The Mother of All Knowledge

RANDOM THOUGHTS ON SIN AND BRAINS

     I’m your kid sister.

     Well, okay, there’s a slight chance you’re younger than me, so that would make me your older sister.  Either way, we’re family, you and I.

     We have the same mom.

     Well … the same grandmom.

     Okay … the same [great-great + 150-or-so greats] grandmom.

     Whatever the numbers, I’m your kid sister.
     I'm reborn.  But the idea of “rebirth” doesn’t make a great deal of sense to us until first we consider what we need to be reborn from.

     And what we need to be reborn from has everything to do with our [great-great + 150-or-so greats] grandmother.

     Allow me to explain in the form of a story.

PART 1 of 4

     Once upon a time, there was only one Her.

     She was called Ishshah, and she was the woman who was born of no woman.  Her name simply means “the female,” because she was one of a kind, fashioned out of the side of another unique human ... the He, the only He, the DirtMan.
     DirtMan had the breath of The God in him, and no other animal on the face of the Earth had that.  This made DirtMan special, but it also made him alone among the living beings.  That’s why The God made Ishshah … because DirtMan had no companion worthy to stand by his side.

     Ishshah was worthy.  She was made from The God’s breath and from DirtMan’s flesh.  She was perfect.
     And she stayed worthy.  For a time.

* * *

     I interrupt this story for a message about knowledge.

     Me, Cosmic Parx, I love knowledge.  I crave it.  I seek it out, I hunt it down, I practically lust after it.  Put a Chocolate Cake in front of me, sitting next to a stack of Really Cool Knowledge, and I’d go for the knowledge first.

     And then I’d eat the cake, too, because, hey, who am I kidding?

     But first, I want the knowledge.

     Just like grandmom.

PART 2 of 4

     So Ishshah and her DirtMan lived in the most beautiful of areas on the face of the Earth.  There was one rule for living there – no eating from the Tree at the center of that massive, beautiful garden area.  It was a tree with specific knowledge in it, the knowledge of good and of evil and of the difference between the two.  Every animal lived in the garden land with Ishshah and Dirtman, and even the most ferocious was tamer than Lassie, because DirtMan had been put in charge of them all by The God.
     And the animals knew their place.
     Except for one.
     His name was Nachash.  You pronounced that CH in the middle like a rough H, like you’re clearing your throat, you know?  DirtMan probably gave Nachash that name because it imitated the hissing sound Nachash made when he spoke.  Yes, I said spoke.  A talking animal.  Why not?  DirtMan and Ishshah were talking animals, too, so don’t get so worked up about it.  Stay in the story, would you?
     One day Nachash decided to chat up the human female.  Test out her brains.  Check up on her wits.  I don’t know if he had tested her before.  I don’t know if he had tried to trip up DirtMan prior to this.  All I know about is this one day, the day Nachash held out a little something that the woman couldn’t resist.
     He offered her a taste of knowledge, a peek into the hidden things.

* * *

     Another interruption, if you’ll oblige me.

     It is a long-held tradition of men that the Nachash, the serpent, was Satan himself.  This is not a Biblical assertion.  Instead, it’s an interpretation based on many, many years of really cool artwork and loads of words from outside the Bible.  Yes, it’s true that the Book of Revelation, written thousands of years after Genesis, has a single line in it that shows the devil in a dragon form and calls him “the old serpent.”  But that’s far from convincing exegesis, considering that: 

1. the Nachash of our story is soon to be cursed to slither on the ground and eat dirt forever, but Satan has no such punishment; we later see Satan freely walking about the Court of the Heavenly Host in the Book of Job, legs intact;
   
2. many things and people are called “serpents” throughout the Hebrew scriptures, including Leviathan, violent men, wine, King Ahaz, invading armies of the north, and (most often) actual serpents.  The New Testament has its share of serpent comparisons, too – a bad gift for a child when he asks for a fish, the wisdom of disciples when they stay harmless as doves, the Pharisees at their worst, and (interestingly) Christ himself in the third chapter of John;
   
3. ergo, picking a single reference to a serpent out of hundreds in Scripture to match up the devil to the creature in Eden is, at best, an act of “eisegesis,” imposing one’s preexisting ideas onto a text … bad hermeneutics, very bad.

     As I mentioned, I really love knowledge.

PART 3 of 4

     The story of our [great-great + 150-or-so greats] grandmom does not end well.  Ishshah had options.  She could have eaten anything else.  Only one tree was forbidden, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Even the one beside it, the Tree of Life, had not been explicitly forbidden.  She could have checked in with DirtMan to get his advice.  She could have checked in with The God, who walked daily in their midst.

     But in that instant, she didn’t want Life.
     In that moment, she didn’t turn to man.
     In that hour, she ignored the God option.
     She chose to forget Who made her, for whom she was made, and all good things she already had.  She bought into the deceit of a lower animal, one over whom she and DirtMan had been given dominion.  She ignored the rule, and she chose her path.

     She really lusted after knowledge.

     DirtMan must have, too, because she had no trouble getting him to join in.

