"Jesus, Do You Want Us To Call Fire Down From Heaven?"

So, in the book of Luke, there's a story that I've read a bunch of times, but struck me in a weird way reading it again recently.  It's the one where Jesus's disciples, angered at a village, demand that it be burned with fire from heaven:

As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” But Jesus turned and rebuked them. Then he and his disciples went to another village. (Luke 9:51-55)

I had plenty of vague memories about this story, but there are a number of things that I had never noticed before.  I had forgotten, for example, that this was a Samaritan village, which is interesting for a number of reasons.  I had also apparently never noticed the specific way that James and John ask for fire to come down from heaven, namely:

"Lord, do you want US to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?" (emphasis added)

My reaction to this was approximately "WHAT?!"

So, on the one hand, these are clearly people with a lot of faith.  They had seen Jesus do plenty of miracles.  They knew their Old Testament, and they knew what kinds of crazy wonders Elijah and other men and women of God had performed in days of yore, including calling down fire on people.  What's more, they fully believed that the same power was alive in them, and that if they so chose, they could perform the same miracles themselves.  What sorts of miracles had they performed up to this point, that had them believe that they themselves could call down fire?  That is some kind of faith, right there!

On the other hand, WHAT?!?!

There is so much presumption here.  And yes, they are asking Jesus's permission and respecting his authority.  But, come on.  Had that ever gotten even the barest hint that this was something Jesus wanted them to do, or would do himself, or had ever done during his earthly ministry?  To me, this feels like a case where James and John ("sons of thunder," appropriately enough) seem to have let their emotions run away with them.  These guys are angry, and consequently they're not thinking straight.

What were they even angry about?  Well, according to the passage...

 ... the people there did not welcome him.

Oh ok.  I could see why you would want the village to be burned horribly and everyone to die as a result of that.  This was basically a village of serial killers.

Well, maybe I should try to be more fair about this.  The Jews and Samaritans had famously hated each other for centuries upon centuries.  James and John almost certainly walked into that village with a big load of hatred already stored up - their rejection at this particularly moment was probably the straw that broke the camels back.  The Samaritans had apparently, sometime in the past, defiled the temple in Jerusalem, and had committed other various tribalistic crimes.  For a long time they had been active idol worshipers (although that seems to have stopped more or less by the time of Jesus).  They had, according to other sources, set up their own fake temple on a different mountain and had edited the Torah to justify themselves.  As Jesus himself said during his conversation with the Samaritan woman in John 4, on the merits, the Jews were right and the Samaritans were wrong:

You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. (John 4:22)

So here were the Samaritans, deliberately refusing to welcome or serve Jews on their pilgrimages to Jerusalem, basically as a way of insulting and humiliating their tribal enemies. And they were wrong.  James and John probably felt they had every right to be angry and every justification to want these people punished.

I can't help but think, though, just looking at my own heart, that James and John weren't really offended that the Samaritans believed wrong things, or that the Samaritans had been inhospitable to travelers.  I think what really got under their skin was the insult of the whole thing.  Here they were, good Jews, travelling with the actual Messiah, deigning to bless a village of heathens with their presence on their way to Jerusalem, and got scorned and rejected for their trouble - all because the Samaritans were wrong and hatefully committed to being wrong.  I'd probably be really angry, too.

But, of course, Jesus rebuked them.  I would love to have heard the words Jesus used to do so.  A few translations of the Bible do, in fact, have some extra verses here (although apparently not every ancient source contains them).  Here, for example, is a footnote from the American Standard Version:

Some ancient authorities add "and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of." Some, but fewer, add also "For the Son of man came not to destroy men’s lives but to save them."

These verses may not be super reliable from a textual perspective, but they certainly feel like something Jesus would've said (and did say, in other places).

The fact is that Jesus had far more right than the disciples to angry at his rejection.  He was the actual son of God, who deserved to be worshiped, and instead he was being rejected and turned away.  Anger makes a person want to punish the perpetrator - to hurt them, and then to justify itself with moral language.  But Jesus had a different goal, and a longer viewpoint.  He wanted those Samaritans to be brought back into the fold - he wanted to be reconciled to them.  He loved them.  And that meant just passing onto the next village, and not doing anything about the insult he had experienced.  He just... let them get away with it.  They were wrong, and they had acted maliciously and hurtfully, and Jesus just walked away.

But that's not how the story ends, either.

In the book of Acts, after Jesus has arisen and ascended to heaven, the apostle Philip goes to Samaria and preaches the gospel.  To the surprise of the other apostles back in Jerusalem, the entire region basically converts.  This same group of people, who before had hated anyone who was simply on their way to the wrong city, was now being baptized and bowing in worship of the rightful king.  (See Acts 8)

Jesus held back his anger, showed mercy, and (in this case at least) eventually won the reconciliation he had long desired.  In Him, Jews and Samaritans were back together.  That's craziness.  But through Jesus, insults and hatreds and bitterness can be cut through, and family and community restored.  It's the power of what he did on the cross, and the spirit that he sent afterwards.

So the next time you feel spat on, insulted, and humiliated by people who hate you and who are wrong - remember how Jesus sees those people, and try to see them as future brethren, beloved of a God who longs to be restored to them.  Punishment is God's for God's timetable.  Your job is mercy.

So...

No, Jesus would not like you to call fire down from heaven and destroy them.

How Should We Respond to Feeling Judged?

Let's talk about judgment (yay!).  I've heard a lot of sermons and Sunday School lessons on the topic of whether we should judge - a very important topic.  Jesus's discussion of judging others in the Sermon on the Mount and Paul's discussion of the topic in the first few chapters of Romans is absolutely worth spending time on.  But there's a different, related question that I feel wasn't covered nearly enough in the church circles I grew up in: how should you, as a Christian, respond when someone else is judging you?

