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
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