Tag Archive for: Jesus

What is so sacred about sex? – Part 2

/1 Comment/in , /by

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.

The will of God. Credit: http://holyspiritrevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/The-Will-Of-God.jpg

Finding the will of God

/0 Comments/in , , /by

If there is one thing that a lot Christians seem to be confused about, it is the question “what is the will of God?”. As a reflection of the times in which we live, this has been further honed into the individualized form “what is the will of God for me”, leading to variations such as “God will fulfill his purpose for my life” and so on and so forth. All of these then presuppose that there is a will of God for each person, and that if one lives one’s life according to God’s plan, then they will somehow discover this “will”. In fact the word “destiny” has now taken on a life of its own in some circles of Christianity to denote this concept, and pastors spend enormous amounts of preaching time trying to distill how to achieve this in their sermons.

However, we may need to pause and reflect deeper on what the New Testament actually says about the will of God before we run ahead of ourselves. This must be done in keeping with the important rule that Jesus must be the key to understanding God’s revelation of himself in scripture, it is important to first look at what Jesus himself had to say on the subject of “the will of God”.

Jesus

When Jesus came to the world, there was one thing he kept announcing – the Kingdom of God. Within the Gospels alone, there are 50 occurrences of the kingdom of God/Heaven metaphor, with Jesus continuously stressing that this kingdom that the 1st century Jews had been waiting for had somehow come through him. And so he set out what many scholars have called his “manifesto” in the Sermon on the Mount as recorded in Matt 5:1-8:1, and in Luke 6. It is important to note that Matthew’s record links everything that Jesus said from Matt 5:1 all the way to 8:1 as part of that one sermon, and any serious student of the Bible needs to pay attention to this particularity. Although our modern bibles have nice chapter and verse divisions and sometimes headings for different “sections” of this sermon, Matthew says all this was said by Jesus at one sitting.

That being the case, it is important to note the following points

  1. Jesus seemed to be behaving like Moses, receiving a new Torah on the mountain and delivering it to his people.
  2. Jesus actually changed some of the provisions in the Torah, laying out a new way for those who will follow him. Compare what Jesus said in Mt 5:38-42 with what Moses wrote in Deut 19:21.
  3. Jesus was touching on 2 very important things in 1st century Judaism – election (who are the people of God, or the “blessed”) and Torah (what should be the way of life of these people). You will find all over the psalms who the people of ancient Israel called “blessed”(e.g. Ps 1, 16,32,112,119,128). Essentially this was anyone who was a descendant of Abraham or non-descendant who worships Yahweh, and who in addition followed Yahweh’s Torah given to Moses. Jesus turned this election around and said the poor, the peacemakers, the humble, those persecuted for his sake etc. who actually follow him are the “blessed” people, and gave his own Torah as to how they must live if they want to be part of his elect people.

In concluding his speech, Jesus ends with warnings related to all the things he had said. He warned about false prophets turning them away from what he has laid out, then warned that those who “do the will of God”, which he has laid down in this discourse, are those fit for the kingdom. He finally ended by saying those who take his words seriously are those who build on the rock, while those who don’t are those who build on the sand. Not only did he undermine the sacred Torah, he elevated his own words above it by using the formula “you have heard/Moses said” and “I say”.

It is no wonder then that when he finished this sermon of his, “the crowds were amazed at his teaching (Mt 7:28)”. Unlike the Pharisees and Scribes of their time, or pastors and teachers of our time, Jesus didn’t expound the Torah. Jesus actually created new laws and invalidated old ones, behaving more like Moses or like Yahweh himself.

All of this put together should lead us to realize that those who were listening to Jesus at the time would have gotten the following picture, which many rejected because it was contrary to what they knew about Yahweh:

  1. Jesus was not just behaving like a prophet, he was also behaving like God.
  2. Jesus was changing the rules as to who was in and who was out. Being a Jew by birth (or proselyte) and following the Torah was no longer enough.
  3. The will of God was to follow this messiah called Jesus, and not to just call him “Lord, Lord”.
  4. Following this will of God was going to lead to even more suffering than they were already under, and yet that was the way that this messiah required.
  5. This will of God required them to love their enemies even to the cost of our own lives, to care for the poor, sick and disadvantaged, to seek justice for the weak and be filled with mercy, to be faithful to their spouses till death or be celibate, to speak truth without abundance of swearing, to let their prayers be not long and flowery but to the point, to do their deeds of love without public display, to put away anger against their brethren and so on. To sum all this up, this will of God simply required them to follow this messiah’s words and ways, and to make him alone receive all the glory of everything they did in their lives.

The Epistles

This will is what Paul expounds in Col 1:15-23 in such terms of cosmic glory. God’s will was that “he [Jesus] is before all things, and in him all things hold together … so that in everything he will have the supremacy … For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him” (v 17-19 NIV). And so Paul says that Jesus will present his followers holy and blameless in his sight, if they “continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard”(v 23 NRSV. The NIV says “continue in YOUR faith”, which falls too close to the trap of individualism for me. Conversely, as pointed out by Ben Witherington, the NRSV also gets Heb 12:2 wrong with “perfector of our faith”, whiles the 2011 NIV gets it right with “perfector of faith”. Sigh …). Here Paul sounds the same warning as Jesus – don’t call him “Lord, Lord” and yet not follow him, but continue to be faithful to him.

We see Paul again reminding the Ephesians that they were saved, so they can serve.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—  not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Eph 2:8-10)

Every other place where the Epistles refer to the will of God is to be understood and framed in what Jesus himself has laid down as “the will of God” – following Jesus, and serving others even at the peril of our own lives.

