A Short History of the Church, Well-worth Reading

I highly encourage you to go read the five short blog entries on this history of the Church (this link is the last blog entry, but it has links to the previous four entries; I encourage you to read them in order. I found the first lesson to be the least valuable, so if it doesn't do much for you, keep going at least through the second before you give up; they're short).

I don't often learn much from what most preachers want to offer me, especially so easily and in such a short format, but this stuff is fascinating. Well-worth reading.

What is the Gospel?

I remember as a young teen being impressed with the urgency of "spreading the Gospel", and wondering just exactly what the Gospel is.

I knew the word meant "good news", but all my church upbringing seemed to equate "the Gospel" with the doctrinal tenets of the traditional "Church of Christ" in which I was raised. That is, "the Gospel" was that you needed to hear, believe, repent, confess, be baptized, and live faithfully as a member of the Church of Christ.

Somehow, even then, that didn't quite ring true with me, but I've never quite been able to put my finger on why it wasn't true, or what exactly the Gospel was.

As I matured, my thinking morphed more into the idea that the Gospel was that Jesus saves us from our sins and gets us into heaven, and then later still my thinking morphed to the idea that Jesus will rescue us from "the Curse" which currently is responsible for us getting cancer and run over by trains and hit by lightning and being lame or blind or deaf and losing our favorite pets and eventually dying ourselves.

Yeah, freedom from those things sounds like "good news" to me, but it doesn't make for a very good sound-bite.

Then tonight I came across the Biblical definition, which had been sitting there all my life (and all of the life of the church for the past two-thousand years). It's in Galatians 3:8:

And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, “In you all the nations shall be blessed.”

The Gospel is that "all the nations shall be blessed in Abraham".

That's it in a nutshell. Now what it means to be "be blessed" leaves plenty of room for discussion, but I now have a working, Biblical definition of "the Gospel". I bless YHWH for this milestone in my life, even if it doesn't "click" for you as it did for me.

North Dakota lawmakers vote that 'personhood' starts at conception

From Perth Now, via Agence France-Presse

NORTH Dakota has become the first US state to move towards passing a law that defines "personhood" as starting at the moment of conception, which would effectively outlaw abortion, pro-life groups said. Lawmakers in the North Dakota lower house voted 51 to 41 on Tuesday to pass the Personhood of Children Act, which confers the same basic rights on "all human beings from the beginning of their biological development, including the pre-born, partially born."

As reported at Theophiles.

Worth Noting

But the more human reasoning is involved, the more tolerant of other's I will be and the greater possibility of my own human reasoning being faulty I acknowledge.

As posted on a Church of Christ email list.

Solve the Jigsaw Puzzle or Die

As seen on a Church of Christ mailing list:

Neal Griffin wrote: The New Covenant is not a legal system with codified laws; or worse yet, a legal system with camouflaged directions which require legal specialists with special tools to unlock and make known what God expects of us.

Marks of a Cult

On a Yahoo!Groups mailing list called Church_Of_Christ, okie_cole62 writes the following:

Here are eight cult distinctives:

Scripture Twisting --- Proof-texting would also fall under this category. Passages are frequently taken out of context, manipulated, misapplied, and/or forced to do duty as the justification of wrong conclusions.

Controlling Leader/Leadership --- Near total submission is generally implicitly or explicitly required of the members. The leaders are "in charge" and are not to be challenged or questioned. What they say is law.

Separation/Isolation of the Membership --- To protect the members from "harmful influences," the group leaders will do all in their power to isolate their disciples from others who may have differing views, or who might dare to challenge the thinking of the group in any way. Outsiders are banned from coming anywhere near the group, and the group members are banned from any type of interaction with outsiders which might cause them to doubt their beliefs or question the direction of their leaders.

Spiritual Elitism --- The group perceives itself as the "chosen of God." They are the ONLY ones who have ultimate Truth all figured out. They have "arrived." They are the enlightened ones, the "one true church," the ONLY ones going to heaven. If you are not in their group, you are lost. Period! Salvation is simply not to be found outside their walls, thus these aberrant groups rarely, if ever, cooperate in any way with other Christian groups. Indeed, other groups are not even perceived as being "Christian."

Uniformity --- Diversity among the membership is scorned, and the idea of having any kind of "unity in diversity" is mocked as godless heresy. The members must think the same things, speak the same things, practice the same things, proclaim the same things, believe the same things. Even in areas where Scripture is silent, uniformity of thought and practice (the standard being, of course, the traditional perceptions and preferences of the group, or its leaders) is rigidly imposed.

