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When Is It Enough?

Tuesday, September 18th, 2012 | Author:

Look to the pact, for the dark places of earth fill with groans of outrage. Psalm 74:20  (R. Alter translation)

Fill – Asaph’s psalm of despair reads like today’s newspaper for followers of YHWH.  He cried out, “Why, O God, have You abandoned us forever?”  He describes the insults to God’s own name perpetrated by the actions of those who reject Him.  He complains that there is “no longer a prophet, nor any among us who knows until when.”  Asaph’s desperation is the result of the apparent triumph of God’s enemies and the loss of God’s house of worship.  It just doesn’t seem possible that God would allow these terrible things to continue.

Any reading of this poem is bound to create empathy for Asaph’s cause.  Look around you.  It’s been nearly 2000 years since we had a prophet who knew.  The temple has been gone for nearly the same amount of time.  The Church we know is falling into decay.  Legalized murder (abortion) reigns throughout the world; a contemporary replacement for Molech.  Violence escalates everywhere.  Those acts that God calls abominations are even present among the ones who claim His name.  And there is no one to tell us when it will all end.  We often say that God’s hand moves invisibly among the lives of men, but this?  Can this be what God wants?  Is His hand so invisible that it allows such insults, such defamation and humiliation to His name?  If Asaph thought it was too much to bear in the 6th Century BC, we must think this 100 times over.  Just as in Asaph’s day, malu (mala’ – to be full) seemed the best way to describe apostasy, idolatry and wickedness.  It seems even more so today.

Before we look at Asaph’s conclusion, we need to consider the historical record Asaph presents, and apply it to our own experience.  Often I hear people say, “God superintends His Word so that even in translation we can be assured the message will be correct.”  That’s a nice thought, but it is a Pollyanna approach to history.  Asaph notes that God does not prevent men from choosing abominations, idolatry and wickedness.  Yes, occasionally we have evidence that God brings judgment, but for the most part, history suggests that God restrains His direct hand from human life at least in terms of allowing men to choose and to suffer the consequences of those choices.  When Luther chose to translate certain Greek words about physical evidence with words that led toward psychological convictions, God did not stop him.  The result has been a radical shift in our understanding of faith.  When Pagnino mistranslated teshuqah as “lust” and perpetrated the heresy of women as subordinate to men in the Church, God did not erase his mistake.  When the contemporary ecclesiastical authorities decide that homosexuality is a legitimate lifestyle within the Kingdom by reinterpreting Paul and Deuteronomy, God does not strike them down.  But the consequences arrive.  The idea that God prevents human error just isn’t supported, in the society or in the text.  There truly is no prophet to tell us when.

But those with eyes to see will recognize the consequences and perhaps be able to trace them back to the originating error.  Pagnino didn’t believe he was making a tragic mistake in the 16th century, but we see the consequences today and realize that he was wrong.  Some days we can see where it all started.  Usually we cannot see where it will all end.

Asaph, however, provides a glimmer of hope in the midst of this barrage of defilement.  “Yet God is my king of old.”  You and I might not be able to see how this will all work for the good, but God is still King even if we can’t understand what’s happening and why He doesn’t strike out today.  “God is my King” is our final hope in the face of the dark places.  The bigger picture of history is closed on both ends.  We just don’t know what is over the horizon, but we can trust that He knows.  And that will have to be enough until “when.”

Topical Index:  fill, mala’, history, insult, Asaph, Psalm 74:20

ISRAEL in 2013:  Yes, I know that the politics of the region are crazy and dangerous now.  But you can sign up for our trip in 2013 without worries.  If things get really bad, the tour will cancel and you will get the money back.  But I don’t think that will happen.  What I do know is that if you haven’t been to Israel, you need to go – and soon.  So please consider joining us in June of 2013.  Here’s the link.

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The Denial of Revelation

Monday, May 28th, 2012 | Author:

And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  1 Corinthians 13:2  ESV

Have not – How we agonize over this verse!  Paraded before the cringing audience in the pews, preachers hammer believers for their lack of “love.”  When we read Paul’s statement in quiet meditation, we come away convicted.  We are crushed under a standard that few if any can achieve.  Our world is filled with the pursuit of prophetic powers, of understanding mysteries, of bottling faith that moves mountains.  But love?  Oh no, that is too much to ask.  That, we are told, means sacrifice, denial, crucifixion.  How can Paul expect such behavior of simple men and women?

