“Therefore the LORD Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel.” Isaiah 7:14 NASB

Immanuel – Today is the celebration of what was once Saturnalia. Yes, now we call it Christmas and pretend that it is the day of the incarnation, the birth of God the Son, known in the first century as the Jewish, human, Messiah. We ignore the fact that this ancient festival was a celebration of pagan origins revolving around the rebirth of deities worshipped in cultures outside of Israel. After all, we have transformed this rather hideous ritual into a Christian one, no longer filled with moral depravity and ethical exemptions. We could study the history and discover just how despicable the real tradition actually was, but since we don’t do those things (now), what does it really matter? We might even agree that historically this is probably not the day of the birth of the universal Christ, but what does it really matter? One day is just as good as any other if you don’t know the real day, right? And besides, it’s just tradition. What’s wrong with that? Everyone has traditions.

So let’s set aside all this history and concentrate on the texts that are used to support the miracle. Isaiah’s two passages about a child named Immanuel (7:14 and 8:8) are referenced in Matthew 1:23. Obviously Matthew thought it was relevant. But what did Isaiah think?

The history of the debate about the meaning of ‘alma versus bĕtûlâ is well documented. TWOT offers some helpful analysis.

Since bĕtûlâ is used many times in the ot as a specific word for “virgin,” it seems reasonable to consider that the feminine form of this word is not a technical word for a virgin but represents a young woman, one of whose characteristics is virginity. This is borne out by the fact that the LXX translates it as parthenos in two of its seven occurrences, and that its use in Isa 7:14 was quoted to Joseph by the angel as a prediction of the virgin birth.

Some translators interpret Mt 1:22–23 as being simply a comment by Matthew, but it is more reasonable to consider that the argument that convinced Joseph was the fact, pointed out to him by the angel, that such an event had already been predicted by Isaiah. There is no instance where it can be proved that ʿalmâ designates a young woman who is not a virgin. The fact of virginity is obvious in Gen 24:43 where ʿalmâ is used of one who was being sought as a bride for Isaac. Also obvious is Ex 3:8. Song 6:8 refers to three types of women, two of whom are called queens and concubines. It could be only reasonable to understand the name of the third group, for which the plural of ʿalmâ is used, as meaning “virgins.”^[1]

The point is that Matthew’s account views Isaiah’s statement as Messianic. But that doesn’t necessarily imply that Isaiah thought it was Messianic. One of the characteristics of the Messianic prophecies is that they are applied after the fact, as our previous review of Matthew’s use of the Tanakh demonstrates. The description of this child had to mean something in Isaiah’s time in order for it to have any relevance to the audience Isaiah addressed. In other words, the prophecy in Isaiah wasn’t given in a vacuum. It wasn’t a prophecy that could only have relevance to Joseph or the followers of Yeshua hundreds of years later. While Matthew clearly sees it as applicable to Yeshua, that doesn’t mean it is only applicable to Yeshua. In Isaiah’s time, ‘alma might have been understood as a reference to a woman who is to bear a child of some special significance in some extraordinary way as a part of Isaiah’s directive in the days of Ahaz and Matthew appropriated the statement because it also fit what he was trying to communicate. In other words, in one context ‘alma could have been understood as a young woman of marriageable age and in the other context it would mean virgin. No matter how we read the cultural context of the two ages, the point is that it is a miraculous sign, much in the same way that the birth of Isaac is a miraculous sign. In other words, there are precedents, even if they are not exact replications.

At any rate, perhaps the real emphasis is in the name, not in the generating event. Immanuel is important in both contexts because it expresses the unwavering faithfulness of God with His covenant people. The “sign” is a sign of God’s presence despite disobedient rulers, idolatrous practices and the rejection by the polis. That Yeshua continues to fulfill what God promised to Abraham underscores YHVH’s righteousness. The name does not indicate that the person so named is necessarily God, as we see from Isaiah’s second verse. It indicates that God is present with His people as evidenced by the one who carries the name.

Today the Christian world celebrates what it believes to be the arrival of God, but in biblical thought, God never left. His Son represents that fact. Say “Hallelujah!”

Topical Index: Immanuel, ‘alma, bĕtûlâ, Isaiah 7:14, Isaiah 8:8, Matthew 1:23

^[1] Macrae, A. A. (1999). 1630 עלם. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke, Ed.) (electronic ed.) (672). Chicago: Moody Press.

“Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher, “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” Ecclesiastes 1:2 NASB

All – As the religious world finds ease in the holidays of faith, we might usefully take a longer look at the summation of life by the Preacher, Koheleth. Perhaps you know the Hebrew phrase, havel havalim (vanity of vanities). It is essentially the observation that all of life is nothing more than a few breaths. Repeated for emphasis, Koheleth’s declaration forces us to consider the real results of our time in chains here on this earth. “Chains?” you ask. Yes, for as Koheleth notices, what a man gains for all his labor under the sun is, at best, a few days of pleasure, a few nights of rest, one or two descent relationships (which end, by the way) and the inevitable grave. Why work so hard and so long if it all comes down to the worms?

Ecclesiastes is the Greek title to this book. It is derived from a Greek word meaning, “member of the assembly.” But the Hebrew title is simply the name of the author, Koheleth, the Preacher. As Michael Fox notes, “Ecclesiastes is a strange and disquieting book. It gives voice to an experience not usually thought of as religious: the pain and frustration engendered by an unblinking gaze at life’s absurdities and injustices.”[1] Martin Hengel’s seminal work, Judaism and Hellenism, suggests that Koheleth’s work is from a late period (270-220 BCE) when Hellenism’s pessimism began to influence Jewish thinkers. “Hellenistic religion underwent a crisis in the Ptolemaic period, undergoing widespread loss of faith in the traditional gods and their replacement by the impersonal concept of fate. It was an age of considerable skepticism and anxiety about justice, human freedom, and divine care for human beings.”[2] In Hegel’s analysis, the role of the individual emerges, along with the individual’s discouragement about life’s ultimate rewards here and now. What happens after death is a faint hope (perhaps) of an ethereal reward, but what happens here and now is real, substantive and, according to the author, purposeless. In the end, it’s all just passing wind, a moment of relief in a lifetime of toil. According to Hengel, Koheleth voices the cry of the thinker who could “no longer make sense of traditional wisdom and piety, but could not abandon the religion of his ancestors.”[3]

Isn’t that precisely where we find ourselves? Have we not come to the end of the traditional cultural understanding of religion, the Christianized West of our heritage? Have we not found it lacking, both intellectually and spiritually, saturated with bias, politics, empire-building and theological distortion? Have we not reached the place where the world, as explained according to the Church, no longer makes sense? And yet we are not ready to abandon the God of our ancestors, the God of the Hebrews. Everywhere we look, the influence of Christianity as a Western philosophy has created division, destruction and death. Mind you, we recognize that the people who claimed Christ as their savior have been responsible for amazing acts of grace, charity and love. But the history of the Church as a religious organization is quite different. We find it disconcerting that the Church as an organization has abandoned the foundation of God’s revelation in Moses, engaged in synchronistic incorporation of one pagan idea or ritual after another and spread doctrines that are not only incomprehensible but actually dismiss the faithfulness of YHVH by replacing Him with gods of their own making. It’s enough to make us give up on the whole effort.

So Koheleth is our voice. Maybe it comes down to a few days of relief in a lifetime of struggle. Maybe the best we can do is append a few verses to the end of our inquiry exhorting obedience. Or maybe we need such a critical self-examination in order to understand the brokenhearted God of the Bible. Maybe God Himself cannot make sense of the world we have generated. Maybe the world as it is truly is irrational and meaningless.

If that is the final assessment of what we really observe when we take off all the blinders, then perhaps we can appreciate the Greatest Commission: that YHVH is as disturbed as we are about the state of the creation and invites us to actively participate with Him in its restoration. Yes, it is an enormous task. Yes, all around us there is havel havalim. It would be so easy to just give up. But He doesn’t, and we shouldn’t.

Maybe the whole message of Scripture is simply this: Keep going with God.

Topical Index: havel havalim, vanity, Koheleth, Martin Hengel, Ecclesiastes 1:2

[1] Michael Fox, The JPS Bible Commentary: Ecclesiastes, p. ix.

[2] Ibid., p. xxix.

[3] Ibid.

