Archives - Redeeming God

Most Christians believe that the death of Jesus on the cross was a good thing. That it was a good event. That it was where our sins were taken care of and salvation was accomplished for our sakes.

But we Christians only say this because we have been blinded to the truth. We have become so familiar with the story that we do not see the crucifixion of Jesus for the evil thing it really was.

The Crucifixion of Jesus was Evil

Forget for a moment that it was Jesus who died on the cross. Let’s just say it was some random guy named Josh.

Josh was a great guy with some good friends. He never harmed anyone, but went about helping others in any way he could. He became somewhat popular among the crowds as a result, and certain religious leaders became nervous about some of the things he was saying, so they got the local government to arrest Josh. One of Josh’s friends even sold him out for money. Others, who didn’t even know Josh, brought false charges against him. He was eventually condemned to death as a traitor. But before the government killed Josh, they tortured him in front of a blood-thirsty mob.

Now…

What is good about Josh being betrayed by his best friends?

What is good about false accusations being raised by religious leaders against a man whom they see as a threat to their power?

What is good about corrupt politicians bowing to the whim of a violent mob?

What is good about soldiers “just doing their job” as they whip and beat a man within an inch of his life before gambling over his clothes?

What is good about sending an innocent man named Josh to a torturous death on a cross?

If anything remotely like this were to happen in our society today, there would be international shock and outrage. It is a terrible, evil thing.

But when we see this happening to a man named Jesus in our Bible, and because we know that Jesus is God, we Christians don’t even bat an eye at it. Instead, we sing songs and listen to sermons about it with smiles on our faces.

Worst of all, we thank God for doing it.

Many strands of Christianity believe that it was God’s plan to send His one and only Son to this earth to die a gruesome death as an innocent victim, and that it was not only God’s plan to do so, but that He orchestrated events to make it happen.

This sort of makes God like Freddy Krueger, except that He carves up His own Son.

God is not Freddy Krueger

It is past time to change this view of the crucifixion.

The crucifixion of Jesus was not a good event. It was an evil event.

And we will never, ever see the real truth of the crucifixion until we first recognize that it was not a good thing.

The crucifixion of Jesus was evil. It was horribly wrong.

And considering that Jesus was truly innocent, and was also God incarnate, the crucifixion is, without a doubt, by far the most evil event ever carried out in the history of all humanity.

God Has Redeemed the Crucifixion of Jesus

I know that you are probably shocked by what I have written so far in this post. You are so accustomed to hearing about the wonderful cross, the glorious cross, and how thankful we should be to God for sending His Son to die for our sins, that it is an affront to your theology to hear someone say that the crucifixion was evil.

But the only reason we say good things about the cross today is because God has redeemed the cross.

Through the resurrection of Jesus, God took something bad, and turned it around for good.

God has redeemed the crucifixion so that we now sing songs about it and listen to sermons about the horrible death of an innocent victim with smiles on our faces. But this doesn’t make the crucifixion “good.” It only reveals God’s ability to redeem anything and everything.

In a recent podcast on Genesis 1:4 I talk briefly about how God redeems the darkness. The crucifixion is the perfect example of this. God takes the most evil event in human history, and He redeems it in such a way so that most people today do not even think of it as evil, but as the most holy and righteous event in human history.

Isn’t that shocking?

This is the beginning place of theology. This is the starting block.

Our Theology Must Begin and End at the Cross

To understand God, Scripture, ourselves, other people, human history, and everything else, we must begin at the cross, and we must see it as evil.

But then, we must see what God does with the cross in Jesus Christ, and how God reveals Himself to us in the crucifixion of Jesus, and more importantly, how God reveals us to ourselves in the crucifixion of Jesus.

There is so much I want to say about this, and so much I will say in future blog posts, books, and podcasts, but for now I just want to invite you to begin seeing the cross of Jesus as something bad that happened, rather than something good. It is only here that you will begin to understand the true nature, meaning, and significance of the cross, not just for our understanding of God, but also for our understanding of Scripture, and most importantly, our understanding of ourselves.

Note: If you want to read more about this idea of the cross being a bad thing that has been redeemed by God for the good, I highly recommend Saved from Sacrifice by S. Mark Heim. This book is easily one of the best books I have read in the last decade.

If you believe in God, life makes more sense

By Jeremy Myers

9 Comments

Sometimes I get asked why I believe in God.

In the past, I used to say that I found it harder to not believe in the existence of God than to believe in His existence.

To put this another way, I found it easier to believe that everything came from God than to believe that everything came from nothing.

And yet … let’s be honest … saying that “everything came from God” only pushes the logical causality of everything further back one step. If I have trouble believing that everything came from nothing, and so say that everything came from God, the question is then, “Well then, where did God come from?” The Christian answer is that He didn’t come from anything; He just always was.

So really, the choice is between believing that everything came from nothing, or believing that God has always existed. Neither choice is easily understood or comprehended by the human mind. However, even with these two options, I still prefer to believe in the existence of God, for at least with God, there is the recognition of a mystery that cannot be understood by human finite minds, whereas without God, the idea that something came from nothing is just pure nonsense.

But recently I have come to realize something different.

I don’t necessarily believe in God because I can prove the existence of God.

No, I believe in God because through this belief, the world makes more sense.

Belief in the existence of God is the organizing principle of everything. Without a belief in the existence of God, everything is simply random meaninglessness. But with a belief in the existence of God, many of the dilemmas and confusing things of life suddenly make sense.