There is an easy answer to the weight of this glory.  It is to move in the opposite direction.  It is to treat love as part and parcel with Christian morality.  How can we meet the standard?  All we need to do is reduce Paul’s exhortation to acting ethically, being a good person, treating our neighbor with occasional kindness, being “nice” to others.  That will do, won’t it?  After all, if we go the route of sacrifice, who will be left to run things?  If everyone becomes a humble servant, who will be in charge?  We may not have all knowledge, but that won’t matter if all that is necessary is to live a moral life.

Both directions are wrong.  Neither relieves the tension.  Love cannot be a standard so high that no human can achieve it nor can it be a method so easy that no one can miss it.  When Paul uses the Greek echo me, he tells us that this “love” is conditional.  In order for it to be present, some conditions must be met.  Without those conditions, no matter what else is added or subtracted, “love” vanishes.  Jacques Ellul provides the insight that explains these conditions.  “No recognizable revelation exists apart from the life and witness of those who bear it. . . . If Christians are not conformed in their lives to their truth, there is no truth.  This is why the accusers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were right to infer the falsity of revelation itself from the practice of the church.  This makes us see that in not being what Christ demands we render all revelation false, illusory, ideological, imaginary, and nonsalvific.  We are thus forced to be Christians or to recognize the falsity of what we believe.  This is undeniable proof of the need for correct practice.”[1]  In other words, “love” is the practice of our claims of believing, and for those who follow YHWH, that practice turns out to be specifically defined by Torah.  This means that Torah-less practice actually denies the revelation of the God of Israel.  Torah-less faith is biblically inconceivable since the God who instituted Torah is the God of the Bible.  Ellul is absolutely correct.  If we do not live the Scriptures, we deny the revelation of all the Scriptures.

It is obvious that Christianity does not practice Torah.  Theologians since 200AD have carefully and deliberately distanced themselves from the “Jewish” Torah.  But doesn’t that imply they have also distanced themselves from the God who reveals Himself in the history and practice of Israel?  Is it even reasonable to claim that Yeshua, Paul, James, John and Peter were not practicing the faithful observance of the revelation of God in Israel?  Would any of these men have claimed that the Tanakh is no longer valid?

This line of thought forces us to ask, “How did Christianity become so far removed from its own source that it denied Jewish practice?”  Until we answer that question, we have no right to claim to be biblically-based “Christians.”  When we answer that question we may discover that we have no reason to be separate from Messianic Judaism.

Topical Index:  love, history, Christianity, practice, Torah, 1 Corinthians 13:2

 

[1] Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity, pp. 5-6.

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The End of Theology

Sunday, May 27th, 2012 | Author:

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.  Colossians 2:8  ESV

Philosophy – Paul warns us about the enticement of philosophy, but we seem to have completely ignored his alarm.  I don’t mean that we have been enticed by the  world’s philosophical systems.  I mean that we have been seduced by theology which turns out to be nothing short of a reversal of the God of the Bible.  I mean that Christian believers have followed their champions  of the faith into religious beliefs; beliefs that are no more than the kind of philosophical systems Paul cautions us to avoid.  Before you jump up to refute such a claim, let’s examine the meaning of the Greek word philosophias.  Kittle defines this Greek term as “systematic efforts to understand the world, especially by sensory perception. The aim is to reduce phenomena to principles and hence to achieve knowledge of eternal and unmoved being. philosophía is both knowledge as a whole and the individual discipline.” [1]

In other words, philosophía attempts to reduce the world we experience (including the reports of such experience in history) to a set of eternal principles or statements that are called the Truth.  This is precisely the project of the systematic theologian.  Theology is the philosophy of God.  And it exactly fits Paul’s concern.  The Bible is not a philosophy, nor is it a theology.  It is a story, a history of God with His people.  As history, it is not reducible to some set of statements or beliefs.  But theology is not concerned with the unique historical events of Scripture.  It seeks deeper meanings in systematized knowledge.  You might ask yourself why we engage in the project of theological knowledge.  Perhaps it is for reasons that are not so biblical after all.

