Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces. (Matthew 7:6) This verse in the Sermon on the Mount is one of the strangest things Jesus ever said. Are we really supposed to decide which people are “dogs” and “swine,” and then refuse to give them our “pearls”? That seems to be a very common way of taking this verse. The holy things and the pearls represent the things of God, perhaps the gospel itself. The dogs and pigs represent hostile, unworthy people. And so the statement translates into something like this: Do not preach the things of God to hostile, unworthy people. This interpretation is often presented as a sort of counterbalance to the previous verses where Jesus warns against judging others. Take, for example, this explanation I found on the internet (the first one I came upon): In context, Jesus just taught his disciples not to judge in Matthew 7:1-5. The kind of judgment Jesus meant is the judgment of a critical and censorious spirit... On the other hand, there are times when Christians are to use good judgment, particularly since they have a mandate to preach the gospel and make disciples. Times come, however, when the audience to our witnessing to the truth in Christ Jesus will confront us with hostility, hatred, and even occasionally violence. In situations such as those, Jesus does not expect us to continue being his witnesses to such hostile audiences. Interpretations like this are almost universal among the commentaries I looked at. Some of the commentators, it is true, seem to feel a little uneasy. They admit that the verse is difficult, and they seem a little apologetic about their interpretation, but they don’t have a better one to suggest. Well, I think I have a better one to suggest. For me, the key to understanding Matthew 7:6 is found in a bit of Old Testament background. In Exodus 22, Moses is giving the law to Israel. Many of those laws are about keeping themselves religiously holy. They are to eat a certain way. They are to dress a certain way. These practices are an outward, ritualistic expression of an inner commitment to holiness and righteousness. One of those laws is found in Exodus 22:31: And you shall be holy men to Me, therefore you shall not eat any flesh torn to pieces in the field; you shall throw it to the dogs. Moses is writing into a very human situation. People need food to live, and people have to work hard to get that food. To get meat, they have to raise animals or go hunting. Given this situation, “roadkill” would seem like a real find to most people. They didn’t have to work to obtain this animal; another animal killed it for them. It would be tempting to think, “Great, let’s take it and eat it.” But God gave Israel a religious restriction against eating that meat, a restriction that makes a certain amount of sense. We all recognize something is a little unsavory about roadkill. It has been violently killed—in Moses’ time, usually by another animal. It has been lying on the ground for who knows how long. The flies are all over it. And so God forbids Israel to eat roadkill because He wants their eating habits to be a symbolic picture of their commitment to cleanness, holiness. God knows the people need food, but what is more important to Him is that their entire lives symbolize a concern for holy and appropriate living. Therefore, God says through Moses, “Don’t take the meat; instead, throw it to the dogs.” These are wild dogs that prowled outside their camps, not pets. To throw the meat to the dogs is a way of saying, “This is not for you; get rid of it.” There is plenty of meat that a holy person can eat. You can eat the animals you raise. You can eat animals you hunt. That meat is holy; it has an appropriate place in the life of a person committed to God. But according to the religious symbolism by which God wants them to live, roadkill is not holy. It has no place in a holy life, so throw it to the dogs. This little command in Exodus gives us very important background information for reading our verse in Matthew. What do we do with unholy meat? We throw it to the dogs. To throw meat to the dogs is to say, “This is unholy; this is not for us.” But what then do we do with holy meat? We keep it; we eat it. What kind of foolish, perverse people would we be to throw the holy meat to the dogs? That holy meat is a gift from God to sustain our lives. Throwing what is holy and good to the dogs shows that we are fools, that what God has called good and holy we have treated as garbage. The most likely meaning of “Don’t throw what is holy to the dogs,” then, is “Don’t treat what is holy and godly as being common and profane.” Unholy things are thrown to the dogs; holy things are meant to be kept and treasured. Notice how different this is than the common understanding of verse six. The typical, common understanding might be paraphrased as this: You have holy things (such as the gospel, the message of the Scriptures) that you must give to others. Don’t think, however, that you can give them to everyone. Some are like the dogs and the swine; they are hostile and unworthy, so don’t give your “pearls” to them. But if I am right, the expanded paraphrase is more like this: There are holy things that must be kept and treasured, and there are unholy things that must be thrown away. Do not, however, treat the holy things as if they were unholy. Only a fool would treat what is holy and sacred as if it were common and profane. This verse, then, is not about the dogs. It is about the fool who would treat what is holy as worthless. Jesus is not saying, “Figure out who the hostile, unworthy people are and don’t preach to them.” Instead, he is saying, “Don’t take what is holy and precious and treat it as worthless.” The verse is not about judging other people’s values; the verse is about getting our own values straight. Likewise, that is the significance of throwing pearls to swine. Pearls are beautiful, and pearls are valuable. They are meant to bring wealth and adornment to a person’s life. So what kind of foolish, perverse person would throw them to the pigs? Again, to do so is to say, “These are not valuable enough to keep. Maybe these pigs can find a use for them.” Jesus is not saying, “Figure out which people are like pigs, and don’t cast your pearls of wisdom before them.” Rather, he is saying, “Don’t be the kind of fool who throws away what is beautiful and precious.” At this point, a very natural question arises: What about the rest of the verse? That is, do not give what is holy to dogs nor throw pearls to swine “lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.” There are two questions that need to be answered: Who exactly is doing the trampling and tearing to pieces? What, if anything, do these words add to the basic idea of the verse? As far as who is doing the trampling and tearing, a straightforward way of reading the verse would be: Do not give what is holy to dogs, And do not throw your pearls before swine, lest the swine trample them under their feet and then turn and tear you to pieces. But many propose that another possibility is to see this verse in an A-B-B-A pattern: Dogs-pigs-pigs-dogs. Then the clause would read like this: Do not give what is holy to dogs (lest they turn and tear you to pieces), And do not throw your pearls before swine lest they trample them under foot. I used to lean toward the second option, with the dogs doing the tearing and the swine doing the trampling. I think I am now leaning toward the first. That is, we have one simple statement about not giving holy things to dogs. And then we have a similar statement about giving pearls to swine, with the added warning that it will turn out badly for us if we do. It is hard to be sure exactly what these words about trampling and tearing mean, but I think the general picture is reasonably clear. The fool in this verse has thrown away what is holy and precious. Perhaps he thought there would be some mundane benefit from it: maybe it will keep the animals happy, and they will leave him alone. But instead, his action backfires, and things turn out worse for him than he intended. He loses the valuable thing he had, and instead of being left alone, he is attacked. If these words do indeed add to the power of Jesus’ message in this verse, they warn us that such perversity is not going to serve us well in the end. Now that we have explored the basic argument Jesus is making in Matthew 7:6, two points emerge that I would like to discuss, a minor point and a major one. The minor point is a philosophical one concerning biblical interpretation. The common interpretation of this verse treated it as a symbolic statement to be decoded. The first step was to ask questions such as, “What do the pearls and the holy things represent?” and “Who do the dogs and swine represent?” So, the common interpretation decodes a statement like “Don’t give what is holy to the dogs ” to mean something like this: “Don’t preach the gospel to those who are hostile and unworthy.” If, however, my argument is correct, we can see that the verse is not really a symbolic code at all. The dogs and swine don’t symbolize anything. We are not supposed to be asking ourselves, “Which of my acquaintances are dogs and swine, unworthy of my pearls?” Rather, the entire statement paints an overall metaphorical picture. Unholy meat, which is not for you, should be thrown to the wild dogs. But what kind of perverse person would throw the holy meat to the wild dogs? Dogs don’t symbolize particular kinds of people; they are just part of an overall background expression “throwing unholy meat to dogs.” If I said, “Don’t flush your first-edition manuscripts down the toilet,” I don’t intend you to ask what the toilet symbolizes. The whole statement is just an expression for treating something valuable as if it were not. Matthew 7:6, therefore, confronts us with an issue that we find in many places in the Bible. How should figurative language be interpreted? Some people, for example, tend to treat Jesus’ parables as if they were symbolic codes to be deciphered. We face the same issue with the imagery used by the prophets. This is a bigger topic than can be explored here; my point is merely that we should not assume that all figurative language is filled with symbols waiting to be decoded. For example, when we read the parable of the prodigal son, we would be unwise to ask, “What do the pigs represent?” Likewise, it turns out that this is the wrong question to ask about Matthew 7:6 as well. My final and major point concerns the overall message of this verse. In particular, what role does it play in the overall message of the Sermon on the Mount in which it is found? As we have seen so far, the general sense of this verse concerns not perversely treating what is holy as something common and worthless. The question is not: Who are the pigs? The question is: What do you value? Cling to what is precious. If you are going to throw things to the dogs, throw the unholy things, not the holy things. How, then, does this general theme relate to what Jesus has said in the rest of the Sermon, and what should we do about it? I can’t help thinking of the contrast in the Sermon on the Mount between the genuine believers and the Pharisees, whom Jesus calls hypocrites. The believers long for eternal life in the kingdom of God. The believers will put up with persecution to gain that life. The believers store up the true treasure, the treasure in heaven. But the Pharisees use their religion to promote worldly gain and self-righteousness. They pray and fast and give alms so that other people will see them and applaud them. They use the law as a means of demonstrating how righteous they are. They see their religion as a way of making their lives better now, in this world. And yet they have lost sight of what is truly valuable. Our little verse, therefore, fits right into the context of the Sermon on the Mount. Cling to the holy and precious things of God—His promises, His commandments. Value them above all else. Do not be like the Pharisees, who devalue the things of God by using them for worthless, worldly goals. Do not throw meat that is holy to the dogs; instead, keep it, be nourished by it. It is for you, to give you life. Do not throw your pearls before swine. Instead, cling to the valuable and beautiful things of God. They are your treasure; don’t throw them away. If you do not keep and treasure them, it will not turn out well for you in the end.

Jesus tells us in the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” This, of course, is terrifying. Is anyone “pure in heart”? I could never claim that my heart has been completely “pure” in anything I have thought or done. To me, Calvin has it right: Let the holy servant of God, I say, select from the whole course of his life the action which he deems most excellent, and let him ponder it in all its parts; he will doubtless find in it something that savors of the rottenness of the flesh, since our alacrity in well-doing is never what it ought to be, but our course is always retarded by much weakness. (Institutes 3.14.9) Could we get around this seemingly impossible demand for purity by postponing it to the next age? Could Jesus be saying, “One day, in the kingdom of God, you will be blessed by being pure in heart, totally free from sin”? Well, no, he is almost certainly not saying that. I understand each of the beatitudes to have the same structure: those whose lives today are characterized by X are the truly fortunate people because they will inherit the kingdom of God in the future. Those who are poor in spirit now will inherit the kingdom in the future. Those who mourn now will be comforted in the future. And thus, those who are “pure in heart” now will see God and His kingdom in the future. There is no getting around it; Jesus tells us that only those whose hearts are pure now, today, in this life, will see God, will inherit the kingdom one day. Since Jesus is telling us that only those who are pure in heart now will see God, we had better try to discover what He means by “pure in heart.” As it happens, I believe that Jesus is drawing on the Old Testament for the concept of being pure in heart. And we see this concept echoed in other parts of the New Testament. To understand who are the pure in heart, we will look at three passages: Psalm 73, Psalm 24, and James 4. Psalm 73 The psalmist begins: Surely God is good to Israel, To those who are pure in heart! (73:1) The psalmist describes God’s goodness to the people of Israel; that is, to those who are pure in heart. He believes in this goodness, but he also sees a serious problem: But as for me, my feet came close to stumbling, My steps had almost slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant As I saw the prosperity of the wicked. (73:2-3) The psalmist believes that God is good to the pure in heart, but he is deeply troubled by the fact that those who are not pure in heart seem to prosper in this world. And in the next verses he goes on to give us a very clear picture of what he means by the “pure in heart” by giving a long description of those who are not pure in heart. They are arrogant, wicked, proud, violent, mockers, oppressors, setting their mouths against the heavens. In other words, they are as far from being faithful, repentant, believing Israelites as you could imagine. The psalmist goes on: Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure And washed my hands in innocence; For I have been stricken all day long And chastened every morning. (73:13-14) The psalmist does not think purity of heart is some hypothetical moral perfection that no one can obtain; he sees himself as having kept his heart pure—that is, having kept his heart from arrogance and hostility toward God. But he wonders whether he has been a fool to do so. After all, the wicked are prospering, but he, the one who has kept his heart pure, is suffering greatly. But then he thinks more clearly: When I pondered to understand this, It was troublesome in my sight Until I came into the sanctuary of God; Then I perceived their end. Surely You set them in slippery places; You cast them down to destruction. (73:16-18) The wicked may be prospering now, but their end will be destruction. But for the one whose heart is pure, for the faithful follower of God, this is true: Nevertheless I am continually with You; You have taken hold of my right hand. With Your counsel You will guide me, And afterward receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth. (73:23-25) So the meaning of “pure in heart” in this context seems pretty clear. The pure in heart are the believers, those who have purified their hearts from a wicked, greedy, arrogant, rebellion against God. There is nothing here to suggest that the pure in heart are perfectly without sin. After all, in his sufferings, the psalmist doubted God and was tempted to abandon his faith. But in the end he did not because his heart was cleansed from a fundamental rebellion and hostility toward God. Psalm 24 The earth is the LORD’S, and all it contains, The world, and those who dwell in it. For He has founded it upon the seas And established it upon the rivers. Who may ascend into the hill of the LORD? And who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, Who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood And has not sworn deceitfully. He shall receive a blessing from the LORD And righteousness from the God of his salvation. This is the generation of those who seek Him, Who seek Your face, the God of Jacob. Selah. Lift up your heads, O gates, And be lifted up, O ancient doors, That the King of glory may come in! Who is the King of glory? The LORD strong and mighty, The LORD mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O gates, And lift them up, O ancient doors, That the King of glory may come in! Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, He is the King of glory. Selah. This psalm has some tricky aspects to interpret, and we will not explore those now. Our main concern is, once again, the idea of a pure heart. What does it mean? It would be possible to interpret David as saying, “Only a morally perfect person could stand before God”—in other words, no one is worthy to stand before God. But that doesn’t seem likely in this context. The psalm looks as if it were intended to be recited in a ritual ceremony of entrance into the city and the holy place, perhaps when David returned the Ark of the Covenant. The question is asked as the people approach, “Who may ascend into the hill of Yahweh?” And then the reply is given, “He who has clean hands and a pure heart.” A blessing is promised to such a one, and indeed the people describe themselves as being such ones, the generation of those who seek the face of God. They are among the pure of heart that come with sincerity before God. Then the psalm ends with a call and response about opening the gates so that God (represented by the Ark, perhaps) may enter in. The point, then, is not that only morally perfect people can go before God. Rather, as they approach the holy place the people are agreeing that God only accepts those who seek to bring their lives in line with His will. Their actions (as represented by their “clean hands”) are in keeping with God’s will, and their inner commitments (as represented by their “pure hearts”) are also in line with what God wants. In other words, it is those who repent and turn towards God that will receive His blessing. Many suggest that Jesus has this psalm in mind when he speaks the beatitude of Matthew 5:9. The psalm speaks of the pure in heart. It says that God blesses them. And it describes them as those who seek the face of God—that is, those who want to see God. That Jesus has this psalm in mind seems quite plausible to me. In any case, both this psalm and Psalm 73 portray the pure in heart not as the morally perfect but as the repentantly faithful. Their hearts are pure because, unlike the wicked, they have sought to purge godlessness from their inner lives. James 4 What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. And you are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel... You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God... Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you. The context of this passage is important. James is writing to churches filled with people who claim to be Christians. They “believe” the gospel of Jesus Christ. And yet they live as if the gospel were not true at all. Their inheritance in the kingdom of God seems to mean nothing to them. Their entire focus is on gaining wealth and power in this life. They fight and even kill to gain wealth. They treat people poorer than themselves with contempt. In other words, although they call themselves believers, their mindset is exactly like those the psalmist called “wicked” in Psalm 73. They want the things of this world, and they are ignoring the will of God to get them. James calls them “double-minded.” On the one hand, they think of themselves as believers. But on the other hand, their actions and motives are entirely worldly. Their “hands” (actions) are unclean and their “hearts” (motives) are impure in that they act and think like unbelievers. James’ admonition to his readers is: “cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” That is, they need to repent of their unbelieving thoughts and actions and truly embrace and live out the gospel. To James, to have a pure heart is to have a single mind, a sincere faith. They need to truly believe what they say they believe. And then they need to act in keeping with those beliefs. Purity of Heart The preceding passages help us to see what Jesus means when he says, “Blessed are the pure in heart.” He is not talking about some hypothetically perfect people. He is not saying that only morally perfect people can be saved. No, to Jesus all genuine believers are among the pure in heart. All have hearts cleansed of their fundamental unbelief and hostility toward God. They are not just ritually pure or outwardly moral in their behavior; they are genuine in their inward desire to trust and follow God. Kierkegaard wrote a famous book called Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing. In that book Kierkegaard wrote a great prayer: Father in heaven! What is a man without Thee! What is all that he knows, vast accumulation though it be, but a chipped fragment if he does not know Thee! What is all his striving, could it even encompass a world, but a half-finished work if he does not know Thee: Thee the One, who art one thing and who art all! So may Thou give to the intellect, wisdom to comprehend that one thing; to the heart, sincerity to receive this understanding; to the will, purity that wills only one thing. In prosperity may Thou grant perseverance to will one thing; amid distractions, collectedness to will one thing; in suffering, patience to will one thing. Oh, Thou that giveth both the beginning and the completion, may Thou early, at the dawn of day, give to the young man the resolution to will one thing. As the day wanes, may Thou give to the old man a renewed remembrance of his first resolution, that the first may be like the last, the last like the first, in possession of a life that has willed only one thing. Alas, but this has indeed not come to pass. Something has come in between. The separation of sin lies in between. Each day, and day after day something is being placed in between: delay, blockage, interruption, delusion, corruption. So in this time of repentance may Thou give the courage once again to will one thing... Oh, Thou that givest both the beginning and the completion, give Thou victory in the day of need so that what neither a man’s burning wish nor his determined resolution may attain to, may be granted unto him in the sorrowing of repentance: to will only one thing. Kierkegaard is probably borrowing from James, who tells us purity of heart means not being double-minded. Kierkegaard says something similar: purity of heart is to will one thing. And that one thing is God. But Kierkegaard rightly acknowledges that our own sin provides the biggest obstacle to being pure in heart. It is so easy to be distracted and confused and stubborn. And so he prays that God will grant us the victory which is repentance, so that we might be pure in heart and might will one thing. Kierkegaard is here praying for the blessing that Jesus speaks of in the beatitude. We are blessed, we are fortunate, if we are single minded. We are fortunate if our sin leads us not away from God but to repentance, where we remember again that we want God and His promises above all else. To have hearts sincere in their commitment to God makes us a truly fortunate people.

