Merry Christmas -- 2018

Experiencing God

“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 

                                                                                                       (John 4:24) 

“God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” 

                                                                                                       (I John 4:16)

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These two verses of scripture express how I feel that I have experienced God as a moving spirit in moments of human righteousness. Rather than experiencing God as something that exists and happens from the outside of my being, I have always felt that the presence of God, as spirit, comes to conscious awareness when I act toward others with an intention of love. When I am treated with love and compassion, I feel it. When I approach others with love and compassion, I feel it again. God as love is a fact of human existence and experience.

Something happens inside me when I set aside personal concerns and accept someone else’s perspective in a way that I can be helpful to them. There is both a giving up and a receiving that happen simultaneously in those moments. To me that is the presence of God and the beginning of a helping/healing activity in real life. God as spirit is never outside, but is always available to be expressed in every good and loving action I give, or that I receive.

If you carefully think about it, God is the highest and best expression of what it is to be human. When we feel that God has acted in our lives it is because we have experienced a practical, human outcome that is the best that we could have imagined for everyone involved, or even better.  Perfect outcomes can become everyday experiences if we choose to live with that as our expectation. Very little exists in our world that does not originate from an idea about how something could be better. God is spirit and in that spirit is the evolving perfection of life that occurs through our learning to love.

The concept of original sin is a human myth and not a truth of our being. The only thing separating anyone from growing into the presence of God is a refusal to approach others, and I mean any other being, with the spirit of love. Luckily, the negative influence of refusals can be eliminated, in a split-second, by a change of heart and mind. We are in charge of expressing the best that is within us. We determine our own living heavens or hells.

Choose your thoughts and actions wisely by inviting the reality of unconditional love, that spiritual perfection we experience and describe as God, into every moment of your life.

What The Bible Tells Us About The Bible – Lesson 2: Christology & Monotheism

The Bible Is A Collection of Human Spiritual Traditions

            Much has been said and taught about the Bible and many of the claims that are made are based on what serious and devout individuals want the Bible to represent. They want it to be the perfect and inerrant word of God, however, it cannot be that. It is, rather, a collection of Judeo-Christian oral spiritual traditions put into writing by various authors over about a thousand years (roughly 950 BCE to about 250 CE.)  Let’s look at some of the evidence that makes this clear, because the best way to understand the Bible and its different messages is to look carefully at how its various parts were written and put together.  In other words, we need to take seriously what the Bible tells us about the Bible.

Books In The Bible Were Created From Oral Traditions

            The first thing that must be made clear about the Old Testament is that the first written word to appear anywhere in it was penned after 920 BCE. That was some 939 years after the time of Abraham, the first Jewish patriarch, who lived around 1859 BCE. That means all the sacred traditions in the Old Testament about Abraham, his family, Joseph, the Egyptian captivity, Moses, the Exodus, the Judges, and the first three Hebrew kings, Saul, David and Solomon, were all transmitted orally before being recorded in documents that would be placed in the Hebrew Bible also known as the Christian Old Testament.  The Old Testament is only vaguely a history. Oral traditions change and are embellished as they are transmitted from generation to generation, which makes them variable and unreliable as historical records. What they do preserve, however, are what devout Jews in different locations and times felt were important spiritual and theological teachings during a 1,000-year span of history.

            The books of the New Testament are also based on oral traditions. There is not a single word in the New Testament that was written by someone who knew, saw, listened to, or talked with Jesus.  His disciples were poor, illiterate, Aramaic speaking day laborers and the writers of the Gospels that were named after Jesus’ disciples, were educated and wrote sophisticated theological documents in Greek.  They were not the same people.

            It is also clear that the Gospels of the New Testament show developing Christian theology from the earliest Gospel of Mark to the last Gospel of John. They do not all say the same things and this is one of the many reasons that the claim of Biblical inerrancy is not supported by what’s literally in the Bible.  It is clear that different groups of Christians had different beliefs so when their oral traditions were written down, that created conflicting stories in the New Testament for all to see for themselves. 

  

Changing Traditions About Jesus’ Divinity

Christology In The Gospel Of Mark

According to Mark, Jesus became divine when John The Baptist baptized him.  Mark wrote that when Jesus came “…out of the water, He saw the heavens opening, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon Him; and a voice came out of the heavens: ‘Thou art My beloved Son, in Thee I am well-pleased’ “ (Mark 1:10-11). Jesus saw the dome that first century people believed separated earth from heaven split open and God spoke directly to him telling him of his then exalted state.