Listen to the words of Jacques Ellul:   “. . . once the transition was made from history to philosophy, all that they [theologians] said was completely correct and true.  They expressed a profound and authentic faith marked by a concern for truth.  Yet it was all completely falsified by the initial transition.  This is why the deviations were stronger than the truth that they retained.  Very soon they forgot the essential point, that God does not reveal by means of a philosophical system or moral code or metaphysical constructions.  He enters human history and accompanies his people.  The Hebrew Bible (even the wisdom books) is not a philosophical construction or a system of knowledge.  It is a series of stories that are not myths intended to veil or unveil objective abstract truths.  These stories are one history, the history of the people of God, the history of God’s agreements and disagreements with this people, the history of loyalty and disobedience.  There is nothing else but history, temporal (not eternal) history, lay (not sacred) history, a history that tells us that God is with and for us, but that does not speak about God in himself, or provide any theory about God.  Like all human history, the Bible is a book that is full of questions but never gives any answers.”[2]

Isn’t this exactly what Paul would say as a Jewish rabbi?  Heschel tells us that to believe is to remember.  His remark reminds us that revelation is history, not theology.  His statement implies that we are to enter into a culture marked by a common history, a common storehouse of cultural memories that supply us with identity, meaning and practice.  Once we divorce ourselves from the historical continuity of the culture of God’s people, we are no longer in the stream of God’s actions.  We are no longer biblical believers.  We are theologians or philosophers, pursuing abstractions about God .  We are not adherents to the revelation of God.  When Christianity became a philosophy – a religion – it no longer was part of the history of God’s people.  It became something new on the earth – a system of thought divorced from the historical reality that spawned it. Today Christians no longer practice the culture of the God of the Bible.  They practice a new religion, a religion that was invented by the systems of Greek philosophy and their influence on the early Church fathers.

Today Christians have a powerful philosophy, but they no longer have a biblical cultural identity.  The evidence is undeniable.  Just ask yourself if Christians follow the biblical calendar or keep the biblical commandments or practice the instructions of Torah.  Why do Christians separate themselves from this historical reality?  Because they now follow a system of thought that is alien to the Scriptures.  The Scriptures become merely the jumping off point for religious theory.

Who is the enemy here?  Isn’t it us?  Aren’t we the ones who, having been seduced by the power of analysis and the temptation of understanding, left the tribe and walked our own way?   Doesn’t that suggest that theology is about control, about usurping power that rightfully belongs only to God by asserting that the Church now holds the words of life?  Is it any wonder that there is no Jewish systematic theology?

Topical Index:  philosophy, philosophía, history, revelation, Jacques Ellul, Colossians 2:8

 

[1] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1995). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (1270). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.
[2] Jacques Ellul, (1986). The Subversion of Christianity (pp. 23-24) Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.
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History or Encounter?

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012 | Author:

In the days of Herod, King of Judea, there was a certain priest . . .  Luke 1:5 NASB

In the days of – Is your faith based in God’s acts in history or does it rest on your experience with God today?  Maybe that isn’t a fair question since it supposes a dichotomy that might not be true.  Maybe you would answer, “Both.”  But if you don’t realize that rabbinic Judaism has a very different view of history than our Greek worldview, you are not going to understand the rabbinic view of Torah nor the importance Torah plays in the rabbinic community.  Since this alternative view of history was already being developed during the time of Yeshua, it has an impact on the way the New Testament authors write.  We discover that someone like Luke adopts a much more Greek view of history in his reporting but since we find it so compatible with our own views, we don’t think much about how radically different Luke’s gospel would have been in the first century.

Neusner describes the rabbinic view:

“Torah-study forms an acutely present-tense encounter with God.  It should not be confused with the academic study of the history of Scripture or the history that Scripture may make available, if any.  Scripture preserves not the history of God’s self-manifestation alone or mainly, but the occasion for humanity’s engagement with God in the here and now.  Revelation takes place, direct encounter with God becomes possible, whenever and wherever the faithful enter into the disciplines of Torah-study.  And those disciplines do not involve historical learning at all.”[1]

The danger in such a view is that once God’s Word is disconnected from the culture and the events that surrounded its original proclamation, it becomes subject to the culture of the interpreter.  This disconnection allows the rabbis to jump across centuries when they connect the words of one verse with the words of another.  This is why we feel so uncomfortable with much of rabbinic commentary.  We often wonder how the rabbis can go from one thing to another without any apparent basis.

But we aren’t immune.  Contemporary Christianity carries the same orientation in its penchant for devotional reflection on the Bible.  Far too often we don’t bother to investigate the culture, the social setting, the history or politics of the particular passage.  We read it for its ability to connect our spirits to God.  We ignore the setting because we want to be lifted into the heavenlies.  I have yet to meet any church group of Christians who accurately understand the social-political-economic and linguistic settings of the passages they so frequently recite.  In this sense, Christian are merely New Testament rabbis, seeking spiritual enlightenment rather than the historical acts of God.

