Christian Zealotry

Greetings, and welcome to the new year! So far, we’ve discussed the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and what we can learn – both good and bad – from each of them. But now it’s time to explore one of the sects of Judaism which is much less publicized to regular Christians, one whose name is far too often misconstrued. I am talking about the Zealots. The Zealots were less populous than the prior two, and their origins are not nearly as well-known due to some of their more shadowy misadventures. But, interesting note, one of the Twelve Disciples was actually a Zealot. He is named in Luke’s Gospel as “Simon the Zealot.” Additionally, there are some theories that Judas may have been somehow related to the Zealots, but more on that later. First, who are the Zealots?

When we think of Simon the Zealot, we often think of him as being very excited and borderline fanatical about Christ. Unfortunately, the Zealots of Jesus’ time were not simply “people with zeal,” but, rather, a militant anti-Roman group. They defaced Roman property, organized protests and riots, and oftentimes even carried out assassinations and ambushed Roman soldiers. They were, in fact, a terrorist cell operating in order to drive out the Roman overlords. You heard me right: one of the Twelve Disciples was a former terrorist. The Zealots were sometimes popular with the common Jews, although their popularity would often dwindle when they unintentionally instigated Roman crack-downs which, more often than not, resulted in the deaths of many, many Jews. It was the Zealots, in fact, who instigated the Jewish Rebellion of 66-73 A.D., after which the Romans burned down the Jerusalem Temple and crucified tens of thousands of Jews all over the country. Some ancient historians claimed that, at the end of the Jewish Revolt, there was a Jew crucified on every street corner. This is likely an exaggeration, but it does explain how the Zealot sect eventually died out alongside the Sadducees.

I also mentioned Judas may have been related to the Zealots, and this comes from the confusion surrounding his last name. If you haven’t noticed, Judas Iscariot (the disciple who betrayed Jesus) is the only one with a last name. Now why is that? One leading theory is that it’s actually “Is-Kerioth,” indicating his birthplace in a place called Kerioth. If this is the case, then it establishes him as the only disciple not from Galilee. However, it could also be a variant of the word Iskarii, a sub-sect of the Zealots who were known for carrying concealed weapons out into crowds and then engaging in random, frenzied stabbings. A terror cell if there ever was one. So was Judas simply a non-Galilean? Was he a terrorist, too? Or, as the gospel of John suggests, was he simply the son of a non-Galilean or terrorist? Unfortunately, we simply don’t know.

I’m sure many of you reading this are immediately thinking that there’s nothing positive which we can learn from a First Century terrorist group. Well, if I can just scrape the surface with a metaphorical approach, I think we can learn from them that we can’t sit idly by as Christians and hope the world gets better. We need to get up and actually start to instigate these changes ourselves. I’d recommend the peaceful Martin Luther King, Jr., approach, mind you, rather than the assassinations and stabbings. I’ll be a little more clear on this, just to be safe. DO NO go out and stab people for God. DO NOT throw in with terrorists, even if they define religion in such a way as to justify their cause. DO NOT DO THESE THINGS.

Now this does bring to mind an issue with our Christian culture today, something which a former Methodist bishop referred to as the “Nationalism Gospel.” We seem to believe that our country is a firm Christian country to which we owe our absolute allegiance. To be a proper Christian, we’re told, you need to be a true-blue patriot, stand for the National Anthem, say the Pledge of Allegiance every day and look down on foreigners. But how odd would it be to realize that in Heaven, with God, in that great multitude worshipping throughout eternity, there will be no America? To know that we will not be Americans, or Texans, or Hoosiers, or bear any sort of nationality other than “of the kingdom of God and his Christ”? There may be no Constitution, no Declaration of Independence in that realm, for God and his Word shall be all that matters. Does this blow your mind? So how does modern patriotism, or nationalism, hold up in light of that eternity? The Zealots committed murder and wrought death due not to their devotion to God, but because of the nationalistic fervor which overcame them. How often do we do the same, letting politics or nationalism cause us to forget our true allegiance to a God of love? This is what I suggest, my friends. Honor the country in which God placed you, but not at the expense of your devotion to Christ and his commandment to love others, even the foreigners.

Until next time, friends…

Christian Pharisaism

Hello, and welcome to my blog! And welcome back to those of you who regularly read it. Today, I would like to begin a series in which I explore the four sects of Judaism that were around in Jesus’ time and see what we can learn from them. These are, in case you don’t know, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Zealots and the Essenes. Most Christians have probably heard of the first two, as Jesus butted heads with them on a fairly frequent basis during his ministry. But in what ways did they do things that we can model in our own lives? In what ways did they go in the wrong direction, missteps which we can learn to avoid? Oftentimes, we can take our best step forward by taking a look behind us, so with that in mind, let us now dive in with the Pharisees!

The Pharisees tend to get a really bad rap (or is it rep?) among Christians, with Christians often advising against what we call “Pharisaism.” This word seems to have become synonymous with legalism and, to a lesser extent, a harshly judgmental view of “outsiders,” i.e. non-Christians. Sometimes, those outsiders are even other Christians, either those not of our denomination, or of our church, or even of our social circle. Have you ever been in an argument with another Christian and felt the desire to distance yourself from them, sure that their heretical beliefs were surely sending them to Hell? I have to admit that I’ve been in that mindset before, and in those times, I believe I’m actually closer to Hell than the supposed heretic because I’ve fallen into the trap of “Pharisaism.” But were the Pharisees always this way?

