Hospitality - How important is it in the Bible?

In Sunday school this morning we read chapter 18 of Genesis in which 3 angels are taken under Abraham's roof in an act of hospitality, then 2 of those angels are taken into Lot's hospitality, but there the residents of Sodom demand that Lot hand them over for sex. The conclusion among the folks in the room this morning was that Sodom's sin was homosexuality. When I brought up that hospitality was certainly at issue as well, they were fairly uncomfortable with that -- apparently because the hospitality argument has been used by gays to prove that homosexuality isn't an issue in the Bible but hospitality is. The leader of the discussion stated that the homosexuality was the far more serious grievance because there is no where in the Bible where lack of hospitality is stated to be a grievous sin and he does find such verses regarding homosexuality. Well, that made my ears prick right up because any time someone makes a global statement regarding what the Bible does or doesn't say, and I can't think of examples off the top of my head that would agree with the statement, I figure that's when it's time to start digging.

So I plan to do a little digging on hospitality. I'm not going to dig at all into the homosexuality question. That's been hashed and rehashed umpteen times and if you're interested in following that route, there are lots of resources out there that lean every different direction of the compass. (Although I would be curious to know the number of times hospitality is addressed either positively or negatively compared to the number of times homosexuality is addressed in the Bible. But that'll take a bit of time to tally and I'm not up for that right now.) But when I searched for pages online regarding lack of hospitality being a sin, I inevitably came up against posts that focused on this story of Sodom and they used their argument not to focus on hospitality but to focus on homosexuality. (Which goes back to the hashing and rehashing thing and doesn't really focus on the hospitality issue at all to my satisfaction.)

I do believe that lack of hospitality is a sin - even a grievous sin. And I believe there is plenty of evidence in Scriptures to prove that point. I'll start with some of the positive admonitions to be hospitable... just to set a foundation.



Romans 12:13 Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

Hebrews 13:2 Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.

1 Peter 4:9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.

Stories that reference hospitality positively:
* Pharoah granted hospitality to Abram and Sarai and all their household during a time of famine.
* Melchizedek showed hospitality to Abram after the rescue of Lot by bring out bread and wine for him.
* Abraham and Sarah showed hospitality to the 3 angels that came to tell them about the impending destruction of Sodom.
* Abraham's servant was shown hospitality when he went to look for a wife for Isaac. (OK, so Laban wasn't really acting honorably since he took the servant in when he saw the jewelry that was being offered, but it's still an example.)
* Joseph had his brothers shown hospitality when they came down to Egypt to get food during a famine.

* The story of the Good Samaritan who showed hospitality to his enemy.
* The parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:34-43, in which those who took care of the needy, showing them hospitality and meeting their needs, were the ones let into the kingdom.
* Simon Peter's mother-in-law showed hospitality to Jesus immediately after he had cured her from being sick. Girlfriend didn't even take time to recover. She just hopped up and started rolling out the bread dough.

I'm sure there are a jillion more examples in both the Old and New Testaments, but I think the point is clear... showing hospitality is a good thing. Duh. We all knew that. But now we really know that.

So what about not showing hospitality? Not so bad? Let's see.

The first example that I can think of was after Adam and Eve gorged themselves on the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Usually they hosted a "walk with the creator" event each day. But after their repast, God had to go looking for them. They not only failed at their daily act of hospitality, but it was a direct result of their sin and showed an immediate break in their relationship with God.

When the Israelites were escaping from Egypt they wanted to pass through Edom (the descendants of Esau) but the Edomites said, "No way Mosé." The Moabites said the same thing and Israel had to skirt around both nations. They got their come uppance later under Saul when they laid waste to those countries and subjugated them. The Edomites refused to show hospitality to the Israelites despite the fact that they were relatives (distantly) and they later paid the price for that. Ditto with the Moabites and the Ammonites and a few others.