What advantage does man have in all his work which he does under the sun? Ecclesiastes 1:3 NASB

What – Want to try a little exercise? Let’s see what it takes to exegetically analyze this single verse. We’ll take it a step at a time. We’ll attempt to build a model that can be used again and again as we approach Scripture. Ready?

Of course, we have to start with the original text. מַה-יִּתְרוֹן, לָאָדָם:  בְּכָל-עֲמָלוֹ–שֶׁיַּעֲמֹל, תַּחַת הַשָּׁמֶשׁ. Oh, sorry, this copy and paste put the text in LEFT to RIGHT order, which is backwards, of course. As you can also see, it added punctuation (not just pointing). We will have to ignore these problems. Let’s start with the first word, יִּתְרוֹן – מַה.   [Please remember that no matter what I do here, the words are automatically transposed in LEFT TO RIGHT order, so as you see this text, it is actually backwards.  Sorry.]  Actually, the first word is not the construction יִּתְרוֹן – מַה, but rather the interrogative ma. TWOT notes:

This frequently-occurring interrogative pronoun is most significant when associated with the word “name.” “What is your name?” is not a question which inquires after a person’s family or personal name; it endeavors to find what character or quality lies within or behind the person. To ask for simple identification, one would say in Hebrew, “Who (mî) are you?” ^[1]

Applied to our text, we recognize that Koheleth is not simply decrying the futility of toil. The use of ma suggests that he views futility as the character or quality that underlies what it means to be human in this world. The real issue of life is advantage, better translated as “profit,” that is, the results of living. “Why am I here? What is my purpose? Why do I matter? What’s it all about?”

This interrogative is in construction with the noun יִּתְרוֹן (yitron). “The wisdom school, especially Eccl, often employs this root in search of the real advantage or the true excellence in life. Prov emphasizes that abundance can be gained by toil and diligent effort (Prov 14:23; 21:5). But abundance must not become the goal of life, for after necessities have been met that which is left then becomes the inheritance of one’s family (Ps 17:14).”^[2]

But Eccl probes deeper by continually asking what profit does one gain from his toil (Eccl 1:3; 3:9). The answer is nothing, especially if it is to accumulate goods which cannot be taken at death (Eccl 2:11; 5:15). Eccl here feels the full force of the curse on man’s work which makes it toil and he clearly sees that ultimate value can not reside in man’s labor or its results.^[3]

Hartley’s conclusion reaches ahead to the end of the book, but at the moment this opening word doesn’t provide anything more than a rigorous analysis of observable reality. “What is the real result of all my effort?” Strip away the Pollyanna gloss and look at the facts. Life comes and goes. The end is the grave. There is no guarantee of anything else. Advantage? Profit? What’s really left behind? What is the real meaning of my existence? As the Greeks asked, “In a thousand years, who will even know that we were here?” If you haven’t asked these questions, you are in drift-mode, pretending that something matters but you don’t even know what it is. “Abandon hope all ye who enter here,” might be the warning about life rather than Dante’s inscription over the gates of Hell. Socrates pressed the same issue. “The unexamined life is not worth living.”[4]

We should notice the grammar. יִּתְרוֹן – מַה is an interrogative pronoun coupled with a singular, absolute noun. There is no verb here. The “does” in our translation is implied (and added) in order to produce an English sentence, but the Hebrew does not require it. Literally the Hebrew phrase reads, “What gain to the man [la-‘adam].” This is a universal question applicable to all men. It is as if we were walking the road of life and suddenly overcome with the futility of it all, throwing up your hands to heaven and shouting, “What gain?”

Now let’s pay more attention to yitron. We remember that the root yatar (remain over, leave, leave in excess, preserve, escape) is found in a critical story in the Torah. “Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak” (Genesis 32:24). Yatar suggests that Jacob was more than by himself. He was “left over,” that is, he had come to the place where the full meaning of his life to this point was being questioned. He confronted the thought, “What does it all mean?” when the man attacked him in the night. Koheleth pushes us to the edge of the Jabbok where all men must face the meaning of what they have accumulated in order to form an identity, all that they have made of themselves. And now the remainder, the “profit” of life stares them in the face and asks, “What was it all for?”

Next we could connect the occurrences of yatar and ma-yitron in the rest of the Tanakh in order to see the broader development of the idea. There are numerous verses to investigate. Then we would look into the cultural settings and the historical period of each of these occurrences, trying to connect the dots while formulating an Hebraic background to the expression. But by this time you see where we are going. Proceed.

Topical Index: exegesis, ma, yitron, yatar, Ecclesiastes 1:3, Genesis 32:24

^[1] Kaiser, W. C. (1999). 1149 מָה. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament.

^[2] Hartley, J. E. (1999). 936 יָתַר. Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament.

^[3] Ibid.

[4] but see Simon Longstaff, http://www.newphilosopher.com/articles/being-fully-human/

All things are wearisome; Man is not able to tell it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing. Ecclesiastes 1:8 NASB

To tell it – Enjoying the season? Eating too much? Taking a break from the rat-race of work? Ah, just in time to follow the observations of Koheleth once more. Now he turns his attention to one of humanity’s greatest achievements: words.

The opening thought does not restrict futile exhaustion (yegeim) to particular tasks. In fact, Koheleth uses the term devarim, translated “things,” which means both “things” and “words.” His point is that it isn’t only tasks that exhaust us. It is also the plethora of speech, the continuous stream of verbalizations that generate no conclusions. Haven’t we had enough talk? Aren’t you just sick of all the pontificating, arguing, opining, explaining? Michael Fox notes, “In the light of the next sentence, it is better to translate ‘All words are weary.’”[1] The gift that separates human beings from the rest of creation—language—is also the most tedious of all presents. According to Koheleth, the universe without speech might just manage to squeak by, but human beings obscure even the simplest of nature’s wonders with their endless prattle.   Here our exegesis must notice that debar is used for both words and things, both the speech of the mouth and the speaker. It is probably significant that one of the derivations of dabar is midbar, the word for “wilderness.” There is something about human speech that makes life uninhabitable. TWOT notes, “Hebrew also has a root dbb attested in the noun dibbâ ‘whispering, slander.’”^[2] Koheleth would nod in agreement.

This observation allows us to properly understand the next two sentences. Koheleth is not saying that no man can distinguish what is happening (“tell” in the sense of “recognize”). Rather, he is saying that no man can express just how exhausting all these words really are. That would take more words, and continue the endless verbal diarrhea. The grammar does not contain a direct object for ledabber. Therefore, the addition of “it” in the translation is unwarranted. Fox suggests that the better translation is the simple, “Man is unable to speak.” He points out that the reaction is emotional, not investigative. The effort to understand and articulate is just too overwhelming, too complex and twisted. The hard facts of life on earth boil down to this: everything wears us out.

We probably wish we could deny this, but if we are truly honest about our time here, we must admit that it is typically consumed with routine trivia. Insight is rare, awe is unusual and wonder seems to be relegated to special effects in movie fantasies. Even our relationships tend to be swallowed up in petty disagreements, disappointments and dysfunctional behaviors. Koheleth is a student of the obvious but discouraging. He forces us to re-evaluate. Is that a bad thing? It might seem so. After all, his analysis, if true, is almost nihilistic. But perhaps this is precisely the process needed in order to recognize just how much YHVH desires to bring us peace and meaning. Left to ourselves, does life really make any sense? Do things really matter? Koheleth’s contribution is a whack on the side of the head, a kick in the ass. Wake up! Realize what you are really dealing with here. Perhaps you will find that without God’s grace there is little purpose to living. If you want to have meaning in your life, you will need to attach yourself to something much bigger than you.

Topical Index: words, devarim, exhaustion, yegeim, Ecclesiastes 1:8, Michael Fox

[1] Michael Fox, The JPS Bible Commentary: Ecclesiastes, p. 6.

^[2] Kalland, E. S. (1999). 399 דָּבַר. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke, Ed.) (electronic ed.) (178–179). Chicago: Moody Press.