The answer, it seems, is a definitive no. The Jewish sect of the Pharisees arose in the middle of the Second Century B.C., shortly after the Jews gained political independence in the Maccabean Revolt. Initially a protest group against the Jewish priest-kings who established themselves  in the aftermath (the reasons are complicated, so I’ll skip the details), they had roots as scholars and sages going back for centuries. Their goal, or greatest desire, was to revive the Jewish scriptures of the Old Testament and convince Israel to renew its old promises with God by living out the detailed rituals and Levitical Laws. The Pharisees remained popular with the people all the way beyond Jesus’ time, and after the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem Temple in 70 A.D., the Pharisaical sect began to evolve into the Rabbinic Judaism which is still practiced today (albeit with 2 millennia of theological and historical growth added on).

While the Pharisees were intent on upholding the Levitical Laws, their original goal was not to fall into a callous legalism. Rather, theirs was a pursuit of righteousness, of serving God wholeheartedly as he’d spelled out to their ancestors, of honoring him in every part of their lives. The Pharisees wanted the old stories and prophecies to come alive and bring the people back into a proper relationship with God, and in that way, we Christians are not really so different. We study the scriptures, trying to apply the lessons it offers in order to become better people. We try to mend our relationship both with God and with other people, and bring about great revivals so that our friends, neighbors and fellow citizens can once again come back to the love of God.

The Pharisees, however, did not stay this way. As with many things – even whole denominations – time was unkind toward them. As Pharisaism persevered through the centuries, many of its followers still sought the lessons which could be gleaned from scripture, and they were not foreign to metaphorical or poetic approaches as some were (more on that when we get to the Sadducees). Some, like Gamaliel, the teacher of none other than the apostle Paul himself, were sympathetic to the early Christians. And if you can believe it, Christ’s teachings during his ministry were actually Pharisaical in form (that is, they brought new meaning and wrought deeper, hidden messages out of scripture while encouraging a more devout faith in God). But by the time of Christ, too many had fallen into the mindset I mentioned at the start, the mindset of judgmental legalism. These Pharisees who clashed with Jesus saw themselves as better than the regular Jews, as better than the other sects, as more holy and righteous in the ways they lived their lives. In short, they fell into the ultimate trap of self-righteousness. And when one is filled with self-righteousness, there is usually too little room left for the righteousness of God.

How many of us Christians have unknowingly started off on the path of the original Pharisees, only to find ourselves in the boat of those who demanded his crucifixion? How often have we, in our ardent desire to love and honor God with our lives, forgotten his love for others and begun to see ourselves as morally superior to them? Are we better than the Muslims, the Hindus, the immigrants or the criminals simply because we follow the teachings in Scripture? If we think we are, and we begin with our fellow Christians to judge and condemn those outsiders, then we have become, in the words of our leader himself, a “brood of vipers.” So we must seek the righteousness of the Pharisees, but also deplore the self-righteousness that had ensnared them by the time Christ walked the Earth. We must welcome the broken, the lost and, yes, even the criminals and foreigners, just as Christ has welcomed into his family those Gentile outsiders who first paved the way for us.

Until next time, friends…

Warring for Peace

Today is Memorial Day. It’s a day to remember our fallen soldiers. It’s also a day to avoid Facebook (I have already failed in this regard), which is bound to turn into a hotbox of political agendas and judgment of those who don’t profess uber-patriotism. So while I could spend my time online sharing all manner of good and bad articles, some of which are written with a suave mastery of the English language and others in the telegraphic speech of a caveman, as soon as I finish my necessary writings and such, I am instead committing to avoiding Facebook for the rest of the day. It’s simply to keep myself from getting angry.

Anyway, it being Memorial Day, I do want to talk about war. In America, we have this notion that war is either good or bad. You have pacifists who say that all war is evil, and you have people on the other end of the spectrum who say all wars are justified. We’re told that if we disagree with a war, then we’re dishonoring the sacrifices of those soldiers who put their lives on the line for our freedom. Sounds deep and powerful, however manipulative that language may be. But in truth, I myself believe that war exists in a sort of gray realm, where it is sometimes justified and sometimes not, and whether or not it’s justified depends entirely on the humane compassion which underlies the declaration of war.

You see, ideally, a war to protect the freedom and lives of those who cannot protect themselves should be justified. If an evil force threatens the lives of innocents, it is the duty of the strong to protect the weak (I read that on a Magic card). But too often, things become twisted by the notion of patriotism, where we find ourselves fighting not for the protection of the weak, but for the interests of our own nation. And since patriotism is lauded as one of the highest qualities, we’re convinced that supporting that war or this war is justified purely on that basis. The issue here is that the war in question becomes entirely relative and subjective. After all, in World War II, the Germans believed they were fighting for what was right and good…though in reality it was just for what was right and good for the German race. During the Hundred Years War, everyone believed they were fighting for what was right, even if it was only for the benefit of their own monarchies. During the Crusades, Christians flocked to Jerusalem in droves and committed horrible atrocities along the way under the belief that they were doing what was right, even if in reality they were only doing what was right for Catholicism and its ally, the Byzantine Empire. You may think that I’m pushing a purely pacifistic notion, but trust me, I’m not. During World War II, the Allies were, indeed, fighting for what was right in liberating Jews and conquered nations, freeing the oppressed from the tyranny of the Axis Powers. That was a good and justified war.

But what about the war we call the Red Scare which was waged in the 1950s and 1960s? Was communistic belief really oppressing and killing people here in America (it was in the Soviet Union, but I’m not getting into that right now), or were we simply afraid of that which we deemed “un-American”? People were blacklisted, arrested and beaten, some even dying in tremendous poverty simply because we couldn’t tolerate that which was different from our patriotic ideals. Is a war like that justified, a war in which no one is being oppressed but in which we feel our patriotic values threatened? And therein lies the true danger, for in trying to destroy a supposed evil, history shows that we merely destroy its vessel, and the true evil lives on, having scarred and scorched our own souls. When the town leaders of Salem hanged or burned over a dozen people as witches, they inadvertently stained their own innocence. When Southern racists during the Civil Rights Movement murdered activists and people of color, they stained their souls with their dark acts, and evil became manifested in their own hearts.

