 Last time, we talked about Jesus’ injunction from Matthew, Chapter 7, urging us not to judge. We explored some of the problems with judgment, which boiled down to this: When we judge, we reduce the world and the God who created it, placing our judgments at the center of the universe and refusing to acknowledge anything that falls outside them. Since other people and God are far bigger than we can comprehend, we end up missing out on everything important in the world, settling instead for a small, plastic copy of the universe that complies with our judgment. Acknowledging this doesn’t solve our problem entirely. Judgment is necessary in a world full of sin. Anyone who imagines we can do without it should imagine the disaster at a four-way stop when everyone says, “Should I stop? Should I go? It doesn’t matter…who am I to judge?” In the absence of judgment chaos will ensue, followed closely by injury and death. Judgment keeps us safe. It also keeps us from harming each other. Remember our limitations is critical as we engage in judgment. Our judgment does not determine all of reality. People of faith are safer viewing judgment as a regrettable necessity, a concession to sin rather than a cure for it. We must always remember that our judgments do not save us. We judge because we are occasionally forced to in order to prevent even more harm than the judgment causes, not because we think our judgments are right or the final answer.  That final answer belongs to God and God alone. God does not concede to sin; God eradicates it. God’s judgment is not regrettable, but cleansing. Our judgment is not God’s judgment. The two exist on wholly different levels with wholly different effects.
Remembering this helps make our judgments more effective. We are free to judge the things subject to our will—whether to stop at an intersection or whether a person walking down the street is likely to harm us—without attempting to usurp God’s reign over the things above us: the fate of the world or the people in it. We’re able to exercise common sense judgment without claiming that God is bound by our common sense. We own our judgment without becoming imprisoned by it or imprisoning others with it. Christians judge. They can’t avoid it any more than anyone else. Christians are also supposed to realize that plenty of things in the universe are more important than their judgment, including and especially God. They don’t abdicate their responsibility to make smart decisions but they don’t fool themselves into thinking those decisions are infallible or eternally binding on their Lord and Savior. --Pastor Dave
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 The opening verses of Matthew 7 have caused hand-wringing and consternation within the Christian faith for centuries. In them Jesus cautions us against hypocrisy in the form of judging our neighbors: Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. 2 For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. 3 Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye. The obvious question: Can’t we judge anything? How do we know how to act if we don’t judge? Right at the top we need to admit that judgment is a concession to a broken world. If life were perfect, the way it was originally intended, we wouldn’t have to judge. When there’s no wrong, there’s no need to discern between right and wrong. The need to judge stems from imperfection. Judgment—even correct judgment—isn’t perfect, isn’t a good unto itself, and certainly isn’t the reason we were put on this earth.  Too many people place superior judgment at the pinnacle of their faith life. How many church teachings boil down to, “Know the difference between right and wrong; do what’s right”? Not only is that impossible in a world blinded by sin—half the time we don’t even know what’s right--the process is wedded to the concept of wrongness. Without a clear wrong, clear judgment can’t be exercised. If faith depends on judgment and judgment actually succeeds in eradicating sin, “faithful” people will lose their purpose. There will be nothing to judge!
To keep this from happening, people who hold correct judgment as the ultimate expression of faith end up creating more wrong around them, the better to judge it. They go through life looking for the bad instead of celebrating and growing the good. This is not God’s intention for us. As a pastor I’ve had the privilege of walking with many families through their struggles. I’ve noticed that whenever their troubles center around a “black sheep” member, a curious pattern emerges. The family—especially the lead member responsible for guidance and clear judgment—will rail against Black Sheep behavior, deriving their identity from the crusade. As long as the transgression persists, the family has order and purpose. But if the Black Sheep actually manages to reform the behavior in question, the family (and especially the guider-judge) is at a loss. They’ll celebrate initially, but ultimately they don’t know how to relate to a Black Sheep that isn’t black! Sometimes they find another objectionable quality to judge in their Black Sheep member. Often they’ll treat the Black Sheep like an offender—labeling them as foolish or disruptive—even though they’re not offending anymore and are, in fact, trying to make amends. When people derive comfort from their internal ability to judge rather than any external relationship with each other, they reduce people objects to judge rather than exploring who they actually are. This is the key problem with judgment, and one of the main reasons we’re warned against it. Next Time: Exploring the proper role of judgment in our lives. --Pastor Dave
Ep. 49 - Is the rapture real? What do we really control in the cosmic sense? Life is a buffet of tension mixed with hope, but hope in what? Justin and Dave tackle an often-confusing text from Matthew 24.