You might ask yourself if you read the Bible in order to understand what God was doing in the lives of people who lived thousands of years ago or if you read the Bible “stories” in order to have the feeling of God’s presence.  If you are in the latter camp, then the opening of Luke will be a problem.  Luke attempts to recall what happened.  He is not trying to give you devotional fodder.  His message is this:  if these events happened, then there are significant implications for all human beings, even if God never demonstrates His presence again.  Could you read the history of God’s self-manifestation as history, without all the “application sermons”?  Would that be enough for you to change the way you live?

Think about significant one-time events in history that have reshaped the world you live in today.  The Reformation, the American Revolution, the signing of the Magna Carta, the bombing of Nagasaki – all happened once, never repeated and yet they forever changed the face of humanity.  What if that’s what God did with Israel?  Would that be enough for you – or would you have to find devotional comfort in every verse?

Topical Index:  rabbinic history, Torah-study, Luke 1:5, history

 

[1] Jacob Neusner, Judaism When Christianity Began, p. 16.

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Thinking About Time

Tuesday, August 02nd, 2011 | Author:

And these are the generations of Terah:  Genesis 11:27  (translation J. Green)

These are the generations – We are familiar with the Hebrew term toledoth, in this verse, e’le toldoth.  We investigated the problem with the spelling of this word.  We’ve noted that the toledoth pattern is the structural framework of Genesis and the deliberate architecture of Matthew.  But we might not have realized just how radically different ancient Semitic thought about the nature of time and history really is.  Once we look a little closer, we find implications that are very disturbing to our usual way of reading Scripture.  So brace yourselves.  Let’s take a cold plunge into the world of the ancient Near East.

“In contemporary Western societies we tend to imagine ourselves on the linear path of time (the pervasive timeline) with the past behind us, striding into the future, which is shrouded in mist.  In the ancient Near East, in contrast, terminology indicates that the people viewed themselves positioned at the convergence of fields representing the past and the future.  At this convergence they were oriented toward the past with its ancestors and traditions, while the future was obscured behind them.”[1]  Walton’s comment echoes Wolff’s analysis of the Hebrew idea of the future – and the lack of any Hebrew words for the concept of time.  One of the implications of this reversal of Greek metaphysics is that history is not a catalog of temporal events in sequential order.  History is concerned with the spiritual meaning of events.  Their particular order doesn’t really matter.  What matters is what is interpreted about the will of the gods through these occurrences since every event is saturated with divine intention.  In Near Eastern (non-Hebraic) thinking, history is going somewhere, but where it is going is determined by the gods and is unknown to men, often despite divination.  All men can do is hope to decipher the will of the gods so that they are not caught unaware.  To do this requires a careful recounting of ancestor experience, magic and cultic ritual.  Even so, the ancients say, “Man is dumb; he knows nothing; Mankind, everyone that exists – what does he know?  Whether he is committing sin or doing good, he does not even know.”[2]

The implication is drastic.  If you were living in the cultures of the ancient Near East, you would have believed that only the gods have control of the future.  All men can do is gather the threads from past events and present incantations in order to catch a glimpse of what might be the case and thereby avoid potential disaster.  The gods are completely fickle and men are caught in their whims.  This essentially means that there is nothing you can do about what is going to happen to you.  You don’t even know if what you are presently doing is pleasing or offensive.

Hebraic thinking is both a radical departure from this situation and a continuation of this cultural orientation.  It is a radical departure because God reveals Himself and His instructions.  No other ancient culture has a foundation in revelation.  In the Hebrew worldview, I don’t have to guess about what God wants.  He tells me.  I can know if I have sinned.  I can know if I am doing what is just and right.  But just like the other ancient Near Eastern cultures, Hebraic thinking is not oriented toward a chronology of events.  It is not concerned with some future outcome (not even some “heavenly” goal).  It still maintains the view that the meaning of the events is the critical factor.  It still holds the view that all events are God-determined and God-saturated.  There is no distinction between sacred and secular and there is no expectation of cause and effect.  Things happen.  Why they happen (what caused them to happen) is almost irrelevant, unless, of course, they are the result of sinful behavior.  What they mean for the present is the critical issue.  How they reveal something about God and God’s will is the important element.  There is no concept of historical progress as we presently understand history in the West.

“These are the generations” is not a statement about the causal connections of fathers and sons.  It is a statement about the meaning of the present, revealed in the people of the past.  That’s why the genealogies of Scripture are not necessarily temporally progressive.  That’s why the chroniclers can skip generations, add names, alter relationships and manipulate the sequence.  What matters is what it means, not how it happened.

