Looking for Jesus

Once upon a time, I was working at an industrial plant in Texas during a maintenance outage.  Around a hundred contractors worked on completely disassembling large pieces of machinery.  Parts were cleaned or replaced as necessary to ensure reliability.  One particular worker there had an incredible religious experience during the outage.

A man was working on sand-blasting hard-water scale off of some nuts when he saw a vision.  On one particular nut, the image of Jesus Christ was made manifest almost immediately after applying the jet of sand.  Elated and awestruck, he stopped his work and immediately started sharing the miraculous apparition with everyone.

That's the actual nut in the photo!  Do you see Jesus?  Yeah, neither do I.  I can kind of make out a face, maybe even a little like Tom Selleck, but if that is the best the Creator of the universe and master of all matter can do to show His face, I'm not impressed.

If God did go around putting the image of Jesus, or the Virgin Mary, on nuts, or toast, or fountain water-stains, it would be weird, and more than a little creepy.  You'd have to examine your bumper after every drive for bug guts in the shape of a crucifix for a sign from God.

Millions of Christians claim to hear from God, but not in picture form.  Thankfully, it appears that relatively few Christians claim to hear God speaking literally.  Instead, in our time, the normal way to "hear" from God seems to be to discern it from emotions they feel or events which occur.  Discernment can be a real problem.

God, in most common reference, provides these messages invisibly.  If there was some invisible phenomenon which moved air from one place to another, and rustled grass and leaves, but was not wind, how could you discern it from wind itself?  Is it just when the air moves in a favorable direction?

If you believe that God controls everything, then anything could be interpreted as a message from God.  Even the weather, which affects everyone regardless of faith, you can see as a personal sign from God.  My older sister appears to have this perspective, as she has said (paraphrased) things such as "God did not want me to take my children to the park today because it rained." 

As a teenager, I had the idea which seems most popular, that God lets most events play out however they will (because He knows the will ultimately end the way He wants), but occasionally does step in to tweak the events or send messages.  I had believed that Jesus/God would step in and provide healings.  I had believed that God would answer prayers.  I had believed that God would place things on our hearts and in our minds.  I didn't know exactly how it happened, but I wanted to know.

You see, as a teenager, I was a budding skeptic.  I was not at all skeptical about Christianity at that time, as a whole.  (The time I am focusing on here, specifically, is during my pious revival mentioned in my last post.)  Yet while the months went by, waiting to hear from God, I thought seriously to myself:  "When I hear from God, how will I know it is really a message from Him?"  This got the gears of my skeptical brain working.

Even at that age, I had come to realize that self-deception was pretty easy.  I had the sense that if I forced myself to look for Jesus in everything, I was sure to find what I thought was Him, but not necessarily the real thing, such as the bolt up above or this recent tale about a guy who thought God had saved him during a trench collapse.

Besides self-deception, I also thought Satan may be out there, lurking around, ready to misdirect me too.  This would have been a perfect opportunity for him, too, given that I was so inexperienced in the faith.  He could have lead me down a path I thought was right because it felt right, but turned out to be all wrong.  I had to be on guard.

That sobering thought reminded me, too, that a message from God may not be telling me to do something that I wanted to do.  In fact, it could be quite the opposite, because it was to be His will, not my own.

With all of these possible snags waiting to catch me, waiting to lead me astray, I got nervous for a while.  I was afraid I might miss the message God gave to me because I was being too guarded, too cautious to make sure it was a real message.  However, this nervousness soon passed.  I knew that God knew my thoughts and my heart, and I knew that God was God.  God could figure out a way to make the message incontrovertibly clear.  At least, that's what I thought.

So I waited.  Listening.  Watching.  Patiently.

Several months went by.  No contact.  No message.  So, slowly, my teenage mind got distracted by other things as my passion for God burnt down to a few glowing embers.  Even with those few, meager embers, I kept the heat of hope alight thinking that God would call me when He needed me.

About a Girl

When I was in high school, I got into a relationship with an older woman.  How much older?  I don't know, for sure.  I was (partially) a gentleman, so I didn't ask.  She was probably in her upper 20's or lower 30's, while I was just 16.  My teenage ego was at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

You've got to understand that I was far from being a Casanova in high school, or really anytime for that matter.  She was one of only two girlfriends I had in high school; the first one.  But using the term "girlfriend" to describe what happened probably isn't accurate.

The relationship started as co-workers in a restaurant, and took the next step with me providing private math tutoring at her apartment.  She was going to the local community college.  Why the late college start?  Well, I was a little slow to put it together, but I think it was kind of a big break-up, re-invent herself, rebound thing.  I was probably a rebound thing too, but I digress.