As I watch (and sometimes try hard not to watch) social media and American culture, I get the impression that this topic is becoming increasingly important.  There's a lot - a lot - of judgment and criticism being thrown around, and it's not the easiest thing in the world to respond well to.  I know I certainly don't.  And in fact, I would argue that I'm very much not alone in that.  A lot of people - both inside and outside the church - react very poorly (shall we say) to other people's judgment.

Have you ever found yourself on social media wondering, "How could that person possibly believe that obviously false thing?" or "How could that person possibly maintain such a flagrant double standard with a straight face?" or "How could that person possibly support X politician from X political party that does X horrible things?" or "Why does that person feel the need to constantly spew venom all over Facebook and Twitter?  Why can't they ever take a break to talk about puppies?"  I am starting to believe that, a huge percentage of the time, such behavior is a defensive reaction to feeling judged.

How, you may ask?  Well, consider how YOU feel when you are judged or criticized.  If you are a human being like I am, the odds are it's going to make you angry and defensive.  It is remarkable to me how much we value our honor.  I keep hearing Americans talk about "honor cultures" as though they only existed in some remote part of Central Asia or on Klingon spaceships, but yes, even we Americans care deeply about honor and shame.  There's only so much disrespect a person can tolerate - defense mechanisms eventually kick in and we start acting to regain what we've lost.  Granted, not everyone is as sensitive to honor and shame as others are.  But throw in the element of moral guilt, and now just about everybody is sensitive.  Some people can tolerate being thought ill of or treated disrespectfully.  Pretty much nobody can tolerate thinking of themselves as evil.  God designed us with a powerful intolerance of moral guilt.  We will go to extraordinary lengths to consider ourselves basically decent human beings.  If you accuse me of doing evil, I have to do something to prevent the accusation from landing.  And that something is often the source of a lot of ugliness.

Let's take an example.  Imagine that there's somebody in your workplace or school (or somewhere else where you have to be on a regular basis) who is a dietary zealot.  Maybe he's one of those paleo/CrossFit types, or a militant vegan, or a raw fruitarian, or an adherent to some new, crazy fad diet, but whichever way, this person not only feels that he has found a diet that works for him, but he has found the one true diet for all of humanity.  Especially you.  And every time you find yourself in the cafeteria or going out to eat with this person, you know you're about to get a lengthy lecture.  He's going to smirk at your hastily packed lunch and roll his eyes a lot.  Maybe he's going to make jokes about how you're slowly killing yourself with your processed garbage.  It won't take long before this guy is going to seriously get on your nerves.

However, you might actually be able to tolerate this to some degree.  You might be pretty secure in your self-image.  There's a chance you won't feel any need to react to this, even if it goes on for years.  But now imagine that he starts throwing in a moral element to his criticisms.  Maybe that ham sandwich is cruelty to animals.  Maybe that allegedly healthy whole-grain sandwich is somehow contributing to planetary destruction via global warming.  Maybe the diabetes of which you will very shortly die is going to bankrupt the country's medical system.  Maybe feeding your children like that is tantamount to child abuse.  But whatever the particulars of his argument are, the upshot is not just that you are foolish for eating your diet, but that you are wicked.  Now the ante is upped.  Eventually, the constant drumbeat of moral indictment is going to build to a climax and provoke your defense mechanisms.  You're going to get angry.

And that anger is going to make you want to do 2 things, as anger does:

1. Punish the perpetrator
2. Morally indict the perpetrator

Given that you are an adult, you are unlikely to just go over and slug the guy in the face (although you may feel the urge).  But you will want to do something to cause him pain.  That's what anger does - it creates a need to punish.  We get better at resisting the urge as we age, but it's still there, boiling under the surface.  But that's not the only urge.  God designed human anger to be intimately tied to our sense of morality.  When someone does something that angers us, it's not enough that we don't like it - it must also be morally wrong.  The four-year-old boy who is put in time out for hitting his sister with a truck cries "It's not fair!  It's not fair!" about his punishment, even when most anybody else would find it the very definition of fairness.  Anger creates in us the powerful urge to moralize.  What was done to us must be cosmically unjust, and the person who did it must be wicked.

So going back to our friend the dietary zealot, we can see how his continual moral criticism of us might provoke a desire not just to punish him, but to judge him right back.  Throwing his judgment back in his face serves two purposes here - not only does it satisfy our anger, it also nullifies his moral judgment of us.  If he is wicked, he is in no place to criticize (or at least, that's how it feels).

What does this look like in practice?  Maybe another coworker comes by our office and casually refers to the zealot as a "self-righteous jerk" and we nod along grimly.  We latch onto the word "self-righteous" (or "judgmental" or "puritanical" or "priggish" or "hysterical" or "virtue signalling" or similar), as it makes it sound like his moral judgment of us is wicked somehow (and therefore unjustified), and that feels good.  Or maybe we see an article on Facebook about a scientfic study suggesting that the zealot's diet increases cancer risk by 3%.  Maybe we go ahead and click "Share" on that study without first checking to see if the study is any good.  Or maybe we latch onto the idea that it's his diet that's so harmful and evil, and the guy is a massive hypocrite (we LOVE the word "hypocrite," as though the problem was his failure to live up to his own standard, rather than the fact that he uses his standard to judge us).  The "fact" that his diet causes cancer may even become truer than truth to us.  It should be true, therefore it is true.  And why should it be true?  Because it proves that our moral accusers are wicked.  It restores our honor, and eliminates our guilt.  Maybe a new diet guru rises up who promises a more moral, healthier diet by eating all the opposite things that our coworker recommends ("It's the Krispy Kreme Kleanse!"), and we gradually start to become a devotee.  The articles and books from the guru "just make sense."  "It's like he's saying everything I've thought all these years, but couldn't articulate," we say.  Maybe the guru comes up with nasty nicknames for adherents to alternative diets, and we eat it up, and occasionally parrot the insults to others.  When we see one of our other coworkers head to the "heart-healthy" line of the cafeteria, we roll our eyes and make snide remarks at her.  And the circle is complete!  We have become the very thing we hated.

