The Bible misused as a dictionary, Faith still needs evidence

Today let us explore some more of the irrationality that propagates itself contentedly in the Adventist church. Keeping with last weeks article let us again examine a statement made by Preston Foster on Adventist Today website:

What I am positing is that 1) spirituality is, by nature, irrational as it is based on faith which is, by definition, "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (that definition, alone, would repel the traditional rational thinker) and, 2) based on our limited ability to comprehend God, whose thoughts and ways, by His own admission, are different than ours is.

How many times have we heard this statement, as if the author of the book of Hebrews was actually trying to define the meaning of faith, as if his intent was to give us the once and for all time meaning of faith even though he had used it before and it had been used many times in the Old Testament and the Jewish religion. After all those using this statement will say that they are only letting the Bible define itself as if the simple common words needed to be defined by the Bible as if it was not only a compilation of books but also a dictionary. Think about that for a moment should I use that technique if I said to someone “I love you” and I used the Bible as a dictionary I could quote “God is love” (1 John 4:8) therefore my statement is now “I God you”. Oh we can work it out in a round about way, we can say God loves and because God loves we are able to love. But still the definition of love is not found in the word God, even less so if I don't capitalize god and I realize that there are many different beliefs about god and gods, after all, not all gods are that terribly loving are they? We can't just substitute one word for another because some place it was equated in a statement where “is” is used. “God God's you” it may be true but what does it mean. So are we really being wise to use Hebrews statement as the definition of faith. Let us look at the text in question with the surrounding context, because after all context gives meaning because we are rational:

^{HEB 10:37} For in just a very little while, "He who is coming will come and will not delay.

^{HEB 10:38} But my righteous one ⁿ will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him." ⁿ

^{HEB 10:39} But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved.

^{HEB 11:1} Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

^{HEB 11:2} This is what the ancients were commended for.

^{HEB 11:3} By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

^{HEB 11:4} By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead.

The purpose here is not to define faith as some kind of irrational thought that just gets into our head and we believe it even though we don't see any evidence of it. Faith is not even meant here to mean just because a person is sure of something and hope that their certainty is true that it is in fact true in all things one maybe sure of, rather that faith in Christ is something He is sure of and encourages other to be sure of. As the Expositor's Bible Commentary says:

The chapter begins with some general observations on the nature of faith. They do not constitute a formal definition; rather, the writer is calling attention to some significant features of faith. Then he proceeds to show how faith works out in practice.

1 In the Greek the verb "is" (estin) is the first word. Faith is a present and continuing reality. It is not simply a virtue sometimes practiced in antiquity. It is a living thing, a way of life the writer wishes to see continued in the practice of his readers. Faith, he tells us, is a hypostasis of things hoped for. The term has evoked lively discussion. Sometimes it has a subjective meaning, as in 3:14 where NIV translates it as "confidence." But it may also be used more objectively, and KJV understands it that way in this passage by translating it as "substance." This would mean that things that have no reality in themselves are made real (given "substance") by faith. But this does not seem to be what the writer is saying. Rather, his meaning is that there are realities for which we have no material evidence though they are not the less real for that. Faith enables us to know that they exist and, while we have no certainty apart from faith, faith does give us genuine certainty. "To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for" (TEV). Faith is the basis, the substructure (hypostasis means lit. "that which stands under") of all that the Christian life means, all that the Christian hopes for.

Faith in the Bible is developed, it is practiced it is lived and thus Hebrews chapter 11 recounts several instances of faith. Not one of them simply based upon some irrational concept. God warns Noah and Noah builds and Ark, Abraham is called by God and goes to a foreign country, Abraham and Sarah have a child which they are promised by God. Now we may not know in all the cases how they received their messages from God but it does appear that it is not meant to convey the idea that their spirituality was based upon some form of irrationality. Instead they were trusting the one that communicated to them. The implication being that their lives included enough reason to come to the place where they could trust God rather then just following an irrational voice in their head. Think of the story of Israel's exodus from Egypt. Moses comes to Pharaoh and tells them what God wants. Pharaoh says who is this god and why should I do what he says and then evidence is provided. Pharaoh needed a rational reason to give up what was to him, his property.

We don't ever want to get to the position of faith without reason. There has to be a reason, there has to be some kind of evidence to create the faith. As Paul once wrote:

^{1CO 15:14} And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.

Faith that is not backed by evidence is usually useless. Irrational preaching and faith is useless if there is not reality to move the irrational into the realm of the rational. The problem is that today there are certain people of a fundamentalist perspective who despise logic and reason because reason dictates against certain of their beliefs. Their beliefs having become sacred truth because they hold them tight because they are traditions. When reality conflicts with their beliefs instead of re-evaluating their beliefs they reject reality in favor of their traditions and as in the above quote redefine Biblical material to support their traditional views. Growth however comes from changing, discarding things that don't fit reality and adapting to new systems of thought that function with reality. It is not perfect as you don't arrive at truth instantly it is a constant movement toward greater understanding. Not every theory will work out and when they don't they must be discarded, keeping the theory just because it has become your tradition insures that you won't ever change or grow. This failure to grow is so often the landmark of religion, it becomes why Fundamentalists whether Christian or Islamic fight against modernity. Because modernity and even post modernity refuse to simply accept tradition without evidence.

So we have to move past the irrational toward rational views in all things, and God is not irrational the very process of progressive revelation of the Bible indicates that God understands the need to grow and change and step by step lead people in a rational way while maintaining the necessary distinction between the natural and the supernatural. Which requires us to reason not only why miracles occur but why they don't occur. How best can we understand a God whose capabilities so outweigh our capabilities and the distinction between force and willing trust. It is unlikely that we can fully understand God but to end the rational pursuit of God is a fulfillment of the old commercial that said “a mind is a terribly thing to waste”. We can never get to the point as someone once claimed a church authority said regarding the Godhead and The Plan of Salvation :

“to wit: if we try to understand it, we will lose our minds; but if we don’t believe it, we will lose our souls.”

Adventist Mission Statement Gospel Restricted to SDA Doctrines

You have probably noticed that I am not putting up blog posts as often as I used to. Part of this is a reflection of the deep disappointment I feel in Adventism. See Addendum below for some examples.

One of the recent article on Adventist Today's website is entitled Have We Lost Sight of Our Mission? By Preston Foster. I will sum up the article by using some of the comments after the article. In response to a comment by John McClarty (in red) where he quotes Preston's original article (in bold) Preston explains his intent.

I'm not saying that our message isn't Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.  It is.  I'm not saying that the most important thing that anyone could ever discover isn't the love of Christ and the gift of salvation thru His sacrifice.  It is.

But those fundamental truths are not our mission."

Do you really mean to argue that our mission and message are separate from "the most important thing that anyone could ever discover"? Our mission is to help people discover the  second most important thing? The third most important thing?

Yes, that is exactly what I am positing.  The point is to differentiate between our message as Christians and our mission as a denomination.  Our message, like that of all Christian churches is Christ, and Him crucified.  That is the most important thing that any Christian can communicate to another human.  However, that is not the reason that this denomination exists.

