Sheep and Goats

Slavery in the Old Testament

People today tend to judge those of prior times in the light of today’s values. It's not a wise thing to do.

The most brilliant and learned people who have ever lived.....namely...us, of course.....come to feel a certain way about this or that practice, so anyone in the past who did not feel that way is barbaric, uncouth, uncivilized, etc. Or, to take the flipside, if we feel a certain way, then the truly learned and wise of prior generations also must have felt that way. But in reality, humankind (yes, even the wise and learned) run with a herd mentality....just like we all wear fat ties one year and narrow ties a few years later.

Slavery is universally condemned today. Yet the most elevated of the ancient world accepted it as a matter of course, and had no qualms about it.  Aristotle, for example, supported slavery as being in accord with natural law. Historians estimate that one of every three persons was a slave in the ancient world.

Sometimes we hear American forefathers like Washington and Jefferson condemned because they kept slaves, without regard for the fact that everyone of their class (wise, refined, prosperous) at the time kept slaves. The fact that they were the most progressive and just of slaveholders means nothing. They kept slaves....damn them..... and so deserve the loathing of today's learned critics, who remain supremely (and absurdly) confident that they themselves would have been immune to the practice had they lived back then.

They kept slaves in Bible times too....in Israelite times....it's codified right there in the Mosaic law....and on that basis today's critics claim moral superiority....again, as if they themselves would have been above it all.

But I'm uncomfortable with making rabid accusations of an ancient society, and much more so judging ancient peoples by today's standards. It seems too much a fulfillment of Proverbs 30:12….

There is a generation that is pure in its own eyes but that has not been washed from its own excrement.

It is OUR world, not theirs, which is on the brink of annihilation from any number of causes: environmental ruin, nuclear annihilation, terrorism, class warfare, economic chaos, and so forth. It is OUR world, not theirs, that lets 20% of its people go hungry, or without clean water, or without any prospects as children other than to become some nutjob’s "freedom fighter." If they were barbaric back there in the OT, our world is 10 times more so. You don't think we should have a better track record ourselves before we go pointing out how rotten they were?

But with regard to slavery, we may divide human history into two periods: when "God's people" were autonomous and when they weren't. For the most part, they were autonomous in the Old Testament (Israel of old was a sovereign nation), however there has never been a Christian nation, neither now nor in New Testament times. Rome was the power of Jesus day and Christianity developed in lands subject to the Roman Empire. Scripture might therefore be expected to be law of the land in OT times, but only a personal code of conduct in NT times. And when scripture was law of the land, we read of a "seven year temporary slavery" arrangement in Israel. How did that work?

Israelites back then, like everyone else, had an economy. And like today, through an interplay of hard work and dumb luck, some would prosper and some would become impoverished. What do you do with those who become impoverished? What do we do with them today? Has today's society found a workable and ideal solution? In ancient Israel, individuals, if they became desperate enough, could sell themselves into slavery to their more prosperous neighbors. (they were never taken by force) That's not so good, some might object, yet is today's solution to poverty really any better?

Though Bible critics rarely mention it, preferring  to take shot after shot at anything religious: after seven years, such slaves were set free! Sooner, if they became slaves before the designated seventh year. And not set free back into poverty. Each Jew was restored to his original hereditary possession, which he may have sold off during periods of poverty. Thus, there would never be generation after generation of permanent poverty, as there is today. Nor would the rich become so entrenchedly rich that ones born into it would come to look at wealth as their right and imagine themselves superior to the less well-off. The obscene lopsided distribution of wealth, characteristic of most societies today, never got a footing in Israel. Of even middle class Americans, one commenter explained: we were born on third base and so we think we have hit a triple.

Not many who rail against the Bible know of this arrangement,  but it compares favorably to anything humans have devised since. We believe it was divine law…..not from humans.

Furthermore, I suspect that many of the outraged who think freeing the slaves after seven years is seven years overdue would immediately rethink their position if they realized it would cost them, as it did those prosperous Jews. They would, instead, raise a clamor about how THEIR freedom was being infringed upon! Free the slaves, as long as its on someone else's dime! Here is a society, unheard of in human history, which regularly, as a matter of course, freed slaves! And all the gripers can do is carry on about how barbarous they were back then! Their system beat anything we have today, mainly because generational, perpetual poverty, the kind that engenders hopelessness and bitterness, never could take root.