I believe that a tremendous amount of the judgment we experience is, in fact, defensive.  It's a reaction to previously experienced judgment, protecting and shoring up a person's honor and moral status.  That Facebook "friend" spewing hateful invective all over your social media feeds is likely to be doing so because somebody else was spewing hateful invective to them.  In the same way that violence spawns violence, judgment spawns judgment.  Moral accusation is frequently retaliatory.

What does this mean?

It means somebody's gotta stop the cycle.

Which is why I think it's important to figure out how not to react defensively to human judgments.  For a Christian to be able to "judge not" as Jesus commanded, it would help a lot, I think, to "react not."  We will be a lot less likely to judge our neighbors if we do not allow our defensive anger to control us.

But how do you do that?  If my own experience has taught me anything, it's that underreacting to people's judgment is extremely challenging.  Of course, it could be that I'm a lot more sensitive than most people (at least, I hope that's true, for everyone else's sake!), but I suspect I am not alone in feeling the need to judge people back.  And what makes it harder is that there's no avoiding other people's judgment!  You have no real control over whether other people condemn you.  You can pretty much expect judgment to come your way.

Jesus says as much himself.  There are two things that Jesus said that sum this up extremely well:

1. "You will be hated by everyone because of me." (Matthew 10:22)
2. "[The world] hates me because I testify that its works are evil." (John 7:7)

As Christians, we could be as kind, generous, loving, and merciful as we possibly could be (and we should be!), and some people will still hate and judge us.  Why?  Because we are aligned with Jesus, who judges them.  And we can't change that.  God created us and instructed us on how he wants us to live - what he wants us to do with our time, money, relationships, sexuality, and energy.  And we would really rather not live that way.  So humanity reacts to God, to his judgment, and to anyone who aligns with him.  This is the awkward fact at the root of the issue: the cycle of judgment began with God.  So unless we disown God, hatred will certainly come our way from some people.  There will be people who want to throw God's judgment back in his face by judging him and the church.  There's no getting around it.

So how do we not add to the problem?  How do we not hate back?

The Bible is not silent on this subject.  As hated as you might feel by the hysterical people on social media, American Christians have absolutely nothing on the serious persecution affecting the early church.  Yet the Bible has a lot of words encouraging us to not hate back.  So here are some ideas that might be helpful, taken from scripture:

1. Remember the Greater Future Reward
   In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.  Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."  Jesus isn't telling you to feel happy when you are insulted just because he said to.  He's offering you a reason to feel happy - there's a fantastic reward coming if you hold fast.  Remember that staying true to God's word and not responding to hatred with hatred will pay off in incredible ways in the long run.
2. Take Active Steps to Reconcile With People Where You Can
   Sometimes people are going to hate you for no good reason.  Other times, they'll be upset for something you did that you shouldn't have done, or something that can be fixed.  We need to make every effort to reduce and eliminate those times, and do what we can to make things right when we screw up.  Also in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus urges his followers: "if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.  Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison."  If you can without violating God's principles, apologize!  Many times you can stop the cycle of judgment immediately.  Paul also talks about this in Romans 12: "Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone.  If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone."
3. Remember God's Character
   Here's Jesus again, from the Sermon on the Mount: "You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."  Check out that language - God provides good things to not just good people, but evil people as well.  And Jesus encourages us to do likewise - to do good to people regardless of their moral status.  What gives you the right to act in hatred where God does not?
4. Give Your Anger to God, He Will Repay
   In the book of Romans, Paul talks about revenge: "Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord."  If you are struggling with anger toward someone, remember that giving it to God does not mean justice will never be done.  It means that you are allowing God - the ultimate and righteous judge - to do his job, to judge and punish (and show mercy) as only he can.  It is easier to let go of anger knowing that justice is in the hands of the ultimate king.
5. Remember Jesus's Example
   It can be encouraging to remember that Jesus went ahead of us.  Consider the book of 1 Peter: "To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.  He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.  When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly."
6. Consider the Practical Benefits of Gentleness
   Peter also brings up another point: "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander."  By being gentle and respectful, those observing stand a chance of seeing the hate that is driving your accusers, and therefore societal shame will work in your favor.
7. Remember What Really Justifies You
   We are justified by God's grace alone - if we understand our own sin, and how forgiven we are, we can work at resting our identities in God's justification.  That means that when someone judges us or rebukes us, we can humbly accept the parts that are true, and react with more self-control to the parts that aren't.  This isn't easy, of course, but I think it's something we can grow in.
8. Ask God for Help
   "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened."  Non-retalation is hard.  Ask God for good gifts.

I feel like this is really just scratching the surface of this topic - arguably the entire book of 1 Peter is dedicated to it.  But hopefully this is a start, at least.

So I would really encourage you, whenever you feel judged or hated, to stop and take stock of what your defensiveness is making you want to do.  Then think of Jesus's example, let God handle the justice, and show mercy to your enemy.