And Jesus answered and said to them, “It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. Luke 5:31 NASB

Are sick – So how do you feel today? Rested? Comfortable? Or maybe your back is a bit sore from holiday exercise. Maybe you ate too much. Maybe you’re coming down with the flu. Time to see the doctor. But if you thought about going to the “Great Physician,” you’ll be disappointed to know that he isn’t seeing patients with physical ailments. No, his practice specializes in another kind of sickness. In fact, if we just read the Greek here, we would have known that. The phrase is kakos echontes, to “have badly.” But the adverb, kakos, comes from a primary root with the same spelling that means, “evil, harm, wicked” and, also, “ill, bad.” As soon as we realize that the Hebrew concept of “sick” is primarily a moral one, we see that Yeshua is not telling us that he came to heal our physical ailments. Of course, he does that, but as a demonstration of YHVH’s graciousness and compassion. No, his principal practice is the healing of moral illness, the inner infection that keeps us from experiencing the full presence of the Father. He treats the Jeremiah syndrome, a disease that affects all humanity.

More than one prophet in Scripture speaks about kakos echontes. They all conclude the same thing: it’s a major problem. But they also notice that, in general, men don’t even think they are sick. Perhaps kakos echontes is more like gum disease than measles. You don’t know you have it until the damage is already done. Perhaps a visit to the periodontist of the soul would help. At least then we would know the symptoms. That’s critically important. Unless we recognize that kakos echontes is present, we won’t know what to do about it. So, what are the symptoms of this ubiquitous malady?

Remember that we are looking at symptoms, not the underlying illness. And the first symptom is most likely the lack of persistent prayer. Heschel once wrote that a man who does not pray cannot know God. In some way not clearly defined, prayer operates more on the one who offers the prayer rather than the one who receives it. Prayer alters our consciousness. The man who has trouble praying is most likely the man who is experiencing distance from the Creator. So number one on your self-diagnosis list might be this: “How easy is it for me to pray?”

Second, we better make a penetrating analysis of our sense of compassion toward others. If the second great commandment is about the other person, and the fulfillment of this intrapersonal empathy is a direct measure of our relationship with God, then the next important question probably should be: “Do I really have a heart full of kindness and compassion for others?” Ah, but that’s an easy one to answer if the “others” are just far enough away. So let’s reword this: “Do I really show a heart full of kindness and compassion for those closest to me?” By the way, the person in your mirror doesn’t get to answer this. The only ones who can give you the proper feedback are the others closest to you. Go ask them.

Third, and this will be all for now (we will probably need some recovery time), one of the symptoms of kakos echontes is fudging with the commandments. If we agree that the commandments are instructions for fulfilled life on earth, and that they represent ways of showing YHVH how much we love Him, then it is moral suicide not to do them. We lock people up who act in ways that are entirely self-destructive, but when it comes to Torah, we have offered two thousand years of psychobabble, theological excuses why we don’t’ have to act in our own self-interest by aligning ourselves with the God of the universe. In other words, kakos echontes appears to be a debilitating mental condition as well because it convinces us that we really don’t need to do what God asks and He will simply overlook the infraction. That’s like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Basically, this kind of action is insane. One symptom of kakos echontes is theological psychosis, the belief that God’s directions for living don’t really matter.

So how do you feel now? Better? Worse? Time to see the doctor? Ah, the doctor who specializes in kakos echontes, of course. No other will do.

Topical Index: kakos echontes, symptoms, Luke 5:31, sick

The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. Ecclesiastes 12:13 NASB

Conclusion – Will you allow me to conclude? Tomorrow is Shabbat, so this is the last day I will write this year. It seems fitting that we follow Koheleth’s summary today. Soph dabar, “the end of words/things.” What has been the end of the matter for this year? Let me offer some personal reflection.

1. Stepping on sacred cows has been painful but necessary. As soon as we relegate some faith statements to the category of unquestionable, we have stepped off the pathway of the pursuit of truth. Yes, it’s scary, but it seems to me that it is unavoidable. The truth cannot harm us. The truth is the only reliable, steadfast way of living. In fact, Scripture tells me that YHVH Himself is truth, so I am quite sure that pursuing the truth will not lead me away from Him. But it certainly seems to lead me away from religion.
2. Relationship is the foundation of all Hebraic thinking. I have found that Brené Brown’s idea of connection is essentially Hebraic. We are hardwired for connection, with others and with God. Wherever that becomes the most important element in life, we grow. When it takes anything less than first place, life diminishes. I must constantly assess my connectedness in order to insure that I am not drifting into a fascinating isolation.
3. I have discovered that the Bible is a story, not a theology. I am learning to read the Bible as a long, lost history of my own ancestors, of their lives, loves and losses, so that I can understand who I am. Theology is interesting, but secondary. Just as life is about present relationships, the Bible is about past relationships. How they formed the worldview of those men and women who came before me. How their lives shape mine. What I am to learn from them. What I know today is that doctrine is not the essence of Scripture. People are. Real people just like me, with real problems, real faults, real struggles and real victories—in connection with a real God.
4. You matter to me. More than I will ever be able to put into words. In fact, Koheleth’s reminder that words are insufferably inadequate helps me appreciate Heschel’s comment, “It is not enough to have met a word in the dictionary and to have experienced unpleasant adventures with it in the study of grammar. A word has a soul, and we must learn how to attain insight into its life.”[1] Each of you has a name, and it is my task to discover the soul behind it, and perhaps help you to discover that soul as well.
5. Finally, I will leave this year, and the day before the last Shabbat of this year, with this, again from Rabbi Heschel. “The Bible is not a system of abstract ideas but a record of happenings in history. . . . Events rather than abstractions of the mind are the basic categories by which the biblical man lives. . . . The God of the philosopher is a concept derived from abstract ideas; the God of the prophets is derived from acts and events. The root of Jewish faith is, therefore, not a comprehension of abstract principles but an inner attachment to those events; to believe is to remember, not merely to accept the truth of a set of dogmas.”[2]

Topical Index: conclusion, soph dabar, Ecclesiastes 12:13

[1] Abraham Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, p. 78

[2] Abraham Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, pp. 12-13.

As we come close to the end of 2016, I thought it useful to articulate as best I can how I approach the Scriptures.  This is really a simplified version of what I think about the paradigms of the authors.  I try my best to figure out what they thought and how they viewed the world, as I believe this is the key to understanding the messages of the Bible.  Some of these points are shared by both Jews and Christians.  Some are not.

1. The biblical text is paradigm dependent.  By that I mean that just like all human language, the meanings of the words are derived from the way the words were used by the author at the time he wrote in his culture.  Sometimes the text is in Greek.  Sometimes in Aramaic.  Sometimes in Hebrew.  But the meaning of the text depends on the ethos of the author regardless of the language he uses.  This means we must know the historical period, the political situation and the human dynamics of the author before we can pontificate about his theology.
2. Since the text itself is a product of the paradigm of the author, an interpreter who does not share that paradigm is likely to misinterpret the text according to the interpreter’s paradigm.  History bears this out.  Examples are prolific.
3. Christian interpretation of the text depends on a Christian paradigm.  Adopting a Christian paradigm presupposes certain views of “Jesus,” Paul and other authors.  In particular, the Christian Church has a long history of interpreting the text according to its doctrinal positions and it continues to do so because it has a vested interest in this paradigm.  But this does not mean that the original authors shared the same paradigm.  In fact, I would argue that the original authors and the original audience did not share this Christian paradigm and it is incumbent on us to notice and articulate the differences.
4. The authors of the text wrote over a long period of time and the message changed in its details during that time.  This was the result of political and social influences as Israel experienced various stages in its development.  Certain critical issues like the idea of the Messiah evolved over time as the thinking of the authors was altered by their circumstances.  This historical development is crucial for understanding the text.  Ignoring it, or interpreting the text as if it were written from a timeless perspective, radically alters the message.  Interpreters today must begin exegesis with the social-political environment of the author.
5. The authors of the text were Hebraic in their point of view regardless of the language they used.  They were devoutly monotheistic, Torah conscious, nationalistic and exclusive.  Any interpretation of the text that steps away from this orientation carries the burden of proof to show exactly why the authors would leave this cultural and historical mindset.  Paradigm conversion explanation cannot rely solely on the text since the proofs from the text will be paradigm dependent.
6. Above all else, the biblical text is the product of actual human beings in relationship with YHVH.  Proper interpretation of the text requires recognition of the human dynamics and emotions of these people.  The text is not raw theology.  It is life experience and any interpretation of the text must strive to understand this human component before theological conclusions can be drawn.