     And when The God walked back among them, they came to know more than they had expected.  They all knew punishment.  To the Nachash came the fruits of deceit: eternal enmity with mankind, the eating of dust, the loss of all reason.  To Ishshah came the fruits of untimely lust for knowledge: the sorrow of bearing sons, emptiness and longing after the man she’d been one with, and subjugation to the rule of a husband she had once been equal to.  And DirtMan, to him came the fruits of abandoning his dominion over all creatures, his entrapment to the wiles of those who should have answered to him: toil, thorns, thistles, sweat, and a return to the dirt from which he’d been made.

     The privileged life they’d lived – that all creation had lived – was gone.  Living on this world became … a different sort of living, not the life The God had offered.  And that living would be hard, with scant hope, and few moments of joy.

     That was our grandmother’s legacy.

     She was supposed to be the mother of the most privileged race in the universe.

     Now, those born from her would simply be The Lost.  DirtMan changed her name.  He called her Hawwa, “Mother of the Living.”

     Before their fall, it would have been a title of honor.

     Now, it was a bittersweet reminder of the fullness of living they’d lost.

* * *

     A final interruption:

     The word Hawwa (or Chavvah in more modernly pronounced Hebrew) mutated over time into the name “Eve.”  Words change, you see.  For example, the recent English slurred-words ginna gohtada used to be pronounced, “going to go to the” – as in “I’m ginna gohtada store now.”  The word Hawwa did that, too, becoming ‘Eua in the ancient Greek, then becoming Eva in the Latin, then becoming Eve in your English Bible.

     Her name is mentioned only 4 times in all of Scripture.

     Despite that, she appears in more artwork than any other woman in history, except for the Virgin Mary.

PART 4 of 4

     Now we enter the story.
     I am your kid sister.

     Or maybe your older sister, I dunno.

     But I do know this: You and I, we are of the flesh of Hawwa, the Ishshah.  That was our first birth.

     This is the month of Christmas, commemorating a very different first birth ... the one that opened the door to our second birth, that amazing moment when the flesh of DirtMan again is filled with the breath of The God.  An internal resurrection.  An infilling by the Spirit Himself (who is, and not incidentally, the Spirit of all knowledge).

     If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you should ask yourself this question: Why was Christ born, if He'd only wind up dying?

     We need to consider that carefully.

     We need to ponder it prayerfully.

     I just told you a story about the day we died.  But the Gospels tell a fuller story.  They give you the biographical details of Christ's life, yes, but they reveal a secret as well.  They tell you the secret of that other Tree in the garden we lost, the Tree of Life, the one we didn’t eat from.

     That’s a bit of information … a bit of Knowledge … that you need to get before this season ends.

     And let’s face it: You really love knowledge, don’t you?

Marana Tha,

Cosmic Parx

A Woman's Role in the Church

A discussion of what the “role” of women is in Christian churches often immediately degenerates into a discussion of what women can’t do in churches.  Discussions affirming what we can do are immediately left behind for much more (apparently) interesting and (certainly) contentious issues.

To give myself a fresh perspective, I thought I’d take a look at the question in the affirmative – what role can a woman play in the church?

Not, “What are women banned from doing?”

Not, “What is a woman’s role in marriage?”

I want simply to provide a survey of what Jesus, Paul, and others in the New Testament accepted as proper and praiseworthy behaviors for a woman aiding the spread of the Gospel – a positive approach in a world of compelling negativity.

***

20 ROLES FOR WOMEN

Brought to you by Scripture

1) THE DAUGHTER

First and foremost, women can be among the followers of Jesus, as evidenced during his life and documented throughout the New Testament.  We might take that for granted.  But God grant that no daughter of Eve ever forget the eternal honor we have been gifted.  Being His child is Role One, and in comparison, no other role comes close.

2) THE WITNESS

Women can witness about Christ and his role as Messiah, sometimes bringing whole towns to belief in Him through their words (John 4:39).

3) THE PRAY-ER

Women can join together with men in prayer (Acts 1:14), and they may host such prayer gatherings in their own homes (Acts 12:12)

4) THE PURSE

Woman can be financial supports to ministry, as evidenced in Luke 8:3, where women are lauded for providing the monetary backing that Jesus’ ministry required.

5) THE MODEL

Older women can train younger ones in areas of womenly expertise (Titus 2:3-5)

6) THE DEACON

Women can be part of the diakonia, benefactors/deacons serving churches (Rom 16:1).

7) THE RISK-TAKER

Women can be co-workers who risk their lives for church leadership (Rom. 16:3).

8) THE PRISONER

Women can bear the honor of being imprisoned for the faith (Rom. 16:7).

9) THE TEAMMATE

Women can pair up in teams to work hard for the Gospel (Rom. 16:12).

10) THE SURROGATE

Women can be dear friends and surrogate mothers to church leaders (Rom 16:12-13).

11) THE GUARD

Women can be guards, along with men, against false teachers and false pastors [I like this one, as it’s currently one of my ministries in the Lord] (Rom. 16:17-19)

12) THE CORRECTOR

Women can be part of male-female “doctrinal correction & teaching teams” (for want of a better term) (Acts 18:24).