(skip one paragraph)

As, perhaps, some of our brethren of other denominations were given light to see was was written about grace, we Adventists have been given a mission in regard to what has been written in Scripture about the Sabbath and its connection to identifying truth in the last days before the Second Advent.  Delivering that message is, in my view, the mission of this denomination, in the context of the body of Christ.

The problem here is not only with Preston's view of things. It is in fact the problem with the Adventist church that we create our doctrines as the official interpreter of the gospel. Let me explain the reason I say that lest I simply make unsupportable statements like the bloggers I have mentioned in the addendum. Adventists have a mission statement that is very peculiar. Until I was spurred by Preston's blog to examine our mission statement I did not realize the cryptic nature of our statement. The Adventist mission statement reads:

Our Mission

The mission of the Seventh-day Adventist Church is to make disciples of all people, communicating the everlasting gospel in the context of the three angels' messages of Revelation 14:6-12, leading them to accept Jesus as personal Savior and unite with His remnant Church, discipling them to serve Him as Lord and preparing them for His soon return. http://adventist.org/beliefs/statements/main-stat1.html

Our mission statement which is given by the leaders to inform the organization how to carry out their mission includes the code language of Adventism namely the three angels' messages. If you read Revelation 14 you will not understand how it explains the everlasting gospel. It does not provide the context of the everlasting gospel. For that you would be better off reading the context of the Gospels, or even Paul then Revelation 14. But the three angels messages is code language for the distinctive Adventist doctrines. Even Wikipedia understands the code method of using the three angels' message to mean the SDA church. As their article quotes the SDA church manual:

"In accordance with God’s uniform dealing with mankind, warning them of coming events that will vitally affect their destiny, He has sent forth a proclamation of the approaching return of Christ. This preparatory message is symbolized by the three angels’ messages of Revelation 14, and meets its fulfillment in the great Second Advent Movement today. This has brought forth the remnant, or Seventh-day Adventist Church, keeping the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus." Seventh-day Adventist Church Manual[2]

In short The Adventist church is the Remnant and it is her doctrines that the remnant must proclaim, the Adventist church sees itself in the book of Revelation and in Revelation 14 as being those who keep the commandments of God and have the Faith of Jesus. As Hans K. LaRondelle states in his article The Remnant and the Three Angels’ Messages

Three key teachings, each developed independently, merged into one message that began to characterize the movement of the Sabbatarian Adventists: Christ’s final ministry in the sanctuary, the Sabbath as a sign of obedience to God’s commandments, and the application of the phrase “testimony of Jesus” to a new manifestation of the prophetic gift through Ellen G. White (1827– 1915) in the “remnant” church (Rev. 12:17; 14:12; 19:10). These distinctive concepts began to be integrated into a unified body of belief during six Bible conferences held in the northeastern United States in 1848. The participants held in common a belief that in the post-1844 period all biblical truth had to be restored among God’s remnant people before the Second Advent would take place. They agreed on seven principal points, which came to be called the “landmarks” or fundamentals. These formed the “firm platform” of present truth on which the emerging Seventhday Adventist Church was built. Specifically, they were (1) the imminent Second Advent, (2) the continuous historical interpretation of the major time prophecies of Daniel and Revelation, (3) the conditional immortality of human beings, (4) Christ’s beginning of His final ministry in the heavenly sanctuary in 1844, (5) the seventh-day Sabbath, (6) the renewed manifestation of the Spirit of Prophecy, and (7) the historical fulfillment of the three angels’ messages of Revelation.

What this all allows is that our mission becomes less about the Gospel and more about Adventist Doctrinal interpretations, the gospel according to Adventist doctrines. We see how important this is in the mission statement if we omit the part about remnant and three angels. Removed the statement would look like this:

The mission of the Seventh-day Adventist Church is to make disciples of all people, communicating the everlasting gospel , leading them to accept Jesus as personal Savior and unite with His Church, discipling them to serve Him as Lord and preparing them for His soon return

That would be a pretty good mission statement. Who would have a problem with that? But of course that is not our mission statement. Remember the purpose of a mission statement is primarily internal, for the organization:

A Mission Statement defines the organization's purpose and primary objectives. Its prime function is internal – to define the key measure or measures of the organization's success – and its prime audience is the leadership team and stockholders.

This shows that the Adventist church goal is to define and spread a gospel of it's own particular formulation. Preston on February 17 commented the following on the blog:

The filter that separates those who, in the last days, are listening to (and obeying) the authentic voice of God are, per Revelation 14:12.  That is, those "keep the commandments of God" as given in Exodus 20, "and have the testimony of Jesus."  It seems many Christians, by definition, "have the testimony of Jesus."  The differentiator, for many, will be "keeping the commandments of God," as opposed to the traditions of men.  The seventh-day Sabbath is the point of differentiation between the two.

For now I will ignore the misuse of Exodus 20 as the meaning of commandments rather then the New Testament meaning of the instructions of God and the fact that really no one is keeping all the commandments of God individually or as a denomination. We see that Preston defines the gospel along narrow Adventist remnant theology. Which is what the mission statement requires.

It does make me wonder, with a mission statement so self centered how will the Adventist church ever actually present the gospel?


----
Addendum: Edited 9:21 Pacific Time
Adventism appears to very quickly be moving into such a narrow cult-like religion that it seems somewhat pointless to point out the foolishness that is afflicting the church from the top down. All one has to do is read the Adventist Today Blog and see they have installed various bloggers with so little sense that it is appalling. A couple of cases as examples. Originally I cited this section as a preamble to my above article, but they are really separate issues and the importance of the mission statement should be seen without the personally feeling I have regarding the quality of material from the Adventist Today bloggers.

Stephen Foster Adventist Today blogger in the comments section of Ervin Taylors Blog says:

However, regarding the Godhead and The Plan of Salvation, I will quote/paraphrase the great Dr. Calvin B. Rock,to wit: if we try to understand it,we will lose our minds; but if we don’t believe it,we will lose our souls.

Later he will say that “try to understand it” is the same as totally or fully comprehend it. It is the technique of arguing by changing the meaning of the words after he said them. You can read the conversation at the blog. It is considerably frustrating to deal with people that are that completely illogical. It is rather like the person who just peed on you leg telling you that the liquid is not from them and that it is good for you and the ground also but it was not pee and you simply cannot understand that they never peed at all. Most all of Stephen Foster's blogs are like that as well, another example is the first paragraph of his most recent blog:

Yes, it is the undeniable fact that the God of the Bible does set before us life and death, and never changes those options, that has forced those who don't like that type of God, or don't think that type of God is worthy of worship, to reinvent Him in their own image. This is what all the postmodern, emergent, cross-over-Christian psychobabble is largely about, no doubt.

As if that opening tells us anything of the kind; that if one does not accept that God sets before us life and death then everything from postmodern, emergent Christianity is reinventing God in people's image. You will not find him logically setting forth his reasoning in any of his blogs on the subject just his presuppositions as fact and they are not intelligent presuppositions or anything close to facts. But he is not alone in this type of writing style. In Cindy Tutch's article last month also supposedly on emergent churches her beginning sentence is as follows: 

In the Adventist sanctuary doctrine, which is unique to our movement, we find a visual merger of relationship (Christ our High Priest), ancient roots (the Judaic Sanctuary rituals) and a common history (unfolding dialogue between the people and God). Satan targets this highly symbolic yet relational motif because it is the very heart of God's will and instructions regarding redemption, mission, spirituality, and even worship.

