Believe what today?

I love it when I see something new in a Bible passage, especially when it's one I've read many times before. That happened again in the story of the royal official, whose son lay sick in Capernaum:

⁴⁹The royal official said, "Sir, come down before my child dies."

⁵⁰Jesus replied, "You may go. Your son will live."

The man took Jesus at his word and departed. ⁵¹While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living. ⁵²When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, "The fever left him yesterday at the seventh hour." ⁵³Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live." So he and all his household believed.

John 4:49-53

The son recovered at the same time Jesus told the man "Your son will live." Something else happened at that exact time, or very close to it: The man took Jesus at his word and departed.

It wasn't just that Jesus said so; it was also that the man believed him. The letter to the Hebrews, talking about some others, says, "... the message they heard did not benefit them, because it did not unite with faith in the hearers" (Hebrews 4:2). But the royal official, in taking Jesus at his word, and also in heading home, combined his own faith with the words he heard from Jesus, and the result was healing for his son and eternal life for him and "all his household."

Here's something I want to believe today: that God will fill us with joy in his presence, with eternal pleasures at his right hand.

Who ruined her life?

There's a verse in Proverbs that says, "A man's own folly ruins his life, but his heart rages against the Lord." I think it's in chapter 19. That's not today's reading, but it's what came to mind when I read the first chapter of Ruth.

Perhaps I'm being unfair, but here's the deal. Naomi, her husband Elimelech, and her two sons leave the land of Israel and go to the land of Moab. Her husband dies, her sons marry women of Moab, and then they die too -- this last after living in the land of Moab about ten years. Eventually Naomi returns to Israel -- to Bethlehem actually, accompanied by her son's widow Ruth.

¹⁹So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, "Can this be Naomi?"

²⁰"Don't call me Naomi," she told them. "Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter.

Ruth 1:19-20

So I checked the text, and didn't see where it says "The Almighty killed Elimelech" (or anybody else) in this chapter. Why is any of this God's fault?

I did notice this, though: that Naomi, Elimelech, Mahlon, and Kilion all went to live in the land of Moab, where they were not supposed to go. Perhaps they had an excuse for going (there had been a famine in Israel), but to stay there ten years?

And it's for darned sure that Israelite men were not to marry Moabite women. So Naomi's husband and sons all violated very clear, explicit commands from God -- and these were not like the "Do not covet" one that's just about impossible; these were "Live in the land I give you" and "Do not marry foreign women".

So yes, I think Naomi is being a little silly. And by the way, in case your Bible doesn't have convenient footnotes to explain this, "Naomi" means "pleasant" whereas "Mara" means "bitter" -- in case that wasn't evident from the text.

A long time ago, I read Peck's book, The Road Less Traveled, which talks about two kinds of problems people have. One, neurosis, can be characterized as saying "it's my fault" basically all the time. Its twin, character disorder, is just the opposite -- never taking responsibility for problems at all.

I once worked with a guy like this. He never made a mistake; t was always someone else's fault. If he said something that wasn't so, his reasoning wasn't wrong; he was misinformed. This sort of thing. He was actually quite sharp, so his work was pretty good. But the character disorder made him a little harder to work with than he had to be.

Anyway, in this passage I see two errors that I want to try to avoid. First, I don't want to blame God unreasonably. Naomi blames God because her husband and sons are dead. What, were they supposed to live forever? They were disobedient -- I'm going to go out on a limb and say they were all disobedient -- in going to Moab, staying there over ten years, and for the sons, marrying foreign women. They're disobedient the way you and I are disobedient. We're all deserving of immediate destruction, and she's upset because she didn't get killed earlier? May the Lord help me not to blame him when he's more merciful to one person than another!

Second, I don't ever want to forget the blessings I've received. Yes, Naomi lost her husband and her sons. I cannot imagine how hard that was for her. But she does have Ruth, who wants to stick with her. (Why did Naomi try to send her away, anyway? That might be the third significant error that I want to avoid -- don't send people away who want to help me!)

So I pray that for you and for me -- may we take responsibility rather than blaming God; may we not lose sight of our blessings; may we not send away people who God has given to comfort and help us.

Running open-loop

I used to work with a professional pessimist. Really. Well, mostly. One of his sayings was, "guaranteed to be broken." He would say this about any device that wasn't tested or testable.

Some argued that he was too pessimistic, but he invoked an illustration something like this:

This mechanism pulls the rods out of the nuclear reactor to prevent a meltdown. Are you telling me it's safe to run the reactor without ever testing this mechanism?

Well, of course it isn't. Now what would happen if a group of people -- a tribe, or a whole country -- wasn't controlled? If there were no "adult supervision"? Golding provided one answer in his classic Lord of the Flies. A similar, older answer comes from the closing chapters of the book of Judges.

In those last few chapters, we see this phrase repeatedly: "In those days Israel had no king" (Judges 19:1). And some atrocity follows: violence (including unprovoked attacks and mass murder), theft, lack of hospitality, idolatry, and so on.

