No one comes to the Father but by me...

I am the way , and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

There are, I suppose, a variety of possible candidates, but today I submit John 14:6 as the single most blatantly misquoted saying from Jesus' entire ministry.  Lifted completely out of context, Jesus' statement is usually presented as "Exhibit A" for Jesus' establishment of the exclusive religion of Christianity as the sole route out of hell...and the reason everyone who doesn't acknowledge the speaker's version of orthodoxy is clearly hellbound.

Someone once said "a text out of context is merely a pretext," and nowhere does this statement apply more forcefully than to John 14:6.  The context is a long heart-to-heart that Jesus had with his disciples at the Last Supper (see the beginning of John 13), on the subject of his impending crucifixion.  This particular discourse actually begins at John 13:31 and continues unbroken through chapter 17.  In it, Jesus is talking about his death and encouraging his disciples to stay strong, faithful, and together through the trials that are coming.  His disciples aren't exactly tracking with his message, though...at least not at the beginning of chapter 14.  Having just told the disciples he's going to prepare a place for them, Jesus reminds them that they know where he's going and how to get there (John 14:3-4).  Thomas, not so much "the doubter" as the guy who's willing to admit his lack of clue, blurts out that he has absolutely no idea what Jesus is talking about:  "Lord, we haven't a clue where you're going, how could we possibly know the way?"  It is in response to Thomas' spoken (and, I supect, the others' unspoken) question that Jesus states "I AM the way..."

Jesus did NOT say "I am starting a new religion with you guys, and this religion is the only way to avoid hell."  Hell's not even part of the discussion.  Nor did Jesus say "no one can be saved unless he thinks in his mind that I am the son of God and I am dying for his sins."  No, Jesus says "I AM the way" directly in the context of his having just told his disciples "you know the way."  The life they have lived with Jesus during the past three-plus years of his earthly ministry, the jobs he has set them to do, the miracles they have witnessed, the teaching they have absorbed; all these things wrapped together have taught them "the way" to the Father, which is the person of Jesus himself.  When Jesus goes on in John 14:11-14 to encourage the disciples to believe that the Father is in him, even this is not for "salvation" the way we think of it...it's so they can do what they've seen him do and more, "so that the Father may be glorified in the Son."

Jesus' words in John 14 (really, all the way through John 17) were spoken not as a warning to unbelievers, but as a comfort to those who already believe!

When Christians loudly proclaim "no man cometh to the Father but by me," they are not talking about following Jesus.  They're not talking about obeying Jesus.  They're certainly not talking about staying faithful under hardship and persecution.  No, they're talking about how wrong Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Liberal Christians, Humanists, and sundry other "infidels" are.  They're usually talking about their certainty that all of the above are destined to burn forever in hell.  (For a current example, take a look at the discussion on my friend Kurt's blog today!)

The gospel of Jesus Christ claims things about him that are true of no one else.  Nobody else is Jesus, and no other teaching holds the stunning uniqueness of the One who rose from the dead.   I am not advocating for the feel-good universalist straw man so often the target of the self-righteous quoters of John 14:6.  But to properly frame those places where Jesus' words confront society, or other faiths, or the Christian church, we have got to start by representing Jesus' own words faithfully.  Using John 14:6 to club "unbelievers" and universalists over the head is categorically NOT faithful to Jesus' message.

Every Christian ought to be a muslim (but not the way you think)!

OK, take a deep breath.  Trust me when I say I'm not asking anybody to throw away their Bible and start planning their pilgrimage to Mecca.  I am, however, going to attack some truly damaging language that I hear from many of my fellow Christians on the subject of Islam...language that I maintain is neither edifying nor honoring to God, and actually flat-out wrong.  There are many issues that need to be addressed in Christian attitudes toward Muslims (and, I'm sure, vice-versa), but one of the first we need to face is our sloppy language.

So I repeat my title statement:  Every Christian ought to be a muslim.  Note, first of all, that I used a lower-case "m" in the word "muslim."  I am not suggesting that any follower of Jesus should change faiths.  In fact, I hope it's clear to any reader of my blog that I wish for more, not fewer, people to follow Jesus.  But while capital M "Muslim" is the name for a follower of the organized religion of Islam, lower-case m "muslim" means simply "one who submits;"  by implication, one who submits to God.