Conclusion

The will of God is that his followers reject the ways of this world and the world’s unwillingness to submit to Jesus in obedience. The will of God is that his kingdom of justice, peace, mercy and compassion, love and care for one another will be made known to the world through the church, Jesus’ community of followers (Eph 3:10-11). The will of God is that men may see that there is a different way that society can exist, and that to find that way is to find the Anointed One who showed that way by giving himself up for us, and to join the people who are living life that way.

There is no separate “will of God” specially created for you different from what God has already defined “before the foundation of the earth” (Eph 1:4;2 Tim 1:9;1 Pe 1:20). God has no special “purpose for your life” other than that you follow Jesus. There is no “divine destiny” for you other than following the messiah, and working for his kingdom and with his manifesto.

If Christians thought this way, they would not be so easily swayed by all the winds of deception and confusion blowing about. They would not need the multitude of conferences and “divine encounters” that are being sold to them everyday. They won’t be worried about consulting “prophets” about whether to marry Kofi or Kwame, or the other important decisions we make in life. We won’t be worried about whether a decision about our lives is “in the will of God”, simply because it will all be reduced to a simple matter of whether it will enable one to continue to be faithful in following Jesus with one’s brethren or not.

If Christians thought this way, they will be less worried about themselves, and more worried about their neighbour. Because the kingdom of God is about what you are doing for others as Jesus did, not how you are grabbing for yourself. And what was it that Jesus said about neighbours?

Is The Bible A Reliable Historical Document?

/in , , /by

People who dismiss the Bible as unreliable and unworthy of attention often challenge its historical credibility. The average Christian usually does not know how to adequately respond to the sophisticated form of this challenge. For instance a critic might submit as a historical fact, an issue like the council of Nicaea during the fourth century to say that this was the point at which Christians met to change things in the Bible to suit their erroneous teachings. For the skeptic this is a good strategy because if you can prove the historical unreliability of the Bible, then Christianity, which is perhaps the world’s most spiritually and morally disturbing faith (i.e. its teachings hunts the human conscience with the issue of sin in the heart), becomes minced meat. Truth be told, most Ghanaian Christians do not know much about Christian Church history; they hardly look beyond their denominations. Skeptics often argue against the Bible’s reliability with reasons ranging from the Bible being a myth to having contradictions and also to being textually unreliable. Of course, the implication of Christians hinging their beliefs and way of life on a historically unreliable document is very serious; the oft-repeated charge that Christianity goes against reason or intellect will become valid if this is the case.

In fact, there is a growing number of Christian youngsters in Ghana today who are questioning their beliefs about the Bible in the face of some scientific theories, challenges from the popular New Atheists in the West and sadly the irrational behaviour and practices of the present popular Christianity in the country. Christianity in Ghana, in the past, has not faced much intellectual attacks and as a result most present day Ghanaian Christians honestly do not know how to deal with challenges to the credibility of the Bible as a reliable historical document. This is understandable. But Ghanaian Christians need to understand that the times have changed. An increasing number of young people who were brought up on Christian teachings are now rejecting the faith because they are not getting reasonable or intellectually satisfying answers to their nagging questions. Their present number may be relatively small in Ghana, since we have historically not been a very questioning culture. But with more Ghanaians being educated to higher levels, and having easy access to information around the globe, the questions that their curious minds are raising should not be ignored. They must be addressed head-on.

I am aware that there are huge volumes of books that have responded to claims of the Bible’s unreliability so I will not pretend that this short article will exhaustively address the challenges mentioned above. What I want to do here is to whet the appetite of honest skeptics, critics and seekers for embarking on an honest investigation of the Bible’s reliability as a historical document. I use the word ‘honest’ because there are those who, in their rhetoric, give the impression that they are intellectually honest in their search for answers yet who have actually already made up their minds not to seriously consider any evidence or argument that will go in favour of the Bible or Christianity. Such people are not my target readership because I am convinced of the words of the sage who once observed that, “To give truth to him who loves it not is but to give him plentiful material for misinterpretation.” And let me also clarify that when I use the word “Bible,” I am limiting it to the mainstream translations in the public domain which have not been customized for the theologies of any particular church or fringe group. Also this article defends only the historical reliability of the Bible and not the truthfulness of its doctrines, which is a subject for another article.

 

Myth or History

Christianity would not be so disturbing had it not been for its claim that Jesus is the Son of God and that he is the only way to God and also that these claims are recorded in the Bible. For some these claims are uncomfortably exclusive and they find it easier to believe the hypothesis that Christians in later generations actually invented these ideas which the early disciples of Jesus (if there ever were any) never thought of. But the fact is that this is simply not true! If Jesus’ divinity and claim of exclusivity are myths invented by later generations then there must have been at least two or three generations between the original eyewitnesses of the historical Jesus and the universal belief in the mythic, divinized and exclusive Jesus. Why? In the absence of this condition, the myth could not have been believed as fact since it would have been refuted by eyewitnesses of the real historical Jesus. Both his disciples and his enemies would have had reasons to oppose this new myth. Incidentally, we find no such evidence at all of anyone ever opposing the so-called myth of the divine Jesus in the name of an earlier merely human Jesus. The New testament manuscripts from first century show that this idea of a divine Jesus originated from the very disciples and followers of Christ right in the first century and no competent scholar today denies the first-century dating of virtually all of the New Testament.

