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Is it bigoted to call Christianity true?

It has become fashionable in some circles recently to publicly disdain Christian claims as “bigoted.” For Christians to believe that Jesus is the world’s only true savior and lord, or to believe that their faith is uniquely true, is held to be disrespectful to other beliefs. What is most ironic about this charge is that those who call such historic Christian beliefs bigoted are themselves making a truth claim disrespectful to other beliefs.

Before exploring this point further, it is important to recognize that people can indeed hold truth claims, including about Christianity, in uncharitable and even bigoted ways. Many people, for example, adopt wholesale a system of beliefs that are hurtful to others and not necessary to the faith they claim. Many Hindus traditionally approved of sati, burning a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre, even though the Hindu Scriptures did not require this. Many Christians in the United States have perpetuated particular unjust racial or other prejudices as part of a subculture that also claimed to be Christian, without distinguishing genuinely biblical from other elements of their heritage.

Moreover, it is possible to hold even essential elements of one’s faith in an intolerantly narrow way that one’s own faith would condemn. Christians who truly believe we are saved by grace share joyfully with others good news of hope. Some, however, have used their faith to boast in their own superiority, forgetting that salvation by grace means that none of us is saved by being “better” or more deserving than others. We welcome the gift and we share it.

Nevertheless, that people sometimes offer religious truth claims in inappropriate ways does not discredit all truth claims. Even if opinions once differed, it made a difference whether smoking was really bad for one’s health or not (it is). Although most religious claims are not verified in the same epistemic manner as verdicts on smoking, those who presume that all religious claims are subjective without examining evidence risk staking on this assumption something much more serious than the longevity of their lungs. Simply because there are different opinions does not mean that none of these opinions can be true. Further, whether or not one agrees that a claim about truth is true, one can still speak charitably about it rather than attributing it to bigotry!

Most faiths make truth claims. At some point these truth claims may contradict each other. For example, a central claim of Christians is that Jesus is God’s Son; an important claim of Islam is that God has no son. (This particular difference may be qualified, in that Islam means especially that God did not impregnate Mary, and Christians actually agree with Muslims on this point. Both Islamic and Christian Scriptures affirm the virgin birth.) More obviously, some faiths claim many deities; others claim only one God (though often allowing for other spirits); atheists claim no deity at all. Such claims do not readily harmonize.

Some truth claims among religions admittedly overlap. Apart from reflecting gender values of its day and some comments about ancestor veneration, much early Confucian teaching is common wisdom widely agreeable to other faiths. Further, the monotheistic religions obviously share much in common; Islam, for example, perpetuated many ethical principles insisted on in Judaism and Christianity (and in some points, such as rejecting the veneration of images, may have acted more consistently than some Christians of that era). Likewise, the Christian faith emerged as a form of Judaism. Many of us today appreciate Messianic Judaism’s argument that there remains enough overlap for a Jewish person to follow Jesus without renouncing her or his Jewish heritage.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that most faiths believe that they teach something more true and more helpful than other faiths; that is why they are distinctive faiths. Even here, however, it is possible to treat one’s core beliefs as true without despising other beliefs.

But what about the belief that it is bigoted for any faith (or a particular faith) to claim to be more true than others? If one believes that no belief is more true than any others, one thereby asserts a belief that holds untrue most other beliefs—since most other beliefs are beliefs because their believers hold them to be true. Moreover, believing that no belief can be uniquely true is logically self-defeating, because one cannot affirm that one’s own belief about other beliefs is uniquely true! Despite the logical inconsistency, a belief that other beliefs are not uniquely true is not necessarily bigoted; it just cannot be dogmatic that it is correct.

By contrast, it is worse than merely illogical to call bigoted any belief system that holds itself uniquely true. Such a claim is itself dogmatic, assuming the unique right to evaluate all other beliefs. It is also the one and only belief system that, by its own criteria, should call itself bigoted. One wonders why those who point the finger at Christians or others as bigoted for their beliefs cannot see how their own pointing leaves their other fingers pointing back at themselves.

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Job’s faith, his friends’ fear

Has anyone ever hurt you more deeply while claiming to comfort you? For example, someone “comforted” a friend of mine who had lost his daughter by suggesting, “Well, just think how bad it would have been had you lost all your family.”

When Job is suffering, some friends come to comfort him yet end up debating him. They insist that because God is just, Job must be suffering for a good reason. He must have done something wrong, so if he makes it right God will bless him again.

Job’s innocence

In spite of themselves, Job’s friends sometimes speak wisdom, the sort of wisdom found in the Book of Proverbs. Proverbs includes general principles, such as God blessing the righteous and punishing the wicked. But what happens when the righteous suffer? Job’s friends badly misapply their inherited wisdom; they assume that if Job is suffering, God must be punishing him. “Like a thornbush in the hand of someone drunk,” Proverbs warns, “is a wise saying in a fool’s mouth” (Prov 26:9).

Job defends himself insistently, and sometimes Job complains that God has struck him even though he is innocent. He wants to plead his case before God (Job 13:15-23; 23:3-4; 31:35), knowing that God will agree with Job’s innocence (23:5-7). Sometimes Job cannot seem to get God’s attention (23:8), protesting that God has taken away his access to a hearing (19:6; 27:2). Nevertheless, at times he seems to recognize that God will ultimately vindicate him (16:19-21; 23:10).

