Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • TVC is at it Again

    The TVC is generally bummed about their week, and one of the major downers for them was California Representative Peter Stark declaring his unbelief in God on the floor of the house.

    I’ve commented on this sort of attitude before. What did they want him to do? Lie? What about all those Christians and others who have declared their faith?

    I’m fully in favor of people declaring just what they believe about anything that is central to their life. I think a major problem is that much religious rhetoric from politicians is simply put there to attract particular groups of religious voters. It’s hypocritical. But if a candidate is a person of faith, he or she should express that faith. It’s part of who the candidate is and the voters should be able to decide. If I were ever to run for office, an event which will occur right after hell becomes an ice-skating rink, the cameras would have to follow me to church on Sunday morning if they care that much. Why? Because that’s where I am on Sunday mornings and you’re not going to stop me.

    When a Muslim was elected to congress I believed and continue to believe that he should express his faith as a candidate and as a congressman. Since Congressman Stark does not believe in God, it is appropriate for him to express that. I don’t know if he attends a Unitarian-Universalist Church, but if he does, that is where he should be at the appropriate time. That’s who he is.

    But consider this quote, taken from the same article:

    Christian Seniors Association Executive Director James Lafferty notes: “It is sad but not surprising that the current Congress has produced this historic first – one of its members has denied God. The liberals in Congress want to throttle any school child who bows his or her head in prayer but they want to establish a right for liberals to bash Christians and berate God around the clock.”

    Lafferty continued, “Congressman Stark’s statement is a very sad benchmark for America. It could be the moment which defines the decline of our country or it could be the spark which marks an important day. That would be the day that religious Americans stood-up to the liberal bullies who are so determined to use the power of government to silence prayer and every other religious expression of free speech.”

    This stuff makes me crazy! The man says he’s an atheist and it becomes an attack on free speech? Just how did they get there? Talk about unbalanced reporting–this stuff has capsized. The religious right needs to get it through their heads that prayer in schools is already legal. Your child can pray. Your child can form prayer groups with other children. If you modeled prayer at home and taught your children how to pray, there would be nothing in their way. The problem the religious right has with prayer in schools is that the government doesn’t sponsor it. Apparently parents can’t get their kids to pray enough so they need teachers to enforce state sponsored prayers.

    And yes, it definitely is alright for liberals or anyone else to “bash Christians and berate God around the clock.” God will remain undamaged by being berated, and Christians who once faced lions in the arena for their faith should be able to take a little verbal bashing. Any time either the left or the right wants to silence people they don’t like it’s an attack on free speech and needs to be fought.

    And that’s one of the big problems with this article. If the TVC wanted to support traditional American values they could take the following approach and appear much more sincere. They could announce that they welcome the honesty and openness of Representative Peter Stark, and they are glad we live in a country where not only can an atheist express his views publicly, something that would be illegal in Saudi Arabia, for example, but he can be elected to congress. That’s a wonderful example of freedom of speech. We intend to support that just as we support the right of those Christians who oppose homosexuality to express their views, or those who believe abortion is murder to express theirs. Hallelujah and pass the free speech!”

    But instead they choose not to follow the path of free speech, something they ask for themselves, but instead they simply try to change who it is the target of silencing.

  • From Word to Study

    (Continuing my series on word studies.)

    From time to time in conversation with my wife I’ll jump topics. My brain does that to me, as one thing suggests another thing, often related only in the most distant way. Suddenly she’ll stop me and say, “I need a context for that.” I’ve said something that she can’t understand clearly because she doesn’t know what it relates to. It might be “What are we going to do about that meeting?” If she doesn’t know what meeting I’m talking about, when it is, or why we need to do something about it, she has no basis on which to react.

    Similarly in Bible study, we always have to have a context. I know that I hammer this point repeatedly, but I do so because it is so often neglected. Much too much use of Bible texts in Christian teaching, preaching, and conversation results from looking for a set of words that fits whatever the person wanted to say. There are a lot of phrases in the Bible, a lot of clauses, a lot of sentences. If you ignore context, you can find one that is useful for you.