13) THE MERCHANT

Women can host traveling preachers in their own households (which they can afford because apparently they can also be well-off merchants) (Acts 16:13-15)

14) THE CONTENDER

Women can stand beside church leadership contending for the cause of the Gospel (Phil 4:2-3 … note, as well, that we see another two-woman evangelism team here).

15) THE CHURCH PROPHET

Women may pray and prophesy aloud (1 Cor. 11:5) under the influence of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:17-18).

16) THE HOME PROPHET

Women may prophesy even in the presence of church leadership, should they stop by for a missionary journey or two (Acts 21:9)

17) THE OWNER

They can own the building where the church meets (Colossians 4:15).

18) THE SUMMONER

They can send out delegations from their home churches to summon apostles to bring discipline from afar (1 Cor. 1:11).

19) THE AMBASSADOR

They can head up missionary journeys to established churches and deliver original manuscripts of the Scriptures to people there (okay, so this won’t happen a lot, but it’s pretty cool that Phoebe was used in that way to get the Book of Romans to the church … Rom 16:1-2).

20) THE ELECT

Women can be the “elect ladies” over children of God, and receive epistles directly from apostles -- addressed to the woman, meant for them to share (2 John)

SUMMARY

I compiled that list in my morning Bible time, and it is certainly not a complete collection of the roles a woman of God can play in the church.

As God's adopted daughter, I can do many, many things – host churches in my home, prophesy in services, pray aloud in an orderly manner, deliver Scripture, pair up with men or other women to work for the Gospel, correct brothers doctrinally,  defend against false teachers, support ministries financially from my own funds, serve in the diakonia, summon church leaders to deliver discipline, be imprisoned for my faith.

          With Scripture empowering me to do all that, I have little to say to those who want to go on and on about what women can’t do in a church.  I’ll simply smile at those obsessed with such a topic.

          And then I’ll be sure not to invite them to preach at the church that meets in my house.

Marana tha,

Cosmic

Dear Lord: Thanks for Nothing

We are a world of whiners.

Please note: I didn’t say we just recently became a world of whiners.  In fact, I’m pretty sure we’ve inhabited Whiney World ever since Cain turned all mortally mopey after his second-rate offering was rejected by the Lord.

But I pay special heed to this age’s Poor-Pity-Me factor because (a) I live in this age, and (b) I’m in the U.S., where mega-church Health & Wealthism is seeping its way into the Body of Christ.  Health & Wealthism leads to a sense of entitlement, which in turn leads to an odd, whiney relationship with other human beings, as well as with our Father in Heaven.  Christians begin to reflect a culture of victimhood that smacks of the flesh and the world.

In the U.S., November is the month we set aside to celebrate Thanksgiving.  It commemorates, ironically, the first major harvest meal shared among the Plymouth Puritans and the heathen Wampanoag Indians.  Why do I say “ironically”?  Because these days, Thanksgiving marks the start of High Whining Season among some American Christians – complaints about stores that dare to say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas; frothing accusations that schools are giving “winter break” instead of “time off for Jesus’ birthday”;  claims of “persecution” when secular government refuses to use taxpayer money to set up Christmas trees, those eternal symbols of Christ’s birth, as clearly mentioned absolutely nowhere in the Bible.

“What if,” I ask myself this year, “I really give thanks in a Biblical way?  What if I thank God for things that would stun the whiners and arch the eyebrows of Health & Wealthers?  What if I overcome my own selfishness, my own self-centeredness, even my own self-esteem, to thank the Lord for all things, good and bad?”

***

I thank You, Lord, for nothing …

   For refusing to act when I begged You to heal me,

   Since now I see the gift my handicap really is.

I thank You, Lord, for nothing …

   For allowing me to stay in poverty after I graduated college,

   Since that time made me grow, not in a job, but in You.

I thank you, Lord, for nothing …

    For not responding to my lists of wants,

    Instead, refining my understanding of my needs.

I thank You, Lord, for nothing …

    For allowing times of suffering to continue,

    And thus teaching me perseverance I had never known.

I thank You, Lord, for nothing …

    For allowing hardships I caused to remain in my life,

    so that I might learn to thank You in all situations.

I thank You, Lord.  For everything.

***

Some may ask, How is a prayer like that in any way Biblical?

I answer:

• because it gives thanks to God in all things, in all circumstances, which is God’s will for me (Thess. 5:18)
• because it is an act of rejoicing in the midst of my suffering, not despite my suffering, which is what Paul commands (Rom. 5:3)
• because I rejoice that I suffer like Christ and even participate, in some way, in His suffering on the cross (Col. 1:24)
• because I give thanks when reaping the punishment for my own behaviors, glorifying God even from the belly of the fish I deserved to be swallowed by (Jonah 2:10)
• because riches aren’t good for me; daily bread is all I need (Prov. 30:8)
• because I give thanks even if I am unjustly thrown into chains and beaten and starved and harmed by enemies (Acts 16:25) … real persecution, not the pathetic protests of those who writhe oppressed under the weight of the words “Happy Holidays.”