The Geek and Greek podcast is a show where two reverends talk honestly and clearly about faith, Christianity, scripture, and life. Follow us at GeekAndGreek.com!  Last time we talked about the evolving nature of “belief”. Once upon a time belief credited things we did not understand. In modern parlance, it means agreement with things we do understand. This shift in meaning has polluted the waters when it comes to faith. Today we’ll try to re-translate the word to more accurately describe the proper relationship between us and God. Whatever belief means in our modern culture, “belief” in God cannot—MUST NOT—mean, “I have twisted my mind up in such a correct way that I can see, understand, and accept him.” Faith is not knowledge. Faith is not comprehension. Faith is not opinion…not even reasoned opinion. Faith is not a choice that you can make on your own with your mental faculties through observation. The best word to translate “faith” in our modern society is not belief, but trust. Belief only happens for us when most or all of the things listed in the previous paragraph are present. Trust happens precisely when they’re absent. Trust happens when we’re not sure, when we don’t understand, when our opinions can’t inform us properly, when all the evidence proves inconclusive. In our culture belief is seen as an individual choice. It requires no other person. You can believe anything you wish without consulting anyone. You can hold onto that belief no matter what anyone else says. It’s all about you. Trust requires something to trust in. It’s a relationship with something outside you. You cannot control trust. You cannot moderate it. It’s a surrender of self. Trust acknowledges your dependence on something outside of yourself, something with the power to affect your life.  Anyone who’s ever been married understands the difference between trust and belief. You can believe in the institution of marriage. You can believe in an idealized definition of the roles of husband and wife. You can even believe that you know your spouse before you marry them. If the reality of your actual spouse doesn’t match your pre-existing beliefs, those convictions cannot keep your marriage together no matter how strongly you hold onto them. Many marriages founder on those rocks.
Belief won’t keep a marriage together. Only trust does that. When you understand that you don’t understand—that everything you thought you knew about marriage and roles and your spouse might prove wrong—but that you can still place yourselves in each other’s hands anyway…that’s how marriages survive. People who hold onto “knowing” their spouse (read: defining as they please and remaining rigid in those definitions) end up killing their marriages. People who trust their spouse build relationship. This is exactly how it is with God, times infinity. Knowing God is fine. Insisting that you know exactly who God is? That’s cosmically foolish. That’s not faith, but arrogance. We modern folks will be a million times closer to relationship with God the way it was meant to be if every time we read “belief” or “faith” we hear the word “trust”. This is true everywhere from John 3:16 (“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who trusts in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”) to the Apostle’s Creed (“I trust in God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth. I trust in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord…”) We are also called to live lives of faith based on that trust. We are not “believers” by virtue of our superior knowledge of God. If that’s the pattern for faith, why are the gospels full of stories of Jesus condemning the scribes and Pharisees but eating with tax collectors and sinners? The former had the correct knowledge and belief. The latter had nothing but trust that despite their shortcomings, their relationship with God would turn out OK. The Pharisees spent all their time condemning everyone they felt didn’t believe or act right. The other folks who had been targets of the Pharisees’ condemnation just spent their time being grateful for God’s mercy and love. Many people and many churches get angry about this definition of faith as trust. That’s a sign that there’s something to it. It robs us of our self-centeredness, our religious superiority, and veneration of practices that point more to us than to God. It exposes the exact hypocrisy (denying God while proclaiming him, substituting ourselves for God) that detractors accuse us of. Those detractors are right! There’s also something more to our faith than we’re showing: the relationship lived out through trust rather than the cheap convictions of belief. If we wish to follow Jesus in lives of faith, our words, actions, and decisions should reflect our trust in him. No matter what goes on in our head, God is still God. God cleans us, redeems us, and makes us more than we ever believed we could be. In this we trust, even when we can’t believe. --Pastor Dave
Ep. 47 - Jesus rattles his followers by telling them the temple, their world, and their very lives are going to be torn apart in ways they can't control. In the end, what can we do but hold on?
The Geek and Greek podcast is a show where two reverends talk honestly and clearly about faith, Christianity, scripture, and life. Follow us at GeekAndGreek.com!  Of all the words that we’ve mangled when describing our relationship with God—and we’ve mangled plenty—none is greater or more tragic than what we’ve done to the word “faith”. The fault is not entirely ours. Both scripture and church writings properly equate the word “faith” with “belief”. That’s the way the original languages of scripture read. But we haven’t accounted for the transformation the word “belief” has undergone in our modern age. Faith and belief—at least the way we think of believing—are no longer so equivalent. The word “belief” originated in a world populated by mysteries. Few people in ancient time strayed more than a few miles from the town in which they were born. Stories of forests populated by fairies and talking wolves sprang up because nobody knew what was actually in those woods. They were dangerous places. Why would you go there? People had a tenuous grasp, at best, on the nature of the universe. The sun rose every morning and set every night but the earth was at the center of the universe. Illnesses were caused by spirits or “humors”. Everything that wasn’t right in front of your face was a mystery, including how it all worked. In this context, “belief” carried with it connotations of the unknown. When you said you “believed” something you acknowledged forces in the world beyond your control or comprehension. “Believing” there were fairies in the forest was less a personal creed or statement of experience, more an admission that the forest was far bigger than your ability to make sense of and that something was out there making things happen. As I write this in North America, circa 2019, untouched forests are an endangered species. Not only have we been in the woods, we’ve mastered them and converted them into raw material for production. The idea of fairies or anything in the woods beyond our comprehension seems silly and childish to us.  The sun still rises and sets, but we understand that we’re not the center of the universe anymore. The sun itself is only a peripheral star in a far greater galaxy which is hurtling through space along with billions of other galaxies just like it. We’re sending out probes and missions to some of our nearer celestial neighbors and we can envision a future where we jet through the firmament to any of them we choose.