I know this is somewhat of a teaser, but I'm not going to divulge the details of the fling.  I'll just sum it up with the fact that I was (thankfully) too shy, inexperienced, and flat-out immature to take full advantage of what would have probably been a big mistake.  The relationship fizzled out before any real damage was done.

Anyway, part of that relationship involved me trying to spend any time I could with her.  She was a Christian, and a regular at her church.  So that meant that I escorted her to church several Sundays.

Her church was different.  It was non-denominational, and it was my first exposure to a non-Methodist church.  To me, for the brief time I attended, it sounded just like a Methodist church, but it looked completely different.  Specifically, there was no Christian iconography.  No crucifix or cross hung prominently behind the preacher.  No stained-glass window adorned the building.  If it wasn't for the pew-style seating, it could have easily been mistaken for just some generic meeting center.

Around the time before this woman, I had put my faith on a shelf.  I didn't go to church.  I still believed in God, but there was nothing about me or my actions which would have given that impression.

Then, there I was again, going to church.  Some might say it was God leading me back into His fold.  I would say it was just me, tempted by having a beautiful, mature woman on my arm, but that was not all.

In the back of my mind, going to church was one of those things I should be doing anyway, but wasn't.  Also in the back of my mind was the haunting question:  Why have I never felt God's presence or heard from Him?  So this church-going revived my thirst to know God.  It took on a significance well beyond this girl.

I started reading the Bible by myself for the first time in my entire life.  Starting with Genesis.  And I started taking hand-written notes; notes which would later serve as the impetus for my Bible summary on my other blog when I came across them about twelve years later.  While I read on in Genesis, there were some things which disturbed me a little bit, but not to the point of shaking my faith at all.  The weight of my faith was based largely on what I had learned of God in church and youth group, which was almost exclusively New Testament based.  The image provided to me was so good that the minor snags I found in my reading were as easy to dismiss as are the idiosyncrasies of dear friends.

I also started praying, which was the first time doing so in a mature fashion.  As a kid, I would pray to God to help me find my lost wallet, but during this personal revival, I was far less trivial.  The maturity of my heart for God far exceeded my knowledge of Scripture, and exceeded the maturity in any other aspect of my life at that point.  I was praying for the healing and good will for other people.  I was praying for God to use me in any way which He saw fit.

But I still wasn't hearing from Him or noticing any discernible signs of divine favor or involvement in my life.  There was no Holy guidance to direct me in God's will.

I began to reflect upon myself to discover what I may be doing which was hindering my relationship with God.  I began to be as upright as I could, changing habits which might be objectionable.  I thought back about my many sins committed that far, and I prayed prayers of repentance.  I remember around that time, Lent was getting ready to begin, and so I chose to give up listening to heavy metal music for Lent, thinking that perhaps that was somehow preventing an interface with God.  (Not being Catholic or knowing much of anything about Catholicism at that time, I just knew Lent was a time to give up something you enjoyed in order to get closer to God.)  I started listening to any sermons I could find on the radio to supplement my church learning.

Still nothing.  Still nothing.

I held out hope.  Someday, God would guide me, when the time is right.  Someday I'd know.  But without any divine guidance, my pious passion eroded away over time.  Hope was still there, but the passion was gone.  I was waiting.  Indefinitely.

Many years later, when I would pick up the Bible again to study it, I mused to myself, wondering if, with just a little divine encouragement, if Abel would not have been killed, like my faith.

Twilight Sucks

I find it amusing and sad that the third most popular post on my other blog is "Vampires in the Bible."  There are no real vampires in the Bible.  If they were there, I'm pretty sure that the church would have hopped on the pop-culture bandwagon spawned largely by the Twilight series as a way to tout how relevant they are.

It just goes to show you how Biblically illiterate the faithful population is.  For far too many, it is a blind faith where they simply swallow whatever their preacher serves to them because they are too lazy to study for themselves, or because their priorities are so far into worldly concerns that they have too little time for that kind of study, which is wrong on so many levels that it scares me to think some of these same people are leading our country, or vying to do so.

Indoctrination in Vanilla

It was like being born a citizen.  I was an American before I had an appreciation for what the United States of America was as a country.  I was a Christian long before I understood what Christianity was about.

My own story of the beginning of my faith was so bland that I have great difficulty remembering details.

