Observations from Translating through John 20-21

 What follows are my thoughts after translating through the Gospel of John and reaching these passages: 

     John 20:19-29: There is in Avengers: Endgame a scene where Black Widow confronts her best friend Hawkeye to tell him there's a viable plan to bring everyone back from Thanos' snap. In the previous movie, half of the planet's population was murdered with a snap of the big bad guy's fingers. Included in that number was Hawkeye's family. For five years, he had operated without hope, without caring if he lived or died, angrily tracking down earthly bad guys as a wrathful, rogue assassin and ending them. When we first meet him in this state after Black Widow finds him, he's lost. He looks lost, his eyes hold nothing but pain, sorrow, and hopelessness. And then Black Widow tells him they have a plan to bring everyone back, and his pained, achingly grieved response is "Don't do that. Don't give me hope."

     This is the substance of where Thomas is at when the other disciples tell him they've seen Jesus. "Unless I see the mark of the nails... I will not believe." How did Thomas know that they had nailed Jesus to the cross? Or for that matter had stabbed His side instead of breaking His legs? This wasn't common practice. He knew because he had watched the whole thing, and like Mary the Magdalene had been devastated by it. Mary's response to the trauma of Jesus' death had been to withdraw in pain to the point where she didn't care if she was caught at His tomb and arrested. Thomas' response was to get angry, lost, and hopeless. Why wasn't he with the other disciples when Jesus first appeared to them? It was the same day Mary saw Him early in the morning, the third day after His crucifixion. Where was Thomas? Why didn't he show up until after the fact? Maybe he was wondering the streets of Jerusalem for three days traumatized by the brutal death of the man he had thrown away everything for and devoted himself to. Maybe he wasn't the only one, but just the last to wander in the door of the upper room.

     Jesus doesn't reveal Himself to Thomas specifically for another eight days, the following Monday. Why? Maybe Thomas wasn't actually ready yet to see Him. Maybe Thomas still needed a little more time to come back from the dark place he found himself in. But He doesn't just abandon Thomas any more than He abandoned Mary, or later Peter. The Scriptures don't record it, but as I read this text, the scene that plays out in my head is Thomas dissolving into tears, maybe even grabbing and clinging to Jesus, maybe falling on his knees in a total breakdown as he says, "My Lord and my God!" Much like Hawkeye reacted upon getting his phone call from his wife when his family returned to life.

     Thing is, Hawkeye wouldn't have been ready to see his family yet either when Black Widow found him. Not in the place he found himself in. He had to be brought back by his friends too before he was ready to hear his wife's voice again. He had to experience the process of recovery, even the loss of his best friend Black Widow, before he was ready to receive his family again.

     Like Mary, Thomas loved Jesus. His doubt wasn't a rational one. It may not have even actually been doubt. It was an emotional response because of the severe trauma he had just gone through of losing a man who had become his whole world, just like Mary. He couldn't bear hoping and then going through that crushing loss again. His mind couldn't take it.

     It's hard for those who haven't experienced similar crushing loss to understand this kind of emotional response. You don't want to hope because you don't want to have that hope stolen from you again. You don't know what you'll do or who you'll be if it is, and so it feels safer to push that hope away, to keep it at a comfortable distance emotionally so that you can't be hurt by it again.

     On a different note, another interesting thing about this passage in Greek is vv. 22-23 which can be translated literally, "And having said this He breathed on, and says to them, 'Take holy spirit; whosever misfires you would let go have been let go to them, whosever you would hold by force have been held by force.'"

     There is no definite article for "holy spirit" in verse 22, and the verb used can and does mean "take" as much as it does "receive" (as it is usually translated). There is also no real justification (other than theological bias) for inserting a definite article here as 'holy spirit' follows the verb 'take' rather than preceding it, which would make a stronger argument for "the Holy Spirit" rather than "holy spirit."

An interesting point too is the verb usually translated as "retain" or "retained" in verse 23 actually means "to hold by force or strength." It's a cognate of the Greek noun "kratos" meaning "force, strength, authority, power, etc." The verb is also frequently translated "arrest" or "seize" when it is used of the temple officers attempting to arrest Jesus.