C. S. Lewis once said something like “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” I mentioned this in my recent podcast on Genesis 1:4.

As usual, C. S. Lewis is right on target.

Believing in God is like believing in light.

While light can be seen, you only really see light itself when it shines directly into your eye, like when someone shines a flashlight into your eye, or when you look at a light bulb or the sun. But you don’t need to have a light shown into your eye to know that a room has light. You know that a room has light because you can see the room. When you look at the walls of a room, and the items that are in the room, you are not seeing light, but are seeing things by the light. When light hits something, it allows you to see that thing. It diffuses, scatters, or reflects.

When we look at things and see them, we can know that the light is on them, not because we see the light, but because, by the light we can see.

As I have come to see the world through the light of Jesus Christ, the crucified God, this crucivision lens has helped me understand life, Scripture, and theology more clearly, and it has helped me grow in love for others more deeply.

So also with the existence of God. Believing in the existence of God helps us see ourselves, other people, this world, and our purpose more clearly.

Of course, you have to believe in God as He is revealed in Jesus Christ, or else you may end up believing in a god that acts like Hitler, and seeing the world through that lens will not be helpful for anybody. But that’s a subject for a future time.

Do you believe in the existence of God? Why? Do you think that this belief helps you understand life and live your life better than if you didn’t believe in God?

[#07] Genesis 1:9 – Let the Waters Be Gathered Together

By Jeremy Myers

1 Comment

Have you ever realized that in Genesis 1, God doesn’t actually create dry ground? Instead, He simply pushes back the waters so that the dry ground appears.

Have you ever tried to push back water so that you create a little space of dry ground in the midst of the water? It’s pretty much impossible, isn’t it? Yet we see God doing this in Genesis 1:9, the text we are looking at today, and we are going to see why Moses wrote about the water and the dry ground this way.

We will see that just as with every other verse in the creation account, Moses is making a theological point that his Hebrew audience would have recognized and understood.

And when we see his point, we will also see what Moses was teaching about sacred spaces, religious spaces, or holy ground. If you think that God is more present in your church building, or on top of some sacred mountain, or in a special prayer sanctuary, you will want to listen to today’s episode and listen to what Moses has to say about these sorts of places.

The Text of Genesis 1:9

Genesis 1:9. Then God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear’; and it was so.

In this discussion of Genesis 1:9 we look at:

What it means for God to push back the waters instead of raising up the land.
The Egyptians creation myth about Atum and the creation of land.
Why it is theologically important that God did raise up the land.
What Genesis 1:9 teaches us about sacred places and holy mountains.

Resources for Genesis 1:9:

Logos Bible Software
Sailhamer on Genesis – Amazon or CBD
Keil & Delitzsch on Genesis – Amazon or CBD
Gibson on Genesis – Amazon or CBD
Walton, Ancient Israelite Literature – Amazon
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WARNING: Geeky Greek Post Ahead

By Jeremy Myers

10 Comments

Kregel Publications recently sent me a review copy of Philip Wesley Comfort’s new study resource, A Commentary on the Manuscripts and Text of the New Testament (Get it on Amazon or at CBD.

If you are relatively familiar with how pastors and theologians study the Bible, you probably know about commentaries on books of the Bible. Those commentaries provide insights and suggestions on the text of Scripture to help the Bible student know what the texts means, how to teach it, and how to apply it to our lives.

That is NOT what this commentary by Comfort is about.

This book is a commentary on the manuscripts of the New Testament.

In case you did not know it, we do not have the original manuscripts (called the autographs) of the New Testament books that were written by Matthew, Luke, Paul, John, etc. We only have hand-written copies. But we have hundreds (and in some cases, thousands) of copies.

From one perspective, this is a good thing, for the textual evidence of the New Testament is much stronger than any other ancient Greek piece of literature. No other piece of ancient Greek literature has as much textual support as does the New Testament.

But here’s the problem: Not all of these copies of the various books of the New Testament agree with each other. There are textual variants in the copies.

So the task of the New Testament Greek scholar is to look at the various copies of the New Testament, and try to decide which of the variant readings most likely reflects what Matthew, or Luke, or Paul actually wrote. Then, these “probable” readings get compiled together into our Greek New Testaments today, and it is from these that our English translations are made.

Anyway, this new book by Philip Wesley Comfort looks at a large number of the variant readings from the textual families, and briefly explains what the variations are, and what Comfort thinks is the best reading for a particular variant.

Comfort’s book, of course, is not the only one like it. Nearly all Greek New Testaments have a summarized version of this sort of textual commentary in the bottom portion of every page (it is called the Critical Apparatus). In my own study and research, I use two or three other similar tools as well. One tool I have commonly used is very similar to the one Comfort has compiled, and it is A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament by Bruce Metzger. So, since I am familiar with that tool, I decided that in the process of reviewing Comfort’s Commentary, I would compare the two.

After spending several hours comparing the two commentaries, and studying their own explanations of numerous variants, here are my observations about the two books:

There are a lot of variants

I always knew there were a lot of variants in the Greek manuscripts, but I had forgotten just how many there were. It seems almost every paragraph in the New Testament has a couple. Nevertheless, I sort of assumed that most scholars sort of agreed on what the “major” variants were.

But as I compared Comfort with Metzger, I realized that there were lots of variants discussed by Metzger which Comfort ignored, and lots of variants discussed by Comfort which Metzger ignored.

