Revelation - Armageddon

More on John the Baptist

2012-05-12T23:06:12Z

Some historical background on John the Baptist and the movement that arose in his name. This is an addendum to the previous blog (below) on Elijah and should be read in conjunction with that.

The most difficult statement any human being could make is, "He must become greater; I must become less" (3:30). Such a statement cuts against the grain of human experience. Yet the Baptist seems to say similar things routinely in the Fourth Gospel (cf. 1:27, 30). You won't find such statements in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, where the Baptist is a great and heroic figure. Why is the Baptist's humility such an emphasis in the Fourth Gospel? A brief survey of Scripture and history proves interesting.

In Matthew, Mark, and Luke the Baptist is described as a "Voice crying in the wilderness" (Isa 40:3, cf. Matt 3:3; Mark 1:3; Luke 3:4), the Elijah of the End time (Mal 4:5, cf. Matt 11:14; 17:12; Mark 9:13; Luke 1:17; 9:19), and the Messenger who is to go before the Lord (Mal 3:1, cf. Matt 11:10; Mark 1:2; Luke 7:27). In the Fourth Gospel, on the other hand, the Baptist specifically denies that he is the Elijah and describes himself only as "the Voice" (1:21-23). The Fourth Gospel, therefore, minimizes titles for John and multiplies titles for Jesus (1:1, 8, 18, 29, 38, 41, 49, 51, etc.). John describes himself in the humblest of terms. "I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals" (1:27), "He must become greater; I must become less" (3:30).

Modern readers of the Gospel could get the impression that the Baptist appeared out of nowhere, baptized Jesus and then faded into the woodwork, never to be seen or heard from again. Historically, however, the Baptist and the movement of those who followed him seem to have been quite independent of Jesus. Only a few of the Baptist's disciples actually left him and followed Jesus, at least initially (1:35-51 cf. Matt 11:2, 3). The Baptist continued to minister and draw crowds for some time after the baptism of Jesus (3:22-30). In the book of Acts, the personal history of Apollos in Alexandria (Acts 18:24-26) and the story of the twelve men of Ephesus (Acts 19:1-7) both suggest the continuing independence of the Baptist movement. Even today, the Mandaeans, located primarily in Southern Iraq, are a small group of people who trace their religious heritage back to the ministry of John the Baptist more than to Jesus or Mohammed.

Many of those attracted to the Baptist in the wilderness, therefore, never gave their allegiance to Jesus but continued to follow the Baptist. At some point, probably after the writing of Matthew, Mark and Luke, but before the writing of the Fourth Gospel, the Baptist movement seems to have become increasingly hostile to Christianity. Since the Baptist himself was martyred because of political involvement, the movement may have found common cause with the zealots and other revolutionaries during the war with Rome (67-70 AD).

Knowing the gospel story as we do, it seems incredible that any follower of the Baptist would have failed to grasp the superiority of Jesus. But there are historical and theological reasons why many may have done so. First of all, there was the perception, not uncommon today as well, that when it comes to theology, earlier is usually better (Jesus appeals to this principle in Matt 19:3-9, for example). The "old paths" are to be preferred. Since the Baptist arrived before Jesus did, many Jews would have assumed that the Baptist was greater than Jesus.

A further reason why many might have regarded the Baptist as greater than Jesus was that the Jewish tradition of the time contained the belief that there would be not one, but two messiahs in the last days, a Messiah from the tribe of Judah, and a Messiah from the tribe of Levi (Russell, 304-323). The Messiah from out of Judah was to be a kingly Messiah, while the Messiah from the tribe of Levi was a priestly Messiah. In the Old Testament both kings and priests were anointed (Lev 8:1-13; 1 Sam 10:1; 16:1-13; 1 Kings 1:28-40, etc.)! Therefore, the expectation grew in some circles that the Messiah (Hebrew-- "anointed one") could not be summed up in one person but would require at least two. When John the Baptist (of the tribe of Levi) and Jesus (of the tribe of Judah) appeared together, it is not surprising that people would assume that these traditions had found fulfillment in the relationship between John and Jesus.

Contrary to the modern ascendancy of politics over religion, the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls considered the priest to be greater than the king. After all the High Priest Aaron took office hundreds of years before the first king ever ruled over Israel. Earlier is better! Not only so, but it was priests who anointed kings, and not the other way around! Ancient Israel was a theocracy ("ruled by God") and God was to be found in the temple, not in the king's palace.

What kind of arguments could first-century Christians bring to bear against the Baptist theology? For one thing, they would point out that Jesus fulfills the role of both king (Matthew, Mark and Luke--"the kingdom of God") and priest (Hebrews) in one person. The Old Testament forerunner of such a king-priest was Melchizedek (Gen 14:18-20; Psalm 110, cf. Matt 22:41-45 and parallels in Mark and Luke; Acts 2:29-36; Heb 1:13; 5:6, 10; 6:20; 7:1-28 etc.), and to some extent, perhaps, also Moses, who exercised both priestly and kingly functions (Exod 24:3-8; 32:1-14, 31, 32; Deut 1:6-3:29; 1 Cor 10:2; Heb 3:2-5). Christians would also argue that earlier revelation is not necessarily better, the present revelation in Christ is actually superior to the old revelation (John 1:17, cf. Heb 1:1-3).

But author of the Fourth Gospel does not approach the issue from these perspectives in 1:19-51. In this Gospel, instead, the concern is to explain why the Baptist came on the scene before Jesus did. The Baptist arrived before Jesus not because he was greater than Jesus (6-8!) but because it was his job to introduce Jesus to the nation (29-34). This could only happen if he came to prominence first. Earlier is not necessarily better. The Baptist was the forerunner, not the real thing. In his heavenly role, Jesus pre-existed the Baptist (1, 15, 30). The message of John is that those who rank the Baptist greater than Jesus disbelieve the testimony of the Baptist himself.

Elijah

2012-05-03T15:12:10Z

This last weekend I was at the annual Calimesa SDA Church (my church) retreat at Pine Springs Ranch. The retreat site is located in the beautiful San Jacinto Mountains not far from Palm Springs, California. It is cool and dry and has just enough cell coverage drift in every few hours to load an email or two but not enough to make a phone call.

Among our speakers for the retreat was one of my former students, Alex Bryan. He is now pastor of the Walla Walla University church in the southeastern part of the state of Washington. It was payback time. His message will sit with me for a long time.

You see, the Seventh-day Adventist Church has long identified itself with the Elijah message in Malachi 4:5-6: "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. ⁶ And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction." The word "Adventist" is a reference to the expectation of a soon coming of Jesus. The idea is that just before Jesus comes, God will raise up a movement (the end-time Elijah; "us") that will bring reconciliation of families and prepare the world for the Second Coming.

That is a noble and wondrous mission. Religious movements begin a group of people perceive that God is at work in their midst. And they raise up an institution to honor God and promote His mission in the world. And that is a beautiful thing. The Seventh-day Adventist Church arose (in the 19^th Century) out of the conviction that God was calling a people, an end-time Elijah, to prepare the world for the Second Coming of Jesus. And the Church has been reasonably faithful to that mission.

But there is something scary about religious movements and institutions. Over time they become more and more focused on preserving the institution and less and less focused on the original mission. It is as if a certain corporate self-centeredness takes over. As the institution becomes more and more the center of focus, the mission becomes secondary in focus. Instead of "It’s all about God," it becomes "It’s all about us." And the members of such an institution may not even notice the shift. It feels natural. It feels right. After all, it was God who raised us up to do this mission and that means we’re really important, right?

Bryan’s message came across like a bucket of cold water hitting a sleepy teen-ager. He pointed out that there was a model for the end-time Elijah of Malachi 4:5-6. It was John the Baptist, who prepared the way for the first advent of Jesus. He was "the Elijah who was to come" (Matt 11:14, see also Mark 9:11-13). He came "in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous-- to make ready a people prepared for the Lord" (Luke 1:17). So John the Baptist is the model for what the end-time Elijah is supposed to be like.

So the question of the day: "Was it all about John?" That’s not the impression one gets from the gospels. In fact his role seems to have been a very humbling one. When Jesus comes to him for baptism, he at first refuses, saying "I need to be baptized by you, not the other way around!" (See Matt 3:14) John baptized with water, but Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit (Luke 3:16). John said things like: "The one who comes after me, I am not worthy even to untie the thong of his sandal" (John 1:27). "He who comes after me ranks before me" (John 1:15). And perhaps the greatest words to ever come out of a human mouth: "He must increase, but I must decrease" (John 3:30). John is not the bridegroom, he is just the friend of the bridegroom (John 3:29).

Alex Bryan brought home the implications of this analogy. It’s not about the Seventh-day Adventist Church. It’s not about the remnant. It’s not about "us." It’s all about Jesus. If any of us is ever more enamored of our religious institution than we are of Jesus, we have lost our way. He must increase, we must decrease, in our own eyes and in the eyes of the world. Self-promotion and self-centeredness in an institution is just as inappropriate as it was when Lucifer said, "I will ascend to the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High" (Isaiah 14). It’s not about us. It’s all about Jesus.

Something for Adventists to think about. Something for all of us to think about.

The Shack

2012-04-21T14:34:57Z

I just read a book called The Shack, by William P. Young. I became aware of it because "everyone" seemed to be talking about it and it had become quite controversial in the Seventh-day Adventist circles in which I spend much of my time. Some people thought it was the best book they had ever read, others thought it was rank heresy. Naturally, that combination made me very curious. . .

I don’t want to spoil the plot for those who haven’t read the novel yet, but intend to. Let me just say that the larger story is of a man who suffered a deep tragedy which called everything he knew about God into question. He returns to the shack in the woods where the worst part of the tragedy took place and meets God there incarnated in tangible and human forms. In this experience God gradually opens his understanding to who God is and why some things happen the way they do. The Shack becomes something like a modern retelling of the story of Job.

I loved just about everything in the book’s picture of God. He (she?) is portrayed as loving, fair and kind even when bad things happen to good people. God loves life and He loves Himself totally free from any touch of pride and arrogance. God is eager to explore the psychological depths of our unforgiveness, our negative memories, our muddled thoughts. God is, so to speak, comfortable in His own skin. I sense that this story could be just what a lot of people who have suffered abuse and tragedy need.

On the other hand, there are a number of features in the story that were troubling from a Seventh-day Adventist perspective (in a way you could say there was something in the book to offend just about every religious person). I get why some people are quite upset over its theology. For example, there is in my view an unnecessarily harsh attitude toward the law and the rules found in the Bible. There is also the implication that death is not a sleep and people are with God as soon as they die. God loves to eat bacon of all things. And more. On the other hand, the story is something of a parable and you don’t take every element of a parable seriously (think rich man and poor man in Luke 16). It is not the story itself that counts, but the deeper message about God and human suffering. The Shack, therefore, is best read in some suspension of disbelief by mature adults.

I suppose I could re-write the book and remove all the offensive elements without giving up much of its unique charm. But then I just don’t get to do that. The story is not my idea. Its brilliance consists in things I never thought of before and probably would never have thought of if I hadn’t read the book. So I’ll just have to let it be what it is and trust that God can use it to benefit those who need it most. If you are a person who has difficulty suspending disbelief and is easily distracted by the unwanted or unfamiliar, The Shack is probably not for you.

If you have read The Shack I’d love to hear from you and see what you got out of it. Don’t be shy now!

Conclusions: Leadership in the NT

2012-03-29T13:25:39Z

Christian leadership is grounded in God the Creator. The clearest revelation of God is in the person of Jesus Christ. The clearest revelation of Jesus is the New Testament. And within the New Testament, the leadership principles of Jesus are most extensively exhibited in the letters of Paul.

When the early Christians were choosing language to describe leadership in the New Testament church, there were three basic models in the Greco-Roman world to choose from; 1) Judaism and the synagogue, 2) the every day household, and 3) the institutions of the Greco-Roman society. Language drawn from the civil, military and business affairs of the Greco-Roman world is widely used in the New Testament in relation to God, Christ, and demonic powers, as well as secular authorities. But with one exception, it is never applied to human leadership in the church. The one exception (proist mi) has a strong related meaning of caring concern and the giving of aid.

Instead, the church blended the leadership language of the household with that of the synagogue and Judaism. Early Christian leadership language had strong overtones of parental concern, service, divine guidance and delegation of authority. In the earliest church, leadership was charismatic. But toward the end of the first Christian century, appointed leadership became the norm and adopted more hierarchical forms.

The bottom line of New Testament leadership is attention to God’s way of leadership through observing the examples of Christ and the apostles. It exercises itself in loving concern for those being led, with the attitude of a servant. As we seek to learn from the language of the New Testament, Christ-like, servant leadership must always be the goal.

The Trajectory of Leadership Language in the First Christian Century

2012-03-22T16:41:25Z

Shortly after the close of the New Testament canon (110 AD), the early church father Ignatius describes a three-part system of leadership that had developed by his time:

"You must all follow the bishop (episkopos), as Jesus Christ followed the Father, and follow the presbytery (council of elders– presbuteros) as you would the apostles; respect the deacons (diakonos) as the commandment of God. Let no one do anything that has to do with the church without the bishop. Only that Eucharist which is under the authority of the bishop or whomever he himself designates is to be considered valid. Wherever the bishop appears, there let the congregation be; just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic (universal) church. It is not permissible either to baptize or to hold a love feast without the bishop. But whatever he approves is also pleasing to God, in order that everything you do may be trustworthy and valid." (Ignatius, Letter to the Church at Smyrna, 8:1-2. Translation taken from The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, second edition, edited and translated by J. B. Lightfoot and J. R. Harmer, edited and revised by Michael W. Holmes (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1992), 188-191. Material in parentheses is mine.)

In many ways an outline like this is more structured and defined than the realities exhibited in the New Testament. For the New Testament offices were a means to an end, not the ends themselves. For Ignatius, on the other hand, each office has a fixed place in a hierarchy with an overseer (bishop) at the head with a council of elders subordinate to him and a group of deacons serving both. The question to be addressed here is when such a structure developed and what stages led from the charismatic leadership of the earliest church to the situation described by Ignatius around 110 AD. The primary body of evidence for the situation of the first century church is in the New Testament itself.