Mark portrays Jesus as the most human in comparison to the other Gospels. Mark has no birth narrative and, in fact, his hometown friends and his family think he might be losing his mind when he starts preaching and some were even offended (Mark 3:20-21, 31-32 & Mark 6:2-4). Approaching his crucifixion Jesus is in anguish (Mark 14:34, 36) and upon his death on the cross he cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34) Matthew also has Jesus uttering the same last words in his Gospel (Matt 27:46). But, Jesus’ quoted last words begin to change in Luke. Luke writes that Jesus said, “Father, into thy hands I commit My spirit.” (Luke 23:46)  Then John shortens Jesus’ last words even more, to simply saying, “It is finished.” John (19:30) There is clearly a progression of spiritual understanding evolving from the earlier Christian writings of Mark to the later Christian writings of the Gospel of John. The Gospels reflect theological history more precisely than human history.

Christology In The Gospel Of Matthew

            Matthew, the second gospel to be written, moves the beginning of Jesus’ exalted status to his birth. Matthew records an oral tradition stating that when Jesus’ “…mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 1:18). This was supposed to be the fulfillment of  “…what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet…” (Matt. 1:22) in Isaiah 7:14 in Hebrew scripture. However, when you read Isaiah 7:14 in its full context it is about a sign given to King Ahaz indicating that his country of Judah would not be conquered by the combined forces of two hostile neighboring kingdoms. (Isa. 7:16) This was a battle that took place centuries before Jesus was born, so it clearly had nothing to do with him.

In addition, The Hebrew version of the Old Testament (the Torah), contains the word, "almah" in Isaiah 7:14 which, in Hebrew, only means young woman, not virgin and it is not at all ambiguous. The Hebrew word for virgin is a completely different word, "betulah".  Since "almah" is used in the original Hebrew text, its meaning must be accepted as the intended meaning of that passage, which means Matthew's assertion of a virgin birth is a translation error from the Greek version of Hebrew scriptures. The Greek word used in Isaiah 7:14 can mean either young woman or a virgin.  Matthew's Christian fervor apparently overwhelmed his skill as a scriptural scholar. Bottom line, Matthew’s story of a virgin birth was his interpretive Christian messaging, not history.

There are other elements of Matthew’s Gospel that describe for us his overall intended message. He is the only source of the stories about Mary and Joseph living in a house where Jesus was born in Bethlehem (Matt. 2:11), about the Magi from the east (Matt. 2:1-12), a wandering star (Matt. 2:2, 7, 9-10), the suspicion and fear of Herod (Matt. 2:3-8), Mary and Joseph’s escape to Egypt (Matt. 2:13-14), and Herod’s slaughter of all the male children two years old and younger in Bethlehem (Matt. 2:16). Only Matthew describes Mary and Joseph’s eventual return from Egypt (Matt. 2:19-21) and that they had to go live in Nazareth in Galilee instead of returning to Bethlehem, because it was still too dangerous (Matt: 2:22-23).

All of these story elements are reminders of the Joseph and Moses stories in the Torah, starting with Joseph, the interpreter of dreams (Gen. 41:15-16) who was sold into slavery in Egypt (Gen. 37:28), only to rise to be second in power to the Pharaoh (Genesis 41:40) because he protected Egypt from a severe drought. Joseph subsequently also protected his family by having the Pharaoh invite them to move to Egypt so they would survive the drought (Gen. 47:5-6). Generations later the Jews in Egypt became a threat to a new Egyptian king who did not know Joseph. (Exodus 1:7-8) and who decided to have all newborn Jewish boys killed by casting them “…into the Nile” (Exodus 1:22).  Then, like Joseph, Moses escaped death in Egypt and came under the protection of the Pharaoh and his family (Exodus 2:1-10). In the meantime the Jews in Egypt were treated as slaves (Exodus 2:23). Eventually, Moses was called by God (Exodus 3:7-10) to lead the Jews out of Egypt, through the desert,  where he received the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17) then on to the border of the Promised Land (Canaan) where Moses died and was buried (Deut: 34:1-6).

Matthew wanted everyone to understand that he viewed Jesus as the new and more powerful Moses, which was initiated by his miraculous birth to a virgin, not when he was baptized. Even Jesus’ Sermon On The Mount (Matt: 5-7) appears to contain revisions of the Ten Commandments given to Moses. Matthew presents the most Jewish perspective of Jesus’ life and teachings when compared to the other Gospel writers.