So what is the solution here? Do we remain pacifistic unless we’re actually protecting the weak and defenseless? Well, that’s part of it. No declaration or act of war should be committed unless it’s backed by a heart of compassion for those in harm’s way. But there’s also another way to solve this issue, a way which may deter both sides on the path to war before war itself becomes necessary. That way is compassion itself: love. Rather than reacting to those who are different from us – who may, in fact, be wholly contrary to us – with hostility and hatred, we should instead respond to them with love and compassion. In Romans 12, the apostle Paul reiterated King Solomon’s advice that, by doing good to those who mean you harm, you will “heap hot coals upon [their] head.” Does this mean that you’ll do them harm? No. Instead, this means that your act of kindness just may jab at their conscience in an way which will ultimately bring them closer to you, rather than putting them in opposition to you. And if we can do this to those supposed enemies in and outside our society, then perhaps we won’t even need to wage a war of compassion.

A war of compassion, my friends, is all that I support, and only as a last resort. Any other type of war is a dishonor to the lives of my two veteran grandfathers. But a life of compassion, in seeking for peace, is the greatest way to honor them.

Until next time, friends…

Die Zukunft

That’s German for “the future,” in case you were wondering. Anyway, hello! The future is actually what I’d like to share today, rather than my thoughts or musings about various comics- or theology-related topics.

You see, about a month ago, there was a job opening for my wife in her hometown of Brownsburg, Indiana. She went ahead and applied for it, which led to weeks of discussion and prayer between us over what to do. After all, we live in San Antonio, while almost all of our families live in Indiana. We couldn’t very well talk to the Hoosiers (Indiana folk) about it, because they’d want us to move back, and neither could we talk to our Texan friends about it because they’d want us to stay. So we first met with a friend-couple of ours who’s currently in the process of moving to Colorado, a perfect audience as they’d have no stock in our choice. After this, we ended up opening up to more and more people: our families, another local friend-couple and eventually our pastor and the Children’s Director at our church. After all, my wife and I are in charge of our church’s elementary school.

Everyone was very supportive, and we ultimately made the choice to move back to Indiana if my wife received the job offer (which she did). But now comes the difficult part: saying good-bye to San Antonio and establishing our future path to follow. For my wife, that’s fairly easy, since she has a job waiting for her, but for me, that’s not so clear. I am ready to leave my current job, but I don’t have one lined up, nor do I have the requisite skills for anything which can support a family.

And there are the anxieties. My writing career is slow-moving, earning me enough money for coffee once or twice a year. I am educated enough to be intelligent but not educated enough for a professorial position at any college. And if we spend a few months living in my parents’ basement while I search for a job, or try and figure out how to go back to school, how am I being the provider which society tells me I must be? Anxieties, like I said.

But there are also the upsides and the possibilities. We’ll get to see our families more often, meaning that, for the first time in three years, I’ll be able to see my mom on Mother’s Day next year (2017), and my father on Father’s Day. We may accelerate our purchasing of a house; I had been planning on us buying one in a year or two, not less than six months from now, though it does seem to make more financial sense to buy it soon. Furthermore, I’ve begun to feel that push toward a professorial career. Sure, I still want to focus on being a writer, for the storyteller gene is a crucial component of my personality, but looking back, the three small groups I led with my church since it first opened its doors have been academic in nature: two classes on an introduction to the Bible and one on the history of the Christian faith. The idea of being paid to teach about theology, history and the Bible seems to replace much of my anxiety with excitement. Of course, there will be that little bump in the road called “earning a PhD.,” which is no small task as there don’t seem to be many colleges in Indiana which offer Doctorates in Theology, though there are absolutely none in San Antonio (I checked).

So there are many rambling thoughts during this new and difficult transition in our lives. We’re committing to an 1,100-mile move, to live with my parents while I may or may not have a job and may or may not have an opportunity to go back to school. Am I moving backward in my life, losing this ground I’ve gained, or am I moving forward, bringing the things which Texas has taught me?

In closing, I want to share something I noticed last night as my wife and I were doing our Bible study. We finished studying the book of Ruth about two weeks ago, and now we’re studying Jonah. What’s interesting is that both of them feature people who either choose or are called to move away from where they are: Ruth chooses to leave her native Moab and move to Israel, while Jonah is sent from his native Israel to Nineveh, capital of the dreaded Assyrian Empire. Are my wife and I, too, called to move, or choosing to move, not toward something less, not in some sort of backward lurch, but toward something greater? I don’t want to get my hopes up, but hope may be all that I have in these coming months, so I will cling to it and trust in God.

Until next time, friends…

Scriptural Variance

Good day. Let’s just jump right in, shall we?

An unspecified amount of time ago, I was reading the Bible and I came across a curious verse which appears in both the gospels of Matthew (chapter 24) and Luke (chapter 17). It reads:

Where the body is, there the eagles will gather.

This verse appears in an apocalyptic context, in which Jesus is describing the end of days and warning his disciples to beware the rising of false Christs. He tells them that they know the way to God, that they know him (Christ), and then he says the curious phrase: for where the body is, there the eagles will gather. What could he mean by that?

