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What is so sacred about sex? – Part 2

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This continues from part 1…..

In part one of this article, we discussed the sexual mood of our present culture and whether or not as human beings, we are the owners of our own bodies and minds. We ended on the note that if it is the case that we have been made or created by someone else for his own purposes, then surely we would have a lot more obligations than we would have if we only belonged to ourselves. But we also noted that, this is a big “IF” because some people do not believe (or at least they live as if they don’t believe) that there is any Being higher than ourselves, to whom we must be responsible. Is it reasonable to believe that an actual Being exists who is responsible for our existence and to whom we might be accountable to, regarding our sexual lives? If there is the possibility for such a Being to exist, why would he be interested in what we do with our bodies sexually?

For starters, let us be brutally honest with ourselves: everything in this world – from ourselves to the flowers to the stars to sea to animals etc – points to the fact that some sort of careful designing has gone into the creation of our world and of ourselves, doesn’t it? We often take it for granted that this physical world of ours is structured the way it is. But mathematically speaking, the probability of this world happening by a mindless random or unordered process is incredibly small. According to Astrophysicist Hugh Ross’ conservative calculation, the chance of a planet like ours existing in the universe is about 1 in a trillion billion billion (i.e. 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 1 in 10 raised to the power 30).

 Scientists are discovering that had even a single feature of our universe been just a little bit different, the stars, galaxies and human life would not exist. Let us briefly look at a few amazing scientific discoveries before we go on. The distance from the earth to the sun is just right. Why? Even a small change of around 2% and all life would cease. If the earth was too near the sun, water would evaporate. If it was too far from the sun, its coldness level would not support life. In fact, even the rotation speed of the earth is just right; if it was too slow, the temperature differences between day and night would be too extreme, and if it was too fast the wind speeds would be catastrophic. Furthermore, if the ratio of the electromagnetic and gravitational forces had differed by about one part in ten thousand billion billion billion billion (i.e. 1 part in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000), then stars such as the Sun, which are capable of supporting life, could not exist. Do you see any picture emerging?

The delicate balance of the elements in our universe, to use the illustration of the theoretical physicist Paul Davies, is like the accuracy level that a marksman needs in order to hit a coin twenty billion light years away on the other side of the observable universe. [A light year is the speed travelled by light in one year. And light, by the way, has the fastest travelling speed in our universe]. In fact it has been noted by some researchers that the earth is placed precisely in a part of the universe that is congenial to scientific studies in cosmology, galactic astronomy, stellar astrophysics and geophysics. That is, if our earth had been positioned in a part of the universe with too much starlight, we could not have been able to see into deep space. There are more than 3000 galaxies in the observable universe, each containing millions to trillions of stars – many being bigger than the earth.

Further, Oxford mathematician John Lennox in his book, ‘God’s undertaker: has Science buried God?’, notes that the distinguished mathematician and astronomer, Sir Fred Hoyle, admitted that his atheism was shaken profoundly when he discovered the degree of fine-tuning needed between the nuclear ground state energy levels in order for carbon to be formed either by a combination of three helium nuclei, or by a combination of nuclei of helium and beryllium. (And for the record, life cannot exist on earth without an abundant supply of carbon). Sir Hoyle’s discovery, according to Lennox, led him to remark that, “a superintellect has monkeyed with physics as well as with chemistry and biology,” and that “there are no blind forces in nature worth talking about.” Interesting isn’t it? And let us not forget the issue of the human DNA – the molecule containing coded instructions for the cells in the body. A group of scientists have recently estimated that the adult body contains about 37.2 trillion cells, each containing DNA. Each person’s complete DNA is unique; the exception being identical twins. The instructions are in what is called Genetic language and they are detailed, complex and specific. These instructions include for example, which cells should grow and when, which cells should die and when, which cells should make hair and what colour it should be.  If all this sounds too technical, then let me make it simple: the scientific discoveries are pointing in the direction where it is highly unlikely that an intelligent Being did not plan and execute the creation of this whole skilfully crafted universe, including human beings like us.

What is my point with all this information? It is this: if conditions in this universe, and the nature of our human bodies, are the way they are – so delicately precision-tuned – and if human beings like us posses the kind of intelligence we posses, even to study them, then it is very reasonable to (and unreasonable not to) suppose that a more intelligent Being, (1) is out there, (2) is the cause of our beings and (3) is interested in our lives. Now if we relate this thought to Mr. Lewis’ thoughts about moral duties (discussed in part one of this article), we can say with a fair degree of confidence that the whole of mankind must have a Landlord. Our bodies, strictly speaking, are not ours. Our Landlord is this Intelligent Being who created this world and everything in it. Religious folks simply call him, God. Since this God is the cause of our intricately designed bodies and existence, it is not mind-boggling that any “Dos and Don’ts” on how we use our bodies should come from him.