You know doubt wonder how it is that Satan targets this highly symbolic yet relational motif? Well you can keep wondering because as with the old “Satan made me do it claim” the claim is all that is necessary because they can't show how Satan made them do it nor can Cindy say how Satan targets the Adventist sanctuary doctrine which is highly symbolic yet relational. If you are a critical thinking person you can probably see another problem there in something being called highly symbolic yet relational. You might like to see that little idea delved into a bit...well you will have to wait for that and I would not suggest you hold your breath to find out about that little theory.

Faith and Mystery vs. Certainity

I came upon the following quote from the speaker Brene Brown on her lecture “The power of vulnerability” at the TED website :

“The other thing we do is we make everything uncertain certain religion has gone from

faith and mystery to certainty, I'm right your wrong shut up that's it just certain...”

This is such an amazingly true statement yet so simply put that it becomes striking. This is so true of Fundamentalism and now becoming undeniable in Adventism. In a previous post I mentioned an Andrews Seminary student who I think is the perfect example of this. In Ervin Taylor's Blog entitled “Forward into the Past” we read this statement directed toward me:

“..It is also just funny how you and some others speak against the doctrines of the church and at the same time don't leave the church . People like you should be disfellowshiped , and given them a restraning order from our churches”... [please not I don't correct spelling or grammar when quoting blog comments]

I put that quote in because most who read the quote by Brene Brown will see the truth of the first part of the sentence but think that we don't actually have people saying shut up if you are not certain like them. Later on this seminary student who apparently is also already a Pastor from what he says, was more magnanimous, saying:

...”Ervin , Ron and Elaine , your problem is that you don't believe in the inspiration of scripture .As a Pastor , I wouldn't mind having you visit my church . I would just not baptize you or give you any privileges ( like preaching , or teaching a Sababth school class or leading in small groups ) So I believe there is place for everybody in the church , and I think that is what the church does to you , I don't think any of you teach or preach in the churches you attend but I am sure that people smile at you and invite you to stay after potluck . ELder Wilson say we should read more Ellen white , I thik she will answer your questions . read the chapter on creation and you will change your view .I am glad that God the remnant church the gift of prophecy and we have Ellen white who has been right on final events and every single area she wrote . Ellen is our modern day "Moses " who is going to take us to the promised land . If you don't want to be deceived by the Satan ,read her writings .”

Church is to be a place to be smiled at and maybe invited to a potluck just as long as you don't talk about what you think and are given no opportunity to express your beliefs or opinions or uncertainty. Shut up unless you believe like me seems to be the new Adventist Fundamentalism. Did you also notice that he would not even baptize those who don't believe like him. My statements here are not simply representative of this seminary student but upon the actual experiences I have in my local church and many churches I have visited. This seminary student is just a recent example who I have in writing so I don't have to rely on my memory of personal experiences.

Certainly about faith and ancient stories and ancient history is really not that wise. It leads to false acceptance of non facts to be facts. I have reason to believe the stories about Jesus Christ but that is based upon certain evidence but evidence is not completely solid which is why it has from the New Testament times been termed faith. But faith that becomes certainty is no longer faith and if that certainty is based upon the misuse of facts or the absence of facts then that certainty is hubris.

Religion as hubris is not attractive! Certainty becomes exclusiveness and rather then spreading the idea of love and acceptance with the humility to learn more, the “certain” church becomes accepting of those who believe like them, love is lost unless you believe as they do or at best a pipe dream talked about but not practices. Humility and learning become the qualities on the outside, they out there, study the natural world and they study mankind with it's many attributes, inside we have our beliefs and we are certain of them because Scriptures can only be interpreted as we on the inside interpret them. Those who are certain don't need to learn anything because it might go against their certainty, and humility becomes humility based upon the assumption that they have the truth, the certainty of their own view of the truth. As we look at history it is often those who are the most certain who are the most dangerous, you only have to look at certain segments of Islam to see that certainty in action and it deadly consequences.

A religion that has lost it's faith and mystery has lost it reason to exist.

May 21 Another End of the World

Well it is that time once again. Its the end of the world again. The great day of judgment just beats the hysterics of 2012 by several months because now the end of the world comes on May 21 2011. At least according to some acclaimed date setters...though not Seventh-day Adventists.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

PHILADELPHIA — Soon it will be spring again. The snow will melt, the dogwoods flower. Trumpets will blast, graves will open, and Earth will begin a five-month descent to its fiery end.
Radio evangelist Harold Camping can hardly wait.
May 21 is Judgment Day, when "this world will be a horror story beyond anything we can imagine," he asserts.
A fixture on Christian airwaves around the world, Camping, 89, is exhorting all who are listening to "make ready" for Jesus' triumphal return, whose precise date he says God has revealed to him with "fantastic proof" in the Bible.
End-of-timers generally have been fixated on the doomsday date of Dec. 21, 2012 — when the "Long Count" calendar of the ancient Maya ends and, presumably, the world with it.
There won't even be a 2012, according to Camping. His website displays the number with a red slash through it.

Some of you may recall Harold Camping from his earlier prediction of the end of the world in 1994. As the Philadelphia Inquirer article states:

 “In the late 1980s, he began warning the end would come in September 1994. When Gabriel's trumpet failed to sound, he revised his dates for several years before dropping the subject.”

Camping however did not  drop the subject. He and his associates have come up with this new date. If we look at one of their websites we see these remarkable facts about 1994 as they list some important dates of Christianity:

33 AD—The year Jesus Christ was crucified and the church age began (11,045 years from creation; 5023 calendar years from the flood).
1988 AD—This year ended the church age and began the great tribulation period of 23 years (13,000 years from creation).
1994 AD—On September 7^th, the first 2300-day period of the great tribulation came to an end and the latter rain began, commencing God’s plan to save a great multitude of people outside of the churches (13,006 years from creation).
2011 AD—On May 21^st, Judgment Day will begin and the rapture (the taking up into heaven of God’s elect people) will occur at the end of the 23-year great tribulation.  On October 21^st, the world will be destroyed by fire (7000 years from the flood; 13,023 years from creation).

Now a good SDA one might ask, from 33 AD to 1988 where is 538 AD, where is 1798 AD which is generated by adding 1260 to 538 however nothing special actually happened in 538, but still where is it and where is 1844, these are important dates in Adventist Eschatology Millerites and Adventists were the most prominent date setters in America.

Once you get past there not being the numbers you as an Adventist are familiar with notice that 1994 somehow became an important date. The 2300 day/year period ended not in 1844 as Adventist's teach but in 1994 and just like in 1844 nothing much changed that we could see, it is all sort of God's plan but does not have anything really to do with us. Except for those who predicted something would happen in 1844 or Harold Camping's 1994. Then it becomes an important date and maybe even critical. Why the new date for destruction by fire is so close to the old 1844 date of October 22 as to be scary if you ignore the 150 years anyway.