Further, the claim of Jesus to be God makes sense of his trial and the Jewish leaders’ desire for his crucifixion. You see, the Jewish sensitivity to blasphemy was a unique thing in the Roman world. No sympathizers of any of the pagan religions at that time would have so fanatically insisted on the death penalty as punishment for claiming divinity because the prevailing attitude in the Roman world toward the gods was “the more, the merrier.” For instance, a city like Athens had many altars for the several gods yet just to make sure that they had not missed any god, they made an altar “to an Unknown God” (Acts 17:23). Now if we still want to maintain that the divine Jesus of the Gospels is a myth, then the question begging to be answered is: who invented it? Whether it was Jesus’ first disciples or some later generation, no credible motive can account for this invention. Why do I say this? Until the Edict of Milan in AD 313, Christians were subject to serious persecution. They were often tortured and killed, and hated and oppressed for their beliefs. No one, especially a skeptical first century Jew, would invent an elaborate practical joke in order to be crucified, stoned or beheaded for it!

Textual Reliability

While some people who may have done some research on the Bible love to point out what they believe to be inaccuracies in modern Bibles as compared to earlier manuscripts, others who have done no study on the subject will often use such purported inaccuracies as valid reasons for not having anything to do with the teachings of the book. Can we trust the Bible as we have it today?

When you take the story about Jesus for instance, we have four Gospels rather than one. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were written by four different writers, at four different times, and with four somewhat different purposes and emphasis. This makes cross-checking possible. Through a textual comparison, we can fix the facts with far greater assurance here than with any other ancient series of events about a historical figure. Like some historians have observed, “The only inconsistencies are in chronology (only Luke’s Gospel claims to be in exact order) and accidentals like numbers (e.g. did the women see one angel or two at the empty tomb?)” Further, Historians evaluate the textual reliability of ancient literature according to two standards: (1) What he time interval is between the original and the earliest copy available and (2) how many manuscripts are available.

Knowledge of Julius Caesar’s exploits in the Gallic Wars are available today because of ten manuscript copies, the earliest of which dates to within 1,000 years of the time it was written by Caesar, somewhere 100-44 BC. Plato’s writings took place around 400 BC and there are seven manuscripts available today, the earliest of which dates to within 1,300 years after Plato’s death. Homer’s ‘Iliad’ is much more reliable in terms of time gap because the time gap between the date of its composition and the date of the earliest copies available to us for examination today is 400 years. It was composed in 800 BC and the earliest manuscript copy dates around 400 BC. It is worthy to note that all we know about Socrates today is known through his student Plato’s writings yet nobody doubts that Socrates ever existed. Isn’t it interesting then to see people expressing unease or trying to discredit the Gospels just because the disciples of Jesus wrote them?

When we use these same standards above which historians typically use, the New Testament stands impressively tall and without equal when compared to other ancient documents. There are nearly 25,000 manuscript copies of the New Testament books available in Libraries and universities around the world today. John’s gospel has the earliest manuscript copies available to us today in the form of fragments (located in the John Rylands Library, Manchester, England) dating to within 50 years from when the apostle John authored the original between AD 50-100. Which ancient document comes close to this? Further, the earliest Greek manuscript copies available today of the Complete New Testament dates to 225 years from the original writing. This is about half the time gap for manuscript copies of Homer’s Iliad, which is the most historically reliable ancient secular document. This is simply impressive. People who accuse Christians of adulterating and falsifying the current Bible need only to go to the Libraries to do the comparisons. But of course it is easier to claim intellectual honesty while making sweeping statements, perpetuating myths and accusing Christians of rejecting their intellect since most unsophisticated Christians will not be able to put up any formidable defence, isn’t it? Even more interesting is that those who accuse Christians of doctoring the current Bible are hard-pressed to produce any originals with which to compare. In essence, the critic is really saying, “I don’t have any evidence but just take my word for it, your Bible has been corrupted.” Quite sad!

 

As far as the Old Testament (The Jewish Scriptures) is concerned, the standards for making copies were incredibly strict. The Jewish scribes saw the discipline as a high spiritual calling. And the accuracy of their copying has been confirmed by the discovery of the ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ in 1947. Prior to 1947 the oldest complete Hebrew manuscript dated to AD 900. With the discovery of 223 manuscripts in caves on the west side of the Dead Sea, we now have Old Testament manuscripts that palaeographers have dated around 125 BC. These are 1000 years older than the previously known manuscripts. After the translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it has been discovered that the text of the modern version of the Hebrew Bible is 95% identical, with the 5% variation consisting mainly of spelling variations. This is nothing short of impressive. And religiously speaking, this remarkably shows how the Sovereign and All-powerful God, even while working with and through fallible men, has preserved his teachings throughout the ages for the World so that we may all get to know him as he is.

 

Contradictions

Contradiction is a serious thing anytime truth is in question and since Christians claim that Christianity is a religion based on truth, it is crucial that the charges of contradictions in the Bible be looked at carefully. I am sure the critics have a tall list of what is believed to be contradictions that are enough to bury the Bible. But like I indicated in the beginning, this article is meant to whet the appetite of the honest skeptics for investigating the historical reliability of the Bible. For this article I have chosen to look at just a few regarding the story of Jesus Christ in the gospels, in particular, the resurrection of Jesus Christ which is the linchpin on which all of Christianity hangs. Christianity stands or falls on the truthfulness of this story, and thus if the eyewitness accounts are essentially contradictory, then there is a big problem – their story cannot be relied upon. One critic has complained that:

 

“In Matthew, when Mary Magdalene and the other Mary arrived toward dawn at the tomb there is a rock in front of it, there is a violent earthquake, and an angel descends and rolls back the stone. In Mark, the women arrive at the tomb at sunrise and the stone had been rolled back. In Luke, when the women arrive at early dawn they find the stone had already been rolled back. In Matthew, an angel is sitting on the rock outside the tomb and in Mark a youth is inside the tomb. In Luke, two men are inside. In Matthew, the women present at the tomb are Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. In Mark, the women present at the tomb are the two Marys and Salome. In Luke, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Joanna, and the other women are present at the tomb.”