    We’ve already discussed one of the primary dangers of word studies, that a person looks for a series of definitions, and then plugs in the one that suits his theology without regard for the immediate context. Now I’m going to talk about some practical ideas for studies you can do with words that can improve your understanding.

    All of these are based on a single principle: A word study should start from a usage in context, and end with a usage in context.

    If that is a bit unclear, think of it this way: The word study doesn’t provide you with a meaning that can be dropped into place like a puzzle piece. Rather, it provides you with options. In order to get at those options, you have to understand each usage of a word in its particular context, and then compare carefully. Differences in the context may imply differences in meaning. Someone who knows the source languages is protected to some extent by use of lexicons, knowledge of various forms of the word that provide natural categories of usage, and the fact that he has just the source language word’s semantic range to deal with. When working in English, or any other non-source language for the Bible, you need to be doubly careful to understand each particular context.

    I’m going to do a brief application of this idea using the word “propitiation” because it has become a key word in the ESV Bible debates. I’m going to use my Logos Bible Software solely to look up words in the ESV, and display ESV text, but I’m going to use Goodrick and Kohlenberger’s NIV concordance (hereafter GK), keyed to the Greek and Hebrew words to track ideas further. This means I’m working today with two English versions, the NIV and the ESV.

    Let’s say my study starts from Hebrews 2:17:

    17 Therefore he had nto be made like his brothers in every respect, oso that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest pin the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. [1] — Hebrews 2:17 (ESV)

    What I want to discover in this study is what it might mean to “make propitiation.” One thing I’m not going to do here to save space, but that I would recommend doing normally, is to compare this text in many English translations. This will help give you a better idea of what the semantic range of the Greek word behind this is. Another critical step is to find out just what the book of Hebrews says Jesus did about the sins of the people. I’m going to leave that aside for the moment. Right now we want to get a better idea of this one word. But remember, if you are studying through Hebrews, that before you settle on a definition for “propitiation” in this verse, you need to understand how this verse relates to the rest of the book.

    In order to work with GK I need to find the text in the NIV. There I find that my key phrase is “make atonement for.” Now depending on my theological background, I may already be more comfortable than I am with propitiation, but if I look in an English dictionary I will generally find that “propitiation” is a narrower and more precise word than “atonement.” (Your results may differ, depending on your dictionary. For example Merriam-Webster says “reconciliation” is obsolete, but that meaning is still used in theological writing, I believe.) Another approach in GK is to simply look up “propitiation” and find the reference at that point to “atonement.”

    Again in order to keep this study limited, I’m going to stick with the New Testament. First, that keeps all my source words in one language. There is value in comparing words as used in the Old Testament with those in the New Testament, especially when studying a book that quotes the OT as much as Hebrews does, but it is more complicated. I find that “atonement” is listed in GK only 3 times in the New Testament, Romans 3:25, Hebrews 2:17, and Hebrews 9:5. Add to this 1 John 2:2 and 4:10 which use “atoning.” So we have a rather manageable list there.

    The source language words are numbers 2661, 2662, and 2663. Now here’s where you can get into serious trouble, and if you don’t know Greek well, you should be very tentative with your conclusions and spend even more time on context. (Did I say that before?) In this case, however, the proximity of the three words indicates that they are cognates in Greek, etymologically related. Words that are etymologically related generally developed from similar roots. It’s easy, however, to make what’s called the “etymological fallacy” here, and assume that their meanings must be either the same or very similar. Words can be closely related etymologically, but very differet semantically.

    Nonetheless, since the NIV translators have provided us with similar English translations, let’s hope we can find at least some relationship. Word 2661 is hilaskomai, and occurs twice (all according to GK) translated once as “make atonement for” and once as “mercy on.” Word 2662, hilasmos (see the similarity?) occurs twice and is translated as “atoning sacrifice” both times. Word 2663 is hilasterion and occurs twice translated once as “atonement cover” and once as “sacrifice of atonement.”