Maybe, here and there, we can stop the cycle.

On Being "Just Sad"

I'm not super proud of this, but sometimes when I pray for "peace" for a person or a family that's experienced a loss, what I'm thinking deep down is something like, "Oh well, there's not much to pray for now, but peace is better than nothing I guess."

Well, I may not have had these thoughts exactly, but on some subconscious level, it's as though I place a value on things like physical healing - things that alleviate the immediate cause of suffering - whereas things like "peace," "strength," "wisdom," and so forth are just kind of nice, fluffy words that sound good but don't really mean anything.  They're things to pray for when you don't have anything better to pray for.

Can anyone relate to that, or am I alone in this?

I'm starting to realize something about this, though.

I think specifically back to last year when my dad passed away.  He was in the hospital for quite a long time, and had been sick in various ways a long time before that, so it was definitely not sudden or entirely unexpected, but it was still very difficult.

I remember one of my friends asking me a pretty awkward and blunt question during the week of the funeral - "So what's it like," he asked, "losing your dad?"  I was a little startled by this - it's not something I was super comfortable talking about, but I tried to answer anyway.  "I don't know..." I said.  "I'm just... sad."  "Just sad?" he repeated back.  "Yeah."  It may have sounded like a cop-out to him, but that's really all I had.  I was just sad.

In my head, I wondered whether he thought I ought to feel a stew of other emotions.  Was I supposed to be angry?  Guilty?  Hopeless?  Fearful or worried?  For the most part, I honestly wasn't any of those things.  And it occurred to me.  I easily could've been.  I could've been angry at doctors and hospitals for not doing what I thought they should've been doing (as clearly I know so much more than everyone).  I could've easily felt guilty for things I should've done better - ways I didn't help enough, or wasn't there enough.  In fact, at various points along the way, I had felt these things.  But right then, at the moment where my sadness peaked, I didn't feel any of that stuff.  Whatever anger and guilt I might have felt was gone.  There was no hopelessness, no fear.  Just sadness.

And although it feels a little weird to me to say, being "just sad" suddenly felt like a huge blessing.  And I mean blessing in a very literal sense.  It felt like being able to be "just sad" had been provided as a gift.  It felt like I was being prayed for, and consequently protected to some degree.  It was a surprisingly strong feeling.  The book of James famously tells us that "the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective," and it felt to me like there were people out there praying for peace for my family, and God, mercifully, was answering it -- in a way that I could understand and feel.

I think about one of my favorite passages in Philippians 4:

"6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

Do I believe that God will do that?  That God can give a peace that transcends all understanding?

I think he did.  It certainly transcended my understanding.

It turned out that peace, in that particular time, wasn't just a nice-sounding, fluffy word.  It was an actual, comprehensible, visceral gift.

This may be something that other long-time Christians are way ahead of me on, but where I am now, I'm starting to realize that things like "peace," "strength," and "wisdom" aren't just fluffy words that mean little - they're actual blessings that God can and does provide in ways that surprise and glorify him.  They're things we can ask for and things he can give, and they mean a lot.  And I'm grateful for it.

I know very well that not all prayers get answered the way we want, but there are times when God says "yes" to a prayer for peace, and I think it pays to keep those times in mind.  I now remember hearing other people share similar experiences in their own life - but I guess it takes experiencing it oneself to let it sink in sometimes.

So I encourage you to treat those prayers as prayers that God will answer, and in a way that people will notice, and will be to his glory.

How to Remember Which of Paul's Letters is Which

I like to think of myself as a "why" learner.  I learn things much better when you tell me why I should care - that is, when I have a larger framework to work from.  I got super frustrated in Algebra II when we learned about matrices (a system for organizing numbers into rectangular grids that involves a whole lot of pointless-feeling arithmetic).  I would ask the teacher, "Why?  What is this FOR?" and she would just say, "It'll be important in later math classes."  That didn't help.  It all felt very arbitrary.  I felt like I had to look up every formula every time because I didn't understand the PURPOSE that would have made it make sense.

Other math students were "how" learners, though.  They seemed to just want to be told what they needed to solve the problem, and anything else - any stories, any context, any larger framework - was just extraneous details that confused the issue.  They didn't mind straight-up memorization.  One time in college, when a substitute math professor came in, he told all kinds of funny stories and tried to explain the math from the perspective of why we care - I absolutely loved it, but I was shocked to hear other students complain afterwards about his teaching style.  Clearly, different people prefer to learn in different ways.

But perhaps there are other people out there who, like me, prefer "frameworks" to hang their knowledge on.  I CAN memorize lists of things for tests if I try hard, but I forget it pretty much immediately afterward.  But if you give me a framework for understanding things, I'm much more likely to retain the information later.

I feel that way about Bible knowledge.  As a kid, I remember wondering how grown-ups at church always seemed to be able to quote chapter and verse so often.  Sure, we had memory verses, and I would memorize them for Sunday School, but they didn't stay memorized long.  Is that what the adults were doing?  Memorizing a LOT of verses and which book and chapter they came from?  How did they retain all that info?

Growing up, the information in the Bible frequently felt unorganized - stories and teachings and individual verses would be quoted with no particular pattern to them, so it just seemed like the Bible was a random collection of stuff.  I had no idea how Sunday School teachers figured out which verses to have us go read.  It all seemed kind of mysterious.

It got a little better, though, as I got older.  At one point in Sunday School, they taught us a song with all the books of the New Testament.  Believe it or not, this was super helpful.  It meant that (at least for the New Testament), I didn't have to go to the table of contents to find any particular book.  I knew what order things were in, so I could flip there more or less quickly.  We had "Bible drills," where the teacher would call out a chapter and verse and we would race to see who could find it.  Unfortunately, if you had to stop and hum a few bars of the kid's song, you were at a distinct disadvantage.

