Monthly Archives: September 2011

Where’s the Beef?

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Back in 1984, Wendy’s challenged their competitors with the famous question – “where’s the beef?”. It featured a little old woman examining her burger and asking the question to her two friends.

The question became a cultural catchphrase used to challenge the substance and validity of the claims others make.

Too bad that feisty woman was not one of the Hebrews encamped around Mt. Sinai after they had been delivered from Egypt. In this post we will look at a moment in the history of Israel where they failed to ask that question.

Setting the context a bit the Hebrews had been enslaved in Egypt for some 400 years. However, after these long bitter years their God has just rescued them in dramatic fashion. The people sitting in the camp were all witnesses to the 10 plagues that fell on the nation of Egypt before the Pharaoh let them finally leave the country. And they all stood at the banks of the Red Sea and trembled in fear as the Egyptian army, sent to chase them down, had them boxed in and was ready to destroy them. And they all rejoiced as they saw God (in the form of a pillar of cloud) stand between them and the army protecting them from certain slaughter and then deliver them through the parting of the Red Sea.

These Hebrews who now sit in the wilderness at the foot of Mt. Sinai are traveling to the land promised to Abraham (the father of their nation). In the last few days they have been offered a set of laws (Exodus 20-23). These laws are offered to them by God in the form of a covenant where He would be their protector and bless them if they obeyed the laws, but punish and remove His protection if they disobeyed. The people readily accepted these conditions and entered into the covenant confirming it with a blood oath (Exodus 24).

It is at this point that they find themselves at the bottom of Mt. Sinai waiting for their leader Moses who has gone back up the mountain. While he is receiving instructions on how to build the ark and tabernacle they are growing tired of waiting.

1When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” 2So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” 3So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. 4 And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” 5When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the LORD.” 6And they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. (Exodus 32:1-6 ESV)

Why did the Hebrews choose to invent a new god (which they had just agreed not to do)? Why did they accept and worship a statue of gold over the God that actually delivered them?  Especially a god that they watched be fashioned from gold. Gold that moments ago was being worn as jewelry that they had owned and donated for the cause. And how could they actually think that this god delivered them from bondage and brought them out of Egypt when it did not even exist until after they were enjoying their freedom?

Where’s the Beef?

There was less beef in this god then the hamburger in the Wendy’s commercial so why were the Hebrews so quick to accept and worship the golden calf? There are many reasons why the Hebrews may have chosen to define their own god that day that could be explored. After all these were a tired and scared group of people. They had no home land as of yet. They are in the wilderness and currently without their leader Moses. And as for idols – well all the other nations are doing it. But, I think that at the core the main reason was this golden calf god was a lot less demanding than the real thing. This chunk of gold was not going to be making any rules on how to live that would have to be obeyed. Instead the Hebrews could go eat and drink and play. Why ask questions when you can “have it your way”.

Today we would laugh at such a scene. Yet people do the same thing when they form their religious or spiritual views based on accepting things based on personal preference and subjectivity – a topic explored in a prior post Burger King theology. Can one really mix and match various spiritual ideas blending them together based on preference and actually believe that it is true? We may not worship a golden calf, but people aren’t any different when they think of Jesus as only a good teacher or a spiritual adviser who will guide us to enlightenment. The idea that Jesus was a good teacher is based  on such teachings as “don’t judge, lest ye be judged”, “treat others the way you want to be treated”, and the call to “love others” and care for the poor. But where do we find these teachings? While there are some extant references to Jesus’ teaching outside the Bible, most of Jesus’ teachings are contained in the New Testament. And most who would claim that Jesus is a good teacher would readily admit that they rely on the New Testament to know what he taught.