Even in the midst of real, life-threatening persecution, thanks and praise are the only valid responses from a heart born in, grown by, and sustained through the Lord.

All right, all right, I admit that thanking God for good things isn’t a bad idea either.  Thank You for my new car, thank You for my good friends, thank You that I’m in a righteous church that clings to Your Word, thank You that I have been saved by Your Son.  Each and every one of those is a laudable act of gratitude.

But I leave you with this thought.

No one in Scripture is ever warned of the dangers of giving thanks to God during suffering and trials.

The only warning about giving thanks that I’ve found in Scripture targets those with lots of health and plenty of wealth.  Thanksgiving for good things.

 “Thank you, God,” a man once said, “that I don’t blackmail other people.  That I don’t break rules.  That I don’t sleep around.  That I’ve got money to tithe and enough food to turn down during times of fasting.  Thanks that I don’t have it as materially or as spiritually bad as that other guy, right over there, the poor, sorry loser.  Maybe he should learn to name it and claim it, you know, Lord?”

See Luke 18 for a better telling of that tale.

And remember to praise and thank Him, especially in the storms.

Marana tha,

Cosmic

Make Big $$$ w/ur Psychic Powers!

By the end of this post, you’ll have the basic skills you need to become a novice Psychic.

“But, Cosmic!” you say.  “You usually write about the Lord, or about language, or about language and the Lord!  Have you lost your mind?”

Nah.  Because I don’t really want you to meddle in psychic affairs.  I want this: for you to recognize how some people … so-called psychics, TV charlatans, even “deceitful workmen disguising themselves as apostles of Christ” (2 Cor. 11:13) … can use language to pretend to wield marvelous powers and work wonders.  I want you to see their false “miracles” and "insights" for the very basic word tricks they are.

And not to be controversial, but mostly I’m talking to women today.  Ladies, we are the ones, by which I mean those of our sex, who pump the most money into psychic hotlines and astrology readings and New Age claptrap.  We are the ones who get a special advisory from the Apostle Paul to avoid the godless deceivers who seem to be apostles, but who creep in and prey on the weak among us, promising us special learning that never really helps us arrive at a knowledge of the truth (2 Timothy 3:6-7).

So get your Godly girl on and grasp how we get beguiled.

* * *

I sat in a church three years ago, watching the antics of a visiting preacher who had whipped the congregation to an emotional high.  As the excitement subsided, the preacher said, “The Lord is urging me now, urging, there is a woman, a woman whose name begins with an M … does that mean anything to anyone?  A special blessing for a woman, an M ...”  Two woman came forward, one who said her name was Michelle, another who said she’d been praying for her hospital-bound mother, Marie.  The visiting preacher had a special message from God for both of the women.  The congregation returned to a praise frenzy.  Every warning bell in my head went off.

Point 1: A woman whose name begins with M?  Did God not know the whole name when “He” spoke to the preacher?

Point 2: Two women went up when one was called upon?

Point 3: Did simply saying “there is a woman” mean she was even in attendance?  Any woman known by any of us, then?

I knew in an instant that I was watching a Mentalist performance, not a manifestation of God’s power.  The visiting preacher was using one of the most basic techniques of psychic performances.  He had a willing audience [excited believers], dangled a small bit of general information [the letter M for any female anywhere], and willing women provided the specific details [Marie, oh, and also Michelle], allowing the audience to ignore a clear error [more than one woman] and credit Mentalist Preacher with miraculous powers [return to praise frenzy].

With tricks like that, you don’t even need psychic powers or messages from the Lord.  You just let the willing shills do the work for you.  Their normal senses make up for your lack of a sixth one.  Let the dupes do the work.

“For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.”  (Matt. 24:24)

* * *

And that's all you need to know to be a psychic.

“But Cosmic,” you ask, “can is be as simple as all that?”

Good question, and not one with an easy yes vs. no answer.  It appears simple from the listener’s viewpoint.  Behind the scenes, though, the charlatan is doing things with language that have effects you might not suspect.

Let me show you how it works.  Let’s pretend I’m your neighborhood psychic, and you’ve just plopped down thirty bucks for a half hour session with me.

Indulge me here, it’s a teaching point.

I'm going to give you a general reading, just to build your confidence that I really am a psychic who's in touch with your inner feelings.  Can you smell the sweetness of the incense in my slightly darkened room?  I'm talking to YOU now ... not the person at the other computer, not to the Internet in general.  To you, [INSERT NAME].  Open your heart.  Here's something I know about you, [INSERT NAME], by reading your soul:

Deep down, you truly ARE self-confident. When it comes to your own areas of expertise ... and you have several ... you really KNOW what you know, and you have the insight to recognize the things you don't know.  You have a strong capacity for improving upon anything that catches your interest, although you don't let yourself get bogged down.  Here's my first bit of advice to you, what the spirits are advising you: Be careful not to let your confidence come across to others as arrogance.  The spirit world can see that you did that recently, and you are right to feel concerned about that.

Can you think of a time recently when your confidence came across as arrogance?  Bet you can.  Am I amazing, or what?  Is there anything I said above that you could disagree with?  Isn't that really what you're like?