My parents shuffled me off to Sunday School while they attended the real sermon.  There, I learned how Jesus loves all the little children, yes, all the children of the world.  Cartoon pictures of Noah and David decorated the cinder block walls.  Cartoon versions of Biblical stories told to us, like how David, just a mere young boy, bravely stood up against the evil, giant Goliath, and killed him with God's help.  (They left off the part about the subsequent decapitation, as they did with any of the less-kid-friendly details from other stories.)

It was, for all intents and purposes, a real school without exams.  The stories which we were told were presented as fact, just like an History class.  That's not to say I would expect anything different, but just to point out that there was no deep thought involved.  There was no reason.  There was only the way it was.  And I just soaked it up without question.  Indoctrinated.  Christian.

I can't remember the precise age, maybe 10(?), but at some point I was deemed old enough to go through the Methodist Church Confirmation program.  It was to be a confirmation that I was actually in the faith, that I was indeed a Christian.  The program took the cartoon concepts presented in early Sunday School and, well, made them less cartoon like.  But just a little.  Still in two-dimensions, the concepts of Salvation and (the only alternative) damnation were sketched out on a foundation of sin.  God's love would save us.  Jesus would save us.  Make that:  Jesus had already saved us.

To this day I can't tell you what version of damnation they had preached to me at that time.  I thought I was already a Christian, and all the people I knew were too, so I didn't worry about it.  Also, I was pretty self-centered, even more than I am now.  ;-)

This program, too, was just another form of school.  The trouble is that I was a pretty smart kid with a wealth of laziness.  When you are "blessed" with that gift, a structured teaching pace can be unbearably slow.  So just like in real school, I would pay attention just long enough to get the gist of what the teacher was saying, and then completely zone out in daydreams.  The Confirmation program did have tests of sorts, and I paid attention just enough to pass them.  That's probably why I barely remember anything from the program.

Anyway, graduation day came, and I was confirmed in front of the entire congregation.  The whole class was paraded up front, where we each read a verse out of the Bible.  Voilà.  We were proclaimed Christians.  Our parents were happy.  I didn't feel any different.  I mean, I thought I already was a Christian.  To me, it wasn't a faith; it was a status, or identity.  It wasn't something you earned, it was something you were.  The pomp seemed a bit unnecessary.

However, now that I was a true Christian in the eyes of the church, from then on I attended the regular sermons with my parents.  Physically I attended, that is.  Mentally I was off in a different world.

Our church didn't have an energetic preacher.  Fire and brimstone was rarely in the forecast.  Nobody jumped up and yelled "PRAISE THE LORD!"  Nobody spoke in tongues.  Nobody got healed.  Nobody prophesied.  Nobody stood up and waved their arms back and forth with hands uplifted as if receiving invisible ray beams of love-energy from the God in the sky above.

There was no show.  There was only worship and psalms.  Reverent, quiet worship.  And daydreaming.  And the occasional nap.

It would take a special girl for me to start pondering my Christianity more deeply, but that's a story for another time...

Christmas Love

Sorry about breaking out the guy in the red suit so early this year.  Seems to get earlier and earlier.  Half a century from now, people will be giving up Christmas cookies for Lent.  But I digress...

I have a confession to make:  I never loved Santa.  Don't get me wrong here.  I loved to get presents.  I certainly appreciated the big guy stopping by with a stash of toys, but I didn't love him.

That's not to say that I had something against him either.  I wasn't creeped out by the thought of him omnisciently watching over me.  After all, that's what God was doing too.  Nor was I scared that he could enter into everyone's houses in the middle of the night without waking anyone up.  Nope.  My parents didn't have a problem with it, so why should I?

I simply just didn't love Santa.  I didn't love Santa, because I didn't have a relationship with Santa.  He sneaked in, dropped off the gifts, and covertly left.  Our family didn't even leave milk and cookies out for him.  I never wrote him letters telling him what I wanted, and I never wrote him letters to thank him for the gifts.  He never wrote me letters either.  I didn't know how to use a phone to call anyone, but he never called me.

Santa was a stranger; a very generous stranger, mind you, but a stranger none-the-less.

This created a rather strange dynamic.  Someone I didn't know stopped by reliably once a year to shower me with gifts in secrecy, without any kind of relationship or return of gratitude.  And he did this with all the kids I knew!  With that kind of consistency, the endorsement of my parents, and the abundance of evidence, I had to accept that it was normal behavior for his special case.

Oh, it was a very beneficial system, but it was hollow.  There was no relationship and no love, so there was no real meaning, aside from knowing that I would get new toys every year.

I don't really remember when I stopped believing in Santa.  There was not an eureka moment.  I think it was a combination of overhearing conversations, leaked information on TV, and recognizing the handwriting on the gift tags.