     Another passage which these verses remind me of is in Matthew where Jesus says in no uncertain terms that if a person forgives another's offences, then their Heavenly Father would forgive their offenses, but if someone does not forgive another's offences, neither would their Heavenly Father forgive that person who did not forgive.

     Traditionally, these two verses are used in support of the Sacrament of Reconciliation where one Christian makes confession and receives absolution from another, usually a member of the clergy (as a representative of the Apostles who first received this authority), but in some denominations and traditions another member of the laity (St. Symeon the New Theologian promoted the idea of lay confession and absolution in the Eastern Orthodox Church). Regardless, the implications of these verses coupled with the aforementioned statements by Jesus in Matthew do impose a further, serious responsibility on Christians to forgive and not hold fast the errors and malfunctioning behaviors of others.

     John 21: And now we come to Peter. In the last chapter we saw Jesus tending to two of His disciples who were utterly devastated and beside themselves because they loved Him and were hurt so badly by His crucifixion and death.

     Peter was in the upper room with the other disciples. He was just as devastated as Mary and Thomas, but he didn't abandon his post, so to speak. Not only was he devastated by what happened, but he carried with him the internal guilt of having disowned Jesus when he swore he wouldn't. He stayed with them. He became their rock that didn't move in spite of his own pain and despair. He was there the first time and second when Jesus appeared to them from out of nowhere. Upon hearing that Jesus' tomb was empty, he shot out the door without a second thought, and only John ran faster than he did to the tomb. There is no question really about Peter's love and devotion to Jesus, and his understanding of Who Jesus is.

     What's interesting here in this exchange in 15-19 is that Jesus begins, not just by asking him if he loves Him, but "Do you love me more than these guys?" That is, "Peter, do you love me more than they do?" Referring to the other disciples sitting there. Peter believes so as he responds without hestation, "Yes." What's also interesting here is the Greek word used for "know" (oida) as he says, "You know that I have affection for you." It's used again in verse 17 along with "ginosko" (also 'to know'). Oida means something like to instinctively know, to know by insight, to just know something. “Ginosko” is more to know by experience or to recognize. He says to Jesus effectively, "Lord, you instinctively know everything! You recognize that I have affection for you!" Jesus' omniscience is a fact to Peter. He knows Who Jesus is. He's known it for a long time. He might not know how. He might not know how it fits into the Jewish theology he was taught in the synagogue, but he knows it nonetheless.

     When Jesus talks about how Peter will die, it seems to me that He was reaffirming to Peter that he, in spite of his best effort, wasn't supposed to die that night with Jesus. Jesus didn't want him to die that night. He was supposed to live until he was an old man who had to be dressed by someone else, led around by the hand, and taken places he didn't want to go. Things played out the way they did, because they had to. In some respects perhaps, Jesus was counting on Peter's getting scared in order to protect him from himself and his reckless devotion to Him which he had just demonstrated by swimming three hundred feet to shore before the boat. Peter didn't think before he leaped when it came to Jesus, he just leaped. He didn't care what was over the edge of the cliff. If that was where Jesus was going, that's where he would run headlong.

     And that's why Jesus told him, "Graze My lambs, shepherd My sheep, graze My sheep, follow Me." That's why, of all the disciples, Simon Peter was the first among equals, and led the earliest church. He wouldn't be scared again. Jesus had given him a job to do, and he was going to do it even if he died for it.

     Another point of interest is that Peter got a do over for his disowning Jesus, and it was in front of the High Priest himself. He got a chance to make it right. And when he did, he accused the High Priests of murdering their Messiah by crucifixion in cold blood, daring them to do the same to him.

What does it mean to "be a Christian?"

 What does it actually mean to be a Christian? 

     I’m not talking about “being saved” or whether or not someone is justified before God through Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. That’s dealt with. Done. That was about what He did for us.

