Tag: Jesus

Book Plunge: God’s Gravediggers Part 1

What do I think of Raymond Bradley’s book published by Ockham Publishers? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I got this book seeing it on sale on Kindle and seeing praise from Graham Oppy for it. I thought this would then be a good and challenging read. Unfortunately, the more I go through this book, the more I see it is not that. Bradley holds to extreme fundamentalist views. Unfortunately, I can easily see why.

Bradley grew up in New Zealand in a situation that was hyper-fundamentalist. He talks about being at Bible camps and all manner of events constantly. At one, he talks about how a leader taught about masturbation and treated it essentially as if it was the unforgivable sin and identified it with blaspheming the Holy Spirit. Whether or not one agrees with masturbation or not, I don’t know anyone who thinks that’s what Jesus was talking about in the Gospels.

There was also the case that his parents when confronted with questions would tell him to have faith. Now I cannot prove any of these stories, but I am going to accept them on face value. I really have no reason to not do so.

So let’s say this at the start. Parents. If you think your faith is extremely important and that your child should believe the things you believe, don’t you think you should study those things and why you should believe them? If you have no reason to believe what you believe, why should your children?

I can think of no other area in your life where people would say have faith? Whether you are a conservative or a liberal, do you tell your child to just have faith your position is true. Do you tell them why you think they should support or oppose gun control instead? Do you tell them why they should or should not support minimum wage laws?

Bradley also early on talks about what could convince him of theism. On page 7, he tells how if the heavens opened tomorrow and God was revealed and kept sharing His desires and ended all injustice and human and animal suffering, he might consider revising his beliefs. When atheists make statements like this, it tells me they are not open to argumentation. They want an experience. (All the while, telling Christians to not go by their experiences.)

He also says that dates are given for people like Caesar in ancient history, but not for the Son of God. It’s hard to believe so many people think this is a serious objection. Now if everyone believed Jesus was the Son of God, of course, they would have written that, but hardly anyone did. Bradley compares the Caesar on the throne to what the rest of the world said was a crucified criminal and asks “Why was one recorded and not the other?”

He also goes on to say the prevailing view among Christians at the start was Docetism. Source for this? Good luck.

When he writes about the existence of Jesus, he says most scholars regard what was said in Josephus as interpolation possibly invented by Eusebius. Source for this? None. He also says Tacitus was at best just hearsay of what Christians were reporting. Source? The same. None. Most scholars think there is some interpolation to Josephus’s first reference to Jesus, but not the whole statement is interpolation. The second one is hard to regard as interpolation.

The reference to Tacitus is not hearsay as Tacitus did not care about hearsay and regularly checked every claim given, including by his best friend Pliny. He was a senator and a priest. If anyone had access to the information, it was Tacitus.

Bradley goes on to decide how his parents reacted to his questioning. This included physical beatings by his father that were so bad a neighbor threatened to call the police. It also involved some books he got being burned. This is actually a great example of how NOT to reach your children. His parents saw this coming for years. They sat him down with two experts, but never seemed to consider learning themselves.

At this, I can have some sympathies for Bradley as such abuse is never justified. However, it looks like Bradley has stayed at this state. He is still the fundamentalist that he was years ago as we will see.

We will continue next time on chapter 2.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Jesus’s Resurrection in Early Christian Memory

What do I think of David Graieg’s dissertation? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

As far as I know, this isn’t published yet nor is there an official name, but the title i have put is something found in the heading of the dissertation. I saw on Facebook that Graieg had done his dissertation on the resurrection from a perspective of memory and I asked if I could see it. He sent it to me and I did tell him I would write a review.

I have now finished it and for my thoughts, well, it’s certainly thorough. If you go through a dissertation, pretty much everything has to be backed, save for when you’re doing your conclusion on the matter, and the bibliography makes up about a third of the writing itself. This would be something for many of our atheist friends to keep in mind who think we just blindly believe matters about religion.

The emphasis in this paper is on the creed in 1 Corinthians 15 and the memory of Jesus’s resurrection event. As we know, the letter was written between 55-60 AD, but the creed comes much earlier. Most scholars will place it no more than five years after the event in question. Most place it at a very early timeframe. Some have placed it within a few months of the event.

Yet the earliest record we have of it is this letter. Perhaps somehow matters changed. Can we be sure that this is accurate? We have Paul’s word on it, but can we trust his memory stood the test of time? Doesn’t memory change? We’ve all experienced remembering something that didn’t happen or filling in details or telling a story and have it change based on the audience.

This is the basis of Graieg’s work. Early on, he has a look at the chapter as a whole exegeting it. I thought this was interesting, but if there was one part of the dissertation I didn’t see fitting in, it was this part. I could understand some parts like the idea of a spiritual body being worthy of discussion, but not the entirety of the chapter as a whole. It was unclear to me how this related to memory studies.

However, from there, nearly every question that can be asked about memory is asked. This includes how memories are shared and how they last and flashbulb memories and what kinds of memories fade. One concern of people who haven’t read this might be that this could be seen from an individual basis. Nope. Graieg spends time looking at the aspects of communal sharing and notes that this would be a communal memory that would be not just shared, but rather performed, several times.