Of course it’s what you’re like.  Consider the alternative:

Deep down, you're a sniveling coward.  You don't know diddly-squat, and you couldn't improve a darned thing, even if you had a real desire to.  Face it, whenever you open your mouth, people know you for the arrogant boob you are. The spirits don’t want to talk to you, they only hang with cool people.

Showing you the exact opposite of your “psychic reading” makes it clear how nearly anyone – especially those who voluntarily went to the psychic for a personal revelation – would accept a bunch of general words as a collection of probing insights.  We want the psychic to know us and to reveal things.  We want healer Peter Popoff to scam away our arthritis.  We want John Edward to cross over to the other side and find our relative whose name starts with an M or a J or an L.

* * *

Let’s take a closer look at what I said in my “reading” of you.  Here are five language secrets a “psychic” or charlatan will use to give you a sense that you’re hearing specialized messages.  If you try these tricks yourself, remember that you must only use your powers for good. 

Power 1: General v. Specific

As your first act of psychic seeing, state a general principle that sounds like a personality insight.  Identify a basic human trait you find loathsome, and tell your client -- the "psychee" -- that he or she embodies the opposite of that trait.  For example, everyone hates an insensitive lout, so tell the psychee she has compassion for those she sees struggling.  No one likes wishy-washy attitudes, so tell her she has a strong grasp of her personal convictions.  You won't be contradicted.  No one will say, "Actually, I'm a mental midget and a wimp."

Power 2: Generic Butter

Deliver a general compliment, a generic butter-up.  The key here is general.  Don't take the risk of saying, "You treat your children well," only to discover you're talking to an unmarried Benedictine nun.  Better would be, "Your friends stick with you because they know they can always rely on you for support."  Not everyone has children; everyone has friends, or at least believes they do.

Power 3: Get Deeeeeep

Your next language trick is to build the appearance that you're probing deeper.  Build on the general compliment by making a personality claim that sounds more specific.  Did you use the "friends" line in Power 2?  Then go with it.  "In fact," tell the psychee, "many of your friends rely on your advice to help them with the problems they're facing."  You've won them now.  Why does this work?  Assuming they came to you, they've already given you the benefit of the doubt.  You were psychic enough to see their good traits; now you've proved you know about their friends, and you detect that they've given advice to some of those friends, and you perceive that the advice was good.  How could you not be psychic, considering that level of accuracy?

Power 4: Flip the Script

Time for a quick twist.  Just when you've got them feeling good, you deliver the coup de grace -- you reveal your first bit of advice by focusing on the dark side of the virtue.  Make no mistake, every good trait has its negative extreme.  Sensitive people run the risk of being emotionally burdened by others; helpful people need to be careful of doing TOO much; industrious people should beware of overextending themselves.  By giving advice on the dark side of their virtue, you (1) show that you're no fluffy psychic fake who's afraid to give the bad news, and (2) further reinforce the GOOD trait you've been affirming all along.

Power 5: Put Them to Work

Ask your shill if something in their recent experience confirms the negative in #4.  If you've played the language rules right, almost anyone who came to you for psychic counseling will now reveal a real-life negative situation related to your general directions.  Take it from there ... if the negative relates to co-workers, make predictions about the psychee's future career path; if family, make predictions about future home events.  The trick is now to listen and build ... and you'll find your client doing most of the work for you, while you get the credit for deep insight.

* * *

No, no, no, I don’t want you to really do that stuff.  I want you to see it because it can be done to you.  Our walk in Christ calls us to be gentle as doves, yes, but we’re also to be wily as serpents (Matt. 10:16), and knowing the tricks of enemies is one step in the wily direction.  As a lover of words, it pains me that language is Satan’s forte.  And as a lover of the Word made flesh, I resent that the enemy employs words made dirty.

* * *

It’s hard for psychics and false prophets to get much out of me, simply because I don’t answer them back and therefore give them little to play with.  Here’s a recent example of a false prophet trying to give me a “word from the Lord”:

The Lord says -- your passion matches your calling. Your passion seems odd, out of place.  But He has given it to you.  It is beyond your understanding.  But His ways are beyond our ways.  Be obedient, and he will magnify you.  [The guy pauses here, then says:] Don’t know if that makes sense or not.  But I prayed and asked.

See the tricks at work in there?  The general vs. the specific … my passion!  The prophet sees my passion!  And the Lord can see I have a specific passion to do [FILL IN THE BLANK] for Him!  The generic butter … my passion matches my calling … way to go, Cosmic, you got it right!  It gets deeeeeeeep, beyond my understanding even.  And the script gets flipped with how odd and out of place the passion seems … but, generic butter again, I need to get obedient with pursuing that passion, so that the Lord will magnify me.

I have no idea what “passion” was being referred to.  Neither did the false prophet.  He was counting on my moving to fill in the blanks and grant him Power 5 (“I don’t know if that made sense or not”).  He wanted to put me to work for him, get me to say, “Do you suppose the Lord is referring to my awesome cooking skills or maybe my sparkly writing abilities?” Had I taken the bait, the prophesy would have continued, filling me with conceit and leading me down the liar’s path.