     In the Scriptures, it calls Jesus’ followers after His ascension, “followers of the Way,” “the brothers,” or just “disciples.” They weren’t even called “Christians” (Grk. christianoi) until later in Antioch closer to 45-6 CE; the word literally meaning “pertaining to Christ,” and it appears to have begun as an epithet. What is clear though is that, from the very beginning, one wasn’t considered a disciple of Christ, or “Christian” unless he or she was living as Jesus taught, not by those within the Church at the very least, and they disavowed those who weren’t regardless of what or whose teachings they professed to follow. It’s pretty clear from Paul’s writing to the Corinthians, and from some of his other writings, that those who stopped living as Christ taught and were engaged in some behavior that clearly wasn’t what Jesus taught were excommunicated and put out of the congregations until they came to their senses and repented so they could be reconciled and brought back into the community.

     Justin Martyr, an apologist who wrote a lengthy and thorough defense of Christians and there manner of life to the Roman emperor, wrote in 160 CE, “Let it be understood that those who are not found living as He taught are not Christian—even though they profess with the lips the teachings of Christ.” Any serious reading of the letters and writings of the late first and early second century Christians, those within the second or third generation from the Apostles, will demonstrate that the emphasis on teaching was on practice, and that it was one’s behavior which defined them as Christian. It was whether or not that they followed the way of life, or the way of death, and much of what they wrote was about the kinds of behaviors one expected to see from those who followed the way of life.

     To be a Christian is to do as Paul wrote repeatedly about in his letters, that is, to walk in the Spirit of Christ, and to not be enslaved to one’s own flesh, that is, one’s own fear, aggression, feeding impulse, or sexual desires. To be a Christian is to produce what Paul called the “fruit of the Spirit” as opposed to the works of the flesh. The fruit of the Spirit is this way of life, and the works of the flesh, the behaviors which result from being enslaved to our own fear, aggression, feeding impulses, and sexual desires is this way of death. As he wrote in his letter to the Romans, “because the mind of the flesh is death, yet the mind of the Spirit is life and peace; because the mind of the flesh is hostile to God, because it isn’t subjugated to the law of God, because neither is it possible; and those being in the flesh aren’t capable of pleasing God. Yet you folks aren’t in the flesh but in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God resides within you, yet if someone doesn’t posses the Spirit of Christ, this person isn’t His.”

     The Apostle John also wrote in his first epistle, “And with this we know that we knew Him, if we should keep His commands. The guy saying that, ‘I knew Him’ and not keeping His commands is a liar and the truth isn’t with this guy; yet whoever should keep His message, the love of God has genuinely been finished within this person, with this we know that we are within Him. The guy saying to make his home in Him is himself obligated to walk in the same way just like that One walked.” He also wrote in the same epistle, “Dear ones, we should love one another, because love is from God, and every person who loves has been birthed from God and knows God. The person who doesn’t love hasn’t known God, because God is love.”

     To be a Christian is to be actively practicing making your home in Him, disengaging from your own flesh born responses and behaviors, and asking Him and trusting Him to act and speak through you. To be a Christian is for people to be able to experience Jesus Christ through what you do and say. To be a Christian is to be following His commands, living as He taught, and imitating Him in His total submission to the Father so that He didn’t say or do anything the Father didn’t say or do through Him.

     To be a Christian has nothing to do with what you say you believe in. Anyone can talk a good line, but can people experience Jesus Christ when they encounter you? Can they say of you, “If you’ve met this guy or girl, you’ve met Jesus Christ”? It has nothing to do with your systematic theology either, or how correct or incorrect it is. As Paul wrote, you can have all wisdom, all faith, and prophesy mystery after mystery, but if you don’t have love you’re nothing, and it’s all worthless. I have met many Christians from virtually every denomination and church I have had contact with, and a great many more who profess His teachings, but follow their own flesh and the way of death.

     Jesus said in the Gospel of Luke, “Yet what are you calling Me, ‘Lord, lord,’ for, and don’t do the things I am saying?” And in Matthew He says, “Every person then who hears these messages of Mine and does them, will be similar to a mindful man, who constructed his house up on the bedrock; and the rain descended and the rivers came and the winds blew and fell towards that house, and it didn’t fall, because it had been founded up on the bedrock. And every person hearing these messages of Mine and not doing them will be similar to a moronic man, who constructed his house on the sand; and the rain descended, and the rivers came and the winds blew and struck against that house, and it fell and its fall was huge.” Jesus also said, “And the guy who doesn’t take his cross and follow behind Me, isn’t worthy of Me.” He would later define not being worthy of Him as not being able to be His disciple.

