Some Say the World Will End in Fire

On Thursday, July 11 of 2013, I presented a lecture at God’s House of Prayer, a sim in the virtual world called Second Life where I do most of my social media interaction.  I’ll be using this blog to post the four lectures they’ve asked me to give during the month of July.  Below you’ll find the first installment.

Lecture 1: Approaching the Approaches to Revelation

I’d like to welcome you to God’s House of Prayer.  This is the first of four 30-minute lectures I’ll be delivering on how to begin reading the book of Revelation.

Please note that it isn’t a study of the Revelation.  We won’t be doing a systematic study of each chapter, verse by verse.  Instead, this short lecture series is about the Revelation … why it’s such a difficult book to read, why it leads to so much disagreement and conflict among believers, how it ever found its way into the New Testament, and what major approaches church fathers and Bible scholars have used over the centuries to help us wrestle with its messages and meanings.

It’s all the stuff I wish I had known before I read a single verse of the book.

For those of you who are pastors, ministers, or other clergy, this might be a quaint revisiting of some of your classes from Days Gone By in seminary.

For the avid Biblical researchers among us, this will also be a review, a far-too-brief summary of the wealth of ideas that relate to the book.

But those of you who are non-researchers, non-clergy, believers growing in faith, Bible readers moving from milk to meat and starting on the path of studying to show yourself approved – you are my main audience tonight.  You are the reason I wanted to create this short lecture series.

We’ll let all those other guys, those pastors and scholars, hang around … but this lecture series is for you.

Some housekeeping before I start:

(a) Tonight’s lecture is entirely in text.  The down side of that is you don’t get to hear peppy, charismatic voice modulations from an energetic speaker.  The up side is … you can sneak off to the bathroom and not miss a thing, thanks to the wonders of scroll back.

(b) There is no note card.  The outline of the lecture is to my left, your right, so that you can gauge our progress through the talk.  I will, however, be posting the full text tomorrow at my blog, and I will make links to that available as the series continues.

(c) We’ll return to voice at the end of 30 minutes.  When I finally shut up, we’ll have a time for questions, comments, and voice discussions.

And away we go …

REVELATION: THE BOOK OF CONFLICT

When Reverend Brett first announced that I’d be giving this lecture series on the book of Revelation, an odd thing happened.  People began to contact me, friends and fellow believers.  They wished me luck with the lectures.  They told me whether or not they’d be able to make it on this day, at this time.  And more than a few of them qualified their good wishes with some version of the words: “I probably won’t agree with you, but it sounds interesting!”

And that seems a pretty normal reaction, no?

But I want you to think about it … because that very reaction tells you a LOT about the church’s 19-century-long love/hate relationship with the book of Revelation.

First of all – (1) Think how that reaction from my friends would have sounded if Brett had announced that I was lecturing on any other book of the Bible.  If the announcement had read, “YoYo Rez will be talking about the Gospel of Matthew, and four distinct ways you could approach it, based on the Church’s history of interpretation,” I’m pretty sure that no one would have said, “Well, I probably won’t agree with you, but sounds interesting.”

Similarly, at last Sunday’s House of Prayer sermon--when Brett announced that he’d be giving us insights into Ephesians 2--if I had texted in local chat, “I probably won’t agree with you, but sounds interesting,” I would have gotten a stern post-sermon talking to.

That reaction, that readiness to disagree which seemed acceptable in the context of the book of Revelation, comes off as silly at best, rude at worst, when applied to another part of the Bible.

It doesn’t sound rude when applied to the Revelation, because we as a church agree that the Revelation is divisive, a book written in conflict, interpreted in conflict, and proclaiming conflict.

Second – (2) Another fascinating thing about the reaction “I probably won’t agree with you, but it sounds interesting” is this: The announcement hadn’t mentioned a single thing I believe about the Revelation. The announcement did mentioned 4 historical approaches to interpreting the book.  It mentioned that all four would be covered.  It suggested we could learn something from each of the approaches.

But it didn’t say a word about which approach I favor.

Nonetheless, any number of my fellow believers, dear friends all, assumed they were going to disagree with me, despite my not having given the smallest clue about my preferred hermeneutic or exegesis.

This shows that the Revelation triggers emotions.  Not one of us can perform exegesis on the Revelation without first sloughing through a vast swamp of eisegesis … because more than any other book of the Bible, this is the one we were all told about before we set eyes on it.  I think most of us will admit that’s true.  First we were told what it all meant; then we tackled actually reading it.

So, this means we’re about to do a dangerous thing, those of us gathered here today.  We’re about to consider a text that for 19½ centuries has raised emotions and caused division, one that has turned brother against brother and father against son.

Happy trails to us, huh?

But there’s good news, too.  Revelation 1:3 offers a unique promise: “Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.”

This crazy, madcap collection of nightmares, beasts, multitudes in anguish and multitudes in glory comes with its own set of seven blessing scattered throughout its chapters … seven Revelation Beatitudes, for the Revelation uses the same Greek word for “blessed” that Jesus used with his disciples.  This first Revelation Beatitude assures us that it’s worth it to hear the Revelation declared, and to declare it aloud, no matter how strange we may find it, and no matter how many emotions it stirs or how much it threatens to cause division.

If we move past the risks, we move into those blessings.

(Side note: Those of you who missed Nak Earst's recent series on the original Beatitudes -- make him do the services for you all over again.  They're not to be missed!)

WHY IS REVELATION SO HARD TO GRASP?

I mentioned eisegesis just now.  That’s usually considered a bad approach to interpreting the Bible.  But there’s a reason we all have to approach the book of Revelation with pre-existing ideas about what it means.  In fact, there are a number of reasons.  For my purposes tonight, we’ll say that that number is exactly three.

REASON NUMBER 1: Revelation can’t be taken literally.

Many of us in the Evangelical community call ourselves literalists.  We even recall the old bumper stickers: “God Said It, I Believe It, That Settles It.”  We take a certain level of justifiable pride in the simplicity of our acceptance of the Bible, and we can handle a few similes and metaphors and statements of hyperbole in the sacred text.  Jesus, we know, isn’t really a shepherd, he is like a shepherd.  He isn’t really a vine or a door … he shares attributes with those that we need to ponder to appreciate.  He doesn’t really expect us to hate our mothers and fathers … he is making a powerful point about how deeply we need to hold our commitment to him.

We’re great Bible readers when it comes to literal passages with a sprinkling of symbolism, clearly explained.

But when we enter the world of the Revelation, all our literalist tendencies are turned on their heads.  We’re told not to be literal (“Those seven heads I just mentioned on the dragon?  They’re seven hills and seven kings too, get it, get it?”)  We’re tricked into expecting one symbol while being handed another (“Turn around and see the Lion.  Whoops!  Gotcha, the Lion you expected is really a Lamb.  Whoops!  Gotcha, the Lamb that isn’t a Lion isn’t really a Lamb either, get it, get it?”)  We’re teased with bits of information we aren’t permitted (“Whoa, do you hear those voices in the seven thunders saying really cool things?  No, don’t write them down.  Leave your readers wondering so they don’t get it, don’t get it.”)