But here are some of the other claims that Jesus makes:

  • son your sins are forgiven (Mk 2:5)
  • Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God … whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. (John 3:3, 36)
  • it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me … (John 8:16)
  • I and the Father are one … I am the Son of God (John 10:30, 36)

What is interesting about these claims is that the Pharisees and people at that time challenged Jesus:

  • no one can forgive sins except God (Mk 2:7)
  • how can these things be? (John 3:9)
  • who is your father, who are you? (John 8:19, 25)
  • you, being a man, make yourself God (John 10:33)

Wonder where those same people willing to ask “where’s the beef” types of questions were when the golden calf was being offered as god?

Questions are not bad. We need to be able to examine our beliefs. But how can we accept teachings from the Sermon on the Mount and reject Jesus’ other teachings or His death and resurrection when they are in the same book? On what basis should we take one teaching of say the Gospel of Mark or John as authentic and reject another teaching as “inaccurate” ? What confidence can anyone have that they picked the right sections as accurate?

The real question is when one approaches spiritual truth or the identify of Jesus this way how is this any different than the Hebrews who sought a golden calf?

Sounds a lot more like Burger King Theology than the Wendy’s version and where’s the beef, in that?

Describing the Greeks (Adjectives)

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Here is a song describing Greeks from Horrible Histories:

Like English, the Greek language has adjectives. School House Rock has a song if you are struggling with what these are. I think most of us studying Greek as first year students would unpack “frustrated” first too. Of course adjectives describe nouns and thankfully they function in the same way in both languages. But School House Rock left out some other things adjectives can do as there are actually three functions that adjectives play.

  • attributive – the typical usage, which is to describe a noun
  • predicate – also describes a noun but it implies the verb “to be”
  • substantival – in this case the adjective is also the noun. The noun is implied.

For example in English the word “bad” is the adjective describing house (attributive):

The bad house

In Greek that would be written as:

ὁ κακός οἰκος

or

ὁ κακός ὁ οἰκος

The key here is that the adjective has the definite article in front of it.

However if we wrote the following the adjective form changes:

κακός ὁ οἰκος

Notice that all we did was remove the definite article from the adjective. Now the adjective is in the predicate case. This would be translated “the house is bad”. However notice that the verb “to be” is implicit since the word ἐστιν is not supplied.

Finally we could write this in another form:

ὁ κακός

Notice here that there is no noun. Now the adjective is in the substantival case. This would be translated “the bad (thing)”. What is bad would have to be derived from the context. Here there is no context supplied.

As you may (or may not have noticed) adjectives use the same case ending as the nouns. This is how we can identify the noun that the adjective describes. However, adjectives are “weird” in that the Greek word can be used in all three genders. Nouns can’t. This is because the adjective must agree with the noun it modifies in case, number, and gender. And thankfully the Greeks did not invent a new word for each gender.

For example we could write “the bad house” using the feminine Greek word for house, instead of the masculine word above. Don’t ask me why there is a different Greek word for house in the masculine and in the feminine rather than one word in the neuter. In any case that would be result in:

ἡ κακια οἰκια

Here the important thing to notice is that the adjective κακός, -ἡ, -όν took on the feminine definite article and the case ending for the feminine nominative singular case.

Three simple rules to help identify how the adjective is functioning in the sentence:

  1. if the adjective does not have a definite article (and there is a noun with a definite article) then it is a predicate
  2. if the adjective has the definite article (and there is a noun with or without a definite article) then it is attributive
  3. if the adjective has the definite article (and there is no noun) then it is substantival

Here is a chart I have been using to work on the vocabulary in BBG2. And here is the answer key generated from Bible Works.

It all relates somehow (Greek:Prepositions)

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Unlike most classes in seminary there is no “off” week in Greek. Everything builds upon the prior week and the pace of the class is very quick. One topic this week is the prepositional phrase. Like most topics this requires understanding the English so that a student can understand the Greek.

School House Rock never disappoints:

Here is the lyric which says it all:

Nine or ten of them
Do most all of the work
Of, on, to, with, in, from
By, for, at, over, across
And many others do their jobs,
Which is simply to connect
Their noun or pronoun object
To some other word in the sentence.

