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Breaking the Mold

Monday, July 16th, 2012 | Author:

Ruth the Moabite said, “He even told me, ‘Stay close to my workers until all my harvest is finished.’”  Ruth 2:21  JPS

Workers – Phyllis Trible observes that Ruth must work within the culture and against the culture in order to transform the culture.  This verse captures Ruth’s daring enterprise with typical Hebraic clues.  Nothing is explicitly stated but a great deal is subtly included.  Perhaps understanding Ruth’s actions helps us set a course for transforming the worlds we occupy.

First, notice that Ruth is still referred to as “the Moabite.”  Ruth may have declared her loyalty to Naomi, Naomi’s people and Naomi’s God, but even the narrator suggests that no one but Ruth believes her.  Lesson One:  Don’t expect instant acceptance.  As far as others are concerned, you will have to earn your new identity by the way you live, not by what you say.

Secondly, notice what Ruth says about Boaz’s request.  In Hebrew, Boaz tells Ruth to stay close to his na’arot (his female workers).  But Ruth deliberately misquotes Boaz by saying that she is to stay close to his ne’arim, his male workers.  Custom required Ruth to stay with the women, but Ruth breaks the cultural mold by working alongside the men.  She is the breadwinner.  She takes the breadwinner’s role.   Ruth does not allow the culture to dictate how she should act when life and death are on the line.  She isn’t timid, but she isn’t pushy.  She just does what must be done in order to provide for the two of them.  Lesson Two:  Be prepared to bend the rules if necessary.  Know the difference between God’s instructions and Man’s expectations.

The rabbis noticed this misquotation of Boaz, but they provided a different explanation.  They suggested that Ruth doesn’t pay attention to the strict separation of men and women because Ruth is a Moabite.  They suggested that Moabites did not observe gender roles as Israel did, and they attribute this lack of propriety to the fact that Moabites come from incest, a complete lack of respect for sexual moral norms.  It seems to me that the rabbis go out of there way to support gender differences and castigate anyone who challenges those differences.  But I find no biblical support for this argument.  It reflects the elevation of cultural tradition to the place of holy instruction.  Ruth reminds us of the difference.  Lesson Three:  Know where your beliefs come from.  Don’t allow what is customary and usual to become “God’s word” unless God says it.

In the next verse, Naomi “corrects” Ruth’s lack of gender consciousness by insisting that Ruth stick with the women.  This is perhaps the last little lesson for today.  Sometimes those we love still don’t see the bigger picture.  Sometimes they are too much a part of the trees to see the forest.  How we treat them says more about us then any stand we take  principles.  Sha’ul addressed this same lack of vision in his famous comments on stronger and weaker brothers.  Lesson Four:  Love is sometimes more important than being right.

Topical Index:  workers, ne’arim, na’arot, culture, Ruth 2:21, gender roles

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A Culture Of Idolatry

Saturday, September 25th, 2010 | Author:

Here is a lecture on the decline of the civilization and its relation to a culture of idolatry.  There are powerpoints that go with this, so if you want them, just email me and ask.

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Playing Opposites

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010 | Author:

But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and whatever is not from faith is sin. Romans 14:23

Sin – Kenneth Bailey makes an interesting observation about this verse.  “We expect [Paul] to say ‘whatsoever is not of faith is unbelief.’  But for Paul the opposite of faith is sin because his understanding of faith includes obedience.”[1] Bailey doesn’t go quite far enough.  For Paul, faith doesn’t include obedience.  Faith is obedience.  Since the Hebrew view of obedience is obedience of the heart, and the heart is the seat of emotions, volition and cognition, faith without obedience is a contradiction.  Faith isn’t something I believe.  It is something that encompasses my feelings, my thoughts and my actions.

What this means is that there is no such thing as faith as mental assent.  Greek culture might call cognitive apprehension and propositional declaration of a doctrine or dogma faith, but that doesn’t make it so.  Hebrew faith expresses me, all of me, on the Way toward alignment with God’s purposes and will.  It isn’t a moment of conversion.  It is a lifetime of transformation.  It is START without STOP, a change in direction, a new way to go, perseverance toward hope.

Of course, the road is bumpy.  The road has potholes and diversions and dangerous bridges.  We get tired.  We get confused.  We make terrible judgments.  But it’s a lifetime of travel in the same direction.  To go another way is sin.  So, the opposite of obedience is the wrong way.  The opposite of faith is sin.

“In every culture the message of the gospel is in constant danger of being compromised by the value system that supports that culture and its goals.”[2] If we are going to be faithful, we must recognize, understand, evaluate and reject this compromise.  It doesn’t matter how long the compromise has been part of our thinking.  It doesn’t matter where it came from or the motivations behind it.  To compromise obedience to the instructions of the Lord is to walk away from faith, no matter what name you put on it.  Compromise is sin.

