bible says. We might not physically cut out passages with razorblades, but we practically do the same thing by ignoring certain teachings and living our lives in clear violation of others.

Probably there are many such teachings that we could use to illustrate the point, but just limiting ourselves to the words of Jesus, we can easily find several examples:

(1) Jesus’ Teachings on Divorce—

Statistics show that up to half of first marriages end in divorce, and subsequent marriages are even more likely to fail.² Furthermore, religious belief doesn’t seem to have a great impact on these statistics, as conservative evangelical Christians are only marginally less likely to get divorced than non-believers.³ How do those statistics mesh with the teachings of Jesus?

At one point in His ministry, Jesus was asked if it was lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all. He responded by saying that, “Anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery.”⁴

In our current climate of widespread divorce for a variety of reasons, this isn’t a passage that is talked about too often, and when it is discussed, it’s often explained away—I recently heard an intelligent, well-educated Christian minister argue that perhaps Jesus wasn’t limiting “unfaithfulness” to sexual immorality, but was also including “emotional unfaithfulness” as a legitimate reason for divorce. Although I am no expert on 1st century Jewish life, the idea of “emotional unfaithfulness” is a modern Western concept that is completely foreign to the New Testament text. In the context of Matthew 19.4-6, where Jesus talks about man and wife joining together to form one flesh, it is an explicit sexual reference. The unfaithfulness that He mentions in v. 9 (or “immorality” in the NASB) is clearly sexual unfaithfulness—Jesus is saying that the only legitimate reason for divorce is once spouse cheating on the other sexually.

This is undoubtedly a hard teaching for us to accept (as it was for Jesus’ original audience—see v. 10)—but does that give us license to ignore it?

(2) Love Your Enemies—

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has a good deal to say about how we should respond to people when they mistreat us, and how we should feel about our enemies in general.⁵ Maybe we struggle to identify “enemies” in our everyday lives, but once again, this is a teaching of Jesus that we often neglect.

For example, I hear lots of public prayers on behalf of “our servicemen and women overseas” but I rarely (if ever) hear prayers for the individuals that those men and women are fighting against.

Certainly I have no problem with praying for US military personnel, but shouldn’t we pray for the other side as well? Regardless of how we feel about militant terrorists (and let me assure you, I’m not filled with warm feelings for them), isn’t this exactly the sort of thing Jesus was talking about?

(3) Treasure in Heaven—

Also in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus urged His audience to focus on building up spiritual wealth rather than the accumulation of earthly treasure.⁶ And this was not an uncommon topic—Jesus spoke about money a lot, and surely His teachings have implications for us, people who claim to follow Jesus who also live in the wealthiest society in the wealthiest time in history.

And what do those teachings say? Over and over again, they are consistent: spending our lives chasing after and accumulating possessions is foolish and wrong, greed is a sin, and we should use what we have to bless others.

I’m not denying the importance of good stewardship and providing for our families, but when multitudes of people around the world are dying due to starvation, contaminated water, and preventable diseases, how big of a house, how many cars, or how much money in the bank do we accumulate before stewardship becomes idolatry?


I could go on, but if you’re the average Christian, I’ve probably already stepped on your toes by now (I know I’ve stepped on my own).

I think living according to the teachings of Scripture is a noble pursuit, and for the Christian, is a necessary one. But by all means, let’s not get so wrapped up in talking about following God’s Word that we neglect actually doing it.

• • •

¹ Jefferson is often described as a Deist, but this might be an oversimplification of his religious views. Regardless, he was certainly influenced by deist thinking.
² http://www.divorcestatistics.org/
³ http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/15-familykids/42-new-marriage-and-divorce-statistics-released
⁴ Matthew 19.1-12.
⁵ Matthew 5.38-47.
⁶ Matthew 6.19-34.