 

On the surface, this seems like a combination of hopeless contradictions which should severely damage the narrative about Jesus’ empty tomb. But hold on a moment! Take a closer look at the each of the narratives in the gospels and you will realize that the differences are in the secondary details. There is actually a historical core to the story that can be relied upon – that Jesus’ body was placed in a tomb and sealed with a rock, the tomb was visited by a small group of women followers of Jesus early on Sunday morning and they found it empty but they saw a vision of angel(s) saying that Jesus had risen from the dead. The differences in the names of the women, their number, the exact time of the morning etc do not disturb the core of the story. Besides the differences in the empty tomb narratives actually informs us that we have multiple independent confirmation of the story. Indeed if all four gospels were identical in the smallest details, it would raise suspicion of plagiarism.

 

We must also note how history was recorded back then and how different it is from our ‘journalist reports’ today. The oral transmission of history focused on the major issues of the hero’s life, not the excruciating details of our 21st century style of reportage. Historical documents of that age typically followed this principle and it is not unique to the Bible. “We have two narratives of Hannibal crossing the Alps to attack Rome, and they’re incompatible and irreconcilable. Yet no classical historian doubts the fact that Hannibal did mount such a campaign. That’s a non-biblical illustration of discrepancies in secondary details failing to undermine the historical core of a historical story,” quipped Dr. Lane Craig, a Christian Historian and Philosopher, in an interview with former investigative journalist (also an Atheist-turned-Christian) Lee Strobel. Most of what seem like contradictions in the Bible could actually be resolved easily with some background knowledge and an open-minded reading of the text. It is fascinating to watch people who usually would boast of open-mindedness suddenly switching to closed-mindedness mode when it comes to the Bible.

 

Conclusion

Those who reject the Bible on the grounds of historical unreliability do so not because of the absence of evidence but because of the suppression of evidence or unwillingness to pursue the evidence wherever it may lead. Like I have indicated twice already, my hope is that this piece whets the appetite of honest skeptics who probably thought the Bible was not historically reliable, to embark on an investigative adventure. I also hope that young Christians who may be doubting the historical reliability of the Bible will find some confidence to keep studying about the Bible and come to the point of wanting to study the Bible’s contents and rightly applying them to their lives. The beauty about the Bible is that it stands up to scrutiny. Many have tried to argue against it, destroy it, bury it, and falsify its contents by claiming things it never claimed but the authentic Word of God continues to live on long after its opponents are dead. If God is indeed sovereign and all-powerful God (which he is) then this is exactly what we should expect – he keeps his Word from being lost, adulterated or destroyed. I have little doubt that skeptics who will take my challenge to do an honest investigation of the Bible’s credibility will find that not only is the Bible historically reliable, but its ultimate Author – God – is very trustworthy also.

Hope In The Shadow of Death

/in , /by

On any ordinary day, death is not a subject most of us would like to occupy our minds with. It is that dark spot in human experience which we all wish was not there. In Ghana, posters with the words “What A Shock!” and “Gone Too Soon” often express how we feel about the death of loved ones. Even when euphemisms like “Home Call” and “Call To Glory” are used, they still do not sit comfortably with many of us. We cannot think of death without feeling uneasy. But I am convinced that the thought of death would not be as frightening, as crippling and as devastating as it is in our experience if we were on good terms with the Giver of life – God. This is a bold statement, yes, but I think facing the truth is a wise thing to do.

We fear death because we are not sure what will happen after death. And the reason we are concerned about what will happen after death is because somehow we know deep within us that physical death is really not the end of our story. We have this profound sense that there is something beyond making a descent living, being good to others and having our bodies decomposed. “Life can’t be that simple!” we reason in the quietness of our minds. Whatever or Whoever was the cause of our existence surely did not fill us with such intricate design and information just to last for three score years and ten or at the most one hundred and twenty years. Even without any exposure to the Bible, many people around the world believe that there has to be something more beyond the grave for this world to make sense. Perhaps justice? Or a better life to make up for the harsh one they had down here?

C.S. Lewis once made the brilliant observation that our repeated astonishment at time as demonstrated in our exclamations like “How he’s grown!” and “How time flies!” actually go to show how little reconciled we are to time. He notes that our surprise is as strange as the case would be if we found a fish that was always surprised at the wetness of water. Such a fish would be really strange unless that fish was destined to become a land animal one day. Similarly, our souls were not made for time but for eternity. This is why we are uncomfortable in this space-time dimension. The Bible teaches that the original intent of God was for human life to go on and on but sin has interrupted this plan.