If you bother to look at the website to see how they made their calculations you see they are just as silly as those for 1844 but you know once people get an idea they really hang on to it even after the events foretold did not occur. Take for instance this remark made on the comments section of Atoday for January 20th by someone who claims to be a pastor and goes by the moniker Seminary Student (I did not correct spelling or grammar):

“Elaine , the point is the Luther left the Catholic church because he believe in scripture not in tradition to interpret scripture , Ellen White  well she was difellowship from the Methodist church  because she  follow Miller interpretation of scritpture which was biblical .”

Now William Miller disavowed his interpretation which in essence became a prediction and now 167 years later we in the Adventist church at our Seminary in Andrews University someone who claims that Miller was right when Miller was clearly wrong. 

The power of reinterpretation from the visible to the invisible. Perhaps it is a strength in Christianity but it most certainly is also a cutting weakness.

Obedience starts with fear, irrational Christianity

Can you be scared into love? It does not sound that reasonable, you can be scared into paying your taxes but it is not all that likely that you will find that after paying your taxes you find that you love paying your taxes. Wesley Snipes is in jail for not paying his taxes do any of us really think that when he gets out he will love paying taxes? Often however Christianity has this mindset that says we first fear God because of what He will do to us and that through the obedience out of fear we will later learn to love Him.

Recently on the Adventist Today website discussion of an article on Hell one of the bloggers of the site said the following:

“My take on the “hell” doctrine is that if it were not for it, there would be no Christians. It is somewhat analogous to teaching/informing your children that there are, and will be, corporal consequences to willful disobedience; even though your strong preference is that there will never be an occasion to ever administer it.

Obedience starts with fear. As we mature and come to understand that the source of the consequences cares about us and knows more than we do, fear becomes respect. As the maturation process continues further, and we realize that we love and owe a debt of gratitude to the executor of the potential consequences, obedience results out of…love and gratitude.
If there were no initial fear of (ultimate) consequences, the obedience which always directly results in our good would never commence in the first place.”

There is something twisted in this kind of thinking, but the author of the above is probably in the majority of Christians. They see God in terms of crime and punishment. Obey or God will kill you. And if you obey Him then He won't kill you and you then become thankful that He won't kill you and you begin to love Him. Christianity as a sort of Stockholm Syndrome. After all God in the Old Testament is quite free with His killing. It is that kind of thinking that informs many people as their interpret the Creation story. Eat of the fruit and God says He will kill them. As the King James version says

Genesis 2:27 KJV But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die

Many interpreters take that to mean God is pronouncing what God will do as opposed to a natural consequence to the action. The more accurate New English Bible makes it clear that the “day” is idiomatic for “when”, after all they did not die on that day and no they did not spiritually die on the day either though you will hear teachers make such claims as nonsensical as they may be.

But this idea of death as punishment rather then the natural consequence of actions has powerfully changed Christianity. The cessation of life because one does not accept the gift of life given by God becomes God's punishment of death. Instead of God as the source of life they focus on God as the cause of death. But if one rejects the offer of life from God the natural consequence is death because God's gift is not accepted. The wrath of God then becomes something that God does to people rather then something that people do to themselves by their own actions. It is very understandable if one does not read the progression of understanding in the Bible. After all in the Old Testament both the good and the bad came from God. The successful blessed by God the sick cursed by God. The side that won the war was the result of God making them successful. We who read the Bible have to learn to read it with these historical factors figured in however.

After all there is a lot of confusing language in the Bible. If we took it all literally we could not mix crops or material in clothing, we would be killing rebellious children, adulterers and sabbath breakers and even as we kill them claiming we are loving them. That become the problem, we assume these kind of things about God and make Him to be as irrational as ancient human beings. Then of course to explain the irrationality we would say God's ways are not our ways or God is mysterious and we can't understand what He does or will do.

But is this what God in human form wanted us to do. Jesus wanted us to be friends with God, Jesus wanted us to move even beyond the idea of servants because servants do what their master says to friends who understand what the Master wants done.

John 15:15 NIV: I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.

When we look at the first sermon ever recorded being preached after the resurrection of Christ it has nothing to do with fear.

Acts 2:22-24 NASB“Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know— this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. “ But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power

The good news, the New Testament is not about the threat of God but the salvation of God. Peter could have threatened them with damnation for killing Christ but he did not, he offered what God offered and that is forgiveness rather than condemnation. Love as a demonstration of God rather then punishment to scare people into behavior. You can scare people into conformity but you can't scare them into love.

The question we should always be asking is what does our doctrine say about the God we believe in?

Some Videos to make you think

Starting the New Year out with some YouTube videos

More Serious:

In Response to Atoday blogs a few words from the Emergents

Over at Adventist Today there have been a couple of Blog authors who have been attacking the Emergent Church movement. Usually with some pretty poorly reasoned and biased arguments such as the opening lines from Cindy Tutsch most recent article which reads like this:

Retreat centers, seminars, and worship experiences that focus on mystical rituals and ancient practices are often seeking to find "the God within." In the ensuing blur of sacred, secular, and mystical, the God who transcends the universe vanishes and is replaced by pantheism or panentheism. Thus, the Creator God cannot be distinguished or worshipped over creation. As a result, each person's interpretations or ideas are as valuable or perhaps more valuable than the expressed Word of God in Scripture.

Cutting edge generalizations there and as with most of the blog articles at Atoday without any source material being given. Because when you actually deal with the actual words of people it is much harder to smear them with banal generalities.

Now I can agree with all the teachings of the emergent church leaders just as I don't agree with all of any other denominations or all of any independent church leader. I don't expect to agree with everyone but I do expect to be able to present my side of an argument and to have the other side accurately be presented. Sadly such objectivity is becoming harder to find in Adventism...maybe also in general Christianity as well.

So in my effort to confront the perversity of such authors as Herb Douglas and Cindy Tutsch lets take some time an hear what an emergent church leader actually says. His own words even, we don't have to go to someone interpretations of what he said we can all look at it. So here is some material from Brian McLaren found in his article A New Kind of Bible Reading He lists 13 points in regards to Bible reading I will abbreviate them here but it offers a nice demonstration between the thoughtful emergent church and the dogmatic traditionalist as seen in Cindy Tutsch's opening lines.

1. Reading the Bible narratively: This means reading the Bible in context of the nested series of stories it is telling.

2. Reading the Bible conversationally: If a culture is a community of people who

converse (or argue) about the same things across many generations, it makes sense to learn the contours of the main players in the conversation.

3. Reading the Bible missionally: If we believe there is a narrative arc to the Bible, we would agree it has to do with God’s creative project, the missio dei, God’s mission of making a world, healing it when it goes astray, and calling it to ever-greater justice, beauty, goodness and truth.

4. Reading the Bible politically/economically: The God of the Bible loves justice,

especially for people who suffer under the domination of violent and oppressive empire. God’s counter-imperial mission is therefore both personal and public, individual and social.