Now, this is slavery only in the Mosaic period, the Old Testament. We’ll do the New Testament another time. Moreover, the above does not apply to non-Isrealite slaves, perhaps prisoners of war. Their prospects were less agreeable. True, there is some OT regulation to prevent unchecked cruelty (which is more than existed anywhere else), but even so, slavery is slavery) Now, we may fume over this, but what does the modern world do with enemy combatants? Can you think of any modern nation which has detained enemy combatants for years without trial or even habeas corpus? True, modern nations have (many of them) adopted the Geneva convention, which strictly regulates treatment for prisoners of war. This treaty is scrupulously observed by all signatories during peacetime. Wartime, of course, is a different matter.

There is even a provision in that Mosaic law that allowed for the possibility that the freed slave might renounce his freedom. [!]

But if the slave should insistently say, ‘I really love my master, my wife and my sons; I do not want to go out as one set free,’ then his master must bring him near to the [true] God and must bring him up against the door or the doorpost; and his master must pierce his ear through with an awl [ouch], and he must be his slave to time indefinite.    Exodus 21:5-6

All would see this voluntary slave about town, and would doubtless observe that he must really have a kind, just, fair, agreeable, etc deal, so as to choose servitude. It appears that this arrangement is a foregleam of what would appear in the Christian era. Peter, Paul, James, the early NT writers, all refer to themselves as "slaves" of Christ. Some modern translations soften the term to "servants," but "slave" is the original-language word.

Why Do Bad Things Happen? updated for atheists (sort of)

When Moristotle, a newly minted atheist whose perspectives I nonetheless value, read my post Why Bad Things Happen, he almost threw up. He declared it a "fantasy," aspects of which were "utterly repulsive," and the rest "not only not nice at all, nor even adolescent, but simply infantile." Now if we could only get this fellow to say what he really thinks and stop pussyfooting so as to spare someone's feelings, he might amount to something!

Still, I take his concerns to heart. It's not pleasant throwing up because.....well, it just isn't. We all know it. Is there a way to write essentially the same thing in a way that those he represents will find more palatable? After all, he declared a related post of mine "profound." True, he was just being nice, he later pointed out, but at least there was no gag reflex, or at least he overcame it. Bear in mind that I'm under no illusions of "changing" him, nor he I. We trade remarks regularly and use each other's work to refine our respective viewpoints and reasoning skills. You can't do that with most internet atheists (in contrast to the more civil non-evangelist kind). They are such snarling pit bulls and do nothing but hurl insults. You just can't converse with them.

It may not be possible to make this stuff more palatable for a certain type of person. Any discussion of why God tolerates evil must necessarily  link to Adam and Eve, and link to them rather substantially. They simply are that key of a building block. And so you have to overcome the "we are wise and learned adults, far too clever to be sold Adam and Eve. Who's next, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck?" syndrome. This is not gonna be easy.

Let's start with some common ground, just like Paul did at the Areopagus.  Moristotle recently trotted out a Greek named Diagoras, who is apparently the world's first recorded atheist. A little quibbling over that in our preceding posts, but I'll concede the point.

Okay. Here goes. Wish me luck.

........................................

Was Diagoras the world’s first athiest? He‘s credited that way. Read up on him and you’ll see he is remembered as Diagoras the Athiest. Isn’t he the fellow who used a wooden statue of Hercules as fuel to cook his turnips?   …….   if Hercules didn’t like it….well, let him do something about it. And how did Diagoras end up an athiest? Wikipedia tells us (2-4-08) "He became an atheist after an [unspecified] incident that happened against him went unpunished by the gods"

Why wasn't it punished? Why didn't God fix it? He’s God, after all. Isn’t he supposed to be all-powerful? We hear this all the time from atheists, agnostics and even believers. Why didn’t he solve Diagoras’s problem and stop the man from going atheist?

It’s because he’d never be able to do anything else. He’d be sticking band-aid after band-aid after never-ending band-aid on a system of things that is inherently unjust, even designedly so. Instead, in keeping with his original purpose, he purposes to replace this system of things with one of his own design. Injustice in that system of things will be a memory only.