 

A Curious Worldview

 In his speech to the members of the city council of Athens, Paul the apostle of Christ tried to give them a new view of God, saying, “God, who made the world and everything in it, is Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples made by human hands.” (Acts 17:24 GNB) In a city so used to building alters and shrines for every imaginable god, this news was however unimaginable. But to the people in the city of Corinth (a city well-known for its immorality), who became believers in Jesus Christ, Paul wrote them a letter in which he explained to them the sacredness of their bodies: “…the body is not to be used for sexual immorality, but to serve the Lord, and the Lord provides for the body. God raised the Lord [i.e. Jesus] from death and will also raise us by his power. … Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and who was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourselves but to God; he bought you for a price. So use your bodies for God’s glory.” (1 Cor. 6: 13,14, 19,20 GNB). Dr Ravi Zacharias, a Christian philosopher, appropriately explains that, “the Christian walks with God, not to God. We no longer go to the temple to worship. Rather we go with our temples to worship.” The body of a believer in Christ, rather than a church building, is the holy dwelling place of God and must be treated as “holy grounds.” Thus what this person wears, or touches, or says, or looks at or reads or listens to must uphold God’s holiness.

So much for the Christian “bodies”! What bearing does this worldview have on those who do not subscribe to it? The non-Christian is a prospective temple of God. God wants to live in this person. The Christian explanation for human existence in general is that God made us and not only that, but also that he made us all for himself (Col. 1:16) and he made us in such a way that only in union with him can our greatest good be had (John 10:10). Sin does not allow this to happen. But God became man in Jesus Christ, lived uprightly among us, identified with our human weaknesses, paid for our sins in his death and rose up and wants to live in us to empower us to live as we ought to. Like C. S. Lewis once observed, God invented us in a certain sense like how a man invents an engine. And when a car is made to run of gasoline, it would not run properly on anything else. In this same sense God made the “human machine,” as Lewis puts it, to run on himself.

The fuel we need in order to function the way he designed us is God himself and the food we need to keep our souls spiritually alive is God himself. We cannot expect to function properly on our own terms. Sexual fulfillment (a major hunger of our generation) with its proper joy, peace and security does not come through the pulling down of God’s boundaries. Without God at the centre of a sexual relationship, our much desired real and secure intimacy which we often believe can be found in sexual intercourse will prove elusive. Any person, Christian or not, who tries to outsmart God on this front will soon find that the last laugh is always God’s, not ours; restlessness, emptiness, meaninglessness, broken trust, guilt and shame will ultimately come resting at our door steps. There is definitely pleasure in sin but it is fleeting. Kenyan Christian Apologist, John Njoroge, insightfully says that, “Trying to meet our real needs without God is like trying to satisfy our thirst with salty water: the more we drink, the thirstier we become.  This is a sure path to various sorts of addictions.”

Even in our limited wisdom, we realize that playing our cherished game of football without any rules does not make it really enjoyable. So we have created rules, in all their imperfections. Even with the rules in place, some people hurt others and get hurt themselves; they offend and get offended during the course of the game. Can you imagine the unbridled chaos that would exist if there were no clear rules? In the same way, we are living in an increasing sexually chaotic culture today because we are desperately throwing off God’s moral restraints: husbands and wives are sleeping with people other than their spouses, young unmarried boys and girls are “training” themselves in the act of sex yet ironically the idea of marriage is appearing uncomfortable to them because of its widely acknowledged moral limitations. God has provided a framework within which sex can be properly enjoyed physically, emotionally and spiritually, and it is not outside marriage.

 In God’s scheme of things, according to Christian teachings, you do not need to be experienced in sex before marriage. This is because you have the whole of your married life to get to know your spouse’s body (God’s gift to you) as your bodies lock and your spirits mesh in sexual intercourse before God. With each encounter you get to know the body of your spouse even better to the glory of God. And here is the rich wisdom of the Christian faith (which may seem foolish on the face of it): Any person who genuinely relies on Jesus Christ before his marriage and also during his marriage will be given the grace and spiritual strength to stay the course of marriage should he find out that he has ended up with a sexually defective spouse. Tough to take in, I know, but I cannot make this truth any more appealing than it sounds right now in a time like ours. Marriage is not a selfish enterprise, where if you are not having a sexually exciting life everything else must come crushing down for everyone in it. Rather it is essentially a self-giving worship of God as you commit yourself exclusively to that one person, to love, to cherish and to seek the good of this person always.

 The Christian scriptures teach that all who trust in God will not be disappointed, ultimately. But break God’s precepts on sex (or on any other issue of life) and you can be sure that you will not only separate yourself from God and into a dark loneliness of the soul but you will also hurt yourself and others. Let us be clear: the idea that God is an unloving and unfeeling Judge up there who is simply watching down to see who has gone even slightly wrong so that he may swiftly punish him, is wrong. God wants to reconcile us back to himself. This is the Christian message to the world. God’s precepts in the Bible are intended to facilitate our happiness and not to stifle it. A parent sternly warns her child to steer clear of fire not because she wants to make the child miserable but because she wants to prevent the child from getting hurt or even dying. How can a child enjoy life when he is hurt or dead? If we separate ourselves spiritually from God (a spiritual death), through sin, how can we expect to receive God’s best? God knows the limits within which our best can be had. Stolen waters are not as sweet as we want to believe. Many people may look happy on the outside but on the inside they may be empty, restless, bitter and troubled because they have violated God in this area of sex.