My first inclination is that the “body” refers to the “body of Christ,” i.e. the Church. Wherever the Church gathers, wherever the people of Christ congregate together, there the mysterious eagles will be. Now eagles were regarded as powerful symbols in ancient days. They flew high above the other birds, usually dwarfing them, seemingly rulers of the skies. Eagles appear twice in the book of Revelation: once in an odd passage describing four Living Creatures (one of which looks like an eagle) which worship God in chapter four, and once when an eagle flies around in chapter eight, bemoaning the devastation wrought by angels as they destroy large portions of the Earth. The eagle here may be seen as a harbinger, a warning sign of what is about to happen, a powerful omen of sorts, and this makes sense when one accounts for the fact that eagles have the greatest eyesight of any creature on the planet. In apocalyptic terms, an eagle is the perfect symbol for an omen, being able to see what’s about to happen because their vision far exceeds that of the everyday human.

So this verse could be meant to say that where the Church is gathered in unity, there will be a growth of vision, of wisdom and power and knowledge. At least, this is the implication I get when reading from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

But the eagle was also one of the big symbols for the Roman Empire, the entity which was so antagonistic to Jews and Christians in the First Century. Sure, wolves were important in Roman mythology, but in Roman symbology, the eagle reigned supreme, and it crushed and persecuted God’s people. Well that’s a confusing twist on the whole thing. But wait, the waters get even muddier! Let’s see what the English Standard Version has to say about the Matthew and Luke verses:

Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.

Well okay then. The New International Version isn’t that much better, simply substituting “corpse” with “dead body.” That verse now seems almost completely contrary to what we’d discussed before. What happened to the body of Christ, and to the magnificent harbinger of the apocalyptic eagle? Now we’re just left with corpses and vultures? Let’s not give up on this, though. Perhaps we can find something worthwhile in here. It’s a fact that a rotting corpse will often attract scavengers, and no scavenger is more pronounced than the vulture. It’s the largest of the them, taking the same symbolic place among the scavengers as the eagle did in the sky. And if you’ve ever seen a flock of vultures flying around, you can be sure that a dead body is near. They are, indeed, the indicator of death.

So if the body of Christ, or any particular church, is not really alive, but dead, those birds which come circling won’t be the powerfully apocalyptic eagles but, rather, the carrion-eating vultures looking to sate their own hunger. Where there is life, there is the eagle, and where there is death, there is the vulture. After browsing through multiple translations of these two verses, I found that they all comprise different variants of these same components: bodies and corpses, eagles and vultures. And from all of this, we can learn what happens when the Church is alive, and what happens when it dies. Fascinating.

But many may ask: which translation is true? Which is accurate? Is it body or corpse? Is it eagles or vultures? When this question arises, I think we come face-to-face with a theological issue that is popular in certain sects of Christianity. It’s the idea that there must be one and only one perfect understanding of scripture on which to base the doctrine of the Church. Fundamentalists would say the proper understanding is a literal one. Others would veer closer toward a symbolic approach. But is there always just one, particular, specific, correct interpretation of the Biblical text?

Certainly, there are some passages of the Bible which have only one interpretation. “Jesus wept” is an easy one. The story of Jeremiah being imprisoned for speaking against Judah is another, as is the beheading of John the Baptist. Each of these stories has an obvious and easy interpretation, and symbolic interpretations aren’t too persuasive. On the flip-side, the description by the psalmist of God “riding on the clouds” is obviously symbolic. I find it hard to believe that God has manifested a form that always surfs in our atmosphere, so a symbolic approach is more appropriate in that regard.

But must every verse have exactly one, correct interpretation? I’m inclined to say no. You see, if there’s only one interpretation of every verse in the Bible, and only one correct interpretation of the Bible itself, then the Bible would really only appeal to a very specific type of person of a very specific spiritual walk in a very specific life scenario. But if God orchestrated the Bible in such a way that the same passages can be not only wildly different but wholly complementary, then suddenly the Bible is able to reach every person of every spiritual walk in every life scenario. It can speak to the millionaire businessman just as effectively as it can speak to the starving beggar. Biblical variance can even teach us multiple lessons, allowing us to dive into layer after layer and still never achieve the full grasp of what the Bible has to offer. We just saw that earlier with the two complementary translations of Matthew and Luke.

Now Biblical variance should not be taken as a “loosey-goosey” approach to the Bible. Instead, it should be seen as an open-minded approach to a deeper intimacy with it. By always digging in and seeing what we can find that’s new, by engaging with different interpretations and seeing what we can learn from them, perhaps we can stave off the vultures and attract the eagles. That, I think, is how the Bible has managed to keep our faith alive for the past two millennia. After all, it was designed by the most clever person we’ve ever known, and I see it as a gift to bring us back to him.

Until next time, friends…

Faults and Absence

Good day, or as the Texans say, good day, y’all! I’ve only been living in San Antonio for a year-and-a-half, so that word hasn’t made it into my vocabulary yet, though it has worked its way into my wife’s language, so I believe the day will come when people will hear me say “y’all.”

Now that I’ve sufficiently bored you by talking about my vocabulary, let’s move into the meat and potatoes of today’s post. In truth, I had two different topics chosen, but I couldn’t choose between them, so I’ve decided to go with both! The first has to do with an experience I had recently, and the second with a philosophical thought I had yesterday.

1: My own moral faults

As someone who reads this blog regularly would know, I have a frequent struggle with a judgmental attitude. In the past, I gave greater reign to my judgment of others, but in the past four years, I’ve put more conscious effort into loving, rather than judging, others. As a reflection of this, a judgmental attitude has become one of the things which I oppose the strongest, and it’s something that I simply cannot stand. I hate judgmental claims because, quite simply, I hate my tendency to make them.