To make matters worse, even the parts of Revelation that feel literal wind up fooling us.  Think of the 144,000 children of Israel who are sealed in chapter 7.  Many who take a Futurist approach to Revelation (one of the 4 approaches this lecture series will cover) breathe a literalist sigh of relief when they encounter that passage, and conclude that it refers to 144,000 real, literal Jews who will be saved during a future tribulation.

But take note: Revelation is again tricking our literalist minds!  Because if we take that number 144,000 literally, and if we take the Jewish identity of the crowd literally, then we would also have to take literally what the text says about where each part of that crowd came from – 12 thousand souls from each of the 12 tribes of Israel.  That is a literal impossibility, since 10 of the 12 tribes had literally disappeared by the literal time that John literally heard those words.  John would have known that while he listened.  We know it now, too, and are left as confused in our literalism as when we entered the passage.

REASON NUMBER 2: The Revelation demands extensive external knowledge.

As philosophical descendents of the Reformation, we share in a sola scriptura commitment – a belief that our scripture is a definitive source and authority for our doctrines.  That said, even the Westminster Confession of Faith recognizes that there will be parts of Scripture, unrelated to salvation, that simply aren’t easy for all believers to understand.  In its first chapter, it declares that “[a]ll things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all.”

In effect: Some Scriptures require a little help to make them clear to the modern mind.

By “a little help,” we usually mean a bit of historical context or other small details that help make a text come alive.  For example, consider a non-Revelation example, the story of the Pharisees asking Jesus if it’s right to pay taxes to the Romans, and Jesus asking for a coin to point out Caesar’s picture is on the coin, meaning it belongs to him anyway.  A typical lay reader would have little trouble understanding that passage, and might perhaps require only a reminder that “Caesar” was the title of the ruler of the Romans, who were occupying Judea at that time.  Additional information might enrich the tale – for example, pointing out that a coin with a human form on it was often considered idolatrous by Pharisees, and that Jesus was making a more ironic and damning observation when he asked, “Whose face is on this coin?” after a Pharisee had been the one to hand it over.  But note: these bits of information simply enhance the story; the basic massage was clear without the information added.

The same is not true for passages in the book of Revelation.  The images in this book come so quickly, and are so bizarre, one often can’t tell where even to start.  Consider these lines from the description of the third horseman of the opened seals in chapter 6, traditionally called Famine.  We’ll start with the King James Version:

“And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.  And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.”

Our first barrier is Elizabethan English.  Here, a penny is not a penny, a “measure” isn’t very descriptive to the modern mind, and there isn’t a clue what “not hurting the oil or wine” might be about.  In addition, we have a pair of balances.  What, a first-time reader will wonder, is a pair of balances?  Something out of gymnastics?

An industrious reader might decide to jump over to another version of Scripture, if his particular congregation allows that.  Being of a particularly free-spirited bent, he goes right to the other end of the biblical spectrum, the New Living Translation:

“When the Lamb broke the third seal, I heard the third living being say, "Come!" I looked up and saw a black horse, and its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand.  And I heard a voice from among the four living beings say, ‘A loaf of wheat bread or three loaves of barley will cost a day's pay. And don't waste the olive oil and wine.’ ”

You may think that clears some matters up, but consider it from the mind of a new lay reader.  Comparing two popular versions of Scripture has raised a number of questions:

Q: Why do the versions contradict, one saying a penny and another saying a whole day's pay?

Q: Why is one selling grains while the other one is selling cooked loaves of bread?

Q: Why is one talking about the oil and wine getting hurt, while the other just says it’s getting wasted?

Q: If the balances are scales, what do they represent?  Justice?  Commerce?  Weight loss?

Am I exaggerating the difficulties of that little pair of verses about the third horseman, Famine?  The older I get, the more I don’t think so.  As a teacher of high school students, I’ve come to learn that the moment you presume some piece of “universal” knowledge, you’ll run into more people than you imagined who have no clue what you’re talking about.  They won’t understand that balances means scales.  They won’t find “penny” to be a meaningless hurdle, nor will they know it comes from “dinarius,” the coin paid for a full day’s work.  They might not even pick up from the two verses that the third horseman should be called Famine.

Please note: I, for one, don’t think of the third horseman as Famine, no matter how skinny he looks on Metallica album covers or in the movie The Crow.  I think of him as “The Horseman of Vast Economic Disparity and Social Injustice Resulting from a Minor Drought.”

Here’s the external knowledge that leads me to that conclusion:

·         AGRICULTURE: Wheat and barley are shallow-rooted plants that suffer quickly in a drought.  Grapes and olives have deeper, farther-reaching roots that help them survive lighter droughts.  In a minor drought, grains perish, while olives and grapes (the source of the oil and wine in the verse) remain unharmed.

·         MICRO ECONOMICS: A laborer in the era of the Revelation was generally granted a denarius for a day’s work.  A “choinix” of wheat was considered the daily ration he needed to survive … choinix being the “measure” mentioned in the verses, and an indication that workers were living hand to mouth, with only the option of buying the cheaper, less nutritious barley if they had other mouths to feed.

·         MACRO ECONOMICS: Grains contributed to breadstuffs, the staples of the lower working classes.  Olives and wines were more of a luxury in Asia Minor (where John is writing), predominantly enjoyed by the upper classes.  The third horseman shows that staples are rare for the poor but luxuries are plentiful for the rich in this seal’s scenario.

·         HISTORY: In the era when this book was written, droughts did in fact touch the Asia Minor area, both during Nero Caesar’s reign and during the later reign of Domitian.  In the latter case, Domitian actually ordered that olive and grape production not be halted in favor of wheat and barley cultivation – a literal manifestation of an order not to harm the oil and wine.

And there you have it – the  “Third Horseman of Vast Economic Disparity and Social Injustice Resulting from a Minor Drought.”  The third horseman was not simply Famine, but a harbinger of a time when a day laborer could barely scrape by on minimum-wage dinarii, while the wealthy continued to dine in opulence, despite measures that could have been taken to withstand the minor environmental downturn.

That was a LOT of effort to put into a pair of short verses – and that was just effort spent pointing out what they really say.  We didn’t even start to get into what they might mean in the context of John’s full vision.

And don’t worry – I won’t be doing a lot of that “Microscope On The Text” approach, even though I feel that is the most fruitful way to get to the meaning of the Revelation.  My point in taking that close a look is to drive home one idea: That it is an act of irresponsibility to send a new Christian into the pages of Revelation with no pre-reading, upfront guidance, and constant supplemental support throughout the reading.

REASON NUMBER 3: It is written in a rare genre.

You may have forgotten that I was in the middle of three points.  This final one is a lot shorter -- the Revelation is written in a specific, quirky genre, one you’ve probably heard about: apocalyptic.

What do I mean when I say “genre”?  Not to turn all English teacher on you, but – a “genre” is a specific category of literary composition marked off by its unique form, style, and content.  The Bible is a collection of various genres.  The Psalms are written in the “poetry” and “song” genres.  The Chronicles are in a “historical narrative” genre.  Jeremiah is in the “prophetic” genre.  Job is in the rarer genre of “theodicy.”  Paul communicated through the “epistolary” genre, letters.  Jesus didn’t write, but according to the gospels he did teach almost exclusively in the genre of  “parable.”