It wasn't earth-shattering either.  I didn't get angry at my parents for lying to me.  In fact, to some extent it made me appreciate my parents even more because I then knew that they were the source of the gifts.

I didn't feel the need to tell my sisters, or anybody, about my discovery.  With every parent perpetuating this illusion, and every kid believing in Santa for a time, it seemed to my like a harmless right of passage.  There was no point in me spoiling the mystery for others.

You know where this is going, right?  ;-)


In my teens, as I began to develop a maturity of mind enough to explore my faith in God, love became a hanging point.  Like we find in Matthew 22:37 below, we are called to earnestly and actively love God:

Jesus replied: "‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’"  NIV

I didn't make the comparison at the time, but I was having the same issues loving God as I had with loving Santa.  I went to church, and always treated the church with a reverent respect.  I went to the youth group. I prayed from time to time.  It seemed to me as though I was putting forth an effort to be with God and talk with Him, but I never heard back in any discernible manner.

I never felt a relationship, and without a relationship, there can be no true love.  At least by my definition of love.

God, and Jesus for that matter, were like Santa, at least to me.  God was a stranger, a generous one, given the promise of an eternal blissful afterlife, but a stranger none-the-less.  Only this Stranger was demanding love.  The only evidence seemed to be that everybody around me believed in God.  There was no annual, reliable, tangible gift session to at least stoke the fire of faith.  You just had to wait it out.  You had to die to get the promised reward.  And before that, you had to love.


When I first had these kind of thoughts, about the lack of a real relationship, that wasn't enough for me to doubt my faith in God.  My parents didn't have a problem with faith, so why should I?  I just thought someday, someday I will hear from God.  I just need to be patient.  I just need to be patient.  It may take longer than a year.

Where, O death, is your sting?

Ten days ago, the 8th of August, the USA Today published an article which would have been unfathomable two hundred years ago.  It wasn't about the new iPad.  It was about Hell, or rather, it was not about Hell.

You see, in this piece titled "Should believers fear Hell - and God?" by Oliver Thomas, Mr. Thomas discussed one of the internal hot-buttons of the church today; whether or not the traditional concept of Hell exists.  Apparently, one major reason this issue is on the forefront is a book called Love Wins by Rob Bell.

Unlike technology, which seems to change faster than my wardrobe, the words of the Bible don't really change.  Finds like the Dead Sea Scrolls illuminate the accuracy and integrity of manuscript copies, and so sometimes changes are made (as in the previous post), but usually these changes do little or nothing to shake the core tenets of Scripture.  Tenets like Hell.  So, how the Hell does Bell make a case for change?

Based off of the words of Mr. Thomas (as I haven't read Bell's book), Bell claims that perpetuated mistranslation is the culprit causing the creation of this wayward doctrine. Thomas provided a four part defense, presumably thanks to Bell.

1. The Old Testament does not portray the domain of the dead (Sheol) as a place of torture, but as a place of no activity.  
2. The Greek word "aiónios" (which he had mistakenly spelled "aionos"), which is translated as "eternal," is better understood as a finality, not a perpetuity (in Bell's opinion).  
3. The word translated as Hell (in the New Testament) is Gehenna, which in Jesus day was in a valley south of Jerusalem where trash was burned, so Jesus was basically telling people that they would be trashing their lives if they did not repent for Salvation.
4. God has perfect love for all of us.  No parent who loved their child could bear to see their child tortured if that child turned out to be a murderer.  How much more that would be true with God.

And, thus, the traditional concept of Hell is completely wrong.  Gone is the burden of trying to reconcile a loving and merciful God with an eternally enduring punishment for the unsaved.

Well, imagine how relieved I felt upon reading this!  As an atheist, no longer did I have to fear repercussions from God, should He happen to exist!  Oh, death, where is your sting!  I now have a hope spoken of in 1 Corinthians 15:55, only on the flip-side of the coin.  It's not eternal life, but, hey, it's not an eternal roast either.

But.  But wait a minute.  Something... something just doesn't seem right.  Let's take a look point by point:

1. Yes, he's right, the Old Testament doesn't suggest that Sheol is a place of torture, but it doesn't describe Heaven as a place of eternal life for good human souls after they die either.  In fact, there is very little to suggest that the concept of an after-life punishment or reward in the Old Testament, aside from what could happen to your still-living progeny.  If you use that to debunk Hell, you'd have to debunk Heaven too, or at least the Christian version of Heaven where the Saved will go.
    