The earliest church began with a charismatic leadership made up of apostles and prophets, who emerged naturally through giftedness or a direct appointment from Jesus or the original twelve. As the church grew and the apostles spread out or died off, a non-charismatic leadership of appointment was soon required. To be an overseer or a deacon was also based on a "gift" (Rom. 12: 7-8; 1 Cor. 12:28), but these gifts could only be exercised after a person was elected and called by the community to a position of leadership.

While the first century cultural context was preoccupied with titles of office, Paul often refers to the leaders of churches without any reference to titles, and does not mention the term "elder" until fairly late. There seems to have been a concern not to encourage pride in leadership and hierarchy and to emphasize the Christ-centered nature of Christian leadership. Nevertheless, offices and titles came to be needed within a generation of the church’s first leaders.

One thing to keep in mind when assessing church organization in the first century is that most Christian gatherings occurred in private homes and were fairly small, even in urban settings. A city like Rome or Ephesus might have hundreds of Christians but they would be scattered in groups of 10-50 all over the city (compare Rom. 1:7 with 16:5). The fact that an important qualification for the position of "overseer" is to be able to handle one’s own family is a natural consequence of the house-church reality (1 Tim. 3:4-5). House churches were not much bigger than an extended family.

In developing offices and titles, the earliest churches had three major models of leadership to choose from in defining their own patterns of leadership: 1) what they had experienced in Judaism and the synagogue, 2) those displayed in the Greco-Roman family system, and 3) patterns of governance observed in the Greco-Roman state and society. We have observed evidence that the New Testament writers deliberately avoided the leadership language and titles associated with the Greco-Roman political and social environment. Such titles and language were considered inappropriate to the servant model they had observed in Jesus Christ.

The Ignatian pattern, therefore, seems to have resulted from a somewhat awkward merging of the other two models of leadership, those found in the synagogue and the home. The well-to-do Greco-Roman household had an overseer, usually the patriarch of the family and it also had a number of servants, who cared for the physical needs of the household. In a spiritual context, this could have given rise to the positions of overseer and deacon in a typical house church. From Judaism and the synagogue, the church inherited the concept of "elder" and a council of elders, although there were analogies in the synagogue (but different names) to the positions of overseer and deacon as well.

Andrew Clarke, building on the work of R. Alastair Campbell, surmises that each house church might have come to be run by an overseer/elder. Over time, cities with multiple house churches would have developed a council of elders made up of the overseers of all the house churches. Eventually, in the absence of apostles, the council would select one of its members to be the overseer of the whole group of churches in a given city or region. This hypothesis is supported by 1 Timothy 5:17, which indicates that all elders had a ruling role, but not all elders were teachers.

Since Paul does not use the title "elder" in his earlier letters, only in the later letters to Timothy and Titus, the household model seems to have held sway at first in the Pauline churches, linking up with the synagogue model only toward the end of Paul’s lifetime. By the time of Ignatius, some forty years later, the process seems to have reached a settled conclusion.

The kind of structure the church developed by the beginning of the second century was not the result of perverse decisions, it was the natural development of a process where one decision leads to another and the outcome is often unforseen. The question that remains is how those who know the New Testament today should do leadership differently as a result of that knowledge.

Later Leadership Language in the NT Church

2012-03-15T03:45:42Z

With the close of the first Christian century the office of apostle seems to have died out and prophets have become increasingly rare. Well before then, charismatic leadership was increasingly replaced with appointed leadership. Timothy and Titus are excellent examples. As a successor of the apostles, Timothy was ordained both by a council of elders (1 Tim 4:13-15) and by Paul himself (2 Tim 1:6) to leadership over multiple churches (see 1 Tim 5:17-22). Titus not only exercised authority over multiple churches, he also appointed elders and overseers to guide them (Tit 1:5-7). But although Timothy and Titus functioned like apostles, they were not themselves called apostles. The second generation of leadership functioned under three titles in particular.

evpi,skopoj (episkopos– overseer)

The term episkopos was a common title in the ancient world for someone "who watches over," therefore it is often translated "overseer." It means something like "supervisor," a position of responsibility within a wide range of contexts and applications, "one who has the responsibility of seeing that something is done the right way." In the non-biblical context episkopos was associated with very specific responsibilities, in today’s terms, the title came with a job description. There can be an element of service and caring relationship in the broad usage of the term.

The word occurs only three times in the New Testament (Phil. 1:1; 1 Tim. 3:2; Tit. 1:7) and the related noun episkop (evpi,skoph) occurs twice (1 Tim. 3:1 and Acts 1:20). 1 Timothy 3:2-7 and Titus 1:5-7 offer a lengthy list of qualifications and disqualifications for those holding the office, things like gentleness and ability to teach while avoiding arrogance and greed. There is very little overlap in the two lists so the job description had not yet been standardized in Paul’s lifetime. Overseers had the same qualifications as deacons (compare 1 Tim. 3:2-7 with 1 Tim. 3:8-12), with the one exception that they must be "able to teach."

presbu,teroj (presbuteros– elder)

Presbuteros refers to someone of relatively advanced age in comparison with others. Elders, as a leadership group, existed as far back as patriarchal times in the Old Testament. Based on usage within Judaism and also in the Greco-Roman world, presbuteros became a major title for church leaders in Jerusalem (the apostles and the elders– Acts 15:2, 4, 6, 22-23; 16:4) and much more widely throughout the Empire later on (1 Tim. 5:17; Tit. 1:5; Heb. 11:2; James 5:14; 1 Pet. 5:1; 2 John 1; 3 John 1). It usually occurs in the plural, suggesting that elders did not normally function alone, but as part of a ruling council. A heavenly version of such a council is found frequently in the Book of Revelation. According to 1 Timothy 5:17-18, elders were normally paid for their efforts, which implies that they were to have a full-time focus on their ministry. While not all elders engaged in teaching, many did. They may have been somewhat equivalent to congregational pastors today.

To some degree the titles of overseer and elder seem to be used interchangeably, as a comparison of 1 Timothy 3:2-7; 5:17-18 and Titus 1:5-7 indicate. According to Acts 20:17-35, the overseers and elders together are the guardians of the traditions of the apostles. Having said this, however, episkopos in Timothy and Titus is always in the singular and presbuteros is always in the plural, which would suggest that the overseer has a top leadership function. So it is likely that overseers were drawn from the council of elders as their leadership qualities were recognized.

dia,konoj (diakonos, deacon)

The term diakonos in the ancient world designated a person who served at tables or took care of other people. There are many terms for service in the Greek, but diakonos particularly emphasizes the personal touch, a one-on-one kind of service. It was widely used for an intermediary or a courier, so like apostolos there is a sense of delegation. But serving others was not highly regarded in the ancient world; ruling, not serving was what brought dignity to a man. So the use of this term for leadership in the church went strongly against the culture of the time.

Diakonos is used in the New Testament, first of all, for Jesus Christ (Rom. 15:8), the ultimate diakonos. All human ideas of greatness were reversed when the Son of God Himself not only served at table (John 13:13-17; 21:11-13) but laid down His life for His friends (John 15:13). The Christian diakonos learns the position by serving Jesus and following Him (Luke 22:24-27; John 12:26).

Over time the word naturally came into wide Christian usage for individuals singled out for special ministerial service in Christian communities (see Rom. 16:1; Phil. 1:1; 1 Tim. 3:8, 12), but these texts do not tell us much about the nature of the office. Evidently, both men and women were permitted to serve as deacons (Rom. 16:1).The original task of the deacon may have been to assist overseers in their work of caring for the church. It is possible that early Christians built on the synagogue model which had a "head of the congregation" (archisunagôgos) and an assistant, who was called a hup ret s rather than a diakonos.

The office of deacon is often thought to have been established in the early Jerusalem Church by the direction of Peter in Acts 6. But the title diakonos does not appear in the chapter, instead the verb form (Acts 6:2, 4) and a related noun form (diakoni,a– diakonia: Acts 6:1) are used. The seven "deacons" selected in Acts 6 all have Greek names and function more like apostles than deacons. But since they were appointed so that the apostles would not neglect "prayer" and "the ministry (diakonia) of the word," it may be inferred that the office of deacon came to focus more on the social and practical side of ministry than the teaching-oriented roles of overseer and elder.

It is clear from these titles that the New Testament church valued service above dominance or "power over" when it came to leadership. But the question remains of how the early church eventually moved away from the servant characteristics of leadership to more structured and heirarchical models.

Early Leadership Language in the NT Church

2012-03-04T14:10:46Z

In the earliest church, shortly after the death and resurrection of Christ, leadership was charismatic rather than appointed. In other words, people emerged as leaders because they were particularly close to Jesus while He was on earth and/or the church sensed a special working of God in their lives (see Acts 1:15-26 for example). Over time these charismatic leaders became known by the titles apostle and prophet.

According to Luke 11:47-50, the ancestors of the scribes and Pharisees killed the (Old Testament) prophets (verses 47-48), just as the scribes and Pharisees would kill the "prophets and apostles" that God sent to them (verses 49-50). So both apostles and prophets in the New Testament are the successors of the Old Testament prophets (see also Eph 2:19-22). The apostles and prophets together were agents of God’s revelation to the fledgling church. As such, they naturally became the leaders of the first generation of believers in Christ.

avpo,stoloj (apostolos– apostle)

The root meaning of "apostle" concerns one who is "dispatched for a specific purpose," a messenger or ambassador of some kind. The status of such an "apostle" depends on the status of the one who sends him or her (John 13:16). The "apostle" can be simply a messenger between ordinary individuals. But when the "apostle" is sent by a king or by God, his or her status becomes extraordinary. It is as if the sender is present in the person of the one sent. The title "apostle" is rare in Greek outside the uniquely Christian context.

In the New Testament, therefore, the apostle is highly honored by other believers as a special envoy direct from God. In the fullest sense, Jesus is the ultimate apostle (Heb. 3:1-2), in Him the definitive revelation of God has taken place (Heb. 1:1-3). All other apostles derive their authority from Him. These became the pre-eminent leaders of the church after the ascension of Christ. Although the term originally applied to the twelve disciples alone (Matt. 10:2; Mark 3:14; Luke 22:14, cf. Acts 1:26), the body of apostles eventually extended beyond the twelve to include Paul (Rom. 1:1; Gal. 1:1, etc.), Barnabas (Acts 14:14; 15:2), James (brother of Jesus– Gal. 1:19) and others (Rom. 16:7).

The office of apostle required some sort of direct calling from the New Testament Jesus, in Paul’s case a call to reach out to the Gentiles (Acts. 9:15; Eph. 3:1, 8). Powerful leaders of the second generation, such as Apollos and Timothy, who did not have a direct call from Jesus, are not called apostles (1 Cor. 3:3-9; 2 Cor. 1:1; Phil. 1:1; 1 Thess. 3:2). So the office seems to have been limited to the first generation of Jesus’ followers (1 Cor. 15:8). The duties of the office centered on traveling from place to place proclaiming what the apostle had experienced with Jesus (1 Cor. 9:1, 5; Eph. 3:5). In the process apostles would found and administer new churches (1 Cor. 15:10-11; Eph. 2:20). They would appoint elders to head up those churches but would retain an authoritative role over them.

profh,thj (prophêtês– prophet)

The Greek root of "prophet" is a compound word, combining a Greek word for "speaking" with the prefix "pro" which is ambiguous in meaning. It can mean "speaking openly" or publically, much like preaching. But it can also mean "speaking ahead of time" or "in advance."

We see New Testament prophets at work in the Book of Acts (Acts 11:27-30; 15:30-32; 21:10-14). Their messages were accepted as authoritative by the church and an obedient response was expected, so prophets had a significant leadership role in the earliest church. At the same time the church struggled in one case with just how to apply the prophetic message to a specific situation (Acts 21:12-14).

It is interesting that although Paul speaks prophetically to the churches (1 Cor. 14:6), he never calls himself a "prophet." This suggests that the designation "apostle" includes the gifts and activities of the prophet and more (2 Cor. 12:1-7: Eph. 3:3-7). Apostles and prophets are equal when it comes to being the objects of direct revelation. But the apostle’s authority is even greater than the prophet because of the special commission of leadership and the unique relationship in time to the first-century Christ-event. The apostles were more directive while the prophets led by influence.

What Makes Christian Leadership Different

2012-02-26T04:30:08Z

In the previous blog I reviewed the major words for leadership in ancient government and society. We noticed that such words could be used in the New Testament for secular leaders, God, Christ and even demons. But they are never used for human leadership in the church, except for proist mi, which had a strong extended meaning of service and caring concern. Most of these words focused more on dominance, superior rank, authority over and heirarchy, which are not appropriate in the church.

In this blog I will share the three most important leadership passages in the NT (in my opinion) and briefly comment on their significance. The first is the "poster child" for Christian leadership: the footwashing example of Jesus in John 13. After washing the disciples’ feet, Jesus said the following (John 13:13-17, ESV): "You call me Teacher and Lord [one of those dominance terms in ancient Rome], and you are right, for so I am. ¹⁴ If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. ¹⁵ For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. ¹⁶ Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master [lord again in the original], nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. ¹⁷ If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them." While Jesus is willing to apply a dominance term like "lord" to Himself (as Creator He has that right), He here transforms the meaning of this term. The one who leads in the church is to be the chief servant. Real greatness is measured not in power, fame or position, but in willingness to serve.

The second major passage is 1 Thessalonians 5:12-15 (ESV): "We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you [this is proistemi, the one secular leadership word used in the church] in the Lord and admonish you, ¹³ and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. ¹⁴ And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. ¹⁵ See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone." The first two verses express how members are to treat their leaders. They are to esteem them highly and to seek peace among themselves rather than strife and rebellion. Paul doesn’t address here what to do when leadership roles are abused, but offers a basic attitude that will shield us from the pride of thinking we know better than those who are over us. The last two verses express the style of leadership that is appropriate for the church. Admonition can include "knocking sense into" for those who need that, but centers in encouragement, help and patience. There is no place in the church for leaders who retaliate on account of criticism. Their role is to seek what is best for those they are leading.

The final passage is the best of all, in my opinion: Matthew 10:20-28 (ESV): Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came up to him with her sons, and kneeling before him she asked him for something. ²¹ And he said to her, "What do you want?" She said to him, "Say that these two sons of mine are to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom." ²² Jesus answered, "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?" They said to him, "We are able." ²³ He said to them, "You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father." ²⁴ And when the ten heard it, they were indignant at the two brothers. ²⁵ But Jesus called them to him and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. ²⁶ It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, ²⁷ and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, ²⁸ even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." The behavior of Jesus is the measure of Christian leadership. We are not to lead the way secular rulers and bosses lead, we are to move among followers like a servant or even a slave, whose sole interest is in assisting those under him or her to be the best that they can be in Christ. The interesting thing is that "servant leadership" is catching on in the corporate world, just as many leaders in the church forget their original mandate.