Knowing the names of the books is helpful, but it's not really enough.  It still didn't tell me what each book was ABOUT, which is far more important.  One of the most helpful Sunday School lessons I ever had came from Jon Shoulders, our church's youth minister at the time, who came down to the kid's room to teach us about the different sections of the Bible.  This was HUGE to me.  I'm talking about how the first five books are the Law, then there's History, then there's Poetry, etc etc.  Suddenly the Bible felt organized!  I had a framework to go on.  Now if you asked me where such-and-such a story was, or such-and-such a teaching was, I had a much better chance of pointing you to the right part of the Bible, even if I couldn't have told you chapter and verse.

But is there anywhere else to go from there other than memorization?  Just read and keep reading the Bible and eventually get so familiar with it you can impress all your friends and relatives in class with your Bible knowledge (because, obviously, this is what impresses people...)?  Well, to some extent, yes.  But I wonder if there may be another in-between step that we could teach people that would help them bridge the gap somewhat.

That is, what if we came up with a way to succinctly describe what each book is ABOUT in a way that's easier to remember?  Like, say, one of the major themes of the book?

I remember a preacher named Jeff Walling actually did this at a youth rally when I was a teenager, and I really appreciated it.  He went over the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) and gave us a single word for each one to describe the difference between them.  The only one I remember exactly is the word for John: "Whoaaa..." said like a surfer.  But I remember the gist of them all.  John was the emotional gospel, the one about all the cool, deep, theologial connections.  Matthew was the Jewish-centric one, Luke was the Gentile-centric one, and Mark was the short one - straight and to the point.  Jeff Walling was giving me a framework.  Because of the way I learn, it was very, very helpful.

So could we do something like that for the whole Bible?  What about Paul's letters?  It's easy to feel like Paul's letters just kind of all run together in a big blob sometimes, but there really are different themes and focuses in each one.

So I'm gonna try something.  I'm gonna try to come up with a word or phrase for each of Paul's letters that describes a major theme or something distinctive about the book, and that STARTS WITH THE SAME LETTER as the book.  And then you can tell me, if you are a framework-based learner like me, if you think this would be helpful!  So here goes:

Romans: Redemption
1 Corinthians: Church
2 Corinthians: Collection
Galatians: Grace vs Legalism
Ephesians: Encouragement
Philippians: Peace
Colossians: Counter-asceticism
1 and 2 Thessalonians: The End of the World
1 and 2 Timothy, Titus: Tending the Flock
Philemon: Personal letter

There may be better choices for some of these - perhaps you could help me think of some!  But I like the general idea.

Romans is a tough one, as it's so central and so important - it's basically the full gospel explained in lengthy detail.  So "redemption" covers a lot, but then, so does "reconciliation," "righteousness", and "right with God."  Could be the "roadmap to reconciliation."  Or "all roads lead to Romans."  There are a number of possibilities.

Thessalonians is also tricky, because the theme is so clear - dealing with Jesus's second coming - but that phrase (or anything related I can think of) doesn't start with T.  But maybe sticking a big "THE" in there is just silly enough to be memorable!

Most of the others I feel a little better about.  Ephesians really is a very positive, encouraging letter.  Philippians has a lot to say about peace (and joy) - the famous "peace that passeth understanding" passage is there.  Colossians is about more than fighting off bad theology like asceticism, but it's definitely in there.  Galatians could be just "grace," but it's such a combative book I feel like a "vs." is required.  1 Corinthians covers a lot of stuff about church practices and has a lot about church unity - communion, speaking in tongues, worship, etc.  To reduce 2 Corinthians to an appeal for money might go too far - but even though there's more to it than JUST that, it's still a big part of the book.  Timothy and Titus have a lot of stuff about being an elder or a deacon, or how to run the church as a practical matter.

So what do you think?  Would something like this be helpful?  How would you summarize Paul's letters?

And then, a bonus challenge... can you do it for the Minor Prophets? (sinister laugh)

Was Jesus a Democrat, Republican, Pharisee or Sadducee?

"Asking whether Jesus is a Democrat or Republican is like asking whether he was a Pharisee or Sadducee."

I distinctly remember my dad delivering this line to me.  I don't remember where he got it from, or whether he came up with it himself, but I do remember one thing very strongly:

I really liked it.

It made perfect sense to me.  Jesus did not conform to the labels and factions of his day.  The Pharisees and Sadducees, two Jewish sects, fought over various theological issues, but Jesus never identified with either.  In fact, not only did he criticize both sects during his ministry, but Jesus arguably reserved his harshest language for them both.  Jesus was interested in the truth, regardless of who it offended.

So dad's statement made sense to me.  I could more or less analogize the Pharisees and Sadducees to our modern political parties.  The Pharisees believed in the coming resurrection of the dead, angels, and spirits.  They were more small town, more religiously conservative, arguably more populist.  The Sadducees were more urban, more involved in the temple power structure.  They denied the resurrection, angels, and spirits.  So, very roughly, I could see the metaphor.  Jesus would probably be yelling at both Republicans and Democrats in the same way he yelled at both sects of his time.

And honestly, I think at some level, I liked it because it made me feel like I was "above" the petty tribal disputes of the political parties.  I imagined that Jesus simply had bigger fish to fry than whatever the sects were arguing about.  I liked the feeling that my fried fish were bigger, too.