Conclusion

We were made for God and if we spend ourselves in illegitimate pleasures, we will only come away broken and impoverished in our souls (and perhaps with physical scars too). No one enriches his soul by being sexually immoral. Rather we bankrupt ourselves spiritually; we feel the emptiness, restlessness of the soul, the guilt and shame of sin because we have divorced ourselves from God, who is our ultimate good. A more serious side to sexual immorality is that in the end, we must give account of our lives to the God. Some people realize this quicker than others but the important thing is that we are willing to take the necessary steps back to God through the path he has provided – faith in his Son, Jesus Christ. And to be clear, faith in Jesus Christ is not mere intellectual belief in Jesus as Lord but includes a willful commitment to live the whole of one’s life in reverence of him and his teachings. Christ offers forgiveness and rebirth even to the one who has wrecked himself or herself sexually yet is willing to repent. Are you a mess, sexually? Jesus gives hope and strength to those seeking to please God in their sexual lives.

“Obia Nto Ne Collection”: Reflections On Castro and The Ghanaian God

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Author: Edem Morny

It has been a over a month now since the sad disappearance of the celebrated “Castro the Destroyer” and his female friend Janet Bandu whiles taking a ride on the Volta River in Ada. Many are the speculations as to what may have happened to them, and whiles the families of these 2 continue to hold out hope for their reappearance, the rest of the world can only mourn them and go on with life as usual. As is always common with the death/disappearance of any musician, their songs, especially the most recent hits become superhits with much airplay, and Castro’s “Adonai” song with Sarkodie is no exception. Paying more attention to this song vis-a-vis Castro’s demise certainly raises a lot of questions which we can either wish away, or confront somehow, and some of which I want to address here.

The song is indeed a good song melodically, and one can’t help dancing, tapping, nodding or singing along. However, one of the gifts of music is it’s ability to make you enjoy it without paying attention to it’s lyrics, and this song achieves this masterfully. I managed to find the lyrics dutifully written out here, which you can peruse yourself. Paying closer attention to them, one gets the impression that Castro together with his friend Sarkodie are praising God for making them the successful people they are today. In this attempt to praise God, they address their “enemies” or people who they suppose didn’t wish them well in life, and not only openly flaunt their vaunted success at these “enemies”, but also make a few disparaging comments about the inferiority of these “enemies” in comparison to them. All the while, Castro’s chorus continues to hook us in with its praise of God, encouraging us not to “lose guard”. All in all a brilliant musical composition no doubt.

First of all I’m not in the least bit surprised by the words of this song. It is the well established pattern in hip-hop culture to flaunt the “success” you’ve become and “diss” your perceived detractors. Coming from a people who have not only felt but experienced systemic poverty and economic marginalization, black American hip-hop culture has always felt that the music was a means to not only speak of the musician’s credentials as a bona fide “hustler who has made it”, but to rub everyone else’s nose in it, especially their perceived enemy. And so I’d rather have been surprised if Ghanaian hip-hop/hip-life songs like “Adonai” didn’t follow the pattern. In this respect, Sarkodie and Castro can pat themselves on the back for a good job done. But what happens when one says “Me nwuu y3 de3 na Nana Nyame te ase” (i.e. so far as I’m not dead, God is still alive) and dies a few months later? Shall we conclude that God is dead? Or more appropriately, shall we conclude that YOUR GOD is dead?

Ghanaians are known be a very religious people, if not one of the most religious in the world. In a country with over 65% claiming to be Christian, the term “God” tends to evoke the idea of the Christian conception of God. And yet I find that in much of Ghanaian discourse, the “God” we refer to is a god of our own creation, not the God revealed to us through the person of Jesus Christ. And to be frank, everyone worships one god or the other, even if they were atheists. So I don’t have a problem if we are referring to any number of these gods. But if we think we are referring to Jehovah as revealed through the person and ministry of Jesus, then we really need to think again.

Are we referring to the same Jehovah revealed through Jesus the Messiah, who told his disciples not only love their enemies but actually pray for them who persecute them, including the Roman soldiers who were persecuting them then (Mt 5:44)?

Are we referring to the same Jehovah revealed through Jesus the Messiah, who encourages his disciples that if forced (again by a Roman soldier, as they were legally empowered to do so) to carry a load one mile, they should carry it two miles (Mt 5:41)?

Are we talking about the same Jehovah revealed through Jesus the Messiah, who says that in his kingdom, blessed are the poor, those who are hungry, those who weep, those who are outcast (Lk 6:20-22), not because these states are states of bliss, but that in his kingdom now and in the future these people will experience reprieve from their troubles?

Are we talking about the same Jehovah revealed through Jesus the Messiah, who says the one thing that will mark his disciples out for the world to see is if they love one another (Jn 13:34-35)?

Or the same one who says the rich will have it much harder to enter into his kingdom (Mt 19:16-19), not because riches are bad, but can and has become a god that people, including musicians, serve?

Because if we are talking about this Jehovah, then he is not the one I see thanks being made to in Castro and Sarkodie’s song. And like I said, that’s alright, because everyone can create their own god and serve them and sing to them as they wish. But let not those who claim to follow Jehovah as revealed by Jesus the Messiah be fooled. They are talking about a different god. They are talking about the god of Ghanaian culture aka the Ghanaian God, under the cover of the Jewish title “Adonai”. For those who know which god they are referring to, at least they can enjoy their music and put on the appropriate filters when we hear “Nyame” and “Adonai” being mentioned. But for many ignorant ones, therein lies an even greater deception.