The prepositional phrase contains the preposition and the object of the preposition (a noun or pronoun).

into the house

This phrase contains the preposition “into” and “house” functions as the object of the preposition.

In Greek this would be:

εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν

There are two keys to the Greek preposition:

  • the meaning of the preposition depends on the case of the prepositional object
  • the preposition is not inflected

In the phrase above the word for house (οἰκία) is in the accusative case and the preposition (εἰς) means in, into with the accusative case. Actually in this case the preposition only takes an accusative case.

A more interesting example would be using a preposition that takes different cases.

παρά τὴν οἰκίαν

Here the preposition (παρά) with a noun in the accusative case means “alongside the house”.

However if it was written like this (with house in the genitive case)

παρά τὴς οἰκίας

it means “from the house”. Notice that in these last two examples the prepositional object (house) changed cases but the preposition did not. However, how the preposition was translated depended on the case of the noun.

This worksheet can be used to practice learning the pronouns (at least those covered in BBG2 chapters 1-8).

Note: if you don’t have NA27 yet there is a good deal at CBD (only $19.99)

Burger King Theology

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The “have it your way” meme has hit religion according to a recent article in USAToday. The quote that sums it all up is here:

“We are a designer society. We want everything customized to our personal needs — our clothing, our food, our education,” he says. Now it’s our religion.  … Barna laments, “People say, ‘I believe in God. I believe the Bible is a good book. And then I believe whatever I want.’”

Nadine Epstein, editor and publisher of Moment magazine is quoted:

It’s incredibly exciting. We live in an era where you pick and choose the part of the religion that makes sense to you. And you can connect through culture and history in a meaningful way without necessarily religiously practicing,”

I guess this should not be too surprising given our postmodern culture which is enamored with subjectivity and relative truth and which views Oprah as its spiritual adviser. Back in 2008, USA Today reported essentially the same thing:

Religion today in the USA is a salad bar where people heap on upbeat beliefs they like and often leave the veggies — like strict doctrines — behind.

Going on to add:

The impact of Oprah is seen throughout this survey. She uses the language of Bible and Christian traditions and yet includes other traditions to create a hodgepodge personalized faith.

How does Oprah view spirituality -  according to a USA Today article reporting on her appearance on the Piers Morgan show:

In Oprah-vision: We’re all good, we should not judge each other and morality is relative. This is no Jesus-centered, born into sin and in need of salvation God who both loves and judges.

Her message of hope is to believe in yourself, redeem yourself. Very popular but not very Christian.

In that same article a partial transcript reveals:

Oprah: There couldn’t possibly be only one way with millions of people in the world!

When asked how she reconciled her spiritual teachings with Christian beliefs, Oprah essentially replied – I have an open mind.

I reconciled it because I was able to open my mind about the absolute indescribable hugeness of that which we call God,” Oprah said. “I took God out of the box because I grew up in the Baptist church and there were rules and belief systems and doctrine.

“What I believe is that Jesus came to show us Christ-consciousness. Jesus came to show us the way of the heart … Jesus came to say ‘Look, I’m going to live in the human body and I’m going to show you how it’s done. These are some principles and some laws that you can use to live by to know that way’. . . Even as a Christian, I don’t believe that Jesus came to start Christianity.”

Unfortunately an open mind did not include and open Bible.

This “salad bar” view of religion has its supporters even in the evangelical realm. Rob Bell, author of Love Wins wrote in his previous best seller Velvet Elvis that Christianity was like a trampoline and doctrines were the springs.

The springs are statements and beliefs about our faith that help give words to the depth that we are experiencing in our jumping.

Offering up the possibility that the Trinity, virgin birth, and other holdings in Christianity could be questioned and even removed.

We don’t need all the springs to jump. While I understand and respect his view that we need to be able to question our beliefs. Test them and evaluate them. There is a fine line big difference between subjectively dropping springs we don’t like and changing springs based on logical reasoning and a study of the Scriptures.