Doctrinal Mutation --- Doctrines and practices have a tendency to devolve and mutate further and further from healthy beliefs and expressions. For example, some groups started out with a very narrow view on divorce and remarriage, which eventually devolved to the point that the leaders insisted on certain members terminating second marriages that, in their view, were unapproved by God. Thus, these aberrant groups have gone from promoting a particular doctrine to actually promoting divorce! Families are destroyed to promote the fallacious findings of the Faction's Fathers!

Dissent Discouraged --- Nothing will get a member of an aberrant group tossed out into the cold more quickly than when they dare to question or challenge "the way things are" or "the way they have always been done." In non-coercive groups, differences with regard to convictions and personal preferences, perceptions, and practices are more lovingly tolerated. That is not the case in an aberrant group. Such "rebels," "liberals," and "digressives" will be ousted before they know what hit them. Dissenters are "marked" and maligned.

Traumatic Departure --- Coming out of such a group is almost always an extremely traumatic experience ... the group will see to that. Painful confrontations are common; months, even years, of being mercilessly hounded and harangued by the "faithful" is typical. Shunning by former friends and family is to be expected.

I don't know if this list is original with him; I don't know what qualifications he has to make these definitions. I actually suspect that he has intentionally designed these distinctives as a swipe against abuses and faults which he has experienced/witnessed/perceived in traditional churches of Christ (almost as if he's had a "traumatic departure" and is now looking to rescue others from the "cult" from which he came).

Nevertheless, I found the list interesting.

Tugs at my Heart

Quoted at http://www.youngcosmos.com/blog/archives/306

In her groundbreaking book, The Hidden Life of Dogs, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas maintained that dogs show deep romantic passion for one another. She arrived at this conclusion moments after she introduced Misha, a handsome Siberian husky, to her daughter’s young and beautiful do of the same breed, Maria. Thomas had agreed to house Misha while his owners were on an extended trip to Europe.

The day arrived. Misha’s owners delivered this vibrant male to the Thomas home. Misha pranced into the living room to look about, settling his gaze immediately on the gorgeous Maria. In an instant he bounded to her feet and skidded to a stop. At once, Thomas writes, Maria “dropped to her elbows in an invitation to play. Chase me, her gesture said. And he did. Quckly, lightly, the two delighted creatures spun around the room. Misha and Maria were so taken with each other that they noticed nothing. Misha didn’t even notice when his owners left.”

These two joyous dogs were immediately inseperable. Together they ate and slept and roamed; together they bore four hearty pups; together they reared them–until the dark day when Misha’s owners gave him away to people in the countryside. For weeks Maria sat in the window seat of the Thomas home in the very spot where she had watched her beloved Misha being forced into a car. Here she pined. Eventually she gave up waiting for him to return. But “Marian never recovered from her loss,” Thomas writes. “She lost her radiance…and showed no interest in forming a pemanent bond with another male, evn though, over the years, several eligible males joined our household.”

Overheard

A speaker I recently heard held out her palm and with the finger of her other hand drew an X across the palm and said:

'X' marks the spot. Be where you are.

That same speaker also asked what lies at the bottom of the ocean and twitches.

A nervous wreck.

Worth sharing, I thought.

Apologies for the Bad Language

In my last post (which has since been deleted), I quoted a science-fiction character as an example of the humor used in the sci-fi show.

Apparently, however, I somehow made it to adulthood and either failed to learn or have forgotten that a word he used in the quote is deemed by society as cursing/offensive language/vulgarity.

Not wishing to contribute to the overall vulgar nature of society at large, and having learned that this word does so, I have removed the post.

Apologies to any who were offended.

Some Notes on Divorce

In the gospel account by Matthew, we are given a picture in which Yahshua begins his ministry, and shortly thereafter having his credentials and teachings challenged by the then-reigning religious establishment. This is no different than what we do in the modern day when a new teacher comes along: we "test" him, probing him with questions to see where he stands on various issues.

We see this happening in Yahshua's ministry. The first eight chapters of Matthew tell us of Yahshua's background and early ministry. By chapter nine, he has attracted the attention of the religious leaders. Several times over the next few chapters he has run-ins with the Establishment.

Part of this friction was a normal, healthy examination of what the new guy had to say.