I thought I’d been getting better at not being judgmental. Then, while I was out to eat with a group of friends on Sunday, I found myself twice delving into deep, vicious judgments of others, first of those who I deemed “dumb” and second of a scriptwriter on a project I was remotely involved in. I won’t delve into my views of her particular script, but suffice to say that I unleashed a furious judgment on it, which quickly expanded into a judgment of the writer herself. But as I was judging most harshly, I was blessed with a metaphorical gut-punch from my wife. She later felt bad for deflating me, and I felt bad for needing to be deflated, but it was ultimately for the best, as she helped to jar me out of that hateful, self-righteous mindset.

Looking back, I still feel guilt over my judgmental attitude in our conversations. But I need to realize that I’m not perfect, and so I have much growing to do in order to become who God wants me to be. And with that in mind, I also need to thank God for blessing me with the infrequently gut-punching wife that I need to push me into becoming that better person.

2: The absence of evidence

In a mostly unrelated topic, I found myself later that same afternoon thinking about whether or not there is evidence for the existence of God. I’ve heard much from both sides of the debate: atheists who claim their is no such evidence, and Christians who claim there is.

On the side of the atheists, the main argument proceeds as follows: there is no evidence for the existence of God; therefore, that absence should be taken as proof of God’s nonexistence. It’s a fairly simple argument that most atheists find persuasive, but which all Christians (as well as persons of other faiths) reject. There are more vigorous interchanges and nuances which I will not explore. Instead, I find the need to point out its flawed core. You see, in the world of logic, there exists a particular fallacy called the Argumentum ex Silentio, or the Argument from Silence. The fallacy is in assuming that a lack of evidence is enough to disprove an idea, entity or event. But alas, this type of thinking is fallacious. After all, there’s no proof that a person ever died on the patch of Earth outside my bedroom window, but that in no way proves that no one in the history of the Earth ever died on that patch of land. The only argument that can be made is that if such an event ever did occur, there is no evidence of it now. So to the atheist, one must simply say that if God does exist, there is no evidence of it. That is all that can be said on that.

Now on the other side, there is the Christian (typically, at least in America) who makes the claim that there is evidence for God’s existence. Volumes could be filled with claims of such evidence, and all to bolster the claim for God’s reality. But there is an issue here as well. Suppose, for a moment, that there was actual, indefatigable proof that God exists. When presented with that undeniable truth, any reasonable person would have no choice but to believe in God, just as they would have no choice but to believe that there are shoes on their feet (if they’re wearing them). But to this I ask: is that belief, then, still an act of faith?

You see, if you choose to believe in God because reason tells you that is the most logical choice, then you’re not really making any steps in faith. You’re simply doing what’s logical and reasonable. The implication of this is that you’re not putting God at the top above everything. Why? Because you’re still holding to reason as that thing which has your utmost loyalty. Choosing God based on evidence means that you’re loyal first to reason, and only secondarily to God.

But if, on the other hand, you choose to believe in God despite the lack of evidence, then your choice gains a new, heroic dimension, for you’re not doing so because of the dictates of reason and logic. Your choice proves that in that moment, you have the ultimate faith, a faith which subordinates reason to God, rather than God to reason. You’re saying that you trust God above and beyond the bounds of reason. While it’s good to use your brain and exercise your capacity for logical thinking, God is ultimately greater and more important.

Personally, I don’t believe there is evidence of God’s existence. But rather than state this from an atheistic perspective, I see this as a gift from God, for by hiding the evidence, he’s giving us a far greater and more faithful power to choose him, even when it may seem unreasonable to do so. And that act, that single choice, will bring you closer to him than reason or logic ever could.

Until next time, friends…

Since I’ll be out of town for the next two weeks, the next time you’ll hear from me will be three weeks from now. So I wish you all a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and a very good New Year! I shall see thee in 2016!

Legalism or Self-Righteousness?

Hello, there! It’s kind of cool that it’s snowing right now; it makes me miss home, where there are often enormous piles of snow in the winter. But aren’t you in Texas? you may be asking. Indeed, there is no snow here. Rather, I was talking about the snow on the background of this very blog post! Do you see it?

Anyway, recently I found myself thinking about the culture of Israel during the time of Jesus. I know, we all think on such things, right? Well on this particular occasion, I thought about two of the primary Jewish sects that existed in that first century: the Sadducees and the Pharisees. While I thought of these, I began to think about the modern state of Christianity, and how we’re not so different from either of these long-forgotten forms of religiosity. But before I explain this, let me give you some details about them.

Sadducees

The Sadducees were an old sect when Jesus was born, with one theory pinning their start nearly five hundred years earlier, at the end of the Babylonian Exile. According to this theory, exiled Jews returned to their homeland sometime after 539BC, rebuilt their temple in Jerusalem and ousted the priests who had been serving there throughout the captivity. Thus, these forerunners of the Sadducees ran the show for five centuries (with many interruptions from foreign powers) and eventually became those leaders who ruled the Temple when Jesus visited it in his youth. Of course, since Rome was ruling Israel in Jesus’ time, the Sadducees had to get along with the Romans very nicely, so they were often seen by the common Jew as traitors colluding with the enemy of Israel. But the Sadducees ruled the only legitimate temple where sacrifices could be made to God, so the Jews had to put up with and obey them.

Theologically, the Sadducees were extremely conservative. They believed only in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible, from Genesis through Deuteronomy), rejecting all the prophetic, poetic and wisdom literature, as well as some of the more fantastical portions of the historical writings. As such, they also rejected the belief in things like angels, demons, the afterlife and the resurrection of the dead. Essentially, they believed in God and only what was said about him in the Torah, and absolutely nothing else.

