Posts from — August 2009

Part I of this series demonstrated that the genocidal God objection (GGO) is an emotional reaction to the biblical text, not a logical objection leveled at the God of the Bible. Part II demonstrated that God’s actions with regard to the GGO were in actuality full measures of grace and mercy on His part, as His actions always are.

Part III intends to forward an idea relating to the GGO discovered at William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith site. WLC is one of the premier Christian philosophers alive today and Reasonable Faith is an easily accessible, excellent resource for Christians of all stripes. In fact, for you free willies out there, be sure to check out Molinism while you’re visiting. It just may be the best theological position for those of you of a semi-pelagian bent. Better yet, check out the Scriptures for the reformed view…

At any rate, the GGO, as it turns out, is not only not a logical objection, it’s not an objection aimed at the existence of God, the truth of Jesus Christ, or the resurrection. Stunningly, even if correct, the GGO succeeds only in refuting a certain Christian doctrine: the inerrancy of Scripture. If it were true, and in no sense do I grant that it is, the GGO would only demonstrate that Moses–or if the inerrancy of Scripture is false, perhaps several redacted sources–was incorrect in his assessment of the nature of God as it relates to the conquest of Canaan.

That’s it.

Nothing more is demonstrated by the GGO. It does not question the existence of God. It does not provide any rationale for believing the resurrection is not an historical fact. It does not question any major doctrine of Christianity, except biblical inerrancy. This is an outright startling conclusion…thanks, WLC. Lastly, and most importantly, because of this, even if true, the GGO in every real sense imaginable provides absolutely no support or rationale for rejecting Jesus Christ or the God of the Bible.

To be clear, the Bible is, in fact, inerrant in the best estimation of The Areopagus. GGO Part IV to come…

It seems that the internet accusations continue unabated: one must be irrational to believe that God could be justified in ordering the Israelite’s conquest of Canaan. Justified, rational, and warranted Christian believers must marvel at the lack of justification offered for this claim. Apparently, the accusers feel the allegations are self-evidently true, given that justification for the claim is rarely, if ever, attached.

Nevertheless, part I of this series demonstrated that, logically, God was not unjust for His role in the conquest of Canaan. Not only was God found true and every man a liar, but it appears to me that resting in the foregoing conclusion alone is itself misleading, and perhaps misrepresentative of the God of Scripture’s character, for God’s act of ordering the conquest of Canaan is in actuality a full measure of grace and lovingness on His part.

The God of the Bible is not a testamental Sybil. He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, which necessarily entails both testaments of Scripture. How, then, are we to think of this Old Testament God who orders the wholesale destruction of sinners? And make no mistake, it’s wholesale destruction. The Canaan episodes are but first-reader accounts of judgment when balanced against the worldwide flood of Noah. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

Scita > Scienda’s continuing series is a virtual catalogue of God’s grace in light of the conquests and the historical background in which they occurred. It comes highly recommended with the certified Areopagus seal of approval, and no Christian or skeptic should maintain an opinion on the subject without studying it or something very similar.

To grace then. It’s sometimes omitted that god was longsuffering in His ultimate judgment of the Canaanites. Centuries prior to Israel’s conquest, the lord spoke to Abraham:

Then the Lord said to him, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sins of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure. Gen 15:13-16

The text is clear that God postponed the destruction of the Canaanites for roughly four hundred years, until the sins of the Amorites reached its full measure. By any definition, that’s longsuffering.

Now, the Canaanites did in fact reach their full measure of sin. Theirs was a horridly depraved and sinful culture, even to the offering of their children in the fire. Incidentally, am I the only one who detects the irony of the skeptics’ concern for children here? At any rate, we would not criticize modern military action to prevent such atrocity, have engaged in it justifiably in the past, and probably could do so as we speak in places such as Darfur. Nonetheless, these types of actions are considered acts of mercy, no less on God’s part as ours—actually, infinitely more, given that He is altogether holy.