Our fear of death

When you have rebelliously run away from home against your parents’ wishes, the thought of returning home can fill you with an overwhelming fear because you know deep down that you did not do the right thing. We all feel a sense of guilt; we feel we have missed the mark somehow. “All we like sheep have gone astray” declared the prophet Isaiah. A prominent theme in the Bible is that we have all rebelled against our Creator in one way or another. Paul the apostle of Christ wrote:

“God’s anger is revealed from heaven against all the sin and evil of the people whose evil ways prevent the truth from being known.  God punishes them, because what can be known about God is plain to them, for God himself made it plain. Ever since God created the world, his invisible qualities, both his eternal power and his divine nature, have been clearly seen; they are perceived in the things that God has made. So those people have no excuse at all!  They know God, but they do not give him the honour that belongs to him, nor do they thank him. Instead, their thoughts have become complete nonsense, and their empty minds are filled with darkness.  They say they are wise, but they are fools; … Because those people refuse to keep in mind the true knowledge about God, he has given them over to corrupted minds, so that they do the things that they should not do. They are filled with all kinds of wickedness, evil, greed, and vice; they are full of jealousy, murder, fighting, deceit, and malice. They gossip and speak evil of one another; they are hateful to God, insolent, proud, and boastful; they think of more ways to do evil; they disobey their parents; they have no conscience; they do not keep their promises, and they show no kindness or pity for others. They know that God’s law says that people who live in this way deserve death. Yet, not only do they continue to do these very things, but they even approve of others who do them.” – Romans 1:18-22; 28-32 GNB

Which of us does not need forgiveness? In the history of the world and in the various religions men have always cried for atonement – something to be sacrificed to appease the higher powers whom we believe we have offended. Jesus Christ, God in human flesh, has offered himself a sacrifice for our sins and as the resurrected Lord of Lords, he extends forgiveness to all who believe in him. This is the heart of the Christian gospel – God’s act of reconciling all mankind to himself. And the Apostle Paul, after converting to follow Jesus, declared to the church in Rome saying, “I have complete confidence in the gospel; it is God’s power to save all who believe, first the Jews and also the Gentiles. For the gospel reveals how God puts people right with himself: it is through faith from beginning to end. .. ” Romans 1:16&17 GNB.

Unlike any other religious teaching, the teaching of Jesus Christ on sin is at once the most challenged yet also the most empirically verifiable truth about humanity. We are all depraved, if not in our deeds then it is in our thoughts. At the same time that we are publicly crying out and fighting for justice and human rights, we find that we are also privately lying, cheating, deceiving others, being adulterous at heart and hating some people. Jesus’ teaching about the wickedness of the human heart has pinpoint accuracy. But in all honesty, if this is all that Jesus did or was able to do then I must confess that he has not helped mankind in any extraordinary terms compared to all the other founders of the world religions. For they also had some useful teachings for mankind, even if some of their teachings were wrong.

What makes Jesus unique in the history of the world is that he did not only correctly diagnose our fundamental problem, he also provided the solution in himself. He offered himself as a sacrificial lamb to atone for our wrong doing. He did not give us guidelines for preparing our own medicine, he prepared the medicine himself and said to us “here it is, take it and you’ll be cured.” This is a major difference between Jesus Christ and the other teachers and prophets. They gave us tall lists of things to do to cure ourselves but they could not grant us the power to do them because after all they themselves did not even have the power. They had to depend on God’s power and mercy. But Jesus Christ says things like, “he who believes in me shall live,” “I will come and live with him,” “I will not leave you comfortless,” “Lo, I am with you till the end of age,” and “I am the resurrection and the life.” Jesus never intended to leave us in doubt about his divine status. He told those who could not believe in him because of his teachings to at least believe because of his miracles. The Bible says Jesus is the son of God and that whoever believes in him will have his soul reunited with his resurrected and glorified body and live in a heavenly city – the new earth devoid of evil, sadness, sickness and death – after the judgement day.

The historical records tell us, Jesus was crucified and on the third day his tomb was found empty. His enemies, who made sure that his tomb was guarded to prevent the disciples from stealing the body and claiming he is alive, did not have any answers for the missing body. It was inexplicable! Jesus had resurrected! He appeared to several people after his resurrection. His disciples who had become so scared to come out of hiding suddenly were filled with boldness to preach outdoors, and stand before the authorities and claim they were followers of the resurrected Christ. The disciples were rational people who often wanted evidence in order to believe and thus would not have put their lives on the line knowing very well they were preaching a lie. The resurrection of Christ is the bedrock of Christianity and the apostles defended it to their deaths. The Apostle Paul once declared that if Christ did not rise from the death then Christians deserve more pity than anyone else in all the world. This was the level of confidence they had! They saw him with their own eyes and testified of it to the point of death. “… he appeared to Peter and then to all the twelve apostles. Then he appeared to more than 500 of his followers at once, most of whom are still alive, although some have died,” wrote Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:5-8 GNB. This was a claim which could have been easily cross-checked at the time since he emphasized that, “most of whom are still alive.” No sane person puts his life on the line for what he knows to be a lie. A person may die for a lie when he believes it to be true, but it take insanity to die for a lie when you know it is lie. Throughout the gospels we see that the disciples were not only sane but were also people who did not believe things too easily and Jesus, often frustrated with their unbelief would say things like “you of little faith,” “Have you no faith?” These were people who wanted to have evidence of the resurrection before believing, even when the women from their own number testified that Jesus had resurrected. These are the kind of men who wrote the part of the Bible which is generally called “New Testament.”

Jesus, the Son of God, has been to the world of the dead and come back and is presently alive. He has overcome death’s power and he assures you that all who believe in him will be taken safely through death into a glorious eternity with him, instead of suffering a damning eternity away from God in hell for sins committed.

I once read of a parable about a very wealthy man whose son used to go out to the city street and talk to a particular beggar. The beggar took a liking to the son and one day gave him a portrait he had painted of him. The young man took it to his father who was an art connoisseur. His father thought to himself, “This is not a very good painting, but we’ll hang it up in the gallery because it’s supposed to be of my son.” Several years went by and the young man stopped coming to visit the beggar. One day the beggar went to the gates of the palace where the young man lived and said, “I don’t see that young man anymore.” The palace guards replied, “He died very suddenly.” The beggar was sad to hear this and he said, “Can I see his father?” And they said, “Yes.” The beggar said to the father, “I have done another painting of your son, just like the other one. I want you to have it.” He gave it to the father and he hung it beside the first portrait.