Being in charge of the Temple, and believing in a strict adherence to the Levitical texts (especially those concerning purity and sacrifice), it’s likely that they engaged their faith in a highly legalistic sense: you do what the Torah says, to the strictest sense of the letter, and never deviate from it. But, as is often the case with legalists, a strict adherence to the letter of the law also leaves open the possibility of loopholes, and these are just what the Sadducees in Jesus’ time relied upon. For instance, when purchasing an animal to sacrifice in the Temple, one was required to buy it using “Temple Money,” which had an exorbitant exchange rate. Imagine, for instance, that you go went a movie theater, but were told that you had to pay for the $10 ticket in “theater bucks.” But the price of ten “theater bucks” would cost you $20. Suddenly, that ticket became twice as expensive, and the theater pocketed the overcharge. This is essentially what the Sadducees were doing in the Temple, and so Jesus’ outburst in the Temple courtyard, where he calls his father’s house a “den of robbers,” suddenly makes a lot more sense.

These very same Sadducees were the ones who put Jesus on trial, led by their high priest, Caiaphas. Fearing that Jesus’ teachings – and especially his violent outburst in the Temple – would make the Romans suspect insubordination on the part of the Jews, the Sadducees wanted Jesus eliminated. It was to please their pagan patrons, the Romans.

Pharisees

The Pharisees, by comparison, were a much younger and more liberal sect. Forming only about a hundred and fifty years before Jesus’ birth, they had little control over the Temple, instead dominating the Synagogues, or local places of Jewish worship and study. The Pharisees believed in all of the Old Testament, from Genesis through Malachi, and they had many more texts to explore as well, including apocrypha, commentaries and oral traditions. They believed in angels, demons and the resurrection of the dead, as well as prophecies and modern (in their time) miracles. But rather than take a legalistic approach to scripture, they were much more open to a variety of interpretations, seeing things as literal and/or symbolic, as well as drawing stories out for the sake of teaching lessons on wisdom, morality and righteous living.

In comparing their teachings with those of Jesus himself, there are some startling comparisons. The Pharisees were obsessed, it seems, with righteous living, with the cultivation of personal virtues, with living at peace with your neighbor and helping those in need. While their initial founding was a legalistic point (they began as a protest movement against a man who declared himself both high priest and king over Israel; they argued that he was wrong for the role since he wasn’t descended from King David), it seems that legalism wasn’t a defining characteristic of the sect.

Despite the similarities, however, they often butted heads with Jesus. Why was this? It seems that between the time of their founding and the time of Jesus’ ministry, their struggle for righteous living and virtuous character had devolved into a sense of self-righteousness and judgmentalism. In striving for righteousness, they’d psychologically dissociated themselves from regular Jews, and thus they came to regard them as more sinful, as inferior to these righteous men. Even Paul, the self-proclaimed “apostle to the Gentiles,” faced this struggle. Originally a Pharisee, his zeal for righteousness had turned him against his fellow Jews, and he carried that guilt for the rest of his life. When he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, it wasn’t just Jesus that he faced; it was his own sinfulness.

Those who faced off against Jesus, however, were unwilling to face their own sinfulness as Paul had, and that’s why, almost every time Jesus called them out, his chosen accusation was “hypocrites.” He was pointing out that their self-righteousness was not true righteousness, that in their judgment they were just as guilty as those they saw as inferior.

A Look at Today

So what we see when we look through the glass into those ancient days was a sect devoted to legalism (Sadducees) and a sect devoted to self-righteousness (Pharisees). Do we not see that in our churches today? There are many Christians who, led by their literal-approach-to-the-Bible pastors, hold a strictly legalistic faith. To them, doctrine rules all, and any deviation from the strict and literal interpretation of the Bible is enough to brand someone a heretic, damned and thrown from the church steps. Most cases are not that extreme, but I think there are a lot of us who are guilty of this to at least some degree, even if it’s something as small as taking a step back and distancing ourselves from those who read the Bible in ways which seem disagreeable to us. In those times, are we not putting our value on doctrine above loving our fellow human being? Are we not then committing the legalistic crime of the Sadducees?

On the flipside, we can sometimes focus so much on our own character and (here’s the danger) our own reputation that we begin to look down on those who are not as “spiritually mature” as we are. I work hard to avoid this, though I often make this mistake. But ask yourself if there’s not someone out there, or some group, that you see yourself as superior to. It could be lesser-involved people in your church, or perhaps people of a different denomination, or perhaps people who aren’t saved at all, or who have a different faith than you. In judging them, are we not committing the self-righteous crime of the Pharisees?

Personally, I think I’m a bit closer to the Pharisee side of things. I struggle vehemently with a judgmental attitude, which is the probable reason why I hate the behavior in others. Seeing that sin in others reminds me that I have it in myself. But like Paul on the road to Damascus, I need to focus on the light of Christ, hoping that it will blind my judgmental eyes until I’m capable of seeing others the way God sees them. So to which sect do you identify?

Until next time, friends…

The Propensity for Fanaticism

(Introductory salutation, indicating my welcoming of you to this current blog post) I hope your weekend was enjoyable and eventful, or relaxing, depending on what you were going for.

In my most recent blog post, I discussed the mistake we often make of arguing against something so ardently that, as Christians, we begin to forget exactly what it is we stand for. This is a dangerous behavior, not only because it makes us into a bad representation of Christ, but because it makes us as blindly wrong and guilty as those against whom we’re arguing. The primary example I used was an internet meme which sought to prove that Jesus was not a conservative Republican. The issue I took was that the creator of that meme went too far and made Jesus out to be a liberal Democrat, which he most assuredly was not. So if we establish that the mistake was overlaying Christ with a modern stereotype, then the creator of the meme argued so hard against it that they ended up inadvertently doing that very thing!