[An excerpt from a talk in a series on Matthew, given August 28, 2016, at Reformation Fellowship. To hear the complete talk, go to " Matthew " in the Audio section of our website.] Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48) It is very common to see this verse as a conclusion to the entire “antitheses” section in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:17-48), where Jesus repeats, “You have heard … but I say to you.” This view sees Jesus’ point something like this: Your righteousness must surpass that of the Pharisees. It is not enough to abstain from murder; you must not be angry. It is not enough to abstain from adultery; you must not lust in your heart. After giving more examples, Jesus then concludes, Yes, your righteousness must surpass the Pharisees; in fact, you must be morally perfect and without fault of any kind, just as your Father is. This way of reading Matthew 5:48 supports the idea that Jesus’ purpose is to drive us to despair: You must be morally perfect, but the unspoken reality is that we cannot be morally perfect, and so we despair and turn to the cross of Christ for mercy. Now, of course, in an important sense that is true. We cannot be morally perfect. And so we need the mercy that Jesus brings through His cross. But I don’t think that is the point Jesus is making in verse 48. Instead, I see verse 48 as the conclusion to Matthew 5:43-48 (NASB): You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and hate your enemy.’ “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. I would translate the word “perfect” as something like “complete.” The logic of the passage is this: Don’t only love those who love you; love your enemy as well. This is the way God is. God does not only send sun and rain to His followers. He also sends sun and rain to the unrighteous. It doesn’t make sense that God would reward you for being like the gentiles, who only love those who love them, would it? So your love should be complete, not only for your friends, but also for your enemies, just like your Father is complete in His love. Jesus is not saying, “you must be morally perfect.” Jesus is saying, “you must follow your Father in being complete, inclusive in your love.” Interestingly, Luke has his own version of this “love your enemies” passage. It ends as follows in Luke 6:35-36: But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Matthew ends: “be complete, just as your Father is complete.” Luke ends: “be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” These are two different versions of the same idea. Matthew’s “be complete” means “be complete in your love; that is, include in your love those who have treated you poorly.” In other words, don’t treat people in keeping with what you think they deserve, but be merciful. This is also what Jesus says in Luke: “be merciful, as your Father is merciful.” And so Jesus says in Matthew, “be perfect, extend your love to all, just as your Father extends His love to all.” In the end, Jesus is teaching something profoundly simple—and profoundly difficult. We are to love our neighbor as ourselves. That is, we are to seek the good of our neighbor the way we would want to be treated. And it turns out that our neighbor is everyone, including those who mistreat us.

Gutenberg tutor Ron Julian gave this talk to Gutenberg’s graduating class on June 12, 2015. *** Today I want to talk about passion. Now I know what you may be thinking. This is a graduation speech. I’m going to talk about “passion.” That means I am going to inspire you to “follow your passion.” I will urge you to find out what you are most passionate about and seek to make that your career. Passion is the key to a rewarding life. Or perhaps, if I am a contrarian by nature, I could urge you not to follow your passion. I could warn you that following your passion is a good way to end up living in your parents’ basement. Instead, concentrate on getting a stable, well paying job. Passion is for the weekends. This, however, is not the sort of passion I have in mind. I decided on this topic of “passion,” by thinking back on what you and I have read together. I found myself thinking about two passages. These two passages speak of the defining passion of our lives. One is a passage from Kierkegaard (of course). One is a passage from Augustine. The first passage, the Kierkegaard passage, comes from the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. You and I spent a year looking at Concluding Unscientific Postscript together. You will remember that Kierkegaard deliberately writes this work in a way that is challenging to understand. Every now and then, however, he makes a summary, clarifying statement that captures the essence of what he is talking about—a statement that truly captures what Kierkegaard himself actually believes. I think this is one such clarifying statement, where he tells us what it means to be a Christian: Christianity is spirit; spirit is inwardness; inwardness is subjectivity; subjectivity is essentially passion, and at its maximum an infinite, personally interested passion for one’s eternal happiness. Let’s follow the progression of his thought: “Christianity is spirit.” That is, Christianity is about the human person. Even though Christianity talks about God and creation and the flow of history, it relates those things to us as persons. Christianity confronts us with issues of the spirit, what it means to be a human being. Then he says, “spirit is inwardness.” That is, the focus of Christianity is on the inner person, the heart, the will. The focus is not on the externals of human existence. The focus is on what we are inside: what we believe, what we want, what we choose to do. Then he says, “inwardness is subjectivity.” The distinction between objectivity and subjectivity is a huge one for Kierkegaard. Let me try to make it clear. Suppose that God were to provide me with a massive amount of objective evidence that Christianity is true. The evidence is overwhelming. Jesus rose from the dead. There were video cameras at the grave. All the evidence proves that Christianity is objectively true. That still doesn’t determine what I personally, subjectively, am going to do with it. No amount of objective evidence is powerful enough to determine my subjective choice. To be a Christian means to make the personal, subjective choice to believe. Kierkegaard then says, “subjectivity is essentially passion.” That is, Christianity is subjective because, essentially, Christianity is all about your passion. Being a Christian is all about what you want, what you desire, what you are willing to choose. And finally, Kierkegaard fills out this concept of passion: it is “at its maximum an infinite, personally interested passion for one’s eternal happiness.” Christianity is about passion, about what you want. But it is about an infinite passion. That is, it is an unending passion, a desire that never runs out. This passion doesn’t cool as we get older and more sophisticated. We don’t say about this desire, “OK, that is enough of that. Let’s not go overboard.” It is a passion that we will follow all the way to the end. It is also a “personally interested passion for one’s eternal happiness.” We don’t want to be misled about the word “happiness.” In our time, the word “happy” has shrunk to mean merely cheerful, smiling, feeling good. But the more fundamental meaning of the word has to do with being fortunate, blessed. Happiness means having good and desirable circumstances as opposed to bad ones. So to be a Christian is to have a personally interested passion for our own eternal blessedness. And of course we know that Kierkegaard, as a Christian, is talking about the hope of eternal life as promised in the Christian gospel. So this is what it means to be a Christian, according to Concluding Unscientific Postscript: In the inner person, one chooses to set one’s heart, to focus one’s desires, unreservedly and without end, on the blessings to be found in the eternal life promised in the gospel. Which brings me to the second passage we read together. This is from Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine . Augustine, I believe, is making the same sort of point that Kierkegaard is. The eternal things, those things that will provide for our eternal happiness, deserve our unending passion and love. The world is full of many kinds of things, and each can be appreciated in its own way. But our loves should be ordinate. That is, there should be an order to our loves. We should love with the strongest passion those things that are most worthy of our love. We are on a journey toward eternal blessing, and we would be fools to invest ourselves in things that cannot last and cannot ultimately satisfy. Augustine makes a very striking statement about this journey toward blessedness, and this is the passage I want to quote. (I have paraphrased a bit for the sake of clarity.) Augustine says that if we invest all our love in things that cannot truly satisfy, ...our course will be impeded and sometimes deflected, so that we are retarded in obtaining those things which [provide eternal happiness], or even prevented altogether, shackled by an inferior love. It is that last phrase that has always spoken to me. Augustine warns that we can be “shackled by an inferior love.” We can invest our unending passion in something that cannot provide eternal happiness. This inferior love becomes a shackle that holds us back from completing the journey toward life. The most tragic thing we could do would be to invest the fundamental, undying passion of our lives in something that cannot satisfy. So what is my point in quoting Kierkegaard and Augustine in this way? Am I urging you to withdraw from the world? Am I saying that nothing in this world is worthy of your ultimate passion, so chuck it all and retreat? It would certainly be an unfortunate sort of graduation speech if that were my message. “I’m sorry to have to tell you that your last four years of education have been wasted. Forget everything you have learned and go sit on a mountaintop waiting for the end.” And Kierkegaard would be furious with me if he thought I was using his words to sell you on such a message. His message was very different. We as Christians do not live under the aspect of eternity. We are finite, existing, changing, striving human beings. It is in the midst of this life that we make the decisions that will determine our eternal happiness. I hope that it is clear to you that the last four years have not been preparing you to withdraw from the world. So at the risk of sounding like I am wandering off-topic, let me elaborate on that point for a bit. What have our goals been for these last four years at Gutenberg? And what do they have to do with the infinite passion of your life? In one sense, our goals have very much focused on life in this world. Our hope has been that we have given you some tools to help you on your journey through this life—tools to help you learn, tools to help you function in the world, tools to help you understand and navigate the circumstances of your life. A primary goal has been to help you develop important skills. Chief among those, of course, is the skill of reading well. You all know that Gutenberg College was born out of a desire to prepare students to read difficult literature, so that they could, if they choose, go on to read the Bible well. It is very much our hope that you will go on to pursue a personal interest in learning from the Bible. But of course the skill of reading well has other implications; it is not just an academic pursuit. Reading is a tool of learning, and learning is one of the chief goods of this life. To be able to read with understanding means that you can learn from other people, both alive and dead. And from the practical perspective of day-to-day life, people who can read well have a skill that is valuable to themselves and to others. A related skill is that of being able to read other languages than your own. You learned Greek, of course, because that is the language of the New Testament. But learning other languages has the further potential to truly broaden your understanding. It gives you exposure to ways of thinking in other cultures and times than your own. And even though I suspect you don’t believe me, I maintain that wrestling with grammar is going to pay off for you in the end. Another important skill we have tried to foster is the skill of discussion. We have wanted to give you a lot of experience expressing your own ideas and listening carefully to the ideas of others. There is a moral dimension to this skill. Listening to other people with respect is a powerful act of love. And the skill of discussing with others has a practical benefit as well. A person who can patiently communicate with another person is a valuable person to have around. Besides helping you to develop skills, we have also hoped to impart some knowledge to you. By reading primary source texts, you have had the opportunity to see the development of the ideas that shape your culture. Now, a minor benefit of this is that you are developing some cultural literacy. This can be very helpful background information to have. When you read or talk to people who refer to the great thinkers and ideas of your culture, you will have some idea of what they are talking about. That classic of world cinema, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, will make sense to you as never before. But more importantly than that, we hope that this knowledge will give you perspective on your world. Philosophy, theology, science, and mathematics are not just abstract academic exercises. The ideas that have emerged from those disciplines have made their way into every part of your everyday life. These ideas seep out through the songs you listen to, the video games you play, the conversations you have with old friends late into the evening. Some of these ideas are very good. And some of them are very bad. As you are well aware, Western philosophy has thought a lot about epistemology, and so have we. That is, how do we know what we know? Should we be skeptical about the possibility of knowing anything at all? Our culture has been teaching us about epistemology from the day we were born. Our culture teaches us to be skeptical that we can know the truth. And at the same time our culture urges us to be self-centered, to celebrate our own personal version of the truth. In a way, much of what we do at Gutenberg is intended to fight this trend. The skills of reading and discussion, the knowledge of philosophy, science, math—all these things speak to the issue of personal knowledge. And our hope is that we have convinced you that a balance is possible. That is, on the one hand, it is possible to know truth. And on the other hand, we need to humbly acknowledge that we have a lot to learn. We can make progress in understanding what an author means. We can make progress in understanding what the Bible means. We can make progress in understanding what is good and valuable and worth pursuing. We cannot be certain, but we can have knowledge that is good enough to act on. Ok, there was my effort to capture something of what our goals are for your Gutenberg education. But the truth is that an education can only give you so much. Which brings us back to the subject of passion. Your life is going to be determined not by what you know but by what you have an infinite passion for. There is something that you want that you will never give up on. That thing, that passion, will tell the story of your life. Because if Christianity is true, and I believe that it is, then here is the deal: You always get what you want. Those whose unending passion is for eternal happiness will get eternal happiness. Those whose unending passion is for something other than eternal happiness will get that instead. We have tried to give you tools that will help you make your way through life. They may help you understand the world better. They may help you discover the truths of the Bible. They may help you find a growing appreciation for the arts. They may help you demonstrate to an employer that you are the right person for the job. They may help you interact with other people in a way that benefits both you and them. But in the end, these skills are only part of the toolkit you will use to discover what your infinite passion is. We don’t want you to worship your Gutenberg education, or anything else in this world. That would leave you shackled to an inferior love. In Practice in Christianity, Kierkegaard tells us, “Christianity places infinite emphasis upon entering into life, upon eternal happiness as the absolute good.” My prayer for you is that your enduring passion will be to enter into that life. Thank you for inviting me to speak, and congratulations on a job well done.