Because there is very little difference between songs like  “Adonai” and a host of other “gospel” songs that plague the airwaves today. A large majority of our supposed “gospel musicians” today are so clueless as to what they are singing about, supposing that they are singing about Jehovah as revealed by Jesus. No, they are singing about the Ghanaian God,

The Ghanaian God who is more worried about your enemies and their annihilation than he is about their redemption from sin and death. Who seems to be powerless in the face of “Abeyifuo” , “Kabrekyire” and “Obonsam”. The Ghanaian God who is a genie that exists to satisfy our personal agenda, working only for our personal success, whiles mowing down our enemies. The Ghanaian God who gives us riches so we can spend only on our extravagance, and watch our neighbours go to sleep hungry. The Ghanaian God who delights in tribalism and divisiveness, who doesn’t mind if we are corrupt at work so we can pay big tithes in church. The Ghanaian God who demands all our loyalty to this country only, so that you hardly ever hear Ghanaian Christians thinking, praying or working to alleviate the suffering that other Christians are going through in other countries. And when that Ghanaian God dies as he supposedly has in Castro’s case, we simply pretend nothing has happened and continue with business as usual.

There is definitely a god that most Ghanaian Christians serve, but I’m not sure his real name is Yahweh, whose son is Jesus Christ the King. No, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob left the building a long time ago. We are only feverishly serving a local substitute.

Constructing the circle of faith

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Author: John A. Turkson

Looking back some five years ago, in Junior High School, Pre-technical Skills was one of my favourite subjects; specifically the Technical drawing aspect of it. I don’t know how they call it these days, considering the frequent alterations in our curricula over these past few years.  There was something special about following all those given instructions to construct various fascinating figures, the precision that came with practicing, the accuracy you needed to employ in your drawing to gain the highest mark, the habit you needed to form to present the neatest work possible, the instruments you needed, even the wide range of pencils required to perform specific tasks. Those were the days; when you’d go to school carrying your big drawing board as if you were that architect chosen by God to draw the plan of an entire new world!

 It sounds funny at first, but that is exactly who we are: architects chosen by God to draw for the world to see His grand blue-print of love! With the tip of the compass firmly planted in Christ, the author and finisher of our faith, we Christians are supposed to describe certain circles in the world with our lives. Christ must be the centre! Christ must necessarily be our focus and salvation, our goal! But all we see in the ‘goalpost’ today are ‘balls’ of gospels about wealth, work promotions, favours, concocted prophesies etc. when the purpose of the gospel message is to reach as many as we can with God’s gift of salvation. Christ is no more the centre and without the centre, a circle does not exist! As tiny as that point is, Jesus, His death and resurrection—the gospel—holds us together in one piece. When our lives are void of this key ingredient, we are lost in the haze of hopelessness and like a lead-less pencil, our lives are pointless. Jesus must be the focus!

 Johannes Kepler, upon analyzing the astronomical observations of one Tycho Brahe proposed three laws supposed to describe the nature of planetary motion. In the first law, he asserted that the orbit of a planet was elliptical with the Sun at one of the two foci. An ellipse is an almost-circle with two ‘centres’ called foci (singular: focus). At one of these foci, in our solar system, the Sun holds the planets in place. Christianity is a kind of solar system in which Jesus is the Sun. The strategic position of the Sun is imperative to our survival. As it stands now, the Earth is hanging in space because it is suspended by threads of gravitation from the Sun; likewise the other planets. It’s been said about Jesus, “And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17, ESV). Jesus is our Sun, around whom we are supposed to revolve. Without him, we shall fall. Apart from him, we’d sink into darkness. But today, we hear about preachers instead of Jesus. The gospel which will lead to salvation has become relegated to the appendix session of our sermons when in the life of the early church, it was the main theme (Peter’s sermon in Acts 2, Paul’s famous Athenian sermon in Acts 17:16-31 and many more throughout the book of Acts). Apart from the Vine, the branches are as useful as firewood! If we are indeed bearing fruit apart from the Vine, I shudder to think we have decayed for some opportunistic multicellular fungus like mushroom to sprout on our ‘skin’! Have we not been deceived enough already? Look within and examine yourself: is Jesus at the centre?

 After the rains have fallen, the winged reproductive termites will want to congregate around a source of light. This forms part of their ‘nuptial’ flight ritual. In the process, they lose their wings. This mode of life is natural. The termite species will not survive without this process the same way we the branches cannot do without the Vine. Apart from the Vine, we lose our wings of faith. We lose our wings when we choose to hover around some drugging ‘miraculous’ light lit to trap our attention from the real Bull’s-eye, Jesus. Jesus promised us he’d send us a comforter, the Holy Spirit. Even as we believe Jesus has sent forth His Spirit to enable us bear fruit, the Holy Spirit will only flow through us through the Vine and not apart from Him. Jesus still remains a chief part of the equation! After all, the Holy Spirit was promised through Jesus to empower the Church (Acts 1:8)  to further the cause of reaching far and near with the gospel—that Jesus, died and resurrected and that it is only in believing in him that we are saved (1 Corinthians 15:1-4). The various gifts the Holy Spirit stirs in us are not to be used for amassing wealth, or procuring passports or visas, or promotions. The message must not be about how God wants us to be wealthy (really?), about prosperity, success etc but must be about Jesus in the right concentration—the gospel (1 Corinthians 15:1-11). The dilution thereof makes the ‘solution’ fake (Galatians 1:6-10). The centre must be Jesus, otherwise the fruit is wrong and the bearer, false! (2 John1:9-11).