After all, what is the injustice that caused Diagoras such soul-searching? Only the one that touched him personally! Had he not witnessed hundreds of injustices in his lifetime? To say nothing of ones his society was built upon. We positively slobber over Greeks as cradle of wisdom, birthplace of democracy, mecca of free thinkers, and so forth, yet they enjoyed their privileged status only on the backs of others. That society embraced slavery, for instance, often working slaves to death. They treated women abominably. And weren't they the original pedophiles? The same sexual molestation of children so roundly condemned today was enshrined in respectable Greek society. Are these among the injustices Diagoras was concerned with? Did he even recognize them as injustices? Possibly, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Lets face it, few situations of this system today are win-win. Generally someone pays the price when we win. Hopefully, for politicians and Pollyannas, it is someone we don’t see in another land or another class. But there is somebody most often and we usually don't even know about it. The system is designed that way. Get the sufferer as far away from the privileged one as possible so they don't see the link and declare any such talk mere "bleeding heart liberalism." Don't think, however, that any political party has a handle on the problem. It's inherent with human self-rule. A new system of things is in keeping with the Bible’s premise that human’s weren’t created to be independent of God.

Things might have turned out differently. The Adam and Eve and Garden of Eden account, brief as it is, demonstrates God’s original intent.

Further, God blessed them and God said to them: “Be fruitful and become many and fill the earth and subdue it.          Gen 1:28

The very name Eden means pleasure; garden of Eden becomes (when translated into Greek, as in the Septuagint) paradise of pleasure, and “subduing the earth” is code for spreading those conditions earth wide. Had humans, starting with the first pair, remained content to live under God’s direction, life today would be a far cry from what it is today. But almost from the get-go, they balked.

Consider Genesis chapter 3:

Now the serpent proved to be the most cautious of all the wild beasts of the field that Jehovah God had made. So it began to say to the woman: “Is it really so that God said you must not eat from every tree of the garden?

2 At this the woman said to the serpent: “Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat.

3 But as for [eating] of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘you must not eat from it, no, you must not touch it that you do not die.’”

4 At this the serpent said to the woman: “you positively will not die.

5 For God knows that in the very day of your eating from it your eyes are bound to be opened and you are bound to be like God, knowing good and bad.”

6 Consequently the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was something to be longed for to the eyes, yes, the tree was desirable to look upon.

Jehovah’s Witnesses understand the "knowing good and bad" of verse five to be a matter of declaring independence. "You don’t need God telling you what is good and what is bad. You can decide such things yourself and thus be “like God.” The serpent even portrays God as having selfish motive, as if trying to stifle the first couple….a sure way to engender discontent. The ploy was successful. Those first humans chose a course of independence, with far-ranging consequences that have only cascaded down to our day.

After a lengthy time interval allowed by God so that all can see the end course of a world run independent of him, he purposes to bring it again under his oversight. This is what Daniel refers to at Dan 2:44

And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be brought to ruin. And the kingdom itself will not be passed on to any other people. It will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, and it itself will stand to times indefinite...

Or Jesus in “the Lord’s Prayer:”

...Let your kingdom come. Let your will take place, as in heaven, also upon earth...     Matt 6:10

Does anybody seriously expect God’s will to be done on earth as it is now? Yet, says the prayer, the time for God’s will to be done is when his Kingdom comes.

Jehovah’s Witnesses well understand that God’s permission of injustice, even evil, is bound up with this trial period of human rule, soon to end. In a sense, the modern-day atheist counterparts of Diagoras have voted for the wrong party. They voted Republicans out of office in favor of Democrats (or vice versa…..no political statement here) and now they're incensed that Republicans aren't delivering on their promises! God’s Kingdom is the arrangement that will end injustice. But they continue to vote for human rule. Does anyone think humans will end injustice?

What the upset ones really want is, not so much an end of injustice, but an end to the symptoms of injustice, mostly the ones that affect them personally, just like with Diagoras. But human rule itself is the source of injustice. We’re simply not designed with the ability to “rule” ourselves. Is it “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely?" God’s Kingdom will not treat the symptoms of injustice; it will uproot the source.

Knocking Highlights A Defender of God

Joel Engardio's documentary Knocking features two Jehovah's Witness families, the Knights and the Kemplers. Joseph Kempler gives the most compelling reason for serving Jehovah I've ever heard.

As a teenager, Kempler was shuttled though six Nazi concentration camps and survived them all. He was interred as a Jew and freed as a Jew. While confined, though, he observed Jehovah's Witnesses. After the war he became one.

"It's difficult to speak to Jews," he says. "They say I became a traitor. Six million Jews died and I joined the other side.

"I was among those survivors who felt that God was really responsible and guilty. He was the one who permitted the Holocaust. So we didn't fail him, we didn't do anything wrong. He failed us. And this is  a very common belief.