I guess Solomon was right – there really is nothing new under the sun. This has played out before:

In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. (Judges 17:6 ;21:25)

Why is Oprah’s view of spirituality so popular and why does removing the springs we don’t like so popular? I think it is because it is “politically correct”, its “open to anything”, its warm and fuzzy and feeds the “have it your way” culture we live in.

What do you think truth should be based on?

[Continue reading: Where's the Beef]

Its all Greek to me

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This semester I am starting to learn Koine Greek. As we progress through the class I will add an entry on what we have learned and upload practice sheets to share with anyone interested. If you already know Greek and have a tip to share or see something wrong let me know in the comments section.

The Greek language has a long history and has undergone variations over time. The Bible (as well as the LXX and the patristic writings) was written in κοινέ Greek (common), which was derived from the Attic-Ionic dialect made popular world-wide through the conquests of Alexander the Great. This form of the language was in use from approximately 300 BC to 300 AD.

I am using the 2nd edition of Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar. In class we have moved through the first 7 chapters in three weeks. The focus has been on the alphabet – because you can’t do much without that – and the definite article (24 ways to say “the”) and the cases for nouns.

Here is a link to a chart on the Greek alphabet (with pronunciation helps).

Since Greek is an inflected language, word order in the sentence does not matter. What matters are the endings of the word. So we have spent a lot of time working on recognizing these endings. For the non-grammar people like me another important thing to remember is that there are 4 cases for nouns and what they mean in the sentence structure.

Here is a sample sentence in English that uses the four cases:

He sent Paul’s message to them.

The four cases of the noun are as follows:

  • nominative – the subject of the sentence (He)
  • genitive – used to show possession. The key word is “of”. (Paul)
  • dative – the indirect object of the sentence. The key word is “to”. (them)
  • accusative – the direct object of the sentence (message)

and here is that sentence (I think) in Greek (minus the verb, which we have not covered yet):

ὁ αὐτός  (sent) τὸν λόγον τοῦ Παῦλου τοῖς αὐτοις

and here is that sentence in a different word order (this time emphasizing the message rather than the sender  since this word appears at the front):

τὸν λόγον τοῦ Παῦλου ὁ αὐτός  (sent) τοῖς αὐτοις

There are two charts which I have created to practice what we have covered in class so far – learning the noun endings and the definite article.

If you want to type Greek characters a free Greek font is available for download from the Society of Biblical Literature and instructions on how to setup and type in Greek using the keyboard is available here.

Anger Management

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Some of you may remember the Hulk TV series, that started with the flashing word “anger”. As the camera pulls back the word is shown to be the word “danger” and is the warning light on the Gamma Ray machine. It also featured the memorable quote from Dr. Banner – “don’t make me angry – you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry”…

The episode introduction would then end with the quest that Banner finds himself on – “finding a way to control the raging spirit that dwells within him”. I guess I am showing some of my age but I enjoyed this show as a kid. However in the show is a powerful message that we are all like Dr. Banner, with a monster within us that can be unleashed when we too are angry or under stress. Driving 5 miles in 30 minutes knowing you have to go nearly 20 miles to make your class on time and you are likely to be late because you gave yourself only an hour to get there is certainly a time when we can start to show our inner Hulk.

However Solomon reminds us that:

Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding,but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly. (Prov 14:29)

Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty,and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city. (Prov 16:32)

Be not quick in your spirit to become angry,  for anger lodges in the bosom of fools. (Eccles 7:9)

Examining Jonah we can learn a lot about anger and when we are angry we can learn a lot about ourselves.

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” (Jonah 1:1-2)

When the Lord came to Jonah what did he do? Jonah ran.