Such factors even as Paul’s age is looked at. We don’t have a biography of Paul, but Graieg goes on the best information we have and he sees no reason to think that Paul would have his memory sufficiently altered to make the creed radically different from what it was originally. Like I said, it’s very in-depth.

This also includes look at how reliable testimony is. Hasn’t eyewitness testimony been called into question a few times? Graieg looks at the ways in which memory is reliable in these situations and in the ways in which it is more prone to error.

In the end, Graieg concludes that there is no reason to believe that there is an error in memory taking place sufficient to overcome that Paul really believed this event happened. That does not mean that it did, but it does mean critics of the resurrection need to be careful before making such an argument. They also need to contend with the evidence and realize perhaps Paul really remembers what happened because it really did happen.

If there was one other area though I would like to have seen covered, it would have been cognitive dissonance. This is a favorite magic word of skeptics who have never ever read anything on the topic, but it is thrown out to make it look like they know what they’re talking about. I consider it a weak objection, but I would have liked to have seen Graieg talk about it.

Keep an eye out for this author. If you’re interested in resurrection studies, this is worth it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Why Good Friday?

Why did this day happen? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

When I was married, my ex and I were watching the series on TV about Jesus that was made by Roma Downey and her husband. This one took some liberties with the text including a great line from Pilate upon the announcement that Jesus would be crucified. “He will be forgotten within a week.”

And you thought two weeks to flatten the curve were a long two weeks.

Here it is 2,000 years later and the world has been totally transformed by Jesus. Many of us do not notice the impact Christianity has on our lives. Art, literature, science, medicine, morality, philosophy, music, etc. All of these have been influenced by Jesus. More books have been written about Jesus than anyone else and more art and music has been done about Him than anyone else.

All of this started though that fateful day when Jesus was crucified, so what brought about that day? It’s beyond dispute that Jesus died by crucifixion. (No. I’m not at all going to treat those Jesus mythicists seriously.) The question to ask at this point is, “Why?”

Now a Christian could respond and say, “Well, Nick. Haven’t you been to church to hear? Jesus was crucified for the sins of the world.” Yes. That is why God allowed it, but is that the same as why it happened? No. Pilate was not standing there saying “This guy is innocent, but we have to crucify Him for the sins of the world.” The chief priests and Pharisees weren’t saying, “Jesus is a pretty good guy, but remember, we have to crucify Him. God needs it done to save the world.”

The question is simple, and yet it is not. Jesus is crucified. We all know that. How did He get up on that cross anyway? Perhaps an example will explain. In Five Views on the Historical Jesus, John Dominic Crossan writes on how Jesus saw John the Baptist get beheaded for having an apocalyptic message, so Jesus shifted course. He was more into such talk as the love of God and the brotherhood of men then. That sounds all good and well until you ask a simple question. “Why was He crucified then?”

A Jesus going around and teaching just about the love of God is not going to get crucified. This Jesus is not a threat to anyone. This is like calling Barney the Dinosaur or Mr. Rogers a threat. This Jesus is harmless and note that Jesus is not just killed, He is crucified, a treatment designed to shame and humiliate, not just kill.

As a Christian, my answer is that Jesus was teaching about His rule in the Kingdom of God and what it would be like and taking power away from those who had it and challenging their right to dictate the way of God to men. Jesus was a threat because He kept humiliating His opponents in conflict over and over and He was doing so many miracles and wonders that the hand of God was undeniable on His life. Crucifixion would be a way of silencing everything as surely that would be the end of it all and no one would want to follow a crucified failure.

But yet, He wasn’t.

All that is being asked here is about a basic fact in history. Jesus was crucified. Why? What was He doing with His life that was so dangerous He had to be crucified? It is common for those of us who are Christians to press skeptics on the evidence for the resurrection. We should do the same with the crucifixion.

Today, we will celebrate that God did take this evil event and use it for the greatest good possible. I also hope we will think some on why this happened. Anything that helps us understand the life of Jesus better will help us live the life of Jesus today.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: 7 Things I Wish Christians Knew About The Bible

What do I think of Michael Bird’s book published by Zondervan? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I have to say that every time I read something about Michael Bird, I get a treat. Michael Bird is an author with keen insights and a pastoral heart as well, but he also has a great touch of humor and will say so many statements that make you laugh all throughout the book. I would be thrilled to see him team up with Andy Bannister to write a book.

This is a book written for Christians, though I think it can be helpful for non-Christians as well. In it, he gives seven different statements that many of us might think are old hat, but in reality, there are people who treat the Bible this way even if they know it’s not literally so. For instance, the first one is that the Bible didn’t fall out of the sky.

Really, even if we don’t know how the Bible came about, somehow, we all know that it didn’t. In reality though, we do often treat it that way. The Bible is a divine book to be sure, but it is also a very human book. That’s actually the second, This gives us more of how the Bible was written by people and has their own personality styles in the text.