"God is being maligned and misunderstood and in many different ways looked down upon as being uncaring or dead or whatever, and there are all kinds of distortions as to what God is and who he is. To be able to speak up in his defense....what a powerful turnaround from somebody where I was to become a defender of God...what  a wonderful privilege this is."

It is a privilege. Mr. Kempler recognized that and grabbed hold of it, even in the aftermath of suffering that turned millions away from God, millions who could not fathom how God could possibly permit such a monstrous thing. Yet accurate Bible knowledge conveys the reason for both suffering and persecution, how God will ultimately work matters out, and how his worshippers should respond in the meantime. Armed with such knowledge, Jehovah's Witnesses survived what was likely the greatest evil in history, with faith and dignity intact,

What is remarkable about the account is how so many people today go the other way in the face of far less provocation. Mr. Kempler saw, in the holocaust aftermath, an opportunity to defend God. But people today, even some of our own people, sever all ties with God for reasons no more substantial than personal inconvenience, having somehow lost all ability to conceive of any life beyond the here and now. Such is the power of a materialistic age where self is the focus.

God being where he is and we being where we are, and we in distinctly imperfect form, one might imagine him keeping us at arm's length. Instead, we're told that we can serve him shoulder to shoulder, as if he considers us equals!

For then I shall give to peoples the change to a pure language, in order for them all to call upon the name of Jehovah, in order to serve him shoulder to shoulder.    Zeph 3:9

and that it's possible to be his friend:

and the scripture was fulfilled which says: “Abraham put faith in Jehovah, and it was counted to him as righteousness,” and he came to be called “Jehovah’s friend."   Jas 2:23

Inherent in defending God is speaking about him. You cannot read the gospels (literally "good news," Mark is the easiest; it moves the quickest) or Acts (the early history of Christianity's spread - "acts" of the apostles - things they did) without sensing that the ideas expressed were not to remain private but were to be offered to others. So speak Jehovah's Witnesses do.

The Bible consistently likens spiritual things to water. Water is healthy when it moves and stagnant when it does not. If Christians take it in through reading, meditation & congregation meetings, then their public ministry serves to keep in flowing. People have lots of views today, and, as a way of proclaiming "truce," a popular notion is that religion is too "private" to discuss, at least, to discuss with strangers. Plainly, JWs don't feel that way. To be sure, to keep "pushing" something upon someone who's made it clear they don't want it is ill-mannered. (though that doesn't necessarily preclude a later call. People change.) But the other extreme, labeling faith as too personal to even discuss, is not in keeping with the nature of Christianity.

In spite of their public visiting, Jehovah's Witnesses are a "live and let live" religion. Their "weapons" are ideas only. When you tell them "no," they go away. Sure, they try to be persuasive, but it's still only words. They don't afterward attempt to legislate their beliefs into law, so as to force people to live their way, much less resort to violence. 

To be a defender of God is a rare privilege indeed.

The Green Cross and the Sewer

There is this doctor...rats, I misplaced the quote....who remarked that blood is "dirty as stool." That's differs from its normal description: "life-giving."

Of course, it is both. The red and white cells, especially the red that carry oxygen, account for the "life-giving" part. But blood also carries away cellular wastes. Thus, the bloodstream doubles as a sewer. That's okay if you're speaking of your own blood, but it gives you pause for thought if you're thinking someone else's blood, as in transfusion!

Blood banks get better and better at screening. Still, every so often we hear of some new disease or contamination passed on through blood transfusion. In the late 1980s and 1990s, it came out that the Japanese "Green Cross," a pharmaceutical company [Japanese name: Midori Juchi] with $1 billion in assets, ignored government standards for AIDS screening and sold infected blood to medical facilities in the U.S, Japan, and South Korea. 2000 people ended up with transfusion-induced AIDS. Of course, they sued, and in the consequent publicity, the Green Cross' surprising and unsavory past came to light.

The company was the brainchild of Hideo Futaki, Masaji Kitano, and Ryoichi Naito, three principle architects of Japan's WWII medical experiments program. Dubbed Unit 731, hundreds of prisoners perished in sadistic experiments (without anesthesia) that rivaled any deeds from Nazi Joseph Mendele, the Doctor of Death.  Unit 731, located way out there in middle-of-nowhere Mongolia, also brewed plague, cholera, and so forth, released it into the surrounding population to see what would happen...to give Japan a "leg up" in germ warfare. Daniel Barenblatt, author of A plague Upon Humanity: The Hidden History of Japan's Biological Warfare Program, reports hundreds of thousands died. The exact number, he remarks, may never be known, since the victims were peasants who had no idea they were being deliberately exterminated, and thus kept no records. They just thought they were getting sick. Why would they suspect it was deliberate?