Yahshua was not the only popular rabbi in his culture. Rabbi Hillel was running his school in Jerusalem about the time Yahshua was born, and Rabbi Shammai had been born just a generation or two before that. Both of these rabbis were very influential on the thinking in Yahshua's day. These two schools had different interpretations of how divorce was to be handled.

According to http://www.ccel.us/place.ch2.html :

A husband could take another wife or concubine without consulting his first wife, and she was expected not only to welcome them into her home but also to live in harmony with them. Only the husband had the right of divorce. Moses permitted divorce if the husband found "some indecency in her" (Deut. 24:1, NASB). There were two schools of interpretation over the meaning of Moses' divorce law. The school of Shammai held that "some indecency" meant unchastity. The followers of Hillel, however, maintained that a husband was justified in turning his wife out of house and home for any reason of displeasure, even if he chanced to find more pleasure in another woman! The only stipulation was that he had to give her the sum of money prescribed in the marriage contract, which served as a form of alimony and child support. If she violated any number of rules, however, such as allowing a man to speak to her in public, she would forfeit the money. In practice, a divorced woman rarely was paid anything.

So when we get to Matthew 19 and find the Pharisees asking Yahshua his beliefs concerning divorce, they weren't necessarily trying to trick him in some way; rather, it appears to be an honest attempt to find out if this new rabbi agrees with the school of Hillel or the school of Shammai.

Yahshua's answer was that he agreed with the school of Shammai: "...whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery" (19:9 HCSB).

But rather than appealing to Shammai's interpretation of the Law, he went directly to the Biblical text itself (19:4ff HCSB):

Haven't you read," He replied, "that He who created them in the beginning made them male and female , 5 and He also said:

For this reason a man will leave
his father and mother
and be joined to his wife,
and the two will become one flesh ?

6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, man must not separate."

When they pressed him further, asking why Moses then allowed divorce at all, Yahshua responded that it was because men are hard-hearted and always looking for the next skirt. He then answered more directly the question they had been asking, by revealing his belief that Shammai was correct, and Hillel wrong.

His disciples were apparently fans of the Hillel doctrine, because they challenged Yahshua: "If it's like this, I'd rather stay single!" (19:10, paraphrased).

And Yahshua's response is sobering: "If you can live celibate, great. If not, then live by the rules."

If I'm understanding the account properly, Yahshua is not making a blanket statement that divorce is always wrong except in very narrowly-defined situations; he's saying that divorce needs a real reason, not a mamby-pamby excuse for a man to kick another human being out into the cold for his own selfish reasons.

Think about what would happen to such a "used" woman alone in that culture. How would she put food in her mouth? Where would she live? What self-respecting citizen would befriend her? Prostitution would be about the only solution she'd have. Yahshua implied this result earlier in his Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5:32):

[E]veryone who divorces his wife, except in a case of sexual immorality, causes her to commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

In other words, a divorce for the sake of the husband's convenience taints everyone involved.

Would Yahshua be so strictly against divorce in the 21st Century Western world, in which women have much more independence than they did in his day? I'm not smart enough to say one way or the other, but I suspect he would, for two reasons:

1) God hates divorce - Malachi 2:16

2) Yahshua did not appeal to the results of divorce as a reason to avoid it, but rather to the original design of marriage. That appeal would still apply in all cultures, regardless of the results of divorce.

Christian Philosophy on a T-shirt

Some might disagree, but I believe the t-shirt I saw earlier today epitomizes the philosophy of Jesus. It said:

Comfort those who are disturbed.
Disturb those who are comfortable.

Recovered: Missing Dog

'Reo disappeared on the 30th from around South 20th and Sayles. Today NJ got a call reporting a dog matching his description at Eula. She drove out, and ... Praise Yah! ... 'Reo is on his way home.

He's tired and worn out, but otherwise in good shape.

Now, for the rest of the story ....

Last year, 'Reo broke his elbow. Of course, it was late at night when the only vet available was the expensive Emergency Clinic. Preliminary triage at the ER convinced us that with his age, and the severity of the break, and the general lifelessness he was showing, and his increasing blindness/deafness, the sensible thing to do would have been to put him down. The ER kept him sedated over night so we could get pictures and make better decisions in the light of day. Come morning, it was obvious that although he was suffering, he still had too much life in him to put him down; we decided to amputate.

But before doing that, we tried one more vet (Dearing, out near Buffalo Gap), and learned that the surgery to attempt a repair was only another hundred and fifty or so over the $400 or so it would take to amputate, so we elected to go with the surgery. Praise Yah, he came through surgery fine, and although he's still slightly crippled, it didn't stop him from traveling twenty miles in the past week.