     No matter what kind of theology he professes, no matter how good of a “testimony” he has, no matter what he says he believes, if a person, man or woman, isn’t producing the fruit of the Spirit which compels them to live as Jesus taught, if they are living in response to the desires of their own flesh, then they aren’t being a Christian but are lying to themselves, and they won’t be a Christian until they confess it, agree with Him, and return to walking His path. 

      The person who continues to profess to be walking in the light while walking in the darkness, who continues to profess Christ with his lips yet is enslaved to the desires of his flesh, and his own hubris, recklessly risks the wrath of God by treating Jesus Christ and His Spirit with whom he was joined, His teachings, and His blood with contempt. He is like the man who showed up for the wedding feast without the wedding garment, and was thrown out into the outer darkness for disrespecting the Father and the Son. Ignorance is forgivable. Deliberately disrespecting the testimony of the Holy Spirit will not be.

     What does it mean to be a Christian? To be a Christian means to be a willing channel for everyone around you to experience Jesus Christ. This is a process. You will make mistakes. But there’s a difference between mistakes and struggling, and deliberately avoiding living as He taught and walking as He walked in submission to His Father. The Father isn’t confused about which is which, and you can’t hide it from Him.

     Quit cowering behind your wall of “correct theology” which you’ve built for yourself. If you’re going to call yourself a Christian, then live as He taught and walk as He walked as everyone who claims to know Him is obligated to do.

When Jesus Says "No"

When Jesus says "no." We read about all the healings in Scripture, but what about the folks He didn't? What about the people who, after being healed wanted to go with Him as His disciples, and He told them "no."

It hurts when Jesus says "no." It feels like a betrayal from the one that you love the most, and He doesn't explain why. Sometimes, we carry a bitterness and a resentment for not being healed, for not receiving what we asked for, for not being allowed to follow in the way we wanted to.

It had nothing to do with our faith. We wouldn't have gone to Him if we didn't believe He could do it. And there's no explanation from Him as to why.

If I have come to learn anything from my experiences with Him over my entire existence, it's that there's a reason for Him saying "no." What we ask for may hurt us in the long run in ways we can't possibly foresee, even if it's a perfectly good and worthy thing. What happens to us, what we know and when, doesn't just affect us, but all those around us. He doesn't explain, because if He did, He would change the outcome by our knowing.

Our expectation or observation of a thing or an event changes the thing or event. This is an understanding from Quantum Mechanics. In His divinity, Jesus knows and understands this concept very, very well. The interactions between people ripple through not just one person or two, but eventually everyone on the planet, changing and shaping outcomes by thoughts, feelings, and words for billions of people. When Jesus says "no" to an otherwise perfectly valid request, it's not just about you even as it is also about what's best for you at that point in time, or any point in time.

What you ask for in your youth, He may say "no" to, only to grant it in your old age because the timing and people are right for it to happen. What ministry or position you ask for, He may say "no" to because you are right where you need to be, and you still can't see how He's working through you to those around you. There are so many variables which we simply can't process as human beings, that He is fully aware of.

He doesn't say "no" to hurt you, and He is keenly aware when it does. He says "no" because granting it in that moment would cause more hurt and harm to you and those around you than you realize, even if it would be appropriate at another point in time and space.

He says "no" because He loves you, and those around you, and those around them. It doesn't feel like love when He says "no," but it never does when a young child hears that from their parent. "Dad, can I drive the car?" Asks the six year old child. "No." Says the Dad who's seeing images of a dead son and a mangled car. "Mom, can I go to this party?" Asks the tween daughter about a high school party. "No." Says the mother, who's well aware of what can happen. Jesus says "no" for much the same reasons, with an omniscience of time and space which tells Him when the best time for granting such a request would be, if at all.

"No" hurts to hear, but it's the best thing He can say to you if He says it.

Eternal Life or Eternal Torment?