Job is sure that he has not done anything wrong to cause this suffering, and he is right. Nevertheless, some of Job’s protests could be understood as reflecting the same misconception held by his friends: the righteous should not suffer. God must be just, yet Job is righteous, and this poses something of a conundrum to everyone.

Mysteries of suffering

Job does not know what the book’s audience knows: God himself had praised Job’s righteousness, and Satan had been the one who wanted to strike him (Job 1:8-12). Although Job is right in a sense that God has done it (12:9; 17:6; 23:16), he does not know the entire story. Yet at the end of the book, when God challenges humans’ questions, he does not bother to inform Job or his friends about Satan’s role in accusing Job in the heavenly court.

This observation suggests at least two principles. First, Satan cannot touch God’s servant without God’s permission. In fact, God earlier protected Job’s health (1:12), and afterward his life (2:6), from Satan. If we are God’s servants, we can trust that God knows every hair on our heads; he may not directly initiate our suffering, but he still cares and has a purpose even when we suffer. Suffering may test us (cf. 23:10); it is not always a punishment.

Second, Job did not really need to know what went on in heaven. We do not need to understand the cosmic mechanics behind suffering; we just need to know that God is trustworthy. It is God and not Satan with whom we ultimately must deal in times of trouble, and Job was right to appeal to God.

In the book’s closing chapters, God asks Job whether he understands the mysteries of nature or has wisdom to rule the world (Job 38—41). “Were you around when I founded the earth? Tell me who arranged its boundaries?” (cf. 38:4-6). “Are you the one who watches over animals until they bear?” (cf. 39:1-4). “Is it by your wisdom that hawks fly and eagles build their nests?” (cf. 39:26-30). In God’s presence, Job recognizes that the larger scheme into which he fits is beyond his ability to understand (40:3-5). God asks Job if he must make God seem unjust to protest his own innocence (40:8). Job confesses that God’s wisdom is right though beyond Job’s understanding (42:2-6).

We don’t have all the answers; neither can we, but neither do we have to. We just need to remember that the one who watches over us does have the answers. Job was afterward vindicated in this life; that often happens after our testing, too, although our mortality means that we do not always live to see vindication. Although Job’s faith may have glimpsed the possibility of life beyond his death (cf. 13:15; 19:25-27), today we have a fuller and clearer hope than he because of what Jesus has done for us. In the cross we understand that God embraced our deepest suffering, and by Jesus’s resurrection we learn of certain hope beyond that suffering.

Wrong answers

At the end of the book, God reproves Job’s friends. “You have not been speaking what is true about me, as Job my servant has” (42:7). Job’s understanding of God, like that of any of us, was imperfect. Nevertheless, he rightly understood that God has the right and wisdom to do as he recognizes best—he is not obligated to always honor the righteous by others’ standards. Thus Job, in contrast to his friends, was also right that his suffering was not because of his sin. (Against some who suggest that Job invited judgments by fearing them, 3:25, which they cite, might refer to his fear after suffering; more clearly, Job elsewhere [30:26] says that he expected good things. The right object of faith is God, not speculations about the future, good or bad.)

Further, laments are ways to express pain; they are not always intended literally. Job’s friends pick apart his words for theological accuracy, but his are words of pain. (This might be the point of 6:26, although that is debatable.) Remember that Job has not simply had a bad day. He has lost all his wealth, all his honor, and worst of all, all his children; his friends have become his accusers. Yet God says that Job spoke rightly. Here God accepts the bitter (though not cursing) words of a man in pain rather than the theological arguments of those who think they are defending God’s honor. Job’s friends should have come to listen to his lament rather than to critique his speech.

Then again, Job’s friends may have been defending something besides God’s honor. Their theological system was at stake. “You see me and are afraid,” Job accused (6:21). If the righteous can suffer, then the sort of disaster that struck Job can also strike them. Their theology protects them against that dreadful thought.

My wife’s country was fairly stable when she was growing up, and she did not know what to think of Ethiopian refugees when she saw them there. She never imagined that, years later, she herself would become displaced in a war in her own country. When we learn of heartbreaking news around the world, do we have ways to explain why such sufferings could never happen to us? Perhaps, like Job’s friends, we need to rethink our theology at that deep level. Those who feel secure can despise others’ suffering (12:5), but the roles could have been reversed (16:4).

Job’s example

During the exile Israel remembered Job’s righteousness (Ezek 14:14, 20). This book was undoubtedly also a comfort to Israel returning from exile. Israel had faced the ridicule of Edomites (Ps 137:7; Obad 10-11), just as Eliphaz the Temanite (Teman was Edom’s capital) ridiculed Job. (For wise sages of Edom, cf. Jer 49:7; Obad 8.) Israel faced grave shame during their exile, yet God restored them from captivity—wording used for God restoring Job’s fortunes at the end (42:10, Hebrew). Later, James uses Job as an example of endurance (James 5:11).