Among the experiments performed in the Unit 731 Mongolian prison itself were animal to human blood transfusions. Naturally, all the expendable victims died. After the war, however, Futaki, Kitano, and Naito cut an immunity deal with the United States victors to avoid war crimes prosecution. later, they put their expertise to good use when they founded the Japan Blood Plasma Company, which later changed its name to Green Cross. The Japan Blood Plasma company made a major money supplying blood to the U. S. Army for use during the Korean War. Thus, the founders of one of the world's principle blood banks are among the world's great mass murderers!

The Green Cross still thrives, having outlived it's long-dead founders (who were never brought to justice). It changed its name twice and, in 2001, was merged into the huge Mitsubishi conglomerate. Extensive research has, thus far, uncovered no evidence that Joseph Mengele, the Nazi doctor of death, ever started a blood bank like his Japanese counterparts.

We Love Our Kids and are Crying

There were nine of them. They were best of friends. They were all girls. They were all graduates - class of 2007, Fairport.

Before going their separate ways for the summer, and then off to this or that college, they'd planned this one last outing. One of the girls' parents had a cottage on Keuka Lake. A great place to lounge and relax and swim and sunbathe for a day or two. They traveled in two cars; five in the first and four in the second.

Was it the vehicle? Was it speed? Was it inexperience? Was it distraction? The lead car swung into the oncoming traffic lane to pass a slower vehicle. That done, it swung back to its own lane. Then - for whatever reason - it swerved again into the oncoming lane, and smashed head on into an oncoming tractor-trailer. Both vehicles exploded and the flames reached 50 feet, burning through cable and telephone lines. The second car stopped at once, but no one could get near for the heat. They could only watch.

As word of the 10 PM crash spread, nearly 100 classmates and family gathered at Fairport High School. David Paddock, the school principal said they watched the sun rise together. "The sun came up," he said. "I'm not sure we all thought it would." The next night several hundred people gathered for a candlelight vigil. "It's a community nightmare....I'm personally devastated," Paddock said. "Our hearts are broken. We love our kids and are crying." Several thousand attended weekend calling hours at the school gym (four of the five had been cheerleaders).

By chance, Governor Eliot Spitzer was in town to chew out state senators for skipping out of Albany for the summer, leaving important work undone. But the local senator, Senator Alesi, would not be chewed out. He cited the tragedy: "I think it would be insensitive to get embroiled in petty partisan politics at this point." Spitzer had beat him to it, however, condolence-wise: "We are suffering with the emotional agony of the tragedy of the students. It just does make your blood run cold. It makes you appreciate every day you have with your children. Our condolences go out to families and those who are touched by this — our hearts go out to all who are touched by this."

Stories and follow-up stories ran for days and days and aren't done yet. The local paper questioned why the vehicles should have erupted in flames; maybe they should have been designed better. Had they been, and had passengers been belted, maybe some would have survived. This, at a combined head-on crash speed of 120 MPH!

Bloggers blogged for days, just like I'm doing now. "Why did God have to take our girls?" one person asked. "We needed these angels here on earth!" And somewhere, without a doubt, some dopey preacher was offering exactly the same obscene "comfort": God was "picking flowers," and He needed the best.

Virginia Tech and the Blame Game

A student gunman killed 32 people on Virginia Tech campus Monday, and wounded 15 others. There were two attacks, one at 7:15 claiming two persons, and the other across campus 2 hours later. Hordes of media descended, asking all questions except the important ones. Like:

Did you ever imagine, when you came to class this morning, that such a thing would happen?

Has it sunk in yet?

The blaming began within hours. There was Katie Couric, so somber, oozing love and compassion, ever so gently probing college president Charles Steger. Didn't he bear bloodguilt, she implied, for not locking down campus immediately after the first shooting?

No, he didn't. He'd already explained the first incident bore every mark of a domestic dispute. No reason to think differently. Besides, thousands of non-resident students were just then arriving for 8AM class. "Where do you lock them down?....You can only make a decision based on the information you know at that moment in time. You don't have hours to reflect on it."