 "The Lord isn't slow with the promise, like some consider slowness, but He is longsuffering for you, not willing anyone to be destroyed but all to give way into a change of mind." 1 Peter 3:9

     One question which has been recently brought up is whether or not God will torture those who don't believe for eternity. This is an uncomfortable question, and it stems from "How can a God who is love justify torturing anyone for eternity and still be love?" It's a perfectly legitimate question, and one which deserves an answer. 

     My answer is that He doesn't. They torment themselves. There is the torment of the psyche due to the untreated malfunction and its logical trajectory, and there is the torment of God's presence due to their rejection of Him. As John wrote, "because every person practicing foul things hates the light and doesn't come to the light, so that his works wouldn't be brought to light" (John 3:20). And the torment lasts for as long as they refuse to cry out to Him, just as it does in this life. "Because every person who would call upon the name of the Lord will be delivered" Romans 10:13 (Joel 2:32). 

     Death is not the complete cessation of the person, not to God who clearly preserves each and every psyche of every human being beyond physical death and considers them very much alive as Jesus taught in Mark 12:26-27. And it is clear from the book of Revelation that every human being will be resurrected in an immortal, spiritual body regardless of whether they have rejected Him. Why indeed would He do this if there was no further hope of reconciliation and redemption?

     Another question which is born from the first one is, what does "eternity" or "eternal" actually mean? I'm not certain any of us can really imagine it. I think it largely depends on your view of God and whether He is subject to time and space, or whether time and space are subject to Him. If it is placed in the context of the former, then it might simply mean "time without end." But if placed within the context of the latter, then it would have a different meaning altogether. It would be an existence outside of the time stream we all experience, and the human brain just isn't equipped to think outside of its four dimensional existence. Try as it might, it can't conceive of an existence without some kind of temporal motion. But what if Eternal Life and Eternal Torment have nothing to do with the passage of time, but being fully and clearly enveloped in the Eternal One and the difference is whether or not you reject that embrace? What if they are, for all intents and purposes, the same existence from different points of view?

     I can't say whether everyone will eventually come around and cry out to Him, or whether they'll be stuck in torment for eternity because of their own willful rejection. I can say that it will be up to their choices. But I do think that the clues are there that God leaves the door open for them to come to their senses. God is eternally patient with us. He allows us to suffer the consequences of our choices so we will learn from them, like any good parent would, but like any good parent, He doesn't give up on us either.

More Notes from 1 Corinthians 9 through 11

      Finished 1 Corinthians 9. There's a lot to unpack in what I translated this morning. But in particular, I want to focus on 19-23 and 24-27.

     In 19-23, Paul flat out repudiates clinging to one cultural or denominational practice or another by stating that he became like everyone in order to deliver anyone of them. In short, a modern rendition would be like, "I became a Jew to gain Jews, a Catholic to gain Catholics, a Mormon to gain Mormons, a Baptist to gain baptists, a Mexican to gain Mexicans, an American to gain Americans, and so on; I became everything to everyone so that I would deliver some of them." It didn't matter to Paul who it was he preached to or taught how to follow Christ and he did it within the cultural worldview framework with which they were accustomed without passing judgment on that framework. 

     Paul recognized it wasn't his job to change what they were, so he became a chameleon of sorts in order to disciple them. Paul detached from the Jewish cultural framework he was raised in for the sake of the Gospel, but he remained flexibly detached from the Greek and Roman frameworks as well and moved back and forth among them as needed. If there were Scythians in town, Paul brushed up on his Scythian "manners" and went to work. 

     Notice, that he never directly preached against or did anything to defile the Olympian gods in front of the Greeks if he could help it. That was the framework within which the Corinthians, the Ephesians, and most of the Greek world lived, and Paul left it alone publicly as he preached Christ. When he was in Jerusalem, he offered appropriate sacrifices in the Temple. In order to not be offensive to Jews to whom they were ministering, He circumcised Timothy even after stating that it didn't matter if a Christian had circumcision or a foreskin. 