And, as I mentioned, the Revelation is written in the “apocalyptic” genre.  You may even recall that the other name for the Revelation is “The Apocalypse,” a translation of the Greek word for “revelation.”  Apocalyptic was a style of literature most popular from 200 B.C.E. to 200 C.E.  (Those are B.C. and A.D., for you folks who went to college in the 20th century.)

The apocalyptic genre pops up in other parts of Scripture, most notably in portions of Joel, Zechariah, Isaiah, and of course in Daniel, extensively.  The Revelation, however, is the only book of the Bible that embraces it without interruption.  Even the opening letters to the churches at the start of Revelation – technically part of the epistolary genre – are delivered within the apocalyptic framework.  John is already in the spirit and hearing apocalyptic voices when he composes the epistles.  Revelation is all apocalyptic through and through, and the symbols it uses are part of a complex code agreed upon by writers in the genre.

What writers do I mean?  For many years, we only had a handful of non-Biblical examples of the apocalyptic genre, most notably the books of Enoch and the Assumption of Moses (both of which are directly quoted in Scripture in the Letter of Jude).  Now, thanks to the 1945 discovery of ancient documents in the Nag Hammadi region of Egypt, we have dozens of non-Biblical examples of the genre as well.

There’s only one point I want to drive home right now about apocalyptic literature.  It is not the same as prophecy.  The two “genres” are completely different in nature.  Many readers of Revelation might think they are reading prophecy with fancier symbolism and cool creatures, but there is a fundamental difference between prophetic and apocalyptic literature: Traditional Biblical prophecy is a mixture of what will happen and what might happen.  Biblical Apocalyptic is simply what must happen, no mights at all.  In apocalyptic, there is no wibble room … there are no options like those often offered in traditional prophecy, that if a person or a nation turns from their ways, they can avoid the wrath to come.

The prophetic very often provides two paths, two possibilities: the Big Bad is coming, OR you can avoid the Big Bad by turning from your ways and returning to the Lord.  Think Jonah, the case study for how God can turn from his wrath completely (and irk the prophet at the same time).

In Apocalyptic, no options remain.  Nothing can get better before it gets worse.  It’s game over.  There’s only the Big Bad, followed by a world to come.

IN CONCLUSION

When we advertised this lecture series, we said we would discuss 4 distinct approaches to reading the Revelation.  As you can see, this first week was spent approaching the approaches, without even getting there.  And to make matters worse, I got through this entire introduction without ever once saying the words “Left Behind” or “Illuminati.”  What crazy kind of introduction to Revelation is this?!

Next week, I’ll discuss the writing of the Revelation, its author, and the tough time it had making its way into the Scriptures and staying there … including Martin Luther’s own rejection of the Revelation with the words: “I can in no way detect that the Holy Spirit produced it ... Christ is neither taught nor known in it.”

After that, I will indeed begin to cover the four prominent hermeneutical models available for understanding the Revelation – Futurism, Preterism, Historicism, and Idealism.  But for now, I’d like to step back and allow people here to voice some of their own ideas, or ask any questions they might have, and maybe even get a nice, raucous, non-emotional and non-divisive discussion going.

Voicers will often say, “I yield the mic.”  Instead, I’ll say: “I yield the alphabet.”

Thank you.

Satan's Own Conspiracy Theory

Ever since the Illuminati assassinated JFK to pave the way for international bankers to allow Satan to promote Muslims like Barack Obama into positions of power, the One World Government has been gearing up to set the Antichrist into place and to require digital chips to be implanted in our hands in order to buy and sell anything, including bottled fluoridated tap water for those who will be brainwashed into following the Roman Catholic mystery religion and claiming there’s global warming when really all they want is to take our guns and our traditional light bulbs.

No, really.  It’s true.  Just ask those guys in your church, the ones who say they know.

PARANOID CONSPIRACY THEORIES

Okay, that bit of playfulness aside, let me start by saying that yes, there are conspiracies.  The world is filled with people, some of them powerful, who gather in secret to attempt to make clandestine plans.  Some of them really are trying to figure out how to take your guns.  Others really are trying to make it harder for you to vote if you’re poor and black.  Conspiracies have long been real, and are evidenced throughout Scripture in examples like secret attempts to kill the Apostle Paul and secret movements to promote Absalom over David.

But Paranoid Conspiracy Theories (PCTs) are another thing altogether.  They promote delusion, are driven by fear, and, from a Biblical point of view, ring thoroughly unchristian in nature.

Conspiracies are simply secret plans being entertained or attempted by a group.  PCTs, on the other hand, are elaborate suppositional systems that leverage delusions of persecution and exaggerated self-importance to cast suspicion upon every authority or person of power and wealth.  A conspiracy can be disproved by new information (“Look, McDonalds is posting calories on their menu now; I guess they aren’t  secretly trying to make America obese.”)  A PCT, though, can never be disproved.  Every bit of disconfirming evidence is turned around to become part of the very theory it has contradicted.  (“Who says a giant dwarf star isn’t headed right at the Earth?  NASA astronomers?  Well, of course they would say that … they’re part of the cover up!  I trust amateur YouTube videos with bad spelling a thousand times more!”)

What disturbs me lately is the number of Christians I encounter who buy into conspiracy theories circulating through the global secular chat stream.  With the ease of a Haitian hoodoo practitioner adapting Catholicism to his existing magic system, Christian conspiracy theorists are embracing worldly paranoia and molding it to fit pre-existing ideas about Christian apocalypse.  Many of the End Times catastrophists among us hunt down, savor, and promote even the most outlandish ideas bouncing around among the unsaved.

Why do I view paranoid conspiracy theories as unchristian?  I’m glad you asked.  [Actually, I’m glad you let me make it seem like you asked, since I was conspiring within my own mind to make that feel as if it were the next question you’d pose.]   I’ll avoid getting overly detailed and try to present six succinct reasons I believe PCTs are against the will of the Lord.

And please be aware: Someone, somewhere, really did just say to himself: “How many reasons did she say she’d give?  Six?  Six?  Six?!  Aha!”

And I’m not joking.

REASON ONE: Paranoid Conspiracy Theories are Gnostic

From the founding of Christianity, heretic groups were eager to claim special knowledge of the path to salvation and hidden insights into the mind of God.  For such types, universally accessible information about the Lord was a simplistic thing.  Everyone can be saved?  The minds of little children can believe?  Rubbish!  The Lord must be pursued through special understandings, secret words, and difficult layers of emanations that infinitely attempt to approach the sublime divine!

