PART 3 – Salvation and Repentance
In Steve Chalkes’s book The Lost Message of Jesus, he tells of the autobiography of the Jewish historian, aristocrat and young roman officer Flavius Josephus. He was on a mission to quell a revolt of Judean revolutionaries. He tells of his meeting with the head of this band of rebels and he uses the expression “repent and believe in me.” (If you want to read more about this – do an online search for 'Josephus repent and believe in me').
In my NIV 1st Century study Bible notes (Kent Dobson) there is a fascinating note in the story of Paul bringing his jailor to faith in Acts 16. The Roman Emperors promised “salvation” by which they meant the pax romana (the Roman peace and rule).
When Paul talks of the Armour of Faith in Ephesians 6, it is believed he was writing from prison in Rome. Paul will have been staring at roman soldiers in full armour on a daily basis.
While many read Ephesians 6 as a call to spiritual warfare, which on one level it is, I think Paul is systematically UNDRESSING the roman soldier. We are replacing the warlike pieces of armour with spiritual aspects – truth, righteousness, spiritual readiness, knowledge of God’s peace. Likewise, when Paul and Jesus talk of salvation, they are borrowing concepts from the (Roman empire) culture around to show a different way.
What do these points mean to me? The life of a Christian is being contrasted to culturally relevant concepts of the day (just as the Old Testament uses culturally relevant concepts of those days). The metaphor and analogy, rich in meaning and application, can be completely lost when we turn them into limited literal concepts (like someone misunderstanding the metaphor: butter wouldn’t melt, which is a statement about perceived innocence, and nothing to do with dairy products).
In today’s 21st Century, at least in our secular Western world, we don’t usually talk about salvation by living under a political regime. We don’t tell criminals to repent and follow another way. Only in religious circles do we really talk about “sinners” (in fact, sinful is now used as a positive word for fun in many contemporary circles). Those are known as religious concepts.
And yet, our theology has engraved these words in what feels like tablets of stone. Repent, bow the knee to Christ, receive salvation... from hell (not from a life on a rubbish dump outside of a community of safety and love). I can fully comprehend why atheism is on the rise when they read concepts of God’s wrath, a need to repent to achieve salvation and the threat of an eternity in hell. These concepts might have meant a world of difference to their original audiences, but today they speak a foreign language and alienate listeners.
Perhaps our role is that of Paul in the temple of Athens, in Acts 17 when he sees the altar to An Unknown God. Paul made that God known to the people around, but in terms that made sense to them. He used their own poets to connect their stories to his. Perhaps we need to rediscover the skill of Paul and the art of Jesus, of making God’s love known in this world, with its language, its metaphor and its needs? I would argue that some concepts of sin, repentance, salvation and hell do little to help this love be known. Rather than reintroduce Roman Empire concepts, might our challenge be to find new metaphors for the gospel? As John says (John 3:17) Jesus did not come to condemn this world but to save it through him.
How to we share this amazing message that God loves all creation and has defeated death, and that nothing can separate us from his love, in the 21st Century?
You can read Part 1 (Fear of God) here: https://musingmonk.blogspot.com/2020/05/language-and-metaphor-part-1-fear-of-god.html
You can read Part 2 (Hell and Gates of Hell) here: https://musingmonk.blogspot.com/2020/05/language-and-metaphor-part-2-hell-and.html
Saturday 9 May 2020
Language and Metaphor, Part 2 (Hell and the Gates of Hell)
This is the second part in my 3 part musings on Language and Metaphor in the Bible.
PART 2 – Hell and the Gates of Hell
Jesus and Paul were both experts at using culturally relevant metaphor to make a deeper point. For example, many believe that when Jesus said it was easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom Heaven, that he was talking of a narrow gate in the city walls where camels bearing many riches would not be able to pass – that to enter that gate they needed to strip themselves of their over-abundance. This makes a lot of sense, as it seems unlikely Jesus is actually talking about the impossibility of someone with wealth going to Heaven. It seems much more likely he is saying that worries of wealth are heavy burdens that prevent us from experiencing the “shalom” of God.
As Jesus spoke of Gehenna (unhelpfully translated as “hell” in many translations), the great stinking, burning rubbish dump outside the city walls, once a site of child sacrifices to Molech and place where wild dogs would fight over scraps of food and gnash their teeth at each other, his listeners would have had no doubt that he was describing a filthy place that no-one wanted to live in. This was outside the city wall – a place of safety, community and belonging. He wasn't talking about Dante's hell, an image that came centuries later, but has infiltrated our imaginations.