I have chosen to use the English Standard Version because it has the same kind of clarity as the NIV, but stays a lot closer to the original structure of the Greek text. It is not perfect, no version is, but seems to cut the middle of many issues as well as any translation in the English language.

Leadership Options in the Early Church

2012-02-20T15:29:45Z

I am returning to the theme of leadership in the New Testament, which I started on January 22 (below) before I got distracted with reporting on a trip to the Bible lands. Go back and read the first blog to get a sense of the bigger picture. Don’t know how the web will handle Greek fonts, etc., but thought I’d give it a try, for those who care about these things.

The ancient world had a number of words for leadership in politics and society. A very common word group is a;;gw (agô) and the related word h`gemw,n (hêgem n), from which we get the English word hegemon. The root meaning of the verb means "to direct the movement of an object from one position to another" The noun form hêgem n is used in civic and military contexts (see Mark 13:11; Luke 22:54; John 8:3; Acts 17:15; 20:12). In the NT this word is used for the leadership of God, Christ or the Holy Spirit in human lives (Rom 2:4; 8:14; Gal 5:18) but it is never used for human leadership in the church.

Another common word for leadership in the ancient world is avrch, or a;rcwn (arch , arch n), from which we get English words like monarch (rule of one), patriarch (rule by father) oligarch (rule by the few, the one percent!), and archaeology (study of old things). The word group has a double root meaning, "beginning" (first in time) or "ruler/authority" (first in power or position). It is used in the NT for governors or other secular rulers (Luke 12:11; 20:20; Titus 3:1), demonic powers (Rom 8:38; 1 Cor 15:24; Col 2:10, 15) and Christ (Col 1:18; Rev 3:14). It is never used in relation to leadership in the church.

Another common leadership word in the ancient world is kefalh, (kephal ), the word for head, the part of the body that contains the brain. It is used for people of high status or superior rank like the patriarchs (Exod 6:14, 25), the leader of a tribe (Num 7:2; 2 Chr 52), and leaders in general (Exod 18:25; Num 25:4; Judg 11:11). It implies a hierarchical leadership system (Exod 18:21) with some people over others. In the New Testament, it can be used in the basic sense, as a metaphor of Christ and the church or for the husband’s role in the home (Eph 5:25-27). Since the church is a living organism, "head" is applied only to Christ, it is never used for the human leaders of the church.

A fourth ancient word for leadership is kuri,oj (kurios), often translated as "lord." The root meaning of the word is "having power." It combines a sense of might (power, ability to compel obedience) and right (legitimacy, legal authorization). The verb form implies control and dominance. It was used as a title for the gods as well as earthly kings and emperors. In the NT is it used for owners of land, slaves and animals, also for husbands (1 Pet. 3:6), fathers (Matt 21:30), high officials (Matt. 27:63), respected individuals (Acts 16:30; Rev 7:14), and the emperor (Acts 25:25-26). The NT applies the term in OT references to Yahweh (Matt. 4:10; 5:33; Acts 4:26) and with reference to Jesus (Matt. 4:7; Phil 2:9-11), but it is never used with reference to leadership in the church.

The last ancient word we will look at is proi<sthmi (proist mi), one who is "over" others. The root meaning of this term is "to put before," "to go first," "to exercise a position of leadership, rule, direct." But this word also has a related meaning: "to have an interest in, show concern for, give aid." It combines leadership with a strong sense of caring concern. This is the only major leadership word in ancient society that was used by the early Christians for leadership in the church (1 Tim 5:17; 1 Thess 5:12).

Conclusion: The common words for leadership in ancient Greek all occur in the NT. They can be used with reference to secular leaders, God, Christ, and demonic powers. But even though these words were commonly used in the Greek Bible of the early church (the Septuagint), they are never used for leaders in the church, except proist mi, which has a strong sense of service and caring concern. The NT uses alternative terms for leaders in the church. Why? We’ll look at some of the key NT texts in the next blog, but suffice it to say now is that there are forms of leadership that are not appropriate in the church, forms that focus on dominance, superior rank, authority over and heirarchy. Christian leadership is to have a servant focus, driven by caring concern rather than the privilege of authority. In the ancient world, this made Christian leadership distinct.

The Bible Lands Are Everywhere

2012-02-14T14:14:32Z

Many of you have graciously shared your appreciation for my series of travel blogs. Those who have never been there have expressed their longing for a similar experience and their vicarious enjoyment in the accounts of the trip my wife and I just took. I am glad to have been of service in this way, but I have one last word of encouragement to each of you. The "Bible Land Experience" is not far from any of us. We can walk where Jesus walked in every place. How? Let me share a precious quote from Ministry of Healing, pages 105-106:

"Many feel that it would be a great privilege to visit the scenes of Christ’s life on earth, to walk where He trod, to look upon the lake beside which He loved to teach, and the hills and valleys on which His eyes so often rested. But we need not go to Nazareth, to Capernaum, or to Bethany, in order to walk in the steps of Jesus. We shall find His footprints beside the sickbed, in the hovels of poverty, in the crowded alleys of the great cities, and in every place where there are human hearts in need of consolation."

So regardless of where you live, regardless of your opportunities or financial circumstances, a Bible Land Experience is not far from you. We walk where Jesus walked when we recognize His presence in the person of others and when we minister to them in Jesus’ name. "Inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me."

Jesus: "Take Time to Chill"

2012-02-13T05:34:33Z

I think I’ve covered the major bases of our trip to the Bible lands, except perhaps for the last day of shopping in the Old City, but I don’t need to bore you with that. Let’s just say that my wife and I bought ten or eleven different things at an equal number of places in the Old City. Each purchase involved some bargaining. We both got better at it as the day went on. A good time was had by all.

A final reflection on something that really sunk in on this trip and I never put it together before. The Sea of Galilee is about 40 miles (65 kilometers) around, so it is not very large when compared with Lake Michigan or the Caspian Sea. The northwestern shore in the time of Jesus was largely Jewish, with towns like Capernaum (Kapher Nahum or village of Nahum I found out), Ginnosar and Migdol forming the core of Jesus’ home base. The gospels tell us that Jesus repeatedly sought refuge from the crowds by taking a boat across to the northeastern side of the lake, which was less densely populated and was more mixed ethnically. But the people from His home base area were quick to follow in boats or along the shore and a crowd was often waiting for him on the other side. So much for the chance to "chill" (my young adult children use that word a lot to describe taking it easy, taking a break, time out or time off with your favorite people or yourself).

But there were at least two occasions when Jesus got really proactive about vacation. On one occasion He marched his disciples all the way up to the border region of Tel Dan and Banias (Caesarea Philippi– not to be confused with Caesarea by the Mediterranean Sea). Today these areas lie at the intersection of Lebanon, the Golan Heights and pre-1967 Israel. They are a good forty to fifty miles (70 kilometers) from Capernaum, which would have been two to four days walk each way. In Jesus’ day this region was populated by pagans and you can see strong evidence of pagan presence and worship at modern-day Banias (in the Golan Heights that belonged to Syria up until 1967).

The other occasion was when Jesus went over the mountains to the coastal regions of modern-day Lebanon, where the cities of Tyre and Sidon still continue. I visited that area last year. In Jesus’ day that region was also fairly devoid of Jewish influence. That trip would have been at least as far as the first, but much more strenuous, perhaps three to five days each way. And remember, Jesus and His disciples were Sabbath-keepers, which means they had a divinely-ordained break every seven days. But Sabbath alone is not enough (pity those workaholics who don’t even do Sabbath!). Body, mind and soul need longer periods of refreshment from time to time.

While the Bible doesn’t make this a theme in the gospels (aside from perhaps the comment of Jesus to His disciples: "Come apart and rest awhile"), the pattern of Jesus’ ministry illustrates the importance of time off. Some feel that the sum of religion is to be a constant bustle of activity. Constant performance convinces us that we are pious and important. But even in a life wholly devoted to the good of others (like Jesus’ life) there is a need to turn aside from constant activity and contact with human need. There is a need to take a break, to do something else for a while, in other words, to chill. This imperative is so important that Jesus twice in the last year of His ministry took major detours in order to completely shake off the constant pursuit of those benefitting from His ministry. He was willing to travel a whole week every so often, just to have some time and space for refreshment, to recharge the physical, mental, spiritual and emotional batteries. In a workaholic world, this example is very important for us.

One Sabbath in Jerusalem

2012-02-10T17:32:44Z

February 4 was Sabbath (Shabbat to the Hebrew speakers) in Jerusalem. We started out the day with worship service and communion at the Garden Tomb, as mentioned in the previous blog. After that we were done with the formal part of our tour. Since the afternoon was free I led the group to the top of the Mount of Olives in a section full of olive trees and stone walls just the right height for sitting. Before us was the Old City with the sun shimmering off the golden dome of the Dome of the Rock monument to Abraham’s sacrifice of his son. We reveled in the atmosphere of a place Jesus could have used to give his eschatological sermon (Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21).

How is it that food never tastes better than when eaten outdoors after a strenuous hike? My wife and I had purchased Arab sesame bread the day before. It is thin like French bagguettes. Google "sesame bread Jerusalem" and look for the type that is about a half meter (foot and a half) long and maybe six inches (15 centimeters) wide shaped like an oval doughnut. The man gave us the loaf along with a little packet of herbs and spices he mixed himself and called "zatan." I bought a whole pound of the green powder from him. Awesome!

After lunch we made our way down the Mount of Olives and along the Kidron Valley with Dave Ellis, a retired pastor who visits these places frequently. We passed the tombs of Absalom (actually built almost a thousand years later than Absalom) and Beni Hezir and the entrance to Hezekiah’s tunnel to the Pool of Siloam. We pondered the blind man’s hike in John 9 from the temple gates to find healing at the pool, almost a mile in length. Then we went over the crest of a hill and saw smoke rising from the Valley of Hinnom (Gehenna in Hebrew and the source of the concept of hell). The smoke is not typical of the place today (it was typical in biblical times as garbage was burned there) but it made a nice setting for a picture.

I took a small group back through Jerusalem, stopping at Schindler’s grave, the spot of the Lord’s Supper and the Western Wall as the sun was beginning to set on a special Sabbath day. Just think, lunch on the Mount of Olives on Sabbath! Doesn’t get any better than that!

I’m sorry it took so long to post this. I lost connection the last few days of the trip and life took over when I returned home. I do hope to post one or two more reflections before I close this series.

I Climbed the Hill of Calvary

2012-02-04T19:45:46Z

One of the great disappointments in Jerusalem for most people is a visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Archaeology, history, science and tradition all point to this site as the authentic location of Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection. But whatever visual construct a person may have regarding the landscape of "Golgatha," they are usually unprepared for the dark, noisy, crowded cacophony of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, with its multiple owners, constant bickering and lack of any sense of the original setting. On the other hand, the Garden Tomb outside the walls of the Old City looks the part perfectly, but doesn’t really make it on scholarly grounds.

So it may be best to characterize the Church of the Holy Sepulcher as the "left-brained" site of Jesus’ death and resurrection. While it is most likely the accurate site of these events, it is very unsatisfying to people of faith, at least those of a more Bible-based variety. On the other hand, the Garden Tomb is the "right-brained" site of Jesus’ death and resurrection. While there is no solid evidence to consider it the actual place of these events, it provides the feel of those things that faith longs for.

We had the opportunity to visit both sites in the last few days and I found the Church more interesting than in the past, probably because I understand its geography a bit better. When you enter the main door, just to your right is a staircase that leads up to a chamber that is likely right above what’s left of the rock of Calvary. But the rock can only been seen through a few panes of glass and felt through a small hole under an altar. When you descend these stairs you come to a stone slab that is thought to be the place where the body of Jesus was prepared after execution. A few dozen yards away is a large indoor shrine that house what’s left of the cave where Jesus is thought to have been buried. Having all of these indoors in a massive cathedral is a bit off-putting, but I had a better sense than before of the layout and the meaning of the layout.

Today we visited the Garden Tomb and had a short worship service and communion. This was spiritually uplifting. The site is quiet, beautiful and meets the mind’s picture of the events. So I repeated something I had said quite frequently in the past week and a half, "I don’t know for sure exactly where this event occurred, but for our purposes this spot is ‘close enough.’" We have seen so many places where it is certain Jesus passed by, it has helped to make these things more real in our lives. I hope each of you has the opportunity to do something like this sometime.

Dead Sea Scrolling

2012-02-01T18:55:20Z

Spent the day in the Dead Sea area. Visited the ruins of Herod’s palace on top of the fortress mountain of Masada. Stopped in at the ruins of a synagogue at En Gedi (had hoped to hike up to David’s hideout there– in a wet cave–but the threat of flash floods closed the place). Visited Qumran, the home of the Dead Sea Scrolls. And managed to avoid a swim in the Dead Sea, since a cold rain was falling when we got there! Spose this is a good time to mention it has rained pretty much every day we were here. That is extremely unusual in this Mediterranean (like Southern California) climate. But our misery is their blessing. The Dead Sea surface level has gone from about 1280 feet below sea level to about 1377 in the last twenty years. That is how fast the Dead Sea is disappearing, all because the rapidly growing country of Israel uses more water than it receives from the heavens. So the flow of the Jordan River into the Dead Sea has slowed to a trickle.

We ended the day with a visit to "Abraham" in his tent, about 15 miles east of Jerusalem. He explained to us the importance of hospitality in the ancient world and offered to show a lot more to all our friends in the future– for a fee of course! I’ve noticed that Middle Easterners are real good at selling things, whether it is their own skills or the products of someone else’s labors.

Probably the most memorable part of the day was our visit to Qumran, where we came into closer contact with a community of people, who were there in the time of Jesus, who left us a large collection of scrolls, some of which they wrote and others they may have collected. Some of those scrolls were books and portions of the Hebrew Bible (called Old Testament by many). Others included commentaries and selections from the Hebrew Bible. Still other scrolls were religious classics we already knew about. And still others described the community and its beliefs and practices. My wife was especially excited to see the holes in the cliffs opposite the community that were cave entrances were. One of these alone had contained portions of 530 different scrolls.