Job undoubtedly did not feel like an example as he expressed his anguish. In our deepest darkness, however, when all we can do is cling to God for dear life, sometimes God counts that enough. He knows the depth of the suffering. He has not forgotten. In the end, he will vindicate those who look to him.

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Blessing Pharaoh—Genesis 47

Although we often retell the stories in Genesis, sometimes we neglect an important detail. When the aged shepherd Jacob came into Pharaoh’s presence, he blessed him (Gen 47:7). Of course, hailing rulers with blessings was not unusual, but Genesis is emphatic. Jacob blesses Pharaoh again at the end of his visit (47:10), framing this interview with Pharaoh. Genesis expends six verses on this short interview, far more than it offers, for example describing Abraham’s death, so the interview and blessings are important. The sort of blessing (cf. 14:19; 27:23; 28:6; 32:29; 48:15) or prayer (20:7, 17; cf. 25:21; Exod 8:28) that appears here is the sort offered by one with special divine favor.

Pharaoh’s respect for the patriarch

We might expect one with special favor before the gods to offer such a blessing, but pharaohs themselves were considered divine. Would not Jacob’s emphatic act thus seem presumptuous to both of them (cf. Heb 7:7)? I do not think so. Pharaoh was in awe of the special wisdom that Joseph had from God (Gen 41:38), and might well wonder about the kind of family in which he grew up. Age was respected in antiquity and longevity was seen as a divine blessing; Pharaoh thus asks the age of Joseph’s obviously aged father (47:8).

Jacob reinforces Pharaoh’s awe by mentioning (indeed, complaining) that his old age of 130 years so far was small compared with the longevity of his ancestors (47:9). Truly this family was divinely blessed! After all, 110 was considered an extremely blessed old age for Egyptians (and this is the longevity later ascribed to Joseph, 50:26). By pointing to the greater longevity of his ancestors, therefore, Jacob merely increases for Pharaoh the mystique of this holy family of Joseph that has great power with the living God.

That Pharaoh would be awed by someone less renowned than himself is not surprising. In my own life I think of some people, often obscure in the eyes of the world, whose divine insights for me have proved accurate, or who seem gifted and eager to pray for me. Grateful and impressed with their walk with God, I count it a blessing to learn from what they have learned from God himself, and to receive their prayer support. This pharaoh (in utter contrast to the later pharaoh who tries to prevent Israel’s exodus from Egypt) recognizes a divine blessing on Joseph’s household and is pleased to honor it. Yet even the later Pharaoh, when God humbles him, will ask for Israel’s leaders Moses and Aaron to bless him (Exod 12:32).

Perhaps it is especially important for us to recognize that blessing Pharaoh is something God wanted Jacob to do. Jacob is now fulfilling his divinely appointed role: the nations are blessed in Abraham and his seed (Gen 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; 27:29), and Jacob, like his son Joseph, becomes a conduit of God’s blessing to Egypt. Sometimes Christians see our role in the larger culture as adversarial, sometimes because of conflicts forced upon us; but ultimately we must seek to be a blessing to the cultures where God has placed us.

Jacob’s restored confidence

We can also learn from how Jacob’s behavior here contrasts with some of his behavior earlier. (Against what some scholars have argued, it is valuable to learn from biblical characters’ behavior; Paul felt that how God worked among people, and how they responded, offers examples for believers of subsequent eras; 1 Cor 10:11.)

After Joseph’s disappearance, Jacob grew anxious about risking his remaining son of his favorite wife. He had lost Rachel and Joseph, so he was terrified about losing Joseph’s full brother Benjamin (Gen 42:36, 38; 43:14; 44:20)—a fear that nearly kept him from getting Joseph back. Despite the passage of years, Jacob’s determination to keep mourning for Joseph (37:35) continued to shape his behavior. The one whom he would have most hoped to bless (48:15-22; 49:22-26) is now gone, and those who knew him best felt that the loss of Benjamin would kill him (44:22, 30-31, 34).

Today we might speak of Jacob having posttraumatic stress syndrome or something similar. We should sympathize with Jacob’s broken heart, not condemn him for his lack of omniscience. But whereas Abraham had been willing to relinquish his beloved son at God’s command yet received him back (22:2-3, 10-12), Jacob cannot let go of the son whom he lost—whom, by God’s grace, he will nevertheless get back.

But now that Jacob has learned of Joseph’s survival and even flourishing, he regains the hope that God’s past promises had always offered him. God speaks to him, assuring him that it is all right to go down to Egypt for now (46:2-4). This assurance was important. Jacob would have passed on to his children God’s affirmations to the patriarchs that God had called them to the promised land. He would have also communicated the warning that Abraham received that his descendants would be abused in a foreign land (15:13-14). Jacob will soon bless and prophesy some of the future for each of his children (48:19; 49:1-32). Now that he recognizes how much God is with him, Jacob acts in his true identity as an intermediary of God’s blessing.

Are we like Jacob?

Many of us are like Jacob. Too often we put more faith in our past experiences of suffering or in others’ opinions than we do in our identity shaped by God’s promise of our destiny. God has called us to be his children, in whom he will delight forever. He has promised us an inheritance in his kingdom forever. He has made us new in Christ, if we depend on Christ as our savior and lord. Like Jacob, I sometimes let past sufferings shape my fears. Yet I do often find it easier to remember my identity when I am encouraged.