5. Reading the Bible rhetorically: Often, we focus on what a text says and miss what it is trying to do. For example, a mother might say, “If you hit your brother again, I’m going to lock you in your room for a year!” Grammatically and logically, we might say she is making a conditional promise that would qualify her for a charge of child abuse: I will do this if you do that. But rhetorically, she is using hyperbole to encourage one of her children to stop hurting another child. She wants what is best for both children – for one to be non-violent and for the other to be a non-casualty. What seems at first glance to be a threat of cruelty is, in a rhetorical light, the opposite: an expression of love flowing from a desire for peace.

6. Read the Bible literarily: When people claim to interpret the Bible literally, they often unconsciously mean, “like lawyers who write and interpret constitutions.” Constitutional readings trap readers in the grim and limited hermeneutics of the past. But when readers of the Bible develop sensitivity to the ways poets, protesters, storytellers, activists, priests, and mystics use language, the Bible is liberated from its constitutional captivity to be the wild, inspired, and impassioned collection of literary artifacts that it is.

7. Read the Bible closely: One of my favorite theologians asks how we can distinguish a better interpretation from a less satisfying one. Better interpretations, she says, account for more of the details in the text than their counterparts. In other words, we should prefer an interpretation that makes sense of details – showing why the author or community that produced the text decided each detail was worth including.

[He either forgot 8 or miss numbered in the PDF]

9. Reading the Bible communally: The Bible is not, as many preachers of my childhood affirmed, so easy to understand that any child can interpret it. A grown-up can’t even do it on his or her own. Nor can all the scholars of a generation. Nor can all the scholars of all generations. One dimension, in my experience, of the Bible’s inspiration is its depth, its absolute saturation with meaning, its ability to generate meaningful insight again and again, across generations and cultures, and across each individual’s lifetime as well.   That’s why, with so much meaning to be explored, we need to engage with it communally.

10. Reading the Bible recursively: Readers of the Bible have seen it in widely varying ways across centuries. For example, who today would guess that the Song of Solomon would have been the book in the Bible taken most seriously by certain late-medieval commentators, much the way that Romans has been primary for Lutherans and Calvinists, or Daniel and Revelation for Dispensationalists? Just as readers across the centuries have seen it differently, so will we across our personal and denominational life cycles.

11. Reading the Bible ethically: Even a cursory review of the use of the Bible in relation to slavery, anti-Semitism, the treatment of Indigenous Peoples, or Galileo’s discoveries about the solar system should remind us that interpretation is a moral act. People suffer and die because of bad interpretations, and they thrive and celebrate because of good ones. That’s why I believe that we should test an interpretation by reason and scholarship, using our rational intelligence – as we have traditionally done. But we must go farther, and also test our interpretations by conscience, using our emotional, ethical, and social intelligence - which we have too seldom done, raising questions like these: How might I treat people if I follow this interpretation? Whom might I harm? What unintended social consequences can we predict if this interpretation is widely embraced?

12. Reading the Bible personally: The Bible scholar or reader who is a follower of Christ can never pretend to be apart from the textual community as she reads the text. She must remember that she is a part of that community of faith, accountable to the God to which the text points and by which the text is inspired. It becomes dangerous to the soul to practice reading the Bible outside of this relational, personal context.

13. Reading the Bible mystically: To take the personal dimension a step deeper, the

faithful reader must develop the habit of mystical openness, receptivity not only to

understanding from the text but to enlightenment from the Holy Spirit, not only to

interpretation but to revelation, not only to intelligent engagement with the text but also to personal abduction by its message. As we read about people having dreams and visions, we must remain open to the possibility of having our own imaginations invaded and surprised.

Scary isn't it, the Bible actually calls for interpretation, much different than just letting some traditionalist tell you what it means. Though of course if you let the traditionalist tell you what it means they won't spend their time bad mouthing you. Of course you won't really grow and you can only tell others what the traditionalists believe and you end up digging a deeper hole that you can't get out of, but then getting out of traditionalism is never high on a traditionalist's agenda.

Traditon and the God that kills so Adam isn't naked

With the following I am beginning a new blog which moves away from the limiting tenancies of Adventism and denominationalism. For a while I will post the articles from the new blog here also. I have not decided if I will continue to cover Adventism as I have on this blog. Maybe just one more entitled : "you can't get there from here".

As we will see as this blog progresses there are so many ideas in Christianity that are simply accepted because of tradition or perhaps simply accepted because people never questioned an idea or belief. Much of them are origin ideas that color the Christians thinking in matters that range far from the original idea.

A good example of this is to be found in this comment from my article on Jimmy Swaggart’s Study Bible, the comment is as follows:

“i don't have his bible but i know from the bible that they did animal sacrifices back then.. because of God killed one.. to make there garments. thus starting the animal sacrifices because God covered them with animal so in turn they covered there sins they did and do back then till Jesus came for all.”

If one were to question the above comment they would have to ask did God actually kill an animal or animals just to make garments? Does it not take a good deal of processing before one skins an animal before that skin can be used successfully as clothing? Was this the same God who just spoke the universe into existence and now He has to kill in order to make clothes for humans? Was God really the very first being in recorded Jewish/Christian history to kill another living creature? If this was meant to be the first sacrifice why did the story not emphasize the killing as sacrifice idea rather then just making it about how God provided garments for Adam and Eve? And finally why does not any other part of the Bible reference this incident as emblematic for the sacrificial system?

Those are all very reasonable questions but I bet the writer of the above comment has not thought about even one of them. Reason is not the enemy of faith, in fact reason encourages faith because then there are reasons for the faith. The reverse however is not usually true; faith is often the enemy of reason. Because then they say if I had a reason to believe something why would I need faith. That is the problem that the traditionalist and the Fundamentalist have when they deal with what is written in the Bible. Their faith is in fact their tradition, their belief is not evidence based but tradition based, to question their tradition is to question faith in their minds. That however is not how the entire Bible lays out faith. Faith in God was based upon the multitude of stories that fill the Bible, the evidence of the Messiah, as Jesus came and lived among us. Those stories, the very pages of scripture are evidence to base ones faith upon.

Blind faith is exactly what it says, a faith that is not seen, a faith without evidence, a belief without reason. It cannot be reasonably explained to anyone it is accepted or rejected based upon nothing because it stands on nothing. As Gandhi said: “Faith... Must be enforced by reason...When faith becomes blind it dies.” Unfortunately that is not quite true because it does not die it instead becomes a vice. A more accurate quote by Ray Cove would be “If you don't have faith in your people in the field, you are lost. If that faith is blind faith, then it is not faith at all, just maladministration.” Blind faith is very problematic.

So how do we answer the traditionalist? We must take them back to their source material and ask them to explain their presuppositions. That is why this is a blog rather then simply an article. The subject is simply too vast, it is too vast for one book, with such a vast field of thought to engage in not every possible objection can be covered or every possible explanation given. Thus this is a conversation, a dialog that continues and evolves as we learn more and as we examine more implications. For our friend who believes that God was the first to kill we can answer fairly simply by going to the source. Because the Genesis story never once says that God killed an animal to make the garments for the people.

As the Exposititor’s Bible Commentary says: “The mention of the type of clothing that God made--"garments of skin [`or]," i.e., tunics--is perhaps intended to recall the state of the man and the woman before the Fall: they "were both naked [`arummim], and they felt no shame" (2:25). The author may also be anticipating the notion of sacrifice in the slaying of the animals for the making of the skin garments, though he has given no clues of this meaning in the narrative itself.”