 Today, the Prophet, the Apostle, the Miracle worker and the Teacher are the celebrities. Where is Jesus? Today, we can only have faith when we have that ‘special’ wrist band on our wrist, that white handkerchief, or that bottle of ‘anointing’ oil, or that ‘Florida’ water. Where is the Author and Finisher of our faith? Today, it’s all about prophesies and miracles (I am in no way saying they are not real. God reveals to redeem. He also works awesome miracles) but have we forgotten about the fruit of the Spirit; about love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; the very ingredients that make us Christians? Have you even examined that Prophet and seen the fruit in him? What did Paul really mean in 1 Corinthians 12:28-31? What is the most excellent way? In the subsequent chapter, we read about love. Does that celebrity Preacher come to mind as a lover of the needy, friend of the widow or a vendor of the recipe to prosperity? Or Jesus does— the pure definition of love? Is Jesus at the centre of the web of ‘spirituality’ you are entangled in?

 Jesus still stands in the centre of time—He virtually holds history together with wood drenched in His blood. Blood He shed for you and I to earn a place at the centre of our hearts. Where is Jesus in relation to your life—outside that circle, inside somewhere or at the centre?

 In constructing that circle of faith in your life, Jesus MUST be the centre. Without Him, “things fall apart and the centre cannot hold”!

Unmasking the Prosperity Gospel

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Author: Robert G. Coleman

About two and a half decades ago, the popular Christian message that one often heard in Ghana was about salvation, and this was traditionally presented as relating to sin, righteousness and eternal life. The call then was “Repent and accept Jesus and you will be saved.” Today, in many places, salvation is presented as an experience with Jesus Christ that will give us the tools and power to be successful in life, enable us rub shoulders with rich non-Christians and make us happy. In addition, the understanding of the word “faith” has also been changed. Faith used to be seen as a living trust in God so that even when things did not go well, we still trusted in the Lord. Today, faith is understood in many quarters as a power or force that is used to get anything we want. This modern interpretation of the gospel is what theologians call the Prosperity Gospel.

This gospel may be presented in different forms and even with different words, depending on who is preaching it, but the core of the message is that Jesus died so that the one who believes in him will become materially or financially wealthy and will never fall sick. Some of this gospel’s oft-used vocabularies include “sow a seed,” “abundance,” “breakthrough,” “anointing for success,” “inheritance,” “prophesy into your life,” “you are destined for greatness,” “claim it by faith,” “positive confession,” etc. Another unique thing about this gospel is that it thrives on changing or playing with the meaning of particular words. The meanings of scriptural verses are often twisted in order to present a semblance of biblical grounding for the prosperity gospel’s non-biblical message.

He Became Poor So That You Might Be Rich

Prosperity preachers usually tell their hearers that God wants them to be rich or to have material abundance. It is not uncommon to hear them use a verse like 2 Corinthians 8:9 which teaches that Jesus became poor so that those who believe in him might be rich. But did the author, Apostle Paul, actually mean that Jesus’ agenda for his followers was to make them rich materially or financially? Ironically, the reason why Paul even brought up this issue was because he was seeking for donations to help the believers in Judea, who were in need. Now think about it, if believers in Christ are automatically to be materially rich just because Jesus “became poor,” as it were, then why were the believers in Judea so in need that Paul had to get the assistance of the churches in Macedonia and Corinth (2 Cor. 8:1-4, 8-15). If it was case that the believers in Judea had failed to “claim their inheritance or birthright,” as the prosperity gospel language goes, all Paul needed to do was to tell them to either “claim it by faith” or “prophesy it into their lives,” but he did not do this because this was not the kind of Christianity he was preaching. It is also worth noting that the apostle made particular mention of the fact that the churches in Macedonia gave generously “even though they are very poor” (vs. 2 GNB) and he meant this in terms of material wealth (vs. 3).

In verse 9 however, when he uses the word “rich” he does not imply financial or material wealth. The context bears witness. He clearly states what he means by “rich” in verse 7 of the same passage: “You are so rich in all you have: in faith, speech, and knowledge, in your eagerness to help and in your love for us.” GNB. There is no mention, literal or implied, of material riches here. Indeed if by “rich” Paul had meant material or financial riches then his actions would be either a joke or an insult to the Judea believers, on whose behalf he was asking for donations, because they would already be materially rich by virtue of Christ having “become poor.” But the prosperity preachers have a different agenda: they want the believer in Christ to see riches as a birthright, something to be grasped, something the Christian is entitled to. But this only leads many believers to disillusionment, because when God has not promised something and you force yourself to believe that he has, disappointment is inevitable in the long run.

The Blessing Of Abraham

It is also common to hear prosperity preachers make reference to the blessing of Abraham in the book of Genesis, in the Old Testament. At the same time these preachers are inclined to use Galatians 3:29, in the New Testament, which says that “If you belong to Christ then you are the descendants of Abraham and will receive what God has promised” (GNB) to explain why they believe a Christian ought to be materially rich and fulfilled as Abraham was. A successful linking of this passage in Galatians to the Genesis narrative about Abraham’s blessings seems to provide a solid foundation for preaching material prosperity in the Church today. But there are some important things to note here.