I don't speak Arabic.  I do, however, speak Swahili, which has significant Arabic roots, and while I'm going to explain in terms of the language I actually know, friends of mine who do speak Arabic have confirmed the truth of what I'm about to say.  In Swahili and in Arabic, if you take a verb and put either an "m" or "mu" prefix onto the front of it, the resulting word is a noun that means "a person or creature who does that verb."  So for example, the Swahili word "kuzunguka" means "to spin or turn around," so "mzungu"  means "one who spins around" (which hilariously is the term Africans coined to describe white Europeans and Americans).  In Arabic, the word "islam" simply means "submission."  A "muslim" is just a person who does "islam," that is, a person who submits.

Islam is, of course, not the only faith that calls its followers to submit to God.  In the Jewish and Christian scriptures, the original temptation and sin of Adam was not the fact of eating the forbidden fruit, it was the desire to "...be like God, knowing good and evil." (Gen. 3:5)  In deliberate contrast to the human desire to usurp God's position in Genesis, followers of Jesus are exhorted to "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped" (Phil. 2:5-6).  Jesus' example is further illuminated in Phil. 2:8 to be his humility and obedience even "unto death on a cross."  Jesus is our ultimate example of submission, "islam," to God.

Of course, the objection many Christians will immediately raise leads me to my second point of language:  submission to WHICH God?  While this may be a hard truth for some to grasp, the answer is "the God of Abraham, Jesus, and Mohammad." 

Time for another deep breath, folks.  Please note that I have not said that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are all equal, identical, one religion, or anything of the sort.  There are plenty of places where Jews, Christians, and Muslims disagree, and some of them are highly significant.  But Christians have got to get off their pigheaded high horse (dare I mix animal metaphors?) and face the reality that, whatever other important differences exist, the God of Islam is NOT a different God than that of Christians and Jews.  He is the God of Abraham; among his names are Elohim, YHWH, Father, and Allah.  Do you notice that "Elohim" (a plural of "El") and "Allah" actually have a similar sound?  There is a reason for that...both Hebrew and Arabic are Semitic languages; that is, they come from a common ancient root.  The names "El" and "Allah" are the same.  Furthermore, Arabic-speaking Christians (at least those who haven't been corrupted by fundamentalist American ideologues) have been using the name "Allah" to refer to the Father for many centuries.  When Christians in America make the claim (and I heard this in a church as recently as a month ago) that "Allah is an idol and a false God," they are at best displaying breathtaking ignorance, and at worst blaspheming the very God they claim to worship.

Many Christians will raise the objection at this point "well, Muslims say Allah is not the Father of Jesus, so he must be a false god."  Funny thing about that claim, it doesn't seem to apply to Jews, who also do not believe that God is Jesus' father (unless they're what we call "Messianic Jews").  If that criterion renders Islam a false religion, it must do the same for Judaism.  You can't have it both ways...and yet the most conservative Christians do not doubt that Israel in particular and Jews in general are still God's special, chosen people.  That's another discussion, and not for this time, but for now, accepting the deity of Christ cannot be a criterion for otherwise worshiping the "right" God unless the same criterion is applied equally to both of the other Abrahamic faiths.

There is much more to say with regard to Muslim-Christian relations, and I expect some day to take on more of it.  But at the very least, let us please acknowledge that Allah is the God we Christians also worship, and may we all strive to be small-m "muslims" to Him.

Peace/Shalom/Salaam!

Tempted as we are?

A study group I've been meeting with has been asked to memorize Hebrews 4:14-16, and it's dug up an old, nagging irritation for me.  The writer of Hebrews states that our High Priest, Jesus, "in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin."  I'll come right to the point:  at least as that sentence reads in English, I cannot accept it as true (please read to the end of this post before freaking!).

I accept the teaching of scripture that Jesus lived a sinless life.  There are many witnesses to back up this claim, and frankly no serious evidence to challenge it.  But I am unable to reconcile the notion of a sinless life with the Hebrew writer's claim that Jesus was tempted in every way as we are.  There are too many ways in which "missing the mark" (ἁμαρτία, "hamartia") in one area is simply not a temptation unless one has well and truly screwed it up in a related way already.  No one can be tempted to theft, who is not already guilty of covetousness.  No one is tempted to adultery or sexual misconduct, who is not already guilty of lust.

One might attempt to parse the desire from the deed, and say that only the latter is sin.  To do so would be downright comforting, and frankly, to some extent I think most of us believe it (and those who don't, are likely burdened with massive guilt or depression).  Unfortunately, Jesus himself demolished this particular rationale pretty decisively in Matt. 5:27-28.  And if looking lustfully at a woman not one's wife is adultery, then the vast majority of straight men I've ever known, are adulterers (I do not therefore suggest we should just give up and do the deed).  And if, by his own definition, Jesus wasn't guilty of mental adultery, than he certainly wasn't tempted in all respects as we ordinary males are.