Not long afterwards, the father also passed away and the beggar heard about it. He also heard that all the art works in the palace were going to be auctioned. He asked if he could go in to observe the auction. An auctioneer came in, looked around and saw all the paintings on the walls and the connoisseurs who had come to bid on them. He also noticed that in the middle of the art collection was hanging the two paintings of the wealthy man’s son done by the beggar that were not good at all. So the auctioneer said, “We’re going to have an auction, but the first paintings to go are the ones of the young man here and then we’ll proceed with the rest.“ The connoisseurs said, “We’re not interested in them, just get on with the ….” The Auctioneer insisted, “No, no, we must begin with these.” But nobody bid. So the beggar put his hand in his pocket and took out a handful of pennies to bid. The gavel was sounded and he got the son’s portraits. As the beggar took them and was about to leave, the gavel sounded again and the auctioneer said, “I have some news for you. Behind the paintings of this young man are the words, ‘Whoever bids on these gets the whole gallery.’” The beggar got the son’s portraits and also got everything else that the father had to offer.

Jesus Christ, the very Son of God, gives you all that his Father has to offer: forgiveness, hope, eternal life in God’s glorious presence in the world to come, meaning in this present life and also victory over the fear of death. When you believe in him, he has promised to come to live with you even while in this life. He will walk you through life and guarantee you a safe landing in the next life. The state of the believer in Christ can be summed up in the words of hymnist, Stuart Townend: “No guilt in life, no fear in death; This is the power of Christ in me.”

When you have this assurance, this hope, which extends beyond the grave, it profoundly influences how you view not only death but also trying times, suffering and life in general in this world. The hope of resurrection is what filled the early apostles of Christ with boldness and led to the eventual establishment of the Christian faith. “Because I live, you shall live also,” were the words of Christ to his disciples. Their hope was not baseless, for it was based on the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and his promise to make them have the same experience. Their hope was based on a person who was able to deliver on his word always – Jesus the Son of God. This same Jesus who rose from the dead and is alive today is calling all of us who are tired from carrying heavy loads – including the fear of death – and he will give us rest. In Jesus Christ, man’s finally enemy, death, loses its sting. The Bible says Jesus Christ is the person going to judge the whole world on the Judgement day. And what better hope is there than to know that your eternal destiny has been secured by the very Judge of the world because you have already committed your life into his hands! When you know Jesus, you know the truth and this truth will set you free even from the fear of death.

Death is not a tragic end for the believer in Christ. It is rather the door through which he passes to be with his Lord in his glory. “I can only imagine what it will be like,” sang Mercy Me, “when I walk by your side; I can only imagine; what my eyes will see; when your face Is before me; I can only imagine; surrounded by your glory; what will my heart feel?; will I dance for you Jesus or in awe of you be still?; will I stand in your presence or to my knees will I fall?; will I sing hallelujah?; will I be able to speak at all?; I can only imagine.” Yes! We can only imagine. For meeting the resurrected Christ in his unveiled glory, his thunderous majesty, power and dominion will be an experience like no other that we have ever known! Let us not fear death but rather put our faith in the King of Glory.

When the dead preach

/in /by

I am here again in the Dissection Room (DR), the familiar scent of Formalin highlighting the sanctity of its atmosphere. Apart from the incense-saturated atmosphere, and the white-clad ‘catechists’ surrounding their ‘lifeless priests,’ little chants of Latin ‘prayers’ could be heard: “Flexor Digitorum Profundus.” Say Amen to that!

By the way, that is the name of a muscle. Not much has changed since I last visited the DR, at least not the shadow of a man lying supine on dissection table number 12. He is still very dead! With a scalpel in one hand and a pair of forceps in the other, I do my best to skilfully cut my way through skin and fat all in a bid to discover the evidence of what I have been taught in Anatomy 201 by some of the country’s most learned minds. But even these foremost Anatomy Professors cannot fully describe or explain the beauty and sanctity of what I am seeing. It is amazing how the innate are able to articulate to us the beauty of the life we are living! How the dead can talk and the living cannot! More amazing is how the confluence of nerves, veins and arteries and the contours of muscle combine to produce the shadow of a complex organism, an almost complete Homo sapiens. If only he could rise and breathe for a brief moment!

Ironically it took just a brief moment for this gentleman (too gentle for my liking) to prove his mortality. I may never know how he died or how he was born, what his name was or how he came to be lying at the edge of my scalpel. I may never know whether or not he was a good man in his lifetime. But on this side of life, he has proven to be one of the best teachers I have ever met and will ever meet or meat.

A legend is told of a certain three-day old cadaver who chose that particular fate—death—and self-managed to raise himself up! I once tried raising myself up alive o. Try as I would, I only succeeded in discovering new ways to fail. You may want to try too. According to this legend, He was God. That explains why he was able to resuscitate himself right? For who else can do that? Now, in choosing a way to die, if I were in his shoes, I would have chosen the easiest way. Wouldn’t you have done same? After all, he had the power. But the legend says he did the complete opposite. Well, it is just a legend so it cannot be true or can it? Everything and anything is possible in a legend. It need not necessarily be true.

Did this legend really happen? Unfortunately, it did. History corroborates the fact that at one time in the distant past – some two thousand years ago – a man died on a cross on the outskirts of Jerusalem. And his reason for dying was not so ‘wise’: He loved you and I so much so that He chose to die to save us from our imminent ‘death’ (which we very much deserved by the way). They say love is blind, don’t they? But I doubt if God is blind. If God really saw us in our most wretched, unlovable state and still chose to die for us, how shall we call this? Not love? Love which we did not deserve yet which He kindly and willingly gave.