           

Christology In The Gospel Of Luke

            The way the author of Luke writes, he may have been a pagan convert to Christianity since that appears to be his perspective. Luke, like Matthew, considers Jesus’ holy conception and birth to be the moment God exalted Jesus to a divine status (Luke 1:26-35).  The birth tradition Luke wrote in his gospel is so different from the story Matthew wrote there is no way they can be harmonized. If one were historically true then the other would have to be false. They are both theological interpretive stories, not histories.

            Luke has Mary and Joseph living in Nazareth in Galilee when they are required to travel to Bethlehem because of a census decreed by Caesar Augustus (Luke 2:1-5). (There are no contemporaneous Roman documents indicating Augustus decreed any such census.) Luke’s story continues. Despite being great with child, and having to travel by donkey or walking, Mary and Joseph make the journey. They find Bethlehem so crowded they had to lodge in a stable, with the animals. That’s where Jesus is born. (Luke 2:6-7). The shepherds in the fields come to town to visit Jesus (Luke 2:8-20) and after eight days Jesus is circumcised according to Jewish law (Luke 2:21-23). Finally Mary, Joseph, and Jesus return to “…their own city of Nazareth” (Luke 2:39).

            Both Matthew and Luke tell essentially the same story of Jesus’ baptism (Matt. 4:13-17) and (Luke 4:21-22). Unlike Mark, however, the voice of God in Matthew and Luke’s versions of Jesus’ baptism, spoke generally to everyone, not just to Jesus. It could have been that Luke simply followed Matthew’s version, instead of Mark’s. Still, none of these writers wrote about events he had witnessed. Each was writing down oral traditions that expressed theological viewpoints meaningful to his particular community of believers.

Christology In The Gospel Of John

            The Gospel of John is so different that none of its stories can be lined up in parallel with similar stories appearing in the Synoptic Gospels (i.e. Mark, Matthew, and Luke).  The first three Gospels are called “Synoptic” because they share common and parallel views of the events in Jesus’ life. However, John is very different. There is no birth narrative in the Gospel of John because John claims that Jesus was the Word of God made manifest on earth (John 1:14) and Jesus’ grace and truth supersede “…the Law given through Moses” (John 1: 16-17).  Jesus had existed eternally “…in the beginning with God” (John 1:1) and was the creator of all things (John 1:3-4). In stark contrast to the other Gospel writers, the writer of John is claiming that Jesus had always been divine.

            Unlike the Synoptic Gospels, John has Jesus cleanse the Temple at the beginning of his teaching career (John 2:13-16) not just prior to his crucifixion (Mark 11:15-17; Matt. 21:12-13; Luke 19:45-46). Throughout the Synoptic Gospels Jesus does not glorify himself. In fact he makes the statement, “Why call me good? No one is good by God alone.” (Mark 10:18 & Luke 18:19) In John, however, his acts and long speeches and signs are all about his exalted divine status and redemptive power. The Gospel of John expresses an extremely different and more complex Christology than the previous three Gospels.

Considered in their chronological order, the four Gospels reveal to us a progression of how succeeding Christian communities had remarkably different oral traditions about how and when Jesus was raised from humanness to divinity.

The Evolution of Monotheism

            It is frequently taught that Abraham founded the Jewish nation by rejecting polytheism and worshipping the one and only true God. However, it didn’t happen as quickly as that. There are traces of polytheism or, at least, monolatry (the worship of one god over all other lesser gods who also are believed to exist) throughout the Old Testament. Consider the First Commandment that states one must “,,,have no other gods before Me.” (Exod: 20:3) This clearly suggests that of all the gods that are in the heavens, the God of the Jews is the most important and the most powerful.  This is also true for phrases such as ”Almighty God” (Gen. 17:1) or “Lord God." There is also the story in Genesis about male deities having sex with attractive human females and the resulting children “…were the heroes that were of old” (Genesis 6:4). Divinely inspired scriptures of a monotheistic religion would not contain such passages. Scriptures were written by humans, for and about human spirituality as it was developing.

Even in the first century, during Jesus’ lifetime, 90% of the population was polytheistic, so the move to monotheism involved a slow and gradual progression, even then. In fact, various early Christian communities that formed after Jesus’ crucifixion had polytheistic doctrines claiming the existence of as few as two to as many as three hundred sixty-five gods. They all claimed to be Christian, they all claimed to be right, and they all claimed that any opposing viewpoint was heretical. Ultimately, the theology that evolved into “Orthodox Christianity” finally won the religious debates and their view of heresy became the standard. As a result all opposing Christian ideas and teachings were vigorously attacked and sacred literature considered heretical was destroyed wherever possible. 