    Where are these? Well, you can find them in GK because the lexicon doesn’t provide definitions, but rather lists of how each word is translated in the NIV. Thus you can look up the words in translation in turn, and find out where and how they are used. Of course, all those definitions using “atonement” or “atoning” should already be on our list. Using this method, let me list the uses of these words:

    • 2661
      Hebrews 2:17 (our primary text) and Luke 18:13 (Aha! Fresh meat!). Note that I located the second verse by looking up the word “mercy” and scanning for the number 2661.
    • 2662
      1 John 2:2 and 4:10. We know these are all the cases, because it lists two occurences, both with the same translation.
    • 2663
      Romans 3:25 and Hebrews 9:5, which we already had located.

    Now let’s go back and use our ESV for a moment. Since I’ve already looked at Hebrews 2:17 (that’s my starting point), let’s look at the only use of precisely the same word in the New Testament. Luke 18:13 reads:

    But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” [1] (ESV)

    Knowing Greek, I can say that there is a difference of form, but that is beyond the scope of this discussion. We have here two possible meanings: “make an atoning sacrifice for” and “have mercy on.” Use of an English dictionary will expand the list, but I’ll leave that to you, especially as you consider what “atoning” means in connection with “sacrifice. You can try dropping these two defnitions into Hebrews 2:17 and see what the results are in context. When you do that, however, I suggest you look very clearly at what the author of Hebrews believes is involved in atonement. Does he believe God simply “has mercy on” or does he believe there must be a sacrifice?

    Similarly try dropping these definitions into 1 John 2:2 and 4:10. Consider both verses before you make your selection, and realize that this is a different Greek word, even though it is related to the word used in Hebrews 2:17.

    Finally, word 2663, hilasterion also occurs twice. In Romans 3:25 the ESV uses “propitiation” saying that God put Jesus forward as a “propitiation” (atoning sacrifice?) for our sins. The NIV goes right to my parenthetical suggestion and uses “sacrifice of atonement.” But Hebrews 9:5 is a bit different. Here we read “mercy seat” in the ESV and “atonement cover” in the NIV. The covering of the ark, which is the item in consideration, is often called the mercy seat, and was the place where God manifested his presence in the tabernacle. Interesting that Merriam-Webster (Tenth Edition) suggests that “reconciliation” is an obsolete meaning of “atonement” because it appears that Bible translators may still be using that meaning partially.

    Given these various options, it would now be time to go back and study your text in context, and keep your mind open to the possibilities. Is it possible that when the author of Hebrews uses related words in 2:17 and 9:5 he may intend to connect the sacrifice of atonement and the place of atonement and God’s presence? Those are possibilities for further study.

    Let me make one more comment on the etymological fallacy. This is terribly pervasive. I even found just such a fallacy in my devotional reading as an author used the Greek “dunamis” to connect to cognate “dynamite” and from there to read “explosive” back into a text. At the same time, I think the quite proper emphasis on fighting that fallacy can result in a sort of “anti-etymological fallacy,” the notion that etymology doesn’t contribute to discovering meaning. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it’s all we have. With the three related Greek words involved in our study today, we have so few instances in the New Testament that we may be required to use etymology as seed for ideas. The key is to start from a word in context and end with a word in context.

    An excellent route for those who have access to the appropriate tools is to carry this study beyond the New Testament. How was the word used in the Septuagint, for example, and what Hebrew words/concepts did it translate. Again, particularly in Hebrews, we have an author who quotes extensively from the Old Testament, and many of his quotations are taken from the Septuagint. Thus that provides an interesting background. We can also look into the broader Greek world and literature to get additional ideas. But all of that is beyond the scope of this post.

    *****

    [1] The Holy Bible : English standard version. 2001. Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.

  • American Civilization, Christian Faith, and Cultural Clashes

    How’s that for a broad title? 🙂

    I’m going to annoy quite a few people with this post, but I have noticed for a number of years that Christians in America often conflate Christianity and American patriotism. This goes to extremes with certain Christian reconstructionists who actually believe that America is the new chosen nation, destined to accomplish God’s will in the world. This manifests itself in a determination to make America a home of “Christian” values, meaning their particular brand of Christianity, and not anything actually having to do with Jesus. Further, it manifests itself as we identify America’s interests with Christianity’s interests.