Like the cadaver on my table, Jesus died to show us a way—the way! In His death, He revealed to us something – that the beauty of life lay in the act of dying to the flesh. He taught us that it was only in dying to the flesh that we can rise up. He taught that sinful man had to be born again in order to experience the beauty of life [John 3:3, Romans 8:1-8]. We may try raising ourselves up by ourselves but who would we really be fooling? The Law of gravity is at work in full gear. It will only take the laws of aerodynamics to help us overcome it. The pulley has been set. Jesus is ready and willing to pull you out of the mess you are in. He will do so if only you will hold on to the gift of his rope of hope, of a second chance, of salvation from sin, of grace – if only you will believe!

Back to that glimpse of our fate lying on my concrete table in the DR – the grim picture of our future: we shall all die! [Hebrews 9:27]. No one knows when though, except the All-knowing God. When and when death comes, what happens then? What happens then is a detailed accounting of how we used everything that we were given, even this sermon from an unknown cadaver. How are you going to answer?

 

 

Jesus of the Gospels 2: His Parables

/2 Comments/in , , /by

One of the most recognizable and yet probably most misunderstood tools of Jesus Christ’s ministry was his use of parables. These were stories he told as he went from town to town, and some of them he definitely told more than once as we mentioned in the previous post on the life of a typical prophet of his day.

The fact that most of these parables had some moral underpinning seemed to have led people to simply label Jesus a “universal teacher” of timeless truths. Much as we like to find nice teaching themes from these parables for our Sunday sermons, we may be surprised that a large chunk of the parable (but not all of them) were meant not as stories of morality, but rather stories of judgment on Israel for its failure to be the light onto the world that Yawheh had called it to be, and also a means to tell Israel that he now was the means of the fulfillment of that responsibility.

Israel As a Light Onto The World

One of the callings that Israel knew and believed of itself was that God had called it to be the light onto the world. This is captured mainly by the prophet Isaiah, and was very dominant in the mindset of Jews at the time of Jesus

“Yea, He saith, ‘It is too light a thing for you to be My servant, to establish the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the scions of Israel, and I shall submit you as a light unto the nations, to be My salvation until the end of the earth’ (Isaiah, 49:6)

“I the LORD have called unto you in righteousness, and have taken hold of your hand, and submitted you as the people’s covenant, as a light unto the nations” (Isaiah, 42:6)

“And unto your light, nations shall walk, and kings unto the brightness of your rising” (Isaiah, 60:3)

This is clearly the context within which Jesus was speaking in Mt 5:14-16. Jesus Christ was not referring to the people as individuals standing before him when he spoke in the famous “Sermon on the Mount” about their light not shining for the world to see. He was talking to them as a corporate, as Israel. Our tendency to read everything with individualistic eyes (and the lack of a different word for plural “you” in English) means we’ve taken Jesus wrongly to mean Kofi as an individual is supposed to be the light of the world. But alas, the man had bigger fish to fry.

Therefore it was in Israel that salvation to the world was to be found (Jn 4:22). It was in them that the world’s hope rested. It was in them that the nations may see light. But here was a people darkened rather, having returned from exile with the prophecies of Isaiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Zechariah etc constantly replaying in their heads about how God was going to re-establish his kingdom and judge all their enemies, yet continuously living under the yoke of the Roman empire’s hardship. Coupled with extreme economic situations, injustice and gross inequality reigned between the rich and the poor. As for the temple and its priest, there wasn’t much to be said for a priesthood which was more interested in tithing and taxing the people, than in ways of ensuring justice and mercy among God’s own people (hmm, doesn’t this sound familiar?). The fact that the high priest was appointed via politicking and bribery and not from the descendants of Aaron anymore was even more depressing. In the midst of all this were those who believed God will save Israel if the “righteous ones” bunched together and fought the enemy by the sword, and so there was a lot of tension, banditry and violence underneath the supposed calm of the day.

Enter Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ enters the fray, declaring that indeed the kingdom of God that was prophesied by the prophets has indeed arrived, but in a shape and form that was different from what they expected. He declared that it had arrived in and through him i.e. he was their Messiah, and yet he sought to expand the beneficiaries of that kingdom to include all those that society had cast away in addition e.g. those considered “sinners” like the gentiles (Mt 7:25-30) and even their Roman centurions that suppress Israel (Lk 7:1-10), the sick, tax collectors (Zacchaeus in Lk 19:1-10) , those considered poor and enslaved by poverty (Mt 18:21-35) and so on. Alongside declaring that the kingdom of God had come, he also declared that Israel had failed in its job to be the light to the world (and in whom salvation should have been found) and therefore he himself was taking up the vocation of Israel.

But he couldn’t tell this bitter truth to the Israelites straight in the face, or else his ministry would not have even lasted the 3 years that it did before he’d have gotten stoned or arrested somehow. So he had to employ parables as a means of disguising his message, so that it’s only upon further reflection would you have understood what he actually meant, by which time he’d probably moved to the next town. They were his way of planting unknown seeds in the mind of the Jewish people, until he is vindicated and those who had heard him see the wisdom and truth of it. And this is why he ended some of his sayings (not only parables) with “He who has an ear, let him hear” and why he says to his disciples

“The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them … This is why I speak to them in parables: Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand” (Mt 13:11-13)

Oh this subversive king of ours.

To Some Parables

Note that most of such “subversive” parables began with “the kingdom of God/heaven is like …” . This should tell us that he was talking about something specific, not giving nice stories of “motivational speaking” or moralistic teaching.