That made sense to me. God help us if we start shutting down entire communities (30,000 plus at Virginia Tech) every time domestic violence flares up.

But Mr. Steger is my age, brought up in a different time. The younger you are the more likely you were to disagree. Today's students were born in the late 80's, not the domestically tranquil 40's, 50's and even 60's. A madman on rampage is not so unusual for them, so that it seemed the college should have taken this in stride. They should have known and been ready. Reporters searched until they found SWAT team experts, guys who live and breathe and dream CSI. Yes, they affirmed, the college should have known. All night, cable and satellite stations pushed the theme.

Lawyers have facilitated this thinking by successfully implanting the notion that money can compensate for life. Of course, that only happens if someone is found blameworthy. So someone must be.

On the other hand, local radio guy Bob Lonsberry found someone here who's a student there. He chatted a few minutes on air with Doug MacEvoy. Doug didn't fault anybody. Absolute madman, who could have known? totally out of the blue was all they could say from the start. But within hours, the same media folks were in full court blame press.

So maybe it's not young people at all. Maybe it's entirely lawyers and media, two groups who distinctly gain by finding parties to blame. [media, because it extends the life of the story]

For those who view such violence as, if not everyday, at least common enough that everyone should always be ready, the important question was not asked. How did society get to be this way?

In the last days, so says the apostle Paul at 2 Timothy, people will be .... without natural affection, not open to any agreement, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, without love of goodness.

They've always been like that, some today counter. So was Paul giving a non-prophesy? Of course he knew what people were like. But there would be a time, he advised, when such traits would be off the charts. Is such the case today? Do we not entertain the nagging suspicion that we are just this close to such events becoming absolutely routine?

Jesus said the dangerous times he foretold...times that would serve to seal the dismal record of human self-rule...would find people "faint out of fear and expectation of the things coming upon the inhabited earth." [Luke 21:26] Those with faith would also be affected by events. A sign is a sign.

Yet knowing the meaning behind it all would give them a different outlook, even a hopeful one. "In this way you also, when you see these things occurring, know that the kingdom of God is near." [vs 31]

Announcing this kingdom forms the core of Jehovah's Witnesses ministry.

Predestination and the Last Days

If you purchase and run a car without a clue how to take care of it, and for some reason you refuse to read the owner's manual, it is certain you will end up with a pile of scrap metal. That's not predestination. It's a certain prediction, and the dealer could have made it the moment he discerned your nobody's-gonna-tell-me mindset. When it comes to the Bible and the "last days," this is the analogy that fits.

The auto-purchase analogy can be seen in the Genesis account, which most people count as a fairy tale. God did not create humans with the ability to govern themselves. Power corrupts, absolute corrupts absolutely, and so forth....God knew it all along. He did not create humans with self-rule ability, just like he did not create them with ability to fly or to walk through walls.

But the first humans ignore him and disobey the only command he has issued, [Gen 2:17] a command which symbolizes their reliance upon him. They embark on the path of self-rule.

Genesis 2:17 says: "But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die.”

Disobeying, eating from the tree, means not respecting God’s right to decide good and bad. Instead, those first humans, by their actions, declare they will decide such matters themselves, in effect, rejecting God’s right to rule in favor of self-rule.

Thus begins a long experiment of human rulership, which God permits as it is the one way of permanently settling the issue of rulership. God knows how the experiment in governing will end, just as the dealer knows how your car stewardship will end. In time, the evidence mounts to the point where all but the most pig-headed can see that God had it right all along....humans just make a hash of things with self-rule. God can then bring "the end of the world" and restore matters to the default position....the one where he governs. He's not upset with the earth; he's fond of it. It's his handiwork. He's upset with those who have ruined it, and he tosses them as a landlord might toss a bad tenant. Thereafter, the earth can be brought to the paradise condition envisioned from the outset.

His rulership....this is what the Bible means by "God's Kingdom." It is proclaimed ahead of the eviction, and people are able to respond for or against. There’s no predestination. Everyone has opportunity and God’s will is for all to respond, though he knows not everybody will.

This is fine and acceptable in the sight of our Savior, God, whose will is that all sorts of men should be saved and come to an accurate knowledge of truth.               1 Tim 2:3,4

How exactly this plays out in every detail is unclear, but it certainly makes sense for a person to act in harmony with knowledge acquired.