Secret pathways to God are an appalling idea to Christians.  However, the Christian conspiracy theorist follows a line of reasoning disturbingly similar to that of the Gnostic.  First, a secret is learned, usually from a fellow conspiracy buff.  The Christian thrills at the new knowledge, fascinated that he’s gotten an insight that most others don’t have.  He then practices telling the secret insight to others.  Many reject his idea, and that rejection saddens him, making him fear for the future of those who can’t grasp the special knowledge.  The Christian conspiracy theorist even starts to become hostile toward those who reject his insight.  The fools!  It is so clear!  They’re in mortal danger, and refuse to see it.  In fact, they probably won't escape the trickery of the times to come, and will be lost, the poor, damned souls …

And so is born a modern day Gnosticism.  The reality, though, is that our Lord is not one who has us deal in secret plans.  The very meaning of “apocalypse” is “unveiling” --  the revealing of things previously hidden.  God, we are told in Amos 3:7, does absolutely nothing major without revealing it through His prophets, and no conspiracy of man … no hidden global force of imagined Illuminati, no Trilateral Commission or presumed Masonic Rites leading to the world's end … are going to go unmentioned in His word and undefeated by His purposes.   All things hidden are revealed to His children, and we are not caught unaware.

Only those harboring excessive, delusional self-importance think we’re in the dark.

REASON TWO: Paranoid Conspiracy Theories Exalt Satan

Those who talk on and on about secret conspiracies and demonic forces at work behind government agencies are, frankly, doing Satan’s work for him.  Satan has one chief weapon: the lie.  In a world where humans are being reborn into spiritual awakening and made new creatures in Christ every day, Satan can only push the illusion that he has extraordinary power to manipulate even the elect, if that were possible.  His tool for sustaining that illusion is the Christian paranoid conspiracy theorist.

If you suggest to a Christian PCT that Satan, albeit a prince of the air in this world still, might not be the all-powerful omni-force their paranoia suggests, you will receive hearty, wide-eyed push back.  You will be reminded that Satan runs this Earth.  You will be chided for claiming that his power is less than global.  In fact, your very faith will be questioned, and you will be invited to become a better Christian by accepting the truth of Satan’s awesome power.

You see the implications of that way of thinking, I know.  It's a scenario where confessing the devil's power becomes more important than confessing God's.  The Christian PCT will consider those who don't believe him to be lesser Christians, ones in danger for not wanting to learn more and more about the devil’s might.

REASON THREE: Paranoid Conspiracy Theories Diminish God

Well, not really.  Nothing diminishes our Lord.  But PCTs can wear away at our own hearts’ understanding of the sovereignty of our God.  I’ll make this crisp and clear: Even if every single Christian paranoid conspiracy theory were absolutely true, no matter how ridiculous an idea it might be (e.g., UFO sightings interpreted as demonic forces in spaceships flown by our lizard-people overlords), God’s plan for the end of time would not be altered one bit.  If it happens, God has accommodated it in His plan.

Theorize conspiracies all you wish, but do not act as if these things are surprises to God or to His children.  “The Lord foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples,” says Psalm 33:10.  Perhaps we, His children, will be temporarily surprised by what the nations do, but we certainly won’t be impressed by them the way a Christian PCT wants us to be.

Try this the next time a Christian PCT wants you to be impressed by a tale of some One World Religion rearing its head.  Say: “Maybe, maybe not, but I know God is sovereign, so I’ll keep my mind focused on Him.”  The Christian PCT probably won’t contradict that, but you’ll see in his eyes and hear in his next words his desire that you buy in a little bit more, and maybe show just a little bit of fear and revulsion.  You're hearing an ear-tickling secret, after all.

REASON FOUR: Paranoid Conspiracy Theories Demean the Brethren

Isaiah 52:5 laments how God is dishonored among the Gentiles because of the misbehavior of the people of God.  With Christian PCTs embracing the conspiracies of the world, believers are likewise at risk of demeaning the honor due God, and we risk being demeaned ourselves because of how some among us embrace the fear and paranoia Satan inspires.

Consider Harold Camping and his recent declarations of the Rapture.  Consider any number of Christian preachers, catastrophists all, who tied the Mayan 2012 calendar to the divine revelation of Scripture, hinting that December 21, 2012 might be the beginning of the end because an ancient carving by those who had never heard of Yahweh did a great job calculating the rotation of the galaxy.

Think, too, of how little the world can tell the difference between a Heaven’s Gate cult predicting the end and a Hal Lindsey Late Great Planet Earth declaration that 1989 was about it, folks, and Jesus would be returning right around then.  Every preacher who says “New World Order” in a sermon; every teacher who ties the word “Illuminati” to his exegesis of the Revelation; every pastor who speaks of “American Christian persecution by government forces” is making us look foolish, and demeaning the message of the Gospel that should really be at the center of our passions.

REASON FIVE: Paranoid Conspiracy Theories Drain the Believer

So many times, I have seen Christian brothers with brilliant minds that have been trapped into counting the weeks of Daniel, guessing the nuances and identity of the seven headed, ten horned dragon, tracking the supposed activities of a New World Order secret elite and their Denver Airport construction plans and their ability to draw the attacks on the World Trade Center right into the back of a twenty dollar bill.  These were men … and they usually are men, not women (who have their own challenges and foibles in the Kingdom) … who have been given the gift of powerful minds, and who have been sidetracked by the temptations of modern Gnosticism.   The Kingdom is being robbed of how they could serve and love the Lord their God with all their mind.

The enemy has sidetracked them.  Their thoughts have been taken captive by the fears and delusions of the world.  They should, instead, be “casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ”  (2 Corinthians 10:5).

To draw attention to false powers attributed to Satan becomes the Christian PCT's hobby, his drive, and his obsession.  The energy it demands can only take away from personal growth in the Lord, and from the sharing of the Gospel of Christ.

REASON SIX: PCTs are Satan’s Own Conspiracy

Yes, there is a conspiracy, and obviously I've been revealing it to you throughout this post: Satan is using his lies to poison some among us with his fabrications, tales of his power and vain imaginings of his might.  He is recruiting those attracted by such tales to make himself and his evil, not God and love and goodness, our focus as a body.

“The words of a talebearer,”  says Proverbs 18:8, “are as wounds, and they go down into the innermost parts of the belly.”  Many paranoid conspiracies are demonstrably false, no better than lies.  The rest are unsupported imaginings that can neither be proved nor falsified, because they exist only in the realm of paranoia.

And that’s exactly the kind of situation Satan relishes.  It puts us in fear of his tales and makes us forget the might of the One who bought us.

Isaiah said it best (8:12-13), so I’ll let his words be the last ones here this month:

“Do not call conspiracy

    everything this people calls a conspiracy;

do not fear what they fear,

    and do not dread it.

The LORD Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy,

    he is the one you are to fear,

    he is the one you are to dread.”

Marana Tha,

Cosmic Parx

You Just Think It’s in the Bible

I’ve listened to several fascinating conversations over the past few weeks about how people approach Scripture with biased hearts.  When we sit down with the Bible, we bring to our reading an entire suite of preconceptions – biases we’ve come to believe from sermons we enjoyed, social preferences and mores, even political preferences that have little to do with Scripture itself.

I thought it would be instructive this month to reflect on things we've come to think are discussed in the Bible explicitly, but which aren’t.  Some might be there in concept, but not in direct words.  Some might be historical misunderstandings.  Still others might be complete fabrications imposed by modern spins of Christian sects.

But all of the things I discuss below should center us on one key question: How well do we really know the Scriptures, and to what extent do we force it to say what we’ve already decided to believe?