If this is true for the ancient Near Eastern view of history, how much of our preoccupation with cause and effect categories has misdirected our reading of Scripture?  Have we paid attention to unimportant “connections” and missed the meaning that the authors were trying to communicate because we applied our idea of history to a different world?  Are we so preoccupied with the causes of events that we no longer see the meaning of events?  What do you think?  Try reading Genesis 1 again, without thinking it’s about 24-hour days or the order of creation.

Topical Index:  toledoth, generations, time, history, Genesis 11:27


[1] John Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament, p. 222.

[2] A statement from an ancient Near Eastern text

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The Problem Of Evil

Saturday, December 18th, 2010 | Author:

I YHWH and none else, forming light and creating darkness; making peace and creating evil – I YHWH do all these things. Isaiah 45:6-7 (translation: M. Buber)

Creating – Where did evil come from?  Such a simple question.  Such an enormously difficult answer, if there even is an answer.  One of the greatest impediments to belief in a wholly good God is the existence of evil.  For centuries theologians have struggled to find a resolution to the problem.  How can a good God be the final creator of all things and yet there be evil in the universe?  Usually we try to make a very big dent with an explanation about free choice and sin.  But some things just don’t seem to be explained by these facts.  Some things just seem too hideous to be accounted for by human failure.  When pressed really hard, theologians turn to this passage in Isaiah, claiming that even though we can’t understand how this can be true, the Bible clearly states that God is not in competition with some other equally powerful demonic force.  Evil does not have independent existence.

But maybe the appeal to Isaiah isn’t quite right.  Maybe Isaiah’s cultural setting has more to say about this statement than the hoped-for resolution of the theological problem of evil.  Martin Buber thinks so.

Buber suggests that Isaiah’s statement must be understood in the context of the 4th Century BC.  In that culture, Babylonian astral gods were the creators of light and darkness and the progenitors of the second-order divine beings who caused good and evil to exist.  These astral gods belonged to a tribal hierarchy of divine entities, ruling over the fate of men and requiring appeasement before showing favor.  Isaiah destroys this pagan belief by claiming that “YHVH is absolutely different, as He reveals Himself to Cyrus in the word of the prophet.  He creates by Himself not only the cosmic opposition pair light-darkness, but also that which constitutes the human sphere, peace-evil.  That shalom, “peace,”  “welfare,” and not tov, “good,” is here contrasted with ra, “evil,” is obviously in order to keep away the notions of ethical opposition.  Evil in the sense of wickedness comes into the world only as a result of resistance to God; but evil in the sense of adversity and affliction  . . . is fashioned by God Himself  for purposes of His leadership of the world, without gaining thereby the same standing as peace, since in the last resort this rules alone.”[1]

It’s worth noting that the verb for “create” in this statement is bara’, a verb used exclusively with God as the subject (cf. Genesis 1:1 and Isaiah 65:17).  Here it is applied only to the negatives “darkness” and “evil.”  “Light” and “peace” use the verbs yatsar and asah.  The emphasis is theological.  No pagan god or gods bring about any conditions of opposition in the cosmos or in the human realm.  God is God alone!  He is the only divine creator.

In the end, Isaiah’s statement does not answer the question, “Where did evil come from?”  It stands as a declaration of sovereignty in a cultural of pagan polytheism.  It’s focus is on the immediate need to overthrow idolatry.  Isaiah’s statement cannot be lifted from its cultural setting and forced into a box within the plan of the systematic theologian.  In the end, we discover that God is in history, interacting with the needs of the day, involving Himself in the issues at hand.  The Holy One of Israel is not the God of the eternal “present,” far above the petty concerns of human beings.  God creates in history; a history that is found in the realm of men, filled with the issues of men.  If we want to meet God, we will have to dress for the occasion in the garb of the day of His revelation.

Topical Index:  create, bara’, evil, darkness, peace, history, Isaiah 45:6-7

[1] Martin Buber, The Prophetic Faith, p. 213.

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Chain Letter

Tuesday, October 06th, 2009 | Author:

and all the brethren who are with me, to the churches of Galatia: Galatians 1:2

Churches – When you read the Bible, do you pay attention to the proper context, culture and historical circumstances behind the text? Or do you read the Bible as if it was written for you yesterday? This is not a trivial question. I wrote about this on April 16, but it is worth repeating many times. Nothing is more important for understanding God’s Word!