Third is that the Bible is normative and not negotiable. In this, he wants us to realize that Scripture is the place of authority. We don’t just pick and choose. Too many “churches” today have the idea that the Bible is authoritative when it speaks properly, which by the way, happens to be the times that it agrees with them. Amazing!

Next is that the Bible is for our time, but it’s not about our time. This is especially the case with modern prophecy experts who think everything going on is talked about in Scripture, they are shown to be wrong, but then a year or two later, the exact things happen again. I am not just talking about so-called prophecy experts. I am also talking about laypeople who read the Bible this way. (Sometimes, they sadly commit the unpardonable sin of calling the final book “Revelations.”)

The fifth is that the Bible should always be taken seriously, but not literally. Somehow, we live in a time that thinks that literal interpretation is the best way to read the Bible every time. The early church really enjoyed allegory, for example. Too many atheists also make a big deal about literal interpretation.

The sixth is that the purpose of the book is to give us faith, hope, and love. Now here, I would have liked to have seen Bird say something about the fake view of faith as belief without evidence or something similar. Still, Bird’s point is entirely valid. As much as an academic like myself wants to gain a lot of knowledge and as much as some people might go to the Bible wanting to get personal advice on how to live, and neither of those are bad in themselves, the main goal is to produce the character of faith, hope, and love.

Finally, Christ is the center of it all. However, saying that, he wants us to be careful to not forget the Father or the Spirit. He also wants us to make sure we don’t just read Christ into everything without first understanding what the text says in itself. Also, he thinks we should be able to teach Jesus as Messiah from the Old Testament, which I agree with.

Bird’s given us a great gift in this one. I highly encourage you to go and read this one. You’ll laugh a few times and you’ll learn something.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

The Incarnation and Evil

Why talk about the vet and the problem of evil? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So I wrote about Shiro this week because it does leave me thinking about the problem of evil. One story I thought of was a story about a farmer who wasn’t a believer and his family went to church one Christmas. He saw some birds outside in the cold and thought they would die so he would try to get them in his barn.

He goes out and tries to motion them to come in the barn lest they die, but he doesn’t have any luck. He then thinks about how much easier it would be if he could become a bird himself and then show the birds the rest of the way to come into the barn. It’s at that point he hears the church bells ring for Christmas and understands the incarnation.

It’s a good story, but is it accurate. Paul tells us to imitate him as he imitates Christ, but when we see Christ coming, we don’t see Him talking as if the reason He came was this. He showed us how to be good, but He doesn’t seem to say that’s why He came. He came to bring the kingdom.

When Christ comes, He really says very little about the problem of evil. I can only think of two times specifically. The first is in Luke where some people talk to him about the people whom Pilate mixed their own blood with their sacrifices. Jesus also brings up the Tower of Siloam falling on eighteen people and killing them and telling the people none of these people were worse sinners than anyone else in the city, but they need to repent lest they perish.

The second is in John 9 when the disciples and Jesus meet the man born blind. He is asked who sinned that this man was born blind. Jesus says that it wasn’t because anyone in particular sinned, but so that God’s glory might be displayed in his life. The whole chapter and story then revolves around God healing the man and how the religious elite responded.

Absent from any of this is an explanation for the evil in the first place. Jesus never even begins to move in that direction. Jesus doesn’t tend to get into the why of the suffering when it happens. He just deals with the problem.

So as I thought about taking Shiro to the vet, I thought also about if only I could speak kitty for the time and tell Shiro why this is happening. However, after awhile, it occurred to me that that might not be any good. Does a cat have the capacity to understand human thinking like that? I am pretty much saying that I want my cat to become a human and cease to be a cat.

Kind of defeats the purpose.

Is our wishing to understand evil this side of eternity that much different? God could explain things to me hypothetically about the suffering in my own life, but would I really understand it. Could the answer be so complex that it would be beyond me?

There’s a Woody Allen skit in a play or a movie where he and his wife are discussing their son who is coming for a visit and is an atheist and the wife says she wants Woody to explain the Nazis to him. He says something along the lines of “Explain the Nazis? I don’t even understand the microwave!” It’s funny, but it’s accurate. We can all think of some area in this life that makes no sense to us.

But we’ve convinced ourselves that we would understand the answer. Why else do we ask for one? Could it be we aren’t given one not because there isn’t one or God doesn’t care, or could it be that we wouldn’t understand it. If the distance between me and a cat is this great, how much greater between us and an infinite God?

Maybe the goal is not to understand evil. Maybe it’s just to trust in the evil. Right now, my cat is on good terms with me again. Last night I came home and all was back to normal. Now if I pick him up again and start carrying him outside of my room, he’ll know what’s going on again and resist it, but eventually, he will just choose to trust again. After all, if he lives in fear of me forever, what does he gain? If we live thinking God is out to get us everyday, what do we gain? After all, if He really is, we’re not changing anything by that. We can’t stop Him.