But that’s not the full measure of God’s grace in this matter. The full measure is theological. What is it exactly that happens to children when they die, according to Christianity? The church is split with regard to this question, but either way a genuine picture of God’s grace emerges. Clearly, if there is an age of accountability, Canaanite children under this age were translated directly to heaven upon death. Presumably, this would not be their fate had they lived. How are we to not recognize the grace of God in the lives of these Canaanite children? Moreover, the women who survived the bloodshed were ushered directly into God’s earthly kingdom. At times, grace is cloaked in trauma.

If the age of accountability is not a deliverance of Scripture, then the Canaanite children slaughtered would receive the same fate as their unregenerate parents. How are we to recognize grace in this outcome? The answer is sought and found in the doctrines of heaven and hell. Since I should develop properly Christian doctrines of heaven and hell here before discussing them deeply, let me just say this: hell is worse for some than it is for others as any punishment in hell is meted in exacting and precise commensuration with the sin debt owed: no more, no less. For the unregenerate Canaanite falling by the Israeli sword, the forfeiture of years of actual and accountable sin by virtue of this judgment is a direct act of God’s common grace whereby He limits the sin debt owed by those who perished. In the case of the children, supposing there’s no age of accountability, this measure of grace is astounding on the part of God.

Perhaps our humanistic culture has influenced us to think that this life is all there is, and any disruption of unfettered pleasure on this earth is an evil. Or, in the case of Christians, this life is somehow the truer, more important life that must be prolonged at all costs. Perhaps North American and European prosperity has blinded us to the true evils on this planet. In this, we value this life above all else and, in so doing, deny the very God that created us for an eternity with Him. How sin persuades us to exchange the substitute for the genuine article, the schlock novel for a Crime and Punishment, this fleeting realm of degradation and becoming for the realm of never-ending heavenly lights—and we do so all along cursing a holy God openly for acting justly. It’s as if we’re cursing the rehabilitation doctor that denies us our heroin. The church needs an Amos.

But the Bible screams that this life is not the sum total of existence: I consider that our present sufferings are not worthy with the glory that will be revealed in us. Rom 8:18. Does any Christian truly think those Canaanite children are presently accusing God of injustice? Or, rather, are they endlessly and eternally expressing their gratitude to Him for the Israelite conquest of Canaan, where God sovereignly chose to intrude into their lives and sever them from their life in bondage to sin? If you listen closely, you might hear them joining in with that celestial choir, worshipping Him in the glorious, great beyond for his inexplicably wonderful grace, singing:

Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty…

This post over at Scita > Scienda has me thinking of CS Lewis. How one pleasant morning, John was spurred to a Pilgrim’s Regress by an otherworldly musical call– a call that embodied his deepest, innermost desires. John soon discovered that while the world mimics this calls in various, multifaceted ways, it never fulfills them. Lewis henceforth postulated that we all have these unfilled desires, and that nature would not plant within us a desire that could not be satisfied. After all, how could it, naturally. Thus, the desire must derive from regions beyond, perhaps that great undiscovered country in which we must all ultimately find ourselves.

As a supplicant of the pentatonic minor, that bane of piano players throughout history, this intuition on the part of Lewis rings true.  Sure, we can scientifically explain the tonal qualities of sound, how the sound waves travel through space, how our inner ears receive the signal, process it, and transmit the signal to the brain. We can also describe wholly in terms of natural causation how the brain chemically and electrically interprets the signal and presents it to our minds. Alas, equations and engineering diagrams are not music, however.

To lapse into philosophy, music seems to present us with qualia. But even then, lapsing into philosophy does not seem to do our perception justice. There’s just nothing quite like the sensation produced by bending a G-string at the fifth fret. Ah yes, bending–another bane of piano players throughout the ages. Pianists of the world unite, though your keytars will not save you! There’s also nothing quite like power chords, the mixolydian, phrygian, for the minoric among us, 80′s glam band hair (huh?), or turning amps to 11, not to mention a thousand other deliverances of music. Pick the one that does it for you.

