Trusting in God or using your Brain? Part 2

More thoughts on Ezra. I don't think God is against us using our brains even when we have faith God will protect or guard us in potentially dangerous situations. However, the Ezra story is not as simple as a mutually exclusive decision to either trust God or trust Babylon. Historically, Israel found itself in deep water when it relied on foreign nations for its protection. In Isaiah 30, for example, God rails against his people for relying on Egypt. In Isaiah 36, the then king of Assyria, Sennacherib, ridicules King Hezekiah for relying on Egypt. Treaties with foreign nations was strictly forbidden in the Mosaic Law (Exodus 34:12,15; Deut 7:2; 23:6). Thus, not only is God's perceived omnipotence at stake, but reliance on the Babylonians is against the Torah. Thus Ezra is compelled to pray to God for safety.

What are the implications of this law for us now?

The law says:

Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land where you are going, or they will be a snare among you. ¹³ Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherah poles.¹⁴ Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.

¹⁵ “Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land; for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you and you will eat their sacrifices. ¹⁶ And when you choose some of their daughters as wives for your sons and those daughters prostitute themselves to their gods, they will lead your sons to do the same.

Calvin, in his Harmony of the Law, includes this commandment under the Second, the commandment against making images. He calls it a "civil supplement" to the second commandment. In other words, this commandment in part expounds upon the second commandment and its applicability in the sphere of society. Calvin says that the point of this law is that God's people ought to avoid getting into relationships with wordly institutions and people such that the intimacy of these relationships might have a corrupting effect on the person of God. Basically, its the slippery slope argument, and Calvin sees this law in effect in the NT by way of Paul's injunction, for example, that believers ought not to be yoked to unbelievers.

The problem is, the spirit of the law seems to be the prevention of corruption of God's people. I'm not sure that's what Ezra had in mind when he declined asking Babylon for protection on the way home.

Kite Runner Renews My Love of Fiction

My wife had been bugging me to read this book for ages. It wasn't that I didn't want to read it--it was more a matter of finding the time and getting in the right mind set to be able to read something for enjoyment without falling asleep.

Assuming Hosseini's descriptions of Afghanistan and its cultural milieu are accurate, I also found the book incredibly informative. It almost makes me want to take a trip to Afghanistan to find Kabul and look around.

I'm undecided on what Hosseini's final religious convictions are. I sensed that you got a picture of the best and worst Islam has to offer. Amir's father is the most enigmatic. He is a man of strong convictions, yet somehow fuzzy on who or what God is. He's especially cynical towards the religious establishment, particularly the teachers of Islam.

This book has renewed my love of fiction because I see now that a book like this can do only what good fiction can -- to suck you in and make you care so much that it hurts. Perhaps the most gratifying moment was when little Sohrab, full of his father's conviction and loyalty, burst Assif's eye with his slingshot. The book could have ended right there.

When I turned the last page, a strange sensation came over me, like, this is what salvation is all about. I'm still trying to figure out why the book had this effect on me. Anyway, its a great read and I see now why my wife begged me to read it.

Trusting in God or using your Brain?

I was surprised by this passage in Ezra:

²¹ There, by the Ahava Canal, I proclaimed a fast, so that we might humble ourselves before our God and ask him for a safe journey for us and our children, with all our possessions. ²² I was ashamed to ask the king for soldiers and horsemen to protect us from enemies on the road, because we had told the king, “The gracious hand of our God is on everyone who looks to him, but his great anger is against all who forsake him.” ²³ So we fasted and petitioned our God about this, and he answered our prayer.

Does trusting in God rule out safety precautions? Only if it is at the cost of compromising your testimony?

"This generation?"

Jesus said, in Mark 13:31 while talking about the end times,

"I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away."

What did Jesus mean by "this generation"? I think there are basically three possibilities: literal, figuaritive, and combination.

Literal: Jesus literally meant that the generation of his listeners would actually see the events described in Mark 13 and that Jesus would return to collect the collect within about 40 years of his resurrection.

Figurative: "this generation" refers not to the literal generation of Jesus' hearers, but to the generations of Jesus' followers that will experience the gathering of the elect over the course of history until Jesus' progressive return is complete.

Combination: Jesus' words are both literal and figurative in the sense that Jesus' followers do experience the trauma described in Mark 13, but they don't experience the full return of Christ. They experience a portion of the "gathering" as the Holy Spirit begins to build the church in the first century. "This generation" also figuratively applies to Christians of all ages who are experience tribulation and wars and earthquakes, the elect who are being gathered as the Son of Man comes slowly towards earth with "great power and glory."

My conclusions:
* "this generation" is both literal and figurative
* the coming of the Son of Man is progressive
* the gathering of the elect represents the growth of the church (not the rapture)
* the tribulations described in Mark 13 are characteristic of all history leading up to the arrival of the Son of Man
* the climactic moment of return could be at any moment now

David's Son is his Lord?

I've been confused about Jesus' retort to the Pharisees when he quoted from Psalm 110 saying, "The Lord said to my Lord, 'Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.'"

Jesus continues, "David calls him Lord, so how can he be his son?" The crowds derives great enjoyment from hearing Jesus stump the scribes. This is in Mark 12.

Maybe it seems obvious to you, but I had to study this a little to make sense of why the retort packed a punch which the crowds found interesting.

Here's the deal. There was a Messianic expectation during this period, and the expected Messiah was thought to come from the line of David. The Jews awaited a hero who would rescue the Jews from political oppression and restore the country to its former glory. This was based on the prophecies of Isaiah and others.

However, and this is what Jesus picks up on, there is also evidence in scripture that the coming Messiah would be greater than the former kings, even king David. Psalm 110 makes this point. It is a Psalm of David, but David is not writing about his own kingship. David writes that "the Lord declares to my Lord..." The first "Lord" is the tetragramaton, referring to the God of Abraham, the Great "I Am." The second "Lord" is "Adonai," which is synonymous to "lord" as a title of headship or authority. Clearly, David intends to convey a dual allegiance to two "Lords," one who is God, Yahweh, and the other, one who sits at Yahweh's right hand and functions both as eternal priest and king of the world. How David could conceive of a second "Lord," and how he envisioned the relationship between these two Lords is impossible to determine. Except that Jesus says that he spoke through the Holy Spirit.

Jesus rightly points out that the position of Messiah, the "Adonai" of Psalm 110, is greater than David. But Jesus uses this point to baffle the scribes by asking them how the Messiah could be David's son if the Messiah is greater than David?" The premise that jeopardizes this assertion is that a son (or descendant) cannot be greater than his father. This reverses the Mosaic law, specifically, the fifth commandment, which places the children in a position of subservience to the parents. For David to call his son (or his descendent) his Lord would be absurd (and unlawful).

The scribes stand speechless because there is no way to respond to this. Either they must deny that the Messiah is the Son of David, or they must deny that the Messiah is greater than David. If they deny that the Messiah is the son of David, but affirm that the Messiah is greater than David, then they must say that the Messiah will have royal blood based outside of David's bloodline. If they deny that the Messiah is greater than David, but maintain that the Messiah is the Son of David, then they contradict Psalm 110 and must settle for a less than David-like king to rescue them from Roman oppression.

To avoid either of these pitfalls, the scribes have only option -- to affirm the divine fatherhood of the Messiah as the source of his royalty, and to affirm the greatness of the Messiah as being the Lord of David in accord with the scriptures. The problem with this option is that it requires David-like submission to the Son of David because this Messiah is also the Son of God.