This article is from a talk given to Reformation Fellowship Church on Easter Sunday, April 5, 2015. *** Communion is a ceremony based around food and drink. This makes a lot of sense to me. In the Lord’s Supper, it is as if we are enacting a physical metaphor. The physical act of eating and drinking is very much like the spiritual realities it represents. Food and drink—hunger and thirst—are incredibly powerful and important parts of human experience. Food and drink are life-giving. If we do not eat—if we do not drink—we will die. Our bodies are designed to tell us that we need food, we need drink. The longer we go without eating, the hungrier we get. The longer we go without drinking, the thirstier we get. And so the experience of eating and drinking is a very big deal. When we start eating and drinking, we usually experience pleasure. We respond to the taste of what we are eating and drinking. And then, as we continue to eat and drink, we feel the satisfaction of our need. Our hunger and thirst diminish and disappear. And the result is: we don’t die. Without food and drink, we die. With it, we live. Our physical existence is sustained for a while longer. Every day, when we eat and drink, it is like we enact a little parable. We experience pleasure, we achieve satisfaction, and we receive life. No wonder, then, that the Bible often speaks of the larger spiritual realities with metaphors of eating and drinking. The Bible portrays the things of God as pleasurable, like food and drink: “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8); “The judgments of the Lord…are sweeter also than honey” (Psalm 19:9-10). The Bible portrays the things of God as satisfying our longings, just as food and drink satisfy our hunger and thirst: “For [God] has satisfied the thirsty soul, And the hungry soul He has filled with what is good” (Psalm 107: 9); “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Matthew 5:6). And of course, the Bible portrays the things of God as giving us life, just as food and drink do. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die” (John 6:48-50). Jesus is telling us that He came to be the true bread, the bread that gives true life, eternal life: Eat this bread—that is, believe in me—and you will live . You will never die. Jesus also tells us how He gives life to the world: through His death on the cross, through His broken body. As He says, “The bread which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh” (John 6:51). He says, “My flesh is true food” (John 6:55). It is my death on the cross that will give you life, eternal life. And so in communion we have a ceremony where we eat the bread and remember Christ’s death. His broken body, his death for our sins, is like our food. We receive his salvation with pleasure. The salvation He brings us satisfies our deepest hungers. And in the end, His salvation will give us life, eternal life. And so that is what we celebrate and remember with the bread. Just as bread satisfies us and gives us life, so Christ’s death brings us a salvation that truly satisfies and truly gives us life. And when Jesus had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” (Luke 22:19) Jesus also asked us to remember His death by drinking from a cup that represents His blood—that is, the blood that He shed when He died for us. Just as with the bread, we are remembering the salvation that Jesus brought us by dying on the cross. And this time, we celebrate it through drinking. Thirst is just as powerful an experience as hunger. We must satisfy our thirst, or we will die. And so, just as Jesus tells us that His body is true food, so He also tells us that His blood is true drink. Are we supposed to be imagining that we are drinking literal blood? Not at all. Rather, as we experience the pleasure and thirst-quenching satisfaction and life-giving properties of physical drink, we remember that it is the death of Christ that will truly quench our thirst and truly give us life. Jesus poured out His life’s blood so that we might live. In the same way Jesus took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” (I Corinthians 11:25)

This article is from a talk given to Reformation Fellowship Church on Easter Sunday, April 5, 2015. *** Today is Easter Sunday, the day we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. We could say many, many things about the importance of the resurrection. Jesus’ resurrection means many things and accomplishes many things. It is perhaps the central event in all of human history. But today I want to look at one little enigmatic statement about the resurrection. This is something Jesus Himself said, and I think it is safe to say that, when He said it, not one person understood what He meant. His statement is found in the Gospel of John. In John chapter two, we see Jesus going to the temple at Jerusalem. There He finds merchants in the outer courts of the temple selling oxen and sheep and doves. People would buy them and then take them into the temple to offer as sacrifices. Jesus says, “Stop making My Father’s house a place of business.” And then he causes a violent ruckus. He overturns tables. He drives the animals out of the temple. This is the sort of thing that could get Jesus in a lot of trouble. Naturally, the Jews in the temple were astounded: Just who does this guy think he is? And so we read in John 2:18: The Jews then said to Him, “What sign do You show us as your authority for doing these things?” Now let’s talk about signs for a minute. Jesus did many miracles as recorded in the New Testament. Sometimes these miracles are called “signs.” They are signs from heaven: they “signify” something; they mean something. That is, they are a message from God saying, “I sent this man Jesus; listen to Him.” Jesus, after all, is claiming to be the Messiah sent from God. Why should anyone believe Him? Well, Jesus does miracles demonstrating the power of God. He heals the sick. He turns water to wine. He feeds five thousand people from a few pieces of bread and fish. He raises the dead. These are “signs,” messages from God that Jesus has come with God’s blessing. Well, that is what the Jews in the temple are asking for. They want Jesus to perform a sign. Jesus is acting as if he has some sort of authority—as if he had some sort of calling from God to cleanse the temple. And so they are saying to him: Prove it. If you are some sort of prophet from God, prove that you act with His authority. Perhaps they have heard rumors that Jesus has performed miracles elsewhere. So they are saying, Put up or shut up. Show us that God is with you. Do something miraculous. Now, we know that Jesus is often willing to do miraculous signs. He often tells people that they should believe in him because of the miraculous signs he performs. But occasionally someone will demand a miracle. On several occasions, the Jewish leadership will demand that Jesus perform for them: Jesus, prove that you are from God. Do a miracle. And on those occasions, Jesus responds very differently. We see His response in John 2:19-22: Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It took forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?” But He was speaking of the temple of His body. So when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He said this; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken. The Jews in the temple have asked for a sign: Prove to us that you have the authority from God to act as you have. And Jesus says, OK, here’s a sign for you: Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up again in three days. We can see how this would sound to the Jewish leadership: That is your sign? Nice try. First of all, that’s impossible. You are going to rebuild in three days what it took forty-six years to build? And secondly, you are bluffing. You know perfectly well we are not going to destroy the temple. It is easy to make an empty boast about something you know perfectly well will never happen. They have totally misunderstood what Jesus said. But it is hard to blame them for that. Jesus has said something incredibly cryptic. Even Jesus’ disciples didn’t understand what Jesus said. Not one person there understood what He was talking about. And notice that Jesus did not explain His words, not even to His disciples. Not until after the resurrection did they think back and figure out what Jesus was talking about. So what was Jesus talking about? First of all, we can see that Jesus was not making an empty boast. He was talking about a truly miraculous sign, the greatest sign He ever did. But it was not the kind of sign the Jews were asking for. They wanted proof right there and then, and Jesus didn’t give it to them. They were mad at Him for casting the merchants out of the temple. And they would stay mad at Him. Next, we see that Jesus refers to “this temple.” He is in the temple complex in Jerusalem, so when they ask for a sign, He in essence says to them: You want a sign? I will perform a miracle with this temple. But the disciples only figure out years later that Jesus meant the temple of His body. Why would Jesus call His body “this temple”? The temple is the place where God dwells; the temple is the place where man can come to meet God. From that perspective, Jesus is indeed the true temple. In Jesus, God has made Himself known on earth. In Jesus, we meet God face-to-face. Jesus is the true temple because Jesus is the Messiah of God. Next, Jesus says, “Destroy this temple….” As it happens, that is exactly what the Jewish leadership is going to do. Because of the many ways that Jesus deeply offends them, they will decide to have Him executed. So although the Jews don’t know it, Jesus is not just making a hypothetical statement; He is making a prediction: You are going to destroy this temple. And finally, Jesus says, “in three days I will raise it up.” And we know what He is talking about. On the third day after the Jewish leadership has Him executed, Jesus rises from the dead. So in essence, this is what Jesus is saying to them: You want me to perform a sign, to demonstrate that I act with an authority from God? I don’t perform on demand, so I am not going to do anything for you now. I am, however, going to perform a great sign. I am the Messiah, the man in whom God has manifested Himself on earth, the very temple of God. You are going to kill me, and when you do, I am going to rise from the dead on the third day. That is the sign that will demonstrate my authority as the Messiah. Jesus is speaking in riddles, to those who actually care what He means. Ultimately the disciples figure out what He meant. Jesus is hinting to them that the resurrection is the greatest of all the signs. How can we know that Jesus is indeed the Messiah sent from God? Well, there are many miracles along the way, many signs. There is the feeding of the five thousand. There are many healings. There is walking on water. And so on. But most of all, there is the sign above all signs. Jesus rose again. Alone among men, Jesus has conquered death. Can we know that God is with Jesus? Yes, because God did not leave Him in the grave. Now I know that there is another question we must ask: how can we know that Jesus rose from the dead? You and I are relying on the testimony of a man like John, one of Jesus’ disciples. John swears that he saw Jesus dead on the cross. He saw a soldier stab him in the side, and blood and water came out, indicating Jesus was dead. John saw the empty tomb. John spoke to Jesus numerous times after the resurrection. Again and again, John swears that he is an eyewitness and that he is telling the truth. At another time, we could discuss why we should believe John’s testimony. But in chapter two, John is telling us something important about how Jesus looked at the resurrection. From Jesus’ perspective, the resurrection is the greatest sign of all. Jesus came into the world saying, I am the Messiah sent from God. There are many reasons why you should believe me. But the sign I would point to above all is my resurrection from the dead.

Some time ago I was asked to speak to a group of students. My usual approach on such an occasion would be to pick a biblical passage to explain. But not knowing the interest level of the group, I chose not to teach from any specific passage. Instead, I presented them with four analogies, four pictures that I find helpful in explaining what it means to be a Christian believer. First analogy: Mankind has often looked up at the sky, and our universal experience seems to suggest that everything revolves around us. The sun, moon, and stars appear at one horizon, travel in an arc overhead, and disappear at the opposite horizon. They never stop doing this. But among this completely uniform motion we see some erratic movement that needs explaining. Puzzling balls of light, which we call planets, slowly wander back and forth among the stars.Why do they do this? A man named Copernicus proposed a satisfying but counterintuitive solution. The sun is at the center of our solar system, and we are on one planet circling that sun just as the other planets do. With this new understanding, the strange dance of the planets is explained in a simple and satisfying way. Although our experience still seems to tell us that the sun and the planets revolve around us, we now understand that the sun is at the center, and we are just one of a number of planets circling it together. The Copernican revolution is striking in the way that one simple change of perspective can so completely change the way we think of the relationship between the heavenly bodies and ourselves. Whereas our common sense experience tell us that everything revolves around us, Copernicus tells us that in fact not we but the sun is at the center, and we are in fact one of those planets, one of those wandering balls of light, orbiting around that sun. Likewise, our relationship to God and our fellow human beings can be seen as strikingly Copernican. We all by nature think of ourselves as of central importance; our interests, our needs, our desires have an obvious priority over anyone else. Other people—even God (if we allow for His existence)—are secondary, serving as the support team that helps me get what I want. Becoming a believer, then, is as profound a shift in perspective as that proposed by Copernicus: I am not at the center of the universe. My Creator is at the center, and I am just one of the planets, one of His creatures, no more or less important than any other human being. Thus Jesus tells us that the two greatest commandments are “love God” and “love your neighbor as yourself.” When I shift the center of the universe back to God, two truths emerge: God has priority over all His creation, and my fellow human beings are just as important as I am. This shift in perspective is central to becoming a believer in the God of the Bible. Second analogy: Sam’s friends are concerned. Sam has gotten into a very bad relationship. His girlfriend, Sandy, is into drugs, criminal activity, and rampant promiscuity, much more than Sam realizes, and she is slowly leading Sam down the same path. His friends patiently try to explain to Sam why Sandy is bad for him, but he won’t listen. When they talk about her extensive drug use, Sam says, “Oh, she is just trying it out. Why are you so judgmental?” When Sandy steals a watch from a friend of Sam, and that friend tries to tell Sam, Sam angrily refuses to believe it and stops talking to him. Finally Sandy, who wants to separate Sam from his old friends, makes a grave accusation against Sam’s best friend, Tom. She says that Tom came to her house, insulted and ridiculed Sam behind his back, and tried to force himself on Sandy. Tom, a friend who has stood by Sam through thick and thin for many years, tells Sam, “I would never do such a thing. You have got to believe me.” Sam looks him in the eye and says, “You are not my friend anymore.” This rather melodramatic story reminds us that what we believe is influenced by what we want; we only believe what we are willing to believe. Sam has many very good reasons to believe his friends, especially his best friend, Tom. But the bottom line is that he doesn’t want to; he wants Sandy more than he wants the truth. This is what the Bible means when it says that mankind unrighteously suppresses the truth about God (see Romans 1:18-23). This is why “faith” is such a big deal. There are good and sufficient reasons to believe in God, to believe the gospel. But such belief requires a willingness to believe, and we don’t want to. We don’t want to give the center of the universe back to God; we don’t want to admit we have been wrong. Ignorance about God is a moral issue, and so accepting the truth about God requires a moral revolution. The Bible tells us we can be reconciled with God and find life if we believe—that is, if we are willing to admit we were wrong and embrace the knowledge of God. Third analogy: Joan’s father has retired to the south of France and left her in charge of the family business. Before he left, he gave Joan a finished copy of the book that he had been writing for many years. In this book he tried to distill all the wisdom and business acumen he had gained through experience. Principles, rules, stories—all these things her father gathered together in a very large and complex book. But Joan is impatient; she thinks that her father is old-fashioned and that his advice will not allow her to make money fast enough. So although she occasionally looks at the book, she really doesn’t care much about what it says and ends up misunderstanding much of it. Years of following her own stubborn ideas lead the business to the brink of ruin. Finally, Joan admits to herself that she is lost and starts reading her father’s book carefully and in earnest. Some of the ideas in the book are immediately understandable and helpful. Much of it, however, is still difficult to understand, and Joan’s attempts to apply it are confused and make things even worse. The business is still in pretty sad shape. She dreads contacting her father and telling him how little she understands of his wise advice. Her father, however, tells her that he is quite pleased because at last she is willing to listen to him. She may misunderstand parts of what he is saying, but she wants to understand it, and that matters most to him. Believers have the same sort of complicated relationship with the doctrines of the Bible that Joan had with her father’s book. The Bible presents us with truths about God, the gospel, ourselves, and the world we live in. But how important is it that we understand and believe each and every doctrinal truth contained in the Bible? The Bible answers that question in a rich and nuanced way. On the one hand, the Bible clearly shows us that wrong beliefs can arise from an unwillingness to know the truth. (See, for example, the book of Galatians.) Like Joan in her early days, we may be ignorant because we really don’t want to know what our Father is saying. On the other hand, the Bible shows us that the process of growing in understanding of God is a messy one and that we need to be patient with ourselves and with each other. (See, for example, Romans 14.) Like Joan, we may want to understand our Father but still be confused about what He is saying. So we cannot say that doctrine doesn’t matter, but we cannot say that doctrine is the most important thing, either. Bad doctrine can at times be a forgivable human failing, and yet at other times it can serve as an alarm signaling that the person is in great spiritual danger. What is central is a willingness to bow the knee to the God who has revealed His truths in the Bible. Fourth analogy: Tim is a wild and rebellious street kid who has been adopted by a compassionate family. The father tells him, “You are going to need a lot of help; I am prepared to help you get the education you need, break free of destructive habits, and in general learn a new way of living. If you want my help, just ask.” But Tim is not interested in his new father’s kind of help, and he doesn’t really trust him anyway. Every now and again he will hit the old man up for some cash, but since Tim will probably end up wasting the money anyway, the father rarely says yes. Tim continues to take care of himself the way he learned on the street, using manipulation, lies, seduction, and any other tool at hand. But at last Tim comes to the end of his rope, realizing that he has gone the wrong way. He comes to his adopted father and says, “You said if I needed help I could come to you. Well, I have gotten myself in a lot of trouble; please help me.” And so Tim starts coming to his father with his troubles. Sometimes the father says yes to Tim’s request. Often times he says no because he has a different idea of what Tim needs. But Tim always comes back. The fact that Tim keeps coming back, whether the answer is yes or no, says something important about his relationship with his father: at last Tim has come to believe that his father has Tim’s ultimate good in mind. Sometimes people think of prayer as a religious discipline that we engage in out of obedience. Other people think of prayer as a technique for getting what we want from God. But I would argue that Tim’s story is a model of how we should think about prayer. The most significant thing about our prayers as believers is that we see God as the one to turn to. We pray because we are now willing to believe that God is our Creator, and He has promised to rescue us, and we trust Him, so we pray. Prayer is a way of living out our belief that God is a real being who is trustworthy and loving. It is not a technique for getting what we want. It is not a religious ritual that God requires of us. It is our recognition that we are children who have a wise and loving father. Sometimes He says yes because He loves us. Sometimes He says no and claims that He does so also out of love. But whether He says yes or no, we continue to believe that He is trustworthy; He is the one to go to. Ultimately, our perseverance in prayer reflects our trust that one day God’s answer to our cries will be an unqualified “yes.” All the hurts and needs that drive us to God will be healed. Conclusion So in the end, what do these four analogies add up to? None of them deal with the specifics of the Christian faith. Becoming a Christian means believing that Jesus is the Messiah, that God raised Him from the dead, that He is returning to judge unrighteousness and establish the eternal kingdom of God. These little analogies don’t speak to any of that. But I think they speak to the deep issues underneath the gospel story. Why does it matter whether I believe that Jesus is the Messiah? What effect does it have on my life to believe that God raised Jesus from the dead? What does it mean to be a person of “faith”? The answer that I see in the Bible, from beginning to end, is this: faith is significant because it is rooted in a deep-seated willingness to transform the way we look at God and ourselves. To believe in Jesus, we have to have undergone the Copernican revolution of seeing God, not ourselves, at the center of the universe. Then the tragic truth emerges that we have not lived as if God were at the center; we have not loved God, and we have not loved our neighbor as ourselves. We need to be forgiven, and we need to be rescued from our own selfishness. And so we personally come to see the gospel as the good news it is. But such a change of perspective can only arise out of a change of will. What we believe arises from what we are willing to believe. The doctrines we learn from the Bible are influenced by what we are willing for the Bible to tell us. Our lives of prayer before God are reflections of whether we are willing to trust Him and whether we will continue to do so. What I like about these little analogies is that they highlight the revolution that faith must be. To live a genuine Christian life, we must revolutionize our view of God and ourselves, which means we must be willing to revolutionize our view of God and ourselves. This is not some strange, esoteric religious mystery. We see this reflected in our everyday experience; we see it in the little stories we just read. A change in our beliefs can often only arise from a change in our wills, in our hearts; and such a change in beliefs will ultimately change the way we live. This is often true in everyday life; it is certainly true in the Christian faith. These little stories are about fundamental change, and how such change is tied to a willingness to change. Faith is a big deal because faith is a change in what we want as much as in what we believe. I should not neglect to point out that, ultimately, such a change can come about because God Himself is working in our lives. Frankly, we are not good enough to effect such a profound moral revolution in our own thinking. But even though God is the ultimate author of such change, it is a change that each individual believer must undergo. As Hebrews 11:6 tells us, “And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.” And such faith only belongs to those who are willing to admit they have been wrong.