Metzger’s volume discussed fewer variants than Comfort, but his discussions are longer and provide more detail about why he chose the variant he did. Comfort, on the other hand, discusses more variants, but his discussions are much shorter, usually only a sentence or two. For that reason alone, you almost need both books.

Scholars Don’t Agree

The second thing I noticed is that while Comfort and Metzger agreed a lot of the time on which textual variant is preferred, they disagreed a lot as well. And on some major verses!

Take Matthew 12:47 for example. The issue here is whether or not to include the entire verse. Metzger says that it should be included “with brackets” indicating that there is some doubt about whether it is original, whereas Comfort says the best reading is just to omit the verse altogether.

There were hundreds of similar such differences of opinion.

Scholarly Squabbles are Funny

Finally, I enjoyed seeing why and how Comfort defended some of his choices. I laughed a little bit when, on page 23, Philip Comfort wrote this:

… Not only do we need to know the original texts, we also need to know the tendencies of the scribes who produced the texts

You see? Comfort is saying that the reasons he chose the textual variants he did, is because he tried to understand the tendencies of the scribe who made the copies! Therefore, Comfort’s choices are better than those who look only at the texts themselves …

When I read that, I thought to myself,

It used to be that you could trump somebody’s exegesis of the text by saying, “Well, although the English says X, in the Greek it says Y …” But then it began to be that this was no longer good enough, for you had to go back further and say, “Well, although the Greek text you are using says Y, the variant reading from Papyrus 46 says Z, and it is preferable for reasons A, B, and C. But now, Comfort is saying that it is not enough to just know what Papyrus 46 says and why it is preferable for reasons A, B, and C. No, now you also have to understand the tendencies of the guy who was making the copy of the text!

So what’s next? Maybe next we will need to know the lighting of the room in which the guy was sitting which caused him not to see the text very clearly, and how he had a fight with his wife that morning, so his mind wasn’t properly focused on his work, and how his ink well had just run dry so he had to get up and get more ink, thus interrupting his attention, and just at that moment, and cat walked sat on his desk (as cats like to do), smudging the work which he had completed, which explains why there is this textual variant in Matthew 12:47.

I know, I know. That will never happen. But it made me laugh at how smart we modern people think we are, speaking so confidently about “what the text says,” when we base our opinions off of some dubious rules for “the best reading of the text” (which nobody agrees on anyway, and even if they do agree on the rules, nobody comes to consensus on how to consistently apply them to the textual variants, See p. 30). When Comfort stated that he is making his decisions based on his research into the tendencies of the scribes who produced the texts, it reminded me of the Parable of the Oyster and Ballerinas.

I am not criticizing the book. It is an excellent tool. And I am definitely not criticizing textual criticism. We must be thankful for the work of the scholars who have spent their life on this task, for it is only because of them that we have the Bibles we have today.

All I am saying is that no matter how much Greek you know, there will always be people who know more than you, and will say that your theology is wrong because you don’t know enough. Even world-class Greek scholars like Comfort “one up” other world-class Greek scholars by saying that the others didn’t understand the tendencies of the scribes who copied the texts.

My Complaint With Textual Criticism

I love studying the Greek (and Hebrew) texts of the Bible. However, I am learning that as important as Greek and Hebrew textual study is, we must not think that the critical study of the text is going to solve all our exegetical and theological dilemmas. It won’t.

My biggest problem with textual criticism is with the canons (or rules) of Textual Criticism. Comfort lists them on p. 30, and while I most of them are good rules (I have serious misgivings about several), the application of these rules is highly subjective, as Comfort himself points out. Even if you get two Greek scholars to agree on the rules, they still will not agree on how these rules are to be applied to a particular variant. The perfect example is how often Comfort disagrees with Metzger as pointed out above…

It is this sort of scholarly disagreement that causes some Christians to just throw up their hands and say, “Why bother? If the experts cannot even agree on what words should even be in the text, how can I begin to study the Bible for myself?”

Here is my answer: Let the scholars have their fun. For it is fun for them. And then, you and I, let’s just read the text that we have, for what else can we do?

If you want to know what the Bible says, just study it, read it, pray over it, and ask God to guide you by the Holy Spirit. Most of all, remember always that you have the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16), which is way better than knowing whether or not Matthew 12:47 should actually be in your Bible or not.

Oh, and here is the #1 rule of Bible interpretation: Stay humble in your conclusions.

I See Dead People

By Jeremy Myers

79 Comments

There is a fourteenth-century poem by Guillaume de Machaut that tells about how the Black Death ravaged a northern French city (I could not find an English translation of this poem online, but I read about the poem in an excellent book I’m reading, Saved from Sacrifice by Mark Heim.)

Curiously, the poem seems to blame the Jews in the city for the Black Death. It condemns Jews in the city for killing large numbers of its citizens by poisoning the rivers, and it also enumerates various grotesque practices by the Jews.

But then the poem goes on to state about how the citizens of the city rose up and carried out a massacre of the Jews, and how this massacre was clearly God’s will because it was accompanied by heavenly signs. Furthermore, after the massacre concluded, the plague left the city, which was seen as proof to the citizens that the Jews were the ones guilty for bringing the plague upon them in the first place.

It’s a tragic poem, but I hope you can read between the lines and see that the events it describes are not historically accurate.

We all understand what really happened.