One of the biggest problems in Christian practice is the lack of a proper understanding of Biblical exegesis. More theological mistakes occur due to a lack of proper exegesis than any other methodological errors. Why? Because a great number of believers treat the Bible as though it has no cultural bias and was written in its entirety last week. Neither of these assumptions is true. Just like any other document, the Bible comes to us in a cultural context (in fact, in several cultural contexts) and it is the progressive revelation of God over the course of thousands of years. These facts must become part of any attempt to interpret the text.

Imagine trying to understand the meaning of The Iliad without any reference to Greek history, mythology or culture. Imagine reading The Iliad as if it were written last week, applying it to today’s issues without any attempt to understand what the original audience received. That would be equivalent to how most Christians treat the Bible. We have this tendency to pull a verse from some book, make a direct application to our lives and act as though God’s Word was written for us and no one else. This is the “God spoke to me” variety of exegesis. This is naïve and dangerous (just ask any woman of God who has been told that Scriptures teach she cannot preach or teach men).

Walter Kaiser emphasizes one other critical point about proper exegesis. The Scriptures are progressive revelation. That means they were not all available at the same time. The fact that we have all the books now doesn’t mean the authors had all the books available when they wrote their volumes. Kaiser’s point is that if we are going to understand the writing of any particular author, we cannot use material written after the passages we want to interpret. We can’t use Revelation to help us understand what John was thinking when he wrote his gospel because Revelation didn’t exist when he wrote the gospel. But we can use Psalms, Deuteronomy, Genesis, etc. because those works were available to John when he wrote his gospel. This might seem like an obvious point until we consider the chronology of authorship in the New Testament (in Hebrew the Ketuvim Netzarim). The order of the books in our New Testament is not an authorship chronology. In fact, the order is completely arbitrary, established by some church council without any regard to events or authors. Why does this matter? Well, when we look at authorship chronology, we discover Galatians was written before any other Pauline letter. Therefore, what Paul (Rabbi Sha’ul) writes in Galatians cannot be interpreted according to what he later writes in Romans or Thessalonians. Galatians is the foundation for the rest, not the result of a long process of theological reflection from the rest. The letter to the Romans does not come first.

We know that Paul wrote Galatians with the intention of having the letter circulated among the churches in that province. And we know he wrote it after the Jerusalem council (Acts 15). We know the real issue among assemblies in Galatia is the relationship between law and grace. But what we can’t do in order to understand Sha’ul’s thinking in Galatians is to run to Romans 6-8 and use that to explain Galatians.

For a fuller discussion of this issue, go here.  But even if you don’t look at the rest of the picture, start treating Scripture as if it were a screen play. Take it in the order that it was written. Your exegesis will improve. You will be able to see the relationship between historical events and the words of Scripture. Things will make a lot more sense. And you won’t make so many mistakes when it comes to understanding the context before the application.

Topical Index: exegesis, Galatians 1:2, church, history

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A Timeshare View of History

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 | Author:

One of the most ingenious inventions of modern real estate economics is the timeshare.  Timeshares are designed to provide a slice of unreality for anyone who has a reasonable credit line.  What most people could never hope to afford completely, they can pretend to afford in slices.  A timeshare is my one week of affluence.  One small piece of the dream of opulence.  The marketing appeal is straightforward – you could never buy the whole thing but you can buy small part.  The secret of the timeshare is group ownership.  Sales people love it.  They sell the same property 52 times.

 

There are basically two kinds of timeshares (and an infinite number of variations).  The first is direct ownership.  I purchase a fractional share in the actual property.  I own it.  I can sell it, transfer it or put it in my will.  With ownership comes responsibility and I am completely responsible for my piece of the pie.  I buy it and then pay for taxes and maintenance it as long as I hold it.  But the little slice of luxury is mine.

 

The second basic timeshare arrangement is “right to use”.  In this sale, I don’t actually own the property.  What I own is the right to use the property for a specific period.  It might be as many as 99 years, but when the time runs out, the property reverts to the developer.  During my “right to use” period, I have all the privileges and obligations of ownership, but in the end it really isn’t mine.  I still pay the taxes and the maintenance as though I owned it, but legally I just have a place to lay my head at the developer’s bequest.

 

Contrary to marketing legend, the timeshare scheme was not invented in the late 60′s.  It was invented at the beginning of everything – by God.  God built the most incredible, elaborate, magnificent luxury property ever conceived and He established the world’s first and best timeshare plan for its use. 