     Paul wasn't wavering or being uncommitted, he just recognized that none of those things actually mattered one way or the other except where they might assist or impeded one's discipleship in Christ or the discipleship of another. Today, this could be applied to statues of Saints in a Catholic Church, or lack of any ornamentation in a baptist one. It could be applied to a crucifix or the absence of any cross in a Messianic Synagogue. Paul would shift from one to the other as needed in order to teach the people how to follow the path of Jesus Christ.

     In 24-27, Paul uses the analogy of an athlete competing in a stadium for a laurel wreath. He says in verse 25, "And every person competing controls himself with everything," and what is really interesting is in verse 27, he's very specific about what he's competing against when he says, "but I give my body a black eye and lead it a slave..." As he writes about in his letters to the Romans and to the Galatians, his own body, neurology, and biology is what has to be brought into submission to Christ, and Paul is clear  that this is an ongoing competition which he's determined to win and is determined that the Corinthians understand that need to up their game if they're going to win it too. 

     "Everyone runs, but only one gets the prize." There are only two competitors in this competition, your own body's psychology and drives, and Christ within you, and you must train and fight to keep your own body's psychology disengaged and enslaved to Christ's. It is like the Native American parable of the two wolves fighting within the man, the one who wins is the one he feeds.

     "Don't let anyone look for his own thing, but the thing of the other, different person."

     Think about this statement for a second. It's not a throwaway platitude. The human malfunction sends the hypothalamus's survival responses into overdrive, treating everything we are attached to or averse from as a survival issue. It programs itself to automatically and immediately attend to what it likes or dislikes because it believes this to be important to the survival of the psyche and the physical being. Not looking out for my own thing immediately goes against these hardwired responses. It's a contradiction which the brain then has to reconcile if it considers it "good" or agrees with it (and thus feels guilty about not doing creating cognitive dissonance which can eventually lead to mental illness), or it is a threat to survival if the brain considers it "bad" or disagrees with it.

     I find it instructive that every instruction Jesus and Paul gave immediately fly in the face of and contradict our malfunctioning survival responses.

     Another point of interest in 1 Corinthians 10 are the pains which Paul takes to not trigger someone else's conscience, that is, their sense of "good/evil" or "right/wrong." Pertaining back to my last post, the conscience is this malfunctioning survival response which then declares what we attach to "good" and what we are averse to "evil" and did not occur among the human population until the incident in Genesis 3. Judging something or someone, deciding whether they are good or evil, is, fundamentally, the decision of whether you are attached or averse to some aspect of that thing or person, whether it pleases or displeases you or whether you agree with it or disagree with it, and it becomes complicated when it pleases you but you disagree with it, or it displeases you but you agree with it. This is where cognitive dissonance occurs and mental illness can follow if it is not reconciled.

     It is my belief that Paul understood these things well enough to avoid judgment of others and especially the unbelieving as much as possible, even as Jesus taught, "Don't judge so you won't be judged," and to take great pains to not trigger the other person's conscience and so initiate their malfunctioning or "sin" response.

     I started on 1 Corinthians 11 yesterday and, being preoccupied with something else, just got through verse 16 this afternoon. Truth is, this isn't a fun passage to comment on in this day and age because of how it has been interpreted.

     Like several other passages of Paul's writings, it's helpful to understand the context of the culture and society within which he was writing. Where most translations render what he's talking about as "covering the head," what he's really talking about is the kind of veiling of the face and head of a woman as is still commonly practiced in certain middle eastern countries. What may not be understood in our day and age in western countries is that the veiling of a woman during Paul's day and age was a sign of a woman's respectability and social status. Lower class women and prostitutes did not veil and in some societies were forbidden to veil. So, if a woman walked around without a veil on her face in public, in that society, it meant she was probably a slave girl/woman, or a whore advertising her wares and availability. There was a good reason why Paul strongly encouraged the women of the Corinthian church to veil themselves. He didn't want them to give the wrong impression and appear trashy. It would be the same, culturally speaking, as if he was strongly encouraging the women of a church today to not wear bikini tops and too short skirts in public, or something else designed to show off as much skin as possible.

     We don't recognize this because we're so used to seeing unveiled women in period pieces and Bible movies, but that is anachronistic and culturally incorrect. Veiling of respectable women was a common practice in the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East up through the Byzantine period, whereas it was virtually unknown in western European societies from which our cultural traditions in the U.S. come.