Alas, my only feedback was to nod in acknowledgement that I heard the words.

False prophets’ biggest vulnerability is just how darned false they are.

* * *

“They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over gullible women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth ….  They are men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. But they will not get very far because … their folly will be clear to everyone.” (2 Tim. 3:6-9)

* * *

Ew, downer.  Let’s end on a lighter note, okay?

Fans of the old Buffy the Vampire Slayer series might recognize this quippy exchange between hero-librarian Rupert Giles and the ever-suspicious Principal Snyder:

     Snyder:       There are some things I can just smell. It's like a sixth sense.

     Giles:          No, actually that would be one of the five.

The point: Let’s rule out natural causes and motives of the flesh before turning our sensibilities over to claims of the supernatural.

Maran Atha,

Cosmic

Super-Magic Jesus Words

If you have to say ‘If it be Thy will’ or ‘Thy will be done,’ if you have to say that, then you’re calling God a fool.  - Rev. Fred Price, preaching about praying

Thy will be done. – Jesus of Nazareth, praying

Today, I have random thoughts on how magical thinking works its way into otherwise healthy Christianity.

I’ve never been a fan of Word of Faith preacher Fred Price, quoted up there right before words from my real Hero.  And my dislike of his philosophies isn’t simply because he makes unkind comments about the blind and the deaf ("How can you glorify God in your body, when it doesn't function right?....What makes you think the Holy Ghost wants to live inside of a body where He can't see out through the windows, and He can't hear out the ears?" – Fred Price).

No, my real dislike of Freddy-boy’s teachings is how they help to sneak magical thinking into the Body of Christ.  Price and his ilk make a regular practice of insisting (1) God can’t do things in your life if you don’t invoke Him right, (2) wealth and health are the evidence of the Holy Spirit in your life, and (3) God adapts His will for you based on your will for yourself.

In other words … if you get the mantra right and “declare” and “claim” and “envision” yourself living the good life, Zeus has no option but to hand over the good things.

Sorry, not Zeus.  I meant God.


* * *


Here’s a hard one to write, because it’s about people I love: The other day, I sat in a prayer meeting and watched a brother in Christ be corrected by a prayer meeting leader (gently, though) who noted that the brother had prayed for someone who’d been “sent home to die” by the doctors.  The correction went something like this: Don’t say that the doctors sent your friend home to die, because when you say it that way, our words have the power to turn it into a reality.  Instead, say something positive, because that will bring about the positive result.  Say the doctors sent him home to enjoy an abundant life and to be healed.

What are we seeing here?  The fruit of ministries like Fred Price’s, magical thinking.  This kind of attitude envisions God as a prankster, one who is waiting for someone to use the wrong words, just to show them that he can hand over a bad thing, even when the heart of the praying believer is longing for a good thing.  “Aha!” says this type of god.  “I caught you asking wrongly!  Watch what happens, now that you’ve used the wrong words!”

This is not Christianity.  So what is it?

• It is the cartoonish thinking of Linus from the Charlie Brown cartoons, the character thrown into despair when he accidentally slips and says, “If the Great Pumpkin comes …” instead of  “When the Great Pumpkin comes …”  Linus believed he had stopped the coming miracle by a slip of the tongue.
• It is the diabolical thinking of any number of Deal With The Devil tales, in which a demon (or a genie, in Arabic literature) turns a good wish into a bad one by finding a loophole or flaw in the way the question was asked.
• It is the New Age foolishness of The Secret and other power-of-positive-thinking schemes, wherein simply thinking positive thoughts makes those positive thoughts come true … and when they don’t come true, it’s good evidence you were letting negative thoughts sneak in, you failure.

* * *

Does God punish negativity?  If God so thoroughly dislikes our speaking the negatives aloud, why on Earth did He permit so many depressing Psalms?  And a whole book of Lamentations!  Those are pretty odd selections from a Being who demands positive words and attitudes and punishes a downcast heart.

* * *

“Be careful what you pray for.  You might get it!”

This is another line I’ve heard casually tossed about by my brothers and sisters in Christ.  Sometimes it’s used as a half-joke; other times it’s delivered with deadly seriousness.  No matter which way it’s used, the concept underlying it is a slap at Scripture, at the assurances of Jesus in Matthew 7:

   Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone?

               Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?

Word of Faith practitioners, with their demands that all magic words be phrased positively and as claims of affirmation, would hasten to point out that the son in this verse knows to ask for bread.  The son named it and claimed it!  But my worry is how they characterize the Lord’s role in this verse … seeing Him as a father who won’t give a thing to the son if the request isn’t made with perfect wording.  A god who responds with gleeful, puckish pranks when the petition is done incorrectly.  A god who reacts to magic words, rather than to real needs among his children.

A god who says, “Gotcha!”

* * *

Not everyone who uses Word of Faith vocabulary is a full-blown Word of Faith practitioner.  The problem, however, is that name-it-and-claim-it thinking sneaks into the ideas and words of true believers in Christ.  Think of yeast.  Think of dough.  Get the picture?  The danger is like that.  I’m being careful not to say what will happen, because I don’t want to say it out loud and force God to make it come true.