With that in mind, I’d like to press onward and describe what the ultimate ramifications are of such behavior. When we, as believers, become an oppositional force, standing against this or that side in regard to this or that topic, we tend to lost sight of that which is most important: God’s loving and forgiving nature. While it may be true that the Bible condemns homosexuality, how is hating or condemning homosexuals an accurate reflection of Christ’s character? Does condemning the rich for earning their keep, or condemning the poor due to the idea that they’re lazy actually do anything to express the love of humanity for which Christ died? I don’t think so. But does this mean that truth must be squelched by tolerant love? No, for you can still share truth with people without judging or condemning them. It’s not about telling them the blind truth, but about telling them the truth which the Holy Spirit decides they most pertinently need to hear.

Truth is a good thing; don’t think I’m saying otherwise. But when we overemphasize it at the expense of love, then what have we accomplished? What good comes from an inappropriate honesty which crushes souls? If we forget to keep love at the center, then that desire for truth will become an excuse to continue hating, and hatred is prone to quick mutations into inhuman behavior.

When we allow our opposition to foment into hatred, then we get the manifestations of racism, sexism, hostility and pitiless violence. From this come genocides and wars, Nazis, ISIS and the Westboro Baptists, terrorists and zealots who believe themselves justified in murder, mayhem and devastation. We, as Christians, should not think that we’re immune to this tendency, for we have historically been as guilty as the rest. Religion, when it becomes infiltrated by this hatred, mutates into something monstrous. This has also happened with atheism, as the French Revolution and the Soviet Union can attest. This is because hatred owes no loyalty; hatred corrupts purely, pushing the followers of any way into fanaticism, and when one becomes a fanatic, then it becomes impossible to love that which is different.

But Christ loved that which was different. He was not infected with the mindless hatred that threatens to overtake us when we stand as an oppositional force. So in the end, I find myself thinking that if opposition leads so easily into hatred, wouldn’t it make the most sense to avoid this trap altogether, and show those with whom we disagree that our disagreement doesn’t keep us from loving them?

Until next time, friends…

Religious Opposition

Hello and salutations. Recently, I was on Facebook (an addiction which many of us definitely need to curb) and an old classmate of mine shared this interesting meme, which got me thinking. Go ahead and give it a look before I discuss it.

At first, after reading this, I rejoiced and thought to myself, of course Jesus wasn’t a conservative Republican! What a great way of explaining away the conservative stereotypes about him! But then, as I began to look more critically at the list of claims applied to him, I started to see some discrepancies. For instance, Jesus never expressed any sort of colonial/anti-colonial sentiment, nor did he teach socialism. And racial equality was never relevant to his core message. That’s not to say those things aren’t relevant components of our social consciences these days; rather, those issues were merely peripheral and not pertinent to his message of love and reconciliation with each other, and devotion to God.

From these observations, I began to develop a secondary view of this meme. You see, in all honesty, Jesus was not a conservative Republican. But neither was he a liberal Democrat. He was, quite simply (and actually so much more radically complex) Christ. In trying to argue against conservativism, the creator of this meme inadvertently took it to the opposite extreme and ended up making the same mistakes as those against whom they were initially arguing! Basically, they made the mistake of trying to overlay a human-derived system upon the creator of humanity, and that is the very thing they started out arguing against! I’m sorry if I’m losing you, here; I’m almost losing myself.

So what is the deeper, underlying message of what I’m trying to say here? Surely, it can’t be a simple rant about an online meme, for there are probably millions of memes out there which are total trash. No, what I’m getting at is the dangerous compulsion to define one’s faith in Christ by what one stands against. This very moment, I can’t turn on my newsfeed without seeing some new article about Kim Davis, who gained notoriety for citing religious reasons in order to not do her job. And what’s the backlash from this news fiasco? People see us Christians as oppressive, as against this or that, as those who oppose the advancement of knowledge and culture. The dangerous thing about this is that by defining ourselves by what we stand against, we lose sight of what we stand for. In recent talks with my own grandmother, I’ve heard her repeatedly talk about political issues that anger her and claim that, as Christians, “we have to take a stand!” While I earnestly love my grandmother, I unfortunately no longer have a clear idea of what she actually believes; I know only what she opposes.

As I said, when we define ourselves and our faith as an oppositional force to this or that social or political hot button, then we ultimately lose sight of those things which we stand for, and the love for which we should stand gets lost, giving the appearance of angry curmudgeons. Now while I love the word “curmudgeon,” I certainly don’t want to be one. But the issue doesn’t stop there: when we lose sight of what we stand for, we find ourselves changing, and before we know it, we’ve become as guilty as those against whom we’ve struggled. When a man gets angry and strikes you, your first inclination (as a man) is to stand up in order to rectify this great injustice. So you strike him back, inadvertently becoming as guilty as he is. But if you instead turn your cheek and allow him to strike you again, not only have you saved yourself from that same guilt, but you may have shown him how to change his own ways. When we stand against an enemy and strike them back, we’ve shown them no love, no loyalty to Christ, who we claim to represent. But when we pray for our enemies, when we show them love and seek after reconciliation, then not only have we properly shown Christ, but we’ve saved ourselves from that same guilt which we see written on our enemies’ hearts. Perhaps, by a loving response, rather than an oppositional one, we can show them how to wash that guilt away.

Until next time, friends…

Stay tuned for my next blog post, in which I discuss the most dangerous result of religious opposition!