The truth was the truth all along, however; all the time that Jacob was mourning for Joseph, God was preparing to fulfill his promise for Jacob’s line precisely through Joseph. This observation is not meant to condemn Jacob or ourselves; Jacob had every reason to grieve, given his limited knowledge of the situation. People in the Bible died just as people die today, and God fulfills his promises in a wide variety of ways. As Paul says, “we know in part” (1 Cor 13:9); our perspectives, like Jacob’s, are incomplete. The observation is simply meant to remind us that God’s perspective, unlike ours, is perfect. God’s perspective toward us is based on our identity in Christ and destiny with him, and God invites us to share his perspective toward us (Rom 6:11; Col 3:1-3).

Jacob’s blessing

At one time, Jacob had lost much of his hope. He had loved Joseph for seventeen years (Gen 37:2), and then lost him (37:32-35). But not only does God provide sustenance for Jacob and his entire household through this temporary loss (47:7-8), but God graciously grants Jacob seventeen more years with Joseph at the end of Jacob’s life (47:28). In the end, Jacob experiences God’s faithfulness. If we serve God truly, we will also experience his faithfulness, some in this life, and certainly fully in the world to come.

Those nations who blessed God’s servants would be blessed; but those who cursed God’s servants, such as the Pharaoh whom Moses later confronted, would be cursed. God freely offers blessings to peoples, but many choose curses instead. Because we are spiritual children of Abraham, we too should be conduits of his blessing to the peoples among whom we live in this age.

Craig Keener, Professor, Asbury Seminary

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Gospel truth—Luke 1:1-4

When I have shared the gospel with people, some of them have asked how we can really know much about Jesus. Because I was an atheist before my conversion to Christianity, these are questions I once struggled with myself. Yet the most traditional answers are sometimes the best ones.

Some voices today have come up with more novel answers, such as the DaVinci Code—which is just a novel. Others appeal to the Gospel of Judas, but it comes from the late second-century, perhaps a century and a half after Jesus lived, and few scholars find much authentic historical memory of Jesus in it. Perhaps most shocking is the alleged “Secret Gospel of Mark,” a work supposedly discovered in the twentieth century, alleged to be based on an original from the late second century. Many recent scholars have argued that this work is a twentieth-century forgery. Those who depend on later “Gospels,” from the second century to the twentieth century, often neglect the most obvious and substantial sources about Jesus: the Gospels in our Bible.

Granted, these Gospels were written by Christians—but we learn the most about ancient sages from the circles most likely to preserve information about them, namely their followers. That is true about Socrates, Jesus, and most ancient rabbis (or in other parts of the world and eras, about Buddha or Muhammad).

These Gospels also should be taken at least as seriously as other biographies from antiquity (which often treated philosophers, politicians and generals). Biographers claimed to write mostly accurate works, especially when writing about characters of the recent past, as the Gospels were. In fact, very few ancient biographies were written as close to the time of their subjects as the Gospels were; historians often depend, for example, on Arrian’s centuries-later biography of Alexander, but the Gospels range from just one to two generations after Jesus’s public ministry. (Both used earlier sources, but the Gospels were written within living memory of some eyewitnesses. The Gospels differ from modern biographies, but most scholars today recognize that they fit ancient biographies.)

When Luke wrote his Gospel, probably shortly over a generation after Jesus’ ministry, written accounts about Jesus were proliferating. Luke tells us that “many” had written about Jesus (Luke 1:1). Most of these sources have been unfortunately lost (the surviving, so-called “lost gospels”—both gnostic and apocryphal—are significantly later). Nevertheless, one of Luke’s main sources, the Gospel of Mark, remains, and many scholars reconstruct much of another source based on where Matthew and Luke overlap. We can often compare these sources and see how Luke used them.

Moreover, Luke had oral traditions going back to eyewitnesses (Luke 1:2). Because ancient education at all levels and throughout the Mediterranean involved considerable memorization, we would expect eyewitnesses to have preserved much information about Jesus, more than enough to fill a gospel. In fact, a primary role of disciples in this period was to learn and propagate their teachers’ messages; even disciples who came to disagree with their teachers were expected to accurately report their views. This was true whether the schools emphasized written instruction (for the highly educated) or merely oral memorization. (Completely illiterate bards, in fact, wandered around repeating from memory such works as all of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.) To act as if Jesus’ disciples would have forgotten and replaced his teachings is to make them completely unlike other disciples in antiquity.

It is thus not those who privilege the Gospels as sources of information about Jesus who treat them differently than other comparable ancient works, but those who neglect the Gospels as such sources. We should keep in mind that some written sources were already emerging during a generation when Jesus’ closest eyewitness followers remained in positions of leadership in the church (cf. Gal 1:18-19; 2:9). These sources are much closer in time to the events they narrate than were most ancient biographies.