The scandal of Jesus was him saying “It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell (Gehenna), where the fire never goes out.” Why is this a scandal? The religious view of the day was that deformity and illness were some kind of punishment from God. Who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born this way? People with illness and deformity were excluded, hence the scandal of Jesus the Rabbi dining with sinners, touching the unclean, healing crippled hands on the Sabbath and declaring a paralysed man’s sins forgiven in front of outraged Pharisees. And here, Jesus proclaims that the maimed and deformed can find life WITH their physical deformity and that those who are “whole” might not live full lives in the Kingdom of God’s “shalom” but find themselves living on the smouldering rubbish dump outside those city walls.
Another fascinating detail is within the story of turning over the temple tables. If we look at Matthew 21:14, we see a tiny, overlooked verse: “The blind and lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them.” Access to the temple was highly regulated. Outsiders, women, priests. All had limits to their access. All had to be ritually purified. The money changers were selling the required sacrifices to allow people to be good enough to approach. In the chaos of Jesus turning over the tables, look who approaches him... the outcasts. Right into the temple itself. And to whom is this letter being written? By Matthew, the former Jewish tax collector, to a mostly Jewish audience. A detail that Mark and Luke omit, whereas Matthew knew the scandal his Jewish audience would have noticed – Jesus, welcoming blind and lame into the temple itself!
And yet today, the 21st Century reader will read this passage and hear this to be about destinations - Heaven and Hell, and self punishment and even mutilation to avoid eternal punishment. Once more, are we missing huge significance of the teachings of Jesus by not entering into the 1st Century world of his listeners?
I once heard a great talk about the Gates of Hell when Jesus was speaking to Peter in Caesarea Philippi (Matthew 16: 13-18). In that location was a temple of Pan with a cave known as Pan’s Grotto – which pagans believed led to the underworld. As Jesus was in that area, he tells Peter that the gates of hades will not overcome his church. Another metaphor, based on the very real, known and significant cave in that region that would have been considered a gateway to hades by the pagans.
Again, how much do we miss, mistranslate and misunderstand when we fail to see the world in which the scriptures were written? How much of our theology of God is built on culturally sensitive concepts and metaphor?
For me, this is a big warning to take care when I try to fathom the unfathomable God of love, reading God-breathed scripture.
You can read Part 1 (Fear of God) here: https://musingmonk.blogspot.com/2020/05/language-and-metaphor-part-1-fear-of-god.html
You can read Part 3 (Salvation and Repentance) here: https://musingmonk.blogspot.com/2020/05/language-and-metaphor-part-3-salvation.html
PART 2 – Hell and the Gates of Hell
Jesus and Paul were both experts at using culturally relevant metaphor to make a deeper point. For example, many believe that when Jesus said it was easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom Heaven, that he was talking of a narrow gate in the city walls where camels bearing many riches would not be able to pass – that to enter that gate they needed to strip themselves of their over-abundance. This makes a lot of sense, as it seems unlikely Jesus is actually talking about the impossibility of someone with wealth going to Heaven. It seems much more likely he is saying that worries of wealth are heavy burdens that prevent us from experiencing the “shalom” of God.
As Jesus spoke of Gehenna (unhelpfully translated as “hell” in many translations), the great stinking, burning rubbish dump outside the city walls, once a site of child sacrifices to Molech and place where wild dogs would fight over scraps of food and gnash their teeth at each other, his listeners would have had no doubt that he was describing a filthy place that no-one wanted to live in. This was outside the city wall – a place of safety, community and belonging. He wasn't talking about Dante's hell, an image that came centuries later, but has infiltrated our imaginations.
The scandal of Jesus was him saying “It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell (Gehenna), where the fire never goes out.” Why is this a scandal? The religious view of the day was that deformity and illness were some kind of punishment from God. Who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born this way? People with illness and deformity were excluded, hence the scandal of Jesus the Rabbi dining with sinners, touching the unclean, healing crippled hands on the Sabbath and declaring a paralysed man’s sins forgiven in front of outraged Pharisees. And here, Jesus proclaims that the maimed and deformed can find life WITH their physical deformity and that those who are “whole” might not live full lives in the Kingdom of God’s “shalom” but find themselves living on the smouldering rubbish dump outside those city walls.