Philosophy, science, technology, engineering…they explain the physical, but not the experience. The experience of music, the way it feels to you, the way it moves you, the magic that is in your mind: that’s the real thing…the thing that somehow transcends the physical strike of the string and the sound wave it produces. We allow the skeptic to tell us it’s the sound wave that’s real, the rest is merely human, when all along we know it’s somehow more than that. Firsthand.

So we find ourselves again at that mystical crossroad where we are forced to choose a path if we wish to move forward. It’s a junction of the physical and the mystical, the natural and the supernatural, the mind and the body. Some of us will choose to turn and follow the austere path of the naturalist: a path paved with matter alone, where the sounds of joy are melded into ultimate nothingness. Others will choose a different path: one where the sounds of joy are somehow more real than the road of matter that brings them to us.

Choose the second road. it’s not a dead end, and the further you walk along, the clearer the sounds of joy become, for you are nearing their source.

Then I looked  and heard the voices of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they sang:

Worthy is the lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!”

Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them singing:

To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power for ever and ever!”

I recall passing a note to a friend when I was in fifth grade. The words of the text focused on a girl named Lisa who was upset by something or other that my friend had done to her. I don’t remember the specific cause of Lisa’s hurt emotions. What I do remember were these words of mine about Lisa in that note: “She’s so sensitive.”

In my mind, I was simply analyzing her reaction and comforting my friend who had caused the hurt. In God’s correct view, however, I was gossiping.

Aren’t we adept at defining our actions as different from what they really are? As different from how God sees them?

For women, we too often fail when it comes to gossip. We then misappropriate our actions for several reasons.

On the fringes

Curiosity. What a pleasant word to cloak what curiosity often really is: nosiness. For some reason, we want to know what’s going on. We want to be in the know.

Some women possess enough self-control to walk away after hearing juicy nuggets without contributing to the gossip. They believe that they’ve done no wrong since they’ve controlled their tongues. The words they hear do not always disappear, though.

7 A fool’s mouth is his ruin,

   and his lips are a snare to his soul.

8 The words of a whisperer are like delicious morsels;

   they go down into the inner parts of the body.  (Proverbs 18)

Ever eaten something loaded with sugar and/or fat? That large bowl of queso or an extra hefty slice of German Chocolate Cake? Those treats satisfy the taste buds as we consume them, but afterwards they frequently consume us, producing results such as stomachaches, weight gain, binger’s remorse, and even for some the occasional diabetic coma. Curiosity about someone else’s drama functions in the same manner. It enters the ears like a delicious, savory pizza, but then settles in our bellies. It establishes in us the foundation for potential future sin.

Like our food diets, it’s best to control what we intake rather than work afterward to remove the unwanted effects.

But there’s the problem. Unless we exercise our faith consciously upfront, we want to hear the latest news. It’s in our pre-Christ nature to desire it. Worse yet, we give approval to gossip when we listen to it.

28And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.  (Romans 1)

Knee Deep in the “Pick-a-little Talk-a-little”

Women talk. Women connect with each other through communication. It’s how we’re wired, even introverts like me. Given that, we should approach our communication with each other with obedience to God’s commands as our primary aim. We’re commanded to love God first above all else, even before loving others.

Caring

Many women believe that they don’t exhibit a caring nature if they fail to lend an ear to a friend in need of counsel. I agree, yet it behooves us greatly to venture into that counsel with trepidation and caution. Some guiding questions:

• Is our friend authentically struggling or is she gossiping about someone else?
• Are we close enough with this friend that our relationship necessitates that we know our friend’s current trial?
• How deep into the details of the struggle do we actually need to plumb?
• Do we see the outcome of the counsel as leading to healing and closure or does the chat time encourage emotional reactions and intensify/prolong the situation?

At times, caring requires that we shun opportunities to fuel the gossip. At times, our sisters need to hear that we cannot discuss this or that because we want to honor God’s command to not gossip.

5 Better is open rebuke

   than hidden love.

6 Faithful are the wounds of a friend;

   profuse are the kisses of an enemy.