NOT THERE #1: The Word “Trinity”

This is one you probably already knew: The word Trinity is nowhere to be found in all of Scripture.  Those whose faith biases them to reject the Trinity are quick to point out that the word is not a Biblical one.  Those who see Trinity as a central element of the entire Christian faith just as quickly point out that the absence of the word is not the same thing as the absence of the concept.  And while there is one verse that seems to speak explicitly about the three-fold person of God (1 John 5:7), many respected Biblical scholars point out that the verse can’t be found in early manuscripts of Scripture, and seems to have been added much later.

Personally, I believe in the Trinity as a concept borne out by Scripture.  But I do need to ask myself this question: If the concept of Trinity is so central to the foundations of the Christian faith, why is it not an explicit fact that’s central to the New Testament?  Why isn’t it an unambiguous theme hammered home as directly and specifically as the nature of God being Love?

NOT THERE #2: A Devil Named Lucifer 

“How art thou fallen from heaven, O heylel, son of the morning,” reads Isaiah 14:12, a verse famously misapplied to a character named Lucifer.  If you look in your King James Version, you will even see heylel changed to lucifer – a rendering inspired by the Roman Catholic Vulgate’s Latin translation of Scripture, which is a fairly decent attempt to capture heylel’s sense of a shining daystar, a bright light of dawn.  Interestingly, the Latin Vulgate presents the word lucifer without an initial capital letter, the lower case indicating it wasn’t understood as anyone’s name. 

But here’s the kicker.  Whatever the translation or rendering of that word, the passage has nothing at all to do with Satan, the accuser.  The entire speech is directly and unambiguously addressed to the King of Babylon, not to any spiritual being, god, or angel.  That fact is further driven home by the words immediately following the fall of the heylel: “Is this the man who shook the earth and made kingdoms tremble?”

The words heylel and/or lucifer appear nowhere else in Scripture.

NOT THERE #3: The Devil in the Garden of Eden

I’ve covered this idea in a previous blog post, but it bears repeating here.  Nowhere in the Genesis account of the Garden of Eden and the Fall are we told that the serpent involved in Eve’s deception was anything but a serpent.  Furthermore, there’s no later Scripture that interprets the passage that way.  As far as we can tell from the actual text in all the Bible, not one sacred writer had the idea that the serpent was the devil.

As I detailed in that other post, there is a single line in Revelation comparing the devil to a snake, but that passage says nothing of the Garden of Eden – and other passages compare many other Biblical entities to a serpent, including one that references Christ Himself (John 3:14).

One brother in Christ I shared this with insisted, “Yes, I know it isn’t there, but it simply had to be the devil that entered into the snake to do that!”  And therein lies the message of this entire blog post: What do we know the Scriptures say, vs. what do we insist it must say because we already think so?

NOT THERE #4: The Term “Personal Lord and Savior”

As often as we ask others, “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?”, you’d think the line appeared at least once in the Scriptures.  Not true.  Jesus as a “personal Lord” or as a “personal Savior” is not a term explicitly stated anywhere in the New Testament, and may be more an expression of American individualism and revivalism than anything else.  To the contrary, there are numerous examples of just the opposite: Jesus not as a personal savior, but as savior of the world, savior of all men, Lord over all – a Corporate Savior and Lord, to put it succinctly.

But here, as with Trinity, we have to hunt for the concept rather than the specific term.  Romans 10:9, for example, says: “…  if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”  For those of you who love ancient languages, you’ll be even more pleased to know that the “thy” and “thine” used in that verse are renderings of the genitive case of the Greek sou, the second person singular pronoun.  It’s clearly a single “you” and not “y’all” doing the confessing and believing.  One person, personally confessing.

But how quickly could I have recalled that verse if I were challenged in a discussion to support the idea of a “personal Lord and personal Savior”?  It’s easy to look as if I knew it right here in this article I took plenty of time to write.  Would I have recalled it while witnessing?  Have I studied enough to show myself approved?

NOT THERE #5: Unconditional Love

Preachers who tell you that the Greek word agape means “God’s unconditional love” are profoundly mistaken.  Since I’ve covered this topic in detail in still another blog post, I won’t devote too much time to it here.  I will, however, point out that the term “unconditional love” is not in the Bible, and that I believe the concept itself is clearly anti-Scriptural.   “IF you confess, you will be saved,” the verse I cited early says.  “You are my friends IF you do as I command you” says the Lord in the Gospel of John.  Computer programmers and scripters know what the word IF indicates … a condition, a possible pathway should a routine follow a potential direction.  Every IF implies an IF NOT ... in programming and in Scripture as well.

No, no, I am not proclaiming a Gospel of works.  We are saved without conditions.  But I am proclaiming that the term “unconditional love” is no older than the 1900s, probably coined by the atheist psychoanalyst Erich Fromm in his book The Art of Loving, and certainly pushed heavily by the humanist Carl Rogers via his concept of “unconditional positive regard.”  Scripture, on the other hand, is a history of conditions about how one behaves in the Kingdom.  The word “if” fills over five pages of Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, a complete guide to all conditional phrases in Scripture.  A vast number of those are conditions being set down by the Lord and by His apostles and prophets.

NOT THERE #6: A Ban on Abortion

Yes, I know, this will raise hackles.  The simple fact is, Scripture directly discusses abortion only once – an extensive passage in Numbers 5 that gives direction on how to perform one if you think your wife has been cheating on you and is bearing another man’s child.  No other direct reference exists.  The one thing Scripture has to say about abortion is how to give one.

I’ve heard lots of discussions that try to uncover a Scriptural attitude toward abortion.  Pro-choice Christians point out that the law and its punishments never treat a miscarriage caused by a violent act as a murder, but only as a lesser property crime.  Pro-life Christians counter that God clearly thinks a blastula has a human soul because Scripture has the Lord saying, “Before you were in your mother’s womb, I knew you.”  Pro-choice Christians counter that knowing someone “before”  they were in the mother’s womb meant the soul must have existed “before” conception, a belief held only by Mormons if it isn’t poetic.  Pro-life Christians counter that counter by saying …

You get the idea.  Both sides have a view, and both sides dig up Scriptural rationales to imply support of that view.  What is very unlikely is that individuals on either side of the argument began holding that view by reading Scripture.  Like so many other ideas, the view came first, and the Scriptural rationales came later.

NOT THERE #7: A 666 Antichrist

Tim LaHaye, coauthor of the sixteen Left Behind novels, has done a masterful job of popularizing the modern mythology developed around the Second Coming of Christ.  If you arched an eyebrow at my use of “mythology” just then, please consider this short list:

• embedded microchips in your hand
• a one-world government
• planes crashing at the time the rapture happens due to missing pilots
• the Catholic Church as a one-world Satanic Religion
• the need to rebuild a Temple in Jerusalem

All of these non-Biblical ideas are part of the fanciful thinking (and dare I say vain imaginings?) of those with a premillennial catastrophist mindset like LaHaye’s.  The Bible has no microchips, not even implied ones.  It has no prophesied one-world government, since the Beast is battling countries from start to finish.  The Whore of Babylon in Revelation 17 is never identified as a symbol of a world religion.  These are all inventions of those who struggle to interpret one of the most symbolic and arcane books of the Bible.