The religious community at Qumran had abandoned mainstream life out of a conviction that they were approaching the end of the world and that God was calling them to a life of strict purity and carefulness. Some think that John the Baptist spent part of his youth in this community, which was located not far from where Jesus was baptized. We are grateful that their faith resulted in a gift to us of scrolls that illuminate New Testament times and the Scriptures that the New Testament writers used as the basis of their faith.

Tomorrow we will be back in Jerusalem, visiting the "City of David," the original part of Jerusalem that is 3000 years old. Then we will trace the Via Dolorosa, the traditional path of Jesus’ suffering and crucifixion, from the Pool of Bethesda to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It is a privilege to be here.

One Thing After Another

2012-02-01T04:28:16Z

Visiting the Bible lands is like drinking from a fire hose. Just one of the sites could be inspiration enough for a year or a lifetime, but especially in Jerusalem it is one inspiring spot after another. In less than 24 hours we experienced the place where Jesus may have been baptized, the place where the Israelites crossed the Jordan, a view of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, the Garden of Gethsemane, the top of the temple mount, the western wall tunnels (which put one in close touch with so many things in ancient Jerusalem), the newly excavated staircase leading up to the temple in Jesus’ day, the Roman shopping street, the place of the last supper, the place where Peter denied his Lord, the street where Jesus and His disciples walked on the way to the Garden of Gethsemane, and Oskar Schindler’s grave. Do I need to go on? It was a lot to process for me and for those here for the first time, their heads were truly swimming.

Probably the most moving moment was in the Church of All Nations by the Garden of Gethsemane. Having just walked down the Mount of Olives, the group was confronted by a large rock in the center of the church that is thought to be the place where Jesus drew away from his disciples and wrestled with God over the fate of the human race. Pastors became moved over the commitment Jesus made to their salvation and one by one they knelt next to the stone, put their hands on it and offered prayers of gratitude and of commitments of their own. It was touching to see their solemnity afterwards as they pondered things bigger than themselves.

At the upper room, we contemplated the significance of the original footwashing and realized it called all of us to sacrificial service for others. To lay aside our pride and make a serious commitment to the betterment of all, whatever it takes.

Can’t wait to share some pictures with you, but I need a connector for my camera that I left at home. Stay tuned!

I Walked Today Where Jesus Walked

2012-01-31T03:48:03Z

This Sabbath we had a special worship service at the traditional place where Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, the Mount of the Beatitudes. There is a shrine on the hillside overlooking the Sea of Galilee, perhaps a mile from the shore and four hundred feet in altitude. People offered testimony of how direct contact with the Bible Lands was transforming their picture of Jesus.

Then we set out on foot to walk all the way down to the shore with the Sea before us and green fields all around us. At the shore we visited the place where Jesus is thought to have provided breakfast on the beach to His disciples and then we ate lunch in ancient Capernaum, the village that Jesus considered home during the major part of his ministry. Capernaum is the location of the house of Peter and the synagogue where Jesus preached and did some of His miracles.

But for me the highlight was probably walking through the fields on the way down to the lake. At one point you could see the four types of soils that Jesus mentions in one of His parables, the parable of the sower. There is a path that is trodden firm and would not allow seeds to penetrate the soil, leaving them vulnerable to hungry birds. There is some stony ground that may allow a seed to sprout but leaves it vulnerable to dryness. There was a patch of weeds, which might allow a see to sprout, but would then choke it out, denying the new plant the sunlight it needs to survive and grow. But finally there was really good soil, that was producing a huge harvest.

It made me wonder, what kind of soil am I? Do I have a learning, teachable spirit? Am I open to the leading of the Holy Spirit or do I like things just the way they are. People are a lot like plants. Unless they grow, they will die. But growth means change and we often hate change. So how open am I to God bringing constructive change into my life? What about you?

The Hidden Years of Nazareth

2012-01-30T04:03:33Z

Recently visited the site of ancient Nazareth. Most people stop in at the Church of the Annunciation, which is built over the supposed spot where the angel met Mary and announced the coming of the Messiah. There is also a shrine at the spot where Joseph’s house was presumed to be, about a hundred yards away. Then they get on the bus and move on to somewhere else.

I wanted a more authentic experience and arranged for locals to open the gates into the archaeological site under the plaza between the two churches. Here we came face to face with a startling reality. Archaeology has found evidence for at most one dwelling in first century Nazareth, but there is evidence for numerous inhabited caves and we got to see at least two of those, just outside the Church of the Annunciation. While we don’t know for certain which of these caves was the place where Jesus grew up, there is no question that we were on the spot of some of Jesus’ neighbors.

Since all of Nazareth back then spanned at most a couple hundred meters, scholars estimate that Nazareth in the time of Jesus was made up of at most 480 total people. Jesus lived in a small, isolated village so insignificant that it left very little evidence of its existence in any formal constructed sense. Jesus truly "humbled himself" in coming to this earth (Phil 2:6-8).

Recently a "Jesus boat" was found at the bottom of the Sea of Galilee. It was dated to the very time of Christ and showed the kind of boat that typical fishermen used at the time. So we are getting a strong sense of the environment and landscape that Jesus would have experienced long, long ago.

The Land of Armageddon

2012-01-28T16:31:53Z

I plan to continue with a couple more blogs on leadership in the New Testament, but right now I am leading a tour of the Bible lands and wanted to update you on that.

Yesterday, we visited Caesarea, Mount Carmel the ruins of ancient Megiddo and ancient Nazareth. On Mount Carmel we visited the presumed site of Elijah’s showdown with the prophets of Baal. In a driving rain we looked down on the Valley of Megiddo (Jezreel) and then went into a church to have a reading of 1 Kings 18. I don’t have my camera cord with me, so I won’t be able to post pictures with the blog. After Mount Carmel we drove down to the ruins of ancient Megiddo, also in the rain, which was unfortunate as my pictures are not very good.

In Revelation 16:16 it talks about gathering the kings of the earth to a place that is called in Hebrew "Har-Magedon" (a literal transliteration of the Greek). The Hebrew word "Har" means mountain. And "Magedon" is the Greek word often used to translate the Hebrew name "Megiddo." So the most straightforward translation of Armageddon is "Mountain of Megiddo." But the big problem is that there is no mountain in all the world that is called Megiddo. You have a city of Megiddo and you have a Valley of Megiddo, but neither qualifies as a Mountain of Megiddo. So in a symbolic book like Revelation (see Rev 1:1 in the Greek) you look in another direction to understand John’s purpose.

If you read the article on Armageddon in the Anchor Bible Dictionary you discover that the most likely meaning of Armageddon in Revelation is as a pointer to the Mount Carmel episode in 1 Kings 18. Elijah and the prophets of Baal competed to bring fire down from heaven to earth in order to prove which God was more powerful or more real. Similar themes are found in the book of Revelation (Rev 13:13-14), but there the evidence supports the counterfeit trinity of dragon, beast and false prophet. So the Battle of Armageddon is a spiritual battle over the allegiance of the human race. And to some degree, the small decisions we make every day are part of that battle.

Where the geography of the Bible Lands comes into play here is that Mount Carmel looms over the city of Megiddo, which lies at the edge of a major valley. From the ruins of Tel Megiddo you can see the peak of the Carmel range and the likely spot where Elijah met the prophets of Baal in spiritual battle. That is the point of connection between Megiddo and Mount Carmel. The showdown on Mount Carmel becomes a model in Revelation for the spiritual battle that we face every day at the end of earth’s history. Apocalyptic assures us that the little decisions of every day life are full of apocalyptic meaning.

Find Me on Facebook!

2012-01-25T03:13:35Z

Just a quick note to let you know that I now have a working Facebook page and have begun posting chapter summaries of the book Ministry of Healing there. You can access this at https://www.facebook.com/jonpaulien.

Copyright 2011 Jon Paulien

Models of Christian Leadership

2012-01-22T15:32:20Z

The other day I was invited to teach a class in New Testament leadership. The material seemed to go over real well with a group of Doctor of Ministry students. So I thought I’d share some excerpts with the online audience here.

One of the biggest challenges in any kind of faith work these days is leadership. Without leadership few good things happen in this world, yet how do you do good leadership? Do you follow the models of western corporations? How about those of democratic governments? Or would you prefer the more autocratic leadership style of a Vladimir Putin or a King Abdullah? Does the New Testament have anything to say about these various styles of leadership? Should followers of Jesus exhibit a leadership style that is different from the models in the popular consciousness?

It goes, perhaps, without saying that the ultimate source of all leadership models is God, the author of creation. Like the manufacturer of an automobile, who provides a manual for that car’s use and care, God is in the best position to understand human beings and how they function as individuals and in groups. But this assertion does little to assist us in the project of understanding leadership principles. No one has ever seen, heard or touched God. So direct knowledge of God, or of the leadership principles He manifests in governing the universe, is not available to us.

In Scripture, however, God has chosen to reveal Himself in human language. The Bible is not a complete revelation of God, but it offers inspired testimonies of how God spoke and acted in specific human situations over many centuries. While God’s self-disclosure is limited by the human context, the Bible offers the clearest revelation of the eternal God available to the human race. This is the place where all Christian leadership models must be tested.

The New Testament portion of the Bible is centered on the life, death, resurrection and heavenly ministry of Jesus Christ. As God in human flesh, He is the clearest revelation of God. He models God’s way of leadership in terms that human beings can understand. As a result, nearly every leadership title in the New Testament is applied to Jesus at one time or another. He is called "servant" (Phil. 2:7), "apostle" (Heb. 3:1), "prophet" (John 4:44; Acts 3:22-23), "overseer" (1 Pet. 2:25), "deacon" (Rom. 15:8), "ruler," (Rev 1:5), "captain" (Heb 12:2), "shepherd" (John 10:1-7; Heb. 13:20; 1 Pet 2:25), and "lord/master," (Eph. 6:9; Phil. 2:11; Col. 4:1), among others. Any study of Christian leadership principles, therefore, must begin and end with Jesus Christ.

Jesus not only modeled on earth what God is like, He also mentored the apostles in the divine principles of leadership. After His ascension He sent the Holy Spirit to inspire the apostles and the Christian prophets to carry on the work that He had begun on this earth (John 14:16-17, 26; 16:12-13). The apostles then passed on to others what they had received from Jesus (1 Cor 11:23; 15:3; 1 John 1:1-4). As He Himself told them, "I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you." (John 13:15, NIV, cf. 13:13-17) Those who were closest to the earthly Jesus absorbed His leadership skills directly. Jesus is the clearest revelation of God. His apostles have passed on the clearest revelation of Jesus.

In the New Testament, this role was particularly played by Paul (1 Cor 11:23; 15:3). While not one of the twelve disciples, Paul frequently applied the title "apostle" to himself (Rom. 11:13; 1 Cor 9:1-2; 15:9). In Acts 20:17-35 Paul gathered the elders of the church of Ephesus at Miletus to pass on what he had learned from Jesus. As the faithful disciple of Jesus (20:19, 24) he is able to mentor the elders of Ephesus. The heart of Christian leadership is to be like Jesus, doing and teaching what Jesus taught. Following in the leadership path of Jesus includes servanthood (Luke 22:24-27; John 12:26; Acts 20:19), self-sacrifice (Acts 20:19-23), a strong sense of accountability (20:26-28), vigilance in the face of spiritual threats (20:29-32), and service, not for pay, but out of a strong sense of being commissioned by Jesus Himself (20:33-35). This is the starting point for a New Testament view of leadership.

The Implications of the Cross

2012-01-06T15:26:28Z

This blog stands by itself, but can also be read as the conclusion of the previous three blogs. What was the cross all about in God’s purpose? What difference did it make? I’d like to highlight two things. First, the cross changes the way we look at our personal lives, particularly our mistakes and failures. According to the Bible, human beings are not simply imperfect creatures that need improvement, we are rebels who must lay down our arms. Those who crucified Jesus acted no differently than we would have, given the same circumstances. In other words, the struggle to overcome evil is not, first of all, a social or political task, it is a struggle against the evil within.

This "repentance" is not fun. Acknowledging failure is humiliating and repugnant. But it is the necessary path toward redeeming our lives from the downward spiral of the evil that besets us all. It is the only way to bring our lives into the sunshine of reality. This "repentance" is simply recognizing the truth about ourselves. We will never change until we are willing to be changed, until we recognize that change is needed.

The neat thing about God’s plan is that He understands what this struggle for authenticity is all about. In submitting Himself to the humiliation of the cross, Jesus experienced the kind of surrender we need. In the Garden of Gethsemane He struggled to give Himself up to God’s plan. And the Bible teaches that if we follow Him in His surrender and humiliation, we will also share in His conquest of death and find new life in our present experience (Rom 6:3-6).

Tragedies like September 11 and the Holocaust are more than just the work of a few kooks and fanatics, they are symptoms of deeper issues that plague us all. The struggle to recognize the evil within us all is fundamental to the human condition, whether we acknowledge it or not.

A second difference the cross makes is, at first glance, the very opposite of the first. We all have a fundamental need to value ourselves and to be valued by others. But how can we value ourselves when we recognize that the seeds of evil are within? It seems that the better we know ourselves the more we dislike ourselves and the worse we feel. How can we elevate our sense of self-worth without escaping from the dark realities within? That’s where the cross comes in.

How much is a human being worth? It depends on the context. If they were to melt me down into the chemicals of which my body is made, I understand I would be worth about twelve dollars (make that thirteen, I’ve gained a little weight). But the average American is valued by his or her employer at a much higher level than that, something like $50,000 dollars a year. But suppose you were a great basketball player like Kobe Bryant. Suddenly the value jumps to tens of millions of dollars a year. And if you were the nerdy designer of the software everyone in the world uses, you would be valued at tens of billions of dollars (Bill Gates)!

You see, we are valued in terms of what others see in us. But according to the Bible human value is infinitely higher than the value we assign to each other. According to the Bible, Jesus was worth the whole universe (He made it), yet He knows all about us and loves us as we are. When He died on the cross, He established the value of the human person. When the Creator of the universe and everyone in it (including all the great athletes and movie stars that people often worship) decides to die for you and me, it places an infinite value on our lives. And since the resurrected Jesus will never die again, my value is secure in him as long as I live .

So the cross provides a true and stable sense of value. This is what makes the story of that Friday in Jerusalem so very special. The cross is not just an atrocity. It is about God’s willingness to take on human flesh and reveal Himself where we are. It is about the value that the human race has in the eyes of God. It provides hope for a better world. How?