2. The Greek word "aiónios" has "aión" as its root, which is defined as "agelong, eternal," which is why aiónios itself is defined as "age-long, and therefore: practically eternal, unending; partaking of the character of that which lasts for an age, as contrasted with that which is brief and fleeting."  This does not necessarily contradict Bell's position, but his position seems a bit more untenable when you consider Matthew 25:46:
   

   “Then [those separated to the left of Jesus] will go away to eternal (aiónios) punishment, but the righteous to eternal (aiónios) life.” NIV

    
3. Ah, Gehenna.  Yes, indeed, Jesus was using the vivid picture of a burning trash dump, but was it simply to say that those who did not repent would be throwing their lives away, or was it meant to be a metaphor for a punishment which would endure forever?  The verses lean towards the latter because of context.
   
   Take Mark 9:43-48, for example.  That's the lovely passage which says you should chop off your hand or foot if they cause you to sin, or likewise gouge out your eye.  You see, these are better alternatives than being thrown into Gehenna, "where the fire never goes out" and where "their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched."
   
   Why would it matter that the fire never goes out?  How would it be possible that worms feeding on the unsaved would not die, and why would that be significant?  If nothing was to happen to the unsaved at Judgement Day, or if there was just some brief punishment, then these references do not make sense.  On the other hand, if there is an enduring and continuous punishment, well, they are right in line, and probably worth chopping of your hand or foot to avoid!
   
   That's why Jesus told us that we should fear what God could do to us after death.  That's also why the exact concept of Hell as a place of after-life torment is used in a parable told by Jesus in Luke 16:19-31!  That's the one with Lazarus is a beggar, and a rich guy who didn't help him.  When they both died, Lazarus went to "Abraham's side," while the rich guy got thrown into Hell, explicitly to be tormented.  The rich guy begged to have Lazarus sent to warn the rich man's still-living father about the place of torment, but Abraham refuses.
   
   It's rather hard to believe that this is just a matter of mistranslation which somehow Bell can sweep aside.  Instead, he is just ignoring this passage because it's not what he wants to believe, and isn't consistent with the God of love he "knows."
    
4. God seems to have no problem torturing people, or perhaps you are not familiar with the Plagues on Egypt which were the impetus for the Exodus, or the wrath God plans on pouring out in the book of Revelation.

So, it looks like the concept of Hell is well supported by Scripture, and, according to a 2009 Pew pol, 59% of Americans believe that the eternal torment of Hell awaits the unsaved.

Now here is the fun part.  Thomas ends his article asking why would anyone want to worship a God who would eternally torture someone?  And, furthermore, what does it say about a nation which reveres such a God?  Thomas appears to be aligned with Bell, so he can ask these questions from a comfortable distance.  Which, I am sure, is why he doesn't flinch at tying believe in such a wicked version of God as the impetus for "Crusades, inquisitions, witch hunts, and, yes, jihad."

Why?  Because "[f]ear is a horrible motivator for human behavior."  Well, Mr. Thomas, on that point, we agree completely.  You might want to bring that up to your Maker.

Old News

Is the Bible inerrant and infallible?  Some people still think so, irrationally.  The reverent believers who study the oldest available manuscripts know better.

Ahab over at the Republic of Gilead sent me an interesting news link regarding a little known project which has been going on for over half a century.  Tucked away in a corner of the Promised Land, a small group of Orthodox Jews are re-writing their Bible, what Christians affectionately call the "Old Testament."  These Jews are meticulously going letter by letter using all of the modern finds, like the Dead Sea Scrolls and other, more obscure scraps of Scripture, and comparing them with the traditional sources used in today's mainstream interpretations of the Bible.

In this tedious process, they've uncovered that some, um, mistakes which were made.  Sometimes, they were just minor changes of a word or two.  Sometimes, the issues were a little more damaging:

"Some verses, including ones containing a prophecy about the seizure and return of Temple implements by Babylonian soldiers, appear to have been added after the events happened."

To the skeptic, this is manna from Heaven.  ;-)   It would be inappropriate to assume that all of the prophesies which appear to have accurately come true were written after the fact based on this finding, but it has happened.  At least once.  That represents something incredibly significant.

An intentionally forged prophesy.  Made to deceive the readers, and/or the followers.  This represents evil intent.  It's a lie.  Why would you need to lie if you have the truth?  If you knew God did exist, how could you dare purposefully write a forgery in His holy book?  If you realize the truth isn't so true, but you benefit from that misguided belief, why not help it become more believable?

The Jewish scholars continue their work with unyielding faith.  Quietly.  With full knowledge that the people working on this project today will not be alive by the time this labor of love is complete.