Christmas has always been controversial

Some say there is a war on Christmas, but really, there has always been controversy surrounding this holiday. It has its roots deep in paganism, and has always had a secular aspect.

It is the celebration of the birth of Christ for Christians today, but even the idea of celebrating a birthday of any kind is a pagan – or secular – idea. In ancient times only rulers and the very wealthy celebrated birthdays, and it was seen as a very self glorifying thing, not something a modest religious person would do. It has been banned at various times in Christian circles because of its worldly beginnings and secular aspects.

In the Americas it was flatly rejected and condemned by the Puritans because of its pagan origin, and because it was often associated with drunken parties.

It did finally catch on, but I think its history is part of the reason it is controversial. It has gained acceptance in religious circles, and that may be why some people see the secular aspects as an attack on Christmas.

Even today there are religious people who object to the idea of celebrating Christmas, usually because of its pagan origins. But I do not want to be making any kind of judgments. I still say people should do what they want and be tolerant of those that do differently, which is more biblical attitude to have.

The bible makes no mention of when Jesus was born, but it does give us a couple of clues. It says shepherds were watching their flocks by night, which means it was a time of year when there was plenty of grass and light. Certainly not the middle of winter, and more likely late spring when days are longer.

Dec. 25 was chosen, not because anyone thought that was the real day, but because it was a time of celebration already in place. The Romans celebrated their Gods in a mid-winter feast in late December. The Pagans (religions in Europe before Christianity arrived) also celebrated a mid-winter holiday in late December. The idea of co-opting that into celebrating the Birth of Christ first came about in the fourth century and was more related to the Roman celebrations.

There was not a lot of interest in Christmas in the “dark ages” but it did catch on again later in Europe, and that is where the pagan holiday was adopted.

In the middle ages people went to church on Christmas morning, and in the afternoon had a big party with lots of carousing and partying. Even then people decried the commercialization of the holiday.

Nothing new under the sun.

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Rambling thoughts on the election

Political polls show that few people really like either of the two main candidates. Nearly 40 percent of the people on both sides are voting for their choice just to stop the other one from getting in. The majority of voters on both sides are voting against someone rather than for someone. The two main candidates have not gathered admiration or even respect in most quarters. Ive not actually heard anyone say "I like him," or "I like her."

It is also true that they rarely talk about actual ideas or plans to improve things. There are people who try to make one seem to be the "Christian" choice. You have to ignore a whole lot of baggage to make that claim. You basically have to say my candidate's sins don't matter but the other side's sins do matter. Jesus had some choice words for this type attitude - and hypocrisy and den of thieves comes to mind.

There are also those that say Republicans are against abortion, and therefore a vote for them is a vote against abortion - which generally is a "christian" position to take. The only problem with that, is when the Republicans were in power, they did nothing about abortion. In 2000 Republicans held the Presidency, Congress, the Senate, and a majority of the Supreme Court justices were conservative. It was a perfect storm. The issue never even came up. Why should we believe them now, especially when it has not been very significant in the campaign rhetoric?

There are other issues, or should be. Things that are Biblical, like social justice and taking care of poor people. Healthcare is another issue that should matter, as well as the economy in that there are policies that are more fair than others.

There are I suppose reasons to vote for either candidate, and you really are voting for a political party more than in individual. That isn't such a good thing either, but that is where we find ourselves.

But realize, no political party will "save" us. No political party will bring about the Kingdom of God, nor will any political party actually be righteous.  God is not sitting up in Heaven worrying about who we are going to elect. God already knows, and it will fit perfectly into his overall plan for the universe.

I think a more pertinent question would be to consider what is God telling us. Certainly God can raise up leaders, and we see our choices. But these are choices we have chosen as well. Is it not a comment on our culture that we have two candidates that basically no one likes?

     Proverbs 19: 21      Many are the plans in a man’s heart,
         but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails.

Do you take the Bible literally?

Sometimes people ask if I take the bible literally. My answer is, “what do you mean by literal?” Do I take the question literally?

What does the word literally even mean?

Some would say, it means that the text literally means what it says. That is reasonable. But there is also the intent of the writer that must be taken into consideration. Taking words at their face value and ignoring what the intent of the writer was trying to communicate, is not taking it literally from my viewpoint.

When someone writes about a sunset, we know what they are talking about. Most of us know the sun does not really set in the evening. The sun pretty much stays still and the Earth rotates on its axis. This means light from the sun changes on the planet as it revolves. But we still know what is meant when someone says “sunset.”