This talk was given to Gutenberg’s graduating class on June 14, 2013. Graduating class of 2013, thank you for asking me to speak to you today. As I thought about what I might say to you, I turned to the rest of the Gutenberg tutors for guidance. I asked them what message, what advice, would they give to this graduating class? As expected, they were no help at all. However, they all agreed on one important point: they were unanimous in praising YOU. All agreed that you were a great class that had done a wonderful job. So about the past there is no question: you should look back on your years at Gutenberg with great satisfaction. You have come a long way, and you have done a great job. That is the very sincere belief of all of your tutors. Congratulations. But a graduation speaker is supposed to speak not only of the past but the future. You graduates stand at the threshold of many changes and possibilities. What words of advice and encouragement are worthy of the occasion? What should I say to you? That was my quest: to find the message that would be most fitting and helpful for the days ahead. But in my search for a message, I ran into what we might call “the Gutenberg curse.” Let me tell you what I mean. This year has been the year of Kierkegaard for me. I have had the privilege of working together with the students through several of Kierkegaard’s important works. I believe I have come to a new appreciation and understanding of Kierkegaard’s thinking. And so my hope was to find something in Kierkegaard that would be suitable for a graduation speech. First, I found a text where Kierkegaard spoke about our human desire to have a huge impact and change the world—or as he would put it, a desire to become a “world-historical figure.” Now that is a great theme for a graduation. Graduation speakers are supposed to talk to students about going out and changing the world. Even better, Kierkegaard’s advice had a nice, contrarian flavor to it. Because rather than urging us to change the world, he speaks of it as a temptation to be avoided. The true business of the believer is to work on the inner person. Our business is to pursue what is good and true with inner passion and urgency. Our passion should be for what Kierkegaard calls “the ethical.” Whether we have any impact on the world is not our business; it is an accident of history—or put another way, it is God’s work, not ours. As Kierkegaard put it, A truly great ethical individuality would consummate his life as follows: he would develop himself to the utmost of his capability; in the process he perhaps would produce a great effect in the external world, but this would not occupy him at all, because he would know that the external is not in his power and therefore means nothing either pro or contra… He would, then, remain in ignorance about [his impact in the external world] through a resolution of the will, and even in death he would will not to know that his life had had any significance other than that of having ethically prepared the development of his soul. Then if the power governing all things would want to dispose circumstances so that he became a world-historical figure—well, that is something he would inquire about jestingly in eternity, for not until then is there time for the light-minded questions of carelessness. Kierkegaard urges us to have so little thought about our impact in the world that we don’t even think about it. We are too concerned with the development of our soul to worry about our impact on the world. We don’t even get around to asking about the impact we had on the world until after we die. In eternity we will have leisure time to discuss trivialities like whether we turned out to be world-historical figures. So that was my first thought: this profound warning from Kierkegaard with a slightly untypical graduation message: don’t worry about changing the world; worry about changing yourselves. True, in an earlier Gutenberg graduation speech Jack had sounded a similar theme. But hey, there is no shame in stealing from Jack and Kierkegaard. But here is where the Gutenberg curse comes in: a first thought is always followed by a second thought. I started thinking about YOU and the pressures you and your generation face. I may be wrong about this, but it seems to me that most of the pressures on your generation are from the other direction. You are not tempted to make too much of yourselves, thinking you are going to change world. Instead, your culture pressures you to think that action is pointless, that you can have no meaningful effect on the world, that it is useless to try. So as profound as Kierkegaard’s warning is, there is a “yes, but” attached to it. On the one hand, it is profoundly true. But on the other hand, it could be misleading. It is a profound warning, but is it the warning YOU need to hear? I had fallen victim to the Gutenberg curse: the deadly danger that we will think ourselves into a corner. So next I turned my thoughts to the Bible. Kierkegaard warned against a rote biblical orthodoxy. In his culture everyone was a Christian. Everyone knew what the Bible said. Everyone knew the right answers to all the doctrinal questions. Instead, Kierkegaard urged that life is not about having all the right Bible answers; life is about making the personal, passionate, existential choice to follow God. This is so profoundly true that I don’t think it can be emphasized enough. But once again the Gutenberg curse came upon me, and second thoughts kicked in. I may be wrong, but once again it seems to me that the pressures on your generation are from the other direction. Your generation is less inclined to fall into a dead orthodoxy. But your culture seems to pressure you to doubt that the Bible can be understood at all. You are not pressured to think that being a Christian is about having the right doctrines; you are pressured to think that doctrine is irrelevant because we can’t possibly know. So once again, as profound as Kierkegaard’s warning is, there is a “yes, but” attached to it. On the one hand, it is profoundly true. But on the other hand, it could be misleading. It is a profound warning, but is it the warning YOU need to hear? So here I was, a poor struggling graduation speaker, left with fuzzy and conflicting ideas. On the one hand, maybe you need to hear X. But on the other hand, maybe you need to hear the opposite of X. The Gutenberg curse was upon me. As the apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 14:8, “if the bugle produces an indistinct sound, who will prepare himself for battle?” I wanted to sound a clear note for you. I wanted to say something decisive that would cut through the ambiguities, that would resolve the tensions between the “on the one hand” and “on the other hand.” Fortunately, Kierkegaard came to my rescue. As you graduates know, Kierkegaard was a fierce opponent of what he called “speculative thought.” For our purposes here, it doesn’t matter what he meant by that. But at one point in his work Concluding Unscientific Postscript , Kierkegaard points out that those who follow speculative thought are fooling themselves. For Kierkegaard, life is about decision. Each of us as individuals must make the personal, subjective decision as to how we are going to respond to God. However, those who pursue speculative thought only think they are making an important personal decision. But they are kidding themselves; it is only a fake, pretend decision they are making. And to Kierkegaard, this shows the absurdity of their position. Why? Because facing the true decisions concerning the faith requires that we stop kidding ourselves about things. The true decisions of the faith require that we abandon self-delusion. And so we come to the statement that I wanted to bring you today. Kierkegaard warns us against self-delusion by saying, “decision is the eternal protest against fictions.” Let me say that again: “decision is the eternal protest against fictions.” That is, making a deep and meaningful decision to follow God requires that we be ever vigilant to reject fictions, falsehoods, seductive lies. (At least, I think that is what Kierkegaard means by it; at any rate, that is what I mean by it.) And so this is my message, this is my clarion call to you today: commit your life to the eternal protest against fictions. Do not let your culture tell you false but comforting stories. Do not tell yourselves false but comforting stories. If we commit ourselves to the eternal protest against fictions, we can resolve the tensions I discussed earlier. We can find our way through the “yes, buts.” We can work our way out of the corner that the Gutenberg curse had put me in. We can confront the “on the one hands” and the “on the other hands” to find the truth contained in both hands. So concerning the issue of our impact on the world: on the one hand, it is a fiction to think that changing the world is more important than tending to our souls; and yet on the other hand, it is a fiction to think that we are not called to act, that there is no point in fighting back against the evil in the world. To cultivate love in our own souls goes hand in hand with acting lovingly in the world. It is a fiction to think that we can do without either one. Likewise concerning our relationship with the Bible: on the one hand, it is a fiction to think that life is merely about having the right doctrines, about having accurate knowledge of what the Bible teaches. It is a fiction to think that any of us has perfect doctrinal understanding. And yet on the other hand, it is a fiction to think that we cannot make progress in understanding the Bible. It is a fiction to think doctrine is unknowable and has no importance. A heart with a passion for God will not accept the fiction that it has all the right doctrinal answers, but neither will it accept the fiction that it can slack off and ignore the word of God. The eternal protest against fictions produces a humility in our knowledge but a hunger to know more. You and I studied through the Gospel of John together. Perhaps then you will understand me when I say that Jesus Himself portrayed faith as “the eternal protest against fictions.” In John we saw all the reasons why people refused to believe in Jesus. They clung to the fiction that physical bread, material wealth, was more important than eternal life. They clung to the fiction that they were good people, that they did not need to repent and be forgiven. They clung to the fiction that what other people thought of them was more important than what God thinks of them. And they clung to the fiction that their doctrinal understanding was so perfect that they had no need to reconsider it. What we saw in John was this: the ones who believed were the ones who abandoned these fictions, the ones who faced the truth about themselves and God. Graduates, here is what I believe about the lives you have ahead of you. The world is going to tell you some stories, some fictions, like these: Your choices don’t matter. Life has no ultimate point. There is no God. Or, we can’t really know anything about God. Or, there is a God but you don’t really need to do anything about Him. Life is about self-gratification rather than self-control. And so on. Even worse, you will be tempted to tell yourself some stories, some fictions, like these: It is always the other person’s fault, not mine. As long as I have a community of good friends, I have all that I need. My biggest problems can be solved through marriage and a good career. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with me. Or the worst fiction of all: I can live in limbo; I don’t have to finally and decisively choose whether to follow God or not. There is a road that leads to life, and every single person on that road is committed to the eternal protest against fictions. So I am asking you to join the crusade: commit yourselves to the eternal protest against fictions. Don’t listen to lies, even when you yourselves are the liars. Now, ultimately I am optimistic. I am deeply encouraged by the choices you graduates have made in your years at Gutenberg. Each of you have faced some hard truths and taken them on with integrity. I don’t think you want to let fictions rule your lives. I think that you will join the eternal protest against fictions. I hope you will.