Tunics that is coverings, it does not say animal skins that is the from the early English translations. When you look at the text and then the interlinear of the words here is what we see using the King James with the

Strong’s numbers following the word:

Adam 120, wife 802, Lord 3068, God 430, coats 3801, skins 5785, clothed 3847

When you look at the word skins 5785 we see that it includes man’s skin also:

5785  `owr (ore); from 5783; skin (as naked); by implication, hide, leather:

KJV-- hide, leather, skin.

5783 says:  `uwr (oor); a primitive root; to (be) bare: KJV-- be made naked.

It is not all that hard to see that God made tunics to cover the skin of the people and thus they were clothed. You don’t have to kill anything with such an interpretation. You don’t have to have God kill an animal and then perform a miracle to immediately make the skin usable for sewing or to become supple and move about comfortably in.

Remember “animal” is not in the Hebrew, just skins and skins can have varying meanings. It could be the cover layer of something else, wool is the covering layer of a sheep, various barks or leaves could be considered to be coverings, a snake sheds its skin, so there are other options available.

All we have is the quick aside in the story that God had seen their nakedness and covered them. God cares, He assists them even when they disobeyed He maintained their interests at heart. It is a simply line in a simple story that people want to pour so much meaning into that it eventually loses the initial meaning.

After this we have to consider what the author was trying to say. Was he trying to reference sacrifices and just did not know how to create the implication very well? Was he trying to express his idea of how God could have done things, without the conception of God that the Bible progresses through. Say for example God in his estimation could kill anything and anyone with impunity and it would not matter because God is the ultimate power and as such can do what He wants and the character…the very essence of God…how He acted and how He loves would be of little concern in his story. God cared enough to cloth them it did not matter how he did it.

We have a lot of questions and perhaps not a lot of answers. The people with all the answers like the original commenter seem to have none of the questions. They don’t know how to ascribe original meaning to the text or application to the present but they do have the answers that their traditions maintain. I prefer the method of the late A. Graham Maxwell who would constantly ask “what does this say about God”.

If that is you, stay tuned to this blog as we explore past the traditions.

Resurrection guest article

Resurrection: Origin of Belief by Elaine Nelson

The Resurrection is central to Christianity, for without the Resurrection there would be no Christians. While the Jews at the time of Christ believed in an afterlife, the first evidence is found in the Old Testament with God’s promise to Abraham that he would have descendants as the sand of the sea, and would inherit the land. This was the only immortality held by most ancient peoples, although there is evidence in their tombs that there was belief in an afterlife requiring food, servants, even animals.

The writer of Ecclesiastes wrote of death that came to everyone: “The living know at least that they will die, the dead know nothing; no more reward for them, their memory has passed out of mind. Their loves, their hates, their jealousies, these all have perished, nor will they ever again take part in whatever is done under the sun” (Ecc. 9). Death was final: “while man goes to his everlasting home. And the mourners are already walking to and fro in the street….or before the dust returns to the earth as it once came from it, and the breath of God who gave it" (Ecc. 11).

Christianity was born out of Judaism, but as the writer of Ecclesiastes wrote: “There is nothing new under the sun” and all religions have gradually developed their beliefs, often building on earlier ones. Judaism originated in the Sumerian and Assyrian cultures where Ur is located, the place where Abraham lived and was called by God. At that time there was still idol worship and practices differing greatly from later established Judaism.

While Abraham is revered by the Jews, it is Moses whose name is a synonym for the Law given to them at Sinai. This is considered to be the birth of the Jews as a distinct ethnic and religious group. God gave them very specific rules by which to live and practice their religion. Even then, there was only the promise of a long life and posterity as their blessing. Moses died without knowing of a resurrection and it was long afterward before the idea gradually was introduced into their religious beliefs.
　
Job is often cited as believing in a resurrection with his famous words: “I know that my redeemer lives.” (Some translations have “avenger). But the correct translation should be “vindicator” a Hebrew word which refers to the next of kin who has the duty of avenging the blood of a brother or protecting his title to property after his death. The role of the vindicator is to insure justice for his own kinfolk, bound to him by ties of blood. “Yet from my flesh shall I see God” is an ambiguous phrase which can mean either :“away from my flesh” (after death) or “from the vantage point of my flesh” (in this present life). The text is so corrupt that we can only conjecture what the original may have been. There is nothing in the book of Job indicating who is the author; the time when he lived; nor that he was a Hebrew. Because “Yahweh,” the divine name used by the Hebrews, and the other common designations for God: Elohim, El, and Eloah and Shaddai are not used; Bible scholars are unable to ascertain these answers. The Jewish Talmud has long observed the tradition that Moses was the author but it is impossible to confirm that. The one identifying feature is that the name “Satan” was never used in Jewish history until the late 6^th or 5^th century B.C., which would indicate that no earlier date could be authenticated.
　
During the Diaspora in Babylon and later Persia, the Jews came under the influence of those cultures. Those beliefs included the concepts of both good and evil; Heaven and Hell, and a Satan that were not in the Jewish religion. Up to that time, the Hebrews had attributed all that happened to their God, and there was no personal hereafter, it was only the nation that would be blessed. In their sacred scriptures, Heaven was the exclusive abode of Yahweh, God of the Israelites and they believed that after bodily death their abode was in Sheol, the place of the dead (Gen: 37:35, Job 7:9, Ps. 49:15), Prov. 15:11: Is. 38:10, Ezek 32:27, Hab. 2:5). This became a common belief when Jesus told the parable of the Rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16: 19-31), where the poor man died and was in Hades, another synonym for Sheol. In the Hebrew Scripture there is no direct reference to a postmortem Hell--or to a Heaven. These terms enter Jewish lore after the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C., and the subsequent Exile of Jews to Babylon when they fell under the influence of Persian dualism and Zoroastrianism--which made a profound impression on Jews, and later Christians, and Muslims.

Daniel is apparently the last writer of the Old Testament who first introduced a hope for the afterlife. As an apocalyptic, he wrote of a coming kingdom with the “ancient of days appearing on a throne to pass judgment. At the end, “those who lie sleeping in the dust of the earth many will awake to everlasting life, the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt” (Dan. 12).

There is no consensus on the date of Daniel. Actually, the professors of Old Testament History at Wheaton College (Walton) and Harvard University (Kugel); professors of the Bible as Literature (Gabel, et al); and the Interpreter’s Bible Commentary all place the date no earlier than the second century B.C. the SDA Bible Dictionary gives a much earlier date, ca. 6^th or 5^th century B.C., although in its comments there is acknowledgment that a majority of Christian scholars attribute it to an anonymous author of the time of the Maccabean revolt during the middle of the 2^nd century B.C. and agree that scholars recognize that the historical sections of the book contain “numerous historical inaccuracies, anachronisms, and misconceptions,” and that some of the prophetic specifications seem to fit Antiochus (and many commentators who accept the book as genuine prediction by Daniel will allow at least some application to Antiochus in ch. 8 or 11) does not prove that a later fulfillment might not fit the requirements even better and more completely.“

Thus Adventists are  hold a minority view in their adoption of Daniel as being written in the 5^th or 6^th century B.C., perhaps because of major doctrines that are based on the acceptance of Daniel as being the last apocalyptic prophet in the OT. The interpretation of Daniel 9 and the specific date for the cleansing of the sanctuary is accepted by most scholars as the history of the time of the Maccabean Revolt and the description of Antiochus Epiphanes that polluted the altar. The unique Adventist interpretation totally discounts the Jewish Revolt in the second century and moves it almost a millennia later. This particular interpretation resulted in what Adventists have described as the “Great Disappointment” of 1844: that being the year predicted when God would come to claim His people. Had they been students of history, as well as fluent in Greek and Hebrew, and had not depended solely on the KJV with its often faulty translations. those mistakes would not have been made.