7One who is full loathes honey,

   but to one who is hungry everything bitter is sweet.  (Proverbs 27)

When we concern ourselves with God’s will and feed ourselves with his word and presence, we will not satisfy the flesh. Gossip will not taste sweet to our ears.

Fitting in

Most of us want to belong, to go where everybody knows our name, to know that we possess a group or place in which we feel secure and accepted. Once we’re comfortable, it can be all too easy to succumb to participating in chatter that dishonors God, disrespects our brothers and sisters, and stirs up unnecessary and meddlesome conflict. Proverbs and the Psalms abundantly reveal these truths to us.

17Whoever meddles in a quarrel not his own

   is like one who takes a passing dog by the ears.

18Like a madman who throws firebrands, arrows, and death 19is the man who deceives his neighbor

   and says, “I am only joking!”

20For lack of wood the fire goes out,

   and where there is no whisperer, quarreling ceases.

21As charcoal to hot embers and wood to fire,

   so is a quarrelsome man for kindling strife.

22 The words of a whisperer are like delicious morsels;

   they go down into the inner parts of the body.

23 Like the glaze covering an earthen vessel

   are fervent lips with an evil heart.  (Proverbs 26)

1O LORD, who shall sojourn in your tent?

   Who shall dwell on your holy hill?

 2He who walks blamelessly and does what is right

   and speaks truth in his heart;

3who does not slander with his tongue

   and does no evil to his neighbor,

   nor takes up a reproach against his friend;

4 in whose eyes a vile person is despised,

   but who honors those who fear the LORD;

who swears to his own hurt and does not change; 5who does not put out his money at interest

   and does not take a bribe against the innocent.

He who does these things shall never be moved.  (Psalm 15)

11 Come, O children, listen to me;

    I will teach you the fear of the LORD.

12 What man is there who desires life

   and loves many days, that he may see good?

13 Keep your tongue from evil

   and your lips from speaking deceit.

14 Turn away from evil and do good;

   seek peace and pursue it.  (Psalm 34)

30The mouth of the righteous utters wisdom,

   and his tongue speaks justice.

31 The law of his God is in his heart;

   his steps do not slip.  (Psalm 37)

19″You give your mouth free rein for evil,

    and your tongue frames deceit.

20You sit and speak against your brother;

   you slander your own mother’s son.  (Psalm 50)

13Whoever goes about slandering reveals secrets,

   but he who is trustworthy in spirit keeps a thing covered.  (Proverbs 11)

28 A dishonest man spreads strife,

   and a whisperer separates close friends. (Proverbs 16)

Read Proverbs 18 and you’ll notice it repeatedly speaks of the fool and his lips.

Additionally, we’re told to choose our friends carefully:

19Whoever goes about slandering reveals secrets;

   therefore do not associate with a simple babbler.  (Proverbs 20)

17Iron sharpens iron,

   and one man sharpens another. (Proverbs 27)

The wisdom of the Proverbs should guide our daily choices and behavior, not only with the brethren but also in the marketplace. Should our coworkers with vitriolic tongues diminish our joy and commitment to following God’s command to do everything for God’s glory? Aren’t we called to be light in the darkness? Aren’t we to live such good lives that the pagans see our good deeds and glorify God?

The Antidote

God, of course.

He will uphold and strengthen us. He will lead us in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. He will work within us to conform us to his perfect and pleasing will.

Mary and Martha return to my mind yet again. Martha complained about Mary, and Jesus explained that Mary had chosen the best option: being at the foot of our Lord, listening and learning.

Focus on God. Learn from him. Trust him. Follow his ways. He will mold and improve us, revealing to us the motives of our hearts and also our errors.

23Search me, O God, and know my heart!

   Try me and know my thoughts!

24And see if there be any grievous way in me,

   and lead me in the way everlasting!  (Psalm 139)

James said that we cannot tame the tongue, but we can control the situations in which we place ourselves. We can walk out of a room. We can lovingly refrain from participating in conversations that border on slander. We can do all things through him who gives us strength.

Back to Lisa. She found the note that I had written. My best of intentions increased Lisa’s pain. How’s that for caring?