Christians with a high view of the Bible have long recognized that much of the world disagrees with them. Opposition can be a healthy thing; having to defend one’s beliefs in the marketplace of ideas is good for the mind and the soul. More and more, however, the “conservative” Christian faces not so much disagreement but outright dismissal. Christianity is presented as so obviously irrational and bigoted that no one could take it seriously. Bible believing Christians are not just wrong, but shameful. Now, shame is a powerful weapon. Shaming is often much more effective than rational argument. To deliver the knockout blow, merely imply that your opponents are so obviously and stupendously wrong that they could not possibly be justified in their beliefs. They are either naïve or ignorant or self-righteous or bigoted; whatever the explanation might be, they ought to be ashamed of ever having thought...what they think. More and more, Bible believing Christians are finding themselves targeted in this way, their opinions portrayed as so obviously stupid and intolerant that every right thinking person is justified in dismissing them out of hand. It is only natural, then, that Christians find themselves feeling defensive and uncertain in response. These things came to mind when I read a recent blog post in the Huffington Post religion section (March 14, 2013), “6 Things Christians Should Just Stop Saying,” by Steve McSwain. The six things Christians should stop saying are: 1. The Bible is the inerrant, infallible Word of God. (Summary: No, the Bible is obviously filled with errors, and saying that the “original manuscripts” are error free is irrelevant, since we don’t have them.) 2. We just believe the Bible . (Summary: No, you just believe your interpretation of the Bible, and other equally sincere Christians disagree with you.) 3. Jesus is the only way to Heaven. (Summary: No, you interpret John 14:6 to mean that, but I interpret it differently, and you have no right to arrogantly assume your interpretation is correct.) 4. The rapture of Jesus is imminent. (Summary: The rest of us Christians are tired of apologizing for you wackos who keep predicting the end of the world. Shut up.) 5. Homosexuality is a chosen lifestyle and it is a sin against God. (Summary: Our culture is changing its mind about this, so move beyond the prejudice of the apostle Paul and get with it.) 6. The earth is less than 10,000 years old. (Summary: stop insisting these myths be taught in our schools, or that courts display the ten commandments, or that the founders of the U.S. were Christians; our democracy will not survive unless you stop.) This post was a classic example of the sort of argumentation that leaves many Christians feeling confused and insecure. From my perspective, however, the post is an appalling combination of bad argumentation and rhetorical bullying. I say this even though I agree with McSwain that three of the six statements are problematic—at least, I could agree with him if we meant the same thing by them, which I doubt. (I’ll leave you to guess which three.) And I know that McSwain says he is a Christian himself. But since he misrepresents and contemptuously dismisses the thinking of pretty much every Christian I’ve ever known, his post ends up being a great example of intellectual bullying. We won’t look at his entire argument, but I thought it would be worthwhile to examine some of the ways he makes his case. The unfortunate sorts of arguments he uses are all too common these days. Forewarned is forearmed. The Folly of Inerrancy To start with, let’s examine McSwain’s comments on the inerrancy of the Bible. It is not my purpose here to argue for inerrancy, but rather to note the way this author argues against it. Here is what he says to convince Christians they should stop saying, “The Bible is the inerrant, infallible Word of God”: It isn’t inerrant and not likely even in the “original manuscripts.” But then, I cannot say that with absolute certainty, anymore than anyone else can either. Why? Because no such “original” manuscripts even exists. That’s like saying, “We believe there are aliens on other planets!” Good for you. Now, prove it. As we have it, no matter what translation you favor, the Bible is replete with errors. To pretend otherwise is your right. To say otherwise is a lie. You are entitled to your opinions, your assumptions, even your beliefs. What you are not entitled to is a misrepresentation of the facts. He has basically two things to say: 1) We don’t have the original manuscripts, and 2) The Bible is obviously filled with errors. Both of these points, however, have the same fatal flaw: McSwain has not troubled to understand the position he is dismissing. Many Christians, I suspect, have not worked through for themselves the issues involved with the inerrancy of the Bible. In order, then, to make clear just how irrelevant and unfair McSwain’s comments are, I need to talk a bit about the way inerrantists think about the Bible. Imagine that you are on an expedition to find buried treasure deep in the heart of a deserted island. For a guide, you have a book written by the man who hid the treasure. At the beginning of the guide book, the man has written, “I am the one who buried the treasure, and I leave these instructions for my descendants. I have checked these instructions again and again; if you follow them faithfully, you will find the treasure you seek.” But the book is only a copy of the original, and it is old, sometimes cryptic, torn in spots, and written in an archaic dialect. What attitude do we, the treasure hunters, take to these instructions? We recognize that the copyist might have made mistakes; we know that we might be translating it wrong; we acknowledge that some of the cryptic language is hard to interpret. We do not have a perfect copy of the instructions, nor do we have perfect understanding of them. But what we do have is confidence that the old map-maker knew what he was talking about. He claims to have buried the treasure; he claims that he checked carefully to make sure he wrote the instructions accurately. We keep trying to perfect our understanding of the book because we have confidence that it is true. We may not understand the book fully yet, but one thing we do not do: we do not question whether the man who wrote the instructions knew what he was talking about. Those who believe in inerrancy see mankind as being in a similar position with the Bible. The Bible, they would argue, claims to be speaking nothing but truth. The inerrantist believes that claim to be a credible one, although there are problems to deal with. Some discrepancies seem possible. There are other places that we don’t understand. There are problems of textual transmission. We do not have perfect understanding by any means. But we believe that the Bible claims to speak only the truth and that it is rational and compelling to accept that claim. We question our translations; we question our manuscript copies; we question our interpretations. But one thing we do not question is the truth of the Bible’s message, to the extent that we have understood what that is . In the light of this, then, we can understand the unfairness of McSwain’s comments. First, he points out that we don’t have the original manuscripts. But no thoughtful proponent of inerrancy argues that we have the original manuscripts. Inerrantists acknowledge the imperfection of their understanding, the potential problems created by imperfect copies and imperfect interpretations. What they do argue is that it makes a difference whether we are striving to understand an accurate or an inaccurate text. Of course our striving will be incomplete and imperfect. We can question whether Paul wrote a particular word in our manuscripts. We can question whether we have accurately understood what Paul meant. But we do not question whether Paul knew what he was talking about. Paul claims to speak with the authority of Jesus because he was taught by Jesus and empowered by the Holy Spirit. The inerrantist accepts that claim. We can see the difference this makes by looking at McSwain’s own words. When he says concerning homosexuality that we should “move beyond the prejudice of Paul,” he has gone way beyond the issue of whether we have the “original manuscripts”; he is saying that we have accurately understood what Paul taught, but Paul was wrong. Even more serious is the bullying way McSwain asserts that the Bible obviously has errors: As we have it, no matter what translation you favor, the Bible is replete with errors. To pretend otherwise is your right. To say otherwise is a lie. You are entitled to your opinions, your assumptions, even your beliefs. What you are not entitled to is a misrepresentation of the facts. This is the classic technique of the rhetorical bully: assume that your position is obviously true and then berate your opponents for their bad faith; the Bible’s errors are so obvious that the inerrantist must be pretending and lying. What this totally obscures is the fact that many thoughtful defenses of inerrancy have been written that deal with the phenomenon of potential errors—defenses that appeal to the nature of error, the philosophy of language, the principles of textual transmission, and much more. Now, maybe those arguments are wrong. I’m not objecting to the fact that McSwain doesn’t agree with those arguments; I’m objecting to the fact that he ignores those arguments and makes anyone who believes in inerrancy out to be a stupid liar. To my mind, this is slanderous and reprehensible. And yet it will serve its purpose. The readers of the Huffington Post can congratulate themselves for not being such dishonest fools, and those Christians who have a high view of Scripture can hang back, uncertain and ashamed to be thought of as deceivers who are afraid to face reality. McSwain uses this name-calling technique throughout. When dismissing the idea of the “rapture,” he says: So, please, please. If you want to believe in the charts that Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye and other “get-rich-off-the-stupidity-of-Christians” have duped scores into believing, then have at it. Now, as it happens, I don’t agree with Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye either. But this sort of name-calling is the exact opposite of the thoughtful sort of critiques that ultimately convinced me they were wrong. Only Your Interpretation The points made in this post often hinge on the “it’s only your interpretation” argument—that is, “You may think that the Bible teaches X, but I interpret it differently, and I have just as much right to my opinion as you do.” This is seen most clearly in the discussion of point 3, “Jesus is the only way to heaven.” McSwain says that this mistaken idea arises from misreading John 14:6: Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me. The typical Christian understands Jesus to be saying, “If you do not believe in Me, you won’t go to the Father when you die.” But McSwain has a different interpretation. As I understand McSwain’s argument, Jesus was only saying something positive to the disciples: when He goes away, He will continue to lead them to the Father. He was not making the negative statement that there is no other way to heaven. (I can’t say I entirely understand McSwain’s argument because he doesn’t explain the explicitly negative statement Jesus makes: “no one comes to the Father, but through me.”) At any rate, McSwain wants Christians to know that there are “equally sincere” Christians who have a different interpretation of John 14:6. He concludes: Again, it’s your right to “believe” or, more accurately, interpret Scripture as you wish. You do not, however, have permission to arrogantly assume your way of interpreting the words of Jesus are the only way to understand His words. This charge that Christians are “arrogant” is very common, but I confess it makes no sense to me. The author is arguing that Christians should stop saying that Jesus is the only way. Why? Because he has a different interpretation of John 14:6, and it is arrogant for them to think that their interpretation is right. But why isn’t it arrogant for McSwain to think his interpretation is right? If other Christians need to stop saying that Jesus is the only way (because it is only their interpretation), then why doesn’t McSwain need to stop saying that Jesus is not the only way (because it is only his interpretation)? If he is “equally sincere” in his interpretation, doesn’t that mean that Christians who think Jesus is the only way are “equally sincere” as well? If it is OK for McSwain to say they are wrong, isn’t it also OK for them to say he is wrong? My suspicion is that McSwain hasn’t accurately described his real objection. The reason that he is not arrogant for giving his interpretation of John 14:6 is that his interpretation supports a welcoming, non-exclusive theology. His interpretation does not insist that Jesus is the only way. Other Christians, though, are interpreting the passage in an exclusive way, and being exclusive is arrogant. In other words, McSwain has a prior belief that Jesus would never exclude anyone, and so Jesus couldn’t have meant that He is the only way. Only a bad, arrogant person would read John 14:6 as saying that Jesus is the only way. Again, McSwain doesn’t say that, but since the argument he gives doesn’t seem to make sense, perhaps this is his real objection. Conclusion Conservative Christians are facing a growing consensus that our views are obviously contemptible. We believe the Bible is infallible because we are hiding our heads in the sand. We believe that Jesus is the only way because we are elitist bigots. We believe homosexuality is a sin because we are scared to death of our own sexuality. We don’t believe in Darwinian evolution because we are ignorant and uneducated rubes who are afraid to look at the evidence. And so it is becoming more common for our opponents to abandon rational argument and resort to shaming techniques. Just stating what Christians believe is thought to be enough to show how ridiculous Christianity is. My only concern in this article is to remind Christians that name-calling is not an argument. Misrepresenting the other guy’s beliefs is not an argument. We do not need to be afraid of “arguments” like this. Of course, sometimes we deserve other people’s criticism. Sometimes we are hiding our heads in the sand, and we need to be called on it. If people are rightly accusing us of being irrational or elitist, then we need to cut it out. But we are not guilty just by virtue of having a strong view of the Bible or a high view of Jesus. What those who ridicule Christianity often don’t recognize is how much their own presuppositions determine what looks cool and what looks contemptible. The critics pat each other on the back every time they “score” a point against Christians, but self-congratulation is no substitute for reasoned argument.