The story of the Levite and his concubine, found in Judges 19, parallels the Genesis 19 story remarkably closely, only in this story the Levite tossed his concubine out for the men to do as they pleased. They basically raped her to death. The Levite hauled her all the way back home, cut her into pieces and mailed them off to all of the tribes of Israel to show them what the Benjamites had done to his property. (There are all sorts of issues with this story. It is my most detested story in the Bible. But I'm only going to look at the hospitality issue here. I think it's fair to say that the Benjamites hospitality absolutely sucked. And the rest of the Israelites went to war with them over it. Twenty five thousand Benjamites died in the battle and their towns were laid waste.)

In 1 Samuel 25, when David was running away from Saul-gone-lunatic (talk about lack of hospitality), they came to the land of a man named Nabal. David demanded hospitality from him but Nabal was a big fat turd and refused. His wife, Abigail, was horrified by her husband's response, so she prepared a bunch of food and provided for David and his army. David had planned on killing all of the men in Nabal's household for their lack of hospitality, but because of Abigail's quick actions, he spared them. But Nabal didn't escape judgement. God himself struck Nabal dead 10 days later.

And in Matthew 10, when Jesus sent the disciples out to spread the good news, he told them, "If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet." In other words, if they're not going to receive you hospitably, have nothing to do with them.

These examples make it pretty clear that hospitality is important, to the point that God even killed a man who refused hospitality to others. I haven't found a verse that states, "Lack of hospitality is a sin," or even "bad hospitality is a sin." But I think it's safe to say that it's a big deal in God's eyes. If God punished Nabal with death because he failed to show hospitality, then there's something here that we need to pay attention to. And the fact that hospitality in both positive and negative forms is described in Genesis 19, and that those who showed hospitality are spared and those who didn't were incinerated, indicates to me that no matter what God is saying about homosexuality in this chapter, he's also making a very clear statement against the people of Sodom in terms of their aggressively anti-hospitality stance.

Made in the Image vs. Made as the Image

Rob and I have been reading a book together by Henri Blocher called In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis. Last night we read through a section on mankind being made in the image of God vs. being made as an image of God. It was an incredibly interesting bit of reading. Blocher argues that the article b^e, as opposed to k^e, would better be translated "as" than "in." (I don't know Hebrew and I couldn't find either preposition when I used BlueLetterBible. So I've got to trust him on this. The NIV and several other translations roll with "in".)

Blocher uses a verse from Paul's writing to support his argument (1 Corinthians 11:7), "man is the image and glory of God." Blocher says, "If man is the image, the emphasis falls on his situation." (emphasis his) And later, "Mankind is to be the created representation of his Creator, and here on earth, as it were, the images of the divine Glory, that Glory which mankind both reflects and beholds."

Rob and I talked quite a bit about the distinction between "in" and "as." The way I see it, it's similar to the difference between being an ambassador vs. being a photograph of an important person. A picture/icon is often elevated as if it, in it's own right, is important because of the image it bears. But an ambassador is considered important only because of the person being represented. The real value is in the person being represented, not in the person who is doing the representing. It's a subtle distinction brought out in only one little teeny word, but I think it's an important distinction to mark. We are not made in God's image in the sense that we are important because we are little gods. We are made as God's image and are important only because of who we represent, and it is he who bears the true importance.

Blocher continues on to say, "If mankind is the image, does not the prohibition of making images of God appear in a new light? God himself has placed his image in his cosmic sanctuary, and he wishes due homage to be paid to it by the service of mankind, the neighbour created in his image. And Christ joins the first and great commandment with the second which 'is like it' -- 'You shall love the Lord your God... you shall love your neighbour...'; surely the logic behind that is the likeness between God and his image."

And then Blocher blows my mind away with what follows, "We can go even further. There is perhaps a polemical thrust to the Genesis declaration, not only against idols of wood, stone or metal, but also against the limitation to certain men of the privilege of the image of God; it is all mankind and everyman, not the king, whom God has made in his image." Wow! Caesar thought he bore the image of a god. So did Pharoah. But the Hebrew God shatters the idea of only royalty bearing God's image. Every person on the planet does. Every person. That is completely revolutionary!

