Should We Nail These On Protestant Churches?

Ben Myers at Faith and Theology put out 12 theses on smiling. My favorite is #7:

I know a little boy whose mother had to go away for a few days. When she came home, he cried and told her he had missed her. Touched by his infant sadness, the mother said, ‘It’s nice to be missed’ – and he replied, ‘It’s not nice to miss.’ It is nice to be missed because we learn what love means in the sadness of another. The face that always smiles is the face of a stranger. Love is written on the face of sadness.

The church can glean some good advice from this in following our commission to comfort those who are distressed.

Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. -Romans 12:15

"Then the King will say to those on His right, 'Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 'For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.' -Matthew 25:34-36

As said in thesis #7 stoic smiling signals distance in a relationship. This kind of demeanor to one who is suffering pushes him away. In a modern Good Samaritan retelling the priest would have been a prosperity gospel pastor smiling at the victim and saying, "God has an amazing plan for you! Don't be discouraged! Here's a list of Bible verses for comfort" before walking away. The danger of the Protestant smile culture is that it puts up an impenetrable wall between the distressed and the comforter. When those we truly care about are suffering we experience sympathetic suffering little. That's called empathy, it's the cause behind the shortest verse in the Bible (at least in English).

When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled, and said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to Him, "Lord, come and see." Jesus wept. So the Jews were saying, "See how He loved him!" But some of them said, "Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind man, have kept this man also from dying?" So Jesus, again being deeply moved within, came to the tomb. Now it was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. -John 11:33-38

Jesus knew the end of the story. He had in mind what he was going to do the moment he approached the crowd. Yet their suffering moved him to tears. He did not put up a smile wall and offer a friendly rebuke of how God would make everything alright even though God was going to make everything alright right then and right there. At this moment Jesus was familiar to these people. He was one of them, weeping with those who were weeping. As a church worker it one thing I have been trying to do is resist the temptation to pretend that I have all the answers to everyones' problems. Sometimes I just need to feel sad or angry or outraged with a victim. Not being a very emotional person that is extremely hard for me. I'd much rather fix a problem than empathize with someone, but if I truly want a Kingdom with strong personal relationships to start developing here on earth I have learn to drop the smile and proactive attitude sometimes.

Should We Move Beyond the Bible?

From the blog Koinonia:

When we take communion with grape juice and wafers, greet each other with a handshake instead of a kiss, or speak out against stem-cell research, we are moving beyond what is in the Biblical text.

The question isn’t if we should. The question is, how?

No one is really 100% sola scriptura.

Us Silly Plebes

J. R. Daniel Kirk has a post about how everyone misinterprets the Gospel event of Jesus vs. Legion in Mark 5 and Luke 8. Specifically why the townspeople, after Jesus sends Legion into suicidal pigs, ask Jesus to leave.

"Clearly, they were peeved about the loss of revenue, the death of the pigs that were their livelihood–all that disruption of the village’s life-capital. Right? Not so much."

Reading this narrative in context, Kirk argues, shows that the men asked Jesus to leave because they were afraid of him not because they were angry about losing their herd. As he explains:

"The whole story is set up as a power confrontation between these great forces. The people of the town are depicted as lacking the power to control this mighty force.

And when they come upon the scene at the end, what is described is not only the transformation of this man, but his posture before Jesus: seated at his feet. Tamed. Controlled. Freed."

I'm one of those people who misinterpreted the story and assumed that the townspeople were upset over losing their herd and missed the whole bit about fear at Jesus' might. I knew the story showed Jesus' control over demons, but not it's relation to the reason the villagers were afraid of him and wanted him to leave. I did not make this mistake because I think business failure is the greatest tragedy that can befall someone. My problem was poor exegesis when I should have read the chapters in context. I guess I missed the forested mountains for the mole-trees. I assumed that because pigs were unclean animals, Jesus driving the demon into them and their subsequent drowning was a slam on the villagers' sinful lifestyle and they did not take it kindly. This felt kinda flimsy at the time and even more so now that I've heard a better explanation. Kirk points out that in Luke the story is placed between two demonstrations of Christ's power: quelling the storm at sea and healing Jarius' daughter (and a bystander along the way). I did not have to study Jewish customs of the first century, what I should have done was read the passage before and after!

One of the joys I have as one of the average Joes who reads seasoned pros is when I learn that something even Pastors often preach on is wrong. I don't take joy in the fact that we have misinformation from the pulpit, I just enjoy improving my understanding of what the Bible actually says.

I've written before about what guides our theology (the protestanty, Bibley kind) though it ended up more "how to keep negative influences out of your theology." My favorite method was to use strong exegesis while praying for the Holy Spirit's guidance. I should have added "actually read the text carefully." Maybe I'll try to start there next time.

Who I Write Like

There's an interesting website that analyzes your writing and tells you which famous figure of literature you write like. I wonder how consistent my writing style is. Part of the reason I started blogging was to improve my writing so there may be big changes between different posts. I'll submit all my long posts and see what they come up as.

The last post about molinism:

I write like
George Orwell

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

The posts "Critic or Theologian," "Rivalry Among Apostles," "Is Theology Important?" and "What Guides Our Theology?":

I write like
Dan Brown

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Apparently I write like Dan Brown. I have never read a Dan Brown book so I can't be subconsciously copying him. I wonder who else is in this website's database.