The best hope for a troubled world is an authentic walk with God that not only takes the "terrorist within" seriously but sees in others the value that God sees in them. If every one of us is flawed yet valuable, all other seekers after God become potential allies in the battle to create a kinder and gentler world. Armed with a clear picture of reality and a sense of our value, we can become change agents in the world. Once we know the right question, it is obvious that "Jesus is the answer."

The Problem of Evil and Its Origin III

2011-12-26T15:15:55Z

As powerful as God was and is, the options for dealing with the consequences of freedom in the universe were not many. What was God to do? God decided to neither rule the universe by force nor to sanction the evil that infected it (see previous blog). Instead, according to C. S. Lewis, the great British scholar and novelist, He did a number of things to gradually turn the tide away from evil and in favor of love and justice. These are outlined in the Bible. 1) He has provided the conscience, an inner sense of right and wrong that few humans are without. 2) He has provided some, from Abraham to Moses to Paul, with visions and dreams that helped clarify the central issues of good and evil. 3) And He provided the story of a people (Israel, the Jewish nation) and the struggles through which He sought to teach them more clearly about Himself.

Then God did the most amazing thing of all. 4) In Bethlehem, just south of Jerusalem in the Middle East, a baby appeared, whose birth we celebrate every year at Christmas time. As the story goes, he was born in a manger, and visited by both shepherds and wise men. He was then forced to flee with his parents to Egypt because he was a threat to the reigning king (Matt 2:1-25; Luke 2:1-20). The reason the Christmas holiday is the high point of the year in Western countries is the conviction that this man, this single, solitary man, was the most important person who ever lived. His name was Jesus.

When Jesus reached adulthood, he went about doing good (Acts 10:38). He had an amazing ability to heal the sick (Matt 8:1-17; John 4:46-54) and, on occasion, even raise the dead (Luke 7:11-17; John 11:1-44). He brought delight to a wedding couple by turning water into wine (John 2:1-11). He fed thousands with a handful of bread and a few fish (Mark 6:30-44; John 6:1-15).

He also taught some memorable things. There were great one-liners like "Do to others what you would have them do to you" (Matt 7:12), "If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other" (Matt 5:39), and "Love one another as I have loved you (John 13:35)." He told unforgettable stories like the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), and the Parable of the Sower (Matt 13:18-23). He had memorable encounters with Nicodemus (John 3:1-21), a Samaritan woman (John 4:1-42) and a dead man named Lazarus (John 11:1-44).

But none of that is the reason Jesus’ life was the most important in the history of the world. It was the strange habit Jesus had of going around talking as if He were God. Others have healed people, some have even claimed to raise the dead. But Jesus went beyond that, claiming an eternal relationship with God and doing things that only God can do.

Jesus is often referred to as a good man, or even the best man who ever walked the face of the earth. But neither description is accurate. Jesus could not be simply a good man. If a mere man claimed to be God he could not be a good man. To quote Lewis, "A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse."

If Jesus were merely another prophet, a man among many, he would be a fraud for claiming to be God. But if He is what He claimed to be, God Himself taking on human flesh, then the life, death and resurrection of Jesus are the greatest events that ever happened in the course of human history. And they are the key to explaining how a loving God, who is powerful enough to stop it, could allow so much pain and suffering in this world.

The climax of the story took place one Friday in Jerusalem, a sequence of events dramatized in Mel Gibson’s recent movie, The Passion of Christ. As the "God-man" he was designated to experience all the consequences of human evil in His own person (1 Pet 2:21-24). His death on the cross would sum up all the pain, all the suffering, all the regret, and all the rejection that evil has caused the human race. He would suffer loss of meaning, loss of relationship and all the misery of human sickness and death (Isa 53:1-12). His anguish was much more mental and emotional than physical (in contrast to Gibson’s movie).

Arriving at Golgotha, the place of execution, Jesus was nailed to the cross through the wrists and ankles and put on display between two common thieves. Three hours later He was dead, more from emotional and spiritual anguish than from physical causes. Rich friends of Jesus then secured His body and placed it in a cave-tomb nearby, closed off behind a huge rolling-stone door.

The story reaches a climax about 36 hours later, early Sunday morning. Several women decide to visit the tomb and anoint Jesus’ body with spices, to preserve it and show Him honor, even in death. But when they arrive at the tomb the stone has been moved away and the tomb is empty. One or two men are standing nearby in dazzling apparel (one witness calls them angels). The women are told not to seek the living among the dead. Jesus has risen from the dead and will appear to His disciples again.

God’s answer to the problem of evil, therefore, is the answer of love in the most self-sacrificing form of that word. He does not seek to change the world by force, but by the power of a loving character, exhibited in the self-sacrificing actions of Jesus in our behalf. He wants to be acknowledged as God, not for what He has or the power He can wield, but on account of His character, which is evident at the cross. Why is this event so important? Stay tuned.

The Problem of Evil and Its Origin II

2011-12-14T15:59:58Z

As outlined in the previous blog, God created the world and filled it with loving gifts for the human race. He gave the original humans the gift of His love, but He also gave them the gift of freedom (Gen 1:26-28; 2:9, 16-17). He placed His loving heart in their hands to cherish it or reject it. God opened Himself to pain and suffering in order to experience the genuine love of His creation.

And, according to the Bible, things went terribly wrong. First, in heaven there was a being called Lucifer who became enraptured with his God-given abilities and position and led an insurrection against the government of God (Isa 14:12-14; Ezek 28:13-15). Echoes of that insurrection can be found in Rev 12:7-9, NIV. "And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down-- that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him."

Second, Lucifer/Satan did not give up the conflict when he was cast out of heaven, instead he transferred the insurrection to earth by enlisting the support of the first members of the human race, Adam and Eve. In the primeval garden he succeeded in turning their allegiance away from God and to themselves (Gen 3:1-7). In the process, their loving relationship with God was broken, and pain and suffering were introduced into the world, resulting in decay and death (Gen 3:8-24). To make it even worse, Adam and Eve’s rejection of God left them subject to the domination of Satan, who had enticed them to break with God.

From that point on in the Bible it could be said of every human being, "Every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time" (Gen 6:5, NIV) The world became a place of greed, exploitation, murder and chaos. From that time on the earthly evidence regarding God’s nature was a mixed bag, tokens of love mixed with portents of suffering and death. And worse yet, the Bible tells us that the world is the chief battleground of a universal civil war, and its citizens are held hostage by rebel forces. Evil does not exist in this world because God is evil, it exists here because the world is enemy-occupied territory.

The question arises at this point. Why didn’t God simply put a stop to evil when it occurred? Why didn’t He stop it in heaven before it ever got to earth? Why not just eliminate evil-doers on the spot and give their squandered freedom to others more worthy?

Imagine a couple of angels in heaven having a whispered conversation just outside the pearly gates. One angel whispers to the other, "You know, I’m not so sure anymore that God is as loving and kind as He makes Himself out to be. You know what I just heard. . . .?" As the other angel leans forward to hear the juicy tidbit a lightning bolt flashes out of the sky and vaporizes the complaining angel.

Stunned, the other angel seeks out an old friend. "You won’t believe what I just saw! Charleburt was just saying some negative stuff about God and got vaporized by lightning, just like that! You know, maybe he was right. Maybe God isn’t so loving and kind as He makes Himself out to be." And at that instant another bolt of lightning flashes out of the sky and vaporizes the second angel.

If this kind of thing were to go on for long, what would all the angels be doing? Looking for lightning bolts, worried that they will be next! It would be the end of love and the beginning of fear in their relationship with God. From that time on they would do the right thing and say the right thing, not out of love for God, but out of fear. So eliminating evil the instant it occurs was not an option for a God of love.

A second option for dealing with rebellion would be to sanction it. God could change His law and character to reflect the new realities in the universe. Everybody would be allowed to do whatever they wanted. But this too would be the end of genuine love. It would result in anarchy, "every man for himself." Evil would become the reigning doctrine in the universe and a destructive chaos would be the result. Injustice would reach even greater proportions than what we now experience, as everyone sought to take what they could from others. Sanctioning rebellion, therefore, was not an option for a God of justice.

As powerful as God was and is, therefore, the options for dealing with the consequences of freedom were not many. What was God to do? The Bible offers the answer, which we will cover in the next blog.

The Problem of Evil and Its Origin

2011-12-04T20:51:38Z

There is clearly something wrong with this world. Between acts of genocide, suicide bombers, widespread pollution, random street muggings, sexual abuse and smart bombs that stupidly kill children, we can all tell that some sort of pervasive evil has twisted the minds and hearts of human beings. We long to believe that the world and those who live in it are basically good, but the most of the everyday evidence seems to run in the opposite direction. Can God be good and yet allow so much pain and suffering into the world? Is there any reason to hope that something better lies beneath the surface of what we see and experience?

The Bible tells us that things were not always this way. According to the Bible, before there was an Earth, before there even was a universe, there was an Eternal Lover, a Being whose very nature was and is love. "I have loved you with an everlasting love," this Being declares (Jer 31:3). Before there was an earth or any human being, this loving God envisioned what it would be like to have a universe full of creatures that could love and be loved. Like a woman who falls in love with a baby before it is born, God loved the creation before it was created. "God is love" (1 John 4:8).

The Bible goes on to tell us that God prepared the way for the creation by filling it with innumerable tokens of His love. There are the flowers, almost infinite in variety, with hundreds of shades of every imaginable color, with incredible perfumes running from light and delicate to rich and dusky. There are the fruits, grains, nuts and vegetables, with their infinite variety of smells and tastes (Gen 1:11-12; 2:8-9). There are the animals ranging from the awesome and magnificent, like the lion, the tiger and the bull elk, to the unbearably cute, like the koala, the kiwi, the chipmunk and the meerkat (Gen 2:19-20).

The incredible delight one finds in the plants and the animals is not a necessary feature of existence. We could live without a variety of colors and tastes. We could live without animals. But life would not be nearly as enjoyable. We could also live without the songs of birds, but who would want to (excepting perhaps the annoying screech of the sulphur-crested cockatoo)? And that is only the beginning of God’s gifts.

I could speak about mountains and lakes, beautiful sunsets over the ocean, the smell of fresh-cut grass and many other delights. The Bible tells us that these unnecessary but enchanting features of our world are the gifts of an extravagant Lover, who wants to fill the lives of those He loves with exquisite joy (Eccl 3:13; 5:19; Jam 1:17). And in spite of the evil we experience in the world today, these tokens of God’s love are still there to be noticed and enjoyed. But if God’s intentions were so good, why is there so much pain and suffering in the midst of this beauty?

It all goes back to a choice that God made. When it came time to create beings, God had to decide whether these beings would be controlled by Him or whether they would be truly free. One wonders at times whether it would be better if human beings did not have free will. As "robots" we could be programmed to be good and kind and to function in a way that enhances the good of the whole creation. In a world of such beings things would never go wrong.

But there is a problem. Full robotic control leaves no room for love. Imagine your spouse were a robot with a computer for a brain. Imagine you could program him or her to have the perfect body and to respond with loving words and actions in all circumstances. While this may sound like the perfect partner at first blush, the delight in such an arrangement would quickly wear off.

"I love you so much," you say to your favorite robot.

"I love you with all my silicon," the robot responds.

When you realize the response isn’t free, the words rapidly become empty. Genuine love requires free will. Genuine love is only meaningful when it is chosen and given as a gift to the other. Genuine love occurs only when someone is also free not to love, or to love someone else. But when someone else is free to love you they are also free to hurt you and reject you. The possibility of love requires the possibility of evil. Freedom is the greatest of all risks.

The bottom line is that love and freedom go together. In order to have one you have to have the other. So when the God who is love, who is the Eternal Lover, decided to create, He also decided to make Himself vulnerable to the choices of His creatures. He made all things good (Gen 1:31), but he also allowed His creatures the freedom not to love, the freedom to reject Him. Ultimately, evil exists not because God is a tyrant, but because He is committed to openness and freedom. Evil exists in this world not because God is powerless, but because He wanted human beings to be powerful in ways that mirrored His own freedom of action.

Web Site Plans

2011-11-21T14:26:17Z

It may interest readers of this blog to know that my webmaster, John Miller, and I never met until last week. Technology has reached the place where people around the world can collaborate on projects without ever coming together. John has appreciated my work and reached out to me about five years ago offering to help me develop more of a web presence than I could have accomplished with my technical savvy alone (pretty limited!). He did the design of the site and has set up the daily devotionals, the store, and my ability to blog and connect with all of you. While things have probably not gone viral to the extent that John had hoped, we do have an average of 150 or so solid hits every day from people all around the world.

Well, last week it finally happened. On a short trip to the Midwest, John and I were finally able to connect, along with his delightful son, daughter-in-law and grandchild. We spent several precious hours together and had the opportunity to brainstorm a little for the future. John’s dream is a major presence on Facebook, which is challenging since I have been resistant to that idea from the beginning. Facebook is all about connection with people and I have had way too many connections with people to manage comfortably, well before Facebook ever existed. But we came up with an exciting idea that I think I could manage when the public meetings I am now holding in Calimesa California are finished (that will be in May of 2012). Those meetings are ongoing at a pace of about two per month and each meeting requires about ten hours of preparation. So the completion of those meetings should free up a little time for new ventures.

What got me excited was the idea of a Day to Day Commentary on the Book of Revelation that would be posted on Facebook each day. I have been studying and teaching Revelation for more than thirty years but have never put a verse by verse commentary together. (Those who would like to own such a commentary might be interested in the work of my student, Ranko Stefanovic, Revelation of Jesus Christ, available from Andrews University Press). I would start with verse one and write a paragraph or two each day about that verse until I had covered all the angles I am aware of. Then I would move to verse two and do the same and so on through all 404 verses of the book. At three posts per verse (it could be a lot more for some), it would take more than three years to complete, and I suspect it will take a lot longer than that. But better to be late than to never try. Let me know what you think of this plan.

A related idea that we came up with was extracting the best sentence or summary from each Facebook post and putting it out on Twitter each day for those who like to follow that. I still have no idea how one would do that, but John knows such things and working together it just might work. Are any of you Twitter followers or producers? Would either of these ideas be personally useful to you? It sounds like it could be fun and I might never produce a commentary any other way, so let’s see what happens moving forward!