In 2 Peter 2:15-16, Peter makes an intriguing reference to a strange Old Testament story: …forsaking the right way they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness, but he received a rebuke for his own transgression; for a dumb donkey, speaking with a voice of a man, restrained the madness of the prophet. Peter is warning his readers about those he calls “false teachers” (2:1), and in trying to capture the nature of their error he says they have “followed the way of Balaam.” When we read the story of Balaam, however, it may not be apparent what “the way of Balaam” is and why it is so bad. What does Peter mean by saying that the false teachers are emulating Balaam, and what should that mean to us? As we look at the story of Balaam more closely, we will find that Peter is using an emotionally rich analogy, one that will tell us a lot about the false teachers of our own day. Is Balaam a good guy? In its very simplest form, the story of Balaam, found in Numbers 22-24, is easy to tell. The enemies of Israel offer great riches to Balaam, a seer, if he will pronounce a curse upon Israel. God, however, tells Balaam not to curse Israel, but instead to say only what God tells him to say. Four times Balaam, rather than cursing Israel, pronounces a prophetic blessing instead. The enemy king is furious with Balaam, and Balaam departs. Told in this form, it might seem that Balaam was a pretty good guy. The king was promising him great wealth, and yet Balaam would not pronounce a curse but pronounced a blessing instead. Maybe Balaam was one of those non-Israelite believers like Melchizedek. Clearly, however, Peter does not see Balaam as a good guy. Other New Testament writers also denounce Balaam. So what was Balaam’s problem? To understand the kind of man Balaam was, we need to look at two pieces of evidence left out of the simple version told above. Those two pieces are 1) a weird story about a donkey, and 2) a passing comment by Moses. Balaam and his donkey The story about the donkey comes early in the Balaam narrative. Messengers come to Balaam asking him to go with them and curse Israel. God tells Balaam to go with the messengers but that he should only say what God tells him to say. However, when Balaam sets out on his donkey, the text says that God “was angry because he was going,” and so the angel of the Lord, arrayed as a mighty warrior, blocks Balaam’s path. Balaam sees nothing, but his donkey sees the angel and balks at going forward. Balaam is furious and beats the donkey, at which point the donkey starts talking to him. Balaam finally sees the angel himself and understands that God is angry with him. He offers to return home, but once again God tells him to go with the messengers but to say only what God tells him to say. Two things are strikingly strange about this story, but upon reflection I think they are the key to understanding the kind of man Balaam is. The first strange thing is that God tells Balaam he should go and then “was angry because he was going.” Is God unfair, blaming Balaam for something God Himself told him to do? Looking at the whole episode, it seems more likely that God is angry not at the mere fact that Balaam goes; He is angry with Balaam’s motives for going. Remember, Balaam has been promised vast wealth if he will come and curse Israel. Perhaps Balaam is not going with the messengers just because God said he could; perhaps he is going with the hope that he can find a way to curse Israel and get rich. The ending of this episode suggests this is the right answer. If God were angry merely because Balaam was going with the messengers, then when Balaam offers to go back home God would say, “That’s right, you go home!” But instead, God repeats His original instructions: go with the messengers, but say only what I tell you to say. God took Balaam through this entire terrifying episode with a warrior angel to drive home one point: when you get there, you had better say only what I tell you to. This strongly suggests that Balaam needed to be warned to say what God told him; he seems to have entertained hopes that he could go off script and pronounce the curses that would make him a rich man. God makes it abundantly clear that Balaam was not to deviate from God’s instructions. The other strange thing in this story is the talking donkey. It seems more like Aesop’s Fables than biblical history. Again, however, I think that reflection helps us to see the point of this unusual event. Balaam was a pagan seer, a man who fancied himself an all-seeing master of the divine. So God takes Balaam through a supernatural experience with a powerful message, an enacted parable that puts Balaam in his place. Balaam, the all-knowing seer, cannot see the angel of the Lord right in front of his face, but his donkey can. God can make a seer out of a donkey if He wishes, which makes ridiculous Balaam’s presumptuous belief in his own power. Balaam is being put through a divinely orchestrated lesson in humility. Again, it makes sense to assume that Balaam needs that lesson in humility. The final result, then, of this strange story about a donkey is to show us how much Balaam’s attitudes need correcting. He needs to be warned again to say only what God tells him to, and he needs to be humbled and shown that his prophetic “gift,” to the extent he even has one, is totally dependent on the power of God. He needs these warnings because he thought he was powerful enough to ignore God and win himself a fortune by cursing Israel. Moses shows us the real Balaam If it seems that we are being too suspicious of Balaam in the way we are reading this story, a passing comment by Moses removes all doubts about Balaam’s bad motives. In Numbers chapter 31, Israel has gone to war against those same Moabites and Midianites that commissioned Balaam in the first place. They did so because, after Balaam’s failure, they had found a way to bring the curse of God upon Israel. That story is told in Numbers 25: While Israel remained at Shittim, the people began to play the harlot with the daughters of Moab. For they invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. So Israel joined themselves to Baal of Peor, and Yahweh was angry against Israel. (Numbers 25:1-3) As a result of Israel’s idolatry and immorality, God curses Israel with a plague that kills 24,000 Israelites. Furthermore, we soon learn that the Midianites had deliberately tricked Israel into abandoning Yahweh and earning His wrath: Be hostile to the Midianites and strike them; for they have been hostile to you with their tricks, with which they have deceived you in the affair of Peor… (Numbers 25:17) The Moabites and Midianites, under leadership of their king Balak, had hit on a very clever strategy. If Israel could be seduced into abandoning their God, Yahweh, then He would abandon them. And that is what happened. What does this have to do with Balaam? Here is where Moses’ comment comes in, found later in Numbers 31:15. In Numbers 31, Israel is now following God’s instructions and attacking the Midianites as vengeance for what they did to them at Peor. And Moses said to them, “Have you spared all the women? Behold, these caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against Yahweh in the matter of Peor, so the plague was among the congregation of the LORD….” (Numbers 31:15) Moses urges Israel, at God’s instruction, to be ruthless to the Midianites, who had deliberately tricked Israel into the idolatry which had brought about the plague from Yahweh. But where had they gotten the idea to trick Israel in this way? From Balaam! Now we have the pieces to put together the full story. Balaam was promised great riches by the Moabites and Midianites if he would curse Israel. God used a terrifying supernatural experience to drive home to Balaam that his “powers” were totally dependent on God and that he had better not say anything other than what God told him to. This was presumably because Balaam was thinking that he was powerful enough to get around Yahweh and earn great wealth by pronouncing the curse anyway. After Balaam is thwarted and unable to pronounce the curse, he goes to the enemies of Israel with another plan. If Israel could be tricked into sinning against Yahweh and committing idolatry, Yahweh Himself would curse them. And that is exactly what happened, with Balaam presumably reaping the riches he had been promised before. It didn’t do him any good, however; as it happens, we know what Yahweh’s final judgment on Balaam was: Balaam was killed in the war that Israel waged against the Midianites. Now we understand why the New Testament speaks so negatively about Balaam. For example, in the book of Revelation Jesus says this to the church in Pergamum: But I have a few things against you, because you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit acts of immorality. (Revelation 2:14) Notice that Jesus interprets Numbers along the lines we have suggested. Balak was the king who had tried to hire Balaam to curse Israel, and Balaam was unable to. But afterwards, Balaam taught Balak the king to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel; that is, Balak and his people invited the Israelites to their sacrifices, and this led Israel to sacrifice to idols and commit acts of immorality. And Jesus is suggesting that some in Pergamum are following the same sort of path, putting a stumbling block before the people of God like Balaam did. Likewise, the book of Jude uses Balaam as a bad example (in a passage that is more or less parallel to the 2 Peter passage): Woe to them! For they have gone the way of Cain, and for pay they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam, and perished in the rebellion of Korah. (Jude 1:11) The key phrase is “for pay they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam.” Jude brings out the idea that Balaam was motivated by the idea of financial gain, just as Jude’s opponents were. This fits the strong implication from Numbers that Balaam was motivated by the very great wealth he had been promised. Finally, let’s turn back to our passage in 2 Peter: …forsaking the right way they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness, but he received a rebuke for his own transgression; for a dumb donkey, speaking with a voice of a man, restrained the madness of the prophet. (2 Peter 2:15-16) Peter affirms some of the same things we deduced from Numbers: Balaam was motivated by greed, by a desire for wealth; he “loved the wages of unrighteousness.” The episode of the donkey was a rebuke against Balaam for his greed. The donkey “restrained the madness of the prophet”; Balaam was mad to think that he could somehow prevail over God and earn great wealth by cursing Israel, and it was only after the episode of the donkey that he realized it was impossible. Now at last we are in a position to understand why Peter says the false prophets have “followed the way of Balaam.” Balaam was a man who was willing to entice the people of God to their destruction—and all for the sake of his own personal profit. This is exactly how Peter sees the false teachers. And many will follow [the false teachers’] sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; and in their greed they will exploit you with false words… (2 Peter 3:2-3) They are stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, as they carouse with you, having eyes full of adultery and that never cease from sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed, accursed children; (2 Peter 2:13-14) For speaking out arrogant words of vanity they entice by fleshly desires, by sensuality, those who barely escape from the ones who live in error, promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption… ( 2 Peter 2:18-19) The false teachers are enticing the believers into embracing a life of immoral sensuality, and their motive for doing so is greed. We do not know any specifics about what the false teachers were doing or how, but we know that “in their greed they will exploit” the believers to whom Peter is writing. When we look at the many problems the church has faced in the past and today, it is easy to imagine the sort of thing Peter is talking about. A man who would set himself up as a leader can often gather a following by appealing to people’s baser desires. Tell them that the gospel promises them “freedom,” the sort of freedom that allows them to indulge their desire for pleasure and wealth. A man can gain a great deal of power, influence, and riches by telling people what they want to hear. This seems to be the sort of thing about which Peter is warning his readers. The false teachers may look convincing and attractive, but in fact they are leading their followers to destruction for their own selfish purposes. Seen in this way, the use of Balaam as an analogy has a real emotional kick. Balaam was willing to sacrifice the lives of God’s people for the sake of his own material gain. The false teachers of Peter’s day were the same. In our own day, it is hard not to think of those “ministries” that promise abundance and happiness, all the while collecting massive amounts of money from their poor followers so that the minister can buy his third mansion. In contrast, the gospel of Jesus Christ is all about God forgiving our sin and one day cleansing our hearts of sin forever. To follow that gospel means holding to that hope with such sincerity that our lives are marked by repentance, longing in our imperfect way for the righteousness that will be completely ours one day. All those who set themselves up as “teachers” and yet lead people away from that gospel and that repentance will find in the end that they have indeed gone in “the way of Balaam,” sharing in his error and his destruction.

Those who lived before the time of Jesus, those waiting for the coming Messiah, did not anticipate a time like the one in which we live. That the Messiah would come and then go away again never occurred to them. The King has come, and yet the world seems very much as it always has. Who could have known? As it happens, Jesus and the writers of the New Testament agree that at least one passage in the Old Testament hints at that very thing. That intriguing passage, one of the passages most quoted by the New Testament, is Psalm 110, a psalm of David. Yahweh says to my Lord: “Sit at My right hand, Until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.” Yahweh will stretch forth Your strong scepter from Zion, saying “Rule in the midst of Your enemies.” Your people will volunteer freely on the day of Your power, In holy array, from the womb of the dawn, Your youth are to You as the dew. Yahweh has sworn and will not change His mind, “You are a priest forever According to the order of Melchizedek.” The Lord is at Your right hand; He will shatter kings in the day of His wrath. He will judge among the nations, He will fill them with corpses; He will shatter the chief men over a broad country; He will drink from the brook by the wayside; Therefore He will lift up His head. Although there are some tricky details in this Psalm (which we will not pursue now), the overall picture is fairly clear. David, the psalmist, speaks of his “Lord,” a man who will be placed at the right hand of God, a metaphorical place of incomparable honor and authority. This man will “sit” in this exalted place until that day when God conquers all his enemies and subjects them to his rule. On that day, this man’s people will eagerly volunteer, presumably to follow him in his conquering army. Intriguingly, he will be not only a conquering king but also a priest representing his people to God—and an eternal priest at that. Yet that day will come when God will go to war to execute judgment on the rebellious kings of the earth and bring them finally and completely under the rule of this man, David’s “lord.” A man who sits in a place of authority, destined to conquer and rule over all the kings of the earth—that sounds like the Messiah, the Christ, and it is almost certain that the Rabbi’s of Jesus’ day understood the psalm in that way. Jesus himself certainly did, as we see in Matthew 22:41-45: Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, “What do you think of the Christ, whose son is He?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “Then how does David in the Spirit, call him Lord, saying, ‘Yahweh said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, Until I put your enemies under your feet?”’ If David thus calls him Lord, how is He his son?” Jesus is clearly affirming several things. First of all, he asserts that Psalm 110 is talking about the Christ. Next, he says (contrary to some modern skeptics) that David is the author of the Psalm. He concludes, therefore, that David saw the Christ as being so superior to himself that he calls Him “Lord.” The Pharisees, as would have been very typical, thought of David as the founding ancestor of the Davidic line of kings, the most important member of the tribe. The Messiah, as the son of David, would seem to derive his authority from David. Jesus uses this passage to remind them that David saw the Messiah not so much as his descendant but as his superior. Ultimately, at his trial, Jesus identified himself as that Messiah, that son of David, and he did so with an unmistakable allusion to Psalm 110: And the high priest said to him, “I adjure You by the living God, that You tell us whether you are the Christ, the Son of God.” Jesus said to him, “You have said it yourself; nevertheless I tell you, hereafter you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.” (Matthew 26:63-64) Jesus speaks of His future coming by alluding to two famous messianic passages. Daniel 7 speaks of “one like a son of man” who comes in the clouds and to whom God gives sovereign rule over the nations. And of course Psalm 110 speaks of that man whom God seats at His right hand, destined to conquer. So the Sanhedrin would certainly not miss Jesus’ point when he says, “you will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.” That one whom the Psalm identifies as sitting at the right hand of God is none other than Jesus himself. The rest of the New Testament authors pick up this exact idea. Acts, Romans, I Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, Hebrews, and I Peter—all these speak of Jesus currently sitting at the right hand of God. That is what his resurrection and ascension mean: God has raised Jesus to that exalted place of honor and authority at the Father’s right hand. Peter in his very first sermon (Acts 2:32), preached on the day of Pentecost, makes that very clear: This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses. Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear. For it was not David who ascended into the heavens; but he himself says, “Yahweh said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, Until I put your enemies under your feet?’” Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. So Jesus, the Messiah, has now arrived at the first stage spoken of in Psalm 110, an exalted place at the right hand of God. But what of the final stage? What about the conquest of the rebellious kings of the earth, figuratively portrayed as sprawled under the feet of the conquering Messiah? That is still to come. As Paul says in I Corinthians 15:23-25: But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ’s at His coming, then comes the end, when He delivers up the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. Paul essentially repeats the thought of Psalm 110: there is a time coming (but is not yet) when God will put all Christ’s enemies under his feet in subjection. Thus I think we can say with great confidence that the New Testament universally agrees that God announced His intentions in Psalm 110: Jesus, the Messiah, would reign as God’s exalted King for a period of time, sitting (so to speak) at the right hand of God, waiting for the consummation of history when all rebellion against his rule would end and his conquest would be complete. This picture helps prevent us from making two opposite errors. On the one hand, we should not think of today as the time when nothing is happening. Jesus is reigning as God’s exalted King now. The rest of the New Testament makes clear that his reign is manifested every time a soul is wrenched from the grasp of Satan, every time the truth prevails over error, every time a follower of Jesus grows in faith. On the other hand, we should not think that this world will just continue on as it is indefinitely. The Father is working to fulfill His promise, that all the enemies of the Messiah, every heart in rebellion against God, will one day finally be brought low, so that the Messiah’s total conquest of evil will extend throughout the earth. For believers, both truths are important. Although it is hard for us to see, Jesus is reigning now, bringing together a people who will love God eternally. And one day his people will see the eradication of all opposition to truth and goodness. On that day real life will begin.