In 2017, I will try to follow these six steps in more detail.  At the end of the day, I am convinced that the fundamental issue is paradigm conversion.  If you can’t see that the Bible is thoroughly Hebrew and Jewish, then you can’t see it–and all of your interpretation of the text will be colored by this blindness.  Of course, you won’t think it is blindness because most of it will make perfect sense in your Christian paradigm.  The same thing can be said for understanding the text as Hebraic and Jewish. It’s not strictly a matter of textual proof.  It is a matter of meta-theology, that is, the interpretative scheme we bring to the text. Issues involving interpretative schemes cannot be settled by textual evidence.  They must be explored by historical examination, culture, probability, external evidence, reasonableness, human dynamics and Spirit.  The point of connection is usually the anomalies created by one paradigm or another.  These are crucial, but they are not enough to force a change in paradigm.  In the end, you have to see it.  How that happens I really don’t know.  But I’m searching.

For it is not an idle word for you; indeed it is your life. And by this word you will prolong your days in the land, which you are about to cross the Jordan to possess. Deuteronomy 32:47 NASB

Idle word – Good morning! Welcome to the thirteenth year of Today’s Word. After the personal journey of 6410 posted studies of Scripture, I have noticed a few things. I’ve noticed that the investigation of some doctrines, particularly those closest to the distinctiveness of Christianity, has generated more comments and more division than anything else. These include the Lutheran idea of law versus grace, the application of kosher rules today, the examination of worship practices and, of course, the Trinity. While I am not surprised, I must admit I am a bit discouraged. Why? Because none of these topics are truly about drawing closer to God. They are topics laced with proof texts, theological arguments and paradigm explanations. But they aren’t filled with an intense desire to seek His presence. At least that’s what I see. So I would like to take a different approach this year, an approach that I believe is necessary for all of us. I intend to step away from the theological and move toward the spiritual.

Yes, I realize that for some of us (me included, once upon a time), theology was spirituality. I’ve spent a great deal of my life in the cognitive world of theology. But I’ve discovered that life doesn’t happen in my mind. All those years left me empty, dissatisfied and alone. Jonathan Sacks pointed out that in the Greek world truth is a system. I am well versed in system. But, as Sacks notes, in Hebrew thinking truth is a story. And stories involve real people in real circumstances. Stories are not mental exercises or abstract principles. When I read the Bible as a story, I find that the men and women in those pages have just as many struggles as I do, are just as misunderstood, just as lonely and just as desperate for the presence of YHVH. In other words, the Bible becomes my story because I am connected to the real people in it. The Bible is a record of the encounter of men and women with their Creator. It turns out to be unpredictable, unnerving, glorious, hideous, frightening and consoling. Just like the way I experience life. In fact, unless I look with theological glasses, I really don’t find much theology. What I find are God’s gracious forgiveness, His explicit instructions and His unwavering faithfulness. What I find is that He doesn’t give up on me.

I want to know the stories of the people of the Bible because I want to know their God. I don’t expect to find lots of perfectly clear answers. I think I am OK with that. Life seems to have fewer perfectly clear answers than I expected. But what I know is this: answers are not substitutes for relationships. I would rather be loved than be right.

Moses told the people what he reveled in from the Lord was not req. The Hebrew word means empty, worthless, and unfulfilled. In other words, what YHVH gave His people were instructions with the explicit purpose of providing a life of meaning, fulfillment and value. That’s what I want. Maybe you do too.

Topical Index: req, empty, unfulfilled, idle, answers, doctrine, story, Deuteronomy 32:47

INTRODUCTION:  Who is Skip Moen?

A few weeks ago I was the guest on a local television show.  The interviewer asked me about my background, my development and approach to Scripture and where I am headed.  You might enjoy the result if you want to know a bit more about me.  Here’s the link.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHJhXUhaMsY

OR you can just CLICK HERE.

You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Exodus 20:13-16 NASB

You shall not – Aviya Kushner notices something odd. “In Hebrew, four key ‘commandments’ are crammed into one verse in Exodus 20.13. But in the 1611 King James Bible, they have more space, with four verses, not one. Each of the four commandments gets star billing, as if each were a lone pole on a prairie of white space.”[1] Kushner finds the English translation inexplicably odd. But, of course, we don’t, because we have always read these as four lone poles on a white prairie. In other words, we never paid any attention to the neighborhood. Perhaps we need to.

I have argued that the emphasis of the Ten Words is Shabbat. The instructions surrounding Shabbat occupy dozens of words while the instructions about murder, adultery, stealing and lying occupy exactly eleven in total. I argued that the audience addressed understood what it meant to murder, commit adultery, steal and lie as part of their cultural experience, but it had been generations since Shabbat was a regular part of their lives as slaves. Therefore, YHVH needed to re-educate His children about Shabbat. Perhaps this argument is valid, but Kushner points out something else. Using the rabbinic rule klal (what is attached to what – observations about word proximity), she follows Rashi in order to answer the question, “Why are murder, adultery, stealing and lying all found in the same verse?” The answer she discovers is that all of these involve the death penalty. That answer, however, is not obvious. It takes a deeper look to see how stealing and lying are connected.

Murder and adultery are fairly straightforward. Other biblical instructions tell us that a murderer must die. And since adultery is the “murder” of the one-flesh covenant between a husband and wife, a man who commits adultery with another man’s wife must die. But since these four commandments are all in the same sentence, then the commandment, lo tignov (You shall not steal) isn’t really about theft. It is about kidnapping because stealing another person requires the death penalty. Yes, there are prohibitions about theft, and there are provisions for atoning for theft, but in this case, the penalty for stealing a person is death. In biblical terms, kidnapping is a form of murder. Similarly, lo ta’ane vereaka ed shaker (You shall not bear false witness) is not about lying but rather about perpetrating a false accusation that results in loss to another, whether reputation, material or financial. In other words, lo ta’ane is about murdering a person’s public or private standing.

What do we learn from this little investigation? First, we learn that even the disaggregation of the words in translation affects how we understand God’s instructions. The words might be translated correctly but the neighborhood has changed and Hebrew communicates through its neighbors, not just its vocabulary. So we will have to read more carefully.

Second, we might not be murderers or adulterers, and we might not be kidnappers in the legal sense, but are we not skirting the edge of the death penalty commandments when we diminish, castigate, impugn or stereotype another person with malice aforethought? How many of us have said something that was intended to falsely accuse another because we wanted to “bring them down a notch”? Have we never acted in such a way that another person’s character or reputation was harmed without justification?

It seems that the Bible wishes to lump these four together. Murderer, adulterer, kidnapper and slanderer. You might be righteous in one of these circles, but can you say the same for all of them? If not, are you then on any more solid ground than those who violate the other three?

Perhaps God lumped them all together because He intends us to see that any violation of the image of God in the other person carries extremely severe penalties. Perhaps we need to see just how close to the edge we are so that we will have hell scared out of us.

Topical Index: commandments, murder, adultery, stealing, lying, klal, Exodus 20:13-16

[1] Aviya Kushner, The Grammar of God, p. 127.

And Jesus said to them, “Nor will I tell you by what authority I do these things.” Luke 20:8 NASB

Authority – We all want to know, don’t we? “Who says so?” The constant insistence on recognized authority. So if I come back with the answer, “Well, I heard it from YouTube,” my claim will probably be dismissed as unreliable—even if it really isn’t. In the academic world we insist on peer review. That means we subject our statements to the verification of other men and women within our field of expertise. They are the authority. Of course, that doesn’t always work so well, does it? Copernicus was rejected by his peer group. So was Einstein. In fact, peer groups tend to be myopically concerned with their current views, usually dismissing someone whose position challenges the common core beliefs. The history of science is full of examples of men who held false theories for decades because everyone else agreed with them. We can easily see the same thing happening in theology. It’s really another instance of paradigm thinking.

But does this mean we just believe whatever we want? Do we wait for that voice from God to tell us what we should believe? Are psychological states an accurate measure of the truth? That hardly makes any sense, as history demonstrates. Plenty of people have been plenty wrong about plenty of things. When the priests and scribes confronted Yeshua about authority, they were asking the same question we ask today: “Who told you these things?” In other words, give us your pedigree so we will know you didn’t just make this up. Behind that question is the more important demand: prove to us that you are in agreement with us.   Show us where your ideas came from so we can feel confident that you have the same sources we do.

I hope that you can see just how circular this really is. It suggests that there really is nothing new, that everything we know has to be connected to everything we already know. The biggest roadblock to learning anything new is precisely what I think I already know. As long as I hold on to my firmly established prior convictions, I will ask only one question. “By what authority?” In other words, I will insist that unless you can show me that your authority is the same as mine or one that I respect, I will discard your idea as irrelevant. My past “knowledge” will prevent me from learning anything new.