So did that mean Jesus was some kind of... I don't know... moderate?  Did he have some "third way?"  Would he have registered as an independent?  Or would he have perhaps stayed home on election day?

Well, I've been rethinking this idea a little bit lately, especially after having read a certain strange passage in the book of Acts that I had long forgotten about.  Here, Paul is on trial before the Sanhedrin for preaching Christ:

6 Now when Paul perceived that one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, “Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. It is with respect to the hope and the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial.” 7 And when he had said this, a dissension arose between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. 8 For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all. 9 Then a great clamor arose, and some of the scribes of the Pharisees' party stood up and contended sharply, “We find nothing wrong in this man. What if a spirit or an angel spoke to him?” 10 And when the dissension became violent, the tribune, afraid that Paul would be torn to pieces by them, commanded the soldiers to go down and take him away from among them by force and bring him into the barracks. (Acts 23:6-10)

I actually found this a bit amusing.  It feels like Paul is cynically manipulating his accusers by playing them against each other - by taking sides in the battle of the sects, so to speak.  He's being very tactical here.  But there's an interesting little fact about what Paul says that I hadn't really considered until recently:

It's all true.

Paul may be cynically manipulating the court, but nothing he said was a lie.  He was a Pharisee. He did believe in the resurrection of the dead, and, in fact, this concept is extremely important to Christianity, which he was on trial for.  So I had this rather surprising realization (for me, at least):

While Jesus would never have identified with either Jewish sect, on the particular issues that divided them, Jesus agreed with the Pharisees down the line.

In that respect, you could even argue that Christianity was an offshoot of Pharisaic Judaism.  This is a bit awkward, as Jesus and the Pharisees yelled at each other a lot.  We also can't ignore the fact that the Pharisees spent a tremendous amount of energy trying to murder Jesus (and ultimately succeeding).  Jesus consistently spoke of the Pharisees as a "them."  He was not even slightly part of their tribe.  But on the question of the resurrection, he agreed with the Pharisees completely.

23 That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to [Jesus] with a question. 24 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for him. 25 Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. 26 The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. 27 Finally, the woman died. 28 Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?” 

29 Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. 30 At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.31 But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.” 

33 When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching. 

(Matthew 22:23-33)

Did you catch that?  Jesus is vociferously defending Pharisaism from the Sadducees.  He is defending the positions of the people who hate him and want to kill him -- people who drove him to use his harshest and angriest language.

I suppose that's not too shocking, given that Jesus was just saying what he knew to be true, but still, it has implications for the here and now.

I think a lot of Christians, including me, have an easy time criticizing "our" political party (whichever one we identify with most).  We're happy to say that we may agree with the party on certain issues, but we're definitely NOT one of those "my party right or wrong" people.  Our faith comes first.

Fair enough.  But there's a harder implication.  To stand for the truth, you have to be willing to do more than disagree with "your" side.  You have to be willing to agree with the "other" side, even vehemently argue for it, if they happen to be right.  Even if they hate you.  Even if they wish you were dead.  Even if their leaders are as corrupt and evil as the Pharisees were.  Could you do that?  Or have you responded in anger to the point where you can't possibly bring yourself to agree with them on any issue?

Could you do what Jesus did and argue for a position taken by people who enrage you?  Can you be on God's side not only when it disagrees with "us," but when it agrees with "them?"

Maybe that's easy for you.  I don't know.  I find it challenging, and something to be praying about.

And I wonder how many of us are willing to take that step...

The Real Opposite of People Pleasing?

"People-pleasing behavior" has been one of my particular struggles for a long time.  The general idea, as I understand the term, is that you take on a lot of responsibility, run yourself ragged trying to meet other people's demands, never say "no" to anyone, and eventually burn out.  This is a struggle for a lot of people, as I have learned, both inside and outside the church.

Now, one of the typical solutions offered by the secular world is the idea of "self care."  The idea is that you're supposed to explicitly take time to rest and recharge - to allow yourself to be "selfish" from time to time so that you do not stress yourself out and die from a wicked case of acid reflux.  There is a certain amount of sense to this - even if your whole goal in life is to meet your responsibility to other people, it certain doesn't help your cause to make yourself sick by overwork.  Taking time to rest is important,  and that's a perfectly fair and even Biblical concept.

But this idea is, at the very least, remarkably incomplete, and possibly even problematic.  This is because I think the secular world frequently misdiagnoses the true root of people-pleasing behavior.  One of the underlying assumptions behind the idea of "self care" is that there's this fundamental split between "others" and "self."  The people-pleasing person is way too far on the "others" side, so they need to come more to the "self" side.  Generally, the diagnosis is that the people-pleasing person suffers from misplaced guilt about taking time for self, and so they need to question or even reject whatever moral standard it is that's causing them to ignore their own needs.  Therefore, the principal villain, in much of the secular world's eyes, is moral guilt.

This is not really my personal experience.

For me at least, the principal driving factor behind people-pleasing behavior is not guilt but fear - fear of people being angry at you, fear of being rejected.  In some people that have shared with me, this can come from a long history of actually being rejected.  As a result, people feel like they don't know how not to be rejected other than to do everything in their power to keep everyone around them happy.  People-pleasing frequently equates to a high degree of sensitivity to other people's anger or disapproval.  Because we people-pleasers fear rejection, we preemptively act in ways designed to eliminate the threat - take on all the responsibilities, meet all the needs, etc.

The issue is that, from a Christian perspective, a lot of the things that people-pleasers do are perfectly good and wonderful things to be doing.  They're frequently not wrong to be doing them.  After all, are we not told that the greatest commandments include loving your neighbor as yourself?  (Leviticus 19:18)  The Bible teaches a pretty radical kind of selflessness.