It is Paul, the earliest NT writer, who first wrote of Christ’s resurrection in what is considered to be his first epistle: “We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and that it will be the same for those who have died in Jesus: God will bring them with him (1 Thes. 4:14). More than a generation later, the Gospel writers told the story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. By the time they were written (not earlier than 60 A.D.), there were already many Christians throughout the Middle East and the Resurrection became the central theme of Christianity, giving hope to all.

This most important of all Christian doctrines: life after death and the hope of eternal life--was only a gradual dawning of the earliest inklings in late Judaism that found its fulfillment in the Resurrection of the Messiah; the beginning of Christianity; and the culmination of all men’s hopes and dreams of the possibility of life after death. All this, because of the belief in what happened 2,000 years ago in a small and remote region of the vast Roman Empire and that revolutionized the world since that time.

　
Sources: Kugel, James L. How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture Then and Now.
Gabel, John B., et al. The Bible as Literature: An Introduction.
Panati, Charles. Sacred Origins of Profound Things.
The SDA Bible Commentary
The Interpreters One Volume Bible Commentary
Walton, John H. Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament.
　
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Comment:

It was only recently during a study of the book of Ecclesiastes that I realized that perhaps the book was written to not only reveal the wisdom the writer had acquired with regard to the world but also that the book may have also provided fodder for subsequent ideas to develop. That it might have been the necessary step in the progressive understanding which God used to reveal the concept of a resurrection. The book asks the question where does the spirit of man go? His answer is that it returns to God.

(Eccl 3:21 NIV)  Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?"


(Eccl 12:6-7 NIV)  Remember him--before the silver cord is severed, or the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, or the wheel broken at the well, and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.

Once the idea that the spirit returns to God the possibility of God doing whatever He wants with the spirit becomes possible. The spirit is in the control of God and if God wanted to reanimate a spirit He could and it would make sense for Him to do that with the ones He loves. At least looking back from our perspective as we try and determine the ways in which a religion grew in understanding and principles. We may well never know exactly how some of these doctrines developed but we must realize that they did develop they had a growth in small increments. That after all is the way humans work, we learn by a step by step process where we apply information in a way that builds upon previous information. That is what the Bible does and we misread it when we pretend that there was some kind of ultimate truth presented from the beginning and people simply forgot that truth. Because in fact that is not what the Bible does and that is not what the Bible ever taught. It is an assumption based upon poor logic and poor assumptions.  ---RC

Glenn Beck and Daniel Lapin unique view of the tower of Babel

I have a friend who is always seems to be surprised  by my critiques of sermons or articles I hear or read. When he hears the same sermon he only appears to focus upon the things that he agrees with and discounts and maybe even forgets anything that could be troubling to a discriminating listener. I think the reason he does this is because if the sermon ends with a point that he agrees with…a point that he agrees is a good point or has had some good points somewhere in the sermon it was a good sermon. How the person got to his good point if it involves logical fallacies or simply completely wrong facts or even absurd theology, well those things don’t matter if the overall point is regarded as good. I am not like that. If the point is arrived at through false information I look at the point as being unjustified. I may agree with the overall point but if the case is not made the speaker or article has wasted my time. If you have a good point; make it with a good case and factual information rather than made up information.

Recently Glenn Beck produced a great example of this kind of false information to a good point. As I have said before I like Glenn Beck and agree with him on a lot of things but when it comes to the Bible and theology he is an absolute amateur. I have found that to be true of the several Latter Day Saints I have talked with personally. Interestingly the Latter Day Saints did better on general religion knowledge in a recent survey.

“On average, Americans correctly answer 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions on the survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. Atheists and agnostics average 20.9 correct answers. Jews and Mormons do about as well, averaging 20.5 and 20.3 correct answers, respectively. Protestants as a whole average 16 correct answers; Catholics as a whole, 14.7. Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons perform better than other groups on the survey even after controlling for differing levels of education.”  

Of course general religious knowledge is much different from actually understanding the Bible or its stories. In this case Glenn Beck brings in Rabbi Daniel Lapin to tell us of his unique view of the story of the tower of Babel. You can read the transcript of the Glenn Beck Television show here and I will quote several sections below as I compare their version to the Bible and standard Biblical reference works.

You all know the story of the tower of Babel…well no you don’t most Adventists think that the tower was built in the hope to save the people in case God sent another flood. Of course that is not in the story and the story is really quite short so I will post the relevant verses here.

Genesis 11:1-9

1          Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.

2          As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

3          They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.

4          Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

5          But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building.

6          The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.

7          Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."

8          So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.

9          That is why it was called Babel-- because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth. (NIV)

From the Transcript:

[Beck says] Let's just look at the legend itself. I don't believe it's a legend. But what is it teaching? A great king says let's build a tower. What's wrong with that?
LAPIN: Right. Well, a few things are wrong with it.
First of all, he didn't actually say — according to Chapter 11 in Genesis and these nine verses really reveal this dark secret that lies at the deepest recesses of the human soul, which is our susceptibility to become slaves. It's there. It's ready. It can pounce at any moment and transform us into serfs.
And sure enough, these nine verses in Chapter 11 in Genesis, as you say, the King Nimrod doesn't say let's build a tower. He starts off with this extraordinary pronouncement: Hey, everybody, let's build bricks. And then he says let's build a city and a tower.
Now, ordinarily people would say, hey, let's build a city and a tower. A shining city on the hill, said John Winthrop. And people will say, how are you going to do it? Well, we'll make bricks. No, here, the key thing was let's make bricks.
And what's more he's not identified necessarily or early as a king. He's first identified as a hunter back in Chapter 10, verses 8-10.
Now, here's the key thing about that, Glenn — everybody was hunting.
BECK: Right.
LAPIN: Today, it's just the good guys hunt. But back then, everybody hunted. That's how you ate.
Why on earth would this one man, Nimrod, be identified as a hunter? Because he hunted, not animals, he hunted people. Not to kill them, he hunted people to seduce them into becoming his subjects and to allow him to become their master.
BECK: OK. So, he said — Nimrod, a great hunter of man, he says, let's build bricks. And then let's build a city. Why did he say let's build bricks first? What do the bricks represent?