I think the reformation made common the idea of individuals being important. The Catholic Church, for whatever reason, liked the idea of a divine order. First there was God, then kings and the pope (or was it the pope and then kings? Can't decide. Why don't you fight about it and see who's left standing?), then the nobility, then the twerps at the bottom of the ladder. But God says that there is no divine order except this: God - people. That's it. Mankind was made to be the image of God. Each of us.

Let Us Make Man...

Isn't it interesting that God made man on the same day that he created animals? He didn't throw animals into the 5th day with the birds and fish. Instead he made animals first, then humans, on the same day. And he follows that first with a blessing (that looks like it's primarily aimed at the humans, though God had also blessed the birds and fish already on day 5) and then a gift that is to both the animals and the humans (every green plant for food).

The animals and humans have been grouped together. They're different from fish and birds and plants. But they're similar enough to be made on the same day. This definitely gives a sense of the close connection between people and animals.

Meat and Vegetables - Genesis 1

This is what's wrong with the King James version of the Bible:

"And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat." (Genesis 1:29)

I don't know a single carnivore that would call plants, trees, or seeds "meat."

The First Creation Story - with colors

I'm still thinking on the first creation story in the Bible. I've typed it up into a spreadsheet with the text in order, but color coded to help me see parallels and repetitions. I suspect I could pull a few more out if I kept working on it, but this is what I have so far. I'll attach a pdf copy at the end. (Grrrr. I tried to insert a table here and Blogger kept rewriting the table out of the page. So I'm just posting a jpg and attaching the pdf....  OK, tried to upload a pdf only to find out that you can't do that on Blogger without a 3rd party assist. So I'm just posting the jpg. Deal with it.)

Tohu wa Bohu

Rob and I have been reading through the book "In the Beginning," by Henri Blocher. The book works through several interpretations of the first few chapters of the book of Genesis, giving various reasons why one interpretation makes more sense than another. It's been an interesting read so far, though it does get a bit academic (in the big words, long sentences, complicated ideas sense of the term). It was in Blocher's book that I first came across the terms tohu and bohu. A search online, however, has revealed that tohuwabohu (or variations on that transliteration) are common in many European languages (an interesting reflection upon the Jewish influence upon Europe despite the Europeans many attempts to eradicate that influence).

Tohu means formlessness, chaos, confusion.
Bohu is generally only found right next to Tohu and is generally taken to mean empty or void.

Pic from RuneSoup with thanks to Terry Pratchett

Tohu and bohu show up in Genesis 1:2. "And the earth was without form, and void..." (King James Version) "Now the earth was formless and empty..." (New International Version) "The earth was unformed and void..." (Complete Jewish Bible).

I find the words, at the very beginning of the creation story, to be a total conundrum. Does "formless and void" have substance? Can you see it? Feel it? Experience it? And if everything is unformed and empty, then how is it that there's water in the second half of that verse? "... and the Spirit of God hovered over the surface of the water." (CJB) Doesn't that imply that there was a watery part and a non-watery part such that God's spirit could hover in the one and over the other? And if that's the case, doesn't that indicate some pattern or "form" to things?

And what is the tohu and the bohu doing there? Is it the stuff, the medium, that God used to create everything out of? If so, then when he spoke did that shape the tohuwabohu? Or did speaking create things from nothing? And where did the tohuwabohu come from in the first place?

If you were sitting down to write a story, and you thought it was a really important story that you wanted people to grasp, don't you think you'd make it more understandable than this second verse of Genesis? Even the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation story, makes more sense in the beginning than this second verse of Genesis 1. The Enuma Elish starts like this:

"When in the height heaven was not named,
And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name,
And the primeval Apsu, who begat them,
And chaos, Tiamut, the mother of them both
Their waters were mingled together,
And no field was formed, no marsh was to be seen;
When of the gods none had been called into being,
And none bore a name, and no destinies were ordained;
Then were created the gods in the midst of heaven,
Lahmu and Lahamu were called into being..." - sacred-texts.com

They've got chaos in there, and earth and water. There's a lot of similarities. But the story makes sense! You know what's going on. There are only so many ways you can interpret "And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name." But calling something formless and void when there was nothing there yet except that there was something there and it wasn't formless and if it was there then it wasn't void either.... 