Yeshua doesn’t answer his critics. In an amazingly clever rebuttal, he silences their inquiry. But at the same time, he never tells them, or us, where his authority comes from. Why? Why doesn’t he just say, “All power and authority has been given to me by the Father”? That would clear it up. Instead, he says nothing. Rather than give verbal justification, he acts! If you want to know where he got his authority, look at what he does and then draw your own conclusion. Not until after the resurrection does he provide verbal justification. Before the grave it’s all about what he does.

Maybe that’s the lesson for us. Stop talking. Just live it. Let others draw their conclusions from the way we act, not what we say. It is always possible to deny someone’s words. It’s very difficult to deny their behavior. Authority arises from action.

Topical Index: authority, truth, paradigm, Luke 20:8

I am traveling to SE Asia in just two days, speaking in several different countries and visiting the Children Under the Bridge ministry.  When I return, I’ll be ready for the Tacoma, Washington, conference, February 11-12.  This is just a reminder to you that you will need to register for that event (so we can know how many are coming) by going HERE.

Also, for those who use GPS to find the location, the ZIP code is 98405.  We had it wrong on the original announcement.

TACOMA, WASHINGTON – FEBRUARY 11 and 12

PLACE: Salvation Army Community Center,

1110 S. Puget Sound Ave

Tacoma WA 98405

(The Northeast corner of 12th & Union)

SATURDAY 3PM to 6PM and 7PM to 9PM

SUNDAY       10 AM to 12 Noon

YOU MUST REGISTER FOR THIS EVENT.

You may also pay at the door, but you need to let us know you are coming so we will have space for you.

Contact Michael Moen

moenm33@yahoo.com

407 405 6005

The cost to attend is $20 for 1 session, $30 for all 3.

saying, “If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes. Luke 19:42 NASB

Make for peace – Not much has changed in the twenty centuries since Yeshua addressed these words to his accusers. We still seem to have no idea what things make for peace. Everywhere we look, violence and anxiety increase. Everyone cries for peace but even at the simplest personal level, peace seems to be very hard to find. What did Yeshua know that we don’t? Why did he rebuke the Pharisees for their lack of insight? We have to explore the context in order to have even an inkling of what is at stake.

The event begins with Yeshua’s final entry into Jerusalem. As he rode down the Mount of Olives, the crowds began to shout joyfully, praising God for all that they had witnessed. Some of the Pharisees criticized them, imploring Yeshua, the leader, to instruct his disciples to be silent. Why would these Pharisees even suggest such a thing? Wasn’t this a momentous day, the appearance of what many thought would usher in a new age of Israel’s supremacy? What concerns did the Pharisees have?

Perhaps they thought the exuberance of the crowd was religiously disrespectful. After all, the Passover season was upon them. Pesach is a time of the celebration of a great miracle, but also a time of humility, God’s graciousness and death. Just as the angels were admonished when they celebrated the death of the Egyptian army, perhaps the Pharisees wished to admonish the crowds because they did not symbolize the depth of the celebrated event. If this is the motivation, then Yeshua’s remark demonstrates that joy is a fundamental component of the making of peace and celebration is its companion. Peace doesn’t come on legal treaties with famous signatures. It comes when the ordinary people experience the freedom to express themselves in public without reprisals. Perhaps that’s something Yeshua had in mind.

But there might be another reason for Yeshua’s cryptic remark.   These particular Pharisees did not recognize the cosmic significance of this event. They were too concerned about personal impact. How would Roman officials react to this boisterous crowd? What would others think of the status of this itinerant prophet from the backwoods of Galilee? How would the crowd’s enthusiastic endorsement affect their status and authority? Each of these concerns is egocentric. Instead of asking, “What does this mean?” (as the men at the Temple Mount asked just a few days later), these Pharisees were asking, “How does this affect me?” And therein lie the blinders of peace. Peace comes when “love your neighbor as yourself” takes precedence over “seeing that the tree was good for food.” Perhaps the reason that the things that make peace are still hidden is because we are still in the Garden gathering fruit from the Tree.

Today your eyes for the things that make peace can be opened. How? By recognizing that the man who said these things lived a life for others—and doing the same.

Topical Index: make for peace, shalom, Luke 19:42

It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea, than that he would cause one of these little ones to stumble. Luke 17:2 NASB

Would be better – This is one of the scariest verses in the apostolic writings. Typically exegetes use it to preach the necessity of pure and correct doctrine. In a Greek world, if you don’t think the right things, then you might teach the wrong things and therefore be subject to this terrible punishment. In a Greek world, getting your doctrine straight is paramount.

But not so in a Hebrew world. The subject here is “stumbling blocks” (verse 1). The Greek is skandala. The LXX clarifies what Yeshua most likely had in mind. “The LXX uses the group [of Greek words] for two sets of Hebrew terms with the different senses of striking or catching in a snare, and slipping or stumbling (with the transferred meaning ‘occasion of sin’).”^[1] “In translation of the Hebrew próskomma, skṓlon, and skándalon are used, and by assimilation skándalon can mean both ‘trap’ and ‘stumbling block’ or, ‘cause of ruin’ either with idols in view or offenses against the law. As a ground of divine punishment skándalon can then denote an occasion of sinning or a temptation to sin.”^[2] Thus, the ESV is probably better when it translates this verse as “Temptations to sin are sure to come . . .”   Correct doctrine is not the issue here. Encouraging, allowing or creating the opportunity to violate Torah is the point. That’s what it means to sin. This is a Hebrew world where what I do is far more important than what I think. In fact, I can have my doctrine (thinking) all wrong as long as I still keep the Torah commandments. But once I fail to keep them and encourage others not to keep them, I’m “gonna’ carry that weight”—the millstone around my neck—as I plunge into outer darkness.

Oh, my! Did we get this one wrong! We thought that Yeshua was threatening punishment for doctrinal error. What he was really teaching was the absolute necessity of Torah observance. Anyone, let’s say it again—anyone who teaches that violating Torah is acceptable falls under this pronouncement. It is inevitable that occasions (temptations) for sin will arise. That’s what it means to be alive in this broken world. The focus here is on the one through whom these occasions arise. Committing a sinful act is bad, but the person who is the vehicle of the temptation is far worse. What is the verdict here? Have your actions or your words created an opportunity for another to violate God’s instructions? Have you taught something that sets aside God’s desires? Have you acted in a way that swept up another in sinful behavior? Then you are a millstone candidate. Good luck trying to stay afloat.

Topical Index: millstone, skandala, stumbling block, Torah, sin, Luke 17:2

^[1] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (1036). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.

^[2] Ibid.

“Give us this day our daily bread.” Matthew 6:11 NASB

Give us – The God who gives. That’s how we usually think of the God of the New Testament. If He isn’t providing for our salvation, then He is busy taking care of our needs. He is the Christmas God, secretly arranging presents for His lovely children. Oh, and just in case we think we can sit back and wait for the Christian sleigh to arrive, we are reminded (occasionally) that we have to be good little boys and girls in order to get oranges instead of lumps of coal.

Yes, I know this is a caricature. Yes, I know virtually all of us believe something quite different about YHVH, the Father. But in practice, most of the time we find ourselves at least wishing for the Christmas God even if we have long since left the pagan history of Christmas far behind. We still believe that God’s real business is to take care of us. We might express this in lofty theological terms but essentially we remain egocentric in our approach to God. How do I arrive at this conclusion? Simple. Listen to prayers.

“Give us” is a frequent opening to our prayers. Yeshua incorporated the phrase in his model prayer (Greek dos from the verb didomi – to give), so it must be an important element in conversation with God. But notice how brief this request for sustenance is. Eight words in Greek, most of which are concerned with repetitive necessary provision, nothing more. The entire model prayer spends most of its energy on the praiseworthiness of the Father and the necessity and function of repentance. Brad Young notices the behavioral penchant of typical prayer. “ . . . much of the current teaching in the Christian church about prayer centers on how to receive a positive answer for requests. Certainly Jesus taught His disciples to pray for their daily bread, and by way of extension, all of the physical needs. Prayer’s most basic meaning is communion with God. But prayer in the teachings of Jesus, as well as in ancient Judaism, involved so much more than making requests or spending time alone with God.”[1] Young summarizes the Jewish view of prayer in these words: prayer “focused on life transformation. The person who prayed was changed and transformed by experiencing the divine presence.”[2]

What would happen to you if you stopped asking? What would happen if you sought the divine presence, the experience of just being in the place where God is? What would happen if your prayers were focused on getting closer rather than getting more? How do you think God would feel if all you really wanted was to be with Him?