And as for an Antichrist whose number is 666?  That is an imposed interpretation.  The Antichrist appears nowhere in the Book of Revelation, the place where the number 666 plays a role.  The 666 code refers to one of the symbolic beasts of the apocalyptic calamity.  The term “antichrist,”  on the other hand, is found only in the letters of John (very likely not the same John as the one who wrote Revelation, given the commonness of the name John and the completely different quality of Greek used by the authors).  When antichrist is mentioned in the letters of John, readers are always encouraged to think of the term in the plural … antichrists, not a single man.  John seems to encourage believers to stop thinking in terms of one arch villain.

Is the beast the same as the antichrist?  We have no evidence to suggest it is, and plenty of encouragement from the epistle writer John to stop focusing on a single bad guy.  There are many antichrists.  There is one beast with the code 666.  For my money, that was Nero Caesar, whose name adds up to that number.  But I am open to other ideas.

NOT THERE #8: A Third Temple

Another result of so many people in the United States embracing a premillennial catastrophist mindset is a need for a third temple to be built on the spot in Jerusalem where the two previous temples stood.   However, Scripture say nothing at all about a third temple being built.

Where did the idea come from, then?  It arises from an attempt to see the apocalyptic sections of Scripture – Matthew 24, Daniel, parts of Ezekiel, Revelation, etc. – as depictions of far future events, rather than as encoded messages about the writers’ own times.  To see those texts as secret codes applying to our own day, we would have to have a temple again, because the texts make such a big deal about what happens with temple sacrifices during the time being discussed.  How does one get those sacrifices underway?  By inventing a third and final temple for them to happen in, despite the fact that Scripture has no prophecies about a third being built.  If your mythology of the End Times demands it, you have to have one.

Far easier would be to read the histories of the time and to realize that nearly all of the prophecies in all the apocalyptic parts of the Bible were fulfilled shortly after being made.  Yet even seeing that might not help dissuade us of our modern philosophies about apocalyptic literature.  A recent interpretive trend is introducing “dual fulfillment of prophesies” – an idea that springs directly from those honest enough to see the fulfillment of the prophecies in history, but still unwilling to let go of premillennial dispensationalism.

Our earliest ideas die the hardest, sometimes.

NOT THERE #9: Prayer Warriors

This is a relative newcomer to the list, but I wanted to include it.  More and more, churches are using the extra-Biblical term “prayer warriors” as if they were describing a special caste of Powerful Praying People, those with more muscle behind their requests of God.  Keep an eye on this term.  It may soon be declared an actual ministry with its place in the hierarchy, despite the fact that Scripture’s description of the armor of God is for all believers, not just a praying caste.

Yes, there are levels of prayer.  The parable of the Widow’s Mite shows us exactly what those levels are: good prayers that get heard, and lousy ones that get ignored and are their own reward.  Any other distinction will make us forget that every one of us is to pray at all times, without ceasing.  To deem some believers to be “warriors” with special praying powers is to deny direct, efficacious intercession by every child of God.

NOT THERE #10: Moses’ Authorship of the Pentateuch

I thought I’d end on a lighter note.  Guys … Moses didn’t write the first five books of the Bible.  Honest.  He didn’t.  Even though your KJV uses the title “Books of Moses” to describe them, those titles are nowhere in the early manuscripts.  Even if they were in the early manuscripts, calling them the Books of Moses doesn’t make Moses the author any more than Ruth was the author of the Book of Ruth.

Yes, there’s a line here and there instructing Moses to write down everything he was going through.  But that doesn’t mean we have those writings any longer, and it doesn’t mean our Torah is what Moses wrote down.  The Bible mentions lots of writings that we no longer have.  For example:

• Book of the Wars of the Lord (Numbers 21:14)
• Book of Jasher (Joshua 10:13)
• The Manner of the Kingdom (1 Samuel 10:25)
• Book of Samuel the Seer (1 Chronicles 29:29)
• The Acts of Solomon (1 Kings 11:41)

 There is evidence against Moses’ authorship: (1) The books discuss Moses’ death.  That part would be tough for Moses to have written.  (2) It talks about Moses in the third person, not in the first person as if he had written it.  (3) It calls Moses the most humble man on the face of the earth (Numbers 12:3) … words not likely to be written by the most humble man on the face of the earth.  (4) Genesis 12:6 says of the Promised Land: “At that time the Canaanites lived in the land” … something still true until well after Moses’ death, clearly indicating the words were being written after the Canaanites were gone.  (5) Genesis 36:31 says “before any king ruled over the Israelites …”  which unambiguously shows the writer knew there were kings over the Israelites hundreds of years after Moses’ death.  (6) There are lots of other clues, but I only included this part to poke at a friend who doesn’t agree with me on this.

My prayer is this: That I keep my eyes open to what the Word really says and never get lost in the blindness of my preconceptions, nor too convinced of my own rightness not to accept correction.

Marana Tha,

Cosmic Parx / YoYo Rez

Dear Faith Healer: Everyone Dies

Once upon a time, a famous faith healer ended a rousing service by bellowing through his microphone, “And Lord, because we get everything we ask for in Jesus’ name, I declare and consider it fulfilled that You will remove every sickness, every weakness, and every pain from every single believer within the sound of my voice!”

And then everyone there dropped dead.

The End

***

Recently, I read a note from a self-proclaimed faith healer sent out over the social network Second Life to various Christian groups.  In the note, the faith healer chided fellow believers for praying that the Lord bring peace and relief to the suffering of a Christian friend of ours who was dying.  That evening, the believer went home to the Lord, and the self-proclaimed healer took it upon himself to rebuke everyone who had prayed for a peaceful passing with little suffering.

The rebuking man strongly implied that our fellow believer would have lived had people prayed in the right way.  In effect, he suggested, those who prayed the wrong words were guilty of pushing one of our own into death.

Apparently, if you get the magic incantation wrong, you’re a killer.

***

Everyone dies.  Everyone.  That is the rule, and any exceptions – Enoch, Elijah, or the ones twinkle-changed at the final coming – are special cases set aside in Scripture as violations of the norm.  The rest of us through all of history, the hundred trillion who have ever been born, we have an appointment set up by the Lord, a specific time at which we will shuffle off this mortal coil.

The days of my life are appointed, all scheduled, Job 7:1-3 teaches me.  The moment of my death is appointed as well, Hebrews 9:27 confirms.  No man, not even a really, really confident faith healer, is going to change by one nanosecond the time God has appointed for my death.  I will de-incarnate, my flesh will be left here and I will be declared Alive On Arrival in His presence, thanks to the saving power of His grace.

***

Everyone dies.  Yes, everyone, even those Jesus Himself healed when He walked upon the Earth.  Those He raised from the dead, they also died again, their first sleep appointed to bring Him glory and their second appointed to fulfill the reality of The Fall.  Can faith change that?  Can it force God to shift the time He appoints?  No.  Even Elisha, who had a double portion of faith, came to the end of his life and passed through “the sickness from which he would die,” according to 2 Kings 13:14.  Read how that is phrased – the sickness from which he would die.  The death was appointed, and the sickness that brought it about was appointed as well.  God was not taken by surprise when Elisha fell ill.