So if we take it literally in the strictest sense, we would have to dismiss the word sunset as ignorance, because we know the sun does not set. Yet we do know what the intent is, and take the intent literally.

Or to take another example from the natural world. When it is cloudy we say the sun is not shining. What??? The sun is still shining, but is above the clouds and we cannot see it. Yet we know the intent, or literal meaning, when someone says the sun isn't shining because it is cloudy.

So if someone wrote .. “It was cloudy at sunrise, but the sun came out around noon and it was a clear day.” We all know what that means in English, but in the strictest literal interpretation, it is total nonsense. The sun didn't rise, the sun didn't just appear at noon and so forth.

We understand the basics of language, and understand the meaning the writer is communicating based on a variety of things. All of those things combine to give us a “literal meaning.”

So why is it, when we come to the scriptures, that we lose sight of this very common sense way of understanding language?

To say a certain story is meant to be allegorical, is taking it literally, because that is the intent of the writer. We know this by the context and by the type of literature involved.

When Jesus told the parable of the farmer out sowing seeds, we know he was not talking about farming practices, or giving advice on planting. It is clear there is something else in mind there from the writer. Parables are told to make a point, as a teaching tool. To take them as otherwise is to misinterpret the intent of the writer.

The scriptures are inspired by God, and are intended to give us some insight into the spiritual world. It is God's method of communicating truth to us.

God uses language. It is not some mystical thing that only a few can see or understand.

We should try to understand them the same way we understand any piece of written material.

Understand the words used, their meanings, then the context, and the intent of the writer as much as possible from that context.

To me that is what literal means.

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A cover up exposed

The word:
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
1 John 1:8-9
The meaning:

By Peter Paul Ruebens. Fall of Man Wikipedia commons

Five times in this passage, verses 6-10, the writer makes a “if we say– then that” type statement, and they all expose a basic human tendency. That tendency is to try to make our selves look good, justifying ourselves to others, or even to our own selves.
If we say we have fellowship with God, but don’t act like it, we are not living out the truth, which is that God is light. If we say we are without sin, we are just deceiving ourselves, or if we say we have not sinned, we are contradicting the truth or lying.
Way back in the beginning of the bible, Adam and Eve were deceived into sinning. They were perhaps deceived, but they still had a choice. When God questioned them, Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the snake.
So our tendency is to sin, and then our tendency is to try to cover it up, blame someone else, or justify it in some way. We can deceive others, and even deceive ourselves.
But there is good news.
Instead of trying to hide the truth – or our sin – we should let it be exposed in the light. God is light and God wants to share it with us.
Verse 10 says, if we confess – or agree with God that we have sinned – then he will forgive us. Notice it says nothing about whether we deserve to be forgiven or not. He is “faithful and just” which means, he will keep his word, and since he is God, he also has the authority to do so.
And this is what God wants to do. God wants to forgive us.
The question:
Why do we try to hide our sins? What would happen if we freely confessed our sins?

Entering God's Rest: Part 1

This is a series of short articles I wrote awhile back.  I am updating them. Hopefully Ill post this series every day or two until its done. It is an interesting part of the book of Hebrews that talks about entering God's Rest. It's interesting that the path to righteousness, peace, and a lot of good things, lies not in trying harder, but in trying less and just being. Faith is the key.

Hebrews 3:18-19
18 And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed ? 19 So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.

There are many promises for Christians, for God's children, in the Bible. Love, joy and peace being among them. So why do many Christian's not experience this? Why do many not experience victory over sin, which is another promise. The answer can be found at the end of Hebrews 3, where it talks about people who never entered God's rest because of unbelief. We have many promises in scripture, but we have to believe them, or to believe God and act upon that belief.
God's rest is a state of being in God's blessing and living in fellowship with God. But if we do not believe in the promises, they won't do us any good.
Fortunately there is an answer, and the invitation is extended in Hebrews 4, to enter God's rest. This series will examine that journey into God's rest.
The Children of Israel were led out of Egypt and sent towards the Promised Land. There were many great miracles along the way, proving that God was with them. They were told that they were given the land, that they would be given victory over every enemy, and that they would have prosperity in the new land that God was giving them. They were to be a nation of God’s own people.
They got to the banks of the Jordan river, and because most of the people in the scouting party were afraid, they refused to enter the land. God condemned them to 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, and the next generation did enter the land.
The picture of being led out of Egypt is seen as a picture story of our being saved out of our lives of enslavement to sin. – The word “Salvation” means deliverance.
But what of the wandering in the wilderness?

Often people see the period of wandering in the wilderness as the period between the time we are saved and the time we get to heaven.