All I can say is at least it rhymes. You've gotta admit, that's a nice touch. 

If, in reading through Blocher's book, I reach a higher level of enlightenment besides the joy of rhyming, I'll let you know. 

Gospel Made Visible

"Christian proclamation might make the gospel audible, but Christians living together in local congregations make the gospel visible (see John 13:34-35). The church is the gospel made visible." -- Mark Dever in his book entitled The Church.

In the Beginning

Rob and I started reading a new book together called, In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Gensis, by Henri Blocher. We're only at the beginning of the second chapter, so we're not real deeply into it yet, but I like what I've read so far. 

The first chapter is essentially explaining how he believes Genesis should be approached --> Scripture should be the overarching authority, illuminating other sources of information (and not the other way around). He gets into the discussions of "Who wrote scripture?" "What place does science have in this discussion?" and "What is the relationship between the two descriptions of creation in the Bible?"

The second chapter begins addressing commonly held beliefs/theories among Christians on how the universe was created. 

• Literal Interpretation: The days in Genesis 1 are 24 hour days.
• Reconstruction Theory: (Which I had always heard called the Gap theory.) God created the universe over a very long period of time (Genesis 1:1), then he destroyed it (vs. 2), and remade it in 7 literal days. 
• Concordist Theory: The days in Genesis 1 are really ages or geological eras. 
• He didn't name this one. The stinker. But the fourth view is that the description of the 7 days in Genesis 1 is a literary device. 

We still have to get into the nitty gritty of it all. But I thought I'd post the four views that he lays out in case anyone was interested. I've previously posted 6 views that were presented to us by my geology teacher when I was in 9th grade. It looks like Blocher is leaving out the diluvialist theory (unless he's merging that with Gap) which is interesting because I've heard Christians mention the diluvialist theory as something they believe as recently as within the past decade. 

Since I haven't included any nitty gritty here, let's not get into any of that just yet. But if you have thoughts on his 4 main theories/beliefs, feel free to pipe up. 

Election quote by Mark Driscoll

"That is election. Where the father in love, pursues foolish, obstinant and disobedient children who have chosen death, and he decrees that more important than their will is his love." -- Mark Driscoll

Let My People Go and Go and Go and Go, by Abraham Malamat

http://cojs.org/cojswiki/Let_My_People_Go_and_Go_and_Go_and_Go,_Abraham_Malamat,_BAR_24:01,_Jan/Feb_1998.
This is an interesting article describing several archeological references that sound similar to the story of Exodus (though not in the same scale). Here's the introductory paragraph:

"Nothing in the archaeological record of Egypt directly substantiates the Biblical story of the Exodus. Yet a considerable body of Egyptian material provides such close analogies to the Biblical account that it may, in part, serve as indirect proof for the Israelite episode."

"Will you forgive me?" -- Asking for forgiveness

Where does the Bible say that we should "ask for forgiveness" from someone we have wronged? I know that the Bible says that we should forgive others. And I know that if we confess our sins to God, he will forgive us. And I know that we have wronged another we should go and seek reconciliation. But it seems to me that going to someone that you have wronged and then asking them to forgive you is adding burden to them rather than taking it away. 

Let's say John injures Tom in some way and Tom is hurt. Then John goes to Tom and says, "I'm sorry, will you forgive me." I'd say that John is doing a good thing in admitting his culpability when it comes to having hurt Tom. But then he follows that quick admission up with an added encumbrance for Tom, that of having to forgive on demand. 