Then 'Reo came to stay a night with me at my house. I forgot that I had put down some rat poison earlier in the week. And 'Reo, being the vacuum-cleaner he is, found it. Rat poison is an anti-coagulant (your grandpa might be taking rat-poison pills on a daily basis), and the dosage he took would have killed him over the course of a few days when his blood-clotting ability finally allowed him to bleed out (probably internally, where it wouldn't be noticed). Of course, this was late at night, when the only vet available was the expensive Emergency Clinic. But we took him in, and they induced vomiting, and put him on a regime of Vitamin K (an anti-anti-coagulant). Praise Yah, he came through fine.

Then about three weeks later, NJ left a 6-ounce package of cocao nibs where 'Reo could find them. She had been careful all his life to keep him from chocolate, but on this day, she just missed a detail. When she came home later, she realized he had eaten all the chocolate. As many of you know, chocolate is a poison to dogs. Of course ... this happened late at night when the only vet available was the expensive Emergency Clinic. But I did my usual searching of the Internet for all I could learn, and I tried various calculations to see if he could withstand the onslaught of the poison. By the time we had discovered that he had eaten the chocolate, about 12 hours had elapsed, and as far as I could tell from the research I did, there's really not an antidote other than to make him throw up, which by now was too late, so we withheld from taking him to the ER and I just prayed that he might survive. I was particularly concerned that NJ would feel guilty if he died. I told God that if 'Reo survived, I would only be able to conclude that it was God that healed him, because as far as I could tell, that amount of poison should have killed him.

About a week after that, I had decided that God had indeed delivered him from death, and I decided to wait one more day before emailing my friends so that I could publicly (to them) give credit to God for this positive answer to my prayers. It was that night that 'Reo went missing, and I just couldn't then bring myself to praise God to my friends when now it looked as if 'Reo might have disappeared forever.

NJ, with help from Don and Jenn and others, made fliers and handed them out and put up signs and contacted newspapers and online classifieds and vet offices and made daily trips to check on the "scraped-off-the-road" and "picked-up-strays" lists.

And then today, 20 miles from where he disappeared, this old, blind, deaf, crippled dog meets up with his owner, licks her face, and heads home with her.

Praise Yah!

UPDATE: He gained 9 pounds while living out in the street. That dog can find food anywhere.

The Unity of the Church

From a posting on the "Church_of_Christ" Yahoo! Group:

"Racoon" John Smith proclaimed at the 1832 Lexinton [sic] conference for unity, "While there is but one faith, there may be ten thousand opinions; and hence if Christians are ever to be one, they must be one in faith, and not in opinion."

Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth

Let me first bring to remembrance our oft-stated claim that we adhere to the Bible, not to human-made tradition. It's important to keep in mind that even a "firm" doctrine which we've known and believed all our lives may turn out to be unBiblical. When that comes to light, we have to make a decision to retain the tradition anyway, or to let it go in favor of the Biblical view.

We've had a tradition, for centuries and centuries, that the Bible is divided into two sections: the Old Testament and the New. We even support this two-fold division by quoting 2 Tim 2:15, which says, "Study ..., rightly dividing the word of truth."

But this two-fold division is not the division known by the early church, and presented by Jesus. We know from historical/secular records that the Jews of Jesus' day divided their scriptures into a three-fold division, that of the Law (Torah), the Prophets (Nevi'im), and the Writings (Kethuvim) (or the "Tanahk", a word formed (with vowels added) by taking the first letter of each of these divisions, TNK).

When the church was established, a fourth division was added to the Holy Scriptures, that being the inspired writings of the early church.

Jesus refers to the three-fold division of the Jewish scriptures, as well as making an oblique reference to the fourth, in Luke 24:44, where he mentions:

1. the Law
2. the Prophets
3. the Psalms (representing the Writings)
4. "my words"

Why does this matter?

1) Because that's the Biblical division. This should in and of itself be sufficient as a reason to recognize a four-fold division of the Bible rather than a two-fold division.

2) Because by lumping the three-fold division of the Jewish scriptures into a single unit, we then misunderstand the teachings concerning the "old covenant".

(2a)
The term "old covenant" is referenced in 2 Corinthians 3:14, where it is equated in the next verse to "Moses", and thus by implication to the Mosaic Covenant, aka the Law, aka the Torah. To extend this term to also refer to "the Prophets" and "the Writings" is to go beyond the text.