It's therefore not entirely out of left field that many in the secular world would love to saddle traditional moral authorities with the blame.  If the poor people-pleasers would just throw off the shackles of a higher moral authority, they would go binge watch Netflix and pornography and not care what anyone thought of them and be happy.  Right?

I've known a number of people throughout my life who appear to have reached precisely this conclusion - and at least one has told me so outright.  Sick of being "good" all their lives, such people decide that "self care" involves giving themselves permission to be "bad."  For them, the real enemy of their happiness was the moral authority they perceived to be condemning them.  If there are no more "shoulds" and "oughts," there's no more stress.

For a believing Christian, of course, this attitude is a complete non-starter.  But even for a secular person, I wonder whether it misses the point.  The people that I have observed to have made the decision to throw off moral authorities do not, from my vantage point, appear any more "free" than they did before.  Rather, they have swapped one emotional slavemaster for another.  Instead of being controlled by fear, they have given themselves over to resentment.

It kind of makes sense, though.  The people-pleaser, motivated by fear, gradually builds up a huge wad of unexpressed rage at the world around them - the world that rejected them in the first place and constantly threatens to reject them again lest they meet all the demands - until eventually anger kicks fear out of the driver's seat.

This is not, in my personal opinion, much of a win for the people-pleaser.  Neither the fear nor the resentment comes from a place of security, a place of love and acceptance.  You can trade a passive reaction for an active reaction (or vice versa) all day long but the problem isn't really being solved either way.  Whether giving ourselves up to please others, or raging at others in frustration, the underlying, incontrovertible fact of the matter is:

We don't have much control over whether other people reject us.

Not really.  We can fear it, we can react to it, but that little fact will still be true either way.  So what is to be done?  What's the real answer for a believing Christian who struggles with people-pleasing?

Well, I would propose that rather than trying to draw a line between "others" and "self," the truly important line is between pleasing people vs. pleasing God.  How can this be, you may ask?  Can't people run themselves just as ragged pleasing God as they can pleasing people?  How can that possibly help?  What's the difference?

I would propose to you that the difference is this:

God already loves and accepts you.

In Christ, we can be secure in God's acceptance of us.  People will sin.  People may hurt you or reject you and there's nothing you can do to prevent it.  God isn't like that.  For those who have turned their hearts to them, they have no need to fear his rejection.  By accepting ourselves that we are accepted by God through Christ, we can allow his love to inform who we are - I can become someone who is beloved, rather than someone who is always afraid of not being loved, or angry at having not been loved.  My desire to please God then comes from a place of security and love rather than a place of fear or anger.  God loved me first.  I didn't have to earn it - I received it by his grace alone.

Notice that Paul, who understood better than anyone else how radical and transformative God's grace is, still speaks of his desire to please God:

"So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it." (2 Corinthians 5:9)

There's nothing wrong with being a God-pleaser.  Truly pleasing God doesn't come from a place of insecurity, but a place of security.  Shortly before this verse in 2 Corinthians, Paul talks about how much he's longing for his eternal home in heaven - he has no doubt in his mind that he has a reward prepared for him.  He has no doubt that he's accepted and loved.  The presence of the Holy Spirit in him proves it -

"Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come." (2 Corinthians 5:5)

The purpose he speaks of is to be clothed in immortality - it's what we were made for!  Paul works to please God, but not from a place of fear or resentment.  God-pleasing, when one properly understands the nature of God, can only come from a place of love and acceptance - because that's what God wants.

Now, a lot of believing Christians have trouble with this.  For many of us, God appears almost exclusively as a judge - a condemning moral authority.  And God absolutely is a judge.  There's no denying it.

But if the people-pleaser struggles with feeling accepted by God, I would encourage them to read over passages like Jesus's parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector.  If you don't know it, please read it - I think it's really important.  I promise I'll still be here when you get back!

The Pharisee, although he was, in fact, a sinner, refused to admit his sins before God, and consequently was not justified.  The tax collector, however, arguably a much worse sinner, "went home justified."  For having done what?  He confessed what he had done.  And he found justification -  acceptance by God - waiting for him.

It therefore seems to me that a believing Christian who struggles with feeling accepted by God does so because they have not really allowed themselves to be broken before him - to admit their sin to themselves and to God.  God will absolutely show you what grace means - what it means to be accepted in spite of anything you've done - if you only turn to him.  He longs for reconciliation with you.  And he will work in you, transforming your very nature into someone who pleases him.

So that's the paradox then.  The people-pleaser's real enemy isn't fear or anger, but pride.  This is because pride is the only thing that prevents us from taking the solution to our insecurities that God is longing to give us.  But if we do take it - if we do turn our hearts to him, if we have the Holy Spirit - then we have all the acceptance and love of God that comes from being adopted as his children.

"For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”  The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children." (Romans 8:14-16)

Take the security that God is offering you.

(P.S. If you are already someone who understands God's love and acceptance, I encourage you to show that same love and acceptance to others.  Since God's love can feel very abstract to people, help make it real by demonstrating it at a personal level.)

Bring on the Baby Kissing - A Weird Thought About Luke 18:15-17

If you grew up going to Sunday School, you're probably at least passingly familiar with the following passage from Luke 18 (NIV):

15 People were also bringing babies to Jesus for him to place his hands on them. When the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. 16 But Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 17 Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”

I must have heard an estimated bazillion lessons on this particular verse, and I remember a lot of coloring book pages showing a compassionate-looking Jesus laying hands on schoolchildren of assorted ethnicities.  (Sunday School teachers may not give a lot of lesson time to the many rape and incest stories of the Bible, but this passage was plenty safe to discuss.)  So I was a little surprised at my reaction when I stumbled across the verse again this morning.