    One of the most disturbing aspects of this was those American Christians who regarded the invasion of Iraq as advancing God’s kingdom, because the American and UK troops paved the way for Christian missionaries. Christians who move in on the heals of invading forces should give serious consideration to the damage done to God’s kingdom when it is attached to the sword of a state. Christianity has spread best when it was carried by persecuted missionaries, and it has deteriorated quickly when backed by the sword (or gun, or tank).

    I grew up as the child of missionary parents. About half of my childhood and youth was spent overseas. I grew up watching cricket, and not baseball, and knowing soccer as football, and not American football. In fact, when I first watched American football I couldn’t comprehend why it was called “football” as they only thing people seemed to use their feet for was to run. The rare occasions on which someone actually kicked the ball produced less points than running.

    Now many Americans look at me immediately with pity, regarding my childhood as deprived. No baseball? No football? You poor thing, missing the essentials of childhood! Well, I disagree. I recall as a teenager riding around town in Georgetown, Guyana, and arguing with a very good Guyanese friend about the recognition of the People’s Republic of China as the proper holder of the Chinese seat on the security council, and not the Republic of China on Taiwan. “You Americans don’t understand how the world thinks,” he told me. And he was right.

    On the other hand I learned a great deal by growing up that way. I was the only white kid in my youth group, and I have never since been able to look at being a minority in quite the same way. I now love baseball, mostly because my two stepsons, one of whom is a professional pitcher, dragged me into it. But I can truly understand how the subtleties of the game drive a newcomer wild. I also understand how non-American Christians can look at us and wonder how we can regard some of our attitudes as “Christian” when to them they appear purely American and somewhat unChristian.

    Early during the war on Iraq I was on a mission trip in the transcarpathian region of the Ukraine, and I found that there were young ethnic Hungarians being pressured to sign up as “volunteers” to be sent to Iraq. Their perspective and that of their families on the internationalization of that war was quite different. Now I’m not trying to blame any particular person(s) for the plight of those Hungarian young men, but it was wrong, and they had a very different perspective from most Americans at that time.

    This morning I read a post by Peter Kirk at Speaker of Truth. Peter and I have generally agreed on the war up to now, but I can see from this post that his opposition to the war is even deeper seated than mine. I don’t intend to debate those points, but rather I’d like to ask American Christians to go and read the words of a dedicated British Christian in opposition to our war on terror and the way it is being conducted. I noted also in my mornings blog feeds this agreeement from another Christian across the pond.

    I think it is important and fair for me to point out, however, that this was a response to another blogger from across the pond Adrian Warnock, with whom I have frequently disagreed. His post was a response to a human interest story from Chuck Colson. To his credit, Colson does admit that there are moderate Muslims and that the cultural clash he describes is with “radicals.”

    All of this brought back to me the issue of just who is a terrorist. I have no problem at all regarding those who flew aircraft into the twin towers as terrorists. They were evil people and they committed an evil act. I do believe there are evil people, you see. Those who train their young people to go out as suicide bombers qualify, in my view, as evil.

    But there is a state of desperation that makes people vulnerable to becoming victims of such evil people. Now here’s where people are going to say that I’m making excuses for terrorists, and blaming American victims for the evil deeds of terrorists. But let me use the analogy of rape. If a woman I love were raped in a bad section of town, I would not blame her as the victim. The person who committed rape committed an evil deed. Rape is not the fault of the victim.

    But at the same time I can do several things that might prevent such an event. I can get training for those I love in how to keep from being a victim of crime. I can advocate improved law enforcement in the community where this action happened. I can advocate better education and better opportunities in that neighborhood to improve their lives, increase their realistic hopes, and reduce the likelihood that they will turn to crime. (Since someone is sure to point this out, let me add that I don’t believe rape is some kind of manifestation of low income level. What would make the community safer would be a population that was willing to help prevent crime and keep their own neighborhood safe. On the other hand, I believe robbery is often the result of an absence of hope.)

    Now taking action to prevent an attack does not mean that I blame the victims. It means I want to make it less likely for the victims to be victimized. This applies as much or more to terrorism. Noting that there are causes of terrorism does not blame the victims. It might just point the way to improving our chances in the war on terror.