What really is the blessing of Abraham? Abraham is called blessed in Galatians not because he received prosperity or material wealth or good health. Instead he is called blessed because he believed God and God accepted him, on the basis of his faith, as righteous (Gal. 3:6). It is this “righteous” status that the apostle Paul has in mind when he says that all who believe are blessed as Abraham was (Gal 3:9). Any person who believes in Jesus today is blessed because the righteousness of Christ is imputed to him. Galatians 3:13&14 explains: “But by becoming a curse for us Christ has redeemed us from the curse that the Law brings; for the scripture says, ‘Anyone who is hanged on a tree is under God’s curse. Christ did this in order that the blessing which God promised Abraham might be given to the Gentiles by means of Christ Jesus, so that through faith we might receive the Spirit promised by God.” GNB [Emphasis mine]

Paul’s meaning of “God’s promise to Abraham” is very clear. He does not have in his mind any idea about Abraham’s material blessing nor does he allow room for extending the meaning of this phrase beyond Abraham’s spiritual blessing of righteousness to include “everything” (Gen. 24:1) else in Abraham’s life, like the prosperity preachers like to do. The promise of blessing for the whole human race through Abraham, according to the Spirit-filled Apostle Paul is spiritual not worldly – it is the receipt of the Spirit promised by God. Interestingly, the author of Galatians, Apostle Paul, whose words prosperity preachers like to use to justify their material wealth preaching, actually wrote disapprovingly about people who try to interpret the Christian faith materialistically in 1 Timothy 6:5-12 saying:

“…They think that religion is a way to become rich. Well, religion does make us very rich, if we are satisfied with what we have. What did we bring into the world? Nothing! What can we take out of the world? Nothing! So then, if we have food and clothes that should be enough for us. But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and are caught in the trap of many foolish and harmful desires, which pull them down to ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a source of all kinds of evil. Some have been so eager to have it that they have wandered away from the faith and have broken their hearts with many sorrows. But you, man of God, avoid all these things. Strive for righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. Run your best in the race of faith, and win eternal life for yourself; for it was to this life that God called you when you firmly professed your faith before many witnesses.”(GNB) [Emphasis mine].

Paul lifts the attention of his readers from the material to what really matters – the fruits of the Holy Spirit: righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness.

Sickness

Typical prosperity gospel does not allow room for a believer to get sick. It claims that a Christian, full of faith, full of the Holy Spirit and who has favour from the Lord simply cannot get sick; Jesus has redeemed the believer from every disease. Thus if you get sick it must be because of your sin or unfaithfulness. But as if to refute the prosperity gospel on this particular point, the Bible contains a record of several godly men (both those who can be described as physical seeds of Abraham and those who are spiritual seeds of Abraham) who suffered sickness yet the Scriptures put no blame on them: Elisha, a man with the “double portion anointing” died of a fatal disease (2 Kings 13:14); King Hezekiah, a man described as one who did what was pleasing to the Lord (2 Kings 18:3), actually got sick and almost died (2 Kings 20:1); Timothy, Apostle Paul’s son in the faith, had frequent stomach problems (1 Tim 5:23); Trophimus, one of the early Christians, was left in Miletus by Paul because he was ill (2 Tim 4:20); Epaphroditus, Paul’s fellow worker in the faith, fell ill and almost died (Philippians 2:25-30); the great Apostle Paul himself got ill physically (Gal 4:13). If the Prosperity preachers’ teaching is true then we must question whether the apostle Paul (whose letters we consider as part of Scripture) and his colleagues in the early church, who got sick, were truly the seeds of Abraham or even Christians at all.

Conclusion

In a developing country like Ghana, where many people struggle financially and with health issues, and where a lot of young people are upwardly mobile, the Prosperity Gospel sounds appealing and inspiring. But it would be in our interest to heed the warnings of Scripture and also the warning of Jim Bakker, the former American prosperity preacher, whose ministry was hit by financial scandals in the 1980s and was subsequently imprisoned. From prison, he repentantly wrote in a letter saying: “It’s time the call from the pulpit be changed from ‘Who wants a life of pleasure and good things, new homes, cars, material possessions etc?’ to ‘Who will come forward to accept Jesus Christ and the fellowship of his suffering?’ … I believe the heart of God is grieved when we cannot delay self-gratification for earthly things in exchange for life in eternity with Him.” Having deceived masses of people, Jim Bakker finally saw the light. I hope the prosperity preachers of our day and their sympathizers will also come to the same realization before it is too late. C. H. Spurgeon once insightfully noted that, “The old covenant was a covenant of prosperity. The new covenant is a covenant of adversity whereby we are being weaned from this present world and made meet for the world to come.”

While Biblical Christianity does not teach believers to actively seek poverty or sickness, it does warn against seeking worldly riches (2 Tim. 6:9&10) and worldly fulfilment (Matt. 16:26) and also entreats Christians to pray for the sick and care for the poor, both within the Church and outside of it. In the Christian life, whatever the believer does, he is to work at it with all his heart as though he were working for God and not for human beings (Col. 3:23). Hard work is encouraged. In the end, however, whether a believer becomes rich or poor or in-between, sick or healthy, the important thing is to have a living trust in Jesus. Faith, in the Christian sense, is a confidence in Jesus Christ and in his power so that even when his power does not take away the unpleasantness you face in this world, your confidence in him remains because of who Jesus is. He is a loving God who can be trusted to always do what is good for those who belong to him.