Imagine yourself to be a Jew at the time of Jesus. Imagine that you are sitting outside your simple house, thinking about what God had promised in the Bible. (Now we call it the Old Testament, but then it was the only Bible you had.) You are one of the children of Abraham, to whom God had promised great blessings. But look around: right now you do not feel very blessed. God promised that He would give you peace from your enemies forever, but your enemies, the Romans, have won. God promised to eliminate evil, death, and sorrow, but everywhere life goes on as it has always gone on; suffering, hunger, evil, and death have never been defeated. The Romans rule; evil rules; suffering and death rule. And yet God had promised that ultimately He would rule, He would conquer all evil and death. You have often heard rabbis speak of “the kingdom of God,” that time when all the earth would come under the righteous, peaceful rule of God through His anointed King, His Messiah. When the Messiah comes, everything will be made right. When the Messiah comes, he will wipe the tears from your eyes. When the Messiah comes, he will drive the cursed Romans out of this land that God promised to you. When the Messiah comes, the kingdom of God will finally have arrived, and God Himself will rule over all and bless His chosen people. As you sit in front of your house, you look out across the field and imagine that the Messiah were coming right now. He would be riding on a white horse, waving a huge sword. He would be accompanied by legions of angels. All around, the glad shout of your fellow Jews would be heard as they welcome the arrival of their savior. “At last, the kingdom of God has arrived.” Then you look at your little house, your possessions. If the Messiah and his angels were coming across that field, would any of this stuff mean anything to you anymore? Of course not. You would gladly leave all of it behind and run off to follow in the victorious wake of your conquering King. While you sit in front of your house, daydreaming about the Messiah, you see that a small group of people actually are coming across the field. It seems to be a rabbi and his students. Soon they stop near you, and the rabbi begins to teach. He is telling stories, parables, which he says are about the kingdom of God. But his stories do not seem to fit your expectations. The kingdom he is describing is not anything like the kingdom you have been expecting—no conquering hero sweeping you up in his great victory march. He talks about the kingdom as if it were something hidden, nearly invisible, which only those who are discerning and wise may enter. He talks about the kingdom as if each individual must make a hard choice about whether to believe in it and pursue it. In a couple of stories, he talks about a person giving up all he has to enter this kingdom. That’s funny; you were just thinking about how gladly you would give up your possessions if the Messiah and his armies came galloping across your field. But this rabbi has no horses, no armies, no legions of angels. Look around: the Romans are still in control, people still suffer and die. And yet this rabbi is calling for you to “give up all you have.” For what? How can you be willing to lose everything for a kingdom you cannot even see? In my imaginary scene the rabbi, of course, is Jesus, and the parables He tells are sometimes called the “kingdom parables.” Found in Matthew, chapter thirteen, these parables spell out the surprising nature of God’s coming kingdom. I asked you to imagine yourself as a first-century Jew, hearing those parables for the first time, because this helps us to see how truly radical these parables were. Jesus did not picture the kingdom of God as a conquering army that would sweep everyone up and carry them along. Although Jesus is not denying that ultimately the Messiah will indeed conquer and rule over His kingdom, the issue in these parables is something else—namely, what kind of people we need to be to enter into that kingdom. Before the conquering armies, before the legions of angels, we have to decide whether His kingdom is valuable to us, valuable enough to persevere and even suffer loss in order to enter it. Here, for example, is one of Jesus’ kingdom parables that might have puzzled his hearers: The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has, and buys that field. (Matthew 13:44) To understand Jesus’ point, we must start by trying to understand the story itself. A man finds a great treasure in a field. Why not just take it? Well, when people ask, “Where did you get that treasure?” the owner of the field might find out and say, “‘That’s my field. That treasure belongs to me.” So the man hides the treasure in the field. Now, when anyone looks, all he sees is a field. Then the man goes and buys the field from the one who owns it, buying the treasure along with it. The key phrase in the parable is “from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has.” Think how this would look to an observer, to his friends and family: “You are selling everything you have to get a field? What are you going to do when all you have in the world is a field? Are you just going to lie around in your field all day? We are too shrewd to make such a stupid deal. You would never catch us selling everything we have for a field.” But this man gives up everything he has joyfully. And given the way Jesus has told the story, we understand the man’s joy. He knows that he is not really losing. No one else knows what he knows: there is a great treasure in that field. When he owns the field, he owns the treasure, and he would gladly lose everything else to gain that treasure. He does not love the field; to him, the field is just the big dirty wrapping paper around a wonderful present. And to give up everything he has to gain it will in fact make him rich. A similar theme shows up in the next parable Jesus tells: Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls, and upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it. (Matthew 13:45-46) Once again, we start by trying to understand the story itself. A pearl merchant is in the business of buying and selling pearls. He is very experienced with pearls; no one understands pearls better than he does. Furthermore, he is a shrewd businessman. He is only going to make deals which benefit him; he is not interested in losing money. One day he comes across a pearl unlike any pearl he has ever seen. This is the pearl of pearls—large, lustrous, without flaw. No other pearl has even come close to comparing with this pearl. Again, the key to the story is the way the merchant willingly sells everything he has to get this pearl. People will not often gladly surrender everything they have, but this merchant is glad to do it because of two things that are true about him: he knows a good pearl when he sees one; and he is only interested in making a profit. Others may balk at the high price for this pearl, but they do not know pearls the way the pearl merchant does. Even if he loses all the rest of his stock, every other pearl he has, the merchant knows that he will still be a winner if he buys this pearl. Several important elements are common to these stories: In both cases, a man is willing to commit the very unusual and seemingly self-destructive act of giving up everything he has. In both cases, the man gladly gives up everything he has because he believes that in fact he is not losing but gaining: this treasure, this pearl, will make him rich. In both cases, the man knows something that is not obvious to others: that field is hiding a treasure; that pearl is valuable beyond imagining. These three elements are what Jesus has in mind when He says that the kingdom of heaven is “like” these stories. Let’s examine each of these elements, starting with the last. (1) Hidden. Jesus’ contemporaries might wonder why He says the kingdom of heaven is like a “hidden” treasure. After all, the coming kingdom of God was the great hope of the Jews, and its value was obvious. That the value of the kingdom was hidden to many, however, can be seen easily from the reaction of those same people to Jesus Himself. The King, God’s Messiah, was standing right before them, and yet most of them rejected Him and wanted Him dead. Sure, the people were ready for the Romans to be defeated and for peace and prosperity to overflow. But Jesus put the focus of His message elsewhere. The coming kingdom involved a moral revolution even more than a political one. He told them, in essence: “You are guilty and condemned, and you need the forgiveness of God. You are morally broken, and you need God to restore your soul. This world is passing away, and you need to fix your hope on the next one, the coming (and currently invisible) kingdom of God. And unless you repent, you will not enter the kingdom at all.” Jesus put the spotlight on the worldliness and rebellion of the human heart: what good is it going to do to kick the Romans out if you stand condemned before God and your soul is being destroyed by sin? This message cannot be attractive to anyone who is not willing to repent, to admit his or her own bankruptcy. The child of God, the one who is willing to repent and embrace the truth, obviously understands something that the rest of the world does not. Thus in chapter thirteen of Matthew, the teaching on the kingdom parables, Jesus praises those who “have eyes to see and ears to hear.” (2) Valuable. We human beings assign value to things that solve real problems and provide real benefits. If we do not agree with Jesus about the nature of our problems, we will not agree with Him about the value of the coming kingdom as a solution to those problems. But by the grace of God some of us get it. We have seen the devastation caused by our own sin and the sins of others, and so we can begin to taste the sweetness of a world where sin is defeated. We have seen decay and impermanence, we have felt the cold winds of death, and so we are eager for life everlasting, a life filled with blessings that cannot be taken away. Most of all, we know that we are guilty before God, and so we are truly grateful that He promises mercy. Forgiveness, the restoration of our souls, and eternal joy—to those who understand their real problem, that sounds pretty good. (3) Costly. Gaining treasure sounds great, but the part about giving up all we have sounds less attractive. Why does Jesus include that idea in both parables? We cannot buy our way into the kingdom of God, can we? No, there is no way to earn God’s favor. That does not mean, however, that a place in God’s kingdom does not cost us: Jesus calls us to repent—that is, to abandon the foolish way we think and live. He tells us that those who follow Him must be willing to lose the approval of the world, even to the point of death. He warns that the riches and pleasures of this world can seduce us away from the kingdom. We must be willing to forgive, to lose our right to demand retribution and condemnation. The list goes on. Jesus seems to think that following Him is not like adding a new hobby to our lives; following Him is a choice between mutually exclusive alternatives. If Jesus is right, then the way we have been thinking and living is wrong, and we are called to give it up. In Conclusion We started by imagining ourselves to be a first-century Jew, struggling with the difference between our own conception of God’s kingdom and the very different picture Jesus portrayed. Only when we embrace Jesus’ mission and message will the logic of the kingdom parables be clear. That certainly is true of the parables concerning hidden treasure and a fabulous pearl. These parables are about people who eagerly pay the price to gain a treasure. Onlookers may think they are foolish, but we who hear the stories do not because we understand their joy. Of course those people are eager to give up what they have: they are gaining a treasure. We would think it strange if a man clung to his garbage while refusing a mansion. In these parables, Jesus is urging us to see the objective, incontrovertible value of the kingdom He has come to establish. To Jesus, the promise of the kingdom is not abstract and intangible; it is the solution to our very real problems: our guilt, moral brokenness, and mortality. The challenge is to believe Him, to feel the weight of our true condition, so that the promised rescue delights our hearts as it should.

Sometimes we can go for years thinking that we understand a passage in the Bible and then discover that we were mistaken. For me, one of those verses was the opening of the well-known Lord’s Prayer: Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen. I knew that I had questions about some sections of this prayer, but one part that seemed obvious to me was “hallowed be Thy name.” Christians recite this prayer together often, sometimes weekly, and I would bet that many of us share the same mistaken idea that I had, namely, that the meaning of “hallowed be Thy name” was so obvious it needed no explanation. In this article we will explore this deceptively simple phrase to understand better what we have been reciting all this time. The First Request To show you where I went wrong, let me ask a question: Where is the first place we actually ask for something in the Lord’s Prayer? What is the first request, the first thing we pray for? Our quick first answer might be “give us this day our daily bread,” but a little reflection shows that will not work; several requests come before that one. But perhaps we might be tempted to answer the way I used to: our first request is “Thy kingdom come.” I used think that the structure of the prayer was like this: Opening statement: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. First request: (May) Thy kingdom come. Second request: (May) Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. I never gave much thought to “hallowed be Thy name,” anyway. It sounded like a fancy way of saying “your name is holy.” That seemed like a good way to start a prayer: address God and say “Father, your name is holy,” and then get on to the requests. But I was wrong; the first request in the Lord’s Prayer is not “Thy kingdom come.” The first request is “Hallowed be Thy name.” Part of the reason we might miss this is our rustiness with King James English. Let us translate the first part of the Lord’s prayer in a way that shows the structure more literally and clearly: Our Father who is in heaven: May your name be sanctified. May your kingdom come. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. The structure of the first three requests in the prayer is actually very tight. They are three parallel third-person imperatives: may your ‘X’ do ‘Y’! May Your… name be sanctified. May Your… kingdom come. May Your… will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That structure is very deliberate on Jesus’ part because each request is very closely connected to the other two. In a way, each request is asking for the same thing. In order to understand this better, we need to look for a moment at the Old Testament concept of the kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God Who rules this world? It seems obvious when we look around. Rich and powerful people rule this world. Kings and presidents rule this world. Russian mobsters, Colombian drug cartels, and television networks rule this world. In a nutshell, fallible selfish people rule this world. And do we rule this world well? No, under our rule injustice still thrives as it has throughout the entirety of human history. Under our rule human sin continues unabated, bringing death and suffering on every life it touches. Our world has been this way for many centuries, and it seems as if it will go on this way forever. The prophets of Israel, however, knew that this was only a temporary condition. The day was coming when God, the rightful ruler of all creation, would assert His rule. He would throw down all the rulers of this world. He would rule over the world through His own appointed King, the Messiah. That King would rule in righteousness and justice. Under that rule the world would no longer be a place of rebellion and evil; the King would conquer every trace of rebellion; every square inch of creation would be under the rule of God, reflecting His goodness and love. This is what the prophets meant by “the kingdom of God” or “the kingdom of Heaven”—God’s rule, through His Messiah, over all the earth, bringing in eternal righteousness. Sanctifying God’s Name Now what does this have to do with “hallowed be Thy name” (or more literally, “May Your name be sanctified?”)? To see the connection, let us look at the words of one of those prophets in Ezekiel 36, starting with verse 16: Then the word of the Lord came to me saying, “Son of man, when the house of Israel was living in their own land, they defiled it by their ways and their deeds; their way before Me was like the uncleanness of a woman in her impurity. Therefore, I poured out My wrath on them for the blood which they had shed on the land, because they had defiled it with their idols. Also I scattered them among the nations, and they were dispersed throughout the lands. According to their ways and their deeds I judged them. When they came to the nations where they went, they profaned My holy name, because it was said of them, ‘These are the people of the Lord; yet they have come out of His land.’ But I had concern for My holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations where they went.” God’s punishing Israel by sending them into exile and captivity had a bad effect on His reputation. God is holy—that is, He is not common and ordinary like you and me; He is awe-inspiringly unique in His goodness and power. That is what “holy” means: set apart, awesome, uniquely wonderful. But if God is so holy, why were the Jews defeated by the other nations? In the eyes of the world, God must be a pretty puny, insignificant god if He could not protect His people against the Assyrians and Babylonians. God’s name was profaned; that is, instead of seeing God as holy, the world saw Him as ordinary, a failure—just one of a long line of gods, and not even a very good one, since He couldn’t save His people. God’s name, God’s reputation, was in the mud. What would He do? Therefore, say to the house of Israel, “Thus says the Lord God, ‘It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went. And I will sanctify My great name which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord,” declares the Lord God, “when I sanctify Myself among you in their sight. For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands, and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances. And you will live in the land that I gave to your forefathers; so you will be My people, and I will be your God.’” This is a description of the coming of the kingdom of God. In chapter 37 of Ezekiel what God is going to do becomes clear: He is going to send the Messiah to rule over Israel, to rule over the whole world. He is going to forgive Israel for their sins. He is going to gather them together under the rule of the Messiah. He is going to cleanse their hearts from all sin, and put new hearts within them. In doing all this, God says He is going to “sanctify My great name.” No longer will the nations dismiss the name of God as trivial and forgettable; in that day everyone will know that God is indeed the Holy One. In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus speaks of the same concept that Ezekiel does, the sanctification of the name of God. What God says He is going to do in Ezekiel is what we are praying will happen when we pray the Lord’s Prayer. God has made many promises to His people, but the world around us feels quite safe in either ignoring or ridiculing Him. Until He comes and keeps all those promises, establishing His rule over all creation, the nations laugh at His name: “God is no big deal. Look around. He doesn’t protect His people. The world goes on the same day after day.” Well, a day is coming when no one will be able to ignore God anymore. God is going to step into history and destroy all the kingdoms of this world and rule over His people and bless them. When He does that, He will “sanctify His name.” God is already holy, but in this world His name, his reputation, is seen as ordinary and insignificant. When Jesus returns to rule over all, God’s name, God’s reputation, will be restored to its rightful place. Perhaps the best expression of how God’s name will be sanctified is in Zechariah’s famous statement about the coming of the Messianic kingdom. In chapter 14, Zechariah describes God coming to the defense of Israel against all the nations of the earth. God will prevail, and living waters will flow from Jerusalem to the east and to the west. Then Zechariah makes a beautiful statement in verse 9: And the Lord will be king over all the earth; in that day the Lord will be the only one, and His name the only one. One day God will be King over all the earth: all other rulers will be taken away, and God will rule over all through Christ. One day all rebellion against God will be eliminated. When God’s kingdom comes, His will shall prevail; the world will be good and pure and righteous, just the way He wants it to be. One day God’s name will be the only one; instead of many rulers all competing for power and glory, everyone will know that God’s name is above all. He alone is worthy of praise. In other words, His name will be “sanctified.” This is the day that Jesus is asking us to pray for in the Lord’s prayer. The Lord’s Prayer We can see, then, that the first three requests in the Lord’s Prayer are not only structurally united but thematically united as well: May Your name be sanctified. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. To put it in a different order, we are saying this: God, I want that day to come when you will rule over all the earth. (May Your kingdom come.) God, I want that day to come when all rebellion is destroyed and your perfect will prevails over all the earth. (May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.) God, I want that day to come when your reputation is vindicated, when all the world will see that You are the One God, whose name is holy above all. (May Your name be sanctified.) What does this mean for us? Why does Jesus tell us to pray like this? In Jesus’ teaching it becomes clear that what we pray for reflects what is in our hearts. In the first half of the Lord’s prayer, Jesus is showing us what ought to be on the hearts of God’s people. We ought to know that nothing in this world can truly satisfy us, can truly solve our problem. What do we long for? What do we really need? What are we going to cry out to God for? If we are wise, we will cry out for His kingdom to come because that is what we truly need. Our hearts should be growing in our desire that God will come and establish His rule over the world—that His desires will prevail, that His name will finally be recognized throughout all the world. We can see, then, that this kind of prayer has nothing to do with “moving the hand of God.” God’s kingdom is going to come whether I pray for it or not. It was His idea in the first place, not mine, and He certainly does not need me to convince Him to bring that kingdom about. The importance of the prayer is in what it expresses about my heart. What is the focus of my life? Am I preoccupied with the worries of this life? Are my prayers filled only with requests for worldly happiness and success? Or have I heard the promises of God and believed them? That is what Jesus is teaching us in the first part of the Lord’s prayer. God has promised that He will come and rule over the world through Jesus. God has promised that His perfect will shall win out over all rebellion. And God has promised that one day His name, His reputation, will be vindicated throughout all the earth. All will know that God is unique, righteous, powerful, special, awesome, wonderful. Jesus is telling us to let our hearts be filled with hope from those promises, and so then let our prayer be an expression of that hope and longing. One day all the world will know that God is holy, and that will be the best day the world has ever known. If we believe this and long for this, then that desire will be at the heart of our prayers, and we can pray “hallowed by Thy name” and mean it.