Another fascinating detail is within the story of turning over the temple tables. If we look at Matthew 21:14, we see a tiny, overlooked verse: “The blind and lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them.” Access to the temple was highly regulated. Outsiders, women, priests. All had limits to their access. All had to be ritually purified. The money changers were selling the required sacrifices to allow people to be good enough to approach. In the chaos of Jesus turning over the tables, look who approaches him... the outcasts. Right into the temple itself. And to whom is this letter being written? By Matthew, the former Jewish tax collector, to a mostly Jewish audience. A detail that Mark and Luke omit, whereas Matthew knew the scandal his Jewish audience would have noticed – Jesus, welcoming blind and lame into the temple itself!
And yet today, the 21st Century reader will read this passage and hear this to be about destinations - Heaven and Hell, and self punishment and even mutilation to avoid eternal punishment. Once more, are we missing huge significance of the teachings of Jesus by not entering into the 1st Century world of his listeners?
I once heard a great talk about the Gates of Hell when Jesus was speaking to Peter in Caesarea Philippi (Matthew 16: 13-18). In that location was a temple of Pan with a cave known as Pan’s Grotto – which pagans believed led to the underworld. As Jesus was in that area, he tells Peter that the gates of hades will not overcome his church. Another metaphor, based on the very real, known and significant cave in that region that would have been considered a gateway to hades by the pagans.
Again, how much do we miss, mistranslate and misunderstand when we fail to see the world in which the scriptures were written? How much of our theology of God is built on culturally sensitive concepts and metaphor?
For me, this is a big warning to take care when I try to fathom the unfathomable God of love, reading God-breathed scripture.
You can read Part 1 (Fear of God) here: https://musingmonk.blogspot.com/2020/05/language-and-metaphor-part-1-fear-of-god.html
You can read Part 3 (Salvation and Repentance) here: https://musingmonk.blogspot.com/2020/05/language-and-metaphor-part-3-salvation.html
Language and Metaphor, Part 1 (Fear of God)
I wanted to share some musings about language and metaphor in the Bible, to show how I have wrestled with concepts such as Fearing God, Hell/Gates of Hell, Salvation and Repentance.
We all approach things wearing different lenses, which is why community exploration of topics can be so rich and rewarding. I’m not an academic theologian, but rather approach things from my own training in both psychology and language (including translation).
I have broken this into 3 parts: Fear of God; Hell/Gates of Hell; and Repentance/Salvation.
PART 1 – Fear of God
I became a Christian in the mid 1990s. When I made the decision to follow Christ, I had an insatiable desire to study the Bible and learn more about God and my faith. I joined Bible study groups, bought a study Bible and spent long hours reading and praying.
However, one concept that I found difficult to get my head around was the regular use of “the fear of the Lord” such as in Proverbs 1:7 (“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction”).
My relationship with Jesus held no fear. I felt love, acceptance, forgiveness, gentleness and encouragement. These much older words told me I had to fear this same God.
My way of reconciling this at the time was to think this must be a nuance in translation. Perhaps “fear” just meant having respect for, in the way a Victorian-era child might have fear of their father – this didn’t mean the father didn’t love them, only that the father was deserving of awe and respect. I began to think of different aspects of God and perhaps I just felt more comfortable with the “son” aspect of the trinity?
Yesterday I was talking with an overseas friend, and I used the expression “butter wouldn’t melt.” She had no idea what I was talking about. We both spoke English, but this metaphor meant nothing to her. While I was saying that a picture I had seen suggested that on the outside, the person gave the impression of child-like innocence, there was an insinuation there might be some mischief behind the eyes. My friend missed all this, having never heard the expression.
Imagine if I were viewed as a deeply spiritual man, and had written this down, and 2000 years later it was translated into whatever language they will speak in Greece? Would people be debating the spirituality of butter, having lost my entire meaning out of context?
A couple of years ago, I stumbled across the words “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” once again. However, my faith had “journeyed” and I had a somewhat different approach to the Bible than in my early days as a Christian. I had been reflecting on the progressive nature of much of the Old Testament (I can’t recommend Rob Bell’s book “What is the Bible?” highly enough!) and how Abraham’s encounter with God shifted from the understanding of capricious, unpredictable, easily angered gods of the day (think Baal, Molech, all the Egyptian gods) that needed appeasing, to a God of covenant who wanted relationship with people.
I realised that as a translator, I had learned to take great care when reading a phrase to consider what words I instinctively emphasised. I was reading this as: the FEAR of the Lord. My 21st Century mind focused on the emotion and the verb ‘to fear’. However, in that ancient world, people didn’t need to be told to fear God. They already feared gods, left right and centre. Solomon here is telling them not ‘to fear’, but to focus on The Lord. Instead, I re-read the verse with the following emphasis – “The fear of THE LORD (not Baal, Molech or any other god) is the beginning of knowledge.”