Just kidding.

Here are a three warning signs that magical Word of Faith thinking might be creeping into your congregation:

Clue 1--The power of names: When you ask for prayer for someone who isn’t present, those praying ask what the person’s name is.  This may seem innocent enough, but notice that when you don’t give the name, those praying will inevitably remind God, “You know all things, so you know this person’s name ...” Here’s what’s up with that: It is ancient, magical thinking to believe knowing a thing’s “true name” gives you power over that thing.  In shamanism, voodoo, occult practices, demonism, ecstatic-trance faiths, and fairy tales like Rumpelstiltskin, having the name means having the power.  Word of Faith practitioners (or those influenced by them) who don’t have the name always feel slightly uncomfortable, and seem driven to remind God that, yeah, okay, He knows the name, I guess.  He has the power, so He can do the magic, I suppose.  Remember, Lord, You know things.

Clue 2--Quoting Scripture to God:  Admit it.  You’ve heard it.  “Yes, Lord!  Praise you, Lord!  As You said in Your Scripture, as You taught us in Isaiah chapter 53 verse 5, by Your stripes we are healed … “ You’ve been in front of preachers who act as if they are talking to God, but in the course of it, tell Him specifically what He’s said in His Scriptures, and then give the citation of where He said it (should He wish to look it up later, I suppose).  As far as I can tell, preachers who do this frequently – note I said that last bit, for I don’t want you thinking I mean anyone who now and then cites a Scripture in the course of a prayer – but those who make a regular habit of quoting the Lord His own Scriptures, chapter and verse, are up to one of two things:

     1) They are not talking to the Lord at all, but talking to the audience,

         performing the prayer, and trying to whip up a powerful faith-knowledge
         combo in the minds of the believers … a spell, in essence, that will, by
         words of power, make the requested magic happen; or

     2) Even worse, they are talking to the Lord, and are trying to use some
         magic influence they believe to be in the words of Scripture to force
         the hand of God to act, and to bend His will to their own. If you think
         I may be overstating this, please reread the Fred Price quotation I opened
         with.

Clue 3--Your magic finances: To keep their health and wealth Gospel churning along, Word of Faith practitioners will give you Scripture’s magic formulas for becoming rich yourself.  Inevitably, this involves giving money to them.  Mind you, I am not talking about a church’s normal requests for donations.  Rather, I’m talking about those hucksters who craft biblical equations to spell out exactly what your monetary Return On Investment will be when you mail in your Love Offering.  Their message: giving is getting, and getting is holy.  Your health, your wealth, those are the evidence that the Holy Spirit lives in you.  The Holy Spirit, these preachers say, doesn’t want to live in a cheap shack … so give to us, that God might be freed from His shackles and give to you.

* * *

Dear Rev. Fred Price,

I learned from your sermons and from your son’s sermons that God will bless me one hundredfold if I give generously to your ministry in easy-to-make monthly payments.  You’ve shown me clearly in Genesis chapter 26 verse 12 that if I send you one hundred dollars, the Lord will be righteous and reward me with a hundred hundred-dollar bills!

Because I love your ministry so much, I want a blessing like that to fall upon you, not upon me.  It dawned on me: This principle of faith must work for you, too!  Therefore, I would like to encourage you to send me $1,000.00 U.S., which will result in God giving you $100,000.00 on my behalf.  Since I can’t afford to send you a hundred grand myself, this is the best way I can guarantee you get it.

I’ve enclosed a self-addressed stamped envelop for your convenience.  Getting that thousand to me before next Tuesday would be awesome, since my rent is due.

Sincerely,

Yolanda R.

* * *

You guys didn’t really think my name was “Cosmic Parx,”  did you?

Mara Natha,

Cosmic

What The Bible Isn’t

Today, random thoughts on the nature of the Christian Scriptures.

* * *

Please read this:

“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

Now please read this:

“All Scripture is handwritten by God in 17^th century English, and it is the Word of God just as Jesus is the Word of God, inerrant and unsurpassed for anything from mathematics, to recipes, to hidden messages revealed through code breaking: That the man of God may have handy quotations with which to browbeat his enemies.” (absolutely not 2 Timothy 3:16-17)

* * *

I have known people who quote the first set of lines above, all the while believing they are quoting the second set when they say the words of the first.  Some of these people (not all, not all) frighten me with their fury when discussing “Biblical inerrancy” – much the way some Muslims (not all, not all) frighten me with their willingness to break into riots, burn buildings, and trample one another upon learning that half a world away, some hick preacher has disrespected a paper copy of the Qur’an.

* * *

If, while reading this, you are already feeling defensive and argumentative and ready to pounce … you might be one of those people.

* * *

This line from a Baptist preacher made me sit up and soul-search a couple weeks ago: “Why are Fundamentalists always pointing to the Bible rather than to Jesus when they talk about their faith?”  The insight in that question stunned me into realizing how many people I know who raise the Bible above Jesus when asked to discuss their faith.  They even argue about some kind of equivalency between Jesus as the Word of God, and the Bible as the word of God.  It borders on book worship, in some cases.