Martin Hengel’s Crucifixion

A while back, I read Martin Hengel’s Crucifixion, which is a short little book that gives scholarly treatment to the practice of crucifixion in the ancient world. In some ways, I was a little disappointed—I had hoped for more of a detailed description of what a “historically accurate” crucifixion looked like, and Hengel didn’t really provide that (largely because crucifixion was a widespread practice in the ancient world that differed depending on time, location, and whim). That being said, the book was very interesting, specifically in three respects:

(1) Crucifixion as a deterrent:
In the Roman Empire, crucifixion was rarely used on Roman citizens and was primarily used on criminals of the lowest classes and slaves. This is pretty common knowledge, and Hengel supports it. What is particularly fascinating is the degree to which Hengel argues that the use of crucifixion on slaves was a means of stirring up fear among the enslaved in hopes of preventing any sort of rebellion. In places like Rome, where the slave population outnumbered those who were free, the fear of rebellion was real, and keeping the slaves paralyzed with the fear of crucifixion was seen as necessary.

(2) Crucifixion as taboo:
Hengel also makes the argument that crucifixion was so horrific, so feared, and so reviled, that it was essentially the sort of thing that was not talked or written about. This leads to what may seem like a surprising lack of references to it in ancient sources. This lack of references doesn’t mean that the use of crucifixion wasn’t widespread (it was), but simply that it was so horrible that people avoided writing about it:

“Crucifixion was widespread and frequent, above all in Roman times, but the cultured literary world wanted to have nothing to do with it, and as a rule kept quiet about it.”

(Hengel, p. 38)

(3) Crucifixion (of Jesus) as “folly”:
The overarching claim of Hengel’s book is that the Apostle Paul’s claim in 1 Corinthians 1.18 that the “word of the cross is folly” to unbelievers is a reflection of the repeated reception that Paul would have received as he went about preaching the message of a crucified Christ.

Crucifixion was so hated and despised that, for the ancient world, following and worshipping someone who had been crucified was sheer madness—it was not a message that easily attracted followers. This part of the message has been downplayed somewhat today (largely because we fail to grasp the level of shame and horror associated with crucifixion) but at its core, the message of the gospel is completely shocking:

“…In the death of Jesus of Nazareth God identified himself with the extreme of human wretchedness, which Jesus endured as a representative of us all, in order to bring us to the freedom of the children of God…This radical kenosis of God was the revolutionary new element in the preaching of the gospel. It caused offense, but in this very offense it revealed itself as the centre of the gospel.”

(Hengel, p.89)

This last point alone makes Crucifixion worth the read, as Hengel seeks to reclaim the scandal of Christianity as central to the message of the Gospel—God loved us so much that Jesus identified with the lowest extreme of humanity in order to reclaim us.

The Indescribable Gift

Adoration of the Shepherds, Rembrandt van Rijn

Since my brother has apparently reached the point where he is too good to actually write on his own blog, I decided to borrow something he wrote last Christmas which I really liked:

I love the story of the woman in Mark 5 who had a hemorrhage of blood. She had gone to many physicians of her day and spent all of the money she had but the problem had only grown worse. In her desperation she turned to Jesus. She only touched His cloak (vs. 27), but this was enough to instantly heal her.

It seems, from reading the text, that Jesus did not purposefully heal the woman. Think about that! What the human experts of her day could not do no matter how hard they tried, Jesus did without even trying.

It is doubtful that Jesus was born in the month of December, much less on December 25th. In a sense then, the association of his birth with this season is unintentional on His part, much like His healing of this woman’s issue of blood was unintentional.

And yet, just as He brought healing to this desperate woman in Mark 5, so too He brings love and peace and goodwill to this season.

Because we associate this time of year with His birth, this is a time when family ties are strengthened and when gifts of love are given—an imitation of the presents brought by the magi given so long ago.

But the ultimate gift associated with the birth of Christ was not the gold, nor the myrrh, nor the frankincense. It was the child Himself.

I like the way the Amplified Version renders 2 Corinthians 9.15: “Now thanks be to God for His Gift, [precious] beyond telling—His indescribable, inexpressible, free Gift!”

Our culture can get awfully mixed up about Christmas and sadly, as Christians, I think we sometimes don’t do much better. Be mindful of God’s indescribable Gift—even if today doesn’t really mark the anniversary of His coming.