The Jesus of the Gospels 1: His Miraculous Works

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As some of you may be aware, I’ve been spending much time reading and researching into New Testament history, with particular regard to how Jesus Christ and the church fit into the real history of events during the life of Jesus and immediately thereafter. So I’m starting off a series of blog posts on what scholars are teaching us about him and his times. I pray that I be able to find the time to keep it up, so we may all share our thoughts on the subject. For the curious reader, much of what I write here will be my understanding of reading mostly FF Bruce, NT Wright and Scott McKnight – being globally recognized scholars in New Testament.

Disclaimer: I’m compressing books of 600 page lengths to small blog posts, so don’t take my brevity personal.

 

Jesus “Mighty Deeds”

A lot of us must have wondered about the miraculous deeds of Jesus Christ, and asked what the point was. Was miracles the sign that he was divine? Did he do them to grab people’s attention, or was he just an interesting magician? What lessons are to be drawn from his “mighty deeds” for our contemporary pursuit of “miracles” from all sources? To be able to understand what Jesus Christ was really doing with his “mighty works” of miracles and wonders, it is essential that we read the Bible through the lens of the people who lived at the time, and what their worldview is. If not, we simply pick up and abuse Scripture for any purpose we have, and point to texts to “support” our agenda. We can’t cover all the ground in this attempt, but let’s unveil what we can here.

 

A VERY SHORT Historical Picture of Jesus’s Judea

The first century during which time Jesus was born was a time of great turbulence for the Jews. Previously whiles exiled in Babylon 500 ago, their prophets had prophesied of their return to their promised land, and of God coming back to them to restore them, and to vindicate them against all their enemies who had trodden on them before. From Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel to Daniel etc., the prophecies of God’s return were rife. And yet, half a millennium later, here they were under the rule of the Romans, with the promise of God’s return not yet arrived.

Interestingly most Jews did their own calculations based on different interpretations of the prophecies especially from those of Daniel (Dan. 9 & 10) and came to the conclusion that the time of God’s salvation and return to the temple (like he did in Solomon’s time) must be close. Some were therefore prepared to wait for God himself to do what he had promised them (like the Essene communities of the time), whiles others were prepared to fight the Romans boot for boot, knowing that because the “calculated time” was close, God will bring them victory (Zealots like Simon the Zealot, Barabbas etc.). The Romans were also very ready to crush any form of resistance that will jeopardize their food (and other essentials) supply channels from Egypt, through Judea to the Roman colonies and capital (as is the case with “jeopardizing” the oil supply from the Middle East to the US today). So contrary to most people’s idea of a nice Jerusalem with Pharisees teaching people how to obey the laws of Moses so they can be “righteous”, second temple Jews were nowhere near holding hands and singing “Kumbaya”, waiting for Jesus to come and be their personal savior.

The Agenda of Jesus’ Entire Ministry

Against this backdrop we see the man named Jesus going about doing a lot of miracles. It is important to note that he wasn’t stationary, but did go about from town to town during his ministry, in an effort to make his work known every.

He is accused of driving out demons by the power of Beelzebub. Denying it, he makes a very significant statement (my emphasis).

“But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you”. Mt 12:28

Jesus clearly declares that his miraculous deeds are meant to announce to them that the kingdom of God has indeed arrived amongst them. Now I want to suggest to you that the reason why Jesus Christ did all his wondrous works was as a display and inauguration of the kingdom of God which the Jews had been waiting for the last 500 years. Note he didn’t say “the kingdom of God WILL come upon you”. Contrary to modern Christian thinking, the idea that Jesus is all about going to a future “heaven” in the sky is not only non-scriptural, but has no Jewish antecedent and is rather from Platonism.  But I digress, so let us delve deeper.

The gospel of Luke gives us quite a chronological account of Jesus’s life and ministry. There is a certain key in that chronology that foreshadows all that Jesus did and which was recorded in the Gospels but our reading of the Gospels have not helped us to realize it. Before Jesus Christ launched his 3 year ministry, he underwent a period of temptation and fortification in the wilderness (40 days and 40 nights, as we were all taught in Sunday school). Luke says he returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and began preaching in synagogues. One of the first records of such teaching is Lk 4:16-21.

“He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the piece where it is written: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor’. Then he rolled up the scroll … and he began by saying, ‘Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing’.”

Here, Jesus picks a messianic prophecy by Isaiah, and says to the Nazareth folks right in their face that he is the fulfillment of that scripture – such guts. And the passage he referred to (Isaiah 61:1-2) states exactly what the Messiah was supposed to be about, and therefore what Jesus ministry on earth was supposed to be about. And so everything Jesus did, including his miraculous deeds, were meant to point out to the Jews who he was – the Messiah. And he had to do it by fulfilling what was already written about him – to bring freedom to prisoners, recovery of sight to the blind, release the oppressed etc.