Asking for forgiveness and giving forgiveness are two very different things. The latter involves consciously being willing to let go of the argument or the emotional hurt in order to renew the relationship. The former is a request. Some treat it even as a demand -- the moment that I ask you for forgiveness for something I have done is the moment you need to make that conscious decision to give up on your side of the argument or your side of the emotional hurt. I have known people who used it as a means of ending an argument with the upper hand. You admit that you're wrong, but then force the other person into a position of loss by dictating that the argument is now over and your feelings toward me must now be restored since I said "sorry." And if you can't do that, then the problem is definitely with you and not me. 

So I'm curious. Can you think of a passage in the Bible that says that when we have wronged someone we should ask for their forgiveness? Certainly we should try to restore the relationship and certainly we should admit to our guilt in our part of damaging the relationship. But does the Bible say we should then vocally put the onus of forgiveness upon the other party? 

What is the difference between a theist and a deist?

Over thinking the brand

I know this is a bit of a leap, but I'm going to make it anyway. I feel like sometimes churches (or perhaps I should say "church staff") over think what they're all about. They try to turn church into something that sounds really, really great, even though you can't really pin down what they mean by most of what they're saying. The church is "authentic." What does that really mean and how does it fit in with the fact that most of the people on stage are paid staff/professionals? Or the word "covenant" is throw in before all the important words to emphasize how important they are, even if they don't really have anything in particular to do with the covenant. 

Here's a clip of Stephen Colbert sharing a sponsortunity he was given by Wheat Thins... with an overly thought out information sheet attached. 

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Grrrr, the video plays in edit mode, but not once I submit. So if this isn't working, click here to see the video. 

The only hermeneutic of the gospel...

I haven't read the book. In fact, I don't think I'd even heard of the author until yesterday. But to the extent that I understand what he's saying, I agree whole heartedly. If the world cannot see the gospel embodied in the church, then how can our story speak with authority or effectiveness?

The following is directly copied from Tolle Lege where I found the quote.

“I have come to feel that the primary reality of which we have to take account in seeking for a Christian impact on public life is the Christian congregation. How is it possible that the gospel should be credible, that people should come to believe that the power which has the last word in human affairs is represented by a man hanging on a cross?

I am suggesting that the only answer, the only hermeneutic of the gospel, is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it. I am, of course, not denying the importance of the many activities by which we seek to challenge public life with the gospel– evangelistic campaigns, distribution of Bibles and Christian literature, conferences, and even books such as this one.

But I am saying that these are all secondary, and that they have power to accomplish their purpose only as they are rooted in and lead back to a believing community.”

–Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), 227.

To yield like air in matters of musical styles (specifically "praise music")

The topic of "praise music" vs. hymns came up in our Bible study this week. In fact, I was the one that brought it up. We're studying the book of James and were specifically talking about James 3:17 where it mentions not showing partiality and not being hypocritical. Our Bible study book had a great quote on this: 

He "will yield like air in matters of personal feeling or interest," but "will stand like rock in respect of moral principle." -- C. G. Moule

One of the gals in the study piped up, "But now-a-days everyone is expected to be tolerant" as if it were automatically a bad thing. So I replied, "Yes, there are definitely times when tolerance is important." Everyone seemed to look at me like I'd sprouted a third eye and one person asked, "What do you mean? Can you give an example?" I gave a few, but the one I finally landed on was the preference some people have for praise music and the alternate preference that others have for hymns sung with their traditional tunes. 

I was rather taken aback when this led to an immediate response about how bad praise music is (We do sing a fair bit of praise music in our congregation, by the way.) and how it often involves singing the same line over and over again, such as "God is awesome, God is awesome." I said (oh yes, I did), "you mean like when the angels sing 'Holy, Holy, Holy?"