So let’s look at some of the parables and see what we will find.

The Parable of the Mustard Seed and the Yeast (Mt 13:31-35; Mk 4:30-32; Lk 3:18-21)

Jesus likens his kingdom to that of a mustard seed. Though it is small, it will grow and spread across the world, and all men and women will benefit from it (signified by birds perching on its branches). Again he likens it to the yeast, where only a small amount is able to work itself into the dough unnoticed, until it takes over. In the above, Christ is showing how his kingdom will slowly but surely spread through Israel and across the world, and become a light to the world that Israel had failed to achieve.

The Parable of the Lost Son (aka the Prodigal Son) (Lk 15:11-32)

This is one of the most popular parables in Christendom, typically used to show how the God loves us in that even in our sins he’s waiting to receive us into his kingdom. Well that is all nice and good, and an appropriate use of the parable. However, I suggest to you that that’s not what the Jews would have heard Jesus talking about. Since the Reformation, our eyes have been accustomed to only see the gospel to be about how God forgives us of our sins so we can go to heaven, but that’s only half the pie (and not derived from a Jewish worldview but from a Gentile one). Could it be then that in this parable, the elder son is Israel, and the younger son is the Gentiles, and that Jesus Christ is talking about how God was willing to make the Gentiles acceptable in his kingdom so that both Jews and Gentiles may benefit from the promises of Abraham as God planned? I’ll leave you to think a bit more about this one yourself.

The Parable of the Wedding Banquet (Mt 22:1-14)

Again he starts off with “the kingdom of heaven is like …” here, and tells his story of the banquet. Knowing their belief in the kingdom to come, the Jews would hear Jesus saying that God was having a party for his son (the Messiah), and had sent out invitations to “those who had been invited to the banquet” i.e. Israel and its leaders. When Israel rejects it, Jesus shows how God intends to punish them for the disobedience and wickedness to him and his servants he has sent by his statement in verse 7 (which NT scholars point to as the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, and which “rapture” fanatics cannot simply accept in good conscience). The banquet is then open to everyone (including all the misfits as discussed before above), and yet God again filters that as well by those who are “properly dressed”.

The Parable of the Tenants (Mt 21:33-45; Mk 12:1-12; Lk 20:9-19)

This is probably the most provocative of all parables and most plain of all Jesus Christ’s parables he spoke to the people. The books of the prophets was replete with so many symbolic pictures of Israel as a vineyard (Ps 80:8–16, Isa 5:1–7, Jer 2:21, Ezek 15:1–8, 17:5–10, 19:10–14, and Hos 10:1). It was bound to be obvious this time round that the “tenants” was a reference to the priest and Pharisees, the messengers were the prophets of Israel, the son was himself and the coming judgment of the “landowner” aka God was what happened to them “in this generation” (Mt 23:34) i.e the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.

More than Meets the Eye

Nicholas Thomas Wright in Jesus and the Victory of God has this to say about Jesus’s parables.

“The parables, therefore, are not simply ‘teaching’, with each parable making one and only one moral or ‘religions’ point. Such a theory is totally anachronistic … The parables were therefore essentially secretive. Jesus was not a ‘universal teacher’ of timeless truths, but the starter of a movement which was to grow like an unobserved seed turning into a plant before anyone realized.” (N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God)

And of the more overt Parable of the Tenants, this is what he says

“The parable which breaks this rule is Mt 21:33-46, but Jesus told it plainly because the time had come to abandon the earlier secrecy and force a showdown. Historically speaking, the parable belongs precisely with the action in the Temple, the moment when Jesus at last acted in a way that the authorities could not ignore.” (N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God).

Therefore the parables was the means by which Jesus Christ both declared the arrival of the kingdom of God, and in addition made known the fact that in him was salvation now to be found, and not in Israel. This meant that he was replacing the position of Israel as the giver of light and telling them that loyalty to the old symbols that held Israel together (cleanliness and food laws, the Temple and its priests, the Torah etc) were no longer the basis on which one will be considered fit to inherit the kingdom any longer. And therefore when Jesus says in John 15 that he is the true vine, he is being clear in stating that the old vine (i.e. Israel) is no longer “true”, and that in him only can the Jews (and by extension the world) find their expected salvation, not in the “old vine” of Israel.

It was all subversion, subversion, subversion. But the parables was the means by which he could say what he wanted to a hostile people, and still be able to get away with it until people REALLY stopped to think further.

Rediscovering His Parables

Again, this theme of analysis doesn’t apply to each and every parable, but does indeed apply to a large majority. But  Jesus continues to amaze me as I rediscover the tools of his trade, but more importantly as I also discover my own (and I’m sure many people’s) ignorance of what these “nice” stories were all about. NT Wright himself quoted a friend thus,

“As an American friend of mine put it, most Western churchgoers treat the gospels as the optional chips and dip at the start of the evening. They are the cocktail nibbles. Only after that do we sit down at table for the red meat of Pauline theology”

Indeed our inordinate attention to Paul’s letters (which were written to explain some angles of the gospel, but not to state the gospel message itself) has blinded us to a lot. Mathew, Mark, Luke and John is where the real meat is. Let’s not drown the monumental impact of Jesus’s life, message and his kingdom with our haste to preach a Jesus that is acceptable to everyone (and that can be used to support every “personal” individualistic worldview agenda).

The man had bigger fish to fry, and his parables were his fishing line to catch the fish “who had ears to hear”, who will follow him into the deepest of waters without fear in launching his kingdom, which had come, and yet was not yet fully revealed.

The Jesus of the Gospels 1: His Miraculous Works

/0 Comments/in /by

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?