It appears that those with the most power will always write and impose on everyone else, their version of history. However, biblical scholarship can help us evaluate the Bible from a more theology-free perspective.  The purpose of these lessons is to provide as bias-free a look at the Bible as possible, so the practical, metaphysical, and spiritual lessons can be considered. Dogma should not dictate reality. It should be the other way around. What we see, feel, and learn every day should be expanding our knowledge and increasing our spiritual awareness of every expression of reality we experience. What we are starts and stops with what we allow ourselves to believe. Therefore, what we believe should be treated with special care, respect, and honesty. Also, unless one claims to know everything, what we believe should develop and change as we have new experiences in life and learn.

What The Bible Tells Us About The Bible – Lesson 1: OT Prophesies About Jesus' Birth

Old Testament Scriptures Were Not

 Predictions Of Jesus’ Birth

Asserted Prophesy #1:

Jesus Was The Expected Messiah

Born Of A Virgin

New Testament:  (Matthew 1, 22-23) All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ²³ “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).

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Note:  New Testament references are shown in bold print in the context of the Old Testament passages in which they were originally written.

Old Testament: (Isaiah 7:1-17)   

 ¹ When Ahaz son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, was king of Judah, King Rezin of Aram and Pekah son of Remaliah king of Israel marched up to fight against Jerusalem, but they could not overpower it.

 ² Now the house of David was told, “Aram has allied itself with Ephraim”; so the hearts of Ahaz and his people were shaken, as the trees of the forest are shaken by the wind.

 ³ Then the LORD said to Isaiah, “Go out, you and your son Shear-Jashub to meet Ahaz at the end of the aqueduct of the Upper Pool, on the road to the Launderer’s Field. ⁴ Say to him, ‘Be careful, keep calm and don’t be afraid. Do not lose heart because of these two smoldering stubs of firewood—because of the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram and of the son of Remaliah. ⁵ Aram, Ephraim and Remaliah’s son have plotted your ruin, saying, ⁶ “Let us invade Judah; let us tear it apart and divide it among ourselves, and make the son of Tabeel king over it.” ⁷ Yet this is what the Sovereign LORD says:

   “‘It will not take place,
   it will not happen,
⁸ for the head of Aram is Damascus,
   and the head of Damascus is only Rezin.
Within sixty-five years
   Ephraim will be too shattered to be a people.
⁹ The head of Ephraim is Samaria,
   and the head of Samaria is only Remaliah’s son.
If you do not stand firm in your faith,
   you will not stand at all.’”

 ¹⁰ Again the LORD spoke to Ahaz, ¹¹ “Ask the LORD your God for a sign, whether in the deepest depths or in the highest heights.”

 ¹² But Ahaz said, “I will not ask; I will not put the LORD to the test.”

 ¹³ Then Isaiah said, “Hear now, you house of David! Is it not enough to try the patience of humans? Will you try the patience of my God also? ¹⁴ Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. ¹⁵ He will be eating curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, ¹⁶ for before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste. ¹⁷ The LORD will bring on you and on your people and on the house of your father a time unlike any since Ephraim broke away from Judah—he will bring the king of Assyria.” 

DISCUSSION:

1.     Old Testament texts were originally written in Hebrew. By the 1st century these Hebrew texts had been translated into Greek. The Gospel writers used the Greek translations of the Old Testament as their reference. The Greek word "parthenos", translates into either "virgin" or "young woman", and is used in the Greek translation of Isaiah 1:14.  However, the original Hebrew word, "almah",  found in Isaiah1:14, only meant “young woman” and not "a virgin."  The Hebrew word for “virgin” is "betulah." Therefore, this scripture is correctly read as "the young woman...", (not a virgin), "...will conceive and give birth to a son..."

2.     In addition, when you read the entire scriptural context around Isaiah 1:14 you get a complete picture of what it was actually about. This is a story of how God, through Isaiah, gives a sign to Ahaz, King of Judah (the southern Jewish kingdom), just as two adjacent kingdoms, Israel (the northern Jewish kingdom) and Syria, were attacking Jerusalem, the capital of Judah.

3.     The sign is that a young woman will give birth to a son and name him “Immanuel” which means “God is with us.” Before this son is grown (“…knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right…”) the two kingdoms attacking him will be defeated (“…the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste.”)

4.     Ahaz was the King of Judah more than 800 years before Jesus was born.  So a child born as a sign to King Ahaz could not have had anything to do with Jesus.

5.     What was it about Jesus’ life and teachings that motivated Matthew to write his virgin birth narrative? By reading the OT context we understand that Matthew’s claim was not true in any literal sense, but what was his meaning in a metaphysical or spiritual sense? What does it mean to make a claim that Jesus is fathered by God? Metaphors are not meaningless and the virgin birth tradition is trying to express something about how unique Jesus was. These kinds of issues are what readers of the Bible need to discuss, consider, and understand better.