Illnesses are caused by viruses, bacteria, and germs. Not only can we fight most of them, we’ve developed the skill to cure conditions that our ancestors couldn’t identify and prolong life to triple their life spans. Mysteries still abound. (The universe is a big place, after all.) But the word “belief” has little relationship to them anymore. Believing in something you can’t prove is seen as a sign of weakness, not a way to make sense of the world. We only want to believe in things that are proven. We insist on demonstrations, studies, and evidence before we’ll invest our belief. If we can’t comprehend it, we won’t believe in it. Notice that this is the opposite of the old construct. Belief used to be pointed towards things outside the self, things too big to talk about in any other way. Now belief happens inside the mind, not granted until the outside thing has been reduced to a form small enough to fit inside our heads. Even though the definition of belief has changed radically, we still equate it with faith. This is disastrous. When we say, “I believe in God” we mean, “I have reduced God to the point that I understand him. I agree with God and godly principles. I hold onto pleasing and easily-digested ‘evidence’ of God’s existence. I have judged God acceptable.” All of these are different ways of claiming that God fits within our own minds and that believing in him is a personal, internal choice. How can any of that possibly apply to the Lord of the Universe who stretches to infinity, beyond every sphere that we’ve ever dreamed of? We will never, ever understand God by sitting in judgment over him. The “god” we end up with will be a pale imitation of ourselves…idolatry in its purest form. How ironic is it that when we say, “I believe” we’re actually committing the worst slander against God possible? Next Time—Redefining faith to make it more faithful. --Pastor Dave First Reading - Malachi 4 - message and music Second Reading - 2 Thessalonians - message and music Gospel, message and music
 You don’t have to spend long in Christian circles before running up against a question: is the Bible infallible? “Infallible” means “without error”. Is it possible the Bible has mistakes in it? Is believing in every word at all times and places necessary? Some Christians hold this up as a litmus test of faith. Asked to name a characteristic of God’s Word, they’ll lead with, “It’s absolutely never wrong.” Technically they may be correct, but that’s a poor starting point for any relationship. If somebody asks you to name the first quality that comes to mind about your spouse or significant other and you say, “They’re never wrong!” we’re going to begin to question your taste and judgment. That kind of talk is often a prelude to abuse, which is often how “infallible” is used. It justifies all kinds of wrongdoing against people we deem lesser, codifying and cementing our prejudices in God’s name. Even if God’s Word is error-free, this is not the purpose it was meant for. Upholding the integrity of scripture has value. We must deal with the word as it comes to us. Picking out parts we think are legitimate while rejecting others eliminates the need for a Bible in the first place. We have become our own gods, our minds sitting in judgment over the text rather than the text guiding and opening our minds. None of us can be trusted with that kind of authority. We need a common Word to gather around. We need an actual God, not a figment of our imagination or bias. This does not mean that God’s Word strikes each of us the same way. God is big. A person of faith walking alongside of him on one side may see things quite differently from a person walking alongside of him on the opposite side. They stand in different spots. They view from different angles. Someone attached to God’s right hip is going to view the person grabbing God’s left pinkie finger as strange…maybe even in error. They won’t understand how the other person can see God the way they do. Yet they’re still both attached.  The Bible itself allows for this. Despite attempts to reduce it to a simple rulebook, it doesn’t let the reader take it in just one way. At some points scripture contradicts itself. A famous example from Proverbs 26 reads: 4 Do not answer fools according to their folly, or you will be a fool yourself. 5 Answer fools according to their folly, or they will be wise in their own eyes. These verses sit right next to each other. They appear to say the exact opposite thing. We could twist ourselves into a theological pretzel attempting to justify both, probably emerging with dissatisfaction and resolving never to read this section again. Or we could simply say, “Sometimes you’re on God’s hip, sometimes you’re holding the pinkie. There’s a time for each.” Even without the contradictions, Biblical scholars have trouble ascertaining what should be included in the text. There’s no ancient, unified copy of the Bible sitting in a vault somewhere…the Template for All Times. The Bible as we know it was compiled from multiple sources, copied and recopied throughout history. Bible translators will generally look for the oldest source possible, reasoning that changes increase the more times the text gets copied. But the oldest texts aren’t always complete. They’re supplemented by bits and parts from other copies. Sometimes a translator will have to choose between competing texts of relatively equal weight. This is why your Bible contains footnotes saying, “Other ancient texts read…” As scholarship has advanced over the years, some sections of scripture have come under scrutiny. The ending of the Gospel of Mark is one example. We’re still not sure how it finished originally, but it’s certain that Mark 16: 9-20—included for centuries without prejudice but now offset with double brackets in most Bibles—was not part of the ancient gospel. With all the fracturing, layering, and editing, how can we be sure that no errors crept into the Bible over the ages? As with everything in faith, it comes down to a matter of trust…not trust that you hold in your hands the original document as each author intended it, but trust that however it got into your hands today, it was meant to be there. God’s Word challenges us, comforts us, arrests us and sets us free. That process still happens even if the medium looks slightly different than we expected. Some interpretations are more helpful than others but no translation or editorial choice can interfere with God’s intention for us.  