UPDATE: I submitted this post.

I write like
Isaac Asimov

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Opportunity Cost and Middle Knowledge

A common way of harmonizing free will with God's divine omniscience through time is to use molinism. You can read the wikipedia entry here but a basic summary is that God has middle knowledge, or knowledge of possible "what if" situations. Middle knowledge contains counterfactuals, statements like "if my train wasn't late I would never have met the woman who became my wife," that God knows not just as predictions or good guesses but as factual knowledge as if they were recent historical events (science fiction authors would kill for middle knowledge). God's sovereignty in our salvation comes from inserting us into a situation in life where we will freely accept the Gospel. God, using middle knowledge, says "I have divinely elected Matt for salvation. I will place him in this society with this family. I know that in this situation Matt will freely choose to accept the Gospel and be saved."

I have some reservations about middle knowledge and counterfactuals and how they are compatible with the nature of God as an all-loving being. Most people address the problem of evil by saying that God desires our true love and that is only meaningful if it is possible for us to reject God. Believe it or not this actually poses some problems for the molinists and God's all-loving nature. While free will exists in the molinist account for people to choose damnation (the normal way of explaining how an all-loving God sends people to hell ("it's their own fault!") the fact that God chooses to create them in the first place is a problem for the all-loving crowd. Why create people who will not choose salvation to begin with? Why does God even bother creating people He knows will be unsaved? Couldn't God only create people he knows will freely choose salvation? Taking traditional soteriology and divine omnipotence as a given God's all-loving nature seems incompatible with middle knowledge.

Here are the premises of the problem:
1. There is an infinite number of possible people who will choose salvation.
2. Human history, as we know it, is limited (it had a beginning and will have an end) so only a limited number of people will ever exist. Therefore, of the infinite number of possible believers only a limited number will exist.
3. Of the limited number of people who will ever exist, many of them (in fact, most of those who have existed so far) will reject God's love.

So many potential believers do not exist and many actual non-believers do. If God loves everyone, why would he create non-believers to burn at the cost of believers to save and have eternal fellowship with? Must there be those who suffer?

Those who suffer do not merely have a pointless existence if God wants them to come to believe, but also their existence comes at an opportunity cost to those who are saved. Human history is limited, it had a beginning and will have an end. The total population of humans throughout time has a limit on it. If God is all-loving and does not really want those who are unsaved to be condemned why would even .01% of humans be those who will not freely choose salvation. Most of the people who have existed up to now were not saved and likely many of the people who will exist will not be saved. God could have chosen to fill the world with people who He foreknew would choose to follow Him freely but instead has chosen to take up some space with people who will not choose to follow Him. Many would respond that God, being an eternal being, should not be expected to be efficient; but this seems more malicious than inefficient. Of all the possible people God could choose to give the gift of existence and love to he chose to create the people He knew would deny Him and be condemned.

Imagine this:
Kevin is one of the infinite number of possible humans that has the proper features that will lead him to accept the Gospel. Bob is one of the infinite number of possible humans that does not have those features. Kevin will never exist because the world will end before he gets his chance. Bob does exist and is one of the many people who are alive right now who will never accept the Gospel. God could have made things so that instead of Bob, Kevin would exist. Instead, Kevin will never exist to be a person who will have eternal fellowship with God but Bob will exist to be condemned for all eternity. Why would God create Bob and not Kevin? If God could love both Kevin and Bob why not create the one that would live with Him in eternal happiness forever and not the one who would suffer forever.

The only solution I see to this to keep God’s knowledge of the future is that He does not love Bob and is glorified in his destruction. Most evangelicals do not like this idea and I sympathize, I just don’t see a way to harmonize all-loving with knowing the future (combined with the fact that some who are created are not saved).

This problem aids the more extreme Calvinistic argument that God does not love the unsaved. That God is glorified in his wrath as much as he is glorified in his grace. This is a problem for most evangelicals who do not consider this an aspect of God's character.

There is the solution, of course, to not keep God's knowledge of the future. To subscribe to what is called the openness clause and hold that the future is a mystery to God, though he is really good at predicting it. This violates one of the major omnis associated with God's character (omniscient in case you were wondering).

So there's the problem as I see it. Is molinism worth it if we have to dump all-loving? Is there a way around it that I do not see?

"Thou shalt commit adultery"

The wikipedia entry for Bible errata is a fun read. It is intriguing how just omitting a "not" in a particular passage can completely change its meaning.

Imagine purchasing a Bible hot off the press and finding the following inside:

"Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God?"
(1 Corinthians 6:9)

"Go and sin on more"
(John 8:11)

"Thou shalt commit adultery"
(Exodus 20:14)

"For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted God, adorned themselves, being in subjection to their owl husbands."
(1 Peter 3:5)

Things are confusing enough arguing over the original texts and Greek meanings!

Clean Hands, Clean Conscience

Perhaps Pilate's behavior in Matthew 27:24 was more therapeutic than symbolic.

physical cleansing seems to more generally remove past concerns, resulting in a metaphorical “clean slate” effect.

The Lady Macbeth syndrome is a myth. You can wash the spot out!