THINK! Think about the values of this culture.  Identify a few of them and see if they are present in your “faith.”  Maybe you’ll find intellectualism or the desire to be recognized.  Maybe you’ll discover fear underneath your financial incentives.  Maybe you’ll uncover denominational or doctrinal pride, or anxious addictions, or selective concern for others or a tolerant view of sexuality.  Maybe you just want to be right.  “Whatever is not from a lifelong commitment to the ways of God is sin.”

Topical Index:  sin, obedience, Romans 14:23, culture, values

[1] Kenneth Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, p. 166.

[2] Bailey, p. 166.

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Speechless

Friday, July 10th, 2009 | Author:

Moses made a copper serpent and mounted it on a standard; and when anyone was bitten by a serpent, he would look at the copper serpent and recover.  Numbers 21:9

Copper Serpent – Many people believe that the common symbol of medicine, two serpents on a cross, originated with this event.  But a careful reading suggests otherwise.  There is something else going on here that is grounded in ancient cultural thinking, not in the Greek symbols of medicine. 

Notice that Moses makes a single copper serpent, not two snakes intertwined.  Furthermore, Moses’ choice of material (copper) is really a word play in Hebrew.  Copper is the word nehoshet.  The word for serpent is nehash.  Moses makes a nehash nehoshet.  Why?  Why not make it of gold or silver or any other material?  Because in the thinking of ancient Egypt, the culture where these people have spent the last several hundred years, word similarities were powerful.  It is as if the power of the real serpent can be drawn off by the word connection to the metal.  The reality behind this strange story is lodged in the culture of ancient Egypt and Semitic thinking. 

Several Jewish Targums add commentary to this text.  One suggests that God used serpents because its speechless existence as a result of the curse is now the punishment for those who speak against the Lord.  That’s why the serpents attack in the first place.  The people complain against God and God sends a cursed creature who cannot complain to test the people.  Another Targum suggests that those who trusted in God’s word through Moses were saved because they had to act on the basis of a spoken word, the very thing that brought their trouble in the first place.

Some word pictures offer additional insights.  The word picture for serpent is “what destroys the fence around life” (N-H-Sh).  The serpent is cursed because the serpent refused to acknowledge God’s boundaries and convinced Havvah to do the same.  The word picture for copper (N-H-Sh-T) is “a covenant concerning what destroys the fence around life.”  In other words, the word picture of “copper” actually removes, by covenant promise, what the serpent initiates.  Did you ever wonder why so many New Age adherents claim mystical powers for copper bracelets?  Perhaps they are more Jewish than they think.

What is the application for this little lesson in ancient cultural thinking?  First, we discover that the stories of the Bible can only be understood within the original culture.  When we pull these stories out of their original environment and language, we often inadvertently add our own cultural perspective.  Just think about Christian sermons that claim this story is about the cross of Christ.   Secondly, we find that many of our contemporary fables, mythical beliefs and practices are really rooted in ancient biblical events.  We are products of the Hebrew culture without recognizing it.  Finally, we see the hand of God, working deliberately within the cultural context of His people, to reveal Himself in ways that they would understand – ways that we perhaps no longer see without serious investigation.  If this is true of the story of the serpents, how much more diligent must we be when it comes to the Genesis stories or the miracles of the prophets?  When Yeshua taught those two men on the road about His presence in Scripture, He helped them see the world through the eyes of the ancient audience.  Don’t we need to do the same? 

The Christian church has practically given away its Hebrew heritage.  It converted the Old Testament into a platform for proof-texts about Christian theology.  Maybe it’s time to return to the roots and become citizens of an ancient Kingdom.

Topical Index:  serpent, copper, Targum, Numbers 21:9, culture

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One More Look

Wednesday, July 08th, 2009 | Author:

There has been a lot of good discussion about the concept of the Kingdom as a world-dominating culture.  I thought I would add these remarks to the dialogue.

Perhaps the best way to articulate this change in perception is to refer to a book given to me by Dan S. Against Christianity by Peter Leithart is a penetrating examination of the difference between the post-modern view of the world and the biblical view. According to Leithart:

Modernity refers to the civilization of the West since about 1500. Culturally, modernity is characterized by “value pluralism,” which entails the privatization of religious institutions and religious claims. Every individual and every group chooses its own shared values, and civil society is the arena where those values enter into combat. Politically, modernity is shaped by “liberalism,” the political system dedicated to the one proposition that political systems must not be dedicated to one proposition.

Through its roots in the patristic period, Christianity in its more developed form is the Church’s adjustment of the gospel to modernity, and the Church’s consequent acceptance of the world’s definition of who we are and what we should be up to Christianity is biblical religion disemboweled and emasculated by (voluntary) intellectualization and/or privatization. Christianity is not merely haphazard embrace of the values and practices of the modern world. Worldliness in that sense has plagued the Church since Corinth and will be a temptation to the end of time. Christianity is institutionalized worldliness, worldliness accepted in principle, worldliness not at the margins but at the center, worldliness build into the foundation.