Moreover, Luke assures Theophilus that he has “thorough knowledge” of the events that he narrates (Luke 1:3). How would he have acquired this? Although the matter is disputed, many scholars interpret the “we” in some passages in Luke’s second volume, Acts, in the most obvious sense: that Luke traveled with Paul. (This was the normal sense in ancient historical works; I argue for this at greater length in my Acts commentary.) If this is correct, Luke stayed in Judea for up to two years, and would have had plenty of opportunity to talk with eyewitnesses and those who knew them (Acts 21:15; 24:27; 27:1). The next best thing to us going and consulting the eyewitnesses today is depending on a writer from that era who did just that.

Luke also writes to confirm accounts that Theophilus had already heard (Luke 1:4). Normally one does not fabricate a lie and then appeal to one’s audience’s knowledge that it is true. Rather, Luke is confirming accounts that already, some time in the church’s second generation, were widely known.

That is partly why so many narratives in the Gospels overlap, rather than telling completely different stories. It is also why these accounts do not directly address some pressing issues of later generations, such as whether Gentiles should be circumcised. The Gospel writers were preaching, using Jesus as their text, but they did not depart far from their text.

They were not simply writing sermons or epistles, but biographies; ancient biographers freely communicated lessons through their biographies, but they chose to draw lessons based on the information they had, rather than making up their illustrations. (Even speeches often drew their illustrations from historical events, the sort recorded in histories and biographies.) Novels (which flourished more in the later period of the apocryphal gospels) were usually romances and were usually interested only in entertainment, not in historical information or (usually) even moral lessons.

Luke’s historical preface invites us to confidence in what the Gospels teach us about Jesus.

Craig S. Keener is author of The Historical Jesus of the Gospels (Eerdmans, 2009).

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Christmas vs. the emperor–Matthew 2 and Luke 2

In many circles, editorials and sermons on the true meaning of Christmas have become a routine, perhaps almost obligatory, protest against the materialism and rush of the season. Christmas, of course, has taken on various expressions in a range of cultures through history, along the way picking up fir trees, wrapped gifts, and developing permutations of figures such as St. Nicholas of Myra (a fourth-century bishop).

Most customs we associate with Christmas did not exist in the first century, but two books that are now in the New Testament describe the circumstances surrounding Jesus’s birth. The circumstances in the first, Matthew’s Gospel, portend Jesus’s future conflicts with hostile members of the elite. Although welcomed by outsiders, Joseph, Mary and Jesus have to flee from Bethlehem to Egypt to escape the wrath of the jealous tyrant Herod the Great. My wife, who was a refugee, readily identifies with their plight as refugees (although gifts from the Magi and the large Jewish community in Alexandria should have provided Jesus’s family a measure of comfort).

Back in Bethlehem, however, Matthew’s scene immediately develops into one of terror. Herod, king of Judea, massacres the male infants remaining in Bethlehem. Three times the narrative lists the objects that have threatened the mad king’s rage: “the baby and his mother.” Whatever Matthew’s sources for this account, his portrayal fits the recorded character of a king who murdered three of his sons, his favorite wife, and anyone he saw as a potential threat to his throne. His young brother-in-law, for example, a high priest who was becoming too popular, had a drowning “accident” in a pool that archaeologists suggest was only three feet deep.
See the rest of this story at the following link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-s-keener/christmas-vs-the-empire_b_4404833.html; also available at http://www.evangelicalsforsocialaction.org/christmas-vs-the-empire/

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The unexpected deliverer—Exodus 2

Often we wonder why God does not seem to be answering our prayers. But I learned an important insight from some older members in African-American churches that I was a part of: “God may not come when you want him to, but he’s always right on time.”

As Israel cried out for deliverance in Exodus 2:23, they may have wondered why deliverance took so long. They could not know the irony that God had already been preparing a deliverer even when Pharaoh was killing their children. Moses’s future role as deliverer is already foreshadowed in Moses’s survival in Exodus 2:3. Moses’s mother rescued him from Pharaoh by putting him in something like a basket—the Hebrew term is used elsewhere in the Bible only for Noah’s ark. Then she placed it among the reeds—a Hebrew term that is later used in connection with the place where God brought his people through the sea. The narrative looks back to Noah and God’s rescue of a remnant to perpetuate all humanity; it looks forward to Israel’s deliverance at the sea.

Surprisingly, God chooses to use Moses as an outsider rather than when he was a prince of Egypt. The narrative prepares us for that outsider role not least by leaving the Pharaoh unnamed, yet subverting his evil purposes by comparatively less powerful women. These women include the named Hebrew midwives who protected children (1:15-21), Moses’s mother and sister who rescued him (2:2-4), one of Pharaoh’s own daughters (2:5-10), and in a sense even Zipporah and the other female Midianites who were Moses’s first contacts in Midian.