 

Each one of us is given an allotment – our little piece of occupancy.  We take possession at birth.  God’s timeshare plan is only “right to use”, not direct ownership.  We have “right to use” privileges for a specified amount of time.  The property belongs to God, the developer.  It always will.  Our “right to use” can’t be sold, bartered or otherwise transferred to anyone else and it certainly cannot be inherited.  However, this should not be a reason for complaint because there is another part of God’s timeshare plan that is completely unique.  We don’t pay for our allotment up front.  We only pay for it after our “right to use” period has expired.  God established the world’s only “full faith and credit” system based entirely on birth.  Just being born entitles us to our timeshare allotment.  For as long as we use the property, we either add or subtract from the market value of the property.  And when the “right to use” contract runs out, God will sit down with each one of us and look over His credit plan to determine if we are on the plus or the minus side of the ledger.

 

If you think this whimsical analogy is too far-fetched, consider a few of the examples of previous “right to use” owners in God’s timeshare development. 

 

Adam seems to be the first.  God gave Adam responsibility, authority and liberty.  Adam had absolutely zero credit when God provided him with “right to use” privileges.  In fact, Adam had the best resort property the world has ever known – The Garden of Eden Ritz, the Heavenly Hyatt on earth, the Wonder Westin.  Not only was it fully equipped with every possible luxury option, it was even clothing optional.  And it came with the perfect companion, complements of the developer.  Unfortunately, Adam so misused his privileges that he was asked to leave the resort and never return.  And he had to take his companion with him.  Adam discovered that his slice of the pie was contingent on following one simple rule.  He lost his right to use early in the game and he spent the rest of his life trying to pay the damages bill.

 

Abraham was another purchaser of God’s timeshares.  God’s sales method is the best in the business.  God simply tells the whole truth about every one of His properties.  God made some pretty spectacular promises to Abraham.  Abraham was promised permanent “right to use” privileges for the land called Canaan.  The only catch was the Abraham’s promise was only good for future generations.  Abraham never actually got to enjoy any of the “right to use” property.  When he died, his only land asset was his tomb and he had to buy that with his own cash.  Nevertheless, Abraham’s great, great, great grandchildren did get God’s “right to use” promise without having to make any down payments of their own.  Abraham’s faithfulness was good enough for many future generations of credit. 

 

Solomon is another interesting example of God’s timeshare business.  At the beginning of his reign, God offers Solomon some spectacular choices.  God’s offer is based on Solomon’s father’s devotion to God.  Were it not for David, Solomon might not have enjoyed such wonderful blessings from God.  But David built up a substantial credit balance and God was quick to recognize it.  Solomon started life with all the rights and privileges of the best resort property still left in the world.  Unfortunately, Solomon did not finish as strongly as he started.  The female help distracted him and it cost him dearly.

 

We could choose other Old Testament examples but the essential pattern is probably clear.  While “right to use” contracts are entirely individual, the balances on the account at the end of the use period have longer lasting effects.  Sometimes the balance sheet means that the next owner gets an up-front bonus.  Sometimes the balance sheet means that the subsequent owners end up paying for the damages for the rest of their lives.  God does His best to ensure that this does not happen.  But owners still ignore the checkout rules and the bills must be paid.

 

Over the history of the property, some damages seem to accumulate.  Not everyone checks out with a zero balance.  Our global village timeshare now faces significant repair issues because past “right to use” owners neglected the maintenance rules set down by the Developer.  It’s already too late to recover some of the resort luxuries.  Others are in serious danger.  The price for repairs is growing.  The Developer has given notice that these repairs are so serious that He has decided to tear down the entire property and rebuild.  At that point, a date that is entirely up to Him, all previous owners with be surcharged for the damages.

 

There is another “balance due” bill that just can’t ever be paid no matter how hard new “right to use” owners try.  No amount of credit will be sufficient to cover this expense.  The reason is that this bill is the result of a slander lawsuit against the Developer. 

 

All of the legal papers tell us that the “right to use” tenants have slandered the Developer through misuse of the agreement.  First the tenants claimed that they were legally entitled to the property.  Then they actually altered, destroyed, sold and deeded the property as though it were theirs.  They even participated in a plot resulting in the death of the Developer’s heir.  This complicity in murder, coupled with continual efforts to usurp ownership, led to a summary judgment issued against all “right to use” tenants.  Every one was found guilty as charged.  The Developer had no choice except to terminate His relationship with all the tenants.  In a class action lawsuit, He was completely vindicated of any wrongdoing and found entitled to massive punitive damages.