* * *

Many Christians are fond of saying, with much force: “The church is not the building!  It’s the people!”

How many would look at me with stunned disbelief if I declared, with as much force: “The Word is not the book!  It’s the Savior!”

At least some would be sure I was on the verge of speaking heresy.

* * *

A friend, a brother in Christ, asked me last week if I took the Bible literally.  Actually, the question was, “Don’t you take the Bible literally?!?!?!” Naturally, I don’t know how many question marks and exclamation points were in the question, but from the force of the inquiry, I’m guessing three each.

I answered, “I believe the Lord aroused the writers of Scripture, and what’s in there is really useful.  I mean, I find the Bible really beneficial for shaping what I believe, and if I mess up, there’s bound to be insights in Scripture that show me what I did wrong.  It’s the book God uses to help me do what’s right.”

What followed was a lot of sputtering and stammering from my friend.  “Useful?  The Bible’s just useful?  It helps you do good works, good works?  It’s really beneficial, that’s all?!?!?!”

Yes, the tone was all punctuation-marky again.  Perhaps what I said is causing a lot of punctuation in your brain right now, too.  But everything I said above is exactly what Paul said to Timothy about Scripture.  All Scripture is profitable.  All Scripture is useful.  All Scripture is a tool.

I cherish Scripture.  But I am in a relationship with the true Word of God, my Beloved, the Lord Jesus Christ.  I am not in a relationship with Bibles.  I am not summoned to the wedding feast of the KJV.  He will not kiss me with the kiss of his New International Version.

* * *

Here’s what Paul says about the Scriptures in 2 Timothy 3:

(1) They can make you wise about salvation through faith in Jesus.

(2) They’re given by inspiration of God.
(3) They’re useful for doctrine.
(4) They’re useful for reproof and correction.
(5) They’re useful for instruction in righteousness.
(6) They help a man of God become complete (which is what “perfect”  means).
(7) They furnish (supply, equip, tool) us for doing good works.

* * *

Random aside: A relatively new Christian once said to me that he knew the Bible was one hundred percent inerrant in all aspects of reality.  Those were his words – in all aspects of reality.

“Even the book of Nahum?” I asked.

“Absolutely!” he said.

“What’s the book of Nahum about?” I asked.

It took him a while to answer.  “I haven’t read that yet.”

In the interest of peace, I let it rest.  What I did not type back to him was this: “If your faith in the Bible isn’t based on the Bible – and it can’t be, since you obviously haven’t finished reading it yet – then where did that faith come from?  Who told you that was how to think about the Scriptures?”

* * *

All Scripture is inspired by God.  Theopneustoskai, a beautiful word that combines the elements of pneuma, wind and breath and spirit, all in a single morpheme; and Theos, God.  The breath of the Infinite.  Whispers from the Almighty.  A conversation with the One I love, He who loved me first.

I’ve watched apologists pour hours of time into “proving” the Bible is “true” through tricks of rhetoric, amateurish plodding through bad science, and retrofitted “prophecies” forced to match today’s headlines.  I am sad for such men.  I picture them going home to their wives, being told they are loved, and responding, “Yes, for I have proof that you love me, dear, evidenced by a 98.7% house-dusting accuracy rate, evidential strata of bathroom towel stackage, irreducibly complex flavors in your cooking, and other items I can detail for you from an explanation of Proverbs 31.  Sit and listen as I expound.”

Such men know the Scriptures.  I pray they know the Author.

Let me go out on a limb here: No one was ever brought into faith in Christ via cool data and meticulous apologetics.  No one.  Not even those who claim they were.  They were brought into faith through the calling of the Beloved, bought through His blood, and set on a path of righteousness through a very intimate infilling of the Holy Spirit.  Spirit.  Pneuma.  Breath.  Breathed into.

Everyone who “believes in” the Bible came to that conclusion only after they were called by the whisper of the Beloved.

* * *

Let me end with a really, really controversial statement.  Only my friends read this blog (I think), so I’m sure one or two will want to sit down with me to discuss this next observation.  Some may even yell at me.  Others will show me Scriptures about what the “word of God” is.

Here goes: Who told us that it is proper to refer to the written Bible as “The word of God”?

I propose this: that the term “word of God,” when it appears in the Bible, almost never refers to the written, completed Bible.  So when Proverbs 30:5 says, “Every word of God is pure,” it is not referring to the bound and printed book we now use as part of our faith.  In the Scriptures, “the word of God” is a term used of Jesus.  It’s used of the message of Jesus’ salvation.  It’s used of Jesus’  teaching on hillsides, and the breathing in of the Spirit when God moved among the prophets long before Jesus’ time.

When a Christian reads the term “word of God” in Scripture, it is incorrect – dare I say heretical? idolatrous? – to mentally insert the term “Bible” in its place.

My Beloved is the Word of God.  He is a two-edged sword, the very sword of the Spirit, and His Word is the Gospel itself, the good news that God has crafted a radical way, an extravagant way, to win back a world.

And that is the Word of the Lord.  Thanks be to God.

Marana Tha,

Cosmic