I won't get into the rest of our conversation here. That's just hashing over a rather discordant and painful time. But I would like to take on the topic itself. I did a quick search of R.C. Sproul's thoughts on praise music (since he was referred to by the person who was so against it) and I found an article that wasn't actually written by R.C. but by a guy named Gene Edward Veith. I found a couple of debatable points in his essay, which you can read on the Ligonier website, but I'd like to zero in on one specific paragraph, just in the interests of trying to focus on the topic and not nitpick on the tangential particulars. He said;

The question is not whether or not we should make use of contemporary music in church, but whether we should make use of pop music. By its nature, pop music is catchy, entertaining, and thus “likeable.” It cannot have much content, much less complexity or depth. If it did, it would cease to be pop art. The art of the folk culture, with its traditions and communal experience, has such things, as does the consciously-crafted art of the high culture, with its challenging content.

I'm not sure how all praise music got condensed down into being pop music, or along the lines of pop music, but I'm going to roll with that. I also don't agree that all pop music is catchy and therefore "likeable" but again, I'll slide past that to get to the next two sentences. "It cannot have much content, much less complexity or depth. If it did, it would cease to be pop art." ... Really? Is that true? 

So I ask you, is pop art a veritable wasteland in the realm of art/music? Can you think of any pop music (or perhaps just a contemporary "praise song") that has any depth at all? And how would you evaluate depth anyway? Thoughts?

Communion Bread

Description:
I usually make regular old no knead bread for communion, but I've been longing to make the thick, chewy, sweet communion loaf that we had in one of the churches I grew up in. It must have been in Massachusetts, because that's where I had my first communion.

I've found a recipe that comes out looking like that loaf, but it's just flour and water. Apparently in the Catholic church, that's all that's allowed in communion wafers. We must have attended some renegade hippy Catholic church in my childhood (in fact, I know we did. They had great music.) and I would swear there was honey in that bread.

This is 1/3 of the measurements of the original recipe with a few modifications.

Ingredients:
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup white flour
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup honey (I didn't measure. So I'm guessing. It might have been more.)
1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions:
Mix ingredients together. Knead for 5 minutes. Let the dough rest for another 5 minutes. Divide into two balls for thicker pieces, three balls for thinner/crunchier pieces. Roll these out and mark with a cross (or plus... since it's centered). Make two consecutive circles around the center. Then make cuts in each section to make separate pieces. Cut at least 1/2 way to 3/4 of the way into the dough.

Bake for 20 minutes at 400 for lightly browned loaves. (I think I've got the ingredients where I want them, but I'm still working out the cooking length part.)

I'll try to remember to take some photos next time so you can see my cutting handiwork. (Still didn't get photos this second time around. Once we started into eating this batch, it went quick. I might make some in plane old cracker shape next time around to nibble on at home.)

Update (7/6/13): I've started making this for a larger crowd and have fiddled with the recipe some. I'm now using:

6 cups freshly ground whole wheat pastry flour
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup clover honey
1 1/2 cups water

This leaves me with dough that's somewhat goopy. I cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper, glop the dough out on the paper - spreading it as evenly as possible - then cook it for 17 minutes at 350 F. When it's done I pull the parchment paper right off the cookie sheet and use a large knife to trim the edges, then cut the block into about 200 pieces. I actually need 300 pieces, so I might be refiguring the amounts. Scraps cut off the block are quite tasty and a good way to "test the product." (That's the excuse you can use, at least.)

Why do we care why God allows suffering?

In high school, we read Edith Hamilton's Mythology book. While reading that book, I don't think the concept of the gods being just, or even good, ever really registered. Assistance, hospitality, caprice, revenge, and unending desire for pleasure all popped up over and over. The gods were good and they were bad. They were a lot like humans - well, super humans. Though you might hope that they would be kind and generous and loving, you really couldn't count on it, even when you were a demi-god, the child of a god.

So why, then, would people have a belief today that God should only be good and should only allow good things? Why would a post like this show up in my Google+ feed yesterday asking, "Why does god allow suffering?" Where did we ever get the idea that maybe God shouldn't allow suffering? It certainly seems like the gods of mythology (not just Greek, but Babylonian, Nordic, etc.) all created a fair bit of suffering among humans. Even Jehovah didn't spare his own son from suffering. So why do we seem to expect that God would forbid suffering during this life time? Why do we think that the existence of God cannot possibly coincide with the existence of suffering in the world? Why do people feel that suffering is one of the strongest arguments against God?