Reading Between the Lines

Most likely, the Black Plague really did ravage the town, much as it ravaged many towns at that time. But as usually happens in such situations, people started looking for someone to blame, and in this town, because the Jewish people were seen as “outsiders under the curse of God,” they became the scapegoats.

But they could not just be killed. They first had to be demonized.

So the villagers came up with stories about how the Jews poisoned the river and engaged in various grotesque and illicit practices.

Once the Jews were properly demonized, they could be “righteously” killed.

After the Jews were killed, any sort of natural occurrence was viewed as a sign from heaven that God approved of the massacre. Maybe the day of the massacre began with dark clouds and fog, but as the massacre commenced, the sun shone through the clouds. Maybe that night a star fell from the sky. Maybe an eagle landed on the house of the town mayor. But whatever the events were, they were interpreted as heavenly signs.

Later, of course, the plague went away, and this also was interpreted as a sign that the Jews were to blame. We, of course, look back and recognize that the Black Plague had simply ran its course, as it did everywhere else.

I am not sure of the exact historical events, but it doesn’t really matter. We are able to read the poem by Guillaume de Machaut and see through the events to what actually occurred: “Frightened citizens persecuted a religious minority, projecting blame for the plague on them and seeking by violence to stop the dissolution of their community” (Heim, Saved from Sacrifice, 55).

You do not need to have been there to have this historical insight into the true story behind this tragic poem.

Stereotypes of Scapegoating

In his book, Saved from Sacrifice, Heim explains our “insight” into what “really happened” this way:

We don’t take this story at face value. We see through it precisely when it takes up certain anti-Semitic themes. The moment the Jews are mentioned in connection with the plague, the moment they are accused of poisoning the water supply, of bearing physical deformities, of practicing sexual perversions, bells go off.

These are stereotypes, trotted out again and again as preludes to pogroms.

They are characteristic “marks of the victim” brought forward as justification for the violence. We do not credit them as reports of fact. We have learned to read such a text quite against the grain of the writer who composed it, for whom these matters were as real as the death of the neighbors on the one hand and celestial omens on the other. We practice a hermeneutic of suspicion against persecution (Heim, Saved from Sacrifice, 55).

Yes, that is true. We do. When it comes to these sorts of texts in history and literature, we are fairly adept at “seeing through” the account to what fears and scapegoating mechanisms lie behind the text.

And it is right that we should do so, because this is what Jesus revealed through His death on the cross. The death of Jesus on the cross “rescues us from sin” in that it reveals to us the scapegoating, blame-game mechanism behind most of our sin and violence. We saw it happen to Jesus, and so we are able to see it happen to other people.

We recognize this scapegoating mechanism at work when we read about a town in the middle ages killing Jews because they are accused of causing the black plague. We recognize this scapegoat mechanism when we read about the Nazis in Germany blaming the Jews for the financial problems and cultural upheaval in that country. We recognize the scapegoating mechanism when people burn women for being “witches.” We recognize the scapegoat mechanism when we read about governments justifying genocide against the native people living in the land.

In all these cases, we practice this “hermeneutic of suspicion against persecution” that Heim talks about in his book. And because of the revelation of Jesus Christ on the cross, we have become quite good at recognizing this scapegoat mechanism when we read about it in historical documents.

… Except in one place.

Reading the Bible with Scapegoating in Mind

Have you ever noticed that ALL of the characteristic “marks of the victim” are brought forward over and over again in the Old Testament as justification for the violence carried out against the enemies of Israel?

The stereotypes are trotted out as preludes to pogroms, but rather than “see through the text” at what is really going on, we nod our head in astonishing agreement with the text.

Like a pre-programmed robot, we say, “Yes … the Canaanites were very evil. Yes, they practiced horrible things. Grotesque things. They worshipped demons and were demonic themselves. Yes, they needed to die to cleanse the land and protect the people of Israel. Yes, God wanted them all to die. Yes, God even sent signs and miracles to Israel when they slaughtered the Canaanites showing that such actions were righteous and divinely ordained.”

Why can we see “through” the blatant lies and false accusations and scapegoating violence when we read such historical accounts, but not when we read the Bible?

Has it ever occurred to you that we read the Bible with blinders on?

It has recently occurred to me, and now, when I read the Bible, especially the violent portions in the Old Testament, my eyes tear up. It’s like reading an account of Nazi Germany … from the viewpoint of the Nazis.

Yet we Christians whitewash the entire thing and say that all the killing, and genocide, and slaughter was “justified.” That it was righteous. That God wanted it. Commanded it. Demanded it.

“And look!” we say. “There’s proof! The waters parted! The walls fell down! The sun stood still! There was peace in the land afterward!”

Yes, which is exactly what every group always says whenever they carry out scapegoating genocide. Those who carry out genocidal violence “believe they are (a) revenging an appalling offense against their entire community [and God as well], (b) expelling the contaminating evil from their midst, and (c) obeying a divine mandate” (Heim, Saved from Sacrifice, 51-52).

Note that this is also what happened when Jesus was killed. His accusers raised a large number of baseless and patently false accusations against Him, then felt that it was necessary to expel His evil from their midst, and they did all this in obedience to the command of God (so they claimed).

Jesus was the ultimate scapegoat … to reveal that we all scapegoat!

When we read the account of the crucifixion of Jesus, we see right through the murderous, scapegoating violence. We see that Jesus was not guilty for that which He was condemned and killed.

I See Dead People

And now we are back to my question: Why can we see “through” the blatant lies and false accusations and scapegoating violence when we read the account of the crucifixion, but not when we read the rest of the Bible?

