THE
BIBLE
The collection of writings known as the Bible are
authenticated, to my satisfaction anyway, as the writings
of separate individuals over the centuries before and into
the time of Yeshua. There is a breathtaking, unifying
thread throughout: awe in the power of God, faith in the
presence of God, and duty toward one’s fellow humans. Set
aside your prejudices because it was written only by men.
So what? Could it have waited until women in America were
liberated? (Keep in mind that women in most of the rest of
the world still are not.) Set aside that it emphasizes
certain trivialities, like the “chosen” people. We know
that Yeshua made that evermore irrelevant. The words of
Micah, ("The LORD has showed you, O Man, what is good. And
what does the LORD require of you? But that you act justly,
love tenderly, and walk humbly with your God." 6:8),
written a hundred or more years before the birth of the
Christ, stand for what runs throughout the Bible. Different
eccentric men (what literate man 2200 or more years ago
wasn’t eccentric?) each describe different encounters with
manifestations of God, and they are gloriously similar. In
this regard, and by this evidence, it is the word of God.
Why does it take sixty-six books and a thousand pages and a
million words to convey so simple a message as the greatest
commandments? Because the Bible is more than that. It is
most of the known writing up to the time of Yeshua, minus a
few Greeks who wrote secular stuff. It is history. It is
context. No doubt it was justification for abuse of power,
in the secretive minds of a few of its compilers. So what?
Its beauty and truth shine through nevertheless.
The opening chapters of the Bible are some of the
most compelling testimony to its authenticity. Far from
contradicting science, I see Genesis as a great
confirmation of it. The story of creation is scientifically
sloppy in many of the details, but look at the overall
sequence! Imagine some poor scribe, listening to the voice
of God 3500 years ago. God tells him to write this down, so
the scribe gets quill and parchment together and waits. God
says: Six billion years ago… The scribe stops him and asks:
What’s a billion? God ponders, and answers: Well it’s a
thousand thousand thousand. The scribe can sort of
comprehend this, because he has counted many herds of
sheep, but he struggles with the measure of a thousand
years. God explains: A thousand years are like one day in
my sight. The scribe says: Fine; and he writes: On the
first day… But consider the sequence. God made the heavens
and the earth. The earth was devoid. God made the seas. The
dry land arose from the seas. The simpler creatures came
first, then humans.
First of all, someone really did write all that down
several thousand years ago. Second, he had it in roughly
the sequence that is verifiable today. Third, he didn’t
make it up! How would a primitive, if literate, stone-age
human, so susceptible to superstitions and pagan
influences, have come up with something so elegantly
scientific just for the sake of writing fiction? The words
of Genesis were that man’s best attempt to transcribe the
almost incomprehensible message that God was expressing to
him. If God spoke to me today and said: “Write this down,”
I’m confident that I would convey it as precisely as I
could, but, since his thoughts are so much higher than my
thoughts, I’m also reasonably certain that I would slip up
on some of the details.
Would God care that my translation from his mind to yours
was sloppy, so long as I conveyed the message?
The Bible came together as a result of several
councils of bishops, (an English word, bishop – they had
many titles for themselves in many languages), that took
place in Nicea (Turkey) and other places in the fourth
century, A.D. These were the early church leaders, and I’m
inclined to consider them relatively free of political,
evil, or irrational influences. They had at their disposal
copies of the Gospel texts handed down in the original
languages and in immediate translations. They worked in
prayer and concord and chose, from the lot those texts, the
sixty-six books that would define for them the word of God,
both as the Jews knew it before Christ, (the Pentateuch,
the Law, and the Prophets, which together make up the Old
Testament), and the Gospels of Christ, the Epistles of
various writers, and the Revelation of John, which make up
the New Testament.
The councils of Nicea left some remarkable things in the
Bible. They believed they left out the extraneous,
not the controversial. The controversial they felt they
left in. They left out a unique set of books written in the
four hundred years or so before the birth of the Messiah,
and these we know today as the Apocrypha. The Orthodox,
Roman, and Anglican-Episcopal churches include Apocryphal
readings in the church liturgy, and they are wonderful
writings. They are omitted because they were not part of
the original Hebrew scriptures and nor were they concerned
with the life and teaching of the Christ.
Some try to challenge you by asking: Do you believe in the
Bible as the inspired word of God? You’re supposed
to say Yes, in which case they then throw some obscure
passage at you that you can’t help take issue with.
Yes, just as I believe the writer of Genesis was inspired
by God, I believe that the Old Testament writers were
spoken to in some manner by God and told to “Say to the
people…” or “Write these words…” I also believe that they
had great difficulty comprehending the ways of God and so
God had to tell it in simple ways, and what they wrote was
even simpler still.