Not to carry out the Lord’s command but like a big kid Jonah runs away and pouts. He was trying to get as far away from Nineveh and the presence of the Lord as he could. Now Jonah lived in Samaria (the Northern Kingdom) in the first half of the 8th century BC during the reign of Jeroboam II. He is recorded as giving prophetic messages to the king regarding victories in battle and reclaiming territories and land for Israel (2 Kings 14:23-27). I doubt that Jonah ran away from the Lord or from delivering these messages.

Well Jonah boards a ship for Tarshish and we all know the rest of the story – after some timeout in a fish to cool off and rethink things Jonah is given another chance:

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days’ journey in breadth.  Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (3:1-4)

Why was Jonah reluctant to deliver the message in the first place? Why didn’t Jonah want to go to Nineveh the capital of Assyria and deliver the message that the Lord would destroy them in 40 days? Certainly the destruction of a strong neighboring nation (one that would take is people into captivity in 722 BC) would have given Israel a chance to continue to expand.

Jonah reluctantly preached to the city – with likely sermons that lacked zeal and total commitment and yet:

And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them. (3:5)

which resulted in:

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it. (3:10)

This is likely a summary verse of what happened. But before Jonah knew the results he settled on a hill overlooking the city having completed preaching to wait out the 40 days. As Jonah sits in the hot sun, stubborn and stewing in his anger he is hoping for a good show. He wants to see fire raining down from heaven to destroy the people and the city. As the days went on he likely saw the repentance of the people and this made Jonah even more angry. So mad he would rather die than live (4:3,8,9). Even though Jonah would not have had the book of Jeremiah yet – he was familiar with the concepts expressed in Jeremiah 18:5-11:

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said,

“O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish;

for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. (4:1-2)

Jonah had great theology. He knew rightly that God was a graceful and loving God. But his application was bad. He was angry because he knew God had given his enemies a chance to repent and be saved. How often are we in the same boat as Jonah – where our beliefs (orthodoxy) are better than our doing (orthopraxy). A pastor once exclaimed that we were “educated beyond our level of obedience”.

As Jonah sits in the hot sun God causes a plant to shade him and ease his misery. When the plant dies and Jonah is left to sit in the scorching sun again he rages and becomes a Hulk (maybe that is why he is a green vegetable in the VeggieTales movie).  He tells God he is “angry enough to die”. Blind with rage he misses the fact that he could have left the hill and headed home or even into the city to join the revival. As the Lord questions him he exposes the fact that Jonah is stubborn, his anger is making him difficult to reason with, and that he cares more for his own comfort than the lives of those around him. Why? Digging deep. Jonah is proud, stubborn, and selfish. And if we are honest most of the time we are angry for the same reasons.

Jonah might make a good stand in for the way evangelicals are generally portrayed in Love Wins as captured in this USA Today article:

But Richard Mouw, president of the world’s largest Protestant seminary, Fuller Theological Seminary based in Pasadena, Calif., calls Love Wins “a great book, well within the bounds of orthodox Christianity and passionate about Jesus.

The real hellacious fight, says Mouw, a friend of Bell, a Fuller graduate, is between “generous orthodoxy and stingy orthodoxy. There are stingy people who just want to consign many others to hell and only a few to heaven and take delight in the idea. But Rob Bell allows for a lot of mystery in how Jesus reaches people.”

While most people are not eagerly awaiting the destruction of other people or hoping they “go to hell”, we all (if we are honest) can be more interested in our comforts and the loss of them then in reaching the lost upon whom destruction is coming. And we can certainly be like Jonah and let our own form of stubborn and selfishness distract from the good works and fruit that would glorify God (Matt 5:16). When we feel that Hulk growing inside we would do well to heed Solomon and slow down and think about the question God asked Jonah:

Do you do well to be angry?

And while I don’t want to read to much into “after-life” theology it should not be missed that repentance spared the city from destruction. The expression of love and compassion in the case of both Nineveh and Jonah can be seen in the fact that each was given warnings, a chance to repent and turn to God, and forgiven based on a positive response. We should also not miss the fact that God was willing to destroy and punish in both cases as well.