Again, I think we are reading the Bible with blinders on.

We read and preach and teach these horrible texts without a bat of an eye or a sign of a tear. We talk about what these texts “mean” and “how to apply them to our lives” and what they “reveal about God.”

But we don’t think about what they are really, truly saying.

We don’t see what they really, truly reveal. The victims disappear, and we become guilty of the same crime as those who crucified Jesus. We say they had it coming. We say it was necessary to cleanse the land. We say that God decreed it. We say that God blessed it.

And we ignore the piles of bloody bodies rotting in the hot desert sun.

I am convinced that we will never, ever see the Bible for what it really is until we are able to read it and say, “I see dead people.”

The Bible was not written primarily to reveal God to us, but was written to reveal the same thing that Jesus revealed on the cross, which is that we scapegoat people in the name of God. And until we see this, we will never read the Old Testament correctly, nor will we ever understand God properly.

You will never understand the Old Testament until you see the victims.

The piles of bloody victims.

The masses of people unjustly murdered.

You will never understand the Old Testament until you see the genocide.

And don’t try to sidetrack this with discussions about inerrancy or inspiration or any of the other fancy theological words we use to divert our attention away from the bodies of bloody men, women, and children strewn all over the pages of our Holy Bible.

This is not about the sanctity of God’s Word, but about the sanctity of God’s people … namely, ALL people.

Once you are able to see this about the Bible, there will be no going back. Not just with how you read the Bible, but also with how you view life.

Once you begin to see dead people in the Bible, your eyes are opened and you begin to see dead people today. You will begin to see that the people we blame for the ills of society and the problems of culture and the war “over there” and the problems in our town, might not be the ones at fault after all…

Maybe, just maybe, those people over there are not to blame. Replace “those people over there” with whatever group you want … the communists, the Muslims, the liberals, the Tea partiers, the gays, the illegal immigrants.

Maybe the fault is not with them … but with us.

This is the perspective that comes from holding the mirror of Scripture before our face and taking a good, long look at how the Israelites scapegoated the Canaanites and how both the Jews and the Romans scapegoated Jesus, and how we ourselves scapegoat other people today.

Thankfully, there are countless Christians around the world who are starting to take the blinders off. They are reading the Bible with renewed eyes and are seeing that the violence of the Old Testament text is actually this genocidal, murderous, scapegoating violence.

And look … I firmly believe in inspiration and inerrancy. I truly do. I just think that the divinely inspired text inerrantly reveals something that few Christians want to see. The Bible reveals the dead people. It is a revelation of death and violence, and where death and violence come from.

The answer? They come from us. Not from God. From us.

But we don’t want to see this. We don’t want to admit it. So we put our blinders on and go back to nodding our heads along with texts that talk about the divinely-sanctioned slaughter of thousands of victims. We participate in the scapegoating, and we put to death the Son of Man all over again.

Until you see dead people, you are no better than those who cried out at the trial of Jesus, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”

Until you see dead people, you will be the one who puts people to death.

Belief in an Angry God is Linked to Mental Illness

By Jeremy Myers

17 Comments

I get dozens of emails every week from people all over the world who are scared of God.

They had some bad thought enter their mind and are now afraid that God is going to kill their family and then strike them down with cancer before burning their house down around their ears and sending them off to eternal torture in hell.

They are so scared, they cannot eat, they cannot sleep, they cannot think. They tell me about physical problems, emotional problems, relational problems, and all sorts of other problems they are experiencing because they are so afraid that God is out to get them because of something bad they said or thought about God.

Does Your Church Teach an Angry God?

Whenever I get these emails, this is the very first question I ask them. I ask them (1) if they attend church, and if so (2) what their church teaches them about God. Without fail, these Christians who contact me have attended, or currently are attending, a church which teaches them about an angry, vindictive, vengeful God.

Usually, they have heard some fire and brimstone sermon about the unpardonable sin or the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and because of the book I have written on the subject, people contact me because they are scared out of their mind that they have committed this sin.

I always try to tell them that God loves them, forgives them, and accepts them … no matter what they have said or done. Due to the large number of emails I get these days, I rarely can get into long explanations or discussions via email about why this is true.

But my heart always goes out for these poor people. Their emails are full of pain and fear, and I sometimes think that many of them are manic-depressive, or bi-polar, or maybe even have OCD.

An Angry God and Mental Illness

So it was with great interest that I recently read that belief in an angry God is linked to mental illness. Here is the article I read:

Professor Nava Silton of the Marymount Manhattan College and her colleagues have reached these conclusions following their analyzing data collected during the 2010 Baylor Religion Survey of US Adults.

Thus, Professor Nava Silton focused on three different categories of people: those who believe in an angry God, those who believe in a loving deity and those who work on the assumption that God is a neutral entity.

“Three beliefs about God were tested separately in ordinary least squares regression models to predict five classes of psychiatric symptoms: general anxiety, social anxiety, paranoia, obsession, and compulsion,” reads the abstract for this paper.

Furthermore, “Belief in a punitive God was positively associated with four psychiatric symptoms, while belief in a benevolent God was negatively associated with four psychiatric symptoms, controlling for demographic characteristics, religiousness, and strength of belief in God. Belief in a deistic God and one’s overall belief in God were not significantly related to any psychiatric symptoms.”