I really don't want to tell you what happened in chapter 19; you'll have to read it yourself. But Israel's other eleven tribes were appalled by what the tribe of Benjamin did, and there was a battle. 22,000 died on the first day, 18,000 on the second, and over 25,000 on the third.

Over 65,000 soldiers died, and the text does not tell us how many civilians.

Without some sort of revelation, some "adult supervision", the natural trajectory of man is not "three steps forward, two steps back"; it's more like five or ten steps backward with an occasional step forward if we're lucky. That's what happens when we run open-loop.

Which makes me think that the very existence of civilization constitutes evidence of God's intervention in history. And when I read the news, I'm glad that he has intervened.

What's a snake have to do with it?

Today's New Testament reading has perhaps the most famous verse in the whole Bible; probably millions can recite it from memory. But the verse begins with "For", as in "For God so loved the world..." But what is that "For" about? Here it is, with the immediately preceding sentence (from the NIV):

¹⁴Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, ¹⁵that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. ¹⁶For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

John 3:14-16

So, verse 16 talks about the extent of God's love for the world. But that's not the main point of the passage; it's there in support of the previous sentence, which says basically that Jesus has to be lifted up -- like the snake in the desert. So what is that about? Well, that incident was one of those truly bizarre things.

There were venomous snakes attacking the Israelites and they came to Moses for help.

⁸The Lord said to Moses, "Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live." ⁹So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived.

Numbers 21:8-9

The passage in Numbers has more detail about that incident, but the point here is that when you're bitten by a snake, if you look at the bronze snake, you'll live. Otherwise you'll die.

Moses lifted up the snake so the people could see it. Jesus had to be lifted up -- symbolically I think. Why symbolically? Well, the story with the snake in the desert was that you had to look at it so you could live physically -- if not, your heart would stop. The story with Jesus is that you have to believe in him so that you can live eternally -- if not, you would perish.

In order to look at the snake, it had to be lifted up -- so it could be seen optically. In order to believe in Jesus, he has to be made, well, famous I guess -- so people could hear about him.

Well, that was interesting (well, OK, it was interesting to me), but ultimately the point is that God is going through all this stuff because of his great love. (The next verse, John 3:17, continues on this theme, explaining that God did not send Jesus into the world to condemn it, but to save it.) And that when Jesus did things that made himself known, it wasn't like the kind of self promotion that people like us would do; it wasn't to get a bunch of glory for himself. Rather, it was so that God could save the world through him.

There's a man focused on the mission, and motivated by an amazing love. Which is good news for you and me.

Bad day

My dog has been unable to pee for some days now. There was a growth... which turns out to have been caused by prostate cancer. They suspected it last week, and we got the definitive diagnosis yesterday afternoon. This sort of thing is apparently fairly common in large dogs.

They put a urinary catheter in him Sunday. After a few times, they gave us supplies to do it at home. That did not work, so yesterday they stuck one in permanently, sutured it to him, and put one of those cone/bonnet things around his neck. The vets said that they shouldn't put another catheter into him; if he couldn't pee naturally by Friday, that would be the end.

I came home and saw him. He looked so pitiful and unhappy. "I wish he didn't have cancer," I tried to say, but couldn't get it out without weeping. I can't even type it now without tearing up.

Well, we drained his bladder last night -- he was very uncomfortable. And I couldn't get the "plug" back in, so he dripped all night.

This morning, he somehow managed to circumvent the bonnet thing. The catheter was lying on the floor. I scolded him mildly and took the bonnet thing off him. Then I took him for a walk. He tried to mark a few trees, but nothing was forthcoming. He enjoyed it anyway.

Unless something extraordinary happens, the vet will euthanize him this afternoon.

"Silly dog," I said. "You shouldn't have pulled that catheter out. It was the last one."

Sorry, I just had to wipe my face again.

Well, he enjoyed his walk. He didn't have to wear the bonnet. That foreign object - the urinary catheter is out. The sun is shining and the sky is blue.

For him, it is a good day to die. For us, it will never be a good day to lose him.

Perplexing passages

Some stories in the Bible frankly baffle me. Today's Old Testament reading has one; it's from the book of Judges. You may know the story of Samson, who was astonishingly strong and had really quick reflexes. His character was flawed, but that didn't stop God from using him.

Eventually, he fell in love (or in lust) with Delilah, who badgered him into revealing the secret of his strength: it was related to his vows as a Nazirite. Samson should never touch anything dead (though he did that on at least a few occasions), never eat grapes or drink wine, never cut his hair. This is the baffling part: he had already broken the Nazirite vows -- when he ate honey from the carcass of a lion, and when he slew a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey (it of course was dead, too). But his strength didn't leave him until he got his hair cut.

²¹Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes and took him down to Gaza. Binding him with bronze shackles, they set him to grinding in the prison. ²²But the hair on his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.

Judges 16:21-22

After his hair grew back, his strength returned. What is God telling us in this passage? That it's all about the hair? That if you take a 3-part vow, it's not really broken until you break 2/3 of them? It's opaque to me.