This (Canaan) is the “rest” referred to in Hebrews, which God invites us to enter. It is worth noting that the invitation is to believers, those that are already children of God. The “rest” is not an invitation to salvation, but to receive by faith all the spiritual blessings God has promised his children.

The ancient Israelites did not have to wander in the wilderness for 40 years. They did so because of their unbelief.

The writer of Hebrews makes it clear that the ancient promise of entering God’s rest still stands. We too then, do not have to wander in the wilderness.

As the ancient story says, we must be delivered out of Egypt and into Canaan, our promised land is where we have all of God’s blessings and protection as we have close fellowship with Him. The only thing that can hold us back is unbelief. The writer of Hebrews encourages us to not be like the people of ancient Israel, but to have faith and enter into God’s rest instead of saying out in the wilderness.

And what are these blessings? We are not promised wealth or even health. Jesus talked about storing treasure in heaven. The rest is a sense of peace and or contentment. 

What if Jesus had been married?

A recent discovery is raising questions as to whether Jesus was married. There doesn't seem to be much debate over the issue in Christian circles, and any controversy there is, seems to be mostly with the media.
A couple of years ago historian Karen King of Harvard Divinity School  translated eight lines from an inscription on a piece of stone from the fourth century. The writing is Coptic, and it seems to be a dialogue between Jesus and his disciples. In it, Jesus refers to his wife, who is Mary.

King believes the piece of stone is legitimate in being dated to the fourth century. She has been careful to point out that even if the writing is authentic, it does not mean Jesus was married.
The bible does not say one way or the other. Some later writings have suggested he was married, but those have been widely discredited as historical documents. Some have argued that surely it would have been mentioned in the bible if he had been married, but arguing from silence is not a sound way of investigating history.
Church tradition holds that Jesus was not married, was a virgin, and of course had no children.
Some of this may be due to Greek cultural influence, which was dominant when Jesus lived, and for awhile after. Greek philosophy held that sex was basically evil and that this sort of thing could not be mixed with spiritual things, let alone the son of God.
Another problem arose when early Christians were trying to figure out their theology. The whole question of whether Jesus was totally human, totally God, or some combination, took a couple hundred years to hash out. How Jesus could both is still a controversy today in some circles.
Perhaps it was thought that since Jesus was God, if he had children, his children would have been super-human beings.
That too is conjecture. As the church finally settled on orthodoxy, it decided that Jesus was fully human and fully God at the the same time. As a fully human being he could have been married and had children who would have been fully human as well, and would not be super human at all.
He may not have been married, or he may have been. Traditions develop, but there is no way to know for sure. From a theological perspective, it should not matter.

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Does the Bible say how old the Earth is?

Just how old is the earth? Did it evolve over billions of years, or was it created in seven days about 6,000 years ago?

There are Christians, and others, who hold to a “young Earth” theory, believing that it could be as “young” as 6,000 years. Most Christians do not believe this. Another idea out there is that the Earth is eternal, without beginning or end as a huge chunk of matter floating in space.
There are scientific estimates of the age of the earth, but when you are talking billions of years, or even millions, it’s hard to have any level of certainty. And is it not also possible that there could have been previous civilizations that we do not even know about?
I will admit that I do not know how old the Earth is. I have no idea, and don’t care all that much really.
But I have studied the Bible for years, and I can say with a fair amount of certainty, that the Bible does not say how old the Earth is, or even how long it took to create.
The Bible is a holy book (actually a collection of many books) to a lot of people, and it contains many answers to many questions. But there are questions it does not answer. There are times when it just doesn’t say. The problem arises when people try to make it say something that it does not really say.
We also need to realize that there are different types of literature in the Bible. The Psalms, for instance, are poetry, and should be read as poetry. Also especially in Hebrew writing, which nearly all of the Old Testament was written in, there were certain styles of writing and ways of saying things. Often they would tell a story in a general way, and then repeat it in a more specific way.
This is the case with the creation story. The general creation story is told in Genesis, and then the story is told about the first people.
There is also an issue of translation. When Genesis lays out six days of creation, we see that in English and think it was a week. That could be, but it is also just as possible that the “days” are a literary device used to frame the story. The Hebrew word translated “day” in most English bibles could just as easily be translated time, or period of time.
So we can say we do not know how long creation took, and therefore we do not know the age of the Earth. There is nothing wrong in saying we do not know, and in saying the Bible does not say.
At some point in history, someone wanted to know how old the Earth was, and they went to the bible and found a way to interpret it to a certain number of years. We do know that Abraham lived around 2100-2400 b.c., and some scholars say less than that. We know that Jesus lived about 2000 years ago. Beyond that, we really do not know.
The Bible does give genealogies, so and so begat so and so and those lists are long. There are a few of them here and there, but a careful examination shows that they obviously left out some generations. In Hebrew your ancestors are your ancestors. Whether that be your father, or your ancestor of 200 years ago, he would be called your father. Even in the New Testament period, they still referred to Abraham as Father Abraham. The point is, the genealogies were used to show a relationship, not to detail every generation from one generation to the other.
Even so, the genealogies were used to figure out a young date for the Earth, but a plain reading of the text, and understanding the language and culture, shows that it really doesn’t say.
I don’t think it helps the idea of credibility of the scriptures to make it say something it does not say. The point of the Bible is not to tell us history. The point of the Bible is to show us who God is. There is some history here and there, but only as it relates to telling us about God. Whether that history is exactly accurate is not even relevant to me.
There is a little information about science, geography and other areas, but those details are not the point.
As you read the scriptures do not miss the message, or the forest for the trees.