The link between the belief in an angry God and mental illness was studied in the context of the Evolutionary Threat Assessment System Theory, which states that anxiety disorders are mainly the result of the brain’s not properly interpreting threats.

Professor Nava Silton wished to stress the fact that her research does not establish causation between the belief in an angry deity and anxiety disorders.

Quite the contrary, the study merely pins down a correlation between the two.

“That means we’re not saying belief caused psychiatric symptoms, but we see relationships between beliefs and these psychiatric symptoms,” the Professor emphasized.

The disclaimer there at the end is interesting, but I think this was more of a copout by the Professor to avoid becoming the target of angry religious people who feel he might be blaming God for mental illness.

Ironically, those who hold to a belief in an angry God also believe that God strikes people with mental illness because of their sin and disobedience…

It may be clear that God has something to do with what happens everyday in the world, but probably not personally to every person that’s ill, sometimes they just don’t the best care of themselves and their bodies.

Anyway, I think that there is a clear correlation between belief in an angry God and mental problems. I further believe that we become like the God we worship. We become like the God we believe in. So if we believe in an angry, vengeful deity, we are likely to behave in angry, vengeful ways. And of course, if we believe that God’s anger could be directed at us, life will be filled with fear and dread.

What are your thoughts on the subject? Do you believe in a God of anger, retaliation, vengeance, and violence? Do you believe that God’s anger could be directed toward you? If so, how do you cope with this idea? If, on the other hand, you’re like me and you used to believe in an angry God but now believe that God looks like Jesus, what happened in your life to bring about this change?Fi

[#06] Genesis 1:6-8 – The Firmament in the Midst of the Waters

By Jeremy Myers

17 Comments

Are you ready to hear more about the mythical background to the Genesis creation story? Have you been telling your family and friends how Genesis 1 is connected to the Babylonian Enuma Elish, the Gilgamesh Epic, and various Egyptian creation epics, and they want to hear more?

I hope so, because I have a lot more details in today’s show on Genesis 1:6-8 about the connections between these stories and the story as it is recorded in our Bible.

The Text of Genesis 1:6-8:

Genesis 1:6-8. Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day.

In this discussion of Genesis 1:6-8 we look at:

How a literal, scientific reading of Genesis 1:6-8 completely contradicts reality.
Why a literary, theological reading of Genesis 1:6-8 is preferable, and yields deeper and more important truths.
How ancient people viewed the order of the cosmos.
How Moses is writing this creation account to subvert the Egyptian creation accounts that the Israelites would have known.
The key truth that death precedes resurrection.

Resources:

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ANNOUNCEMENT: My Podcast is now live!

By Jeremy Myers

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I am officially launching my podcast! Click the image below to open iTunes and subscribe.

If for some reason the link in that image doesn’t work, click here to subscribe at iTunes

The One Verse Podcast

The podcast is called the “One Verse Podcast.” In it, I am seeking to liberate Scripture from the shackles of religion, one verse at a time.

Beginning with Genesis 1:1, I plan on taking you verse by verse through the Bible to explain it from a historical-cultural perspective, and in a way that exposes how religion has forced Scripture to become its errand boy, when in reality, Scripture should be leading us away from religion and into a deeper and more intimate relationship with God.

Right now, there are five episodes published (not counting the introductory episode) and I plan on trying to publish one episode each week.

I am thrilled at the way these podcasts have been turning out. I have already learned so much, and am excited to share with you what I have learned, so that hopefully, you can teach these things to others also.

Ultimately, of course, I hope that as you listen to these podcasts, you will learn to think, look, and live more like Jesus Christ.

After you listen to the first several episodes, please consider leaving a review at iTunes as this will help other people find the Podcast as well. Thanks!

Now You Can Understand Prophecy

By Jeremy Myers

1 Comment

In the opening paragraph to Understanding Prophecy, Alan Bandy and Benjamin Merkle say that “Prophecy is something with which most people are either obsessed ad nauseum or about which they feel so inadequate they avoid it altogether” (p. 17).

This has been my exact experience as well. People sometimes leave comments on my blog about prophecy, and almost without fail, these comments are thousands of words long, full of Scripture quotations and links to current events about Obama, Putin, Area 51, and chem trails. I usually delete these comments. These are the self-proclaimed prophecy experts who are not doing prophesy or Christianity any favors, and their obsession with prophecy makes the rest of us feel rather queasy.

Then there are those who try to read prophecy, such as the book of Revelation, and are so confused by what they read, they throw up their hands in frustration, and turn on ESPN. I understand this feeling. To be honest, that approach is probably better than if they had decided to persevere and opened up a few commentaries on the book of Revelation, for then they would have become really confused. Every commentator is so certain about their interpretation of Revelation, but every commentator contradicts each other on nearly every point. How can so many people be so certain about the interpretation of Revelation, but at the same time, so different? It is very confusing for the normal student of Scripture.

This is why a book like Understanding Prophecy by Alan Bandy and Benjamin Merkle is so important. Though they differ on some interpretations of prophecy, they have written a book to help you and I read and study prophecy for ourselves. The book does not so much explain the various prophetic texts in Scripture, as provide a framework to read and study it on our own.

It is sort of the “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day; Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime” approach to biblical prophecy.

Overall, I think that Alan Bandy and Benjamin Merkle did a fine job in the book. They point out that prophecy should be filtered through the lens and grid of the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ, and that prophecy is not so much about telling the future as it is about calling people back into faithfulness to their covenant relationship with God. They also point out the difference between conditional and unconditional prophecy, and how to know which is which.