Asserted Prophesy #2:

 Jesus Was The Messiah Born In Bethlehem

Who Was To Save Judah

NT: Matthew 2:3-6

³ When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. ⁴ When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. ⁵ “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written: 
 ⁶ “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
   are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
   who will shepherd my people Israel.’” 

•  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •

OT:  Micah 5:1-6

A Promised Ruler From Bethlehem

 ¹ Marshal your troops now, city of troops,
   for a siege is laid against us.
They will strike Israel’s ruler
   on the cheek with a rod.

 ² “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
   though you are small among the clans of Judah,
out of you will come for me
   one who will be ruler over Israel,
whose origins are from of old,
   from ancient times.”

 ³ Therefore Israel will be abandoned
   until the time when she who is in labor bears a son,
and the rest of his brothers return
   to join the Israelites.

 ⁴ He will stand and shepherd his flock
   in the strength of the LORD,
   in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God.
And they will live securely, for then his greatness
   will reach to the ends of the earth.

 ⁵ And he will be our peace
   when the Assyrians invade our land
   and march through our fortresses.
We will raise against them seven shepherds,
   even eight commanders,
⁶ who will rule the land of Assyria with the sword,
   the land of Nimrod with drawn sword.
He will deliver us from the Assyrians
   when they invade our land
   and march across our borders. 

DISCUSSION:

1.     Around 721 BCE the Assyrians attacked and defeated the northern Jewish kingdom of Israel. They also threatened the southern Jewish kingdom of Judah, but Judah accepted vassal status and paid tribute to Assyria. Micah was written about 750 BCE and is about these events involving Assyria, Israel, and Judah.

2.     What Micah is saying is that a leader will arise from Bethlehem in Judah who will be mighty enough to provide the military leadership necessary to defeat Assyria. It asserts he will “…rule the land of Assyria with the sword…” Clearly, this scripture is not about Jesus, born more than 700 years after these words were written and whose message was love, not military power or vengeance.

3.     Matthew may have been trying to suggest that the spiritual power of Jesus’ message and example is as meaningful to human life as was the military power of ancient messiahs (kings of Jewish states) who fought and defeated the enemies of the Jews. However, Jesus demonstrated a totally different way of approaching those who appear to be your enemies. Jesus' alternative message of love is what deserves our serious consideration and discussion.

Asserted Prophecy #3:

Jesus Was God’s Son Called Out Of Egypt

NT: Matthew 2:13-15

The Escape to Egypt

 ¹³ When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

 ¹⁴ So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, ¹⁵ where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

•  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •

OT:  Hosea 11:1-7

God’s Love for Israel

 ¹ “When Israel was a child, I loved him,
   and out of Egypt I called my son.
² But the more they were called,
   the more they went away from me.

They sacrificed to the Baals
   and they burned incense to images.
³ It was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
   taking them by the arms;
but they did not realize
   it was I who healed them.
⁴ I led them with cords of human kindness,
   with ties of love.
To them I was like one who lifts
   a little child to the cheek,
   and I bent down to feed them.

 ⁵ “Will they not return to Egypt
   and will not Assyria rule over them
   because they refuse to repent?
⁶ A sword will flash in their cities;
   it will devour their false prophets
   and put an end to their plans.
⁷ My people are determined to turn from me.
   Even though they call me God Most High,
   I will by no means exalt them.

DISCUSSION:

1.     Hosea was written around 745 BCE and these particular verses are explaining why the Assyrians were victorious over the northern kingdom of Israel. In the phrase, “…and out of Egypt I called my son” the word “son” represents all the Hebrew slaves brought out of Egypt by Moses. Consider the preceding phrase. “When Israel was a child..." (in other words a slave population in Egypt) "...I loved him.” Both singular terms, “him” in the first phrase and “son” in the second phrase, refer to an entire nation of people.

2.     Hosea describes how, once freed from the Egyptians, the Hebrews reverted to sinning and because they did not repent were ultimately conquered by the Assyrians. There is nothing in these passages about Jesus, who was born more than seven centuries later.

3.     Matthew took what was a literary device describing a nation of people and used it as a description of a single person, Jesus, and his relationship to God.  Accurate Biblical scholarship was not Matthew's strength nor, apparently, his concern.  He had something to say that seemed more important and larger than the words he had available. What could possibly have moved Matthew to write the story as he did? That is the spiritual perspective worthy of serious thought and discussion.