Israel’s expectations of a deliverer may be shaped by how God raised up Joseph generations before. But God does not always do things the same way, and we see some contrasts between Joseph and Moses:
• Whereas Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery, Moses’s sister helped him escape slavery
• Whereas Midianites sold Joseph into Egypt, Midianites welcomed Moses when he fled Egypt
• Whereas Joseph became like a “father” to Pharaoh (Gen 45:8), Moses became a son of one of Pharaoh’s daughters
• Whereas God exalted Joseph from slavery to rule Egypt, Moses abandoned his royal position on behalf of slaves
• Whereas Joseph made Egypt Pharaoh’s servants (Gen 47:19), God uses Moses to free Pharaoh’s slaves
• Whereas God used Joseph to deliver Egypt economically, God used plagues through Moses to devastate Egypt economically
• Whereas God used Joseph to bring Israel to Egypt, God used Moses to return them to Canaan

Nevertheless, there are important parallels between these figures, for example:
• Joseph married the daughter of an Egyptian priest; Moses, fleeing Egypt, married the daughter of a Midianite priest
• Both Joseph and Moses gave their first son names recalling that they were staying in a foreign land
Both these factors underline a deeper parallel: both deliverers were initially rejected by their own people. Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery; one of Moses’s fellow Israelites complained, “Who made you ruler and judge over us?” (Exod 2:14). Many prophets and deliverers, and ultimately the Lord himself, faced the same resistance.

God did not act in the way his people would have expected, and they did not initially recognize the one who would be their deliverer. In fact, many complained about his leadership even during their forty years in the wilderness. Sometimes we don’t recognize that God is at work even when it is right in front of our eyes, because he is not working the way that we expected.

Nevertheless, God’s deliverance did come, and it sent a clear message when it did. Israel had suffered for a generation in bondage, but God’s purposes are often worked out over the long run. Too close to our sufferings and our daily life in the present to see beyond, we often miss the larger picture of God’s faithful work over time.

Yet how much clearer could the message finally be? Pharaoh drowned Israel’s babies in the Nile; the first plague later turned the Nile to blood. Pharaoh drowned Israel’s babies in the Nile; the last plague struck Egypt’s firstborn. Pharaoh drowned Israel’s babies in the Nile; God drowned Pharaoh’s army in the sea.

Those wise older believers who had been through much yet had seen God’s faithfulness were right about how God works in the long run. “God may not come when you want him to, but he’s always right on time.”

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Finding common ground—Acts 17

Paul’s letters never compromise God’s message, but he uses the language of his culture to articulate that message whenever possible. Sometimes God’s message is compatible with our culture; often it challenges our culture. But we hear both its affirmations and its challenges most clearly when we understand it in the language of our day.

By Paul’s time, Athens was no longer the greatest academic center of philosophy, but it retained that reputation from its earlier days. It also had a market and citadel full of idols, which revolted a worshiper of the true God like Paul (Acts 17:16). This drove Paul to preach there. But Athenians did not license just anyone to teach “philosophies” in their city, so they brought Paul before the Areopagus, the leading court of the city (17:19), demanding to know about his “strange deities” (17:18). Ancient readers who knew how Athens got its philosophic reputation would remember that Socrates was earlier brought before this same court—and that he was condemned to death on the charge of sacrilegiously denying Athens’ deities.

But Paul had seen altars of unknown gods around Athens. Centuries earlier, the Athenians had sacrificed to all their deities to stop a plague, yet the plague had continued. Finally they sacrificed to whatever unknown deity may have sent judgment against them, and the plague stopped. God had prepared Athens for his gospel, and Paul preached to them about the God unknown to them.

He began with a respectful address (Acts 17:22), as was standard, and quoted their own poets (Acts 17:28). He identified with their culture as much as possible so that the only stumbling block, if there was one, would be the stumbling block of the cross. Stoic and Epicurean philosophers comprised some of his audience (Acts 17:18), but the Christian worldview had very limited agreement with Epicureans (except that the divine was transcendent). Stoics were different; at many points, Paul could teach biblical ideas that the Stoics also related to. Stoics agreed that God is not limited to temples (17:24), needs nothing (17:25), created people (17:26-29), and so forth. When we share Christ with others, it is helpful to build on what insights they already have correct.

But Paul did not stop there. He was not simply “dialoguing” to let the Stoics know that he was a good philosopher whom they should welcome. At some points the gospel may agree with values in our culture, but at other points it challenges them. Philosophers knew about “conversion” to philosophy, but Paul summons them to turn to the one true God (17:30). Epicureans denied life after death; Stoics affirmed the soul’s immortality but could not conceive of bodily resurrection, and also believed that history was cyclical, with no final judgment. Yet Paul preaches a final day of judgment, which God proved in advance by raising Jesus from the dead (17:31).

In a sense, Paul may “divide and conquer” his audience, as he did later with the Pharisees and Sadducees (Acts 23:6-9). He had limited common ground with the Epicureans, but had at least some with the Stoics (17:18). Yet the culture’s assumptions were so different that even these intellectual conversation partners did not understand his message fully. Some wrongly thought he was preaching “strange deities”—plural—namely, Jesus and Resurrection (Acts 17:18; “Anastasis,” or “Resurrection,” was also a woman’s name in Greek!) Paul had to clarify that he announced one true God who had resurrected Jesus. When he finished, some scoffed (probably especially Epicureans), but others listened and, most importantly, some believed (Acts 17:32-34). It was a start, and eventually the Christian message spread throughout Greece.