Ultimately, I’ve never really found evil to be a convincing argument against God, but I know some have. My suggestion here is that perhaps the wrong answer is being looked for. I encourage people to look at the positive evidences for the existing of God and for the resurrection. If those are true, there is an explanation for evil. You don’t have to know it. Maybe you couldn’t.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

The Peace of Jesus

What does it mean to have the peace of Christ? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I’m really wrestling with this one right now, but while at the movies with a friend yesterday, to which we saw the Ten Rings movie which I thought was excellent, I was thinking about this. I have said I am on a journey as a fellow traveler walking through the pain of divorce and even if I am just one step ahead of a traveler on the journey, that’s one step I can help him through. It’s worth it.

Sometimes, I can have a hard time sleeping at night. I am very prone to anxiety. I often wonder if my marriage had anything to do with it. Imagine what goes through a person when they have to speed down the highway near their home because they think their wife could be killing themselves at any minute. Welcome to what was my world.

As an Aspie also, I have a constant fear as well of doing the wrong thing even in minor areas. Taking a risk can be very difficult for me. Yesterday, I also went to a psychiatrist and got put on the minimum dosage of an anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medication. I don’t want to say which because inevitably, someone will give me a horror story.

Sometimes when I get this anxious, I think of the story of Jesus on the boat calming the storms. Yes. We know. Jesus calms the storms in our lives. Isn’t that wonderful? Well, yes, but that’s not the point I think about when I think of this story.

I think that Jesus is asleep in the story.

That’s the part that really astounds me the most. It’s easy to understand how a man who is also fully God can stop a storm. Not a problem there. What blows my mind is that this guy could with a dozen men in a ship that is rocking and reeling from a storm and just sleeping. When He is woken up by His disciples, there is really no sense of urgency in His life. He seems puzzled that His disciples were ever panic-stricken to begin with.

In some ways, as I go through this, it’s making me look at Jesus through fresh eyes. You know how we can sometimes worry what other people think about us and wonder? You never see Jesus doing that. Jesus is the one person who never changes who He is to try to please the people around Him. Jesus is never in an identity crisis that we know of. Jesus knows who He is and He lives it out.

This means that what people thought of Jesus didn’t even bother Him that way. His identity was never based on it. Even when He is crucified, one can think that even if you don’t believe in the Gospels, it’s evident that the Jesus in the Gospels is in control the whole time.

Look at what happens when the crowds come to arrest Him. In John, Jesus speaks forcibly, the soldiers fall back, and He tells the people to take Him and let the others go. Jesus is being arrested and yet He is giving the orders and being the real threat. Now some could say this account is made up, but honestly, if someone made up this person, I want to know who this person is who made Him up. I find it hard to imagine someone like this. You can call that an argument from incredulity if you want, but it is something striking about Jesus.

This Jesus is never panicked about what’s going on in the world. He openly goes through an area where Caesar has power and tells the people that the Kingdom of God has come. Herod wants to kill Him? Well, go tell that old fox….

This is a guy who is a peasant talking about the king who can put Him to death and He refers to that king as an old fox.

There’s something amazing about that.

This Jesus doesn’t mince words. Want to know what He thinks of the Pharisees? He just comes right out and says it. It’s never “I didn’t want to tell you Pharisees this, but….” My favorite example of this is Luke 11. In it, Jesus is going after the Pharisees and the teachers of the law say “Excuse me, but do you realize you are insulting us when you say this?”

There is no indication Jesus turns apologetic. Quite the opposite. He turns and gives the teachers of the law the exact same treatment. You can picture those guys walking away at the end of this and one of them saying to the one who spoke up, “Nice going. You got Him on our case also.”

It really shows that Jesus is the most amazing figure more and more who ever lived.

And so what about His peace? We keep thinking often about the peace that Jesus can give us. I think before we think about that, we need to think about why Jesus had peace to begin with. The answer i come up with is He had total confidence that whatever happened, God was in charge. We know He knew some things about His destiny, but that doesn’t mean He had to know everything that was going to happen to Him as He walked this Earth. When Jesus asks the father of a boy with a demon in Mark 9 how long this has been going on, I don’t see any theological depth to the question. I think Jesus is just seeking information. Jesus had to learn and grow like the rest of us.

Yet no matter what happens, He is in charge. Even when He prays passionately in the garden out of sorrow, He is still in charge. He scolds His disciples and is not caught off-guard by the arrest. There is no begging for mercy from Him on the cross. At the same time, it’s not really pride we see in Him. It’s more just confidence. It’s His confidence in God.

Now here’s where it gets scary.

If I am to walk as Jesus walked, I am to have that much confidence in God too. Whatever happens, He is in charge of the story. If I was one of the Hebrew boys in Daniel, could I say “Our God is able to save us from the furnace you have, BUT EVEN IF HE DOESN’T, we will not bow to your idol.” Think about that. They had no certainty. They had no guarantee. They could have died that day and they didn’t even have a promise of resurrection! I would like to say I’d have that courage as well, but I can’t guarantee that I would.