    Somehow many of us in America have gotten the idea that if you just kill enough terrorists, terrorism will end. People often point me to Israel as a specific case. “We need to respond to terrorism like the Israelis do,” they tell me. But the Israelis are still living under constant threat of terrorist attack. Now I don’t want the Israelis to give up and go away. I think they have every right to defend themselves. I don’t blame them for going after terrorists on their home ground or taking security measures. But it’s important to notice that those measures alone have not brought an end to terrorism.

    I am not one of those who believes that we don’t have to fight a war on terror. But I think that as a duty to ourselves we need to be very careful how we fight such a war, and precisely who gets injured and killed. Families in Iraq and Afghanistan are not generally going to distinguish carefully whether their loved ones were killed by an act of terror, or by an act of war by a legitimate government. They’re going to be angry. I’m fairly certain it’s impossible to conduct a war without errors, and that someone is going to get killed who is not supposed to. But doesn’t that make it even more critical to be very careful where and when you go to war or take any violent action and make sure that the violence is intelligently aimed at a good end?

    If this is a cultural war, we aren’t winning it, except in our own minds. I think it’s funny that some pro-war folks here in the United States accuse me of not realizing we’re in a cultural clash, while at the same time acting as though we’re in a purely physical clash. Do you believe you will win a cultural war solely through physical violence? Do you think that we’ll win a cultural war by randomly attacking various countries?

    There are Muslim radicals based in many other countries of the Middle East. If we have a cultural clash, we should include Saudi Arabia on the other side. Surely their treatment of their own people qualifies as just plain wrong. Yet they are our allies. Bluntly, we aren’t behaving at all as if it’s a cultural clash. People in a cultural clash use ideas, and when they do use violence, they use it very carefully.

    One last point–if this is a cultural clash, we need cultural allies. We need physical allies as well. I have been told repeatedly by supporters of the war on Iraq that if those wimps in other countries, especially Europe, who don’t want to stand up to terrorism don’t want to support us, #*%$ them! We can take care of it ourselves. But that view is simply idiotic. Look at what’s going on now. Our reserve and guard troops are exhausted. Yes, they’ll keep going and going like the energizer bunny, but it will be harder and harder to recruit and eventually we’ll be past the point where even a substantial draft will take care of it. Beyond that, there are still other military powers in the world. We’re not up to being a world empire, either physically or morally.

    If we think this is a cultural clash, we need to arm ourselves to act in the cultural arena. Right now we’re failing. A good start on that would be to listen to some folks in the rest of the world. They don’t see us as we see ourselves.

  • Christian Carnival CLXV Posted

    . . . here. I like the theme texts with each post. I only had time to scan quickly, but they looked good, and of course of great importance to me 🙂 I liked the one on my post. How could I not?

  • Freedom of Speech Rights Tangled

    Here’s an interesting freedom of speech issue again brought to my attention by Breaking Christian News and this time referring me to this LifeSite article. It appears that at a minimum there is confusion about the facts of the case, including the professor’s intentions and when the paper was graded, as comparison of the LifeSite article with this article on the Southern Illinoisian web site.

    I am uncertain of where the law would stand on this, and would certainly welcome comment that might clarify it for me. This whole story bothers me because of what it means for education. A professor’s beliefs do have something to do with what they teach and what they are going to find acceptable in a paper. I can imagine, for example, a person who wants to be a social worker, but who believes that the entire course of treatment should consist of prayer and Bible study. Should such a study be granted a degree in social work, essentially the university saying that this person is qualified to perform the functions of a social worker? If it’s a free speech issue, then the validity of the contents would not be relevant. I’m not suggesting that Christine Mize did not provide a reasonably competent, faith-based program, but it seems dangerous to me to apply free speech standards to the grading of college papers.

    To take an example from a field with which I’m more familiar, suppose that a biology student wished to write a paper on origins for biology class that claimed that all species appeared fully formed and without genealogy, and proposed to demonstrate this from the Bible. I would have to say that there should be no requirement that such a paper be accepted for biology credit. The student has free speech, and can go home and post his paper on his blog if he wants, but I don’t think the first amendment guarantees, or should guarantee a passing grade. Of course the level of competence required would depend on the level.