In verse 10, the word "angelous" should probably be rendered "messengers" rather than "angels" as it fits more with the context of the women of the church not giving the wrong impression to the general public, of which they would have had regular contact with messengers going to and from.

     The general message of this passage is for the Corinthian church to follow respectable societal norms in terms of dress and presentation. This goes back to what he was saying in the previous chapter where he says "become harmless to both Judeans and to Greeks, and to the congregation of God, just like I also strive to please everything to everyone not looking for my own benefit but the benefit of the many, so that they might be delivered." The very next thing he says in 11:1 is "Become mimics of me just like I am also of Christ."

     The goal here is not to please ourselves, but to do anything and everything necessary, even changing our own habits and customs if necessary, to enable others to see Jesus in us so that we might be Jesus for them and give Jesus to them. If how we dress, or how we eat, or how we do anything impedes that, then we need to seriously look at which psychology is in control, ours, or that of Jesus Christ. If anything impedes our submission to Jesus Christ, if anything impedes others seeing Jesus Christ instead of "us," then, as Paul saw it, it must be done away with.

     It should go without saying that, while in Paul's society veiling was proper and appropriate, in modern U.S. society it really isn't considered the norm except for certain religious groups and subcultures. It carries very different connotations and implications in modern western society. 

     The same is true regarding his comments on men and long hair. In Roman and Greek society, if you've ever seen any Greek or Roman busts or statues of men, they always have short hair. It's very possible that long hair on a man in their society indicated a male prostitute who dressed and acted like a woman of the kind which served at certain temples (there were some who underwent castration and masqueraded in their temple sexual rites, something which was immediately offensive to Paul's Jewish Torah sensibilities). This would also seem to be indicated by the word used as it refers to someone "pluming themselves" with long hair and putting on airs. In modern U.S. society, long hair on a man does not necessarily indicate effeminacy, and certainly has no connotations towards a man being a temple whore, but can, within the right context, project masculinity instead. It is the personal and societal context which is important here.

Love is the Proof of the Life of the Eternal One Within You.

 John 17:2-3

“Just like You gave to Him authority over every biological being, so that every one of [these biological beings] which you have given to Him he would give to them eternal life. Yet this is the eternal life so that they would know You the single real God and Jesus Christ whom You sent out.”

1 John 4:7-13

“Dear ones, we should love one another, because love is from God, and every person who loves has been birthed from God and knows God. The person not loving didn’t know God, because God is love. With this the love of God was made to shine out within us, because God sent out His one of a kind Son into the world so that we would live through Him. With this is the love [of God], not that ‘we’ had loved God but that ‘He’ loved us and sent out His Son a means of appeasing about our malfunctioning behaviors. Dear ones, if God loved us in this way, we are also obligated to love one another. No one has beheld God at any time. If we would love one another, God remains within us and His love is having been finished within us. With this we know that we remain within Him and He within us, that He gave to us from His Spirit.”

John 1:18

“No one had seen God at any time; the one of a kind God* who exists in the embrace of the Father, that person explained [Him].”

*[Or “Son” depending on your Greek text]

     Jesus, in His prayer in John 17, very explicitly states that eternal life is knowing the only God which really exists and Jesus Christ whom that God sent. This is the definition Jesus Himself gave. Not living forever, not fire insurance from Hell, but knowing God the Father, to whom He was praying, and knowing Himself. 

     In John’s first letter, John explicitly states that the person who loves knows God, and the one who doesn’t love doesn’t know God. Whether or not someone loves is the measurement or standard by which it can be determined if someone knows God, and is the measurement or standard, John states, by which it can be determined if God remains within us.

     If eternal life is equivalent to knowing Him, and knowing Him is equivalent to loving, then eternal life must be equivalent to loving, at least on some level, and it can be said that the person who doesn't love doesn't have eternal life and according to John’s logic doesn’t have God remaining within him. We know that we are remaining in Him, that He gave to us from His Spirit, that we are in possession of eternal life when we love one another.