How to understand the Bible

Three steps to understanding the Bible

The key to successful Bible study is a three-step process, which is: Observation, Interpretation and Application. This means basically, to look at what it says, figure out what it means, and then apply that message. You can also look at it as three questions: What does it say? what does it mean? and So what?
While there is a spiritual aspect. The Holy Spirit opens our spiritual eyes to the truth of the message, but that does not mean we stop using our brains. Our spirit may commune with God through the scriptures, but it is still with our minds that we understand.
To understand the bible we should study it the same way we would study any other piece of literature.
God has not hidden his message in the bible, or spoken in some way that is hard to understand. There is no secret code or message hidden that you need to pay someone to get the secret. For the most part it is fairly straight forward. Disagreements come when the text is not clear on a given topic.
The Spirit of God does direct our study, and the Holy Spirit can bring things to our mind to help us understand, but the actual understanding of the Bible is no different than understanding any type of writing.
It was also written in a certain context, and the words themselves have a context. A professor I know used to say, "Context is King." Context is everything in understanding. One sentence by itself has little meaning because it has no context. So while you are doing the three-step method, always keep in mind the context of what is being said.

Observation

What does it say? This is the first step, where we carefully observe what is written. Try to avoid interpreting at this point and only obsserve what is written. As questions. What do other passages say on this subject? Try to determine the context. What is the overall teaching of the passage. Realize that the original texts did not have chapters and verses, so observe the flow of what is being said more than verse numbers.

Interpretation

The second step is where the actual work begins. You have your questions, so set about trying to answer them. Look at other passages, other verses. What does the rest of the bible say about this. The concordance in the back of most bibles can be very helpful here.
There are many tools out there to help, and many are available free online. There is nothing spiritual about avoiding looking up words or studying the history involved.
The context of when and why things were written help in understanding.
"The King James Version says "study to shew thyself approved."
The more information you have the better you will be able to interpret the meaning. There are concordances and dictionaries that can help with word meanings. There is also a history of interpretation that can be valuable.
In this step you try to understand the meaning. A good rule of thumb is that the plain meaning of the text is usually best.
There are also commentaries and various other books where you an get knowledge from other people from ages past and from now. There is nothing inherently spiritual about not having outside help. There are several websites where these books are available free.

Application

Here is where we answer the "so what?" question. Now that you know what it says and have a good idea of what it means, you are ready to apply it to yourself.
Ask yourself, as a result of what I know now, what should I do or understand about God?
There should not be a lot of difference in what people find in the first two steps. This step can get a little gray as everyone's situation is different. But application is very important. The purpose of Bible study should not be just to gain knowledge. We also need to apply that knowledge.


American Bible Society, Bibles.com

Whose approval do you seek?

The Word
John 5:44 How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God?
The Meaning
In this passage Jesus was having another confrontation with the Pharisees and other religious leaders of the day. They saw his miracles, and had heard his claims to be the Son of God, and they wanted some proof, or more convincing.
Earlier in the passage, he said if he praised himself that would not be a valid praise, and he said he did not accept praise from men (verse. 41).
There was John the Baptist who testified as to who Jesus was, there were the works he did - the miracles - and there were the scriptures.
One of the objections that they had against Jesus was that he had not come from them, had not been praised by them, and that he had not been approved by them. Jesus was saying he did not need their praise or approval, needed only God's approval.
The Question:
Whose praise do you seek? Whose approval do you crave? Man's or Gods? How would you seek God's approval?