You see, there was kind of a standard issue Sunday School commentary that typically accompanied this passage in my experience, and it went a little something like this:

"Back in the olden days of the New Testament, children were looked down upon, shunted to the side, and treated as somehow less than human, unlike today, where we rightly understand that children are the future and consequently schedule our entire lives around them.  So it may seem weird to us that the disciples would rebuke people bringing their children to Jesus, but it was just the culture of the time.  So when Jesus says things like 'The kingdom of God belongs to such as these,' he's being remarkably counter-cultural and shocking!"

I'm not entirely sure what the evidence is for this, and it may be right as far as I know (I wasn't there), but part of me kind of doubts this is true.  I mean, did people suddenly start sentimentalizing childhood sometime after World War II?  I think the reason that this explanation appeals to people, though, comes from the mysteriousness of the disciples' reaction in verse 15.  Why on earth would the disciples rebuke people for bringing kids to Jesus?  Did they think Jesus would be bothered by such trifling and unimportant matters as young human beings?  It's not out of the question, I suppose, but that explanation still feels weird to me.

But even weirder than that was the reaction that I personally felt this morning when I stumbled upon verse 15.  You see, here's what verse 15 did not say, that I nonetheless kind of expected it to say:

"And lo, the many school-age children of various ethnicities approached Jesus of their own accord, in eager expectation of learning at his feet with their pure, innocent, humble hearts."

Rather, it says that people (meaning, presumably, the parents) were bringing their babies to Jesus so that he could place his hands on them.  (As a quick note, the same account in Matthew and Mark uses a different Greek word, translated "little children" in the NIV, which explains why the word "babies" surprised me.)

The instant image that popped into my head was decidedly un-Biblical.  I remember back when I was really into the Beatles in college, I read a story of a lady in Australia who threw her mentally-handicapped child onto a passing truck in which the Beatles were sitting, hoping that the Beatles would cure him by touching him.  And there were many other stories like it.  People ascribed literal godlike power to four human beings (including Ringo Starr) for no other reason than that they were extremely famous and liked, and that meant people wanted the Beatles to touch their babies.

Now, how would you react to that story?  I found it tremendously sad.  I imagined that the lady could not have been terribly bright, and the poor kid getting thrown around was certainly an innocent in all this.  She clearly was longing for something to worship, but instead of directing that worship at Actual God (TM), she directed it at Silly Rock Stars, with potentially tragic consequences.

But imagine a less extreme example - say, people lining up to let famous politicians, actors, or whatever kiss their babies, without throwing them into traffic.  To me, there's both something kind of superstitious, and even something kind of self-centered about the practice.  "I'm gonna get my baby blessed!"  I honestly feel a little bit of... what's the right word... contempt for such people.

So when I read in Luke 18:15 that "people were also bringing babies to Jesus for him to place his hands on them," my mind immediately went to those silly people mobbing the Beatles.  Was Jesus the equivalent rock star of the day?  Were they just hoping to get a little positive mojo on their babies?  Didn't it matter to them that Jesus's blessings weren't supposed to be like a rabbit's foot or a good luck charm?  That the babies may have been too young to understand what was going on?  Didn't they know that it was Jesus's identity, his word, and the power he had from his Father that was important, not the literal laying on of his hands?  That Jesus really wanted obedience, mercy, forgiveness, and justice - things of the heart?

So I wasn't in the least bit surprised that the disciples rebuked these people.  During that split second emotional reaction, I wanted to rebuke them, too.

So when Jesus turned to rebuke his disciples, as it happened, he was also rebuking me, hundreds of years later.

"Let the little children come to me."

Implicit in that, though, I feel, is also:

"Let the little children's parents who you think are superstitious yahoos come to me."

Jesus did not turn away the "people" bringing their "babies" for him to lay his hands on. And in Mark, the account even adds an extra verse:

"And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them."

He gave the parents what they wanted.

Now Jesus was frequently highly critical of people, particularly people who thought they were the moral stuff.  But for people whose hearts were turned to him, he only encouraged them.  He only showed mercy.  Even if the particular way they were turning to him might seem inappropriate to someone else.

There's another account from Jesus's life that is highly similar to this, I think - the story of the woman who poured perfume on Jesus shortly before his crucifixion - perfume valued at a year's wages.  Mark describes the disciples as "indignant" because the money could've been given to the poor.  Here's Jesus response in Mark 14:

6 “Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 7 The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. 8 She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. 9 Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

Performing crazy acts of worship toward Liverpudlian guitarists is crazy.  Performing crazy acts of worship for the actual Son of God is not - it's what those feelings are for.

How many times do we look with contempt upon people worshiping God in a way that's different than ours?  Are those people over there too superstitious or too simple-minded for you?  Are those people over there too emotional, too sentimental, too weepy-and-waily for you?  Are those people over there too traditional, too straight-laced, too button-down for you?  Does that man who thinks that he's worshiping God by dressing in his "Sunday best" and showing respect and being quiet bother you?  Does that woman who thinks she's worshiping God by dancing (rather poorly) with ribbons and soft rock music bother you?  Does that other lady who thinks she's worshiping God by sitting quietly in a room full of candles and incense with her head bowed bother you?  Does that king of Israel bother you when he worships God by stripping down to his linen ephod and dancing around the streets?  Do you feel contempt for people showing their love for their creator in the best and most sincere way they know?

Then Jesus's rebuke to his disciples may be for you too.