     Eternal life is the life of the Eternal which is expressed by love for one another just as He is love. How can you say you know Him and yet hate or act hatefully towards one another? How can you say that the life of the Eternal One is within you when you seek to destroy one another or tear one another down? These things don’t come from the single real God who is Love, and who became Love incarnate.

     What is your “being saved” worth if you do not love one another? What is your theological orthodoxy worth without the love of God shining forth from within you? Nothing according to Paul who wrote in 1 Corinthians 13, “If I should talk with the tongues of human beings and of angels, yet I don’t possess love, I have become a ringing brass or clanging cymbal. And if I possess prophecy and I know all the mysteries and all the knowledge and if I possess all the faith so as to transpose mountains, yet I don’t possess love, I am nothing. And if I feed all the things of my existence [to children] and if I hand over my physical body so that I should be burned, yet I don’t possess love, I am benefited nothing.”

     What is it Jesus explicitly said were the two most important commandments? What new commandment did he add and harp on over and over again at the last supper? If you take nothing else away from what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, He was explicit in that loving was the central and primary mode of operation. Love God, love one another, love the guy next to you, and love your enemies, doing good to those who hate you, blessing those who curse you, and praying for those who pursue you and do harm to you. These are the commands to which John was referring when he wrote in 1 John 2, “And with this we know that we have known Him, if we should keep His commands. The guy saying that, “I have known Him and not keeping His commands, is a liar and the truth isn’t within this person. Yet whoever should keep His message, the love of God has truly been finished within this person, with this we know that we are within Him. The guy saying to remain within Him is himself obligated to walk just like that One walked.” Obedience to His commands to love is the evidence, the absolutely required evidence that the life of the Eternal One is actually within you.

     Without it, you’re just a noisy cymbal.

God's RPG and Satan's Descent into Insanity

      I remember from a Doctor Who episode with the 12th Doctor, there was a book which if anyone read from it, they committed suicide. It turned out that the reason why they did was because the book proved to them they weren't real, but were only a part of a massive computer simulation of the real world. Their committing suicide was an act of rebellion against the system, the only act they felt had any real meaning.

     Prior to creation there was God alone. No empty space. No infinite expanse of nothing. Just God alone. Then, for the sheer pleasure of it, just to amuse Himself, He creates everything else like a software coder writing the most complex, interactive, A.I. RPG with NPCs that have free will and can make their own decisions with Him being the only "player." He is now no longer alone, and He treasures each and every one of those NPCs that keep Him from being alone. 

     And then some of them begin to malfunction and cause problems within the creation. I had the thought today that what drove Satan insane was the realization that he is just an A.I. NPC in a one player RPG, and the only player is God. He couldn't handle the fact that the only Existence that wasn't just programmed information was God, and he was just code. Once he realized what he was, he couldn't handle that thought because then he came to the erroneous conclusion that nothing he said or did mattered, and thus he didn't matter. It was all determined by the conditions of the program which God laid out. Even his insanity "must" have been predetermined. As I chewed on this thought for a bit, it then occurred to me that this is also the argument which was going on between Satan and God in Job.

     God points out Job and how he's obedient and doing very well. Satan's point was, "Of course he's doing well and acting right, you've set up the parameters in such a way that it's been determined that he'll do well and be obedient."

     Rather than argue back, God then says, "Okay, so change the parameters. Change the conditions under which Job is responding. If you're right, then he won't be right or obedient any more." I imagine the look on Satan's face here was something like, "Really?" I don't think he was expecting God's response. When Job didn't respond the way Satan thought he would, he then pushed the issue to really prove his point by causing physical harm to Job.

     In short, Satan was arguing that nothing he or Job did mattered because it was all part of the program, and God was arguing that their choices did matter, that they had the free will to choose in spite of the conditions or parameters to which they were subjected. God thought Satan and his brothers were important enough that this point had to be made, even though it cost Job so dearly (whom He repaid with interest). Through Job, God was trying to get through to Satan and those sympathetic to his view. Through Job, God was demonstrating that they too had the free will to choose Him or not. 

     Determinism is erroneous, because even if the conditions of the program have already been set into motion from our perspective, we still have the free will to choose our responses to those conditions, to choose Him or to rebel and reject Him.