OK, so what do we do with this apparent contradiction?  I see three possibilities:

1)  The writer of Hebrews may be wrong.  The notion of Jesus' sinlessness is indispensable to a substionary atonement doctrine, but it's also pretty important in any understanding of the incarnation.  But the idea that he was tempted just as we, though it could be a comfort, is not so central.  Maybe in his quest for an appropriate simile the Hebrew author went overboard and misrepresented Jesus' earthly experience.

2) The Hebrew writer could be right, with the proviso that he was talking about Jesus' actions, not what might have gone on in his head--that is, for example, Jesus may have gotten an eyeful of a pretty girl as much as any guy, but never given in to that temptation by making an advance (or worse) on her.  This is more palatable, for sure, but in order to swallow this interpretation, we are then stuck with Jesus' own statements referenced above.  Although Jesus' standard is the harder one to handle, it IS the words of Jesus over against those of the author of Hebrews, and if I have to choose which to accept, Jesus' own words have to take precedence.

Either of these two options slam squarely into the notion of Biblical inspiration.  Readers of this blog already know I do not accept a flat-book dogma of verbal inspiration, but many Christians hold this teaching dear.  Is this one of those cases where God deliberately put a paradox in place to test whether we'd trust him over the brains he gave us?  (for the record, I don't believe God plays this sort of "belief trick," but some folks seem to give the idea credence--think young-earth creation vs. the fossil record).

3) There is, of course, a third option.  We could take a look at what "temptation" actually means.  The usual working definition of "enticement or desire to sin" may be our real problem here, and actually, I think this is the case.  According to Young's Analytical Concordance, the original word here (πειράζω, peirazw) occurs in some form about 38 times in the New Testament.  Twenty-eight of those times it's translated "tempt" or "temptation" in the King James version (I don't have statistics for other versions), but in several others it's translated something like "test" or "prove."  It's actually easier to understand if we think of the old English metallurgist's concept of "trying" an ore; that is, applying heat to it in order to see how much gold comes out.  This idea of "trying" can be described as applying difficulty in order to reveal the content, or character, or purity of a substance.  It's no leap of logic to go from assaying an ore ("assay" is another way peirazw can be translated), to assaying human character, and in fact that's what is often meant.

For example, the same word peirazw is used in John 6:6, where Jesus suggested to Phillip that he procure bread to feed the five thousand.  John tells us he did this to "try" Phillip...Jesus already knew what he intended to do.  2 Corinthians 13:5 is another example, where Paul exhorts believers to "examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith."  The word translated "examine" is the same word as the one in Hebrews 4!  I hope no one thinks Paul is suggesting that it's healthy to put ourselves in a position where we could be induced to sin, just to see how strong our faith is!

To wrap it up, then, the Hebrew writer is not suggesting that Jesus had the same problems of temptation humans wrestle with to varying degrees.  What he is saying is that Jesus understands the tests and discouragements of life, because he went through them too.  This is why the first half of the same verse states that we "...do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin (NRSV)."  Change "without sin" to "without failing the test" and we're probably closer to the actual meaning of the text.  Or as my Mom put it last year, "he didn't flunk!"

This, of course, fits nicely with Philippians 2:5-11.  It was because Jesus remained faithful--obedient--to death, that God has highly exalted him.  The glory follows the passing of the test...and that's why he's now our High Priest.  This, I have no trouble believing.

If Spirit = Breath, what of Theopneustos?

Those who know me well may have seen this coming...but now that we've looked at the Holy Spirit, not as a "being" but as the Wind/Breath of God (see this post if you haven't already read it), it's time to take another look at an old friend.  I refer, of course, to θεόπνευστος ("theopneustos") from 2 Tim. 3:16.  Those who already know Greek will know, and the perceptive among the rest of you may notice, that this is a compound of θεός ("theos," god--not necessarily the Christian one) and a form of πνεῦμα ("pneuma", wind or breath or spirit as previously discussed).

The usual translation of θεόπνευστος, as nearly everybody knows, is "inspired" or "God-breathed," and is the source of the common notion that what Paul was saying to Timothy was that the scriptural canon was breathed out by God...that is, that God is the source of "all scripture" (I've previously argued--1 & 2--that this statement cannot legitimately be read as an imprimatur on the entirety of our current canon).  Unfortunately, it appears that Paul coined a word that has no antecedent in classical Greek literature and only occurs once in the entire biblical text.  We are therefore stuck with the task of deducing what he meant by taking the word apart into its constituent parts, and one possibility (of course) is that the translators are right, that equivalents of "breathed out by God" are in fact correct and that Paul is saying that those scriptures which "are able to make you wise unto salvation" (v. 17) actually come from God.