And this good news of the kingdom will be preached in all the inhabited earth for a witness to all the nations; and then the end will come.                 Matt 24:14

When the books are finally closed on the experiment, a thousand plus years from now, will humans once again get it in their heads that self-rule is the way to go? Hopefully, Mark Twain's words will apply:

A cat which sits on a hot stove will never sit on a hot stove again. In fact, it won't sit on a cold one either, for they all look hot.          

Don't Worry, I'm in Charge and What About 911?

Many churches post out front some sappy slogan, such as “What is missing: C H _ _ C H.” The church down the street does that. A lot of them do.

A few years ago one of them read: Don’t Worry, I’m in charge….signed, God.

This stuff is embarrassing. It’s nothing more than feel-good fluff. Days later, terrorists flew airplanes into the World Trade Center. Both buildings collapsed. 3000 people died.

I wondered if that silly sign was still there, so I drove past the church. It had been changed! “God Bless America!” it now said. I saw the priest in my mind’s eye hurriedly swapping letters at 3 AM, hoping no one would see him. What once seemed cutesy was now obscene.

Immediately after 911, for once, the clergy had nothing to say. Many were wondering how they could possibly explain things come Sunday. Falwell had the answer. God was mad about pagans and abortionists and feminists and gays and lesbians, but the outspoken clergyman later backed away. But as long as you maintain that God’s in charge, it does seem that you have some explaining to do.

Only Jehovah’s Witnesses had answers that day. The truth is that God is not in charge. The slogan is wrong. The patchwork of sovereign powers all pushing and shoving each other, as if in some adult version of King of the Mountain, is not God’s idea. He doesn’t bless it. It’s not his arrangement for governing earth, but is a consequence of rebellion at mankind’s beginning.

In the year 29CE, just after Jesus was baptized, he was led off into the “wilderness,” where he fasted 40 days. During that time he was temped by the Devil. The second temptation is instructive:

So he brought him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the inhabited earth in an instant of time; and the Devil said to him: “I will give you all this authority and the glory of them, because it has been delivered to me, and to whomever I wish I give it. You, therefore, if you do an act of worship before me, it will all be yours.” In reply Jesus said to him: “It is written, ‘It is Jehovah your God you must worship, and it is to him alone you must render sacred service.’”    Luke 4:5-8

Jesus refused the offer, but he didn’t deny the premise…that the Devil is in charge of all kingdoms, and that he can deliver it to whomever he wishes. Just like if I offer you a watch, it’s understood that the watch is mine to give. At any rate, Jesus said nothing to the contrary. So the Devil, not God, is the one in charge of this present mess of manmade governments.

How earth’s rulership got to be this way, and what are the implications, is the subject of another post….this one, for example.

I was one of many in the ministry the next day. People were mellow, easy to talk to, more open than usual to the Bible’s promise of God’s Kingdom rule, which will accomplish for earth what no human government can even dream of.    

The Atheist and the Agnostic

Dear Newspaper:

Though Sam Harris has an intellectual revulsion for God, his real beef seems to be with religious groups that are willing and eager to force others to think as they do, often through violent tactics. But all-embracing and tolerant religions are also no good, he informs us, for they fail to “call a spade a spade.” They refuse to condemn their belligerent religious cousins.

Yet not all will be able to adopt Mr. Harris’ view of life, which relegates spiritual concerns to the toilet in the interests of science, and exhorts that we picture ourselves as deluxe machines with a 80 year warranty.

That doesn’t leave many options.

This month, Jehovah’s Witnesses worldwide are distributing a tract which chronicles the history of injury perpetrated in the name of God. It does call a spade a spade, and yet words are the group’s only weapons. They do not seek to force their views on others through political means, and they don’t fly airplanes into buildings. So I start to imagine that, just maybe, they have found a niche which even Mr. Harris would be able to stomach.

But probably not.

Yours truly,

Sheepandgoats

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If a religious group decides to “pronounce God’s judgments,” that can make them unpalatable to some. And it can make them a laughingstock. But it doesn’t make them dangerous. They become dangerous only if they decide to help Him out a little (or a lot) in carrying out those judgments.

But religion that includes fanatics as part of a “rich mosaic of diversity” also betrays God. Sam said you have to call a spade a spade. He’s right.

Actually, most of what Sam Harris says regarding religion is right on. He gives refreshing straight talk. When he decries the toxic results of religion through the ages, well…who can argue with that? If only he stuck to lambasting religion, he’d be a visionary. Or he’d be one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Alas, he throws out the baby with the bathwater, declaring not only that religion is bogus, but also God.