This is not as easy as it reads. Distractions, self-interest, anxiety, angst have to go. Try imagining you are just sitting near the most loving parent you could ever have. Try feeling what that is like. Try seeking the delight of such a parent just to know His child loves to be with Him. Put your requests on the shelf and let the emotion guide you.

Topical Index: prayer, give, didomi, Matthew 6:11

[1] Brad Young, Meet the Rabbis, p. 13.

[2] Ibid.

Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household.  Matthew 10:34-36 NASB

Sword – For half a century I lived within the accumulated expectations of my relatives. They watched me grow up, earn degrees, create a business, fall apart more than once and do things that I now very much regret. I became identified by my history of behavior. Everyone could say, “That’s sounds just like him.” They drew conclusions based on my past. They assumed, just like we all do, that my past actions would simply continue into the future. How could they think otherwise? We are all products of our own history.

Until God makes something new.

God decided I needed a new family. To get that new family I had to have a new identity. After years of struggling with God in the presence of my natural family, in a matter of days God changed everything about me. Suddenly all those identifying marks that made me part of my family on earth did not seem to fit. I discovered that what I tried to find in other relationships was replaced by a deeper satisfaction and confident identity I had never experienced but only glimpsed. I was thrilled. God became real. I couldn’t wait to greet Him each new day.

But my old family had other reactions. One member asked me to stop communicating about the change in my life. It was upsetting her religious assumptions. Another person told me that these changes were too much to deal with. “Please don’t tell me any more,” was the message. “I just have too much trouble handling it.” Someone else was a bit less kind. “Don’t bother me. I don’t believe it anyway.” One suggested that if these changes were real, I should make amends to everyone. Most just said nothing. They would rather not confront the possibility of real change. It left too many question marks.

Now I understand why Yeshua made such a shocking statement about family relationships. He knew that radical change would upset all the previous dynamics. He knew that people don’t like change. Actually, I’m not surprised. If I had no real experience of the power of God to change people, I would be the first one to say, “That stuff Skip is saying is just fake. He’s grasping for anything to help him feel better about his circumstances. I know him. Pretty soon we’ll be hearing that he is back to his old ways. People don’t change.”

From our natural perspective, meaning is derived from the past. We live in a world of cause and effect. The natural direction of cause and effect is toward the past. What has already occurred becomes the basis for explaining what will occur. The fact that the sun came up every day for the last ten thousand years becomes the basis for claiming that it will come up tomorrow. Past dictates future (except in the stock market, of course). As a result of this orientation toward the past, we assume the meaning of a man’s life can be explained by his past behavior, environment and experiences. This is not a “nature-nurture” debate. Both nature and nurture lie in the past. Both are subsumed under the banner of cause and effect.

But God’s point of view is different. From His perspective, the past is no indicator of the meaning of my life. The past is only the process by which I arrive at a turning point. The meaning of my life in God’s world is found in the future because the meaning of my life is what God intends to do with me from now on, not what I have already done to myself. This is the message behind Yeshua’s declaration in John 9. The blind man is not blind because of some occurrence in the past (although, of course, from the cause and effect perspective, there must have been a reason in the past for his condition). The blind man is blind because his blindness is about to become the opportunity for God to demonstrate his compassion and His power. The reason for this man’s condition has nothing to do with how he came to be blind. It has only to do with what God will make from his blindness. What matters is why and the answer to the why question is future directed.

The change in direction is the essence of forgiveness. Unless God is able to alter the sequence of cause and effect, forgiveness is impossible. Forgiveness implies a new beginning, and an inexplicable interruption in the natural chain. Forgiveness is an opening to a new future, a future that is no longer determined by what I have been but rather by what I will be. God doesn’t care how I got into the ditch. He wants to show me why being in the ditch can change everything about me.

But those of us who live in the cause and effect world cannot understand this break in the chain. How could we? Cause and effect demands uninterrupted compulsion. Why would anyone believe that life patterns could be dramatically altered? For many years I was someone who claimed to be a Christian but acted in ways that denied any real inner transformation. It was a sham. Perhaps not deliberate, but certainly obvious. That is the tragic verdict about most “believers.” We claim to be followers, but if we really took a hard look at our lives, we would not see anything substantially different between how we behave and how the most ethical non-believers behave. We lack the power of God coursing through us because we live as though cause and effect rule us. We just try to be good people, not holy people. We just try to get by, not die completely to self. We just try to help out, not sacrifice. So the world takes a hard look (as it did of me) and says, “Well, he’s a nice guy but . . .” Yeshua was not a nice guy. He was a radical disruption to all expectations. And he asks us to follow him.

When the change in my life finally came about because God made life impossible without Him, all that past record was still attached to me like a felony conviction. My family still had my old resume filed away in the character assessment drawer. The new behavior didn’t match the resume. It was like going to a job interview for the president of the company with a resume of a janitor. No leadership history. Don’t trust this one.

I knew the change was real. I knew that things were somehow different. But the outside world didn’t have any evidence except my claims. Who could blame them for not believing?

When God gets a hold of us, a revolution begins. We know that the world doesn’t look the same. But those who knew our past lives cannot see the reconstruction inside. We have history to overcome, a history that is as determined as the cause and effect chain that governs our natural understanding of meaning. With our newly acquired enthusiasm, we forget that external assessment of our transformation is naturally tied to past explanations.   God doesn’t forget this important characteristic of transformation. The history of the people of Israel in the wilderness is the story of forgiveness in the temporal dimension. God had to let an entire generation die in order to free Israel from its past perceptions. It’s a lesson we need to take to heart. Meeting God in the wilderness often requires leaving a generation behind.

Of course, most people really do hope for change. They are not so cantankerous or obstinate that they simply won’t allow real transformation. The problem is not that they have given up. The problem is that they are worn out. When God begins remodeling life, there are a good number of previous structures that need to be torn down. Every forgiven person has an historical architecture to overcome. The longer God has been chasing us, the less enthusiasm others will have about our remodeling. That’s why families easily rally around the child who confesses faith but withhold genuine encouragement for older adults. That’s why new friends are more likely to volunteer aid while life-long relationships stumble. Our pasts present formidable evidence against us. Those who know our pasts bridle their endorsement. They want to be convinced before they sign up again.

Yeshua is completely realistic about the separating power of forgiveness. The break in the causal chain is not easily understood and even less easily accepted. Yeshua knows that when love comes to town, hearts will be broken as well as mended. Some of us will not be able to handle the shift in the direction of meaning. Forgiveness requires a radical departure from the natural view of life. Forgiveness introduces a new factor in the equation of explanation, a factor that cannot be understood, anticipated or determined by the previous chain. For some of us, forgiveness is not a welcomed word. If I truly recognize the power of transformational forgiveness in the life of someone whose architectural history is well known to me, then this power to rebuild implies a great threat. It implies that I too can change. My past life can be radically altered by forces outside of my control and explanation. Forgiveness comes as a loaded gun. To shoot the enemy of love, I may have to turn the weapon on myself.

When I finally came to my senses, I was unprepared for the reticence of those life-long relationships. I knew the transformation as an existential reality. There was no denying my experience. But just as no one can truly know my pain, neither can anyone know my joy. At best we have only analogous understanding. I know pain, therefore I have some approximate idea of your pain. But I do not know your pain. I just read the external signals and recognize that they are a lot like mine. I am not a cancer survivor. My appreciation of that struggle is only appreciation, not identification. But even the cancer survivor will never fully understand the personal depth of any other survivor. In the end, we are all uniquely separated embodied beings.

Transformation is also interpreted by analogy. Unless I have experienced the radical alteration of real transformation, I am like the man who appreciates the struggle against cancer but who cannot know its ravages in my own body. The un-transformed have no analogous experience for interpreting the transformed. Past relationships devoid of personal transformation are incapable of understanding. There is no common ground. This is the first reason why forgiveness separates. The shared experience is missing.