Our relationship with scripture is just that: a relationship. It’s a conversation between us and God. In those terms, it hardly matters whether scripture itself is infallible. Any relationship is only as good as its weakest link and we’re certainly not infallible. Even if the Bible is without error, we’re not capable of hearing, processing, or interpreting it without messing it up. We introduce errors into the system the moment God’s Word passes our eyes and ears. If the relationship stands or falls on the absence of errors, we’re all doomed.
Fortunately God’s Word is better than infallible. It conveys a message of love, forgiveness, and redemption despite the world’s sin and error. It doesn’t show us how to not make mistakes. We’re not capable of that. It shows us how goodness triumphs over our mistakes. In the end, we aren’t saved by our own knowledge, interpretation, or goodness. If we’re saved, it’s because God loves us enough to save us. The Bible is less infallible than it is persistent in delivering that message, then assuring us that God does, indeed, care that much. When confronted with a person who proclaims loudly, “I believe that the Bible is infallible!” I always respond with, “Maybe? But you and I aren’t. So let’s work together to figure out what this word means in the midst of our mixed-up world rather than assuming we already know.” --Pastor Dave
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Ep. 46 - Some folks ask Jesus whether there's a resurrection from the dead. Justin and Dave explore the implications, not just for the afterlife, but how we approach God and each other today.
The Geek and Greek podcast is a show where two reverends talk honestly and clearly about faith, Christianity, scripture, and life. Follow us at GeekAndGreek.com!  t the beginning of most services, we have a time of confession. It’s different than the cultural image would lead you to believe. We don’t have wooden booths where people list out their specific sins to a priest. Together, we all admit that we didn’t live up to everything we were supposed to be in the week past. We speak this truth before God and each other, then we hear words that create hope for the week to come: God still loves you, God delights in mercy, you are forgiven. The traditional, cultural image of confession puts the focus in ineffective places. First, people are expected to remember and enumerate all their sins. This not only assumes that they can recall correctly, but that they can identify correctly! Some of the things we think are fine actually end up hurting other people or bringing harm into the world in subtle ways. Sometimes we’re slow to realize these things. Confessing every sin we can acknowledge and remember is not the same as confessing all our sin. This manner of confession also gives power to the sin itself, making wrongdoing central. We come together because of the sin. We speak about the sin. We almost take a weird kind of pride in it. That power then translates to the priest or pastor, who hears our confession, then doles out penance. If we spend time in the cosmic penalty box, doing good things, our sin gets erased. The entire process focuses on us. The people we harmed are largely left out of it. God becomes the great vending machine of forgiveness, dispensing it in response to our penance coins. Since the entire root of sin is placing ourselves in the center of the universe, devaluing God, this seems an odd way to go about erasing sin. In our confession together during worship, we do not name the personal sins we remember. We are always free to do that with a pastor individually if we wish, but that’s not the central point of the worship confession. Sin doesn’t get to hold center stage. Instead we admit we have neglected and hurt others in ways we know about and ways we don’t. We confess that we don’t know how to do things right, that we always fall short in some way, that we cannot save ourselves. Then we speak the great truth:  “God, if this is going to come out right, it depends on you.”
After we say these things, we hear the pastor speak absolution. We hear that sin, though real, will not be the most powerful element of our relationship with God or our neighbors. We hear God assuring us that even though we are imperfect, we are beloved bearers of God’s Spirit. Nobody’s shortcomings are big enough to overturn the work and power of God. God chooses to love us, to inspire us, and to send us into the world to do good, no matter what. The action here is not on us. The power does not lie with the things we do wrong. Instead the power and action are God’s. In response to God’s action, we go out into the world sharing the same hope: we are more than our shortcomings, more than our mistakes. Sin will not reign; love is more powerful. --Pastor Dave |