My primary complaint about this book is that despite their desire to filter the interpretation of prophecy through the lens of Jesus Christ, they still believe in and hold to a violent, bloody, vengeful, and wrathful second coming of Jesus Christ. They say that although Jesus came with peace, love, and forgiveness in His first coming, the second coming will be with fire and blood and war (cf. p. 27), though to be fair, this position does not present itself much in the rest of the book.

The book takes the various sections of prophecy in Scripture and presents them in their literary and cultural contexts, providing a brief summary of the various views and interpretations that are available for each section. All in all, it is an excellent summary of how to understand and study biblical prophecy on your own, and I highly recommend it.

Get your copy today at Amazon or CBD.

A theological parable about oysters and ballerinas from Robert Farrar Capon

By Jeremy Myers

14 Comments

Some like to say that theology is the queen of the sciences. But I am beginning to think theology is not so much a science as it is a form of entertainment.

I mean, don’t these guys look like a barrel of laughs?

Seriously though, we theologians often take ourselves way too seriously.

But if historical theology and church tradition teach us anything at all, it is that many of the ideas we have held to most dearly have been the same ideas that have cost the church and the world most dearly.

So let all the shouting, yelling, and finger pointing cease. Let us all sit down and take a deep breath. Let us loosen our ties and untuck our shirts. Let us relaaax.

Then, let someone stand up and tell us a joke. Or a story.

Then let us all start laughing more, and not just laughing, but laughing at ourselves. Let us remember how ludicrous our carefully packaged systems of theology really are.

When we teach and write about theology, we know next to nothing regarding the topic about which we speak, but we speak about it as if we know everything.

If you cannot laugh at your own hubris when you teach theology, you should not be teaching theology.

If God truly is as infinite as we claim, then all the compiled knowledge and ideas about God are nothing more than a speck of insight compared to the infinity of God. Yet we speak with such certainty and arrogance, as if we have all knowledge of God.

I am reminded of a parable about theology from Robert Farrar Capon in his book, Hunting the Divine Fox. Here it is for your enjoyment:

Once upon a time, in the mud at the bottom of a tidal pool, there lived an oyster. By oyster’s standards, he had a good life: the sea water was clean, and full of plankton, and the green warmth of the light at low tide made him grow and prosper.

Next to him lived a stone with whom he sometimes talked. It was very much the same size, shape and color as he, and was good, if undemanding, company. As a matter of fact, their conversations gave the oyster a definite feeling of superiority. He loved to dwell at length on the differences that underlay their apparent similarity. Rocks, he would say, are merely mineral. Oysters may be mineral on the outside; but inside, they are bona fide members of the animal kingdom.

One day, however the stone surprised him by coming up with a rejoinder. It pointed out that there were nonetheless some advantages to being further down the evolutionary scale. Rocks have fewer enemies than oysters. Starfish and oyster drills, it observed, were no threat to stones; to the oyster they were a matter of life and death. Furthermore, the stone told him, it was getting just a little tired of being put down by an oyster with airs. He might get a lesson in humility if he would listen to some of the things the starfish say about oysters — things which the oyster never heard because he was too busy being mortally afraid, but which the stone heard regularly, and with amusement.

Starfish, it seems, have a very low opinion of oysters. They eat them, but they always refer to them as ‘nothing more than a rock with a stomach.’ In fact, what passes as starfish humor…invariably has to do with how stupid it is to be an animal and not be able to move about. The worst thing one starfish can call another is ‘sessile creature.’

The oyster terminated the discussion huffily and went into a state of profound depression. To have everything he had been so proud of become the butt of underwater ethnic wisecracks made life not worth living. Existence, he concluded, was nothing but a cruel joke. All the faith he once had in a grand design of the evolutionary scheme forsook him. Better to believe in nothing than dignify this farce of a world with its pretensions of order. He became an anti-evolutionist, and stopped saying his prayers.

For a while, righteous indignation made the losing of his religion rather fun, as it always does; but as summer wore on into fall and the water began its slow progress to winter’s cold, he became merely sour- angry at the universe, but even more angry at himself for having let it turn him into a grouch. Finally, in desperation, he decided he would pray once again; but this time with a difference. No more mumbling of set pieties. He saw himself as a Job among oysters; he would open his shell and curse his day.

And the oyster spoke and said, “Let the day perish wherein I was spawned, and the night in which it was said, A seed oyster has appeared. Why is light given to him that is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul? Why do I live my days in doubt and darkness? O, that one would hear me, and tell me openly of the glories above. Behold, my desire is, that the Almighty would answer me.”

And, to his utter astonishment, a voice said, “All right, all right. But I have to make it short. It’s Friday afternoon.

“It’s all true. There are things you never even dreamed of. All kinds of stuff. And with moves you couldn’t imagine if you tried. As a matter of fact, that’s your problem. There you sit with a rock on one side and a starfish on the other. My apologies. It’s a limited field of vision, I admit, but in the evolutionary scale business, you’ve got to put a lot of things near the bottom. Spoils the effect if you don’t.

“Anyways, the moves. I’ll tell you a few. Basketball. College basketball, especially. The best ones are so flashy, they make you laugh for not being able to believe the guy actually made the shot. And squirrels going through trees. One of my best effects. You know the last time a squirrel missed his footing? I keep track of such things. It was May 3rd 1438. Definitely a record.