Link to Al Qaeda, Arab Spring and Armageddon

2011-11-13T15:06:31Z

Officials of Loma Linda Broadcasting Network have assisted me in finding the TV interview that I mentioned in the previous blog online. Go to http://llbn.tv, which brings you to the home page of LLBN, then click on the link entitled "English Videos" and you will see my interview right on top of the list (until next week at least, when it would be second on the list! Enjoy!

The Arab Spring and Other Thoughts

2011-11-13T02:05:46Z

I have been quiet on this site for a month or so because of some significant opportunities to record for television. Preparation time and actual recording have wiped out discretionary time lately, but the outcomes will be very positive over the long term. Those who have been following the Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guides this quarter may be aware of the audio studies I have prepared on Galatians 3 and 4 and which can be accessed at www.pineknoll.org/sabbath-school-lessons. They include nearly six hours of teaching in the context of a highly intelligent class of some 50 people. While they follow the pattern of the above-mentioned Study Guides, they would also be helpful to anyone interested in Galatians 3 and 4. There are other projects as well which I will reveal on this site when they get a little closer to broadcast. But one recent interview is worth immediate mention.

On Tuesday, November 1 I gave a one and a half hour interview on the Christian Connections program of the Loma Linda Broadcasting Network. The interviewer was Ganim Hanna, an Iraqi Christian man who quizzed me about the events taking place in the Middle East over the last year. These events have been nearly a hundred years in the making and some Muslims would argue that they have been nearly 4000 years in the making. I would like to post that broadcast on this site and will work to get permission for that.

One aspect of the interview that might interest readers of this blog is the observation that the Muslim nations of the Middle East have had a triple dynamic going on for the last hundred years or so, in reaction to colonialism. When the European powers took control of the Middle East, the Arab peoples reacted in three main ways. There were those who collaborated with the Western powers, often educated people who could speak English, French or Italian (Libya was ruled by Italy, the French had control in Algeria, Tunisia, Syria and Lebanon, most of the rest were ruled by the British). These elite classes profited from colonialism and were often placed in positions of power. A second dynamic was people who were disenfranchised by colonialism yet were enamored of capitalism and democratic values and wanted to be free to embrace and practice these values for themselves. The third dynamic was an Islamic backlash by people who resented both the intruders and their values and wanted to go back to the day when the Islamic Empire was a major world power and islamic values governed the Middle East, including Sharia (Muslim) law.

When the grip of colonialism was weakened after World War II, the elite classes in most Arab nations managed to wrest control of these countries from the colonial powers. In the process, the democratic and islamic movements continued to be marginalized in these countries. Harsh crackdowns, often tacitly supported by the US, kept these forces in check for several decades. So opposition to the repressive Arab regimes was usually two-fold. It involved democratic groupings who wanted the kind of freedom and democracy typical of the West but not available at home and islamic groups like the Muslim Brotherhood who longed to return to an earlier period of history.

The first major break in this picture occurred in Iran (a non-Arab, but Muslim country at the edge of the Middle East) in 1979. Supported by Western media, the democratic opposition succeeded in overthrowing the Shah and establishing a more democratic government. But a few months later the Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile and the revolution turned islamic with tragic consequences for the workers in the American Embassy, who were seen as collaborators with the Shah.

This same pattern seems to be happening in the Arab Spring uprisings. The opposition forces in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen are a mixture of people holding democratic and secular ideals on the one hand and people holding more islamic and traditional dreams on the other. While a revolution is in progress, the western media plays up the democratic side, because most of the people they can talk to (English speakers) support that side. And so Westerners get the impression that it is a democratic revolution primarily. But the Arab-language media paints a different picture based on people who speak only Arabic. And so in Tunisia and Libya revolutions that were seen as very positive in the Western media are now proving to have a strong jihadist element and could easily produce islamist governments that could prove more hostile to Western interests than the regimes they replaced.

Things are fluid right now, but in many ways these events were forecast as desired outcomes of September 11 by Osama bin Laden himself. While he is now dead, events he unleashed still affect the world today.

Teaching Evolution at a Faith-Based Institution

2011-10-06T04:08:05Z

In the three previous blogs I have been talking about science, humility and faith. What does all this have to do with the teaching of evolution at a faith-based university? I recently met a conservative colleague from the Philippines who asked me what was going on at my sister institution. I told her that they were being accused of teaching evolution in science classes. Her immediate, unscripted response was, "Well, I hope so!" (Not what I expected from her.) What did she mean by that? Two things, I think. For starters we need to distinguish between microevolution and macroevolution. The former is taken for granted in horticulture classes, for example. All plants adapt to their environment or they die out in times of environmental change. You cannot teach horticulture without teaching that form of evolution. But should macroevolution be taught in faith-based universities? I think the best answer to this question is yes and no. Even if a scientist is unconvinced about the evolutionary hypothesis of origins, it is still necessary to teach the theories and the evidence they draw on in class. I think not to do so would be irresponsible.

It seems to me that there are three main options for the faith-based scientist in the classroom. 1) Teach science the way the average believer in the pew (and many church administrators) wants you to teach it, disparaging evolutionary science and scientists, and highlighting only the evidences for creation. 2) Teach science the way you were taught in secular, graduate schools and let the religion teachers worry about the fallout. 3) Teach micro and macroevolution as significant scientific disciplines but also expose your faith and how you have maintained it in the face of what many consider overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

The first option would probably be the simplest way out for scientists in a faith-based institution. But experience has taught scientists of faith that if you do that, most students and their parents will be comfortable, but the same students will lose their faith when they move to graduate school at a secular university or a scientific workplace. Easy and shallow answers can crumble overnight in the face of what seems overwhelming evidence. To not prepare students of faith for graduate school and the workday world they will face later on is simply irresponsible, comfortable though it might be. The second option is also relatively simple, but is also irresponsible in my opinion. If science teaching in a faith-based institution is no different than that taught anywhere else, why should any aspiring scientist choose a faith-based institution for their studies?

So that leaves the third option as the most responsible approach. The problem is this, if you do teach evolutionary science in a responsible way, some students and many parents will be angered. And some students will lose their faith in the process no matter what you do. But if you prepare them well, the majority of students will withstand the scientific challenges of graduate school and the workplace and will be preserved to serve the church with their wisdom and talents. In many ways it is a thankless task, but I honor all scientists of faith who teach according to their consciences, in spite of criticism. Such teaching will be misunderstood, so it requires great courage. But I believe the outcomes of such courageous teaching will be celebrated in eternity.

Should the science professor be satisfied that fifty to seventy per cent of his or her students keep their faith in spite of the challenges of scientific evidence and theories? Of course not. Every student lost to the faith is a tragedy. Scientists of faith must constantly observe and experiment to learn the best ways to introduce troubling material to young and sensitive minds. In the process there will always be tension with those on both extremes whose minds are made up. But it seems to me that the effectiveness of scientific education in a faith-based university should be judged not on what the professor teaches but on the outcomes in the lives of the students and graduates. Students are relatively fragile creatures, easily broken. Scientists of faith who love people will care deeply about the impact of their teaching.

There is a strong tendency in today’s world to push to the extremes. This is very evident in political speech and often also in the theological and scientific realms. Instead of a genuine search for truth, people prefer to cherry-pick the evidence that supports a predetermined conclusion. This happens on both sides of the origins debate. A theologian of faith is easily tempted to ignore the problems by focusing in only on evidence that challenges the prevailing theory and disparage all who disagree as perverse. The evolutionary scientist may, consciously or unconsciously, avoid experiments and evidence that don’t fit the prevailing theory, because a God who acts in history is not a working concept for him or her. Scientists of faith, I believe, will know and teach the assumptions on both sides, assumptions that color the evidence and the models one creates to explain the evidence. Scientists of faith will acquaint themselves with alternate interpretations of the data, so they can compare different ways of understanding the evidence. Helping students sort out the strengths and weaknesses on both sides of the tension will prepare them to evaluate the arguments they will face in later years.

My youngest daughter is an aspiring scientist. She plans to pursue her dreams in faith-based universities, including my own. I will be monitoring her development with great interest and care. I will be trusting scientists with someone who is infinitely precious to me. In the process I will probably ask many questions. But I will honor and respect the position her teachers are in. Whatever the outcome of the current discussions, I don’t want to make their teaching process and her learning process harder than it already is. I want them to know I will be praying for them as well as for her.

Faith and Science

2011-09-23T04:41:23Z

For me personally the Bible and philosophical reasoning both point to a Creator. I recognize that people who favor the scientific evidence can read Genesis in ways that differ from the traditional. But the best exegetical work on the Bible points to the idea that the ancients who wrote and read these texts understood them to be pointing to a creator God as the originator of the natural world and that God’s creative activity is fairly rapid and recent. And beyond Genesis, the Bible’s teachings on sin, salvation and resurrection all presuppose a God who actively intervenes in space and time. Philosophically, I also find it easier to believe that the complexity and beauty of the world we know is the product of a loving and intelligent Designer than that it all is the product of random and chance events over long periods of time. But while the preponderance of scientific evidence is not hostile to the possibility of design, it is very hard to square with the biblical idea of a recent creation of life. Believing, short-age creationist scientists tell me that there is currently no creationist model that is scientifically fruitful in its ability to predict observable outcomes the way microevolution does. A possible response to this dilemma: If God is as great as we believe Him to be, He is capable of doing things in a way that science cannot fully observe or understand. In any case, it seems to me that believers who are honest with the evidence must live with a certain tension. And that is what faith is all about.

As the author of Hebrews puts it (Heb 11:1, my translation), faith is an "inner conviction of things we do not see." It is through faith we understand that "the universe was created by the word of God." (Heb 11:3, ESV) Faith is more than just knowledge of facts. It is an inner conviction of things we cannot always prove. If the scientific evidence perfectly confirmed our faith, it would no longer be faith in the full sense that Hebrews describes it. To live in faith is to live with a certain amount of tension. When it comes to matters of faith, we need to take the evidence in both the Bible and science seriously. Because of inspiration, I choose to give the Bible 51% of the weight in my personal faith decisions. But those faith decisions do not rule out a continuing openness to further study in both the Bible and science. Study of the Bible can suggest scientific options that an unbelieving scientist might not think of. Study of science and experience has led the church to read the Bible differently (think Galileo and Acts 15). The best definition of theology I have ever heard is "Faith seeking to understand." Faith is both a standpoint and a process. When it comes to faith, both conviction and continuing process are a given. To repeat, people of faith must learn to live with a certain amount of tension.

Where one ends up in matters of faith seems to have a lot to do with experience. If life has pointed you to the beauty of flowers and bird feathers, mountain peaks and sunsets, if you have sensed the divine presence in small tokens of everyday life, you will likely be open to interpreting the Bible and science from a divine perspective. If life has confronted you with birth defects, disease as a result of genetic accident, cruelty, oppression and injustice, you may be tempted to either hate God or to explain the world in ways that leave God out of the picture. Because experiences of life are so different, I am reluctant to judge those who see the world and God a bit differently than I do. The world as we experience it projects a mixed picture. Faith can afford to be generous with the intellectual struggles of others. Perhaps the following statement is apropos here: "The perception and appreciation of truth. . . . depends less upon the mind than upon the heart." (DA 455)

I think the story of Job is helpful here. Job, his wife and his friends all were ignorant of the larger issues in the universe that resulted in the situation Job found himself in. The conflict between their view of God and the world they experienced created a tension that challenged their faith. Job’s wife saw the tension and gave up her faith in God. Job’s friends maintained their beliefs by denying that there was a tension. Job recognized the tension, struggled with it and still believed. His belief did not lead him to deny the reality of the tension, he believed in full awareness of the tension. And it was Job’s position that was commended by a God who chose not explain the tension in terms the reader already understood (chapters one and two), but left the tension in place (Job 42:7-8, see 38:1 - 41:34).

The Need for Humility

2011-09-15T12:45:19Z

Both scientists and students of the Bible need to maintain a strong awareness of the limitations of evidence and of human understanding of the evidence. As a biblical scholar who operates from the standpoint of faith I have all the more reason for humility. While I find the Bible an invaluable revelation of the will of God, I am painfully aware of the huge gap between my understanding of the universe and God’s (Isa 55:8-9). Let me share an analogy. Being a scholar is like a farmer digging a post hole at the edge of a field. I know everything there is to know about that contents of that post hole. But the deeper I go into my limited field of knowledge, the more I am aware of how deep the field is and how much I do not know. When all I knew was the surface of the field, I could imagine that I knew a whole lot about the field. But now that I have gone deep in a tiny portion of the field, I realize how deep the entire field goes. So the mark of a true scholar is not how much he or she knows but to know how little one in fact knows. The more a scholar learns, the more aware he or she becomes of how much there is yet to learn. With great knowledge comes great humility. And I believe the reverse is also true. With great humility comes great knowledge. Most of us learn to the degree that we are open to learning.

That brings me to what I call the Ladder of Humility (appreciation to Fritz Guy, who first introduced me to the concept). As a biblical scholar who dabbles in many other issues, I have learned quite a bit in this life. Step one in my ladder of humility is how much I know. But step two is what everyone on earth knows. That is an almost infinite advance on what I know. Go into any university library and you will see that my knowledge is a minuscule fraction of what the human race as a whole knows. But step three is what everyone on earth could know, given an infinite amount of time and opportunity. Another infinite advance. Step four in the ladder of humility is what everyone in the universe knows. If, as most people suspect, there are lots of inhabited planets out there, all possible human knowledge is but a minuscule fraction of what everyone in the universe knows. And of course, step five is what God knows, truly another leap of infinity. Looked at from this perspective, everything I could possibly know about God and His ways are like the musings of a two-year old in comparison with what I don’t know. Even the knowledge of the prophets was limited (1 Cor 13:9, 12). So it behooves everyone interested in the issue of faith and science to demonstrate a strong element of humility in everything that is said and written on the subject.

Are there similar limitations to our knowledge of the physical universe? I have to believe so. There are many areas of science in which knowledge has vastly increased in the last few decades. It is, therefore, reasonably certain scientifically that evolution occurs at the micro level (small changes that we can observe over a human lifetime). This would have been an extremely troubling admission for people of faith a century ago and is still troubling to many today. But microevolution is within the direct purview of scientific method and few people of faith question its existence today. But can we extrapolate from microevolution to large changes taking place over millions of years (macroevolution)? There is significant scientific evidence that points in that direction and one does not have to be a God-hater to see that. For example, the order in the fossil record suggests some kind of evolutionary progression and radiometric dating indicates a considerable amount of time for this progression. I have no compelling scientific data to counter the basic thrust of that evidence. After all, science by nature looks for patterns in repetitive events. A single act of creation in the distant past would inevitably leave some very challenging evidence to the scientist. So in the absence of direct observation and experimentation, can we be absolutely sure of the way things occurred in the distant past? Is it possible that we have yet to discover the flaws in our current analysis? I think humility is an appropriate approach for both science and faith. We must not only bow before the evidence we have but also before the evidence we have not yet been able to examine.