    There’s a subjective line here between thoroughly incompetent and competent but challenging prevailing attitudes. I must say that while it seems excessive to me for the professor to refuse any inclusion of faith based options in a treatment plan, considering that there is substantial disagreement on the value of such elements, it also seems to me that applying first amendment rights to the acceptance and grading of assignments is questionable, and I wonder what the courts may have ruled on this in the past.

    As I have time I will look it up, though it’s likely that brilliant readers will have straightened me out before I get the time to do that.

    Brilliant readers, where are you?? 🙂

  • Laura has some Good Advice

    Being a father and then a grandfather has made me progressively more interested in how to protect kids. One of the best ways is by teaching them to be aware of their surroundings and not to be paranoid, but to be intelligent and careful. If someone is scaring them, it’s generally a good idea to get away from that person. Most commonly it may just be coincidental behavior, but avoid that one time when the person really is after you.

    Laura wrote a good entry on this topic and also about apathy. Why is it that we find it so easy to stay aloof from the problems of others?

    It reminds me of the line from the Hitchhiker’s Guide series (actually in Life, The Universe, and Everything). Ford is explaining to Arthur:

    “An S.E.P.,” he said, “is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, becasue we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what S.E.P. means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out; it’s like a blind spot. If you look at it directly you won’t see it unless you know precisely what it is. Your only hope is to catch it by surprise out of the corner of your eye.”

    I think we all have plenty of SEPs in our lives!

  • Structural Typology and the Tabernacle

    That’s a fairly pretentious title for this little essay, but in overview form, it fits. This post also represents a return, finally, to my series of posts on the book of Hebrews. I’m looking at the book topically, and using questions from my study guide to the book of Hebrews.

    On page 24, in the third lesson, I ask:

    What do each of the areas–courtyard, holy place, and holy of holies–mean (Hebrews 8:1-5; 9:1-10; Exodus 25-31; 36-40)? What is the meaning of the ark of the covenant and the mercy seat (Leviticus 16, especially verse 2)?

    impression of the tabernacle

    Now the long references from Exodus are part of the advanced reading. It can be helpful to read those passages quickly while trying to form an image in your mind of what the tabernacle would look like. Go ahead and use your imagination. One can debate minor details for many, many pages of discussion, but that is not my point in this question. I’m interested in the general structure of the tabernacle, and the lessons it has to teach.

    I have argued elsewhere (also here) that the sanctuary service was characterized by two goals that act in tension. First was the command to distinguish between the holy and the common, and the second was the command to “be holy as God is holy.” These two commands can bring on considerable tension depending on how one views them and attempts to practice them, but they have a very practical intent. There is a basic idea of teaching good basic discernment and decision making, and once those distinctions are properly drawn, bringing more and more into God’s sphere, the sphere of the holy.

    In a sense, the tabernacle itself can be used as a metaphor for building the kingdom of God. You can look at this building in a couple of different ways. First, you can look at your own life as you grow in holiness, or to phrase it better, as God takes over more and more of your life. Sanctification is a gift. You can also look at it as the growth of God’s kingdom like a mustard seed, as God’s glory and presence grows on and in his people. Make sure, however, that you don’t regard these metaphors as exclusive meanings. What I’m saying is that the tabernacle can serve as metaphors, and I believe these are valid meanings to draw from it.

    high priest

    Now if you didn’t read the two earlier posts I linked above, let me mention simply that I bracket this entire set of ideas with two scriptures: Exodus 19:6 and 2 Peter 2:9. God’s original goal for Israel was that they be a nation of priests. Now if you think about the idea of priesthood, you will probably recall that a priest acts as a intermediary between God or divine things and human beings. Thus if Israel was to be a nation of priests, for whom were they to act as intermediaries? Well, here we have that intention for Israel to be a light for the nations (see my devotional on this here) as is so eloquently and repeated expressed in Isaiah (chapters 40-66), and it’s expressed in doubtlessly very early literature. Israel as a witness to the nations and as a priesthood was not a late afterthought on God’s part.

    From a Christian perspective, there is a fulfillment of God’s desire from Exodus 19 in the priesthood of all believers, this fulfillment being expressed explicitly in 2 Peter 2:9. This bracketing makes the whole concept extremely important for Christian theology, I believe, and the view is expressed in some detail and with some force in Hebrews.