For me, this is all about getting a better picture of who Jesus is. We can talk about Him with His love for us, but usually when we think about Jesus, it’s about what He does for us. We never think about what He did for Himself or how He managed His own life, but we should. We talk about how Jesus helps us in sadness, but never how He dealt with His own. We also talk about how Jesus gives us peace, but perhaps we should do the same with that. We should ask how Jesus had peace first and go beyond the pat “He’s God” answer. It’s true, but if we follow that consistently, we are left with no reason to emulate His life since we know we can’t do it for that reason. No. In His humanity, we are to fully emulate Him.

Am I good at this yet? No. Not really. I still stress out and have to call my friends. I still worry about pleasing other people at times. I still panic about doing the wrong thing. I still have a hard time being confident that God is in charge of the story.

But you know, knowing is half the battle. I should at least give thanks that I know these things so I know what to work on. It is better to know my faults and that I need to work on them than to go in the world believing a myth that I am a pretty good guy doing alright.

I hope you will join me on this journey, fellow travelers. In some ways, it’s actually fun to see Jesus in this new light.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: The Gospel Precisely

What do I think of Matthew Bates’s book published by Renew? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I want to thank Matthew Bates for his friendship as I was one of the people he contacted in order to promote his new book. It’s an honor to be in that circle. I find Matthew Bates to be a highly informed scholar, but I am super thankful that he is not just staying in an ivory tower, but is taking advanced New Testament studies and breaking them down for the layman to understand the gospel in a whole new way.

Too often, our idea of the gospel is way too shortsighted, which is a tragedy because what we have is really good already and yet we miss that there’s so much more. We are more content with making mudpies when a day at the beach awaits us. We are pleased with what we understand of the gospel, and we should be, but we miss that there is a lot more.

So let’s start with what is the gospel. Most of the time, we make the gospel about ourselves. This is what God is doing to forgive us. With that, we are ultimately the subjects of the gospel. It is about us. The gospel is not about us. It is about Jesus. We are the ones that are being used for the glory of God. God is not to be used for the glory of us.

One aspect that we miss is the gospel is Jesus becoming king. I remember hearing once that John Dominic Crossan said about Mark 1:1 that talked about the beginning of the good news of Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God. It’s a short little verse, but Crossan said it could be translated as “In your face, Caesar.”

If he said that, he’s not wrong.

Jesus is coming and declaring Himself to be the king who will rule on God’s behalf. This is part of the gospel. This is one of the reasons He was crucified. You don’t get crucified for just teaching good ethics and sharing parables. Jesus was a majorly political figure as well as a religious one.

Why does this matter? Because we were created to be the rulers of this world on God’s behalf. Unfortunately with sin, we all failed at that one. Jesus was meant to be fully human and fully God so that He could rule and reflect God perfectly but also be a man ruling like God intended. Part of the good news is also that not only are we forgiven, but we are to be rulers of the new creation with Jesus Christ. God saves us so we can serve.

This is however also good for non-Christians for the time being. The world is meant to be a better place with the coming of Christianity and where Christians aren’t being what they were supposed to be. Most people, Christians or not, do support the life and ethics of Jesus. I still remember a non-Christian friend saying on my Facebook wall that life would be a lot better if we all tried to live like Christ.

Oh. Let me explain something with that. When we speak of Christ, we shouldn’t treat Christ as just a name. Some people actually think that he was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Christ. I wish I was joking. I can still remember years ago someone asking “Why would a Jewish guy have a Greek last name?”

The closest idea we have to Messiah is King. In our country, that’s something that seems foreign to us, but we might not be too far from us. A friend of mine thinks we might naturally move as a society towards monarchy. Every four years, we are having “The most important election of our lifetime” which should show that we place way too much emphasis on the president, no matter who he is.

Of course, if we’re servants of God, we need to know who this God is. The Trinity is not just an add-on. If Jesus is not fully God and fully man, the Gospel is completely changed. Christians need to learn how to understand to some extent the Trinity and how to defend it.

I’m only giving snapshots here because honestly, i want you to read the book yourself. Some of you might be concerned with reading a whole book on this. Good news. The book is only about 100 pages. You could easily read it in a day or two, and it would be a day or two well-spent.

Finally, how do we share the gospel? This is where it might get difficult as Bates lists ten items that he thinks we need to remember and share. Those complaining about this might want to think about what they have memorized about sports teams, TV shows, music, or video games.

So final opinion? Get this book. It’s a great one to understand the gospel and will show you how much you are missing. It has five chapters and while I said you could read it in a day, if you wanted to read one chapter a day, you could do so easily and read it in a week and you would be blessed for doing so.

Matthew Bates is a gift to the church that keeps on giving and thanks to him for his work and being considered part of his team to help share his material. It’s material worth sharing and it’s an honor to be a part of it. And oh yes, there is one part where he does show that he does believe Jesus was born of a virgin so he does affirm the virgin birth, which I do affirm, the obvious important sign of anyone wanting to share the gospel.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

More on the Sadness of Jesus

Why do we not talk about the sadness of Jesus? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Within the past month, I have written about the sadness of Christ. I was pleased to see that article linked to on a popular apologetics website. However, after seeing that, I started to ponder. I have written many blogs including on the historical Jesus. Why this one?