It’s not a bit surprising that the religious situation today should produce an abundance of agnostics. If anything, the surprise is that it hasn’t produced more. Religion, by its conduct and teachings, muddies the water to such an extent that it becomes well-nigh impossible to understand God. But give an agnostic some accurate Bible knowledge….answer questions such as why does God permit evil? and why do we grow old and die? and sometimes these persons do an about face.

Atheism seems different to me. Once you cross that line, do you ever cross back? Maybe.... because not all who say they are atheists really are…..no atheists in the foxhole, and all…..but I wonder if a genuine, certified, grade A atheist ever crosses back. I don’t know of any, whereas I know countless agnostics who have come to know God.

I’d love to run these ideas past Sam to get his input, but I don’t know how to get in touch. He receives 100 letters a day from religionists who want him to burn in hell, so he, quite sensibly, no longer opens his mail.

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The wicked one according to his superciliousness makes no search;
All his ideas are: “There is no God.”      Psalm 10:4

Maybe that's the difference. The agnostic has not given up on the search. The atheist has.

Sheepandgoats does not, however, apply this scripture to any individual. That's not his place.

The Holocaust and God's Permission of Evil

The answer the Bible provides as to why God permits suffering: does that really wash? Does it really account for God standing aside while atrocities such as the Holocaust ravage us all? Isn’t that the time for God to intervene if He’s ever going to? And wouldn’t it have been better to educate Adam regarding the consequences of rebellion, rather than see him plunge himself and all his offspring into misery?

One must remember that the stakes are high. God’s rulership is to produce everlasting life in perfect health on a paradise earth. Human rulership is producing exactly what we see today. Anyone delighted over it?

If you are the teacher and you are faced with a wiseacre student who insists he knows a better answer, who will not follow your course, who accuses you of wrong motives, and who is gathering an audience, how do you handle it? You know his answer will not work, yet the student insists. Don’t you just hand him the chalk and let him work out his dumb answer? And when his approach creates the chaos that you knew it would, do you help him out? Won’t that just prolong the misery?

http://www.watchtower.org/e/publications/index.htm
(2nd listing. Chapter 11, which features the above illustration)

Imagine that you have had parents who have provided for your needs in every conceivable way and have done so from infancy. Physical, spiritual, emotional...every need and proper desire was provided for to the fullest degree. They've done nothing but show love. And along comes a stranger and tells you that your folks are lying to you, have always lied to you, and that they are trying to deprive you of what is best. And you immediately side with the stranger! What does that say about your heart? And isn't this the situation with Adam and Eve?

One must remember that Adam, the first of God’s human creation, was created perfect. While you and I may do dumb things, acknowledge them, correct and recover on the basis that we are imperfect, subject to mistakes, a perfect creature doesn’t do that. Any wrong course he chooses is deliberate. He doesn’t afterwards turn around. You don’t educate him.

And so God is extending time, soon to run out, for humans to act on their boast of self-rule.

Also, the Bible’s provision for resurrection ensures that no lasting harm is done anyone through God’s present permission of evil.

...and I have hope toward God…. that there is going to be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous.    Acts 24:15

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Whenever one recalls rotten things that God has permitted, the Holocaust tops the list.

Thousands of German Jehovah's Witnesses were among the very first concentration camp prisoners, preceding the far-more-numerous Jews, and other groups. This because they absolutely refused allegiance to the Nazi regime, which the latter demanded. JWs are the only inmates who can properly be termed martyrs (as opposed to victims) in that they had power to secure their own release by signing a document renouncing their faith and pledging cooperation with the Nazis. Only a handful  took advantage of the opportunity.

You (and I) can lament how unjust God must be to permit such a thing. But we didn’t live through it. They did. They experienced the vilest that mankind has to offer. And the above explanation of why God permits suffering is what sustained them.

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“All those who suffered persecution because of their religious or political beliefs and who were willing to accept death rather than submit deserve our great respect, such respect as is hard to express in words. Jehovah’s Witnesses were the only religion that completely refused to accede to the demands of the Hitler regime: They did not raise their hand to give the Hitler salute. They refused to swear allegiance to ‘Führer and State,’ just as they refused to perform military and labor service. And their children did not join the Hitler Youth Movement.”        Peter Straub, president of the State Parliament of Baden-Württemberg - from a speech made on the 58th aniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.