Miracles: A Tool in the Kingdom Declaration Toolkit

Again, let’s see what Isaiah says elsewhere about the Messiah’s coming and his kind of miraculous deeds in Is 35:5-6

“Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy”

So it is that he goes about doing wonders with the idea that any Jew who saw Jesus works (and in addition, listened to his parables and other statements he made) would have known that this guy was trying to show us that he was the Messiah, not just a miracle worker. And so you will notice throughout the gospels that Jesus didn’t just do miracles, but he did miracles of a particular nature. NT Wright explains it this way

 

“Thus from the perspective of a follower of Jesus at the time, his mighty works will have been interpreted within the context of his overall proclamation: they would be seen as signs that the kingdom of Israel’s god was indeed coming to birth. From the perspective of anyone with vested interest in the kingdom coming in different ways, or indeed in not coming at all, the same events will have appeared as dangerous and subversive, i.e. as ‘magic’.

 

The evidence from Qumran suggests that, in some Jewish circles at least, a maimed Jew could not be a full member of the community. In addition to the physical burden of being blind, or lame, or deaf, or dumb, such a Jew was blemished, and unable to be a full Israelite … This shows that Jesus’ healing miracles must be seen clearly as bestowing the gift of “shalom”, wholeness, to those who lacked it, bringing not only physical health, but renewed membership in the people of YHWH.

 

Many of the people Jesus healed came into one of these banned categories. There were blind people (Mt. 9:27-31; Mt. 12:22; Mk. 8:22), deaf and dumb (Mt 9:32-3; Lk. 11:14; Mk. 7:32), lepers (who were not only ritually excluded, but also, of course, socially ostracized i.e. Mt. 8:1-4 or Mk. 1:40-45), a woman with an issue of blood, which rendered not only her, but anything she sat on or anyone or anything she touched, unclean (Mt. 9:20-22 or Mk. 5:24-34), a crippled woman ‘whom Satan bound for eighteen years’ (Lk. 13:10) … So too his miracles performed for Gentiles (Mt 8:5-13; Mt 15:21-28) and for a Samaritan (Lk. 17:11-19), bear witness to the inclusion within the people of YHWH of those who had formerly been outside.

 

The effect of these cures, therefore, was not merely to bring physical healing … but to reconstitute those healed as members of the people of Israel’s God. In other words, these healings at the deepest level of understanding would be seen as part of his total ministry, part of that open welcome which went with the inauguration of the kingdom and part of his subversive work which was likely to get him into trouble.

 

… Other signs of covenant renewal include the multiplication of the bread in the wilderness, and the stilling of the storms, both carrying overtones of the exodus”. (NT Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God)

 

And so, just imagine you lived in Judea at the time of Jesus. There were about 6 or so religious festivals each year, and every Jew was supposed to partake of them (whether living in Judea or in another country). For the particular festival of Passover, the population of Jerusalem could swell from about 50,000 to about 500,000 people (just think of Saudi Arabia’s Mecca and you’ll get the picture). And some of these festivals are not 1 day holidays, but whose celebration could span days, including the preparation up to those festivals. Some of them required the provision of animals for sacrifice for each person/family’s sins or as thanksgiving. This required money that poor people (and those poor by inability to work because of sickness) didn’t have. Any study of NT history shows no doubt that today’s poverty levels have nothing on the poverty levels amongst first century Jews of Jesus day. Then there was the regular weekly attendances that most people make to the temple, as well as going there to give one’s tithe when it was due. Gentiles (and Samaritans) who lived in Judea and wanted to serve the god of Israel as well could only enter the court of the Gentiles, and no further. The temple and religious activities were central to everything about being a Jew. A person’s inability to be an active partaker in the religious lives of Jews at the time due to any uncleanliness/deformity/nationality meant that one did not really feel a member of the community.

To a Jew who knows very well the story of how God fed them with manna during the exodus from Egypt to Canaan, 1) feeding 5000 people and another 4000 people and 2) doing so in the wilderness, looked very much like God repeating a miracle he’d done before. Calming the storm, again showed a person who had power to control the waters, just like God did during the exodus by splitting the Red Sea in two.

All these miracles were meant to speak to a people who already knew what prophets like Isaiah had already spoken of the coming Messiah and his kingdom in places like chapter 35, 61 and a myriad other such places.

Given this picture …

I began then to ask questions of our modern day attitude to miracles, and my personal evaluation leads me to think that we haven’t understood their purpose, and are simply abusing the examples of Jesus as a means to pursue a different (sometimes parochial, sometimes ignorant) agenda. I can therefore understand why Peter and John will bring healing to the lame man at the temple gates, who will never be able to enter it to feel like he was part of God’s people. The kingdom of God had arrived, and Peter and John’s work enabled him to partake of it. These and many more miraculous events (at least of the Gospels and Acts) seem clearer to me now.

But in the same way, our pursuit for miracles and our means of dishing them out today begins to look questionable. When we organize events and call people to come and receive “miracle”, what kind of “miracles” are we talking about? Miracles for the unmarried to be married? Miracles for people to get visas to go abroad? Miracles for “success”? How does not having any of these prevent us from being part of the kingdom of God, of being counted and taking an active position amongst the people of God? And even when we are healing sicknesses, how does that again display the kingdom of God’s defeat of sin and evil, when it only serves to display the “power” of the supposed “man of God”?

How does a person with the supposed “gift of healing” tell us that unless we come to their church, we may not receive a healing, when the Divine Healer didn’t confine his work to a church? That unless we “sow a seed”, we cannot receive a “miracle” from God, when even the premise of “miracle” itself is actually flawed?

Do you also think this understanding of the miraculous works of Jesus throws more light or raises more questions for us today, 2000 years later?