Could it be that this one resonated? This one did hit something and it at first doesn’t even seem to be something related to apologetics, but I think it is. Could it be that maybe we talk so much about the joy of Christ that we don’t know about His sorrow as well? Could it be that we ourselves don’t really know much about sorrow either?

Now that last one might be a surprising statement. After all, look at how many people in our country struggle with depression. Look at how many self-help books we have out there. Our people have experience with sorrow so surely they know a lot about it.

It’s not hard to figure out the error in this statement. Our people also debate politics and economics regularly, but most of us think that our fellow Americans are clueless about both of them. This is especially so since you can find quite sincere people and quite intelligent people on both sides of any debate. We have had the sexual revolution going on, but I contend that our culture is one that knows very little about sex.

One of our problems with sorrow and depression is we really don’t know how to handle it. We often act like we’re not supposed to have any depression or sadness at all. Sadly, the church is one of the worst at this. We often pay lip service to the idea of mourning with those who mourn and Jesus weeping in the garden,

For us, if you have depression or anxiety, then there is something wrong with you. Christians are supposed to be people of joy and so if you have depression or anxiety, there is something wrong with you. This can lead to being depressed about being depressed or anxious about being anxious.

Being a fully functional human being means experiencing the full gamut of human emotions and sometimes you will have anxiety or sadness. That is okay. If you start saying you shouldn’t, then what are we to mourn for?

This also leads to a false pollyanna world that skeptics don’t believe in. They don’t want us to act like life is always great. They want to see how we will handle it when life is hard. Will we be realistic or will we be living a life of total denial?

I also don’t believe in that world.

We also then treat suffering like it is something foreign to us. The suffering that we cannot bear often times would be nothing to our ancestors of the past. These were people who were willing to go to the death for their faith. They also didn’t only exist back then. They exist in the world today where real persecution is going on.

Why do we not talk about it with Jesus? Maybe because it doesn’t seem to give us something to aspire to. It’s easy to want to live like Jesus when He is being gracious to His enemies or outwitting them in debate or showing outstanding love. However, to aspire to be like Jesus in His sorrow will mean experiecing that sorrow as well, and we don’t want that.

But that is part of pollyanna thinking. The sorrow will come. We treat pain and suffering like they are something foreign to us. In reality, they have been promised to us.

The question is not then will suffering come, but how will we handle it? We are not to act like it is all good and wonderful. Sure, we are to count all things joy, but that does not mean that you always put on a happy face since Jesus didn’t do that. We can need help on the journey, and that’s okay. That’s why there are friends and therapists and yes, even medications.

Sorrow in Jesus I think resonates with us because deep down, many of us know that it is a reality and we want something in our lives. Yet still, the only book I found on a general search on Amazon on this topic was about 500 years old. Who is writing about this today? If any New Testament scholar is reading this, consider this a challenge to write a book on the sadness of Christ. To any pastor, consider preaching a sermon on Jesus being sad. It would be refreshing in some way. If anything, that could help many in your audience who do struggle with depression and anxiety. They could actually really resonate with Jesus.

I continue to think on this and learn about the topic. If we want to know Jesus as He is, we have to know all sides of Him. We have to have a Jesus who is not just fully God, but also fully human. That includes not just being hungry, thirsty, and tired, but also, sad.

Nothing short of a real Jesus will do.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Ehrman vs Price

What are my thoughts on this debate? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I have been recovering from a sickness and I’m still at home so yesterday after watching my church service, I decided to also watch the Ehrman/Price debate that was held before Mythicist Milwuakee. This is probably the first debate where I was ever on the side of Ehrman. While in many areas like politics and abortion I side with Price, in this area, being the existence of Jesus, I side with Ehrman.

However, this debate brought out to me the multitude of problems both sides have. Let’s start with mythicism. Mythicism is a ridiculous proposition from the get-go. There is a reason the scholarly academy has rejected it over and over and over again. I generally refer to mythicism as a conspiracy theory for atheists. When I meet someone who espouses it seriously, I know to not take them seriously. By that, I mean someone who argues it thinking it is true. I would have no problem with an atheist saying “I just don’t understand why no one would write about Jesus if He was such a miracle-working figure and I would like to know,” and assuming that is an honest question, I would be glad to answer it. (Such an answer can be found here.)

Most atheists are no like this. These are people who think they know better than the entire academy. Note that these same people will mock young-Earth creationists for doing the same thing with evolution. I am not a young-Earth creationism, but I can understand that at least they interpret a text that they regard as holy and think God has said in the text that the Earth is young.

However, I think Ehrman and Price both have a problem with who Jesus is. Ehrman will clearly say in the debate several times that he does not believe Jesus did anything miraculous whatsoever. He’s interested in defending the historical Jesus and surely the historical Jesus never did anything like that.

This leads me to ask the question of where these miracle accounts came from. Ehrman rightly says that we need to get past Albert Schweitzer who talked about an event like the feeding of the 5,000. The scholars of his day said one person brought out his lunch and then others did and Jesus encouraged everyone to share and it eventually became the miracle account. Schweitzer thought all of these accounts were ridiculous and strongly argued that.