“And it’s not all slapdash, either. I’ve got creatures so graceful, they almost break your heart. When it comes to exquisite moves, my favorite maybe is girls’ knees. Lovely. Some people think that’s a funny thing to get excited about, but in my line of work, there’s no substitute for enthusiasm.

“Seriously. If you take the knee thing and really go all the way with it, you get my absolute favorite for loveliness, a prima ballerina. Talk about moves. It’s like Ernie DiGregorio, Marcel Marceau, and Squirrel Nutkin all rolled together- but as a girl, which makes it that much better. Terrific.

“Listen, though. It’s almost sundown, and I have to set a good example. As I said, your basic problem is your point of view. There really are all these great moves, but you unfortunately don’t know from motion. If you’re going into business as the world’s first philosophical oyster, its o.k. by me. But just so you shouldn’t get it all wrong, I’ll give you one piece of advice: Think very carefully. Remember that all this stuff really is, but it can’t possibly be the way you think. Or, to turn it around: The way you think about things will never be exactly the same as the way they are. But enough. I really have to run. Mazel tov.”

And with that, the voice ceased and the oyster was left alone with his thoughts. He felt both humbler and more elated than ever before. He resolved to philosophize no matter what the difficulties, and, in order to make the best use of the voice’s advice, he decided to put himself into a methodical frame of mind. What follows is a transcript of his train of thought.

1. There is motion. I, as an oyster, can distinguish two sorts. The first is being moved (e.g., both the stone and myself can be moved by oystermen). The second is moving on one’s own. The stone cannot do this at all. I can move the part of myself within my shell, but I cannot move my whole self from place to place. The starfish can move from place to place.

2. The voice was quite clear on the existence of more mobile creatures than the starfish. Let me see what I can say about the prima ballerina:

Starfish move; ballerinas move.
Starfish attack oysters.
Can starfish attack ballerinas?

This is problematical. Perhaps a tentative solution would be that since the ballerina’s motion is apparently far more eminent than the starfish’s, a ballerina would invariably move in such a way as to avoid starfish. There are unresolved difficulties, however:

a. I do not know whether starfish and ballerinas occupy the same medium.
b. I do not know whether starfish have any interest in attacking ballerinas.

3. Let me begin again:

Starfish move; ballerinas move.
Starfish are deadly to oysters.
Are ballerinas deadly to oysters?

One line of approach would seem to be that, since the voice says that ballerinas are his absolute favorite for loveliness, and since loveliness and deadliness do not seem to be compatible, the ballerina cannot be deadly to the oyster. (This depends, of course, on what is meant by loveliness and deadliness. It also might depend on whether a ballerina’s possible deadliness to the oyster proceeds out of her nature, as the starfish’s does, or out of some accidental or acquired taste, as it were. If the latter were true, then it might be that not every ballerina is deadly to oysters.) In any case, there is not enough evidence to resolve the question.

4. Even though the voice’s enthusiasm for the world of higher motion seems to have suspended my own doubts, it is disturbing to think how easily a skeptical oyster could argue from all this that ballerinas do not exist, but rather are nothing more than a distracting hypothesis invented by oysters who cannot face the grimness of existence without flinching.

5. Tentatively, I shall list the following as the chief properties of the prima ballerina:

a. Mobility (like the starfish’s, but better.
b. Invulnerability to starfish (likely).
c. Loveliness (on faith).
d. Deadliness (possible, but not certain).

There is a good deal unresolved here. Perhaps it would be useful to consider next what ballerinas are for. This is fascinating but tiring. At least, though, the seawater seems refreshing again.

I love this parable from Robert Farrar Capon (and everything he writes) for it perfectly represents human theology.

We are the oyster. The Bible is God’s revelation to us about ballerinas. And our theology is like the oyster’s methodical philosophizing about the nature and character of ballerinas.

This is why we must never take our theology too seriously. Sure, it is enjoyable. It can be fun. It is a healthy pastime. It can even be entertaining.

But we must remember that this is all theology is. Some people play basketball. Some people plant gardens. Some people watch TV. Some people discuss God.

As soon as we begin to think that we have figured out God and the mysteries of the universe, we are just like this oyster who thinks he has figured out a few things about ballerinas, but really, knows absolutely nothing about them.

When we approach theology this way, theology can be an enjoyable pursuit, and even a healthy pastime. But as soon as we take our methodical philosophizing too seriously and start demanding that everyone else agree with what we have figure out about God, well, that’s when theology is not longer healthy, good, or enjoyable.

So do you like theology? Great! So do I. Let’s talk about ballerina knees a bit.

The Crucifixion of Jesus was Evil

God is not Freddy Krueger

God Has Redeemed the Crucifixion of Jesus

Our Theology Must Begin and End at the Cross

The Text of Genesis 1:9

In this discussion of Genesis 1:9 we look at:

Resources for Genesis 1:9:

Downloadable Podcast Resources

Do you like learning about the Bible online?

There are a lot of variants

Scholars Don’t Agree

Scholarly Squabbles are Funny

My Complaint With Textual Criticism

Reading Between the Lines

Stereotypes of Scapegoating

Reading the Bible with Scapegoating in Mind

I See Dead People

Does Your Church Teach an Angry God?

An Angry God and Mental Illness

The Text of Genesis 1:6-8:

In this discussion of Genesis 1:6-8 we look at:

Resources:

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Do you like learning about the Bible online?

The One Verse Podcast

Theological Study Archives

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