Everyone gets sick, like Paul’s companion Trophemus in 2 Timothy 4 who had to be left behind to recuperate, and the devoted servant Epaphroditus in Philippians 2 who came close to death in his sickness.  These men traveled with a paragon of faith, the Apostle Paul, yet for neither did Paul demand or receive in Jesus’ name instantaneous healing.  Paul knew the will of heaven, and prayed only in that will.  He learned to do that from his own three failed attempts to pray away the thorn in his flesh – and Scripture clearly calls that affliction a matter of the flesh, using the word “buffet,” the pounding of a fist, a physical messenger of Satan to give Paul physical weakness.  I point this out because you can rest assured that a Magic Faith believer will try to soften that Scripture and say it had nothing to do with physical sickness, that maybe it just meant a whole lot of persecution.

Anyone who says that to you is either lying or denying. 

***

“But wait!” I hear a Magic Faith Wielder claim in my imagination. “Christ promised us that anything we ask in His name, He will do for us!  He said it in John 14:14, and then, to show how true it was, He repeated it in John 16:23!”

Yes, He did say that, and yes, He will do anything we ask in His name.

But you, self-proclaimed Magic Man, are focused on the word anything.

I recommend you now focus on the words in my name.

Without making too long a lesson of it, Christ’s name is His essence, His power, and the fullness of His will.  There are things you simply will not get when you pray for them, since those things are outside His name and His will.  I don’t care how much faith you have or how passionately you declare “In Jesus’ name!”  You simply won’t get “anything” you ask for.  For example:

• It won’t work if you pray, “Dear God, please change the appointed time of the Second Coming and send Jesus back riiiiiiight …. NOW!”
• You won’t get what you want when you pray, “Oh Lord who gives me anything I ask for, please turn my grumpy boss into a koala bear.  Literally.”
• You certainly won’t get what you want with the prayer, “Father who promised me I get anything I request, please travel back in time, stop Eve from being tempted, erase all of The Fall from history, and make it so Jesus never had to die for sin.”
• And you don’t get this: “God, make people not die any more.”

***

People get sick and die, according to the will of God and despite the will of self-proclaimed faith healers.  Notice how some faith healers misuse the words “in the name of Jesus.”  They proclaim them at the end of their healing prayer, raising their volumes as if punching home the power words that make the wish come true.  They have declared their “anything” and now BAM, like chef Emeril slamming down a spice, they fiercely spurt, “in JESUS’ name!” as if that were the power flex in their enchantment formula.

Advice to the wise: the words “in Jesus name” are not there to trigger or compel the power of God.  They are there to guide and humble the asker.  You don’t get anything you ask for.  You get anything in His name, in His will, and that is what you should ask for.

Look at it this way – if I freely offer you any red car in my lot, any red car you ask for, you don’t get to leave with the black van.  You get a car, you get a red one, and that’s in my generous will.

Those who focus exclusively on the “anything” word in Christ’s promise are obsessed with getting.  Those who focus on the “in My name” are obsessed with His will, and with getting what is best.

***

And in conclusion …

Dear Faith Healer: Everyone dies.  When our fellow believer passed away and went into the presence of the Lord, it was not because people neglected to pray the right magic words.  The time of that death was appointed, and a miracle happened … a miracle you didn’t notice.

This was the miracle: Throughout Second Life and into the real, non-virtual world, members of the Body of Christ received a Word of Knowledge that you did not.  That Word of Knowledge was an insight into the will and appointments of God, the spiritual understanding that it was the appointed time for our fellow believer.  And acting on that miraculous gift of the Holy Spirit, those who were given that Word of Knowledge prayed for ease of suffering and a gentle passing from the flesh and into the presence of the Lord.

While you prayed to thwart the appointed time of God, others prayed in His name and for His will.  And I firmly believe those prayers were answered.  One more of us is away from the body and at home with the Lord, in accordance with His schedule.

One day I will join the ranks of the dead, dear Faith Healer, and one day so will you.  I serve my Lord happily wherever He wants me and in the state He judges best.  I know that in the Magic Faith world, people see me as cheating myself out of miracle door prizes I’d be getting if I knew some special Faith School rules or if I named it and claimed it just so.  And I know the Namer-Claimer types look at me, the actual me, Yolanda Ramírez, with pity – the inner city girl born deaf and left mute because of that deafness.

And I smile.  If only their eyes could see the blessings brought to me because of the minor inconveniences I endured for a few decades.  And if only they could see that even if my worldly blessings fade, I have Him.  So nothing else matters.  I have anything in His name, even when I have nothing in this world.

Along with my brother Job of Old, I declare: 

“Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”

Marana Tha,

YoYo Rez, who is Cosmic Parx, who is God’s Yolanda

Divorced Pastors: The New Norm?

“Divorced men CAN serve as pastors, elders, and deacons!”
 Dave Miller, Pastor, Southern Hills Baptist Church (from his blog post on the topic)

“I hate divorce.”

God, the Good Shepherd of the Universe (from his Scripture on the topic)

***

I’ve recently done a bit of top-line investigation on divorce rates among Evangelical pastors, and the first round of results has me somewhat discouraged.  The lowest figures I found on pastoral divorce come from Barna Research studies in the late 1990s, a finding of a 13% divorce rate among active pastors. 

The closer I got to our own time, the higher the rates climbed … 25% according to a Focus on the Family study from a few years ago, and a staggering 38% reported by www.intothyword.org that distilled recent reports from Barna, F.O.F., and Fuller Seminary data.

These surveys didn’t cover general Protestant ministries in the U.S.  They targeted Evangelical and Reformed ministries, specifically.

One in four of our U.S. pastors has a divorce in his résumé. Maybe one in three.

***

“Because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but it was not so from the beginning.” Matthew 19:8.

***

THE SIN WITHIN

Are we in the midst of an all-out assault on our congregations by those who do not even have the emotional wherewithal to lead a family through spiritual hard times?  Is Satan using the self-serving rationalizations of divorced pastors to invade the Body of Christ and degrade our marriages from within?

In the past several years, I’ve met an alarming number of pastors in New York, Maine, and Connecticut who are on the second round of their once-in-a-lifetime “two shall become one flesh” journey.  Some of them–not all, I confess, not all–are absolutely vitriolic in the pulpit about the moral state of the U.S.  How horrible it is that non-Christian gays are in relationships!  How terrible a thing that non-Christian couples want to use condoms to space out their babies!  How abominable that non-Christian millionaires have to pay high taxes on the small unsheltered, onshore fraction of their visible yearly incomes!

Strangely absent from their rants: lamentations about the moral state of Evangelical Christian leaders, specifically in the area of divorce.  There are far too many splinters in the eyes of non-Christians for pastors to make their own divorces a plank in their in-Church morality platforms.

***

“For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness.” Jude 4

***

“DIVORCE DOESN’T DISQUALIFY ME FROM PASTORING!”