I agree, but I still want to know where the miracles came from. Now the answer could be “Well, they needed to build up Jesus since He was their Messiah.” Okay. Well, that makes sense, except for one question. Why was Jesus chosen to be the Messiah?

It is absolutely certain that Jesus was crucified. Aside from the mythicists, you won’t find anyone denying that. What sense does it make to take a crucified man and say “He’s the Messiah!” The last time I asked this to someone, I was told it was because of prophecy. Okay. Can you show me who was interpreting Isaiah 53 this way? I know that rightly or wrongly, Christians today do that, but were Jews doing that and even if they were, why choose this man instead of anyone else?

We could go further and ask “What did Jesus do that got Him crucified?” I remember years ago reading Five Views on the Historical Jesus where John Dominic Crossan had a chapter and in his, Jesus saw His cousin John the Baptist get killed so Jesus went on a much kinder streak then and spoke about the love of God and the brotherhood of men. That might not be an exact quote, but it is the general idea.

I kept thinking the same thing reading it. “This Jesus does not get crucified. You do not get crucified for being Mr. Rogers. This Jesus is not a threat to anyone.”

This is why Jesus is really the most difficult figure in history to explain. The basic facts about Him are the biggest problems. Why was He crucified? Why did He have a reputation as a miracle-worker and exorcist? (Note. That is not saying He was those, though I think He was, but it is accepted He had that reputation.)

Most Biblical scholars I am sure agree that the ethic of Jesus is excellent. Why then crucify a teacher who had such a great ethic? What about the cleansing of the temple? That’s one that is generally accepted to have happened.

Now we have to ask the question. Why did He do that? Was that also alone sufficient? Could Jesus not have just been seen as a madman? You don’t crucify someone for being insane. Jesus had to have some kind of movement to get even that going, on especially since he had twelve disciples which is also accepted. Why?

The idea of this Jesus that someone like Ehrman has comes loaded with questions. Why was He proclaimed Messiah? Why was He declared to be risen from the dead? Why was He crucified? Where did these miracle stories come from and how did they overcome the “true” accounts so quickly?

I really have hopes that as things go along, New Testament scholarship of the secular sort will find itself pushed into a corner more and more. The ideas conceded today would not have been the ones done fifty years ago. The questions I am asking also I consider basic. Why? Jesus was crucified? Why? Jesus has a reputation of doing miracles? Why?

Of course, I think Jesus did the miracles, but I think historical Jesus research has a problem if we show up and say at the outset “Well we know Jesus didn’t do any miracles.” If that is from a position you have not argued for, why should I think that? If the historical Jesus did do miracles, you have a method that has ruled out the truth from the outset.

Now suppose you are a philosophically-minded historian who says “These are the problems I have with theism and why I think atheism is true.” Okay. You at least have a basis for your skepticism, Even then, you should still be able to say, “But if there is enough evidence for the miracles in the Gospels, I will be open to changing my opinion.”

Years ago Chesteron said that the believer in the miracle believes in the miracle, rightly or wrongly, because of the evidence. The skeptic disbelieves, rightly or wrongly, because he has a dogma against them. I find that still to be entirely accurate. As a theist, you could eliminate every miracle out there and God would still exist. (Christianity would be false, but atheism is not necessarily true.) It could be that God exists and just hasn’t done any miracles.

For the atheist, however, grant one miracle and something happening outside of the materialistic chain of events, and there is a problem. There is much more at stake. Take a book like Keener’s “Miracles” and every single miracle in there has to be shown to be false.

In the end then, Price’s position is completely untenable, but is Ehrman any better off. I have several questions about his Jesus as well. Now if Price wants to go with something like “Well one person shared his lunch and that’s how the miracle story of the feeding of the 5,000 came about”, I don’t find that plausible, but it’s at least an attempt to find an answer. Oddly enough, at least mythicism recognizes the problem there.

As someone who thinks about these issues, I do ask these questions. Every position of Jesus has questions to answer, but I really find the orthodox view of Jesus has the best explanatory power of the data. All others are wiling to try, but for now, I will stick with the Jesus I find the most likely to be the world changer that there is today.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

The Sadness of Christ

Why was Christ sad? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

There have been some snafus with the blog lately. I hope that’s worked out. I do have a new laptop now and I tried to make YouTube videos of the blog for that, which apparently also had some problems. I was going to work on that some today, but really, things are extremely rough right now.

I don’t want to go into everything going on, but let’s just say that yesterday, I had the perfect storm of depression and anxiety come based on so many situations. Much of it I still want to keep private, but I can assure you it’s real. It has been so real I called to have an emergency session with my therapist and I am trying to reach out to other friends who I know can do some counseling.

So yesterday, I started wondering about the sadness of Christ. Go on Amazon and you can find plenty of books of Christ offering hope to those suffering. Wonderful. You can hear about Christ speaking to your sadness. Excellent. You can hear a lot about the promises of Christ and what He went through for your joy. Great.