    If you read Hebrews carefully, and look at the structure of the tabernacle and its services equally carefully, I think you will come to the conclusion that much of the sanctuary service symbolizes the separation from God rather well. Starting in Exodus 19, immediately after we have the expression of God’s desire, we have the expression of fear. The people don’t want to be that close to God because they are afraid. They aren’t ready for that close of contact. In Hebrews, certainly, the tabernacle is seen as symbolizing separation, and entry into the inner veil as something that has been bought through the sacrifice of Jesus.

    This is not, however, an exclusive theme of the book of Hebrews. Jesus expresses this in his final talk to his disciples (John 15:11-17 amongst others). He has come and brought us into much more direct contact with God. That is both a tremendous blessing and a tremendous responsibility, and again these are both themes of the book of Hebrews.

    before the veil

    Thus the progressive chambers of the tabernacle are progressively more restricted in access. The people can enter the courtyard in front of the altar to offer sacrifices, but beyond that, and into the Holy Place, only the priests can go. This is symbolized further by the Israelite camp, with the priests camping closest, then the levites according to their service, and outside of that the rest of the tribes of Israel. Then finally the High Priest enters the Most Holy Place once per year for the day of atonement. On this day of repentance atonement could be made even for intentional sins. The closer to God, both the greater the glory and the danger, but also the greater the grace.

    The “hilasterion” the place of God’s presence, often known as the mercy seat, then symbolized God’s presence. But at the same time it symbolized God’s presence in a limited way, separated from his people. It was placed behind a veil, with God’s presence repesented by human light and offerings of incense in front of the veil, but demonstrated through God’s light on the other side.

    Meditating on the symbolism of this service can be very constructive. I have used it before in preaching by simply forming the general shape of the tabernacle with chairs, or even people holding ropes. Then people can walk through and ask themselves just which chamber they were most comfortable in, and then thinking about how they could move forward in their experience.

    Note: I make use of the tabernacle as a metaphor in my sermon The Sin of Getting Stuck, available in MP4 video (from a standard VHS tape) or MP3 audio.

  • Turning Point? What Turning Point?

    From the Washington Post:

    Feb. 22, 2006, is the day the Bush administration says everything in Iraq changed.

    Before that day, military and administration officials frequently explain, Iraq was moving in the right direction: National elections had been held, and a government was forming. But then the bombing of the golden dome shrine in Samarra derailed that positive momentum and unleashed a wave of brutal sectarian violence.

    This is what gets me about people’s reaction to this war. I simply do not understand the number of people who have changed their mind about it. I’m especially annoyed with politicians like Hillary Clinton who seems to think she was deceived about the war. I commend John Edwards for saying he was wrong and apologizing. Nonetheless, I simply question all of their good judgment, and I have to ask what it is about this war that is surprising such as to cause them to change their minds? What on earth did they expect would happen?

    The one doubtful issue was the presence of weapons of mass destruction. I opposed the war even if such weapons existed in the region not because I think a nation like Iraq, then or now, should have such weapons but because I didn’t think that was the most useful place to get them anyhow. People overestimate the value of a large country, friendly to terrorists, as a base. No doubt it is useful, but terrorists are often, unfortunately, more creative than their opponents. Governments keep thinking massive logistics, coordination, detailed planning, and command and control, while terrorists work around those things as necessary.

    Nonetheless, even though I personally didn’t think it merited such priority, destroying materials and weapons would have been a reasonable goal for a war. It could be accomplished, finished, checked off, and declared a victory. The Iraqis were acting guilty, and there was enough evidence for a warrant.

    But again, even so, there was the problem of what you’re going to leave behind. From a military point of view, you need a specific objective and the means to accomplish it. From the political point of view, and even from a more strategic military point of view, you need to see a situation develop from accomplishing those objectives that is better than the previous situation. Is Iraq less or more dangerous when all is said and done than it was before? And that is where I see the problem. Our troops didn’t fail. Certainly there have been problems of tactics and logistics, and political maneuvering that is not the greatest. But the one big problem with this war was there before we went in and remains there now. It hasn’t changed. There simply is no “after the war” scenario that is going to make things better than they were before.