The Evolution/Creation Controversy

2011-09-09T00:56:10Z

A sister faith-based university not far from where I live is under attack for teaching evolution in biology classes. Since the issue frequently comes up wherever I go, I thought it might be helpful for me to put a few thoughts on the issue into writing. I begin with a caveat. While I work at a faith-based health science university, I am not an expert in the specific, scientific issues related to the origins of life on this planet. Neither do I have inside information as to what exactly is or is not being taught at the sister institution. So I think it would be wise for me to confine myself to some general principles that I find helpful in making sense of the debate over the origins of life, regardless of the particular instance that triggered this blog.

The relationship of faith to the evidence of science is a very important point of discussion. The field of evidence is so vast and the issues so significant to people of faith that it is unwise to ignore the issue. The unfortunate aspect of the current debate is that once an issue like this becomes politicized, the conversation tends to be controlled by extremists on both sides and those who represent the center are often intimidated into silence. So many may think my addressing the issue at all at this time, when every word may be weighed with hostile intent, is rather stupid. But I write anyway in the hope of encouraging honest, respectful discussion in spite of the stakes. It is at times when courage begins to fail that those who "cannot be bought or sold" must be all the more prepared to speak. But in the process we must not confuse rudeness and disparaging speech with integrity. Genuine integrity must be combined with respect for those who may disagree.

Where is the center in this debate? It seems to me that scientists of faith come to this debate from one of three standpoints. At the risk of oversimplification, let me identify those standpoints as follows. 1) There are those who find the evidence for evolution (in the grand, macro sense) and long ages of life on this earth overwhelming. As a result they seek other than traditional ways of reading the Bible with regard to origins. 2) There are those who find traditional ways of reading the Bible perfectly clear and compelling and therefore put all of their energies into finding flaws in the contemporary scientific consensus. 3) I would see the center to be comprised of scientists of faith who have a high and respectful view of both the Bible and the evidence of science. Such scientists recognize that at this moment there is no easy resolution of the differences that exist between the two bodies of evidence, so they bend all their energies to resolve the issues while maintaining a strong awareness of the limitations of evidence and of human understanding of the evidence.

Moving forward, then, it seems to me that we need to avoid two extremes in the debate. One extreme is taking one’s cue from a faith tradition and assuming that every scientist who disagrees with that viewpoint must be perverse. Most scientists I have met are very open to evidence and discovering the flaws in their own thinking. (That was certainly true at the Banff Conference I attended recently.) To proclaim otherwise destroys one’s own credibility in speaking to the debate. The other extreme is to downgrade or mock the validity of Scripture because straightforward readings of Scripture point to a different view of the world than that of traditional science. Scripture has stood the test of time in so many areas and the last word in science is far from being spoken yet.

That leads me to the subject of the next blog, the need for humility.

A Geoscience Tour

2011-08-30T03:44:21Z

Before I get into my topic, let me apologize for a couple of things. I have been pretty quiet the last couple of months because of significant travel, one part of which I will share about at some length. I have been to Siberia, Brazil, two provinces of Canada, Colorado and Orlando, Florida (the latter was not for play, but for work). I have spoken to groups of pastors, church leaders, hospital administrators and scientists. Any one of these would be interesting but collectively it all flows into a blur!

The other area for apology has to do with the vagaries of the internet. My webmaster, John Miller, is as good as they come, but lately we have had an overwhelming flood of spam attacking the site, particularly the discussion boards. I am sorry for those of you who have gotten a flood of junk (I get it too). We have had more than a hundred junk messages from a dozen or so different (apparent) sources. John is not ignoring the problem and things would have been much worse without his diligence. But that’s the kind of world we live in today. Bear with us.

The trip I’d like to focus on is one of the trips to Canada. I attended a Geoscience Conference on the teaching Science in faith-based institutions. The conference was located at Canmore, Alberta, just outside Banff National Park. About 60 scientists of faith gathered there to explore how to teach science in faith-based universities and secondary schools. They let a couple of religion types along just to humor us, I suppose. I thought the tone of the conference was respectful and honest with regard to the scientific evidence and the standard model used to interpret that evidence. But it also offered some fresh and creative perspectives on the issues. In this blog I will summarize the activities of the conference and in future blogs, I will share some of the thoughts I presented at the conference (I read two papers and listened to perhaps 40 others).

The first day of the conference (July 28) was spent at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta, out in the prairie, away from the Rockies. Located in the middle of nowhere, the museum is one of the world’s best repositories of dinosaurs (most of which were found nearby), with many complete skeletons and even some samples with a bit of flesh and hide in places. It was very cool to be able to tour the museum with a student of biology who had been a docent at the Field Museum in Chicago and therefore knew what he was looking at most of the time.

We spent the weekend in Canmore, trading papers on various issues in science, religion and the intersection of the two. We examined the strengths and weaknesses of evolution as a scientific model and learned a lot about a variety of scientific disciplines that most of us, even the scientists, were unfamiliar with (DNA, genetics, paleo-geology, biochemistry, astrophysics, microbiology, the list could go on and on). But a major highlight on July 30 was a half day break to go hiking in small groups with scientists who exchanged expertise on the rocks, plants and landscape we hiked by. I went to Lake Louise and hiked up the mountain on the right side of the lake to visit a couple lakes much higher into the mountains. It was a good warmup for what I would have to do a couple of days later.

When the formal part of the conference ended on Sunday July 31, we hiked up into the Burgess Shale at the top of a mountain in Yoho National Park, British Columbia (Monday, August 1). The total hike was about 14 miles and 3000 feet of altitude (starting at nearly a mile high!). It was a physical challenge for us all, especially for me, being twice the age of some of my hiking companions. The goal at the top was the Burgess Shale, famous for fossils of ocean floor sea creatures easily findable at the top of a mountain a mile and a half above sea level! It was explained to us that the sea floor appears to have been thrust up to that altitude by the collision of two gigantic plates in the earth’s crust (British Columbia seems to have once been a large island that collided into the main plate of North America, the collision pushed up the sea floor to the top of the mountains). The Burgess Shale contains abundant fossil specimens of the famous trilobite, considered in the standard model the earliest fossilized creature.

On the last day of the conference, we played auto tag. The group split up into about a dozen cars, which all followed a prescribed route and made stops designated by GPS to find fossils in road cuts and observe geological features in the mountainous landscape. We traveled through Banff National Park all the way into Jasper National Park, ending the day’s drive at the massive Athabasca Glacier, which pours down out of the largest icefield south of the Arctic Circle. We noticed that the glacier had receded nearly a mile over the last hundred years, giving evidence that the climate of the northern hemisphere, at least, seems to be getting warmer.

Wish you all could have been there. If you have any questions about the conference, put them on the comment board below and I will do my best to answer them. Watch for a series of proposals over the next month on how to teach science responsibly in the context of faith. Feedback welcome.

He’s Greater Than Jonah

2011-08-11T14:03:15Z

Sorry for the gap in posting. I have been traveling to several places, which makes it harder to post. One of those places was a geology conference in Banff, Alberta. I will be reporting on that shortly. In the meantime. . .

In my book Meet God Again for the First Time I describe how Jesus provides the meaning of Old Testament Israel’s whole life and history. He is the second Adam, the new Moses, and the son of David, among many others. Whenever you read a story or a letter in the New Testament, you want to be constantly aware of references to the characters, stories and experiences of the apostles’ past. This was the way New Testament writers related to the their Bible, what we often call the Old Testament. God meets people where they are. And he embedded His message for us in the language and style of real people in the first century.

So I was not surprised when Timothy Keller (see previous blog), in his description of the Mark’s version of Jesus’ stilling the storm, noticed multiple references to the Jonah story in the Old Testament. What did Jesus have in common with the world’s first recorded submarine ride?

For starters, both Jesus and Jonah were in a boat, both boats were overtaken by a storm and the description of the storm was quite similar in both cases. But the similarities do not end there.

When the storm begins, both Jesus and Jonah are asleep (Jonah 1:5; Mark 4:38). In both stories sailors wake up the sleeping passenger and assert, "We are going to die!" Jonah 1:6; 4:38. And in both cases there is a miraculous divine intervention which stills the storm. But instead of calming the sailors down, the stilling of the storm makes them even more terrified (Jonah 1:15-16; Mark 4:40-41)!

The two stories are almost identical except for one thing. In the Jonah story, he tells the sailors to throw him into the sea and it will become calm (Jonah 1:11-12). That doesn’t happen in the Jesus story. Or does it? People have noticed that there is very little overt "theology" in the Gospel of Mark. Whatever messages one gets from that gospel are embedded in the stories and the way they are ordered and tied together. The same is true of this story. In another place Jesus said, "One greater than Jonah is here" (Matt 12:43). And he explains that just as Jonah spent three days and nights in the belly of a fish, He would spend a similar amount of time in the tomb (Matt 12:40). He is the new Jonah. And just as Jonah stilled a storm by the sacrifice of himself, so Jesus would still the ultimate storm of sin and death by the sacrifice of Himself on the cross.

When we go through the storms of our lives, it is easy to wonder, as the disciples of Jesus did in Mark 4: 38-41, whether God even cares about what we have to experience. But when you come to know the meaning of the cross, when you come to understand that He threw Himself into the ultimate storm, the one the threatens everything we are (sin and death), it puts our smaller storms into a bit of perspective. If He did not abandon us in the ultimate storm, why would He do so in the relatively minor trials of our lives?

From the cross we get a sense of the kind of God who rules our lives as well as the universe. A God who is caring, gracious and merciful. In His wisdom he does not calm every one of our storms, but as we walk with Him we learn to trust Him even in the midst of the storm. And we learn to trust that one day He will still all storms for eternity. And that is what we call hope.

Power, Foreknowledge and Grace

2011-07-23T03:39:05Z

This morning I was reading in a book sent me for evaluation by a publisher. It was the latest book from the pen of Timothy Keller, entitled King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus (NY: Dutton (Penguin Group), 2011). I was struck by the way the author handled the story of Jesus and the stormy sea in Mark 4: 35-41.

Storms are and were common on the Sea of Galilee. The sea lies about 650 feet below sea level and Mount Hermon rises 9200 feet nearby. When cold air from the mountain clashes with the warm air rising from the Sea, spectacular and unexpected thunderstorms occur. That means that anyone sailing regularly on the Sea of Galilee is an expert at it. So the storm mentioned in the text, and its consequences for the boat, must have been unusually severe, because the disciples of Jesus were overwhelmed enough to wake Jesus up hoping for some help.

According to the story in Mark, Jesus awoke and two amazing things happened. The wind immediately died down and the sea became calm ("a great calm"), smooth as glass. All in an instant. Both events together was amazing, since it usually takes a while for the sea to calm down after a storm abates.

There is a further element to the story. Jesus doesn’t wave a wand or recite an incantation, the way someone does when they are calling on a higher power. Jesus simply says, "Quiet! Be still!" (Two different Greek words to say roughly the same thing). He spoke as one who had authority over such things.

There was a consensus among the ancients that the sea was uncontrollable by anyone other than God or the chief among the gods. It was a symbol of unstoppable destruction. The ocean was so ungovernable that only God could control it. But Jesus was able to effortlessly exercise the kind of power that only God has. He did not just have power that was derived from His connection to someone or something else, He was power. That power resided within Himself. He was Lord of the storm. For us today, that means that no matter what shape the world is in, Jesus can provide all the healing, power and rest that we need.

But there is still more to the story. In the face of the storm, the disciples were afraid. Mark 4:40. But after Jesus calms the storm, the disciples are terrified ("fearing with great fear")! Mark 4:41. They were more terrified in the calm than they were in the storm. Why? Because they came to realize that Jesus is as uncontrollable as a storm. The storm had immense power, they couldn’t control it, it’s no wonder they were afraid. But now they realized that Jesus had even more power than the storm, so He was even more uncontrollable!

Why was this so terrifying? In part, it was the realization that Jesus didn’t have to wait until the boat was almost swamped to intervene. He could have stopped the storm at any time or even completely prevented it if He had wanted to. The natural question in the disciples’ minds was, "Do you really love us? Because if you really loved us, you would have kept this storm from happening." But Jesus doesn’t buy into their line of thinking (and often ours). The implication of His question, "Why are you so afraid?", is that their basic premise was wrong. "You should have known better. I do allow people I love to pass through storms. Why don’t you just trust me?" Mark 4:40.

It reminds me of the Chronicles of Narnia. When one of the children asks if the lion Aslan is safe, the beaver replies, "‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the king." In Mark’s story Jesus is most certainly not safe. He is even more uncontrollable than the stormy sea. But there is a big difference between Jesus and the stormy sea. A storm doesn’t love you. Nor does the sea care one bit. Nature is an unfeeling and unmanageable power that will get you sooner or later, in one way or another. In many ways Jesus seems similar; unmanageable power that leaves a trail of suffering in my life. But the Bible portrays Jesus as more than just powerful. He is also infinitely wise and infinitely loving. His power is without boundary, but so also are His wisdom and love. If the disciples had understood this, they would not have been terrified at Him. They would have realized that He could love someone and still let bad things happen to them, because He knows better than they do. We serve a God who is great enough and wise enough to have reasons we cannot understand. He is beyond my biggest notion of what He is up to. He’s the king.

Why Are God’s Footprints So Faint?

2011-07-18T22:52:55Z

This blog offers some final reflections on my reading of Stephen Hawking’s book The Grand Design. For me, the most troubling thing about Hawking’s book is not the science, the science is actually fairly favorable to the cause of intelligent design and creation. What is troubling as I consider the big picture is the relative lack of tangible evidence for the presence and activity of God in the universe as we experience it. If God is real and wants to be known and loved, why is He so silent? Why is He so absent from the gaze of honest, open-minded people like Hawking seems to be. Why is He so unwilling to be experienced and detected by our best efforts? Why doesn’t He just show Himself? Why doesn’t He settle our doubts and lay out the evidence for us? Why did he even play games with Job and tell him everything except the actual reason why Job was suffering?