(2b)
The term "old covenant" is also referenced in Hebrews 8 and 9 where it speaks of the ritual components of the Torah of Moses. To extend the term to also include "the Prophets" and "the Writings" is to go beyond the text. This term is also explained by the writer of Hebrews as the covenant referred to by Jeremiah (see next point).

(2c)
Jeremiah defined the covenant which would be replaced by the new covenant, in Jer 31:31ff. In this passage, Jeremiah makes it clear that the old covenant which would be replaced by the new is the covenant which YHWH made with the Israelites at the time He brought them out of Egypt, aka the Mosaic Covenant.

(2d)
This means that the 39 books we know today as the "Old Testament" (aka TNK) have not been replaced by the New Testament. Only the T portion of the TNK (or more specifically, the Mosaic Covenant portion of the T portion) has been replaced by the new covenant. Or in other words, the portions of the Tanahk which are not part of the Mosaic covenant have not been replaced by the New Covenant, but are in fact, still in effect.

(2d1)
We see this is true by logic: we accept the rainbow of the Noahic covenant as still being in effect, trusting that God will not flood the earth again as he did in Noah's day. (If this covenant with the inhabitants of Earth is still in effect, we are still to multiply and be fruitful, and we should still execute murderers.)

(2d2)
We see this is true by the doctrine of Jesus, who based his teachings concerning marriage, divorce, and remarriage on the validity of the Creation account. If that text is no longer in effect, then Jesus' teachings about marriage are no longer in effect; he did not create a new doctrine out of his own authority, but used the authority of the Creation text. Do away with that authority, and you do away with Jesus' doctrine.

(2d3)
We see this is true by the doctrine of Paul, who explicitly says in Galatians 3 that we are part of the Abrahamic covenant, and that the Mosaic covenant was added in as a temporary covenant, but that this temporary covenant did not nullify the first covenant. It was this temporary Mosaic covenant which was replaced by the new covenant.

(2d4)
We see this is true by the example of the Beroeans in Acts 17:10ff, who turned to the Tanakh as their authority in measuring the words of the apostles, and were praised as noble for doing so.

Conclusion:
We need to stop teaching people that the Bible is divided into two portions, the man-made division of the Old Testament and the New Testament. Instead, we need to make it clear that the old covenant which was replaced by the new was the Mosaic covenant, not the 39 books we refer to as "the Old Testament".

Night with ebon pinion ...

"Night with ebon pinion / brooded o'er the vale...".

Beautifully poetic words, in a beautiful song. But how many people know what the phrase means? I do, because as a kid I looked up the words and managed to put it together into plain English (which I then penciled into my song book at church for future reference). But I daresay that many people have sung this phrase all their life and don't have a clue what it says.

Nothing wrong with beauty; nothing wrong with poetry. Until it gets in the way.

What then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will also pray with my understanding. I will sing with the spirit, and I will also sing with my understanding. - 1 Cor 14:15

Three Proverbs

1. Two people can look at the same thing and see it differently.

2. A rich person is not the one who has the most, but is the one who needs the least.

3. You can't make anyone love you.

Christians Against Christ

Michael Cecil writes in an online forum:

Christianity is a specific set of doctrines, not merely the claim that a person is following Jesus.

And, if it can be determined that there is a conflict in Doctrine between what Jesus taught and what Christian theology teaches, then Christianity becomes the manifestation of the denial of the Teaching of Jesus.

Saved By Love

Phil Comer writes:

Your salvation depends on how much you love God? Good luck with that. My salvation depends on how much He loves me.

Forgiving the Adulteress?

Every once in a while an epiphany hits you that's been staring in your face for thirty years.

In John 8, Jesus did not forgive the woman who was caught in adultery. Rather, he maneuvered her accusers into dropping their charges against her. Different thing entirely.

With no eyewitnesses to testify against her, there was no case, and she was acquitted (or rather, pardoned - she was guilty, after all).

Yet Jesus perceived that she really was guilty, so he did the only thing left for him to do: he told her to "Go, and sin no more."

The story wasn't about her being forgiven by God; it was about saving her life in the culture's legal environment. Jesus wasn't asking the accusers to forgive her; he was asking them to cool off enough from the mob mentality to make sure they really wanted to testify in a case that would lead to the death of a fellow human being who in retrospect wasn't any more sinful than they themselves were.

A Wise Saying

MamaBear writes on Yahoo! Answers:

Things should be believed in because they are true, not the other way around.