    We want contradictory things. Democracy, but no Islamic republic. The will of the Iraqi people, when the Iraqi people themselves divide into community without a strong, common national interest. Iraqi sovereignty, but measures that guarantee the security of the United States.

    If we could accomplish all those goals, the cost in lives would be reasonable. I know many people will protest, but I’m a veteran myself, and when you go into the military, you know you might die. You may not think that you, personally will die, but you must be ready to put your life on the line for your country. If I were still in the military, that would be what I’d do. Further I expect politicians to be able to look at the folks in the military services and ask whether their lives will be well-expended. A peaceful, stable, democratic Iraq without weapons of mass destruction would be worth such lives.

    The problem is that it isn’t going to happen, not with any amount of resources and lives we have at our disposal. That’s the tragedy of all this. There’s no turning point. Our troops have done well with the resources and the goals they were given, but the goals were badly laid out–not just badly stated. They were bad goals.

    I recall a national championship game in which Nebraska played Florida and defeated them overwhelmingly. A radio commentator and Florida fan were discussing the game the next day on a call-in show, and the fan asked what was the turning point of the game. “Turning point?” said the commentator. “The turning point was the singing of the national anthem.” In the case of Iraq, the turning point was when the military was sent in to do a job that was not politcally feasible. No blame should attach to them for not accomplishing the impossible.

  • Persecution Victim as a Profession

    It seems that former Chaplain Gordon James Klingenschmitt, who claims to have been dismissed from the Navy for praying in the name of Jesus, is making a career now of being persecuted. The story is being kept alive. I was alerted to the current edition through my Breaking Christian News e-mail alert, a source that often provides me with valuable, positive news, but in this case refers me to the WorldNetDaily which appears to be a bit apoplectic.

    WND said:

    A chaplain who was dismissed from the U.S. Navy when he refused to following orders to make his prayers “nonsectarian” and remove the name of Jesus from them now has been commissioned by the governor of Kentucky as an honorary “Kentucky Colonel.

    But CNN reported:

    In September a military jury found Lt. Gordon Klingenschmitt had disobeyed a superior officer’s order not to wear his uniform to a political protest at the White House in March 2006.

    Ah, he was not dismissed for praying in Jesus name, but for disobeying a lawful order. Interesting difference. The Kentucky legislature should be ashamed of themselves for commending an officer for disobeying orders. Kentucky’s governor should be ashamed of himself for giving such a person an award for courage.

    Since I have commented on the issue before, I’m not going to go through the details of the original problem about prayer. Suffice it to repeat here that Klingenschmitt’s view on this differs substantially from that of others, including other Christian chaplains.

  • Only Evil People Disagree with Me

    Well, not really. But that’s what many people think according to this Washington Post story, that reports on a study by Glenn D. Reeder, a social psychologist at Illinois State University.

    When Reeder and his colleagues asked pro-war and antiwar Americans how they would describe the other side’s motives, the researchers found that the groups suffered from an identical bias: People described others who agreed with them as motivated by ethics and principle, but felt that the people who disagreed with them were motivated by narrow self-interest.

    I don’t think most of us required a survey to realize that tempers are hot, and the other side is generally accused of bad motivations. I would suggest, however, that not only is it a question of how convinced we are of a position and how important that issue to us, it’s also a question of how much moral investment we have in it. Such commitments drive the intense debates about abortion, for example, in which people on one side cannot imagine how anyone reasonably human can accept the “slaughter of millions of babies” while folks on the other side see a massive invasion of their personal lives at the very deepest level. On the war in Iraq, we’re dealing with people getting killed, and that is certain to be very emotionally invested.

    I really liked the following note, however:

    “Partisans within ideological groups tended to view themselves as atypical vis-a-vis their group: atypical in their moderation, in their freedom from bias, and in their capacity to ‘see things as they are in reality’ even when that reality proves to be ideologically inconvenient or ‘politically incorrect,’ ” Harvard Business School researcher Robert J. Robinson and his colleagues concluded.

    This is behavior I have noted in myself. But hey, I really am more moderate than everyone else! 🙂