Leithart draws a needed distinction between Christianity (the “official” religion of the West) and the Church (God’s people in the world). Christianity is a part of the world culture, accommodated to the systems of the world through its organization, goals and operation. Just think about the scope and actions of the Roman Catholic Church. It is big business with a worldwide organized hierarchy. In fact, it is probably the first multi-national company. Of course, any of the mainline denominations fit the bill today. What this implies is that the members embrace a cultural orientation that is dictated by the religion and that religion is in cooperation with the state. So, state and religion work out a pact of mutual non-aggression. The state passes laws that endorse or protect certain religious freedoms and the religion endorses and supports certain activities of the state. Just consider the almost universal acceptance of democracy as the proper political system of Christianity. Nothing in the biblical record supports this idea. Where did it come from? From the Greeks. The Church is not a democracy. The Kingdom of God is not a democracy. But most Christians have accommodated to the state by accepting democracy as the correct political system.

This same shift can be seen in economic policy, social liberties, civic responsibilities, education, ethics and philosophy. The biblical worldview is an all-embracing reorientation of life to a radically different culture. It is Semitic, ancient, theocratic, without hierarchy, distributive economics and maximized personal responsibility. Its legal system is compassionate but without appeal (there is no supreme court that can overrule God’s law). Its educational system is focused nearly exclusively on Torah. It is exclusive (drawing careful distinctions between those who are followers and those who are not) and intolerant (demanding repentance). In fact, it is a lot more like the culture of Islam than it is like the culture of the West.

Most Christians today have absorbed the cultural values of post-modernity. They believe in tolerance, inner truth, private religion and the separation of State and Church. They just don’t realize that none of these are biblical. So, they act more like Greeks than followers of the King, but they aren’t aware that there is really a difference.

It’s time to open this discussion, to realize that living a “Christian” life is not the same as being a good, morally upright member of the nation. Everything must change if we are really going to embrace the teachings of the Messiah and make Him our King. How can “Your will be done on earth” be our motto if what we do is nothing more than proper ethical behavior as outlined by the laws of the land?

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The Chameleon Christ

Saturday, June 27th, 2009 | Author:

Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever  Hebrews 13:8

Same – How many times have you heard someone mention this verse or something similar as a defense for the unchanging teaching of the Word and the unchanging character of our Lord?  Christians are quite fond of telling the world that Jesus never changes.  Most of the time what we mean is that His mercy, forgiveness and grace remain constant.  But there is a logical inconsistency here that defies traditional doctrine.  You see, if Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, then He is that same Torah-observant, Jewish rabbi who calls us back to restoration with God within the Hebrew frame of reference.  He keeps the Sabbath.  He lives according to the revelation to Moses.  He walks, talks, prays and eats God’s Word – the Hebrew Scriptures.  How can we confidently ignore all His Hebrew worldview and at the same time assert that this verse in Hebrews is foundational to the church?  The answer is simple.  Most Christians really believe in the chameleon Christ.

The Greek word here is really just a pronoun (autos).  With the definite article before it (ho), the meaning is “the same”.  We might think of it as “the self same.”  In other words, there is no change in identity over time.  Literally, the verse reads, “Jesus Christ yesterday and today the self same even to the ages.”  Jesus doesn’t change!  But our interpretation of Him certainly did, didn’t it?  Somewhere along the way, He stopped being a Jewish sage, a rabbi, a man whose theological position was closer to the Pharisees than any other group and the Jewish Messiah.  Somehow He became the leader of a new religion called Christianity, a religion that understood the world from a Greek philosophical perspective, that rejected the place of the Law in the life of a believer, that ceased observing the Torah and that claimed that Jesus (a name unknown to the one we call Lord) was closer to our Western European way of life than He was to the Semitic culture of His birth.  Nevertheless, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.

The chameleon Bible is certainly flexible.  It is able to change colors to fit whatever culture and context is necessary.  Don’t like worshipping on the Sabbath?  Just issue a papal edict that the Lord’s day has been officially moved.  Don’t like being told that homosexuality is sin?  Just redefine the Greek word arsenokoites.  Want to live according to your own instructions?  Just separate law and grace.  Want excuses for continuing sinful behavior as a believer?  Introduce the idea of the “carnal” Christian.  I am sure you could add more to the list.  If Yeshua HaMashiach is the same yesterday, today and to the ages, then ignoring what He says, does and commands is virtually blasphemy.  Stripped of the culture, He becomes whatever we want Him to be – and nothing substantial at all.  This entire passage is about copying His behavior.  If you don’t see Him as He is, how will you know what to copy?  Reminds me of the Beatles.  “Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away.  Now it looks as though they’re here to stay.  Oh, I believe in yesterday.”  How do you want Jesus served to you?  On your cultural dinner plate or on His?

Topical Index:  culture, yesterday, forever, chameleon, Hebrews 13:8

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