GRACE
I don’t epitomize the line that hard work and honest living
pay off. That’s largely a myth. Hard work and honest living
do confer some advantages, and I’m the beneficiary of many
such advantages. But too many who have placed their faith
in that mantra are eventually disillusioned. Industries
close and lay off the most loyal workers. People who live
healthy lives contract the worst diseases and have
accidents. Secure, solid families suddenly fall apart.
I don’t fear these things. I have been unbelievably blessed
for decades. When it is my turn to deal with such a
tragedy, I will hope I have been worthy of the prosperity
and security that went before. I hope that I can give
thanks for what I have, not complain for what I don’t have
or what has befallen me. I hope I have been fortified for a
reversal and will not be destroyed by it. I believe it is
God’s grace that has kept me these many years. I have
evidence of it. But grace comes with expectation. It is up
to me to discern those expectations and respond with my
love for the God whose grace I’ve enjoyed. It is my grace
given to God that I endeavor to meet his expectations of
me.
The story of Job is a special illustration of grace. Satan
challenged God by declaring that he could make Job speak
ill of God. So God said go ahead and try. Satan set out to
ruin Job by destroying his family and his wealth. The
people around Job counseled him that he should curse God
for allowing all this to happen. He would not. His pain was
terrible and he could not understand what was happening to
him. But he didn’t speak ill of God. When Satan lost the
bet, God restored Job’s losses.
An important promise of God’s grace occurs in another Old
Testament prophecy. From Ezekiel 33:1-6: “The word of the
Lord came to me: O Mortal, speak to your people and say to
them: If the people of the land take one of their own as
the sentinel, and if I bring the sword upon the land; and
if the sentinel sees the sword coming upon the land and
blows the trumpet and warns the people; then if any who
hear the sound of the trumpet do not take warning, and the
sword comes and takes them away, their blood shall be upon
their own heads. They heard the sound of the trumpet and
did not take warning. But if they had taken warning, they
would have saved their lives. But if the sentinel sees the
sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, so that the
people are not warned, and the sword comes and takes any of
them, they are taken away in their iniquity, but their
blood will be on the sentinel’s hands.”
So many “Christians” are quick to assure that anyone who
has not been “saved” will burn in hell. What about those
who never heard the Gospel? Burn in hell. What about babies
who die before they can understand? Burn in hell. What
about the retarded, the mentally ill? Burn in hell. The
testimony of Ezekiel assures the Hebrews that there is
grace for those who have not heard or cannot know. And that
was before Yeshua’s ultimate sacrifice, which
gives hope even to those who tune out the trumpet.
When tragedy strikes any of us, it may be that there are no
answers for us, as there were no answers for Job. It may be
that our strength is in our personal experience of God. And
we also need to remind ourselves that a) the details of our
lives are not the things that matter to God; our
relationship with him is what matters; and b) most of what
“happens” to us is of our own choosing; mankind invented
most of the risks we consider necessities; we choose to
expose ourselves to those risks.
SIN
There’s one line. Either you’re on one side, where the
sinners stand, or you’re on the other side, where the
non-sinner stands. You’re in or you’re out. Proximity to
the line is immaterial, just as proximity to the surface of
a cesspool, for one who is beneath the surface, is as vile
as proximity to its bottom. There are no lesser and greater
sinners. Yes, certain misdeeds are described as
abominations to God, and somehow certain Christian sects
have wasted their time ranking one another’s sins. Does
that mean there are other sins that are not abominations to
God, but mere amusements? Is not the hatred of others and
abomination to God? Is not the judgment and condemnation of
some people by other people a self-righteous hatred?
Saint Paul lamented his inability to remain sinless, even
in the face of so great a motivation as he had been given.
But he knew that it was his continuing remorse that freed
him from the curse of sin. God seeks our remorse. Not
certain mumbled prayers of repentance. Not even,
necessarily, atonement (in the sense of making restitution
or doing compensatory good deeds). It’s what’s inside that
will matter.
Those who are especially regretful of their sins have, in
certain Christian traditions, the option of confessing to a
confidant, repenting, and receiving absolution, supposedly
conferred by God through his agent the priest. Certain
traditions make more of the baptism as a cleansing and
don’t rely on confession. But these sacraments and
ceremonies are for us mortals, not for God. The
Bible offers some fine examples of what people did
way back, and if it makes you feel good to do something
similar now, that’s not necessarily required, but it is
certainly acceptable.
2002
©DamnYankee.com