And right now, I don’t really care about it.

Right now, I want to know about Christ Himself. What about His sadness? For some of us, it seems shocking to talk about such things, yet at the same time so many refer to Isaiah 53 as a prophecy of Christ that describes Him as a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering.

Yes. That’s what it says.

Jesus is not referred to as a man of joy. He is referred to as a man of sorrows. He is not described in ways that glorify Him. He is someone despised and rejected. There was no reason to desire Him. Nothing. Let us not color it over so much saying it was Jesus that we miss something.

This is in many ways a very depressing chapter.

Consider the hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” How many of us have sung that at church? What a wonderful encouragement! What a blessing it is to us! How good it is to know God is faithful! That passage is in the Bible? It must surely be in a book of joy. It’s a Psalm of praise. Right?

Think again. It’s Lamentations. The entire book of the Bible that is just that, a lament.

So if you hold that Isaiah 53 is Jesus, this is really Jesus. When I talk about wanting Christ, I want to know just what He will do for me when I have sadness. I want to know what He did for Himself. I want to know why He was sad. I want to know His experience.

The number one place is in Matthew 26 when Jesus is in the garden praying and fortunately, I found one book on the topic by Thomas More that is over 500 years old called the Sadness of Christ and it is looking at the Passion. Jesus tells His friends that He is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Jesus turns to His friends.

Let’s get rid of some bad theology with this.

Some people will tell you that if you have God and you know His love, you should always have joy and happiness. If you are depressed then, there is something wrong with you. You need to repent.

I defy you if you are a Christian to find one human being you think has better theology than Jesus.

Was there something wrong with Jesus that He was sad? Did Jesus have a deficient theology? Did Jesus just need to repent and find joy in the Lord?

If your theology contradicts Jesus, your theology is wrong.

Jesus was sad. We could say it was because of the sins of the world and the pain of the people around Him, but could we consider something else? Maybe, Jesus just didn’t want to go to the cross. Hebrews tells us that He went despising the shame of the cross for the joy set before Him. He knew this was the path to the greatest joy so He went for it.

He went to the cross because He wanted to save the world and bring glory to God. He didn’t want the cross for the sake of the cross. He would have preferred another way.

Yet Jesus was sad.

If that’s the case, then we can dispense with this idea that if you have God in your life, you should always have joy and living abundantly. Dare I say it, sometimes you should be sad. If you have a loved one who dies on you and you are not sad, you are not exhibiting great strength. You are being actually deficient as a human being.

1 Thessalonians is a passage I am discussing in eschatology right now, but while we disagree with many Christians on the eschatology, let’s speak about one thing we should agree on. The text says we mourn. Paul never says “Cheer up guys! No need to mourn! These people will rise again! Celebrate!” No. He says mourn. In Romans, he even tells us to mourn with those who mourn.

Paul says he had no rest at one point until he found his brother Titus. He talks about how thankful he was to have someone come to him so he could have less anxiety in Philippians, the very book where he tells us to be anxious for nothing. It could be Paul was also preaching to himself there. How many of us know what it is like to give advice some one and yet struggle to follow that same advice ourselves?

But to get back to Jesus, Jesus definitely did have sadness. When we talk about the incarnation, we understand He was hungry and He slept and was thirsty and could experience pain and even die, yet talking about sadness seems taboo. Jesus as a human being had emotions and surely those emotions always had to be joy.

No. Not a bit. He experienced the full gamut of emotions. When my soul is also overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death, in some ways, I am in good company. Jesus’s was too.

What did Jesus do? He needed what we need then. He needed His friends. He didn’t just turn to God. He turned to others. I am thankful I have God to turn to, to be sure, but there are ways that another human being can connect with you that God can’t always. This evening I am planning on visiting a friend to have a gaming night. Sorry, but God isn’t going to sit on a couch with me playing Smash Brothers or something.

Sometimes, you need a touch too. Now Jesus could appear and do that, but it’s not likely. I am not a touchy person, but sometimes, it is nice to have.

In all of this, I am not saying prayer and good music and Bible study and similar things have no place in this. They are good. I also say good music because sometimes it’s not just Christian music you need. When I heard Nabeel Qureshi had died, I was one of the first. Mike Licona was there when it happened and his wife called and told me and said not to tell anyone. I was in a Wal-Mart shopping at the time and having to put on a brave face even though inside, I was falling apart. What did I listen to driving then?

World of Ruin from Final Fantasy VI.

Sometimes in my own pain nowadays, I find myeslf listening to A Place To Call Home from Final Fantasy IX. Different music will resonate with different people. Some will find themselves listening to the classical composers. Some might want rock and roll or even heavy metal. If it is not sinful and it helps you get through it, go for it.

But I don’t want to overwhelm you. For now, I just want us to think about the sadness of Jesus. We have a Lord who was sad and had to deal with it. We do nor honor Jesus when we turn Him into a superhuman who never had sorrow and sadness in His life. That should be a comfort too. If our Lord had it, we should not count ourselves exempt from it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)