Yet there are things I can learn from this:

• power of one kind (physical or intellectual for example) doesn't guarantee power of another kind (self-control or moral fortitude).
• Weakness of one kind (unruly passions) can destroy effectiveness of a strength (brain or muscle power)
• You never can tell what God is going to do (really this is just saying the future is unknowable).

I think the point for me is to be watchful in times of success.

And another

The other story in today's reading that perplexes me is from the New Testament, where Jesus turns water into wine. You can read about it in John chapter 2. At the end, they take the wine to the master of the banquet,

⁹and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside ¹⁰and said, "Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now."

John 2:9-10

So this suggests that, contrary to what some people say about wine in the Bible (that it had no alcohol) is probably not true. Notice, too, that Jesus created some of this stuff (probably not de-alcoholized).

But what to make of "you have saved the best till now"? When Jesus turned water into wine, he didn't make "Two Buck Chuck"; he turned it into some really good stuff. But what does that mean for you and me? Here are a few possibilities:

• When God makes something (or someone), he does not make junk.
  That may be true in general, but I don't think we can count on that in all cases. The Bible itself talks about animals with defects. What about the man who was born blind? Were his eyes (or optic nerves or something) not broken at birth?
  
  
• God is astonishingly generous -- extravagant, even.
  The water which was turned into wine was in "six stone jars... each holding from twenty to thirty gallons" (John 2:6). 5 bottles/gallon, 4 cases/jar... this is over 24 cases of wine. I think this one is also a valid conclusion.
  
  
• God's plan was perfect, but sin and disease and corruption entered the world afterwards.
  I'm not sure this verse quite proves that, but one might reasonably conclude that based on other parts of the Bible.
  
  
• Good Christian businessmen should never produce goods for the low end of the market.
  In other words, the makers of "Two Buck Chuck" are sinners? I don't think so.
  
  
• Good Christians should try to produce the best work possible, as Jesus did.
  People of a certain personality type might think so, but I wouldn't necessarily agree with that statement as it stands. I mean, Jesus produced the best wine that was drunk that day, but does that mean that a Christian who makes wine should do everything possible to produce the best wine in the world? The proverbs tell us that diligence is good, and that it's bad to be slack in one's work. But always trying to be the best? I don't see that here.

People sometimes justify their perfectionism (or workaholism) with verses like this, which to me just seems wrong.

No, rather than that, I think the points are more like these: that the world wasn't supposed to be full of disease and corruption and suffering. Thousands of children aren't supposed to be orphaned daily by AIDS/HIV. Bridges aren't supposed to collapse because of defective construction. Neighborhoods and subdivisions aren't supposed to be terrorized by gangs of criminals.

And that our God is generous and extravagant; he's created a world filled with beautiful things, and given us the capacity to derive great joy from them.


revised 5/3

What do you want?

John (who was baptizing everybody) pointed Jesus out to some of his disciples.

³⁶When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, "Look, the Lamb of God!" ³⁷When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus.

³⁸Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, "What do you want?"

They said, "Rabbi" (which means Teacher), "where are you staying?"

³⁹"Come," he replied, "and you will see." So they went and saw where he was staying, and spent that day with him. It was about the tenth hour.

John 1:37-39

I love this passage! "What do you want?" Jesus asks. Notice how the disciples don't answer him exactly. They imply that they want to see his apartment, but of course that's not really what they want.

Well, at least they didn't say, "Uh, is there a Shell station around here?"

What do they want? I think they want to see what's going to happen next. I mean, they've been following John, who then says, "There's the guy I've been sent to prepare the way for." John also said that Jesus "has surpassed me." With that kind of endorsement, which of John's disciples wouldn't want to see what would happen next?

But we know that both Jesus and John will be dead within a few years of this incident. John actually makes Jesus's death quite plain to his disciples; in verse 29 he said, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!"

How does a lamb take away sins? Lambs don't carry much meaning for us today, but the disciples would know, as any Jew of the time would: lambs get sacrificed. They die. Their blood atones for sin.

So when John said, "the lamb of God," the disciples would know right away that Jesus would die to "take away the sins of the world." And when Jesus said, "What do you want?" they might have wanted to know how this was going to work out. But they probably didn't want to say, "We want to see how you're going to die, umm, we mean, how you're going to take away the sins of the world."

Well, they got a whole lot more than they imagined. What an exciting time it was for them!

And it makes me think: if Jesus were to come to me today and ask, "What do you want?" -- what would I say? What do I want from God today, this week, this month? What do you want?

Not that we'll necessarily get what we want, but I think it's probably a good thing to know what we want, and to ask God about it. I suspect that he may be more willing to give than we are willing to ask.

These two disciples ended up asking to spend time with Jesus. I suppose that's one thing I might like, too. I don't mean praying and hoping someone's listening that I can't see, and listening and hoping someone speaks to me (but not generally in an audible voice); I mean talking with him like these guys did.

And I believe that this desire will be satisfied, that one day, that day when we see him as he is, we will be able to talk with him and hear his loving words.

And won't that be something!