I now see that this verse as not commanding us to fear God, but as actually yet another way of describing the greatest commandment – love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Putting our fear in God is about putting all our emotional world, our hopes, dreams, anxieties etc. into the Lord.
And in that moment, I saw Jesus in the Old Testament once again...
You can read Part 2 (Hell and Gates of Hell) here: https://musingmonk.blogspot.com/2020/05/language-and-metaphor-part-2-hell-and.html
You can read Part 3 (Salvation and Repentance) here: https://musingmonk.blogspot.com/2020/05/language-and-metaphor-part-3-salvation.html
We all approach things wearing different lenses, which is why community exploration of topics can be so rich and rewarding. I’m not an academic theologian, but rather approach things from my own training in both psychology and language (including translation).
I have broken this into 3 parts: Fear of God; Hell/Gates of Hell; and Repentance/Salvation.
PART 1 – Fear of God
I became a Christian in the mid 1990s. When I made the decision to follow Christ, I had an insatiable desire to study the Bible and learn more about God and my faith. I joined Bible study groups, bought a study Bible and spent long hours reading and praying.
However, one concept that I found difficult to get my head around was the regular use of “the fear of the Lord” such as in Proverbs 1:7 (“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction”).
My relationship with Jesus held no fear. I felt love, acceptance, forgiveness, gentleness and encouragement. These much older words told me I had to fear this same God.
My way of reconciling this at the time was to think this must be a nuance in translation. Perhaps “fear” just meant having respect for, in the way a Victorian-era child might have fear of their father – this didn’t mean the father didn’t love them, only that the father was deserving of awe and respect. I began to think of different aspects of God and perhaps I just felt more comfortable with the “son” aspect of the trinity?
Yesterday I was talking with an overseas friend, and I used the expression “butter wouldn’t melt.” She had no idea what I was talking about. We both spoke English, but this metaphor meant nothing to her. While I was saying that a picture I had seen suggested that on the outside, the person gave the impression of child-like innocence, there was an insinuation there might be some mischief behind the eyes. My friend missed all this, having never heard the expression.
Imagine if I were viewed as a deeply spiritual man, and had written this down, and 2000 years later it was translated into whatever language they will speak in Greece? Would people be debating the spirituality of butter, having lost my entire meaning out of context?
A couple of years ago, I stumbled across the words “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” once again. However, my faith had “journeyed” and I had a somewhat different approach to the Bible than in my early days as a Christian. I had been reflecting on the progressive nature of much of the Old Testament (I can’t recommend Rob Bell’s book “What is the Bible?” highly enough!) and how Abraham’s encounter with God shifted from the understanding of capricious, unpredictable, easily angered gods of the day (think Baal, Molech, all the Egyptian gods) that needed appeasing, to a God of covenant who wanted relationship with people.
I realised that as a translator, I had learned to take great care when reading a phrase to consider what words I instinctively emphasised. I was reading this as: the FEAR of the Lord. My 21st Century mind focused on the emotion and the verb ‘to fear’. However, in that ancient world, people didn’t need to be told to fear God. They already feared gods, left right and centre. Solomon here is telling them not ‘to fear’, but to focus on The Lord. Instead, I re-read the verse with the following emphasis – “The fear of THE LORD (not Baal, Molech or any other god) is the beginning of knowledge.”
I now see that this verse as not commanding us to fear God, but as actually yet another way of describing the greatest commandment – love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Putting our fear in God is about putting all our emotional world, our hopes, dreams, anxieties etc. into the Lord.
And in that moment, I saw Jesus in the Old Testament once again...
You can read Part 2 (Hell and Gates of Hell) here: https://musingmonk.blogspot.com/2020/05/language-and-metaphor-part-2-hell-and.html
You can read Part 3 (Salvation and Repentance) here: https://musingmonk.blogspot.com/2020/05/language-and-metaphor-part-3-salvation.html
Monday 4 May 2020
Jesus and Healing
Musing for the day...
Our 21st century minds read many of the healing accounts of Jesus and focus quite naturally on the overcoming health-related suffering aspects. This is the love and power of God made manifest.
However, we are probably missing a lot of the social exclusion aspects of the first century. Even with some head knowledge of this, we probably struggle to fully appreciate it as a lived experience.
In the famous story of the paralyzed man being brought to Jesus through a hole in the roof, Jesus responded in an unusual way.
"When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralysed man, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’" (Mark 2:5).
In fact, it looked like Jesus wasn't even going to heal the man, until he became aware of the grumbling of the Pharisees, at which point he carried out the healing to demonstrate he had the power to declare his sins forgiven.