Merry Christmas.

Observation #3

If Jesus “went about doing good” (Acts 10.38), He probably wants more from me than just holding the right positions on doctrinal issues.

The Compassion Of Christ

There are a lot of passages from the gospels that I could use to expound upon the title of this post, but recently, I was struck by a passage from the book of Matthew.

Matthew 14 starts off with the narration of the death of John the Baptist. John has been imprisoned for speaking out against the unlawful marriage of King Herod, and now, at the request of Herod’s daughter, is beheaded.

John’s disciples take and bury his body, and then go and tell Jesus what has happened.

The Bible doesn’t tell us too much about the specific interactions between John the Baptist and Jesus, but we know that their ministries and lives were closely connected.

In addition to the fact that they were relatives, we know that John baptized Jesus, and that Jesus later had very complimentary things to say about him, proclaiming in Matthew 11.11, “among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist!”

It shouldn’t surprise us then, that “…when Jesus heard about John, He withdrew from there in a boat to a secluded place by Himself.” (Matthew 14.13)

Jesus was God’s Son, but He was human as well, and sometimes we forget that He felt the same feelings that we do. When He heard that John had been killed, Jesus must have been terribly upset—after all, John was likely a close friend of His and was possibly the one person on earth who somewhat understood Who Jesus was and why He had come. He was upset, and He wanted to be alone.

But by now, Jesus was popular, and the people wouldn’t let Him be alone. When they figured out where He went, they followed on foot. Jesus leaves His boat and comes ashore, and then comes Matthew 14.14, which, in the context we’ve just described, is amazing to me:

“When He went ashore, He saw a large crowd, and felt compassion for them and healed their sick.”

Apparently, at the sight of the people, Jesus immediately forgets His own sorrows and sees only the troubles of those around Him. He feels compassion for the multitudes, and subordinates His own needs to the needs of the people. He heals their sick, and goes on to satisfy their hunger by miraculously multiplying five loaves and two fish.

What an example Jesus provides for us! We should never be so engulfed by personal tragedies, political considerations and economic uncertainties that we lessen our ability to feel compassion for the plight of others around us.

Oh that Christians were characterized by the compassion of Christ!

Change

Fall has been my favorite season ever since I reached the point where I didn’t dread going back to school.

This morning, as I walked out to my car, there was a chill in the air. Outside, some of the more adventurous trees have begun to transition to autumn colors.

It seems like it has taken a while, but fall is surely approaching: the days are getting shorter, the Major League Baseball Playoffs are underway, and in Northwest Arkansas, our drinking water tastes very much like dirt.

Although I enjoy the the change in seasons that we get to experience here in the Ozarks, I am not a fan of change in general. As time passes, I lose touch with old friends, have to say good-bye to lost loved ones, and become increasingly disconcerted by events and developments that occur throughout the world.

In a time filled with constant changes, some of which are very unpleasant, I am always comforted when I remember Hebrews 13.8 which says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

How great it is that in a world where we can’t count on anything to remain constant, the only One who we should count on always will!

Jesus, our Rock and Redeemer, will always be there for us, and His love for us will never change.

Lifehouse “Everything” Skit

My brother sent me this video the other night.

Watch the whole video. It’s a little bit strange at first and it took me a couple of minutes to figure out what was going on, but when it hit me, I thought it was very powerful.



This version adds the passage from Romans 8 at the end, which I thought was very fitting.

A Less Significant Sacrifice

Every six months or so, we have a blood drive at our church, and since I am the type of person who is willing to give blood if it is exceptionally convenient, I donated at our blood drive yesterday afternoon.

If you’re lucky, you get a free t-shirt when you give blood, and yesterday, I was lucky (or so I thought). I didn’t really look at it until I got home. It said, “He gave His. I gave mine,” and then had a Jesus fish underneath it.

I dunno, there’s something about comparing my convenient gift of a superfluous pint of blood to Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for all mankind that just irks me.

Design a new t-shirt.