The second reason forgiveness separates is seen in the difficulty of interpreting analogous behavior even when common ground exists. When I tell you that I am also a cancer survivor, the only way that you have of determining the truth of my statement is the evidence I present. But I could fake it (as insurance examiners will confirm). Fortunately, when it comes to things like cancer, there is physical evidence. But what do we do about matters of the soul? Without physical evidence, how is it ever possible to sort out the fake from the real? The answer, of course, is behavior. That’s why the Bible consistently claims that if we are true followers of the Way, our behavior will change. It is simply not enough to make the soul claim of transformation. The evidence must be observable if the claim is valid.

Evidence is simply a matter of the collection of the facts. Or so it would seem. But spiritual matters are not always so cut and dried. What would we do about the “evidence” that resulted from the claims of faith made by some very important Biblical role models? Would we be quick to support Abraham’s claim that God told him to sacrifice Isaac? Would we vouch for Noah’s claim that God wanted him to build a boat in the middle of the desert, or for Hosea’s claim that he was supposed to marry a prostitute, or for Isaiah’s claim that he was to lie naked in the streets for three years? Too often, much too often, we subject evidence to our standards before we take up the matter in God’s court.

Gathering evidence takes time. That is the other problem. Transformation can be instantaneous. When the Spirit moves, a man is uprooted. The old dies. The new is born. But the evidence of this new birth is gathered slowly. Fortunately, God is very patient. Unfortunately, human beings are not. The demand to “prove” your faith may be nothing more than succumbing to the current culture’s infatuation with instant analysis. In a world where the news is a live feed, meticulous insight and understanding are merely dust in the wind. Just go to the video. Forget about time-lapse comparison.

Transformation changes me.   I know it. I notice my behavior begins to change. Slowly. Incrementally. If you’re really looking, you may observe it. But the pressure to deny that transformation really changes me will be greater than your need to lift me up. Denying transformation keeps you safely outside. Outside of my now re-ordered world and outside the possibility that you might also need a re-ordered world.

Yeshua brought a sword. It is two-edged. What cuts me to the bone will also cut you. And in the new family, only the bleeding are brothers and sisters.

Topical Index: transformation, cause and effect, family, Matthew 10:34-36, sword

Tim sent me this:

Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. Genesis 2:7 NASB

Man – Sometimes Christian theologians argue that because man was created first, men have primacy of authority over women. Bruce Ware makes this argument is his work, “The Beauty of Biblical Womanhood.” It has been a fairly standard claim in conservative Christian circles for many decades. But it is a mistake; perhaps the first mistake since it involves the first human being.

Ware argues for male headship on the basis of the man’s primacy in creation, that is, man was created before woman and therefore has priority in authority. This seems tenuous. Do we argue for primacy of authority of individuals over government because individuals were ontologically first? Do we argue that animals have precedence over men because they came first? Do we maintain the covenant commandment of circumcision because it came first? Is the horse and carriage to be given priority because it came first? Can you see how specious this argument from priority is? Actually, even in Genesis, God displays a consistent pattern of choosing the second as His vehicle of covenant relationship (Isaac, Jacob) and the discarded and rejected as the means of grace (Tamar, Joseph). I’m not sure you can make much of the “cardinal order of creation.” God seems to choose to ignore it quite often. First, second or third really makes no difference with respect to authority. The critical issue with authority is not cardinal priority but rather assigned priority. Thus, laws that were first adopted are not given priority of authority on the basis of their cardinal order. In fact, in the legal system, it is often the case that authority is given to subsequent laws. On this basis, we should argue that women have priority of authority because they were created second. Once you examine the claim, you see how foolish it is.

Furthermore, the Genesis text indicates that both men and women are given the prime directive, and given it equally. They are equally responsible to jointly cooperate in finishing God’s creative effort. And they are equally held accountable for the violation of the first commandment. Of course, the precise consequences are different because the relationship between source and outcome differs, but they equally share in the blame.

Ware ignores this part of the story because he is looking for a way to promote male headship, but if male headship were really a biblical principle, then we ought to hold Adam solely accountable for permitting the woman who is under his authority to bring sin into the picture. By the way, Paul argues that it is Adam, not the woman, who deliberately sins.

What does this mean for us? It means that partnership, not priority, is the biblical model. It means that men are not spiritually chosen bosses because of their gender. It means reorienting our cultural bias and establishing a kingdom where neither male nor female genders matter. It means that she is right too, and we better listen.

Topical Index: gender, headship, authority, man, Genesis 2:7, Bruce Ware

The king reflected and said, “Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?” Daniel 4:30 NASB

The great – “Since the culture of ancient times tended to value a person in light of the role performance, personal values also follow that path. Van der Toorn finds a ‘priority of shame over guilt, of honour over self-esteem, and of success over integrity. Since misfortune of any sort was inferred to derive from having offended deity, the “offender” inevitably experienced social rejection. No one wanted to suffer from guilt by association and likewise attract the ire of some god. Therefore, though the sufferer felt no guilt (the suffered had no idea what he might have done wrong, though he was ready to acknowledge any offense if only he were informed what to acknowledge), he was overwhelmed with shame from society’s response to his difficult circumstance. He felt that humiliation of public disgrace and suffered consequences in disintegrating relationship in his town and in his family. Prayers therefore seek restoration of the god’s favor, which is expected to result in the renewal of one’s social well being rather than in the renewal of one’s personal or spiritual well being. Shame would be resolved and honor restored.”[1]

Imagine life in this ancient world. When tragedies strike, when circumstances go against you, when success turns to failure, you are left wondering, “What did I do wrong? What god did I offend?” This is a world where invisible deities rule the affairs of men, where the favor of the gods is the single determining factor in well-being. But it is also a world where the gods hide their thoughts and their expectations. This is a world where you are left to guess what you must do in order to survive. Therefore, when bad things happen the only reasonable assumption is that you did something wrong to cause these bad things to happen. The problem, of course, is that you have no idea what it was.

In this ancient culture, God’s revelation of Torah makes all the difference. For the first time, men can know what God demands. Men are able to act according to the revealed expectations of God and can therefore anticipate the consequences with regularity. Life is no longer a guessing game. God tells us what to do. The ancient problem of the hidden gods is solved. Ancient Israel knew what God wanted. Life became a matter of obedience, not guesswork.

The loss of Torah in contemporary religious circles is not simply a loss of rules. Torah resolves the question of how life should be lived. Torah establishes the bridge between God and men. When the Church sets aside Torah, it sets aside the resolution of the problem of the hidden gods. Men are thrust back into a world where guessing governs well being. However, contemporary religion without Torah offers a different solution to this ancient problem. First, it moves the discussion from the public arena to the private experience of the individual. In the ancient world, my identity was determined by my public, social behavior. The shame of public humiliation was far more important than personal guilt. My honor and my family’s honor trumped any concerns about my personal self-worth. My display of visible success was so important that it mattered little how it was achieved. But in the modern world, guilt, self-esteem and inner spiritual restoration replaces the social and public nature of being human. Therefore, as long as I have a personal sense of right-standing before God, as long as my personal guilt has been resolved, the rest of my life is of little spiritual concern. There is obviously a direct connection between this internalization of religious status and the idea that once I am “saved” my subsequent behavior doesn’t matter. Since Torah is principally the explanation of correct behavior in the public arena, the priority of inner religious conviction no longer requires this external legislation. For example, as long as I have Jesus in my heart, it doesn’t matter what I eat. My internal religious conviction simply erases any concern about living in a way that acknowledges God’s external behavioral requirements. When the modern world replaced social identity with private self-esteem, Torah became obsolete.

Secondly, contemporary metaphysics no longer views the world as divinely saturated. Cause and effect have replaced the whims of the gods. Modern society believes that reason has overcome the superstition of a universe under the control of the gods. This implies that the principles of causality are the true determining factors of life. If I can find an explanation within the causal system, I do not need the gods and since the metaphysics of the causal system asserts that all events are causally connected, the real implication is that God is entirely unnecessary. This is why Aldous Huxley could claim that religion was simply a crutch for the feeble-minded; a useful support that could be cast away when Man eventually threw off the shackles of his delusions of dependence.

While the Church continues to claim a role for God, strands of metaphysical causality are also present in contemporary religious systems. For example, the proposal that God is the uncaused cause (the cosmological argument) already assumes the priority of causality. In fact, the argument is an argument of the existence of God, an argument that is only necessary when the culture no longer views God’s existence as unquestionable. Modern theological assertions of sovereignty wrestle with the problem of evil, once again demonstrating that metaphysical causality has set the stage for the entire debate. Creationism falls prey to the same metaphysics.