I received glimpses of an answer reading an essay by Marty Phillips entitled "Glimpses of His Glory: Towards a Working Definition of Faith Development in Context," in the book A Man of Passionate Reflection: A Festschrift Honoring Jerald Whitehouse, edited by Bruce L. Bauer (Berrien Springs, MI: Department of World Mission, Andrews University, 2011), 281-312. Marty notes in the essay how God has left "footprints" of His presence and glimpses of His character in various forms in every people group. Nevertheless, His self-revelation is limited among non-Judeo/Christian communities. He has left hints of His will and character in such cultures, but they are often "encoded" in obscure forms and rituals rather than taught with clarity.

Why would God do that? Why not simply be clear? The beginnings of an answer lies in a war story that is referenced in passing in Revelation 12:7-10 and other parts of the Bible (Revelation 20, Ephesians 1, Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28 and Genesis 3). In the beginning, before there was a planet we call earth, the entire universe and all who lived in it were in harmony. But one of the highest of God’s creatures, called Lucifer, rebelled against God and accused Him of being arbitrary, dictatorial, unforgiving, and unjust. The whole universe was thrown into disarray because of these charges. God could have responded with indignation and put down the rebellion with force. But the rest of His creatures would from then on have served him out of fear and doubt rather than out of trust and love. So God chose to redeem the situation by opening Himself up to judgment, by giving Lucifer time to expose his true character of self-centeredness, lies, and coercion, and the whole universe time to examine the two options and decide for themselves if the charges against God were true.

To demonstrate the falseness of the charges, God has chosen to win the cosmic conflict from a point of utter weakness. Due to the accusations leveled against Him, He has limited His self-revelation to those who are weak and fragile in the eyes of the world, people like Abraham (Gen 12:10-20; 15:1) and like Paul (2 Cor 12:7-10). Instead of winning the war with power and brilliant persuasion, He woos us with a "still, small voice." He reveals Himself to Abraham, a man with no future (his wife was barren). When Jesus comes to reveal God, He is not born in a palace, but in a donkey’s feedbox. Jesus surrounds Himself, not with the great minds of his day, but with a dim-witted group of fractious fishermen. The greatest intellectual of the early church, Paul, had physical disabilities that enabled him to "delight in weakness, . . . for when I am weak, then I am strong."

This is God’s story. In the end good will triumph over evil, not by force, but by the power of truth delivered in seeming weakness. In other words, God’s presence and His goodness will be best apprehended in the context of human weakness. It is God’s will that people find Him and understand Him without Him exercising the advantages of power, brilliance and wealth. History demonstrates that it must be so. Whenever religion becomes powerful, wealthy and respected, it quickly loses sight of God and begins to act in the ways God is accused of acting: arbitrary, dictatorial, unforgiving, and unjust. Religions quickly confuse their own ethnic, social and religious identity with the sum total of God’s work in the world, and thus make religion the basis for power over others and the accumulation of worldly wealth. God cannot ally Himself with human power, wisdom and wealth, because in the context of this world, they would only distort the truth about His character. God’s form of government is superior, not in its power and glory, but in its character of humility, grace, gentleness and goodness.

So God is not only hidden to science, He is hidden quite often to religion as well. Human pride and self-sufficiency seeks a God that will make us famous, wealthy, powerful and brilliant. But such a God is not like God, he is in the image of the rebel Lucifer. We are most like God when we are content with weakness and obscurity.

In light of the cosmic conflict, we should not be surprised that God is so difficult to detect with the instruments of science. Were He to erase all of our doubts, we would quickly seek to appropriate Him to our own advantage and make Him over into the image of our own distorted characters. It is when we turn our eyes away from the attractions of power, wealth and brilliance that we begin to detect His presence in weakness. It is when our eyes are turned away from ourselves, that we begin to see glimpses of Him everywhere. Science is not inherently opposed to God, it is just a different source of knowledge about the universe, one well designed for its purpose, but not well-designed to detect His "still, small voice."

The Apparent Miracle III

2011-07-12T02:04:58Z

This blog is the third in a series. To make full sense of it you need to go back and read the two previous blogs first. I am reviewing a chapter of the book The Grand Design, by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. Although Hawking does not profess to be a believer, toward the end of the book (in a chapter entitled "The Apparent Miracle") he gives the most brilliant defense of the anthropic principle I have ever encountered. The anthropic principle has been used by the intelligent design crowd as evidence that the universe is uniquely fine-tuned for human existence, and therefore designed by a higher power.

In the first of these three blogs I have summarized Hawking’s argument that the earth’s position in the universe is finely-tuned for life as we know it. If the earth orbited more than one sun, if that sun were slightly larger or smaller, if the earth’s orbit were slightly more oval in shape than it is, if the earth were slightly closer or further from the sun, life as we know it could not exist. As impressive as this argument is, the weak anthropic principle is explainable as chance in that there are multiplied billions of stars, many with planets. So the chance that just one of them might be "just right" for life as we know it seems a reasonable proposition.

In the second blog Hawking unpacks the "strong" anthropic principle, which demonstrates the idea that the entire universe is finely-tuned for human habitation. The very laws of nature have to be exactly the way they are (out of an almost infinite variety of possibilities) for even carbon to exist. There is a whole chain of improbable sequence necessary, grounded in laws that could easily have been different, for life to appear in exactly this place at exactly this time. Take almost any law in the universe, modify it even slightly, and the universe would be a very different place. Building on Aristotle and the biblical accounts of creation, Aquinas argued that the order in nature points to the existence of a Designer who created and sustains the universe in exactly the form that we experience it. The much, more recent work of cosmologists provides evidence for design that is far more overwhelming than anything Aquinas could have known.

How is it, then, that Hawking still does not believe? Because, in his words, science now knows what Aquinas didn’t. The earth is not the center of the universe, it holds no privileged place. It is an average planet, toward the edge of an average galaxy. But at the same time the cosmological evidences for design of the whole are far more impressive than anything Aquinas knew. So what is Hawking’s answer to the problem of the strong anthropic principle? Building on the observation that countless galaxies, stars, and planets would eventually result in one just like earth, Hawking concludes that our universe must be one of a countless number and variety of universes, each with different laws and different outcomes. Ours appears finely-tuned simply because it happened to be the way it is. It is the outcome of an almost infinite rolling of the dice. Our observable universe is only one of many, just as our solar system is only one of many. If the present makeup of the universe is the outcome of one chance in 10⁵⁰⁰, then there must be 10⁵⁰⁰ number of universes. To quote Hawking, "In the same way that the environmental coincidences of the solar system were rendered unremarkable by the realization that billions of such systems exist, the fine-tunings in the laws of nature can be explained by the existence of multiple universes." The multiverse concept explains the fine-tuning of natural law without the need for a benevolent creator who made the universe for our benefit.

The multiverse theory is grounded on a variety of theories of modern cosmology, theories that arose before the strong anthropic principle was discovered, so it is not invented out of whole cloth. But the reality is that we are in no position as human beings to explore these other supposed universes and verify the truth of these things. We cannot apply scientific method to any alternate universe, much less all of them. The multiverse theory is in the end an educated guess, but can never be compelling in the way that observable natural law is.

I find the following quote from the Chief Rabbi of England, Lord Sachs, helpful: "There is a difference between science and religion. Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation. Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean. They are different intellectual enterprises." We don’t have to accept Hawking’s conclusion that we have to choose between God and the laws of physics, as if they were necessarily in conflict. Laws of physics do not create anything, they are merely a description of what happens under certain conditions. According to Oxford mathematician John Lennox, "What Hawking appears to have done is to confuse law with agency. His call on us to choose between God and physics is a bit like someone demanding that we choose between aeronautical engineer Sir Frank Whittle and the laws of physics to explain the jet engine. The laws of physics explain how a jet engine works, they cannot build one of themselves."

So in the end it comes back to what you will put faith in. If you put your faith in scientific theories that cannot prove or disprove the existence of other universes or even of God Himself, you have chosen your standpoint in the philosophical universe. If, on the other hand, you put your faith in the Bible as evidence of a Designer God, who not only fine-tuned the earth and the universe as we experience it, but was active in human experience, you have taken a different standpoint. If, furthermore, that God has left footprints in your own life and experience that cohere with the evidence of Scripture, you will probably have less faith in a multiverse explanation for life as we know it and more faith that there is a God who not only designed and sustains this universe, but leaves traces of His presence. "Faith. . . is the evidence of things we do not see." (Heb 11:1)

For the non-scientific believer, like me, the anthropic principle is certainly evidence that science not only cannot disprove the existence of God, at times it almost seems to require it. For the scientific believer, I realize things are more complex than I am capable of sharing here, but one can still hold onto faith, knowing that it opens us to evidence that science can neither demonstrate nor disprove. Faith and certainty do not have to be the same thing. When it comes to matters of science and religion, both believers and unbelievers need a good dose of humility.

Whether you believe or not, you can still be interested in the discoveries of science. Either way you can contribute to theories and experimentation. A great scientist, believer or not, is compelled by evidence rather than pre-conceived theories. But where the evidence falls short of proof, faith takes over and provides the meaning that science cannot provide. There I stand. To quote Lennox again: "Much of the rationale behind Hawking's argument lies in the idea that there is a deep-seated conflict between science and religion. But this is not a discord I recognise (sic). For me, as a Christian believer, the beauty of the scientific laws only reinforces my faith in an intelligent, divine creative force at work. The more I understand science, the more I believe in God because of my wonder at the breadth, sophistication and integrity of his creation."

Thank you, Stephen Hawking, along with your co-writer Leonard Mlodinow. I appreciate your refreshing honesty and subtle humor. I appreciate your willingness to introduce the complexities of quantum mechanics and cosmology in language a non-scientist can understand. And I pray that you will leave yourself open to detect the evidence of God’s footprints in your life.

The Apparent Miracle II

2011-07-04T15:41:49Z

In the previous blog we talked about the "environmental coincidences" that make life possible on this earth. Isaac Newton attributed those "coincidences" to the work of God and Stephen Hawking suggests that they were an accident of nature. Ours is only one cosmic habitat out of many that exist in the universe and we obviously must exist in a habitat that just happens to support life as we know it.

But Hawking acknowledges that there is a much stronger form of the anthropic principle. It is not only the location of earth in the universe that is "just right" for human existence, but the very laws of nature themselves happen to be "just right" for human existence as well. (I should note that other cosmologists, such as John Barrow and Frank Tipler, define the weak and strong anthropic principles a little differently than Hawking, but I am following Hawking’s approach) In other words, the entire universe has to be just the way it is for life to exist on our planet. In much of what follows, most readers will need a bit of faith that these things are so, since I am over-simplifying some very complex but exciting concepts. But the concepts are based on Hawking’s work and he is as familiar with these concepts as anyone on earth.

In order to produce life as we know it, the forces of nature had to be such that heavier elements, especially carbon, could be produced from more basic elements and remain stable for billions of years. These heavier elements were formed in the furnaces we call stars, so stars and galaxies had to be there for carbon to form. Stars can only exist if matter is not uniformly spread around the universe, but varies in density. Not only so, the stars that form have to then explode in precisely a manner to disburse the heavier elements throughout space. Then these heavier elements needed to recondense into a new generation of stars surrounded by planets incorporating the newly formed heavy elements. Just as certain events on earth had to occur for life to develop, so every link of this universal chain is necessary for our existence. But for this chain to occur, the fundamental laws of nature had to be "just right."

Hawking goes on to affirm that life as we know it would be extremely doubtful in the absence of carbon. Carbon bonds with other elements in a unique way that is essential for life as we know it. For example, carbon dioxide is very useful for life, but its closest chemical relative, silicon dioxide, is quartz, not particularly breathable. Carbon is formed inside stars from the collisions of three helium nuclei and only because of a special characteristic of the laws of nuclear physics. If the laws by which the elements of the universe interact deviated by just a few percent, it would destroy either all the carbon or all the oxygen in every star and thus the possibility of life. In other words, change the natural laws of our universe just a bit and the conditions for our existence disappear. In the words of Fred Hoyle, "I do not believe that any scientist who examined the evidence would fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed (emphasis mine) with regard to the consequences they produce inside the stars."

The above has now proven to be a general principle. Take almost any law of the universe, alter it by only a modest amount, and the universe would be very different and likely unsuitable for life. If protons were less than one percent heavier, they would decay into neutrons, destabilizing atoms. If the makeup of the quarks in a proton were changed by as little as ten percent, few atomic nuclei would be stable, and stable nuclei are an essential element of life.

For stable, elliptical planetary orbits to exist, the universe has to function in three dimensions. In any but three dimensions the pull of other planets would send a planet off its orbit either into or away from its sun. In more than three dimensions, the sun would either break apart or collapse into a black hole, "either of which would ruin your day." (The book is really hilarious at times) Similar problems would occur in the case of atoms, causing them to self-destruct. To quote Hawking, "The laws of nature form a system that is extremely fine-tuned, and very little in physical law can be altered without destroying the possibility of the development of life as we know it."

But there is an "environmental coincidence" even more impressive than this, which leaves Hawking "almost persuaded" to believe in a Designer. It relates to Einstein’s "cosmological constant" of general relativity. Since all matter attracts other matter, Einstein proposed an anti-gravity force to combat the tendency of the universe to collapse onto itself. The cosmological constant describes the strength of that force. Scientists now believe the universe is expanding from an original "Big Bang," so for a time the cosmological constant was discarded. However, it was recently discovered that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, which means Einstein’s repulsive force does exist after all. Here’s the point. If the cosmological constant were much larger than it is, the universe would have blown itself apart long before galaxies could form, and life as we know it would be impossible.

This "strong anthropic principle" seems more than coincidental, even to Hawking. It is a "different kind of luck" than the environmental factors of the weak anthropic principle described in the previous blog. It cannot be easily explained and has deep philosophical implications. To use Hawking’s own words, "Our universe and its laws appear to have a design that both is tailor-made to support us and, if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration. That is not easily explained, and raises the natural question of why it is that way." To put it another way, the chance that life as we know it would come to exist in the universe by pure chance is about one in 10⁵⁰⁰ For all practical purposes, that is impossible.

Why is it, then, that Hawking still does not believe in a Designer? Why does he still believe that our universe is the product of luck or chance? I will deal with that in the final blog of this series and also share my own reaction.