But what if θεόπνευστος is not "breathed out," but rather "breathed upon" or "breathed into?"  Might Paul be suggesting that the written words, lifeless in and of themselves, become profitable--even powerful--when they are infused with the life-giving Breath of the Father?  Perhaps it's not an issue of writings being "inspired" at all, but rather what happens when these writings become "in-spirited" in the context of believers individually and collectively seeking God through them.  It stands to reason that any writing, whether by the canonical authors, by modern believers, or even by secular writers, becomes highly profitable if and when it's enlivened by the Breath of Life.

This is not to suggest that God is not the actual source of any of the biblical writings.  2 Pet. 2:20-21 is one good example of how God clearly and specifically moved prophets to write and speak specific words to his people.  Our task as believers is to discern those words--and the spirit within them--and to pray that God will yet again breathe upon us as we seek to be equipped for his work.

The Holy Spirit - Part 2: When and Where?

In my last post I took issue with common Christian creeds' trinitarian characterization of the Holy Spirit.  This time I'm going to take a look at another element of common Evangelical statements of faith: the claim that the Holy Spirit "indwells every believer."  This teaching makes the claim that the Holy Spirit is bestowed upon everyone who "believes in Christ" (a phrase fraught with its own baggage), and essentially dwells in the believer for life.

As with most required doctrines, this one doesn't stand up well to comparison with what scripture actually says.  Let's start with the most obvious evidence, two historical accounts in Acts.  Acts 8:14-17 relates how Peter and John were sent to Samaria, to a group who had believed in Jesus, who were even "baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus," but who did not receive the Holy Spirit until the prayer of Peter and John.  The second account is Acts 19:1-7, in which a group of "disciples" had already received the baptism of John (and given the use of the term "disciples," one would believe already accepted the message of Jesus' lordship), but who had not even heard of the Holy Spirit, which was given to them when Paul laid his hands on them after baptism.  The evidence is pretty straightforward: unless we accept a dispensational interpretation nowhere supported in the New Testament, it is possible both to believe in Jesus and to be baptised in his name, and yet not have received the Holy Spirit.

The second part of this doctrine is the implicit notion that whatever receiving the Holy Spirit means, it's a once-and-done event.  Here, too, the scriptural evidence would suggest otherwise.  There are, of course, numerous accounts in the Old Testament (particularly the books of Samuel and Kings) where the Spirit of God seems to come and go from the same individuals...usually kings or minor prophets.  But even in Acts, it is interesting to note that the same people are shown to have been "filled with the Holy Spirit" at least twice:  see Acts 2:4 and Acts 4:31.  Furthermore, we learn in Acts 6:3-5 that a condition for selecting the men to serve as the first deacons (this is when Stephen was ordained), was that these be men "full of the Spirit."   This requirement is nonsensical, unless there is either (1) such a thing as a believer who has not received the Spirit at all, or (2) at least varying degrees of "filledness" with the Holy Spirit.

Perhaps as intriguing as anything, though, is Paul's statement in 1 Cor. 7:40 that, in relation to a command he's just given, "I think I, too, have the Spirit of God."  This claim truly makes no sense if every believer is always-and-forever indwelt by the Spirit.

The principal reason I believe this error matters, is that it allows us to cop out of a major self-examination desperately needed by both individual believers and the church as a body.  Here's what I mean:  throughout the Bible, when the Breath of God moves in and through an individual or a group, something big happens--and by "big" I do not mean people get teary-eyed or feel a major case of the warm fuzzies.  Countless times, it results in the individual prophesying (Num. 11:25, 1 Sam. 10:10, 1 Sam. 19:20, Luke 1:67, Acts 19:6).  It can result in people speaking in languages other than their own (Acts 2:4, Acts 10:46).  It can also result in superhuman strength (Judges 15:14) or even physical transportation (Acts 8:39).  The Spirit of God doesn't always make a splash; Isaiah 11:2 refers to the overall anointing of Messiah's life (though when this actually happened (Luke 3:22 and parallels) it was certainly obvious enough.

An interesting aside here--if the conventional notion of the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ being persons of the Trinity were true, why does scripture report the Holy Spirit coming on Jesus, not only in Luke 3:22, but also his self-proclamation in Luke 4:18-19?  How can one "person" of a "godhead" receive another "person?"

Anyhow, my point here is, what is the evidence of the Breath of God blowing through our churches today?  It is my stubborn belief that, if God's mighty wind were to blow in our midst, we wouldn't have to do mental gymnastics to believe it, we'd have the evidence smacking us in the face!  And if, as I regretfully suspect, those who lead the Body of Christ have so thoroughly quenched the spirit that God has taken his action elsewhere, what are we--what are you--what am I--going to do about it?