Since Lapin begins with Nimrod and honestly the Bible says very little about Nimrod here is what it does say:

Genesis 10:8-12 Cush was the father of Nimrod, who grew to be a mighty warrior on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD; that is why it is said, "Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the LORD." The first centers of his kingdom were Babylon, Erech, Akkad and Calneh, in Shinar. From that land he went to Assyria, where he built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah and Resen, which is between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city. (NIV)

1 Chronicles 1:10 Cush was the father of Nimrod, who grew to be a mighty warrior on earth. (NIV)

Micah 5:6 They will rule the land of Assyria with the sword, the land of Nimrod with drawn sword. He will deliver us from the Assyrian when he invades our land and marches into our borders. (NIV)

That is it; the Bible says nothing else about Nimrod. Granted there are all kinds of legends about Nimrod after all The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop has quite a bit to say about Nimrod and the dastardly influences of Nimrod upon Christianity. But then Hislop’s book is terribly inaccurate, even the mythology he uses is inaccurate. Of course most of the books that Hislop quotes are relics of history so who knows if he is quoting them accurately or not. But comparing his material with more scholarly works dealing with ancient myths the differences are profound. But that is just a side note to our story. For our purposes let’s just acknowledge that the Bible says nothing about Nimrod being a hunter of men whether as big game or politics. He is never said to even be a king in the Bible but does found a number of cities. It is often assumed that Babel is the beginning of Babylon, as the Expositor’s Bible Commentary points out:

“One ends in Babylon, the other in the Promised Land. It is hard not to see this positioning of the account of Babylon as deliberate on the part of the author of Genesis, especially in light of the continuous interplay between the name Shem (shem) and the quest for making "a name" (shem) both in the account of the building of Babylon (11:4) and in the account of God's election of Abraham (12:2).”

The writers of Genesis rather liked to imply somewhat less than complementary beginnings for the nations that surrounded the Hebrews. Aside from the confusion of the failed tower of Babel, a couple of other nations were attributed to Lot getting drunk and having sex with his daughters.

Genesis 19:36-38  So both of Lot's daughters became pregnant by their father.

The older daughter had a son, and she named him Moab; he is the father of the Moabites of today. The younger daughter also had a son, and she named him Ben-Ammi; he is the father of the Ammonites of today. (NIV)

For now we can just note the tendency, what it means…if it was true or an attempt to denigrate is up in the air depending upon your method of interpretation.

The most obvious answer to the Genesis statement about let’s build bricks is to introduce the idea of city construction. After all there is only so much you can do with building by placing stones upon stones. If you quarry and cut stones you can do much higher but that does not appear to be the intention in Genesis 11 here it explains the establishment of a city and of course the tower which many scholars think is a ziggurat. But Rabbi Lapin has other ideas.

LAPIN: Two differences between bricks and stones.
Number one, every brick is the same as every other brick. That's the whole point. They're totally interchangeable. If you want to turn people to bricks, you are able to turn them into interchangeable social economic cogs that can be just plugged around society.

The second thing about bricks is they're made by man. Stones are each unique. When we have a tradition in Western civilization that man is created the image of God, what it really means is that just as God is unique, so is every single human being is unique, just like a stone.

Don't allow other people to turn you into bricks, retain the personality of a person for which you are created.

That is quite a leap from the building of a city to stones or bricks representing people. It does not follow the story at all if one interprets the bricks as people. After all in the story as they build all having a common language what happens? God says look at these people nothing can stop them they can do anything. In the story God comes down to stop the people from being so successful. In the story as it compares the two lines we can see that it is done so that the Hebrews can be established through Abraham. God is setting back the people at the city of Babel apparently so that the line which introduces Abraham will be able to compete.

BECK: OK. So, Nimrod is a guy and he says, we want — I'm going to build — I'm going to build bricks. Was it — was it a real religious society? Because this is right after the Great Flood. Everybody is wiped off and everybody is scattered their own way. They all have their own language, right?
LAPIN: Many different languages.
BECK: And they're all — and they're all worshipping God.
LAPIN: Yes.
BECK: And Nimrod comes and there's something about — you know, he had a — he had a new idea, right? Tell me about the new idea.

Here Beck and Lapin disagree with the very story they are telling. Saying they all had their own language when the Genesis story said everyone had the same language. It never says they were all worshiping the same God. As the story says of the children of Noah, they spread through the world.

Genesis10:32  These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood. (KJV)

Who they were worshiping is not known, but it is likely that if God was upset about Babel and if the tower was actually a ziggurat it is likely that there are religious implications involved. As that was the key issue that separated the monotheists of the Hebrew religion from those around them.

BECK: OK. And the mortar that holds those bricks together.
LAPIN: Yes now, in Hebrew, mortar is very related — same word really as the word materialism. And you can actually even hear the similarity transfer into the English language. Mortar — M, T, R are the key consonants. Material — matter — same word essentially.

Now we don’t have to read Hebrew to know what word is used and how it is translated. We have numerous scholars who have written numerous reference works on these words and the word for mortar is not materialism. As Strong’s says:

2563  chomer (kho'mer); from 2560; properly, a bubbling up, i.e. of water, a wave; of earth, mire or clay (cement); also a heap; hence, a chomer or dry measure:

KJV-- clay, heap, homer, mire, motion.

See also the Brown, Driver, Briggs and Gesenius Lexicon online

Water and clay, slime that sets, cements things together. The word makes complete sense as mortar because that is the context of the story. It makes no sense as materialism. Even when you build with stones you use mortar. It is frankly a bizarre bit of reasoning if it can even be called reasoning. Ultimately with this style of interpretation we see Beck say:

This may seem like a new story to you, but a new world order is not. The very fist time that this was tried — let me bring in Rabbi Lapin. He is the president of the American Alliance for Jews and Christians.

Rabbi, the very first time socialism or communism or new world order was tried was the Tower of Babel, right?
LAPIN: Yes.
…BECK: He said, Let's make people all like bricks, all the same, not like stone. The mortar that will hold those bricks together is materialism.
LAPIN: Yes.
BECK: And we'll have this utopia. We'll build a tower that will reach the heavens.
LAPIN: Yes. You will be able to fulfill your highest aspirations in that fashion.
BECK: We're all bricks.
LAPIN: And I urge people to read the story and to listen to us, not as if we're describing some long forgotten historic event, but we're describing what is really happening today and will happen in our grandchildren's generation somewhere in the world again.
It will happen over and over again.

This conclusion… this main point I agree with but it is not really found in the story of the tower of Babel and that makes the case not made at all and it frankly makes their attempt look foolish…at least to anyone who takes the time to actually read the story and check the word usage. Not that you can’t draw lessons from the story but they are not as far fetched as Beck and Lapin submit. As the Expositor’s Commentary says:

“Although by itself the story of the building of Babylon makes good enough sense as the story of man's plans thwarted in God's judgment, its real significance lies in its ties to the themes developed in the surrounding narratives. The focus of the author since the beginning chapters of the Book of Genesis has been both on God's plan to bless mankind by providing him with that which is "good" and on man's failure to trust God and enjoy the "good" God had provided. The characteristic mark of man's failure up to this point in the book has been his attempt to grasp the "good" on his own rather than trust God to provide it for him. The author has centered his description of God's blessing on the gift of the land: "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth" (1:28). The good land is the place of blessing. To leave this land and to seek another is to forfeit the blessing of God's good provisions. It is to live "east of Eden."