Common sense would seem to tell us that a thing cannot be both costly and free at the same time. If I must pay a high price for something, then it is not free; if it is free, then I am not required to pay for it. This commonsensical observation, however, leads to a theological puzzle: do the promises of the gospel come to us for free or at great cost? The Bible uses both kinds of language. To cite just two of many examples, compare these statements: And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost. (Revelation 22:17) Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, to see if he has enough to complete it… So therefore, no one of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions. (Luke 14:27-33) So which is it? Are we to count the cost, or are we offered something without cost? One simple (but wrong) solution would be to see two offers being made in the Bible: one for salvation and another for discipleship. Salvation is free and unconditional, and all believers accept this offer. Discipleship, however, is costly, and only some believers pay the price and reap the rewards of being a disciple. As some have said, one can accept Jesus as Savior without accepting Him as Lord. Now, discussing the "lordship salvation" debate is not the purpose of this article (I wrote on this topic at length in my book Righteous Sinners ). Rather, I want to untangle the seeming contradiction between "costly" and "free." Indeed, we will find no contradiction: salvation is free in one sense and costly in another, and both truths are equally important in understanding our lives as believers. In our day-to-day lives, we are quite familiar with the ways in which something can be free in one sense and costly in another. Imagine that a young woman has been accepted to Gutenberg College and offered a full scholarship. Her tuition is fully paid for four years, and her rent, books, food, and other living expenses are paid as well. In one sense, then, to be a student at Gutenberg will cost her nothing. She does not have to give any money or qualify in any other way; she can just bring herself, freely, without charge. As any Gutenberg student could tell you, however, being a student here is not without cost. To be a student at Gutenberg requires "payment" of time and energy and commitment. To say "yes" to Gutenberg costs a certain amount of freedom. Even if someone had the opportunity to attend Gutenberg for "free," that person would still have to ask whether the price (in time and energy) is too high. The same thing can be said of the gospel: in one sense salvation is offered to us freely and graciously, but in another sense to accept that offer can cost us dearly. To illustrate this point, let us look at the context in Luke 14 where Jesus speaks of "counting the cost." Some have argued that Luke 14 is proof that we must distinguish between salvation, which is free, and discipleship, which is costly. Jesus tells a story about people being invited to a banquet (Luke 14: 16-24); this invitation is gracious and free and extended to all. Then Jesus changes subjects and says that no one can be His disciple unless he hates his father and mother, picks up his cross, and gives up all his possessions (Luke 14: 26-27). Thus, some argue, Jesus is clearly making two different calls: one is the call to a free salvation; the other is the call to costly discipleship. I would argue, however, that to call the invitation to the banquet "free" is misleading. While certainly "free" in one sense, the invitation is quite "costly" in another sense. To see how this is so, let us look at parable of the banquet from Luke 14: A certain man was giving a big dinner, and he invited many; and at the dinner hour he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, "Come; for everything is ready now." But they all alike began to make excuses. The first one said to him, "I have bought a piece of land and I need to go out and look at it; please consider me excused." And another one said, "I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please consider me excused." And another one said, "I have married a wife, and for that reason I cannot come." And the slave came back and reported this to his master. Then the head of the household became angry and said to his slave, "Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in here the poor and crippled and blind and lame." And the slave said, "Master, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room." And the master said to the slave, "Go out into the highways and along the hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste of my dinner." (Luke 14:16-24) As Jesus tells this story, the offer to attend the banquet is free in one sense and costly in another. In one sense, the banquet costs nothing. A lush meal is graciously provided free of charge. Those who are poor and crippled cannot even hope to return the favor; the host of this banquet will never eat a lavish meal at their house, and yet he still invites them freely. The invitation is wide open: anyone who is hungry, come and eat. In another sense, though, attending the banquet is very demanding; look how many people turned it down. They all had things in their lives that meant more to them than attending the banquet, things they were not willing to give up. Their personal property and relationships meant more to them than the banquet did, and so they did not attend, even though the banquet was "free." In the end, they lost out entirely because they were not willing to pay the price. Now we can see that when Jesus goes on in Luke 14:25 and following to speak of the cost of discipleship, He does not intend a contrast with the parable of the banquet that preceded it. Rather, what He goes on to say about the cost of discipleship is exactly in keeping with the banquet parable. Now great multitudes were going along with Him; and He turned and said to them, "If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple." (Luke 14:25-27) Here Jesus uses the language of obligation and cost: a person cannot follow Him unless he or she does these things, unless he or she pays this price. A person must "hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life." I would paraphrase what Jesus means as follows: If you follow me, you may face a choice. The important people in your life—your father, your mother, your wife—may not approve of you following me. The people of this world hate me, and if they hate me, they will hate you. And so you must choose: do you want to follow me and find eternal life, or do you want to keep the approval of those around you? The world being what it is, you can see that to follow me might even cost you your life. Notice that nothing in what Jesus says suggests that we are earning His approval or making ourselves worthy of salvation. He is not saying, "Leave your wife and children, and then I will know that you are worthy to be my disciple." Jesus is making a free and gracious offer: just bring yourselves, as you are, and I will give you life. In a world such as ours, however, accepting that offer can cost us much. In a world hostile to God, seeking to be God's friend can make you a target. We might like to follow Jesus and keep everyone happy with us, but that choice might not be open to us. Furthermore, the costs of following Jesus are not always tangible and external. Sometimes we must pay an internal cost as well, giving up cherished beliefs and ideas. Paul grieved because most of his fellow Jews did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah, but he understood why: Brethren, my heart's desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge. For not knowing about God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. (Romans 10:1-4) They did not come to Christ because they were seeking to be justified based on their own performance, not on the forgiveness Christ offered. To follow Christ, they would have had to pay the price of abandoning their previous ideas. Ironically, some of the Pharisees came as far as believing that Jesus was the Messiah, and yet they still could not abandon their self-righteousness. Thus the "Judaizers" said they believed in Jesus as Messiah, but they continued to believe that obedience to the Jewish law—circumcision and eating kosher and such—won God's approval. But a gospel that tied salvation to performance of the law was not really the gospel at all; in Galatians Paul called this a "different gospel." Believing that Jesus was the Messiah was not enough; they had to believe that Jesus was the Messiah who saved unworthy sinners such as themselves. The Judaizers found that too high a price to pay. Costly and free—the gospel is both. To say that everyone can freely receive salvation while only some need pay the price of discipleship is to make a serious mistake. Salvation is totally free in one sense and highly costly in another, and we must understand both senses in order to understand the Christian life. Salvation is free in that we can do nothing—we can pay nothing—to earn our acceptance from God. We are evil, but God accepts us anyway, without reservation. We are guilty before the court of God's justice, yet He frees us from paying what we owe. God is not waiting to accept us until we meet some standard; we do not meet the standard, and yet He blesses us now. If we do not understand how freely and graciously God is acting toward us, then we can fall into self-righteousness and/or despair: self-righteousness because we have forgotten that we do not deserve God's kindness; despair because we have forgotten how freely willing God is to overlook our guilt. Yet, salvation is also costly, and we must understand that as well. By its very nature, to believe the gospel is a huge shift in our lives. To believe that Jesus died for our sins costs us our self-satisfied belief that we are good people. To believe that God is willing to forgive us costs us our bitter unwillingness to forgive others. To believe that the true riches are found in the kingdom of God costs us our delusion that money matters. To ask Jesus to be on our side may cost us the approval of others. If our faith is genuine, then it cannot help but confront us with some hard truths and hard choices. This confrontation is not optional; what Jesus offers is not what the world offers, and to have them both is impossible. To deny this is to distort our picture of faith itself.

As if in a dream, I found myself walking through a wood, earnestly debating with a young man wearing bell-bottoms. He looked strangely familiar, but for some reason I could not remember why. We seemed to have been talking for some time. Me: Tell me, though—Why does Christianity seem like nonsense to you? Him: I've always tried to be a reasonable, rational person. Christians are naïve and gullible; they just believe in this fairy tale about Jesus because they want to. My dad says religion is a crutch, and that's what I think, too. Me: Well, people often do believe things because they want to rather than because such belief is warranted. I wonder, though, how can you be so sure that they are the ones whose desires are leading them astray? What about your own presuppositions and desires? How do you know that you aren't the one ignoring reason and evidence because you don't want to believe? That is, in fact, what the Bible would say. God has made Himself known in many ways, but we each find our own excuses for disbelieving. Him: I don't know why I am telling you this, but you've put your finger on a sore point. I find that every time I get close to thinking that the Bible might be true, I run away in a panic. I have to admit, that doesn't sound very objective. (He scratched his beard as I scratched mine.) Me: No, it doesn't. Him: After all, though, you can't escape the fact that one needs good evidence and reasons to believe. Supposedly the Israelites got to see God part the waters of the Red Sea. If I saw the waters of the Red Sea miraculously part, I would believe, as well. Me: It's funny you should say that. Even though the Israelites went through the Red Sea and saw miracle after miracle, the Bible records that, in fact, they did not believe. They did not trust God, and in the end they voted to kill Moses and go back to Egypt. So much for the power of miracles to induce belief. Him: OK, I'll grant you that a stubborn person can disbelieve even the evidence of his own eyes. But I don't want to be stubborn—at least, I don't think I do. But where is this evidence? Where are the good reasons I should believe in Jesus? Me: Well, I think about it like this. Right now you have a worldview, a way of looking at reality that excludes God. There are really two questions: Does your worldview hold up? And does the Christian worldview hold up better? Him: Of course my worldview holds up. I can make perfectly good sense of the world. Science has explained pretty much everything to us. Heck, Apollo 15 just got back from landing men on the moon a couple of months ago. Human reason is perfectly capable of explaining the world without God. As for the Christian worldview, it can't stand up to scrutiny. It's obvious that there is no God. Where is He? Why doesn't He show Himself? Me: Let's start with your current worldview. It's a funny thing about the modern world—just as man is confidently asserting that science allows him to know everything, philosophers are telling him he has no right to think he knows anything, including his own existence. After all, if mankind is just a product of random forces in the universe, what reason do we have to think there is any relationship between the activity in our minds and the real world—if there is a real world? Something tells me you have thought about this before. Him: Yes, but these questions just get me angry. Obviously our minds get us in touch with reality. We just don't know how. Me: Here, at least, is a place where the Christian worldview has it all over the centuries-old debates of the philosophers. As human beings, we are born with a great confidence that we can know things as they are, and the Bible tells us where that confidence comes from. We are made in the image of God, in the image of the one who made both our minds and the world we are trying to know. Him: You sound just like Francis Schaeffer. My high school philosophy teacher made us read Escape From Reason, and it made me furious. Schaeffer supposedly showed the philosophical problems with all the art that I love—the movies of Fellini and Bergman, the poetry of Eliot, the music of the Beatles, and so on. He berates Juliet of the Spirits because Fellini wants "to prevent the viewer from distinguishing between objective reality and fantasy." But that's exactly what makes the movie so powerful! I just don't think Schaeffer gets it. I love the tragic resignation in a poem like Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach": Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. Despairing, but such a beautiful despair. Me: You're forgetting about the first part of the poem, where Arnold explains where the despair comes from. The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. Whether he knew the answer or not, Arnold had the right diagnosis: Christian faith provides us the foundation for knowing who we are and why our lives have meaning. Being created by God does not just explain how we can know the world; it explains why we are personal beings, who we are, and what our purpose is. No philosophy that has tried to build on a non-Christian base has accomplished as much. You are familiar with B. F. Skinner, right? Him: Yes, his book Beyond Freedom and Dignity just came out in 1971. Me: Just came…? Hmmm… Well, anyway, look where his philosophy led: Freedom and dignity… are essential to practices in which a person is held responsible for his conduct and given credit for his achievements. A scientific analysis shifts both the responsibility and the achievement to the environment. (Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity ) In order to preserve his view of man as a randomly assembled machine, Skinner is prepared to throw out everything that we think of as making us distinctively human. Hasn't it occurred to you that tossing God out of our worldview has led to a view of life that is unlivable? You can talk about beautiful despair all you want, but the Christian worldview does not bow in inevitability to despair but decisively answers it: man can know, and his life has a purpose. Have you never felt that you would like an answer to these beautiful, artistic statements of despair? Him: I ought to tell you to get lost, but there is something about this place that makes me want to be honest with you, almost as if you are the one person it is most important I not lie to… strange. Anyway, I do have to admit some odd behavior on my part recently. For the past several summers, I have been going to summer picnic meetings with (gasp) a high school church group. I am their resident atheist, and I take every opportunity to show them what I think of Christianity. What I have been wondering about is why I kept going. I am almost afraid to admit it, but the fact is, I kept going because those kids have something I don't have: they have a meaningful center to their lives. They read C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams, and then they talk about what those books mean as if it mattered. Me: I know just what you mean. So listen, we've talked about the Christian worldview as providing the only adequate basis for knowledge and meaning. What about morality? Him: I think you have been reading my mind. (How could that be?) In school we had to read The Brother's Karamazov. A theme that comes up a lot in that book is that if there is no God, then everything is lawful. When I read that, I got so mad I threw the book across the room. That can't be true! Me: I am encouraged that you haven't tried to deny right and wrong; you just don't know how to explain it. Modern naturalism is busy trying to fit the round peg of personal morality into the square hole of an impersonal universe. Once again, the Christian worldview has an answer that your worldview does not. If you doubt that the mindset of the modern man is lost on this issue, just look around. Him: Let's change the subject here. You make it sound as if Christianity were a perfectly plausible alternative to the way I look at the world now. But who can believe this supernatural stuff now? Science has showed a new way of looking at the world that doesn't need supernatural explanations. Miracles don't happen. Man came about through evolution. These things are facts, and a modern thinking person can't believe in magic anymore. Me: Science has shown that the supernatural cannot happen? How did it do that? It is true that modern science is uninterested in God as the source of anything. But it did not (and could not) empirically demonstrate His irrelevance. What the modern naturalistic scientist has done is replace one set of religious assumptions with another. The evidence from nature does not compel the scientist to embrace naturalism; indeed, he evaluates the evidence from nature based on his naturalistic religious assumptions. Him: This "Christian worldview" you talk about comes from the Bible, right? Why should I have any confidence in it? I have been looking through the Bible, and I have found a lot of things that don't add up. For example, I found Paul saying that we are justified by faith and not works, while James says that we are justified by works and not by faith alone. If the Bible cannot get its story straight on such an important issue, why should I have any confidence in it? Me: You have a good point. But I have two things to say. First of all, this is not an issue that has gone unnoticed. Let's go all the way back to the Reformation. Luther and Calvin saw the solution (in part) in different definitions of "justified"; Melancthon saw the solution in distinguishing between meritorious and non-meritorious works. Have you considered their explanations? Secondly, does skimming through a book to point out apparent contradictions really have intellectual integrity? If you read any serious and difficult book, apparent contradictions can arise. The question is whether you have read carefully enough to really understand what the authors are doing. My contention is that the biblical message has such congruence with our situation as rational, moral, personal, meaningful beings that it commends itself as worthy of belief. At that point, then, we recognize that some parts of it are more difficult to understand than others. Doesn't it make sense that we would humbly try to understand those harder parts without immediately discarding the whole book? I can, in fact, report that I have thought about the Paul/James problem quite a bit, and I have come to believe that they do not contradict each other at all. I will not explain my conclusions now, but I find them very convincing, and for some reason I think you will one day find them convincing, as well. Him: Well, tell me: what's the bottom line? What is the Bible saying? Me: It's saying something that you ought to find very believable. You are here because God, who is all-powerful, personal, rational, good, and merciful, has created you to be in His image. As you know, however, you and everyone else have turned away from that God and filled your life with selfishness and foolishness. You have failed to love and obey God as you should, and you have failed to do right by your fellow man. By rights God should toss you on the garbage heap of history, but instead He has reached out to you through Jesus Christ to rescue you from your own guilt and your own evil. Jesus came to be your teacher, your rescuer, and ultimately your ruler forever, bringing you life instead of death and a heart filled with goodness instead of evil. The question is… will you believe it? Him: … I'll have to think about it. And with this the scene faded, and I awoke to find myself staring into the mirror at an aged but familiar face.

Ron Julian, Author at Gutenberg College

About Ron Julian

Ron Julian began as a teacher at McKenzie Study Center in 1982, where his teaching focused on biblical exegesis and communicating the gospel, and he has been a tutor at Gutenberg College since it opened its doors in 1994. Other interests over the years have included biblical languages, film, music, literature, and computer technology. He has a B.A. in linguistics from the University of Oregon and an M.A. in religion from Reformed Theological Seminary, and he is the author of Righteous Sinners and a co-author of The Language of God: A Commonsense Approach to Understanding and Applying the Bible.

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