Like Jesus and Paul, we should not avoid those outside the faith. We should labor to explain Jesus to them in terms they understand, yet without compromising the gospel’s truth. Whether we are bridging gaps with unchurched youth using some of the saner rap lyrics, secular thinkers with the best of their ethics, immigrants with genuine respect for their culture, and so on, we need to try to relate the good news of hope to people in their own language, lovingly yet unashamedly. Usually that means that we must learn to understand their culture first (as Paul must have done long before Acts 17), which comes through sensitive and caring relationships. It also means that we must labor to understand and faithfully articulate Christ’s work without compromise.

Craig Keener is author of a four-volume commentary on Acts. This post is adapted from a much earlier article in the Missionary Seer.

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The discouraged prophet—Matthew 11:2-6

Have you ever faced discouragement in doing God’s work? John the Baptist had reason to feel dejected (Matt 11:2-3; see also Luke 7:18-20). Jesus had just warned his disciples about coming persecution for their mission (10:16-39), yet promised that whoever received them would receive Jesus (10:40-42). John, however, had already been rejected by those with power.

Now imprisoned, John recognized that he might never again see freedom. What would become of his calling? Was he not called to prepare the way for the coming one (3:3, 11)? He had recognized Jesus as the promised one, who would baptize in the Spirit and in fire (3:11); he even wanted Jesus to baptize him, presumably in the Spirit (3:14). (In the context of John’s announcement, baptism in fire plainly referred to judgment—3:10-12.) But now he was hearing reports about Jesus (11:2), and there was no evident baptism in the Spirit and certainly no fire.

John now had doubts. Was Jesus the coming one or another forerunner? Either way, John trusted Jesus to tell him the truth. Jesus was a true prophet; John was only unsure whether he was the baptizer in the Spirit and fire that John himself had announced. So John sends some of his disciples to ask Jesus openly.

At this point in Jesus’s ministry, it remained more discreet for Jesus not to specify his full identity publicly; nevertheless, he manages to communicate the idea indirectly for John. After the messengers have witnessed Jesus’s works, he sends them back with a summary of the works. The first noted works are the blind receiving sight and the disabled walking (11:5).

These first two works probably echo Isaiah 35:5-6, which belongs to promises of God’s future kingdom. Jesus’s works thus are demonstrations of God’s kingdom, or reign. The context of these signs in Isaiah includes the restoration of creation (Isa 35:1-2). Jesus’s present healings, although not universal, foreshadow a day when the Lord will renew creation, providing full healing for us and for the physical earth. Likewise, as we honor Jesus by carrying on his works, caring for people and even for the natural world, these works foreshadow the fuller deliverance to come.

Whether it was Jesus doing the works or us doing the works in his name, the works announce Jesus’s identity. Jesus is the one who inaugurated these works of the kingdom. Isaiah spoke of these works happening when God would come (Isa 35:4), just as John had announced that the one whose way he was preparing was divine—since only God could pour out God’s Spirit (Matt 3:11).

In the last line of Matthew 11:5, Jesus also echoes Isaiah 61:1, referring to the mission of God’s servant to bring good news to the poor. Caring for the poor, like caring for the blind and disabled just mentioned, was not the way people in Galilee, Judea, or elsewhere in the Roman Empire sought power. The ambitious gathered wealth and cultivated the favor of members of the elite; in Judea Jesus could have appealed to Pharisees, scribes, and especially Sadducees. Instead Jesus follows only the Father’s mission, depending on the Father’s power. Jesus embraces the lowly and the outsiders, those who are willing to receive the kingdom with the same attitude of dependence as children (Matt 18:3-4). It is the meek who will inherit the earth (5:5), and Jesus himself is meek (11:29).

After hinting about his identity to John through these biblical allusions, Jesus offers a blessing for whoever does not stumble on account of him (11:6). The stumbling block of Jesus’s limited ministry prefigured the fuller stumbling block of the cross (cf. 1 Cor 1:23; Gal 5:11). Humility, servanthood and sacrificial death are not what the world honors or what makes sense to the world, but God’s servants are not ashamed of the cross (Romans 1:16).

We may be tempted to condemn John’s doubts and struggles, but Jesus affirmed John. After the messengers left, Jesus began to praise him behind his back (Matt 11:7-10). Prophets such as Elijah and Jeremiah struggled with their callings (1 Kgs 19:4; Jer 20:14-18); David nearly snapped under pressure (2 Sam 25:33-34), and in his ministry Paul experienced fear and anguish (2 Cor 7:5; 11:28-29). Later in this Gospel, Jesus himself expressed feelings of despair: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Matt 27:46). Of course, Jesus knew that the words he was praying were from a psalm that ended on a note of victory (Ps 22), but that does not diminish the agony he experienced at that moment.

If you have ever experienced discouragement in doing God’s work, this was also true of God’s servants before you. God was faithful to them, however, and God will be faithful to you. Be faithful to what you are called to do, and God will see to it that what you are really called to do is fulfilled. We each have our part to play, and the Lord may praise our work afterward, as he did with John (cf. Matt 25:21, 23). But the kingdom is not about us–it is about Jesus. We can have courage, because Jesus the kingdom-bringer has already inaugurated his victory. Unlike John, we know how that story ends.