The Holy Spirit - Breath of God

I approach this subject with a bit more caution than some of my posts, because I know it's going to be particularly sensitive to some readers...enough so, in fact, that a couple caveats are necessary at the outset.  First and foremost, while in the next couple posts I'm going to challenge a number of commonly-held teachings about the Holy Spirit, I am NOT denying either (1) that the Holy Spirit is real, or (2) that the Holy Spirit comes from God the Father.  I acknowledge Jesus' warning in Matt. 12:31, paralleled in Mark 3:29 and Luke 12:10, that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is unforgivable; however, the context in Matthew and Mark makes it clear that what Jesus was talking about here was an accusation that the work he was doing through the Spirit of God, was actually of the devil.  This is not what I am saying, nor should it so be taken.

With the caveats properly stated, though, I will come to the first point.  Christian doctrine has held since the very early days, that the Holy Spirit is a "hypostasis" or "person" of a triune godhead.  I have previously suggested that the notion of the Trinity doesn't square well with the way Jesus represented himself and his relationship to the Father; now here I will add that the Spirit of God as described in the Gospels and Acts, also doesn't lend itself well to the Trinitarian definition.  I just took a look at every occurrence of the word in all four Gospels plus Acts, and while the Spirit is heavily in evidence throughout all five accounts, the sense of the word seems to me far more like an amorphous presence than a distinct entity, and nowhere in all five books is there any claim that God's Spirit (which is clearly bestowed upon others from time to time, and which clearly influences events) is actually a form or being of God himself (though it unquestionably comes from God).

The word in Greek which is translated "Spirit" as in "Holy Spirit" is nothing more than the word πνεῦμα (pneuma).  This same word is also translated as "ghost," "breath," and "wind" in various places and by various translators.  Sometimes it's linked to the word "holy," and other times it stands by itself.  But by separating the concept of "breath/wind" from the concept of "spirit," English Bible translators have created a divided concept which fits well with standard creeds, but masks a much less clear-cut concept in the actual text.  Perhaps the most intriguing passage I found to illustrate this point was John 3:8, which says:

"The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."

Both the word "wind" in the beginning of the verse, and "Spirit" at the end, are the exact same word in Greek.  We may think "the Spirit blows where it wishes" or "everyone born of the wind" make no sense, but that has more to do with the doctrines we've built around the Holy Spirit than it does with solid translation.  If we were to allow the original language to speak for itself, the metaphor of the "breath of God" actually pervades the Bible all the way from Genesis on.  In the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures done about 200 years before Jesus, the spirit of God moving over the face of the waters is a form of the same Greek word (the wind of God moving over the waters...think about it), and even more beautifully, when in Genesis 2, God breaths into man the breath of life, it's also the same word--actually the Greek synonym πνοὴν (pnoe). 

This latter parallels spectacularly with Jesus' breathing on the disciples and saying "receive the Holy Spirit (breath)" in John 20:22.  Just as the breath of God is what made man "a living soul" in Genesis 2, so the breath of Jesus made man a living soul in the New Creation of the resurrected Christ.

So why am I saying this?  Do I really care whether we use the term "Holy Spirit" or the maybe more-poetic term "Breath of God" to refer to the influencing presence God sometimes bestows on his people?  Well yes, I do, but not as a matter of semantics.  I'll get into how the coming of the Holy Breath is actually described in scripture, next time.  But for now, I care because the doctrinal statements to which Evangelicals are often expected to subscribe, include assent to an explicit and detailed doctrine of the Trinity.  Nothing new here...the old creeds have been demanding as much since at least the third or fourth century, though interestingly, the Apostles' Creed only states "I believe in the Holy Spirit," without any details of just what that belief must entail.  Nevertheless, I'm afraid this is another area where our Christian authorities' obsession with lists of things one must think in order not to be damned, has overtaken the simple message of the Gospel.  The expectation of the church is that we think and speak and teach a certain way.  The expectation of Jesus was, and is, that we live a certain way, influenced by the wind of his Father blowing through us.

Confronting homelessness in person

Just wanted to highlight the work of a local Atlanta man who's chosen to spend a month homeless to highlight the homelessness situation around here.  Elijah Montgomery has temporarily abandoned his comfortable job and digs, in an attempt to raise money for a coffee house he wants to start, at which he will hire homeless kids to work.

You can read about his effort on 11alive.com, or even better read his own thoughts at his blog, The Waiverly Projects.  I encourage you to visit, comment, and if possible, donate!