 

What the timeshare “right to use” tenants failed to realize is that the Developer actually owned them too.  They were not independent purchasers, selecting this resort through comparison-shopping.  They were a part of the development itself, created by the real Owner for the enhancement of the property and for the enjoyment of the entire design.  The failure to see this part of the Developer’s plan caused an outbreak of a severe disease that left all of the tenants mentally handicapped.  They began to believe the lie that they were gods of their own making and could do whatever they wanted.

 

The Developer was distraught.  His vision of harmony and integration was jeopardized by this insanity.  So He devised an ingenious, comprehensive and compelling solution.  He decided to accept the verdict of the Court as though it applied to Him.  He willingly took on the obligation to pay the damages because He knew that not a single one of the tenants could ever cover the expense.  This strategy allowed Him to re-establish the relationship broken by the misuse of the contract.  The debt was paid.  A new contract could be written without balancing the accounts. 

 

The new contract still contained the timeshare principal of “right to use”.  But this new contract offered the tenant a clean-slate start and it provider a permanent advisor who would offer immediate guidance on all property use issues.  After all, the Developer really wanted tenants who lived in harmony with the resort’s vision of excellence and community. 

 

Then the Developer made a stunning announcement.  Anyone who had an old contract could tear it up.  The Developer would cover all the costs to rewrite a new agreement.  Amazingly, many tenants refused to take His offer.   Insanity so deeply affected them they wanted to go on pretending they were in charge.  But for those who realized that they were bankrupt, this offer brought incredible relief.  They could complete the current “right to use” period knowing that the new resort awaited them.  Their lives took on the purpose of preparing themselves for a new place.  Not surprisingly, those who refused to see the coming change considered these early-adopters deranged. 

 

So, where does this little story leave you and me?  It’s sale-closing time.  The new contract is on the table.  We can go on believing that the resort will keep operating as it always has and ignore the signs that the maintenance bill is growing at an alarming rate.  We can party until we drop and then face the bill collector.  Or we can see that the party is over even if the ribbons and balloons are still hanging from the chandelier.  We can sit down at the table with the Man with the new deal.  We can take it while it is still available.

 

What do you say?  Which option do you want?

Category: Articles  | Tags: , , ,  | 3 Comments

Without History

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 | Author:

Our Father in heaven  Matthew 6:9

Our Father – The usual interpretation of this opening phrase focuses on fatherhood.  Questions are raised about how we can understand God as Father if we lack examples of human fathers.  This is, of course, a monumental problem in our culture today.  With more and more children raised in the absence of fathers, and with the sinful passion to simply eliminate the need for a father, our children are pushed one step further away from embracing the true Father.  We need to be reminded of the importance of godly fathers. 

But this is not what I want to look at today.

You may have been taught that the concept “our Father” was new to Jewish ears.  Not so.  It was not at the forefront of Jewish thinking, but there are plenty of examples of the collective understanding of God as our Father in Jewish thought.  Nevertheless, there is something here that shines a new light on this divine connection.  When God is our Father, none of us have any history.

Here’s what this means.  We are all connected through some link in the history of our past.  Somewhere back there, we all came from the same beginning.  The Bible certainly emphasizes our common legacy.  No man is radically separated from any other man.  Enemy or friend, we are all still brothers.  But Yeshua suggests something deeper.  When we pray, “Our Father,” we stand in direct relationship to God.  We no longer depend on our human ancestry to establish our relationship with Him or each other.  He is our immediate Father.  We stand before Him without any legacy or ancestry.  He conceived us (that’s what Jesus says in John 3) and we are His direct children.  This is commonly expressed as “God has no grandchildren.”  That’s true.  But what it implies is pretty deep.

If God is my immediate Father, and He is your immediate Father, then we are bonded together by spiritual blood ties.  We belong to each other.  Yeshua makes that abundantly clear in the pronoun, our.  He is the Father of each of us, all together.  And when we approach Him, we do so as part of His immediate family.  Our presence before Him is not individualistic.  We represent each other.  We are His children, plural.  We need to think of ourselves as His children, plural.  This concept runs deep in Scripture.  When one sins, all are affected.  When one hurts, all cry out.  When one rejoices, all dance.  When one is lost, all are grieved.  After all, He is our Father.

This is the opening thought of the model prayer.  Did you get that?  The very first thing in prayer is to realize our common bond.  Prayer begins with “us,” not “me.”  I have no history to rely on.  I have only you, my brothers and sisters.  We come to Him together.

Maybe we should start praying all over.

Topical Index: Our Father, history, community, children, Matthew 6:9

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , , ,  | 7 Comments