Protagonist

Hello! I apologize for being a day late on this current post, but yesterday being Labor Day, I was unable to contrive the time necessary to write. Now I was initially unsure of what to write on today, but then I remembered a story I recently wrote which has been generally well-received by anyone who’s read (or, rather, listened to me read) it. Given my most recent two blog posts – one discussing fictional accounts of breaking the Fourth Wall, and one discussing fictional accounts of characters recognizing the falsity of their reality – I found this story to be a reasonable cap to this series.

I originally wrote this story for the San Antonio Writer’s Meetup Group, a gathering of local writers who meet twice a month to share their work. The ideal word limit is approximately 1,200 words, so I took that as an exact directive in constructing this piece. I hope you enjoy it!

Hello, my name is Max Destroyo. Seriously? That name is just so…terrible, and pretentious. It’s like the writer took maybe five minutes to come up with it. I mean, come on, man, am I a human being or a cyborg? Honestly, I’m not really sure because the writer didn’t develop me enough. Anyways, like I said, my name is Max Destroyo, and…I just feel like I’m dying whenever I say that. The “Max” part isn’t bad, but “Destroyo?” What, was “Explodo” already taken? Seriously…

In any case, I have recently come to the conclusion that I am a fabricated, written character. How do I know this? Well, my lack of body is a great indicator. Most real, living people don’t exist solely as words on a page. Most of them have things like hair and arms and a mouth, none of which my writer took the time to develop in me. What’s my hair color, bud? That’s right, intangible, because that’s a real color. And don’t get me started on my mouth, or, more specifically, my voice. Did my writer research and build a psychological profile or historical background for me, factors which are extremely necessary for building a character’s unique voice? Of course not, that’d be far too much work! I suspect that the writer thought of this earlier in the day, and then later in the afternoon, after a big meal and a nap, sat down to write out the story organically. Let me tell you now: you don’t develop a character organically and expect him to have a unique voice right off the bat. It takes pages and chapters, sometimes even whole volumes, to develop the voice of an organic character, and I have the sinking feeling I don’t have that much time.

Okay, now let’s pretend there’s a segue between that paragraph and this one. I’m also supposed to tell you that I’m quite sarcastic. Okay, now that’s just bad writing. If I have to tell you about a personality characteristic as bluntly as that, then that’s just laziness. Where’s the subtlety in the writing, the fine art of allowing the audience to come to conclusions on their own? When I say things as bluntly as “I’m quite sarcastic,” it’s like I’m taking control of their perspective of me, and that’s too much control in the writing process. But I’m not the writer here, and certainly neither is my own writer.

You know, I think I should just take a deep breath and relax. I’m not normally this angry, after all. I think I’m just frustrated. I mean, how would you respond if you just found out that your entire existence is tied up with a short story with a 1,200-word limit? And what word are we on now? 463? That means my life is over one-third over now. I’m the equivalent of a guy in his late twenties or early thirties, and reading this page probably took less than three minutes. Maybe if I slowed down, I could extend my life just a little…bit…long…er…

It doesn’t really matter. What is the purpose of trying to extend my life if my whole purpose is to be the narrator for one, single story? I mean, if I’m lucky, maybe I’ll get the story expanded into a book, and if I’m extremely lucky, maybe even a series of books. But even then, when I reach the last word of the last sentence of the last chapter of the last book, my existence will draw to a close. As the last stroke is drawn on the page, so my own life ends. It’s true of any character in any work of fiction: when the last story about them ends, they die. They don’t live forever, don’t keep going. The grim reaper waits upon that final letter, and though a shadow of them may live on in the reader, the core of them has ceased to be.

What will that be like for me? At the end of this story, will the last word hurt, like a knife in my back? Will it be eerie and disturbing, like hearing the last of the dirt tossed upon your casket? Yeah, I got morbid there. Sorry about that. But will I die and go on to a fictional afterlife? Or will I simply cease to be? These questions plague me. It’d help if I could remember what it was like before I formed through the writer’s words. But how could I remember from before I existed? If that were somehow possible, perhaps it would undermine the real value of my purpose here.

I don’t think I blame the writer so much anymore. I mean, sure, he didn’t really do any sort of character development, but he at least created me, bringing me here for a purpose, though I just passed the two-thirds mark and I still don’t know what that is. Is that what life is like? Trying to find your purpose, your reason for being here? Are we here simply for our stories, or is there some deeper, more true purpose for our existence?       I can understand if I was placed here to oppose some evil mastermind, or some brooding supervillain. Or maybe, on a lower key, a minor antagonist. But where is that antagonist for me to rail against? Maybe…maybe the antagonist of my story isn’t so much a person, but more a state of being. Am I here to fight against my impending death at the end of this story?

I think I just wish that my purpose would extend beyond the end of this story. If I’m lucky enough to be the protagonist – and I think it’s safe to assume that I am, here – then I’ll make it at least as far as the story’s climax. If I’m really lucky, there may even be some falling action, but that’s like walking that last green mile before the executioner’s chair. I know death waits for me at the end of the falling action. So it all goes back to my core question: am I only here to complete a single story? Man, I wish I existed like the audience and the writer. At least for them, there’s the possibility of living on, not to mention having a body. I mean, what if I wanted to be a runner and run forever? Thank God that’s not true, because I just don’t have the energy for that.

Enough of the reveries, I think. Back to reality! Er, I mean, back to fiction! So what’s this story supposed to be about? I only have about a hundred words left, so I don’t think I’ll be able to accomplish much. Hey, hey, hey, I just thought of something devious, yes, yes, a way to get back at the writer for not giving me characteristics: instead of actually doing anything, I just wasted his entire story on this one, single monologue. Take that, writer! You wanted a story and all you got was rambling nonsense! Oh, now I’m sad. And there, ladies and gentlemen, is more bad writing.

Sixteen words left, I should make them count. But how should I end this? How about…

Until next time, friends…