This is a very odd story if you approach it from a (penal substitution) way of seeing the Good News being that if you repent of your sins and accept the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross then you will have eternal life. For starters, there is no indication that this man repented of anything. Secondly, Jesus had not yet died or been resurrected - therefore how could this man put his faith in the cross?
A much better reading of this passage to my mind, is that Jesus was not preaching about avoiding hell if people repent, but rather he was declaring a message of inclusion - God's love is for ALL. In those days, any illness or disability was considered grounds for exclusion, or attributed to sin. People who were ritually unclean were not welcome, certainly not allowed to be touched or to share a table with a Rabbi - hence the shock of people who saw "sinners" eating with Jesus, the shame of the woman with bleeding touching Jesus, or Peter eating with gentiles. When Jesus saw the faithfulness of the friends (remember, the concept of faith and faithfulness is not a cognitive belief in something, but a living out faithfully to something) he was declaring that this man was living in God's Kingdom, evidenced by the love of the friends. While the Pharisees were judging people as unclean and putting barriers up between them and God, these friends were doing the exact opposite. They were, quite literally, taking their friend into the very presence of God. Jesus saw his message lived out in this stunning example of faith, love and inclusion.
Coming back to the healing aspect - it is an amazing story of inclusion, and Jesus proclaiming that the faithfulnnes of his friends is "Kingdom living". The way the story is told, as I mention above, it looks like he was almost not going to even do the healing, had he not heard the grumbling Pharisees. The physical disablity was not what Jesus saw when he looked at the man.
In today's world, many are perplexed why God appears not to heal/answer all prayers (although many point to times God DID appear to answer their prayers also).
However, my musing of the day - might Jesus' lifetime ministry have primarily been one of inclusion? In a first century culture where illness resulted in exclusion and blame (assumption of sin), might the healing of physical illness have been the method Jesus used to bring people healing from their exclusion (almost all the healings were of people likely to be considered unclean, or of outsiders), rather than the purpose - just something to make people's lives more comfortable or less painful? Jesus spent a lot of time outside of the city (Jerusalem) precisely where the marginilised would be. He wasn't a travelling doctor. He was a proclaimer that God's Kingdom was for all.
This has interesting implications for Christianity today. Rather than focusing, as some churches or ministries appear to, on miraculous healings, might we be entirely missing the "healing of exclusion"? There is a lot of research that shows the health benefits of belonging, relationships, friendship, community etc. Our medical advances have transformed health care. Many great advances in society have stemmed from Christianity (but let's acknowledge the amazing contributions of all types of people, regardless of culture or belief). Do we need to think of all physical healing as miraculous? Or perhaps a better way of putting it, might all our medical advances be miracles in themselves to give thanks for? However... how are we doing at love and inclusion?
In Matthew 18:8-9, Jesus said it's better to find life, despite being crippled and maimed, than to have physical well-being but to be discarded on the rubbish dump that is Gehenna, outside the city walls. Perhaps we need to focus more on this gospel of inclusion to see genuine healing in our world.
Notes on Matthew 18:8-9: many read this as Jesus saying it's better to gouge out something that causes you to sin, so that you can enter Heaven maimed than be sent to hell whole. However, this is a very different way of understanding what he was likely meaning. Jesus said it is better to enter "life" (not a future Heaven) than be thrown into the fire of Gehenna, which was the burning rubbish dump outside the walls of Jerusalem. John the Baptist proclaimed the Kingdom of Heaven being near. Jesus said it would be in our midst. I think it is much more likely that Jesus is saying it is better to be included (in the loving Kingdom that he was proclaiming) even if we were maimed or crippled, than to be physically healthy but excluded and cast aside - often as a result of our own sinful decisions, greed and unloving actions that destroy the loving community Jesus calls us to build with him.
This is a turning upside down of the beliefs of the day that physcial disability was a sign of sin and therefore the person needed exluded. Jesus challenged this head on, saying those people could find true life despite it, thus breaking the idea that illness was somehow linked to sin. A total challenge to the theology of the day!
Readers of this blog will know my views on homosexuality. Where would Jesus be today at a Gay Pride march? On the sidelines with a placard saying "faggots will rot in hell" or amongst the religious and non-religious marchers declaring how wonderful it is to include all in our world and to celebrate human life? Does God exclude us because of our genetics, our appearance, our orientation, our beliefs, telling us that only after repentance will he welcome us? Or does God celebrate us as created beings, longing for us to be welcomed in his loving arms, and calling us to share that all-inclusive love with all? I know which God I love...
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