I wonder if the question doesn't reveal more about our own opinions of ourselves rather than our opinion of God. Did our sentiment around God and suffering change during the Enlightenment as we started to put more value on the individual?

I finally posted a response on the G+ thread: "I've been thinking on this one since you first posted it. What keeps popping back into my head is, 'Why do we expect god to not allow suffering?'" Joel, the one who originally posted the question, replied, "Great question. I guess for me it comes down to this: If god doesn't help people, why have a god? Why do so many people pray to god, if god isn't interested? Does he give us any benefits at all over not having a god?"

I thought that his questions, in turn, were also good. I'll post my reply to him here (in case you don't want to click through to the original post) but I'd be curious to also hear your thoughts. Why does God allow suffering? Why do we care? Are there any benefits at all to having a god over not having a god?

My last reply:

"What if god does help people, he just doesn't help all people all of the time? Does that make a difference?

"Or what if god provides basics - such as a working ecosystem that's well suited to our needs - but not necessarily all of our wants - such as the end of all sickness. Does that make a difference? In this scenario, no god would mean no ecosystem or a crappy ecosystem... and we'd still have sickness.

"I just think the underlying assumptions beneath your original question are really fascinating. I've heard people argue about god and suffering till the cows came home. But I don't think I've ever heard a conversation on the premises that these discussions are based upon.

"I wonder if the ancient Greeks ever sat around and asked, "Why does Zeus allow suffering?""

Spare the rod, spoil the logic

There's an article in yesterdays's New York Times about a pastor in Pleasantville, Tennessee, who has written a book about how to raise children. Apparently the book was hailed by parents who severely abused their adopted daughter until she died. When her body was found she was emaciated, had been beaten, and apparently had been forced to live outside in an unheated barn. The upshot of the article was that the pastor had written a book along the lines of, "People are inherently sinful. Parents need to train their children not to sin. The only way to keep them from sinning is to spank them, or withhold food from them, or give them some other form of punishment until they eventually learn to behave."

What strikes me is the inherent lack of the gospel in this story. At the very end of the article the  pastor is quoted as saying, "To give up the use of the rod is to give up our views of human nature, God, eternity." Where is the gospel in that? Where is grace? He seems to believe that the only way to get to heaven is to beat our human nature into submission, physically, so that God will accept our beaten up submission and allow us into heaven. If the only way to get rid of sin is to beat it out of a person, then why didn't Jesus come down with a big stick and give us all what for?

Isn't the whole point of the gospel that we can't sacrifice enough to ever make ourselves worthy? No amount of beating will ever cleanse us from our sin. Only the atoning death of Jesus can pay that price. And then we don't have to. There's no, "grace plus beating" clause in the gospel. The pastor's comment makes no logical sense in light of what Jesus has already done.

Should Christians be building walls or tearing them down? This is a totally open-ended question. Hit me with your best shot.

I feel like my gift to the church has been...

I'm writing a survey and I'd like feedback on this question. When you read the question, keep your own church congregation in mind. 

What do you think of the question itself? What do you think of the possible answers? Is there something that immediately springs to your mind in answer but that's not listed in the possible answer list? 

I feel like my gift to the church has been ____________________________________.

Please fill in the blank with whatever comes to mind (whether it's in the following list or not). Feel free to use the following list if that helps. 

a. compassion	b. hospitality	c. faithfulness
d. humor	e. kindness	f. thoughtfulness
g. prayer	h. evangelism	i. teaching
j. listening	k. forbearance	l. financial gifts
m. music	n. singing	o. experience
p. leadership	q. knowledge	r. hope
s. practical help with the facilities		t. gentleness
u. practical help to people in the congregation
u. a welcoming attitude to newcomers		v. wisdom