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MacArthur’s Strange Fire

[Note: As a rule, Dr. Keener does not review books on this site (even his own). The site also does not usually address the sorts of issues addressed here. Nevertheless, Dr Keener is making a single exception in this case due to the very public nature of the challenge.]

While offering some very needed points, John MacArthur’s Strange Fire unfortunately extrapolates from those points to an entire “movement.” As I note below, I also believe that MacArthur suppresses some biblical truth on the basis of a postbiblical doctrine, the very offense with which he charges others.

Nevertheless, there is much to be learned from his criticisms; he has brought again to our attention some serious errors that charismatic churches must be on their guard against. I start with some agreeable points in the book and then move to points where I believe MacArthur has clearly overstepped the bounds of reason and Christian civility; there my tone cannot be as conciliatory. (All pagination in this review refers to the uncorrected page proofs that I received shortly before the book’s publication.)

Read the rest of the review at:
http://pneumareview.com/john-macarthurs-strange-fire-reviewed-by-craig-s-keener/

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The Bible and rape

Steve and Celestia Tracy travel from the U.S. each year to provide ministry to women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo who have endured rape and sometimes sexual mutilation at the hands of militias there. Some of these women were young girls; some were mothers violated in front of their own children. The heartbreak that Steve and Celestia report is overwhelming, but they endure malaria and other hardships because the need for counseling and healing is so great.

Democratic Republic of Congo has one of the world’s highest reported rates of rape; one study in 2011 even suggests 400,000 rapes occurring there per year, or more than 45 per hour. According to this study, about 12 percent of the women in Congo have been raped by outsiders; 22.5 percent suffered sexual violence from partners. Although rape is more common in the war-torn east, it is reportedly common throughout the country; although the majority of victims are female, males are also sexually assaulted. Fearing HIV, a number of husbands have abandoned their wives when the wives were violated by soldiers.

Not only in Congo, but elsewhere in the world many, especially women and children, suffer traumatic sexual abuse, sometimes at the hands of those closest to them (for example, in the case of children suffering incest). Although the proportion is lower than in Congo, rape happens often in the United States as well.

It is important for victims of these crimes not to be left to feel alone; most of all they need to be reminded that God is on their side. What they have suffered is not their fault. God is near the broken but far from the proud.

Although God is on the side of the rape victim, some rape victims have been made to feel the opposite. Nearly two decades ago, when I was a fairly new seminary teacher, a student told me about a teenager in her congregation who had been gang-raped. Aside from the trauma of physical and psychological violation, this young woman had been saving herself for marriage and felt devastated morally. At the time, we were studying in class the story of Amnon’s rape of Tamar, and my student went back to assure the young woman that she remained a moral virgin in God’s sight.

That the Bible sets a high standard for sexual purity should motivate the Bible’s readers to take sexual violence all the more seriously—and to leave the blame only with the responsble party.

The Bible offers a few examples of rape, always portraying it as a horrendous crime. In 2 Samuel, David’s sin unleashed suffering on his household, beginning with Amnon’s rape of his half-sister, after which he despised her (2 Sam 13:1-17). Tamar so lamented her virginity that she never married (13:18-19), though as a king’s daughter she would have retained many suitors. Tamar’s brother Absalom avenged her by killing Amnon; while Absalom went too far (and may have had additional motives: his older brother Amnon stood one step closer to the throne than Absalom was), the narrative portrays graphically the devastation of rape.

Earlier, Dinah’s brothers had avenged her rape by killing the rapist and (to avoid retaliation) all the men in his community (Gen 34:1-31). Again, this went too far (see Gen 49:5-7), but it illustrates how seriously siblings took the responsibility to provide their sisters protection from sexual predators.

Jesus tells us that Israelite law fell short of God’s eternal ideals (Mark 10:5); those laws nevertheless at least limited some abuses for ancient Israelite society. In Israel, if a man violated a virgin, and her family refused marriage, the man had to pay a dowry equal to that of virgins (Exod 22:17). This helped to provide for her future marriage to someone else (in a society where most men preferred to marry virgins) and helped to restore some of her honor. Because she had not invited what happened to her, she remained a moral virgin. Likewise, if one could not know either way whether the woman was forced or not, she was to be given the benefit of the doubt and the case treated as rape (Deut 22:25-27). There are many elements of Israelite law that we would view as inadequate for us today, but at the least this principle may be safely inferred from it: a person who is raped is recognized as a terribly violated, innocent victim who deserves protection and support.

The good news of Christ liberates from sin. But Christ is also good news to those who have been sinned against, because Jesus suffered not only for us but with us. When he was unjustly executed, his death pronounced judgment on the miscarriages of justice and the oppression of the innocent in this world. To those who have been wounded against their will, he reminds you: It was not your fault. His own nail-pierced hands offer healing and new life.

Craig Keener is author of Paul, Women & Wives: Marriage and Women’s Ministry in the Letters of Paul, and an article, from which this post is adapted, in the Missionary Seer. With his wife Médine, who is from the smaller Congo, he coauthored a pamphlet on this subject used among rape victims in Francophone Africa.