It’s tempting at this point to fall into a tedious, picky argument about whether Scripture forbids a divorced person from serving as a pastor.  If you’re interested in those rationales–and I confess, they are interesting, with their Pharisaic attention to the jots and tittles of words and their clever sidesteps to justify how God didn’t really mean what He’s so clearly saying–you can find them just about anywhere on the Web.  Google away.

Instead, I’d like to focus on a few disturbing observations that I hope will get at least a couple pastors or pastoral selection committees thinking before their next move.

Disturbing observation #1—The divorced pastorate is becoming a norm among Evangelicals.

When God wanted to choose a symbol to represent His connection to His people, He made marriage the first and foremost of His metaphors.  Israel was His wife; the Church is His Bride; the coming of the Kingdom is a marriage feast; Jesus’ first miracles were at a wedding.  In fact, the institution of marriage was likely created by the Lord for one reason alone–to show us that He will never sever the bonds He has with His creation.  He is our Spouse.

When 25% of Evangelical pastors are divorced from their own spouses, what becomes of this holiest, first metaphor?  Answer: It becomes a joke.  It becomes a declaration to the world: “A relationship with God is optional.  If you don’t like it, you don’t have to stay in it, so relax.  Flee when times get tough, the way I did.  Don’t bother sticking in there the way Yahweh did.”

Does your desire to flee your covenant, oh minister, justify a divorced pastorate becoming the Evangelical norm?

Disturbing observation #2—The divorced pastorate is highly skilled at rationalizing its own divorces.

One of the research sites I found while preparing for this blog used this phrase about pastors who divorced after being sexually unfaithful to their own spouses:

 “… they took comfort where it ought not to be taken.”

It nearly made me dizzy.  The cheating pastors took comfort?  Such language softens the impact of sin, and is gut wrenchingly disturbing precisely because the author intended it to soften the condemning blow to pastors for their violations of the lifelong marriage covenant.  When the act of betraying one’s spouse by sneaking away, becoming naked in secret, pressing flesh to flesh illicitly, performing an act of sexual intercourse, and then lying about it afterwards becomes known as “taking comfort where they ought not,” then we might as well start referring to murder as “acting out a little” and rape as “getting a bit carried away.”  It’s offensive language, and such manner of thinking should disgust us.

I’ve asked some divorced pastors directly about their state of broken covenant.  Here’s one of the replies I’ve gotten over the years: “I remarried because God says it is not good for man to be alone.”

This response sidesteps the issue.  A divorced pastor is only alone because of a spiritual failure to make the marriage covenant work.   I’m certain Solomon felt lonely time and time again.  Was he, therefore, justified in his hundreds of wives and their new gods?  After all, he felt so lonely, the poor man.

Does your loneliness, oh minister, outweigh the longsuffering of Job, and does it justify a divorced pastorate becoming the Evangelical norm?

Disturbing observation #3—The divorced pastorate sees itself as entitled to a pass.

Another response I’ve gotten from more than one divorced pastor takes several forms I'll summarize this way: “The blood of Jesus can forgive me of anything, including a bad marriage.”

Really?  I ask you, pastor, do you really think that your past marriage, abandoned by you, is wiped away clean, unremembered, a sin that’s as far from you as the east is from the west?  Then let me run this one by you:

“I don’t have to pay child support for that kid of mine, because I was drunk when I had sex with that lady I’d just met.  I’ve since become a Christian.  God has forgiven me of that drunkenness, of that sexual sin, and of that child.”

If one of your congregants said that to you, you’d burst into laughter, asking how on Earth a man could think he is “forgiven” of his own child.

I laugh as well, asking why on Earth a pastor might think he is now “forgiven” of two humans Scripturally becoming one flesh, a joining that creates the holiest of unions and God's own metaphor for His unceasing love.

Does your station in life and your personal conviction that your divorce “feels right” to you, oh minister, justify a divorced pastorate becoming an Evangelical norm?

Disturbing observation #4—The divorced pastorate loves loopholes.

By far the most common rationale I have heard from divorced pastors I’ve known is this one: “My spouse cheated on me and/or became an unbeliever, and Scripture allows divorce for that!” 

The obvious question here – it’s low-hanging fruit, so I won’t spend a lot of time on it – is, “Wow, how can so many future pastors have such poor judgment when it comes to picking a spouse, and what does that say about their judgment now?”

Of more concern to me is that there are so many pastors who act as if they are supposed to divorce when their spouse cheats on them or when their spouse loses faith.

They are not ordered to.  They are not commanded to.  And they ought not to.

Squirm in your seat and protest that, pastor, but your heart knows I am right, even if your congregants have bought into your excuses and your misuse of Matthew 19 and 1 Corinthians 7.  Divorce may be permissible in certain situations.  That we know.  But you, as a leader of churches, as one held by Scripture to a higher standard, you are called to be the role model of reconciliation.

First Corinthians 7 establishes that model – if one is separated from a covenant spouse, one is to pursue reconciliation.  That becomes the new ministry of the pastor, a calling modeled by the Lord himself through centuries of Israel’s unfaithfulness.  If you do not see yourself as called to that and instead see yourself as entitled to a divorce and a new marriage because you’re feeling so alone and have a Bible verse that gives you an out … then you mock the covenant nature of marriage, you mock the wisdom of Paul who pushed reconciliation to the failing spouse, and you mock your very Lord, Who never gave up on the unfaithful people He called.  You are a role model of nothing but self interest.

Or are you, oh minister, allowed to be just as relativistic and situationally ethical as all those Post-modernists you rail against from your pulpit?

SHEESH, YOYO, KIND OF HARSH, NO?

Yes, my words in this blog are strong … because today I am speaking directly to pastors and elders and deacons, those who lead the churches and who sometimes need the voice of admonition to kick them back into a righteous path that frees itself from the kind of self-justifying rationales that entrapped Peter when he would not eat with Gentiles.

I end with these bits of advice:

Betrayed pastors: When your spouse cheats on you, it is time to focus your efforts on reconciliation, and that means leaving your ministry.  To say “It’s not fair, it wasn’t my fault!” is a child’s response.  The bottom line is, your house is not in order, and your new ministry is clear, whether you think that’s fair or not.  It is time to pursue reconciliation with all your strength.

Divorced pastors: It’s past time for you to leave ministry and dedicate yourself to reconciling with your estranged spouse.  Perhaps that upsets you.  Perhaps you recoil at the idea.  You need to realize how ungodly that reaction is.  Think about it: you can’t imagine leaving ministry, but you were able to imagine–and go through with—breaking a lifelong covenant?  Are your priorities right if you see being a pastor as more central to your faith than being a spouse in a lifelong quest for the reconciliation Paul called for?

Congregations: When you select a new pastor, you need to put that pastor’s marital status at the forefront of your consideration.  A pastor who has left behind a spouse and family will leave you behind as well.  A pastor whose house is not in order will bring chaos to your house.  And a believer who is not passionately dedicated to reconciliation of a covenant relationship has no place in Christian leadership.  Such pastors are far too focused on their own liberties and entitlements in this passing world to help us prepare for the eternal world to come.

Marana Tha,

Cosmic Parx