At the more pedestrian level of the ordinary believer, there is very little awareness of God’s active presence in every aspect of living. Most believers embrace a laissez-faire God who shows up when necessary or appropriate but who, for the most part, quietly sits in the bleachers while we play the game of life on the court. Acting as spectator, God offers color commentary rather than active engagement and must be “invited” to join our worship services and our lives. Furthermore, since Christian ethics is no longer directly connected to Torah, ethical guidance for living amounts to not much more than the endorsement of good behavior principles (“do unto others” or “love one another”). Because religious experience has become a private, interior commitment, there is little behavioral conformity in the application of these general principles. This lack of conformity is justified by an appeal to the witness of the inner experience. Circular arguments are, of course, immune from criticism.   More importantly, these circular arguments are also removed from public scrutiny and alignment with the culture of Scripture.

Finally, we must recognize the enormous difference between the ancient world of Semitic cultures and our own when it comes to the priority of individualization. In ancient Semitic cultures, isolation, solitude, self-sufficiency, and independence were considered “symptoms of death, dissolution, and destruction. Life is interdependence, interconnection, and communication within webs of interaction and interlocution that constitute reality.”[2] Only a moment’s reflection is needed to recognize how radically different our perception of reality has become. The very symptoms that the ancients considered anathema to life are now the primary forces that shape our world. From an ancient perspective, we are living in a culture of death.

Torah reflects these ancient views. Torah is not a modern religious invention. It wasn’t a modern religious invention in the first century. It was an ancient way of life. That’s why Gentiles who embraced the Jewish Messiah were ushered into training in Torah. Those Gentiles already shared the same worldview as ancient Babylon. They were undoubtedly overjoyed to find a God who had revealed the proper way to life. They did not convert to a system of religious belief like our contemporary culture of death. They adapted to an ancient path, a path where God actually told people what to do and how to live. It would have been unimaginable for first century converts to live according to some inner experience or witness of the Spirit. Life was public and religious conversion meant public transformation. A first century Gentile convert who stepped into our contemporary congregation might wonder how in the world we expect to do what God demands of us. He would be thrown right back into the guesswork of Babylon.

Many Christians think of Torah as rules. With the Enlightenment emphasis on personal liberty coursing through their veins, they reject the specifics of Torah, opting instead for a personalized ethics of principles application determined by their particular point of view. This tragic mistake goes unnoticed because the metaphysics of causality has also replaced the immanence of God. In combination, modern men no longer quake under the ancient question, “What does God demand of me?” Modern men think that they already know the answer, and what they do not yet know, they can rationally determine. Modern men have cast off Torah restraints and unwittingly thrown themselves into the dark. Of course, since they have closed their eyes, they don’t even know that the lights are off.

Whoever finds me [Wisdom] finds life and obtains favor from YHVH; but whoever misses me does violence to his very being [nephesh]; all who hate me love death.  Proverbs 8:35-36

Topical Index: Babylon, wisdom, Proverbs 8:35-36, John Walton, Daniel 4:30

[1] John Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament, p. 146.

[2] Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament, p. 148.

Now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth. 1 Corinthians 8:1 KJV

Love – We need to resurrect an old word. If you have an old King James Bible, you will sometimes notice that the word “charity” appears in odd places. There are twenty-seven occurrences[1] in the King James; all rendered “love” in newer English Bibles.   The reason, of course, is that the King James renders the Greek word agape with this old English term “charity” while we now use the word “love.” But this is just history. In 1611, English had the word “love,” so why did the translators choose “charity” instead?[2]  The answer lies in our cultural psychology, not in etymology. Love is an internal word. For us, it describes a feeling, a state of mind. Charity, on the other hand, is external. It is a word about action toward others, not about how we feel. In fact, it is one of the three obligations of Jewish practice. It is at the heart of the Levitical command. It’s not how I feel that matters. When it comes to relationships to others, it’s what I do that counts. In the time of King James, the culture understood the necessity of social relationships. Christianity embraced this Jewish idea because the society could not function without it. The Church was at the center of social welfare and recovery. The Church was the active agent in social reform. Community was a living reality.

Things have changed. We no longer “need” each other for survival. The government has usurped the roles God assigned to us. Now an anonymous bureaucracy provides welfare, retraining, comfort, sustenance and protection. Relationship has been sacrificed on the altar of efficiency. Now we can feel good by making a financial contribution without having to lift a finger. We have been seduced into thinking that God is the God of the inner spiritual life rather than the God of community relationships. We need a cultural resurrection, a resurrection that will restore the obligation of interpersonal action to the concept of agape. What is love? It is active care for the other, the willingness to put myself at risk for the needs of another, to bend my yetzer ha’ra to serve someone else. It is intensely personal because it must involve confrontation with my agenda. Love at a distance means nothing. That is words, not deeds. If God kept His distance, none of us would know anything about love. But for God to involve Himself in our lives, He must suffer. Those who are touched by love experience emotion. Joy and sorrow, jubilation and pain, celebration and regret, victory and loss. The opposite of love is not hate. It is apathy.

Today we have the opportunity to love, the opportunity to resurrect the true meaning of charity. Do what is needed. Do it yourself! Convert feeling into action.

Topical Index: love, charity, agape, 1 Corinthians 8:1

[1] Consider 1 Cor. 8:1, 13:1-4, 8. and 13, 14:1, Col. 3:14, 1 Thess. 3:6, 1 Tim. 1:5, 2:15, 2 Tim. 2:22 and 2 Pet. 1:7 as examples

[2] For the etymological history, see http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=charity. Notice that the Vulgate retained the idea of action, but since Tyndale, Protestant Christianity moved in the direction of inner feeling.

Samuel said to Saul, “You have acted foolishly; you have not kept the commandment of the Lord your God, which He commanded you, for now the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever. 1 Samuel 13:13 NASB

Foolishly – The story of Saul seems confusing and contradictory. He is anointed king at God’s direction, but on coronation day, he hides among the garbage (1 Samuel 10:22). He experiences the power of the Spirit but makes ridiculous vows. He accepts Samuel’s instructions as YHVH’s words but acts without considering the consequences. He makes decisions but blames the people when he is confronted. Eventually the text says that not only did God reject him as king, but YHVH sent an evil spirit to terrorize him (1 Samuel 16:14). It seems as if Saul is almost schizophrenic. At times he appears to be an enthusiastic servant of YHVH. At others times he looks like any other self-concerned ruler. And God’s interaction with him seems to reflect the same double nature. Reading the whole story of Saul is disturbing. We never know what he will do next and we never know what YHVH will do in response.

The Hebrew text uses the verb sakal. Goldberg’s comment is noteworthy. “The verb usually expresses lack in a moral or spiritual sense. Thus Saul acted as a fool when he usurped the Levitical prerogative in offering sacrifices. There is more involved than simply being an intellectual fool—Saul displayed his utter lack of spiritual comprehension (I Sam 13:13).”^[1] Because modern English uses the word “foolish” as a cognitive description, we don’t realize that the Hebrew verb sakal is not about intellectual capacity. It is about obedience! The moral and spiritual components of sakal describe someone who ignores YHVH’s instructions, someone who acts on his own without consideration of God’s commands. In Hebrew, a fool is not stupid. He is corrupt.

Now we may understand why Saul’s life seems so aimless. Sometimes he seems to do what God wants, and then he twists or turns to undo what God wants. He is the perfect picture of James’ concept of dipsychos, the double-minded man. Once we realize that “foolish” is a moral category, we discover that Saul is a lot like us. We don’t have much difficulty with knowing what God asks. After all, we have the printed text to read. Our difficulty is doing what God asks, without subjecting it to some cognitive filter. We are just like Saul. “God couldn’t possibly mean, ‘Get rid of all those things.’ Some of them seem good and useful. God wouldn’t want us to destroy the good with the bad, would He?” And so it goes. Half in—half out. We compromise with the words of instruction. We recast YHVH in our image to suit our evaluation. And when things don’t work out so well, then, of course, it really isn’t our fault. Maybe this exasperating story about Saul is part of the biblical account because it points out just how morally schizophrenic we are.

Topical Index: Saul, sakal, foolish, dipsychos, double-minded, 1 Samuel 13:13

^[1] Goldberg, L. (1999). 1493 סָכַל. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament.