This might be deeply unpopular but...

I think even my staunchest atheist friends would agree that the Bible nails this truth:

We are punished for the actions (sins) of our ancestors. (Ex 34:7, Nm 14:18, Ex 20:5, De 5:9)

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But not in a simplistic manner (i.e. I get cancer cause my grandfather shot a man). No, what I'm getting at is that the dysfunction of our ancestors gets passed along to each new generation. We see that clearly in conditions such as alcoholism, poverty, and bigotry to name a few. We even have a name for battling it: breaking the cycle.

And the greatest cycle that humanity is caught in is illustrated in the original passing of sin. Every Christian knows that Genesis 3 is where "Original Sin" enters our history but I think we sometimes forget that the "Original Consequence" is found IMMEDIATELY afterwards in Genesis 4 where Adam & Eve's one son, Cain, murders their other son, Abel.

The Biblical author knew that violence is the deadliest outcome of missing the mark of being in concert with God. And you can make a strong argument that Jesus came primarily to demonstrate and rescue us from this seemingly endless cycle of violence. He knew that we are so susceptible to resorting to it.

Now normally, in our First World lives, we don't pay much attention to that cycle. I'm guessing that few of us leave our homes prepared to fight to the death.

But then something horrific happens such as the terror attacks in Israel or, to give an American context, 9/11 and we reflexively harness our inner Cain. I know I do.

But, and here's the unpopular part, Jesus commands you not to.

I consider myself fortunate that this time I can be hashing this out as a theological conundrum rather than as a combatant, but I know that I failed in 2001 and suspect I'd fail if it was revisited to my personal doorstep.

But as a country, it is being visited upon our doorstep and I fear that collectively we will fail. That individually we will fail and that will give our leaders the grave opportunity to throw fuel on this fire and light the world aflame.

So as a Christian, I am called to resist leaning into violence no matter how tempting it is. I am called to denounce all violence as uncomfortable as that makes me feel.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

(PS: If you want to educate yourself on the non-violence of Jesus, I'd strongly recommend reading John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, William Stringfellow, Walter Wink, Daniel Berrigan, and Miroslav Volf to name a few. I would be happy to get you an e-book of a few of these authors.)

(PPS: Not sure I intended to ever get back on this horse, but here I am)

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I know I said I was taking a hiatus but then they pull me back in with a church sign.

Really? Really???

I’ll give them credit that on a PURELY TECHNICAL basis this church’s sign is correct: Grace was achieved at Christ’s expense.

But is this an effective message? More importantly, is this a message that Jesus would share? I emphatically answer “no” to both (and will share some proof later in the article).

Imagine a child receiving a wonderful Christmas present and then their mother chiming in, “I hope you realize that this present was given to you at your Father’s great expense”. And then she delivers the coup d’etat, “He died so you could have your present”

Now those are two factual statements, but if I was that child I’m putting down that present and slinking away.

When Christianity is presented like this, I get why people become atheists. Hell, consider me an atheist if this is how God sees us. I 100% reject a Higher Power that guilts us into faith.

Thankfully, He doesn’t.

Grace is a gift that can’t be earned. It is a gift of love. If you’re a decent parent you understand this. Our children never earn our love. It is never at our “expense”. And God isn’t merely a decent parent, He is the Perfect Parent.

Jesus loves us and would do anything for us including laying down His life. That is tallied in the “love” column never the “expense” one.

At this point you may be thinking, “hey Tim, this lovey dovey Jesus talk sounds great but is it Biblically supported? Didn’t you say that you would share some proof?” I think that is a great question so I decided to do an investigation into the Greek noun “xáris” which we translate as “grace”.

Turns out that xáris, or some form of that noun, is used quite a lot in the New Testament. 157 times if BibleHub can be trusted. But over 97% of the time, it is used by someone other than Jesus, and I’d really like to hear what Jesus thought about grace seeing as though I’m stipulating that He would take issue with this church sign.

Now, I realize that you might PERCIEVE that I am treading into heretical waters. So I’m going to tread carefully here.

I treasure that the authors of the New Testament (John, Luke, Paul, et al) share what the concept of grace is, but they can only share what it feels like to RECEIVE grace or to OBSERVE what grace looks like. As valuable as that wisdom is, and it is valuable and inspired, only Jesus can tell us what it means to extend grace.

So Jesus…do you perceive Your grace to be something listed in the expense column or the love column?

Jesus only uses the word xáris 4 times that is recorded in the New Testament. In Luke 17:9 we translate it as “thank” and Jesus uses it in a parable to describe how His disciples should act. I could squeeze this verse to get an answer about grace, but I think the other 3 occasions where Jesus uses xáris are more fruitful.

All three occur in a passage in the Sermon on the Plain, in Luke 6:32-36, which is an abbreviated version of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. In that passage xáris is translated as “credit”:

If you love those who love you, what credit (xáris) is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit (xáris) is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit (xáris) is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners in order to receive back the same amount. But love your enemies and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil people. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Luke 6:32-36, NASB

Granted, “credit” might seem like it is ill suited to explain grace, but I would tell you to reread that passage and see if you think that Jesus is someone who is expecting to receive “credit” for His actions.

He certainly isn’t.

What He is saying is that you are to love because we are designed to love one another. Love for love’s sake. Not for anything in return. Love is its own reward. Love is how we become the “sons of the Most High”.

And if Jesus is preaching it then you can be certain He is living it.

So no, Jesus wouldn’t be putting that sign up. I’m guessing He would have a “need grace? I got you covered!” sign but apparently that sentiment is in short supply amongst His pastors in America as a Google search didn’t return much.

But here are some alternate examples I did find for Munster Church to consider:

Well its back to a crash course in SEO and PPC as I will be hitting the ground running next Monday as the new General Manager at Windy City Rooter. As you can see, its hard for me to sideline this passion of writing about Jesus, so I promise you that I’ll be back on a regular schedule starting in the Summer.

But in the meantime, if you find any church signs that you think would piss me off, please send them my way. I can always make an hour or two for a 1000 word rant.

And finally, if you made it this far and you are someone who walked away from this brand of Christianity, I encourage you to reach out to me because there is a different Way. A Jesus Way.

And finally finally…remember:

Jesus Loves You!

Its with bittersweet emotion that I am writing you today to announce that Jesus.Place will be going on a temporary hiatus.

I am excited as…

I am starting on a new career path at the age of 56. I have accepted the position of General Manager at Windy City Rooter, a plumbing company located in Antioch, Illinois. I look forward to working with the Windy City workforce to uphold our reputation as the premier plumbing company in Chicagoland and to expand our business operations.

I am sad as…

Getting up to speed at Windy City Rooter will occupy my complete attention and therefore I will not have the time to adequately devote to Jesus.Place. When I started out writing at Jesus.Place, I did so with the knowledge that my casino career only required 40 hours a week and that left adequate time to conceive, research, and write my weekly articles at Jesus.Place. Adequate time is not available in the immediate future to passionately pursue both this new career path and my writing.

However…

I plan on returning to Jesus.Place sometime in late Spring or early Summer of 2023 when I have settled in. But return I will as I am convinced more than ever that people are searching for a spiritual answer, but they are turned off by church and organized religion. Jesus is the answer and if I can help even one person find their way to the Way then I’m compelled to share again.

And I will say with 100% certainty that…

Jesus isn’t taking a hiatus in my life.

In fact…

I found this position because I have been intentional in my walk with Jesus. I’m far from perfect, but I take my faith with the utmost seriousness. My mantra is “love God and love your neighbor, and who is your neighbor? EVERYONE!” By demonstrating that love, I came to the attention of the owner of Windy City Rooter, and I plan on managing his business with love as my guiding principle.

Thank you for being a subscriber at Jesus.Place. This isn’t a goodbye, but just a “see ya later”. Until we meet again, remember…

Jesus loves you.

It seems like ages ago (even though it’s only been a month) that I finished up Part 1 & Part 2 of my 3-part series on using analogy to describe God. But I’m eager to dig in on this final part because this is the analogy that I have always used to describe the mechanics of my faith, the nuts and bolts of it.

So lets get into “The Gym” as an analogy for understanding God.

Every year, with the passing of December into the new year of January, the fitness industry experiences a boon. Millions of Americans vow a New Year’s resolution to get fit.

For most, that is shedding some unwanted pounds that they have allowed to accumulate, but for others, it might be to tone up, get their cardio back into shape, or head off some potential health issues. Whatever the reason, the new year seems to act as a clarion call for all of us to address our overall fitness.

So we make the trek over to the local gym franchise, get the tour, and then plunk down for a membership.

Then typically, for a few weeks, we are diligent gym members.

We’ve carved out time to workout 3 to 5 times a week. We’re on a meal plan at home and are carefully adhering to our diets.

Things are looking good.

But then something happens. Perhaps we go out to dinner and break from our diet. Maybe our workout buddy gets sick, and we decide skip that gym day.

Whatever the reason, most of us end up abandoning that New Years resolution. According to LifeHack.org, one large gym fitness chain reports that by the end of March over 90% of those new sign ups will stop going to the gym.

I know, I know: its a fascinating story, but you’re asking, what does it have to do with God?

Well, fitness seekers have the gym, and God seekers have faith. And if you thought that failed fitness acolytes have a sorry tale to tell, I think that many misguided God seekers live out a sadder story.

Lets see if I can tell the unfortunate God seekers story within the analogy of a gym.

So instead of people abandoning their fitness goals by the end of March, let’s say that 90% are still going to the gym on the regular.

From head to toe, they look the part as they roam the gym sipping on their hydro flasks and scanning workout apps on their smartphones.

Plus, they are no longer newbies. They know the front desk staff, and they have met new friends at the gym that they look forward to seeing on a regular basis.

The gym has become an essential part of their life.

Therefore, everything is going great. Or is it?

If the idea of going to the gym is to meet people then, sure, its been a success. Or if being a member of the gym is a status achievement, well, ok, you have a achieved it.

But isn’t the goal of going to the gym to get fit? You can have a membership, be a well-respected member, and even be the most sought after, but unless you’re picking up some iron, you’re not going to get fit.

Osmosis doesn’t work at the gym.

Nor does it for God seekers.

If you want to know Christ, you are going to have to put in some work:

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.

James 2:14-26, ESV

Now, I don’t say that as condemnation of others, but as a word of warning from someone who has avoided that work.

I was fortunate 9 years ago to have an encounter with Jesus that changed my life, but I think that lightening strike of an encounter spoiled me a bit. Thankfully, it also created hunger that always gnawed at me even when I refused to feed it.

But it must fed if you want to know Christ.

And Jesus is begging you to feed on Him.

Consider what Communion is. It’s not some GRANTING of magical power found in the combination of a juice box and a stale cracker. Its an INVITATION to KNOW the most Loving Presence in the Universe on a personal level.

Or consider these words from Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew:

So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

Matthew 7:12-23

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

Matthew 25:31-46, ESV

Maybe I’m wired differently, but I’ve never read those words and worried about my eternal salvation.

Maybe it’s because I had a personal encounter with Jesus that I’ve read them as an instruction on how to meet Jesus again.

By no means am I claiming to be the “fittest” Jesus follower in the gym. No, I have still have some spiritual weight around my midsection that I want to lose. But I can tell you with absolute certainty that if you follow Jesus words in Matthew 7:12-23 and 25:31-46, you can experience the Kingdom coming on Earth in the here and now.

So put your membership to work and get fit with Jesus. He’s ready to get started now. Are you?

I wanted to pen a summary of my 3 day experience at the Asbury Revival of 2023 that spontaneously kicked off at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky on February 8^th, 2023 and still is going on as of today, February 21^st, 2023.

I’m going to tell this story in 4 parts, and I’m going to embed my TikTok videos (yes, I’m a TikTok’r now) so from there you can get both a written and video feel of what it was like to be at the Asbury Revival of 2023 for 3 days.

I learned of the Asbury Revival on its 5^th day, Sunday the 12^th, and I immediately felt convicted that I had to attend. As I mentioned to a few friends at work that Sunday, I talk a good Jesus game, but if Jesus was making His presence known at Asbury University, and I had the means, mode, and time to be in His presence…

And I didn’t go…

Then what am I doing?

So I got off work on Sunday night, and drove thru the night to arrive at Asbury at 6:30am on Monday morning.

I’m going to be honest…my first thoughts upon arriving were a rebuke of the question that got me in the car.

I arrived to a sleepy little town with its residents filing into its solitary gas station getting ready to head out to work. And none of them had any idea of people gathering, let alone an event the world was starting to call the Asbury Revival of 2023.

“What did I just do?” is the thought I had.

But I quickly figured out that the locus of the Asbury Revival was an 1/8^th of a mile down the road at the Hughes Auditorium on campus. As soon as I walked into the auditorium, I was struck by a feeling of reverence.

There were only a few scattered people on the floor of the auditorium, perhaps 15 or 20 people in a space that holds at least a 1,000 on its lower level. None of them were sleeping, nor were they talking or mindlessly gazing at their phones.

They were in deep contemplation.

The video I made about this got a fair amount of flak from the commenters because they thought I was being critical. My “Holy Spirit taking a nap” quip probably wasn’t the wisest idea for a new audience, but that aside, I was not being critical.

@jesusdotplace#asburyrevival #asburyrevival2023

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I’m relatively new to this God thing (yes, I still feel like a newbie after 9 years), and I had never experienced a group of people in such a deep state of contemplation. Also, I had never been in a building that FELT as Holy as this building did.

I knew then that I had made the right decision to come.

Outside of the auditorium, I got to chatting with a local police officer, a kid named Zack who had just came in from Knoxville, Tennessee, and another guy from Pennsylvania. It was weird how the 3 of us from out of state had been drawn here, and equally weird that the local cop didn’t think it strange at all.

It was as if all 4 of us realized that something special was taking place and the usual rules and mores didn’t apply.

I found out that a chapel service typically starts each day at 9am so after catching a quick breakfast at that solitary Shell station, I made my way back into the auditorium around 9.

As you can see in the picture below, it was almost empty of people, but I promise you, it wasn’t empty of Spirit.

I will always remember the young man playing the red guitar. He sang chorus after chorus of “Nothing But The Blood of Jesus”. I picture him like a modern-day John the Baptist, alone at the Jordan River before the crowds knew to flock there, but singing with a quiet confidence because he knew they would come.

And come they did.

They started arriving in groups of 2’s and 3’s, and then the college students started filing in in single file lines from the front and back of the auditorium. And by 9:30 or so, the auditorium was at least half full of its 1500 seating capacity.

But I had just been outside a mere 30 minutes ago, and there was no sign of these people. Where do you stash 600 to 800 people until the service starts? Or did they all providentially appear like my new friends and I had done?

My only other memory of that morning (I was getting a little sleep deprived) was of the bluegrass band that sang Gospel music. Halfway thru their worship set, the banjo player in the band took to the mic to tell the assembled what type of music they sang.

He mentioned that these were traditional songs that were either created or adopted by the people in the “hills & holler” of Kentucky. These people lived hard lives with no expectation of any improvement in this lifetime so they sang about places far away where life was better. They believed that Christ would be delivering them to a better place after this life.

And then he said something that brought me to tears.

He said; indeed Christ would deliver on that promise, but Christ’s true promise was of bringing Heaven to here on Earth. To bring His peace to all the dark places of the world. For He had vanquished Satan in Hell, and He was coming to bring deliverance to all those who languish in this life.

So we should sing to the depths of our souls, because God was delivering Heaven on Earth in this moment.

@jesusdotplace#asburyrevival #asburyrevival2023

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After a short respite at the hotel, I returned to the auditorium around 4pm to get ready for the evening session of worship and preaching. The crowd was still far below capacity, but you could feel the energy building in the room.

It was at this point that I noted for the first time what I call the “Christmas Tree” effect.

If you took a moment to scan the room carefully, you could see that random people were being overcome with emotion. The scene reminded me of a Christmas tree with lights that blinked on and off except this wasn’t a coordinated string of people.

No, it was like the Holy Spirit was dropping down onto individual believers and touching their hearts. One moment they would be singing, and then they would be overcome with the Spirit. Nothing showy or outlandish; just a pause in singing to sob tears of joy for a moment or a minute. And then they would resume worship while the same pattern would repeat itself across the room.

I’m going to close this first part of my story with a memory from the evening session.

As those who have been with me in church know, I am not a “worship” person. If I had my way, we’d get a 90 minute sermon every Sunday. Additionally, I’m not an “arms in the air” worshipper. The most you’ll get out of me is a little swaying back n’ forth.

But thru the morning and afternoon sessions, I could feel something building in me as I listened to the crowd in the auditorium worship.

I had run out to get a quick bite, and returned to find the auditorium at capacity, but as a “single” I was able to get in. As I was getting seated, one of the pastors was delivering a quick message on stage so I sat down quietly and anonymously as we are apt to do in strange locales with unknown people.

And then the worship music started back up and I became one of those Christmas tree lights.

I sat quietly but I started to sob in fits and starts like one who doesn’t want to embarrass themselves. But it was no use to fight and soon I was overcome with emotion.

Then they started playing a mash up of “Promises” and “Run To The Father”, songs I don’t know the words to, but nonetheless, I was up out of my chair singing and sobbing, holding my arms out in prayer and worship.

I came to Jesus 9 years ago, but I gave Him my whole heart in Asbury on that Monday night.

And no one will ever think of me as non-worship guy again.

@jesusdotplace#asburyrevival #asburyrevival2023 #asburyuniversity #revival #jesus #asburyuniversityrevival #worshipmusic

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Thanks for going down memory lane with me, and I’ll share with you what my 2^nd day at the Asbury Revival of 2023 was like in my next post.

God bless you and remember…

Jesus loves you.

If anyone sees a brother or sister committing a sin that does not result in death, they should pray, and God will give life to them—that is, to those who commit sins that don’t result in death. There is a sin that results in death—I’m not saying that you should pray about that. Every unrighteous action is sin, but there is a sin that does not result in death. (1 John 5:16-17, CEB)

I’ve had a busy week with my regular Tuesday article and then two articles (here & here) about Sam Smith & the Grammys so instead of finishing up our Analogies series, I thought I’d do a quick Explain It Like I’m Five article.

To those waiting on the “Gym” analogy, I promise its coming next week.

So what triggered my interest in 1 John 5:16-17?

I follow Jacob Wright on Facebook (you should too!). He is a Jesus follower and a sharp Christian thinker when it comes to viewing theology thru a Jesus lens. What I particularly like is that his comment section gets spicy from time to time.

In the comments, I came across a Catholic guy (this distinction will be important) who was arguing that some of us are irredeemable and on the express path to Hell. To say the least, this is contrary to my theology, but I was curious to know how he was building his argument.

Here is our exchange:

Me: You said “every person will be judged by their deeds”. As every person is a sinner then are we all going to hell?

Catholic guy: All are sinners, but not all are in *mortal sin*.

Me: Are you kind of Catholic in your thought that there are different levels of sin? And which sins are which level?

Catholic guy: Yes, I am Catholic. Scripture teaches that not all sin is deadly, or mortal. (He then cites 1 John 5:16-17 and the Catholic Church’s teaching on sin)

His next comment, though, gave me great pause:

Catholic guy: So, what we have are signs. Jesus says that we will know a tree by its fruit. This is what he is talking about. He is talking about knowing the goodness or wickedness of people by the actions they perform. Even here we only know the sign and not the inner reality directly, and sometimes the signs are ambiguous, so we must always be reserved in our judgment. But this also means we can always hold out hope for anyone because we do not directly see their souls, only God does. We may hope for the salvation of anyone upon their death, not knowing whether God has saved them. Even if there are no signs of grace. Sometimes there seems to be signs to the contrary. We can only pray for God's mercy.

Granted, this is “Facebook Comment Theology”, so people are marshalling their thoughts on the fly and this unfortunate soul was taking fire from all directions so I’m going to cut him some slack that his explanation is somewhat meandering (God knows I suffer from that as well).

With that in mind, let’s dig into it.

I’m operating under the theology that Jesus had already taken care of sin. See Romans 5:12-21, Colossians 2:13-15, John 3:16-17, John 16:33, Romans 8:1, as a small sample.

In my theology, assuming we are believers, Jesus has already done the heavy lifting.

But Catholic guy appears to be saying that some believers can be disqualified from Jesus’ atoning work based on the severity of their sin. What Roman Catholics term a “mortal sin”. We should be able to get a pretty good idea who is going to Hell based on their behavior, their “fruit”. He leaves hope for a last-minute pardon by Governor God, but that seems an iffy proposition.

Again, I’m not a fan of this theology at all.

Seems like we better be toeing the line pretty carefully. And for those of us who have more than a few “mortal sins” on our resume, it appears we’ve got to catch God on good day. Is there an article somewhere like those that tell me the best time to post on Facebook except they give me the best times to petition God? (Never on Holidays and try just after lunch so He is not hangry)

But it doesn’t matter if I’m not a fan of it. What matters is if his theological argument is stronger than mine.

And the linchpin to his theological argument is 1 John 5:16-17. That there is a distinction of sin that DOES NOT lead to death and sin that DOES lead to death.

My argument is that Catholic guy is misreading 1 John 5:16-17. And not just him, but all Roman Catholics as this is the linchpin of Roman Catholic sin theory. So I’m not just arguing with some rando on Facebook but Roman Catholics writ large which sounds like a great idea for a busy week.

Thankfully, there is an explanation in mainstream Protestant theology that I can turn to which is rooted in the environment that Saint John is in.

As Colin Kruse writes in his heralded commentary, The Letters of John, “Anyone seeking to make sense of the Letters of John really needs to have a working hypothesis concerning the events which lie behind them.”

Kruse then gives us a great synopsis of those events:

The Gospel deals primarily with the ministry of Jesus and reflects the conflict between Jesus and some of his Jewish contemporaries. At a secondary level, the way the story of Jesus is written may reflect something of the experience of the Christian community of which the Beloved Disciple was a member when he wrote his Gospel. This community consisted of a number of churches, probably located in and around Ephesus in the Roman province of Asia.

Sometime after the writing this early form of the Gospel, difficulties arose within this community. Some of the members had taken on board certain beliefs about the person and work of Christ that were unacceptable to the author of the letters and those associated with him. These new beliefs involved a denial that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, come in the flesh (1 John 4:2–3), and that his death was necessary for the forgiveness of sins (1 John 5:6–7). A sharp disagreement arose which resulted in the secession of those who embraced these new views (1 John 2:19).

The secessionists (as we shall call them hereafter) were not content to keep their new beliefs to themselves. Instead they organized a group of itinerant preachers who circulated among the churches and propagated their beliefs with a view to winning people over to their understanding of things.

So Saint John has got a mutiny on his hands!

And the purpose of these Letters is to shore up the knowledge and faith of those in his community who hadn’t bailed on him.

As Kruse writes, “The author’s purpose, however, was not to correct the secessionists (the letter was not written for them), but to show his readers that the secessionist claims were false. By doing this he wanted to prevent them from being deceived by secessionist teachings.”

So, with this as the background, let’s revisit a statement I made earlier:

In my theology, assuming we are believers, Jesus has already done the heavy lifting.

But what if you are not a believer? What if you are a secessionist from Saint John’s community? Wouldn’t it make sense that you can’t ask for atonement from a being that you don’t believe has the power to grant it?

If Jesus is the gift of life, then isn’t the denial of him a denial of life? And wouldn’t that be the one and only sin that would result in death?

See I don’t think Saint John is creating a categorization of sins. Instead, he is categorizing people.

He states in v16: “If anyone sees a brother or sister committing a sin that does not result in death, they should pray, and God will give life to them—that is, to those who commit sins that don’t result in death”. These “brothers and sisters” are believers, members of Saint John’s community. And Saint John is saying their sins won’t result in death because they aren’t committing the only sin that does, the sin of unbelief.

Then in v17 he tells them to not bother praying for these secessionists as no prayer can help them as they won’t accept the gift of life that Jesus is and that results in the sin of death.

For some reason this clicked with me before I knew the backstory so I was encouraged to find support in the commentaries I read:

So much for a “quick article” but I thought important to include the 600 words of commentary from the foremost scholars regarding the Johannine Epistles, and these commentaries of Kruse, Thatcher, Smalley, and Marshall are considered best in class.

(Note: the historical context in which Saint John’s Gospel & Epistles were written is a phenomenal story, but I didn’t have another 2,000 words to explore it. Nonetheless, I would encourage you to do so.)

Additionally, I thought it important to shine a light on the doctrinal issue of atonement from sin. I’m certain my Catholic brothers and sisters will differ with me, but for those of us who are Protestant or Orthodox, I wanted to demonstrate that John isn’t putting a believers salvation in doubt. He’s just reinforcing the certainty that you can’t get salvation if you reject it.

You can’t win a game you won’t play.

So keep playing, my brothers and sisters. Even you Catholics who want to add complexity where it needn’t be added. Keep playing even when you stumble. Keep playing because in Jesus you have won.

Amen.

God bless you and remember…

Jesus loves you.

References:

Kruse, Colin G. (2000). The letters of John (Pillar New Testament Commentary). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Marshall, I. Howard (1978). The epistles of John (The New International Commentary on the New Testament). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Smalley, Stephen S. (1984). 1, 2, and 3 John (Word Biblical Commentary). Word Books

Thatcher, Tom (2006). 1, 2, and 3 John (The Expositor’s Bible Commentary). Zondervan

Sam Smith’s and Kim Petras’ performance of their single “Unholy” at the 2023 Grammys has rattled a few cages, especially in the Christian world. Their performance on Sunday night certainly lived up to its name, and that’s what seems to be getting the majority of the criticism.

I’d like to offer, however, a different critique. One that starts with another unholy night.

The night I watched a man beaten to death with a baseball bat.

On that night in 1991, a buddy and I were out to score drugs in Las Vegas. Unfortunately for us, our regular spot was out of commission which posed a problem: two clean cut white guys weren’t gonna have much luck on their own. We looked too much like cops, and my buddy driving a Crown Vic wasn’t helping matters.

So as enterprising fiends, we picked up a local resident to score for us. We buy his drugs, and he finds us a dealer and makes the deal.

Where he took us was a street that made a “U” thru a neighborhood, and at the base of the “U” he got out of the car to go deal with a group of three men sitting on the stoop of a house about 100 feet away.

As he got to within about 10 feet of the stoop, one of the men started to yell at him. I said to my buddy, “this doesn’t look good” but he insisted this was just part of the process.

Our guy stopped and then all three of the men got up and started walking towards him with the original guy still barking and now waving his hands menacingly in the air.

Again, I said, “hey, this is bad; lets get out of here”, but my buddy insisted we weren’t going anywhere. That guy had our $200 and, more importantly, those guys had the drugs we were dying for.

And die somebody did.

Cause one of those other two swung a wooden bat and caught our guy flush in the side of the head.

From 100 feet away, it sounded like the crack of a home run ball, but instead with a mist of blood and brain matter leaving the bat. It was unbelievable to watch. But absurdly, my pal didn’t want to leave.

Me: “Lets go. NOW!”
Pal: “Nah, they’re just arguing”
Me: “No, they just killed that guy”
Pal: “He’ll be ok”
Me: “They knocked his f’n head off!”

It took the guy with the bat starting to jog towards us to give my buddy a reality check, to finally put the car in gear and drive away.

I’d love to tell you we went straight to the police, but that didn’t happen. No, we went to a different neighborhood, found a different local, and made a different deal, this time sans baseball bat.

That unholy night has always haunted me, but what does it have to do with Unholy at the Grammys?

I’ve always been a “live and let live” guy. I was one in 1991 and now I’m a “live and let live” Christian.

What that means to me today is that while there is MUCH I don’t agree with in the world, I tend to ignore it as long as you’re an adult and your garbage doesn’t spill over onto me and mine.

Wanna abuse drugs? Bad idea, but you’re an adult. Cheat on your wife? That’s gonna end poorly, but you’re an adult. And even when it comes to my faith, you’re an adult and you don’t have to follow my path.

My reasoning is that I’ve never stopped doing something because I was prohibited from doing so. In fact, the prohibition usually made me want to do it more. I’m grateful some kind people gave me the “bad idea” speech, but I’m certain my faith wouldn’t work if I didn’t come to it willingly.

So I’m going to allow others to lead the charge that this looked like a Satanic ceremony, that it was lewd & lascivious, that it shouldn’t be on Network TV. I’m in agreement with that, but my “live and let live” instinct is to just be the guy that says:

“Hey America, this is a bad idea”.

But if the mainstream media is any indication, you’d wonder why I’d even have an opinion.

Reading some outlets, I’m wondering if I watched the same performance. Kind of getting the 2020 “mostly peaceful” vibe.

Here’s Access Hollywood’s take. An epic night. Racy. Never heard Satan referred to as merely racy, but ok.

(Note: I was going to include the full video of the performance, but CBS/Viacom is playing whack-a-mole with them on YouTube. So you get Access Hollywood)

Grammy.com calls it a “fiery performance” and Variety.com “horror movie inspired”. But I think People.com takes the cake because they didn’t even report on the performance. They only note a “show-stopping all-red moment on the red carpet”.

To their credit, some outlets did report on the controversy. But mainly to question why there is a controversy.

Billboard.com writes (and the author has to have a wry sense of humor) “Instead of celebrating the fact that the pair made history for the LGBTQ community that night, conservative viewers slammed the performances for promoting the worship of Satan”. You’re shocked conservatives didn’t celebrate LGBTQ history? And were bent over Satan worship? Really?

Upworthy.com asks “Was it a historic moment of inclusion or a historic display of a Satanic ritual broadcast to the world?” I’d take Door #2 but you know what? I guess I’m wrong: “Taking it from the song creators themselves, it seems the message really being put out is that of acceptance.” Oh, my bad. That was an “acceptance” performance.

Folks, we’re being gaslit.

That seems to be the theme of this century’s “Roaring 20’s” and “move along, nothing to see here” is its motto. We are the boiling frog in the pot, but no one wants to acknowledge that we’re in a pot, let alone boiling. The Grammys are just the latest example.

A functioning society works when we can have an open discussion about the path we are on. We’ll never agree completely, but differing opinions keep us from tilting too far to one side culturally (I’m keeping politics out of this).

Within Christianity, I’m the progressive liberal. To some, I’m the Sam Smith. But amongst good faith people in our faith, we can discuss and disagree. Granted, there are some folks who REALLY don’t like my opinions but I never feel like I can’t have them.

But in our secular world, that seems to be the case.

A couple people close to me told me not to write this article. I said “why not?” and they said because this is a LGBTQ thing, it’s a trans issue. To me, it’s a Satan issue, and if it was put on by the Elks Club, I’d have the same damn complaint.

We can’t have topics off limits because we might upset the grievances of one group or another. But we do, and that’s where the Grammys Unholy night converges with my unholy night in Las Vegas.

I should have never picked up that poor guy in Las Vegas, but my desire to get high got the best of me.

I should have yelled, beeped the horn, done something when I knew he was in trouble, but I so wanted to get high.

I should have gone to the police so his family could have gotten some justice, but my high was more important than that.

Our journey as a society is somewhere between the car and that stoop. Somewhere before the yelling starts.

But very few people want to get involved before the action kicks off. Much like I didn’t want to jeopardize my high, many don’t want to risk their relative comfort.

In the words of Churchill, they want to feed the crocodile in the hope that it eats them last. Except this reptile is the snake of Eden, and I’d gladly feed myself to the croc rather than being consumed by the Enemy.

We shouldn’t need that supernatural incentive, but perhaps that’s just our sad reality.

For as a human, I’m called on to do something before the bat gets swung, but as a follower of Jesus I am compelled to do so. One’s a recommendation and the other a requirement.

So I’m beeping my horn.

Society doesn’t have to agree with me, but I must share my voice, no matter the cost.

Its unholy otherwise.

Picture Credit: (Getty Images for The Recording Academy/Emma McIntyre) http://bit.ly/3Ylzgfy

An Open Letter To Kim Petras and Sam Smith

February 7th, 2023

Hi Kim and Sam,

I am a writer about all things Jesus. And tomorrow I will be writing a commentary from that perspective that is critical of your performance of Unholy at the 2023 Grammys.

But too often we discuss performances without taking into account the people who put them on. Unholy is merely a song, but Kim Petras and Sam Smith are real people; not just celebrities.

Therefore, I wanted to address you, Kim and Sam. I’d love to have a conversation with you, but as that will probably never happen then this short letter will have to do.

I think it’s clear that your performance was designed as a shot at religion and Christianity in particular. I can’t blame you, I take shots myself and I’m in the club.

But what Kim said, after the Grammys, really struck me:

“I think a lot of people, honestly, have kind of labeled what I stand for and what Sam stands for as religiously not cool, and I personally grew up wondering about religion and wanting to be a part of it but slowly realizing it didn’t want me to be a part of it,” she said. “So it’s a take on not being able to choose religion. And not being able to live the way that people might want you to live, because as a trans person I’m already not kind of wanted in religion. So we were doing a take on that and I was kind of hellkeeper Kim.”

You wanted to be a part of Christianity but realized it did not want you.

That is heartbreaking.

I feel that heart break, but in reality, I have NO IDEA what it is like to walk in your shoes. To be Sam as an open homosexual at a Catholic school. To be Kim as the world’s youngest transsexual.

But I am well versed in one area that concerns both of you.

As someone who was an active participant in Satan’s playpen, I do have a VERY CLEAR IDEA that what you are doing is indeed playing with fire.

As Jesus says in Luke 23:34, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

You may think your performance is a mere mockery of Christianity, but I know the Enemy sees it as an audition for a leading role in his cruel band. And while Christianity may appear to be restrictive to you, you have no idea the life of bondage Satan has in store for you.

Whatever barbs you have for Christianity and/or organized religion are probably well deserved. As followers of Jesus, we don’t follow very well. But please don’t allow our imperfections to deny you the perfection of His love.

Because while you may never be welcome in religion, you are ALWAYS welcome in Jesus’ arms. He loves you just as you are.

Be Well,

Tim Soper
www.Jesus.place

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Picture Credit: Yahoo, https://yhoo.it/3K8J7B9

This is my 2^nd of 3 posts where I am using analogies to explain “what is God?” to me. If you haven’t read my first post, which uses Super Mario Bros. as an analogy for understanding God, I encourage you to do so as I will be building off of it somewhat in this post, and considerably in my final one.

In this post, I would like to build on the “power” that I, much like my arcade friend Mario, have discovered and put it to use to hear God’s will for my life.

To do so, I am going to use the casino card game, Blackjack, as my analogy.

For those who don’t know, I’ve spent the last 3 decades in the casino industry. During that time, I have probably observed more hands of Blackjack than most casino employees alive, and certainly more than any player living.

Blackjack is one of the few games in a casino that is a game of skill. That is a player who plays a perfect strategy, what we refer to as Basic Strategy, can narrow the casino’s advantage to nearly zero. And a skilled player who can “count cards” can flip the advantage from the casino to themselves.

But what is often misunderstood about card counting is how profitable it is. Movies like The Hangover and Rain Man, in addition to the fictionalized account in 21 about the real MIT team, tend to sensationalize the amounts that can be won.

In reality, a card counter works off a tight margin. A card counter who spreads his bets from $100 to $1,600 can expect to make $134 an hour. Not a bad living, but not exactly commensurate with putting at risk a bankroll 200 times that size, and the risk of detection by casino personel like myself.

In a perfect world, though, with no meddling casino supervisors to wreck your outing, card counting is an optimal way to earn a living if you have the discipline to play properly and the mental stamina to stay in the game for long periods of time.

This perfect scenario is where we shall construct my Blackjack analogy for understanding God by listening to His will for you.

Blackjack is an analogy for the game of life.

When we are birthed into this life, we are plunged headfirst into the game. Hopefully, we have parents who will provide some guidance to get us somewhat unscathed to adulthood. Unfortunately, many of us had some bumps in the road during childhood, but nonetheless, we will still arrive at our majority, whether we are ready or not.

And when we do sit down at the Blackjack game of life, each of us will employ a strategy.

Let’s go thru the types of players and the strategies they use.

Those players with little prior guidance, or those who disregard any received, tend to make random decisions that have no strategic value, but no strategy is a strategy in and of itself. Inevitably, the edge of the game whittles that player down. If they are fortunate, they survive to learn from their errors and change their strategy. If not, they become the losers of this game; scraping by to get back to the table, but inevitably forfeiting their bankroll again.

In the aggregate, life, just like Blackjack, will crush anyone without a strategy.

The second type of player has a strategy, but it is a defective strategy, typically birthed from trauma in their past. There are two subtypes of this player: the self-destructive and the self-aggrandizing. Without intervention, the self-destructive player is on the fast-track to ruin. The self-aggrandizing, however, tends to have big swings, with fantastic wins and large losses, but may indeed be a “winning” player at the table.

But what they both share is a contempt for life and those around them. Both players tend to quickly clear out any other players from the tables they sit at, and neither seems to be very happy playing. For one, it’s a suicide mission, and for the other, it’s the soulless task of acquiring casino chips.

In the aggregate, life, just like Blackjack, is stripped of its joy by those with a defective strategy.

The third type of player represents the majority of people. This player understands that to play the game of life like Blackjack that you need a strategy, a Basic Strategy for life.

Unfortunately, though, this player can’t follow that Basic Strategy in whole. They have what poker players call a “leak” in their game. In Blackjack, that might be never hitting a 12 against a 3 or not doubling an 11 against a 10. In life, their leak might be their health, their poor finances, or how they parent. They will probably get their money’s worth of enjoyment from the game, but far short of what they could have.

In the aggregate, in life, just like in Blackjack, this player leaves unrealized winnings at the table.

Which brings us to our final player. This player not only plays Basic Strategy well but brings with him or her a ringer to the table; their own card counting Blackjack Advisor.

They bring Christ.*

As we all have Christ in us, this option is open to everyone who plays the game of life, but as I described in my first post, Jesus is never going to impose on you, you have to lean into Him.

I consider myself fortunate that I had an experience with Jesus when I reached out to Him. And even more fortunate that He shared with me who He was and then asked me, “Tim, don’t you want to hear My words?”

That question has always stuck with me.

I now know that Jesus has always been in me. I’m also certain that while a similar Jesus experience is open to everyone who calls on Him, I don’t think it is necessary to feel His presence. We can all feel the “power up” of being in Christ when we follow His Way without a supernatural experience. I know I did as a child before I got lost in my trauma.

But what that question means is that none of us have to blindly stumble into a power up. We have a collection of books and letters from His original followers that can guide us to His Way.

The Bible, with a specific emphasis on the 4 Gospels and then the rest of the New Testament, is our Basic Strategy.

I don’t mean, though, that it is a simple instruction manual for a moral life. Sure, you can find those instructions, but that’s putting the cart before the horse. The primary instruction is how to draw closer to Him so He can guide your life. Once you see that, those moral instructions transform into a witness of what living in Christ is.

So, to take liberty with my Blackjack analogy, our Basic Strategy will certainly instruct you when to hit or stand, double or split, but what it really does is put you in contact with the Advisor who can flip the advantage in the game to you.

This is difficult for me to quantify, but I am not the man I was before I met Jesus. I am no longer operating solely under my own guidance. With His encouragement, I have become a better man. Kinder, more caring. Simpler.

I know that comes from Him indwelling in me, and me welcoming His guidance. Its a feeling within that prompts me to do the next right thing. And its as effective as if He was whispering the answers to life in my ear.

The trick, though, is actually listening. But when I do…

He’s flips the advantage to me.

That would be a great line to end on, but as we live in a world that keeps score, I think it wise to revisit the fortunes of the card counter who lives off of tight margins before I sign off.

As I mentioned, the public (and some casino managers) think that card counting always results in a win. That’s hardly the case. Over the years, I’ve watched many card counters get broken by a bad run of cards. When you flip the advantage, you only flip it to a 53/47 edge and those 47 losses can do a lot of damage to those 53 wins.

And that’s the case with life.

I know many people interpret the Book of Job as God testing Job, but I think of it also as God’s chosen children questioning why bad things happen to good people.

It’s a question we are still asking today. And much like the writer of Job, we want to think that our misfortunes are God’s will, part of some bigger plan that we can’t see or understand.

We must be wired pre-Genesis 3, pre-apple, because we seem to have some primal programming running that was designed for Eden. That programming just can’t compute that we live in a fallen world. It freezes and shuts down when tragedy and disaster befall us.

And the only way we reboot is that way lay that suffering at God’s door.

But I can’t reboot that way. I have come to know Jesus and I know the Trinity is not responsible for our mishap and misfortune. That isn’t the nature of a loving God, and I know my God is only love.

So I assure you that you will have good runs and bad runs, you will lose when you should win, and win when you should lose. But never judge your life by the chips you have, but by the life that you have lived in pursuit of them.

And know that God’s will is to know you, be in relationship with you, to power you, to guide you, and to travel the ups and downs with you every step of the way.

In Christ is your advantage.

God bless you and remember…

Jesus loves you.

* I’m not arrogant enough to think that professed Christians have the only ringer. I believe that Christ is in everyone, and adherents of other faiths, even some of my atheist friends, might be following Him without even knowing it. And I know some professed Christians that aren’t very Christlike. So, I’m not picking a fight; I’m just writing for those who are looking to follow the “Jesus way” in the only way I know how to describe it.

I had an epiphany the other day.

I asked my close friend, Mac, to read my Super Mario Bros. post. He responded:

As I’m pretty protective of my writing, my initial thoughts were quite defensive. Less words? More condensed? I had to work hard to get that piece in under 1700 words. How in the hell does he think I’m going to shrink this down to 1000 or 500 words?

What I love about Mac, though, is that he gives me his opinion, not what I want to hear. And the reality is that the market for 1500 word essays isn’t what it used to be. Present company excluded, but people just don’t read as much today as they did 20 or 30 years ago.

So I’m trying to sell horse & buggies when people are buying Model T’s. People are watching media more than reading it.

But then my epiphany hit.

Why not go find the money quotes from my posts and present them in a visual form as social media posts? And while I’m at it, why not go find the money quotes from my favorite Christian thinkers and do the same.

Make no mistake, I’m going to continue to produce 1500 word posts each week because that is how I organize my own thinking. But I’ve always known that I would eventually have to also get into the short video format, i.e. TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, because that is where the eyeballs are. And as I haven’t carved out that time yet, why not start with a simpler visual format.

Quote pictures.

Quote Pictures: My Content From Jesus.Place

I went thru all my posts and lifted as many standalone quotes that I thought were money quotes. My goal is to then put a link to the post that the quote came from. I’m also not arrogant enough to attribute the quotes to me, but if you know me, you know I considered doing that.

Quote Pictures: Quotes From My Favorite Christian Thinkers

The reality is that there is so much great Christian content that flies under the radar. Of course, many people know C.S. Lewis and Bonhoeffer, but there are some first-rate theologians that get relegated to niche status.

For example:

• Non-violence: Walter Wink & John Yoder

• Christian Ethics: Stanley Hauerwas

• Social Activist: William Stringfellow

• Reconciliation: Miroslav Volf

• Atonement: Rene Girard

• Discipleship: Dallas Willard

• Jesus Missionary: Carl Medearis

• Current First-Rate Theologians: C. Baxter Kruger, Bradley Jersak, Michael Hardin, Scot McKnight, Thomas Jay Oord

And that’s only a start. I’ve got at least a dozen more names.

Each one of these Christian thinkers is someone I am familiar with. Most of them, I have read a book or two of theirs, and a few of them wait patiently on my shelf. But I promise:

EVERYONE OF THEM has gone into how I understand God. I stand on the shoulders of these thinkers.

Most importantly, for you, my loyal readers, I’m certain that I can get at least an electronic copy of every book that I took these quotes from (that’s why the book is featured in the quote pictures).

I want to expose you to some of this great thinking and turn you, the last of the readers, onto their work. Just reach out via comment on any of the quote picture Facebook posts and I’ll email you a copy of the book if I have it.

I do, though, have a two small asks of you.

One, if you aren’t a follower of the Jesus.Place on Facebook, I would appreciate a follow. That’s how you’ll see these quote pictures.

And two, if one of these quote pictures strikes your fancy then please repost it on your Facebook timeline. There’s a ton of sappy Christian quote pics out there so I’d like to upgrade the offering. And I need you to do that.

I appreciate each and every one of you who is subscribed to Jesus.Place on SubStack. MORE THAN YOU WILL EVER KNOW. Thank you in advance and let’s see if…

A quote picture is worth 1500 words.

I’ve been a Christian for nearly 9 years, yet I still have a difficult time explaining why I believe in God, specifically the Christian God that I identify thru in Jesus Christ.

I don’t have a hard time understanding my own belief; I’ve lived this life for the last 9 years, so it makes sense to me. Where I struggle, though, is in explaining it to others. And explaining it so they might have their own Jesus experience.

I feel like I’m playing a game of Spiritual Charades, and I’m not very good at getting my point across.

Oh, you KNOW I am a Christian because its pretty much all I talk about, but too often I feel like I’ve missed something in my sharing. It’s as if I know where a winning lottery ticket is, but I can’t convince someone to go get it.

So, I’m going to try a different tact.

Analogy.

I love using analogies! As you may have noticed, I’ve used two analogies already in this post. Analogies are my default mechanism for explaining things which I’m certain any friend of mine will attest to.

Yet strangely, I haven’t taken the most meaningful experience of my life, my Jesus experience, and formulated a refined and detailed analogy for it.

But now I have. In fact, I’ve come up with three.

In this first of three posts, I am going to explain “what is God?” to me using “Super Mario” as the analogy. In my second and third posts, I will be using “Blackjack” and “gym” as my analogies.

So, let’s get started with Super Mario.

In the Spring of 1989, I spent a semester at a junior college in St. Louis where I didn’t learn much academically, but I did become fluent in Super Mario Bros., the arcade game. I invested more than a few pockets of quarters to learn how to navigate the levels of the game to save the Princess.

My memory of that Spring is a bit fuzzy, but I remember the trick to navigating all the obstacles and dangers in the game is “powering up”.

See Mario just can’t run thru all the levels and expect to save the Princess and win the game. He could do that, but he’s never going to score well or navigate past just a few levels without powering up.

So how does Mario power up?

They didn’t have too many different power ups in this early game in the Super Mario franchise. The most common one was the Super Mushroom that doubled Mario’s size and allowed you not to die if he got hit by an enemy. Less common was the Fire Flower which allowed Mario to throw fireballs. And the rarest was the Super Star that made Mario invulnerable to nearly everything.

Now that I’ve given you a short dissertation on Super Mario Bros., you may be wondering, how in the name of everything holy does this relate to God?

Good question so let me walk you thru my Jesus experience to explain.

As I detailed in an earlier post, I did not come to Christ based on any logic. I didn’t pick up a Bible and it miraculously made sense to me. I didn’t stumble into a church and was blown away by a sermon. Nor was I convinced by a Christian apologetic book like “The Case for Christ”.

I’m fairly certain that there was no line of reasoning that could have convinced me there was a God, especially the Christian God.

What it took for me was to experience the presence of Jesus Christ.

I was a non-believer who had run out of options which led me to try something completely out of character, a plea to God. And this wasn’t a phony plea. I meant it with every fiber of my being. God, if you are real, I surrender to you and ask you to fix me.

Lo and behold, I then experienced the presence of Jesus Christ. I’m going to save the explanation for how I knew it was Jesus for my next post, but what was just as powerful was how His presence made me feel.

I felt alive. I felt high. I felt an energy boost.

I felt powered up.

And all this for me was pre-Bible, pre-church, pre-anything Christianity. But I suspected that if the Bible, church, and Christianity were an outgrowth of Jesus then I should be able to find this power up concept within them.

Sadly, my early experience with church and Christianity led me to find this power up idea as the exception rather than the rule although those exceptions were powerful and reaffirming so I treasure them to this day.

The Bible, however, was where I found a bountiful harvest of the concept of being powered up. No, I don’t have a Super Mario Bros. translation of our Holy Scriptures, but the concept is all throughout the New Testament, primarily in the Gospel of John and in the letters of Saint Paul, if you know what to look for.

In Super Mario Bros, you consume a mushroom, flower, or star, and then Mario is transformed into Super Mario which is Mario’s best self. This transformation is temporary until Mario again triggers the release of one of these items which starts the transformation all over again.

In John 3:3, Jesus explains to Nicodemus the Pharisee that “unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God”. This stumps Nicodemus because how can a person be born again? Its just not physically possible.

But, of course, Jesus is speaking in figurative language.

Jesus is telling him that he must have a spiritual birth. To be new creation based on the belief in the Son of God.

But the word “belief” means something much richer in Greek than how we use the word as an acceptance of something being true. According to Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, the Greek “pisteuó” in relation to the New Testament means “the conviction and trust to which a man is impelled by a certain inner and higher prerogative and law of his soul”.

We are impelled by Christ when we turn towards Him (when we repent) and we accept Him into our heart much like our arcade character is transformed when he triggers the transformational item and consumes it.

For years, I was like Mario running and failing at Level 1 until I was shown how my surrender unlocked the spiritual fullness of who I am in Christ.

Now before I finish up with Saint Paul, I should address the issue of whether works creates faith. Or in plainer language, does something I do create my own faith?

The answer is unequivocally no.

Neither Mario or I create our transformation. We do have to initiate it. Mario by hitting a brick or me by leaning into Jesus. But neither of us creates our transformation. Mario can’t take credit for the mushroom nor I for Jesus.

Now let’s move onto Saint Paul who is the poster child for transformation in the New Testament. Acts 9, the conversion of Saul, is the arcade equivalent of Mario eating his first mushroom.

He is a man changed by the presence of Jesus. More so, he has been indwelled by Jesus and his Letters speak to that. He writes time and time again about being “in Christ” or of “Christ in you”.

Regrettably, I think many people read that to mean they are a part of this Christian thing of ours. They’ve been dunked, learned the slogans, and have the secret handshake so now they can claim they are in the club.

But I don’t think Paul means that at all.

Read these passages and interpret them to mean the spirit of Christ acting within you.

(Colossians 1:27): “the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory”

(Romans 8:9): “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.”

(1 Corinthians 6:19): “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?”

(Ephesians 3:17): “So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith”

(2 Corinthians 5:17): “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.”

Saint Paul isn’t talking about being part of a movement or a denomination. He is talking about being reborn from the inside out by the most loving Presence in the universe. And he is talking about it from a position of firsthand experience.

Alas, that’s where I find myself: trying to explain my own rebirth in Christ. To explain so you’ll go deeper into yours or so you’ll experience it for the first time.

Perhaps I should cut myself some slack. Saint Paul is acknowledged as one of the greatest writers of all time and certainly one of the wisest Christians to have ever lived. Yet even he went out into the sands of Arabia for 3 years to figure it out.

So, let’s see how my Mario analogy sinks in with you.

I write, I cajole, I interrupt, and now I’m telling analogies because I want you to feel what its like to power up. It will change your life and you’ll be addicted to putting your proverbial quarters in the Christ game and questing on His behalf.

I guarantee that with every fiber of my being.

God bless you and remember…

Jesus loves you.

Screenshot credit: https://supermarioplay.com/

(This is the 3rd & final post in a 3-part series about how sexual sin is crippling both our larger society and our Christian communities. I strongly recommend reading Part 1 and Part 2 before for you read this post. I’m going to talk frankly about sex - but nothing I think is NSFW - because we need to have MORE not less of these adult conversations. And I think you’re adult enough to do so.)

Thank you for joining me for my final post on sexual sin.

To quickly recap, my first post sketched out the breadth and depth of sexual sin, with an emphasis on pornography, and how that sin is harming us. In my second post, I discussed the concept of “sin”, what sin perverts, and how sexual sin might be the ultimate perversion of relationship.

I’ve outlined, to the best of my abilities, my mounting realization that sexual sin is an existential threat to humanity.

I’m guessing that if you made it this far you are somewhat in agreement with me. You might think I’m a bit hysteric about it, but you recognize that we have a serious problem with porn and sexual sin.

Which brings me to this post.

Admitting you have a problem is the first step to solving it.

But as Christians, I don’t think we’re ready to admit that WE have a problem.

Oh sure, society is on the fast track to Sodom & Gomorrah and humanity is just begging for Flood 2.0. But us? Christians? No, we’ve got a neat mechanism to deal with sexual sin.

Shame Club.

And the first rule of Shame Club is that you don’t talk about shame.

You might be asking “what is this Shame Club?”

Well, for the vast majority of Christians, it is your church.

Now before you go into some long-winded defense of your church, let me elaborate on my claim.

How many times has your pastor changed the sermon at the last minute to address his own personal sexual shame? “Good morning, I had prepared a sermon on saving the good wine for last, but today I feel it necessary to talk instead about how I struggle with sexual sin.”

Or have you ever greeted someone in church (“peace be with you”) and they asked if you’d stick around after the service to talk about the extramarital affair they’re having? Or the last time the Saturday Morning Men’s Group discussed each member’s struggle with their porn addiction?

We don’t do this in church because our churches are Shame Clubs and we don’t dare share our shame, especially our sexual shame, with our local friends and family.

To be fair, society at large weaponizes shame to keep people in line. Shame is a powerful tool to preserve order. No one wants to wear a scarlet letter.

But we’re not society. We’re supposed to be the aid station for humanity! Jesus came to rescue us (John 3:17) and our churches are supposed to be sanctuaries for the weary and burdened (Matthew 11:28-30).

Unfortunately, though, we have convinced ourselves that church is the destination of salvation not the vehicle for the journey to it. And that has created some misaligned incentives to use shame to manage that façade.

Dan Foster, a blogger who writes at the Backyard Church, wrote a stinging article about how churches use shame to create converts, raise money, police conformity, lift attendance, and manage behavior. And Dan has arrived at the same conclusions I have:

Christianity is supposed to be a life-transforming faith, but it has been reduced to a sin-management program in many churches where there are very clear guidelines about what a good Christian is and does…Guilt-based religion and shame work well to keep the troops in line because shame certainly is a powerful motivator— but only in the short term.

Shame is powerful, but it is a terrible solution.

I think, though, that you already knew that. The question then is where do we go from here?

Before I address that, I’d like to correct a statement I made earlier. I don’t think OUR CHURCHES are ready to admit that we have a problem, but I think we as Christians might be.

If we’re going to fight off the Enemy, its going to be a ground up movement. No institutional change is on the horizon. It’s going to start with individual Christians like you and me having conversations on how to pivot our faith from shame to focusing on being healed from sexual sin.

So, friend to friend, here’s a few ideas I have to start our conversation.

Houston, We Have A Problem

For some of you, this should be easy. You know you have a problem with sexual sin, be it porn or infidelity, and you’re just looking for a solution. If so, feel free to jump ahead.

But as someone with addiction issues and who has hung out with many addicts, I know firsthand that the addict is often the last person to admit to a problem.

So let’s simplify this.

If you are being unfaithful, you got a problem.

And while this one might be harder to swallow, I firmly believe that if you are viewing porn, you also have a problem.

It might not be apparent, but you are playing with fire and your brain is getting burnt out every time you view porn. Let’s nip it in the bud before it metathesizes into full-blown spiritual cancer.

(One another point before I move on: I’m going to be referring to us as addicts moving forward. If that offends you, I’m gonna suggest that you quickly get over it. If it helps, consider me an overbearing prick, but please don’t let this sidetrack you.)

Be Healed Not Prosecuted

Ok, we have a problem. But remember we are treating a cancer and not a crime. We can have a theological debate later whether sin is an offense to God. In the meantime, there is a patient to be saved, and I know just the Savior.

Jesus Heals

In AA, they reduce the first 3 steps to: “I can't, He can, I'll let Him”. People seem to be able to take those first two steps, but the third one is where most people fall off the stairs. We insist on believing that our “works” is what is going to heal us when in reality God is doing the healing that enables us to do the legwork.

You have to LET God heal you. You have to SURRENDER. You have to REPENT.

By the way, the word “repent” gets a bad rap. It just means to have a change of will, a turn to God.

To move forward, you need to turn to Jesus, surrender the wheel to Him, and let Him drive your recovery.

Hopefully, no one reading this needs to be convinced that Jesus is a healer. But if you do, the Synoptic Gospels are packed with stories of Jesus healing people. Here’s a link to handy dandy chart of Jesus’ healings provided by BibleWise.

A Threefold Cord Is Not Quickly Broken

My favorite book of the Bible is Ecclesiastes and if I get a chance, I’m always going to swipe a quote from it. What the Preacher (Solomon) is telling us in Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 is that there are no successful solo acts. You need a team to succeed.

This is a lesson that I constantly need to be reminded of. If I had my druthers, it would be the Jesus & Tim Show. But that is not the way our faith works. Oh sure, I can feel the presence of Jesus in my life when I’m alone, but the POWER of Jesus is apparent when two or more of us meet in His name (Matthew 18:20, 1 Corinthians 5:4).

We need community.

Sadly, when it comes to sexual sin, many of our churches are failing us. But there are Christian communities where recovery from sexual sin is taking place. For men, there is the Samson Society. And for men & women, you have Celebrate Recovery. There may be more communities out there, but I know both of these to be powerful assemblies of people in recovery.

But remember, people are strange so don’t write off recovery communities writ large because you stumbled into a group that isn’t your cup of tea. In the spirit of Jesus’ instruction to the 12 disciples in Matthew 10:14, shake off the dust from your feet and go find another group.

Cause you’re gonna need community to overcome sexual sin.

The Path To Recovery

You are running on 200 proof Jesus and are gathered with other addicts in recovery. So what’s next?

There’s some legwork to be done.

Thankfully, other addicts have blazed a path to living in recovery that we can follow.

I’m a big fan of the 12 Steps of AA. Granted, they were written for alcoholics but those 12 Steps can be applied to any addiction, even sexual addictions. And I’m a true believer that if you follow them diligently, fueled by the power of God, that even the most corrupt degenerate can be healed.

The Samson Society has a 7-step recommended program that they call “The Path”. What I like about the Path is that it is a Christian program whereas AA is a spiritual program. Additionally, while many of the men I have met in Samson Society meetings are struggling with sexual sin, the Path is written for anyone who is “living apart from God”.

Nobody said it would be easy but there is a proven path to recovery. You just have to be willing to follow it.

Falling Off The Path

Recovering from sexual sin is a journey, and sometimes your journey is going to go off the path and into the ditch.

Saint Paul understood this fully when he wrote to the Roman church:

For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. (Romans 7:15-20, ESV)

But Saint Paul counters in the next chapter with the following:

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:1-2, ESV)

Romans might be the most beautiful and insightful collection of writing ever compiled. Yet its twists and turns can sometimes give me a headache. But isn’t that what this journey of life can do as well?

Life is complicated and we do stupid things that complicate it even more. We wander away from the herd for the silliest of reasons. But our Good Shepherd always come back for us.

I think Saint Luke captures it beautifully in Luke 15:5 when he states “And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing”. Jesus literally has to pick us up and put us over His shoulder, because were gonna just keep wandering until He grabs us!

Stop wandering and let Him (Step 3) put you back on the path. Allow yourself to be carried by Him.

To My Pastor Friends

My last conversational idea is directed to those who run our Christian communities, our pastors and priests.

I am under no illusion that Christianity as an institution in America can be turned around in the aggregate. I don’t think that our churches, on the whole, will ever abandon Shame Club. I think it is baked into the cake.

But there is an opportunity for individual leaders of churches to turn their communities away from shame and pivot towards healing.

I have no idea how you do that, but you owe it to the people you pastor to try to replace shame with healing.

In conclusion, I’ll share one final story with you.

When I was a teenager, in a drunken blackout, I drove my parents’ car into a parked car. What a disaster! And for months afterwards I was tortured by a dream of the accident where the car was moving 1 MPH towards that parked car and there was nothing I could do to stop the crash. It was crazy that the car always moved so slowly, but the crash was always so powerful that it would wake me up.

I feel like I’m now watching that crash play out in our sexual sin.

I can’t tell you why it took me so long to see that we are in real danger. Maybe because I came from a world of sexual degeneracy or maybe I’m like the lobster slowly boiling in the pot. Or the car slowly moving towards the crash.

I don’t know why.

But I’m well aware of the problem now.

My hope then is that unlike my dream, maybe I’ve woken up before the crash so I can do something before sexual sin wrecks those in my small corner of the world. That I can have conversations like this with my friends in the real world. And you can do the same.

That we can win this battle, together in Jesus’ name.

God bless you and remember…

Jesus loves you.

(If you are a Christian man who struggles with addiction, I recommend that you look into the Samson Society. The Samson Society is a fellowship of Christian men who are serious about authenticity, community, humility & recovery.)

(This is the 2nd in a 3 part series about how sexual sin is crippling both our larger society and our Christian communities. I strongly recommend reading Part 1 before for you read this post. I’m going to talk frankly about sex - but nothing I think is NSFW - because we need to have MORE not less of these adult conversations. And I think you’re adult enough to do so.)

Let's talk about sex, baby

Let's talk about you and me

Let's talk about all the good things

And the bad things that may be

Let's talk abo—

No, no, no.

Wrong topic.

Let’s talk about sexual sin.

Talking about sexual sin isn’t very popular.

If you’re a secular person, you don’t want to be lectured about morality. And if you’re a Christian, its usually spoken as a cudgel against the “heathen” non-believers or to shame one of ours who has gone astray.

But discussing sexual sin to understand it and deliver people from it? That’s not in either camp’s wheelhouse.

But I’d like to take a crack at it.

With no lecture on morality. No pronouncing judgment. No shaming.

Let’s start with the concept of sin. What exactly is sin?

Thousands of pages have been written about the concept of sin and this isn’t the forum, nor do I have the theological chops to present a drawn-out explanation.

So, let’s keep it simple.

The Greek word for sin most typically used in the New Testament is “hamartia” and hamartia means “to miss the mark”; like a dart player missing the board or an archer missing the target.

Two things come to mind when I consider hamartia as sin.

First, there is no moralistic component built into the definition of hamartia. Missing the mark means you did something wrong, but it does not necessarily connote a value judgment on your intent or character.

You threw the dart into the door rather than the bullseye, but that doesn’t mean you hate the door or you’re a terrible person for doing so.

However, from my conversations with many Christians, I know this sterile definition of sin tends to rub some of you the wrong way.

I know this is thin ice I am walking on.

But I’m going to ask for your grace until I finish this series of posts. I’ll be going deep into this in my next post on Shame because the connotation of sin, the baggage that we attach to sin, threatens to crack the ice and swallow us whole.

As Richard Beck, a Christian writer and professor of psychology, writes, “the ‘hate the sin, love the sinner’ notion is just psychologically a nonstarter. Empathy and moral outrage tend to work at cross purposes.”

So, for my purposes, I’m going to destigmatize sin so we can bring it out into the light and discuss it like adults searching for a solution.

(Don’t worry though…that stigmatized concept of sin will be right there waiting for you if you need it when you’re done reading.)

The second thing I realized about hamartia as sin took me a while to see even though it was always right in front of me.

Missing the mark means we were engaged in an act that went wrong, NOT that we shouldn’t have been doing the act. To revisit my dart analogy, because you missed the board doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t be playing darts.

In fact, sin is a perversion or corruption of some attribute that God gave us as a necessity to live.

I love that my Catholic brothers & sisters are the cataloguers of all things God. If you can’t find it in the Catechism, you better check and see if you’re in the right classroom.

And the Seven Deadly Sins is a perfect list to demonstrate my point.

Let’s briefly go thru six of them (I’ll leave Lust as its own discussion) and see what necessity each corrupts.

Pride. Pride is having an exaggerated opinion of oneself or one’s actions. What is pride a corruption of? Wisdom. We need to sound thought and action, but when we start believing our press clippings, we get pride.

Greed. Greed is a selfish and excessive desire for more of something. And what necessity does greed corrupt? Well…necessity. We all have a baseline of primary survival needs. Food, water, shelter, etc. God gave us a drive to acquire those, but when we go into overdrive, we get greed.

Envy. Aristotle defined envy as the pain we feel when “those who have what we ought to have, or have got what we did have once”. Envy is a corruption of admiration. We need role models to admire and emulate, but when admiration gets corrupted, we get envy.

Gluttony. Here’s a sin we don’t talk about much. Gluttony is greed manifested in eating. As humans, we need to eat to survive, but when we overindulge our basic caloric needs, we have gluttony.

Wrath. Wrath is a corruption of righteous anger. In its proper application, anger is our early warning system that something is not right, that something is out of order in God’s plan. But when we don’t balance anger wisely, it evolves into wrath.

Sloth. We get labeled with sloth when we are lazy, but what virtue could sloth be a corruption of? Rest. Everyone needs rest; even God rested on the 7th day! But when we go too far with rest, we fall into sloth.

I think we need to think of sin in terms of a balancing act.

We need wisdom, drive, admiration, food, righteous anger, and rest, but we need to use them in the proper balance.

Theologian Cornelius Plantinga (oh boy, I’m quoting a Calvinist!) notes that “prophets kept dreaming of a time when God would put things right again”. This state of being in the Bible is “shalom”.

We tend to translate shalom simply as peace, but according to Mr. Plantinga it means “universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight” where every entity in the world would have its “own integrity or structured wholeness” but that we all would get along interdependently with “edifying relations to other entities”.

Shalom would be “the way things ought to be”.

To be in peace, to be in shalom, is to be in balance with ourselves, with others, and with God.

Perfect peace is a state of perfect love. In fact, if you replace “balance” with “love” in the aforementioned statement, you have a truncated version of the Great Commandment.

So with balance in mind, and the corruption that interrupts that state of shalom, lets look at lust, or more broadly, at sexual sin.

For some reason, sexual sin tends to be at the apex of sin in modern Christianity.

We’ve got a lot of prideful preachers, out of shape congregants, lazy disciples, and angry followers plus a liberal helping of envy and greed in our Christian communities, but those rarely are they the goats that we send out into the wilderness.

I have an idea, though, why sexual sin is at the top of the pyramid. And perhaps, rightfully so.

First, lets look at what lust is a perversion of.

Lust is a perversion of…lust.

Lust is a passionate desire, and we need passionate desire to prolong our species. If men and women stop being attracted to one another, this tribe of ours will go the way of the dinosaurs.

But much like fire can warm your house or burn it down, lust is a double-edged sword. As the HELPS Word-studies notes in the definition “epithumia”, the Greek noun for lust, lust “can be positive or negative, depending on whether the desire is inspired by faith (God's inbirthed persuasion).”

So God has a design for lust.

Obviously, we need to procreate so God made sex the most pleasurable activity we could engage in. Talk about a bribe! He even made it so pleasurable that we would do it again & again AND be willing to stick around & raise the fruit of our passion till adulthood.

I think, though, that He had an equally important second design for lust. One that isn’t as obvious but is the meaning of life.

Relationship.

Everything, both heavenly and human, is based on relationship.

The Trinity is the divine model of relationship.

(Sidebar: if you have a daughter, you know that 2 girls having a playdate is doable but that 3 girls is a disaster waiting to happen. I often wonder if God decided on the Trinity to say “hey, if the three of Us can get along then you humans should be able to figure it out”. I think, though, that God put too much faith in us, but I digress)

The Trinity is the ultimate relationship and amazingly, we are included in it!

We came into being thru Jesus (John 1:3), we know God thru Jesus (John 14:7), and we are called to love one another as we do God (Matthew 22:37-40, Mark 12:29-31, Luke 10:27-28)

RIGHT RELATIONSHIP IS THE MEANING OF LIFE!

Doubt me?

Go read the last part of each of the three versions of the Great Commandment I linked above. The answer is right there.

In Matthew, Jesus says, on this “depend all the Law and the Prophets” meaning all of Scripture, all of life. In Mark, Jesus says “there is no other commandment greater than these” meaning this is the prime instruction for life. And my favorite is in Luke where Jesus simply states, “do this, and you will live”.

You will live.

Relationship is the hinge life pivots on.

But there are some wild turns possible when lust is what greases our most intimate of human relationships, the joining of man and woman.*

Because while it’s the most intimate, it’s also the most fragile.

As high as passionate desire can take you, the fall from rejected desire is just as steep. We have shared our being with another, and they can say “thanks, but no thanks”.

And Satan knows this is the chink in our armor.

The weak point where life can be crippled.

He can’t attack the Godhead. Satan tried to tempt Jesus, but he failed. He tried to kill Him, but Jesus beat death.

Satan can attack humanity’s relationship with the Godhead, and while he’s won some battles, it is impossible to get God to give up on His children so that war will be ultimately lost.

But destroying the holy, yet fragile relationship of man and woman joined together? That’s a vulnerability with promise and Satan is hard at work exploiting it with the super-charged technology of the 21st Century.

Before I get to my closing, I want to acknowledge that I haven’t gone into the particulars of sexual sin. I’ve done this intentionally. As Christians, we tend to get bogged down in the details and argue with one another about what constitutes sexual sin.

Meanwhile, humanity is under attack.

So I’d like to posit that the inverse of my “live and let live” statement from my first post should be our focus.

That if what you are doing sexually is harming you or another, then that is where we should start.

That’s certainly a big enough task for me; focusing on how the technology of porn, sex work, and hook up apps is destroying us. If you need to see how daunting Satan’s array of weaponry is, then go back and read my first post.

But we don’t have time to dawdle.

We need to talk about sexual sin like adults.

We need to acknowledge that we have a sex problem not only in society but within our churches. We need to approach sexual sin as a therapeutic problem to be solved rather than a moral one to be prosecuted. We need to drag sexual sin out into the light because “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

The time has come to stop sending our scapegoats into the wilderness with our sexual sin. Let’s address them, right here, right now.

So I hope you’ll join me in my next post when I discuss how we use shame to mistreat sexual sin and suggest some healthy & productive alternatives to a shame based approach.

We’ve made it this far folks. Let’s take back sex from the Enemy who has hijacked it.

God bless you and remember…

Jesus loves you.

(If you are a Christian man who struggles with addiction, I recommend that you look into the Samson Society. The Samson Society is a fellowship of Christian men who are serious about authenticity, community, humility & recovery.)

*I didn’t go into same sex relationships because that’s a branch of this conversation that needs its own post. Somewhere down the road, I will address same sex relationships, but if that is you, for the time being know that you aren’t forgotten and Jesus loves you just the same. And feel free to reach out to me if you want to start that discussion.

References

Kruger, CB (2013). God in the hands of angry sinners. https://tftorrance.org/journal/s3/participatio-2014-s3-12-Kruger-87-102.pdf

Plantinga, C. (1995). Not the way it’s supposed to be: a breviary of sin. Eerdmans.

Photo Credit:

7 Deadly Sins: https://www.britannica.com/topic/seven-deadly-sins

(This is the first in a 3 part series about how sexual sin is crippling both our larger society and our Christian communities. I’m going to talk frankly about sex - but nothing I think is NSFW - because we need to have MORE not less of these adult conversations. And I think you’re adult enough to do so.)

I had a series of encounters in the last week that opened my eyes to the depth and breadth of the crisis of sexual sin that our society is awash in.

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The first was with a young female friend of mine commenting that sex should be treated as a gift to share with someone and, in response to her, a mutual male friend replied that sex wasn’t a gift at all.

Now if he was sharing some Jesus’ wisdom from Matthew 7:6 that you “do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine”, I think I could see his argument. But that’s not what he was saying.

He was stating that sex isn’t holy. He did concede that it might have been holy once, but that ship had sailed a long time ago.

My second encounter was with a different young female friend who told me that having a threesome was on her bucket list. She isn’t some thirsty young thot (if that went over your head…head on over to the Urban Dictionary).

Just a regular young female who thought a threesome sounded “fun”.

Fun?

I suggested that smoking crack is fun, and she looked at me like I was crazy. A well-deserved crazy look because smoking crack is a bad idea. But she couldn’t make the connection that a threesome might equally be a poor choice.

Now before I move on to my third encounter, I think I should address the two questions that I’m certain you have so you don’t dismiss me out of hand (and please feel free to light me up in the comments below).

I’m guessing that some of my more secular or liberal readers might be wondering:

Are you some sort of sexual prude, Tim? Maybe a fundamentalist religious zealot?

And the rest of you with at least a room temperature IQ are asking:

Tim, what world are you living in? We definitely aren’t in Kansas anymore, but brother, we haven’t been there in a long time. Perhaps you should have channeled your inner Rip Van Winkle rather than Dorothy.

I promise you that I am the furthest thing from a sexual prude, and if you give this series of posts a chance, I think I’ll make that point abundantly clear. And a fundamentalist? That would be the first time someone ever accused me of that.

As to what world I’m living in, well, that is a little more difficult to explain.

I haven’t been Van Winkling for the last 30 years. I’ve seen the tide of sexual permissibility rolling in. But I think I’m like the guy who knows he has a spending problem but then is shocked when he totals up his credit card debt. I had witnessed the crisis, but never comprehended it in total.

Which brings me to my third encounter. My third encounter wasn’t merely the shock of seeing the total . It was the realization that we were bankrupt.

I attended an online Christian men’s meeting where we were sharing our struggles with addiction. I happened to share first and explained that I had made a mess of my life due to drug and alcohol abuse, that sexual vice was part & parcel of that lifestyle, and I was here to work thru all those issues.

The remaining half dozen guys didn’t have a story like mine at all.

Oh, all of them were struggling with some sort of sexual issue. But none of them had my background. All of them were “good Christians”. Raised in the church; some were elders, and one was once a pastor. They had jobs, and wives, and kids.

They were all just what I would consider “normal guys”, but each one of them had a crippling sexual addiction, be it porn or promiscuity.

Whoa! This floored me.

I had come of age as an addict, and as I mentioned, sexual mores go out the window when you’re an addict.

We were all getting high to get off, and what better way to enhance your high than sex. There’s a reason why they say sex, drugs, and rock & roll. If you’ve ever done Ecstasy and sex wasn’t the outcome, then you kind of feel like you got cheated.

But drug addicts are outcasts in the world. We are the underbelly of society; the wrong side of the tracks. We are on the outside looking in.

And that’s my point.

You had to go looking for this stuff when I was in the deepest depths of my addiction in the late 80’s and early 90’s. You had to find a coke dealer. You had to go to that rave or nightclub. You had to seek out other members of our dysfunctional tribe to get sexually degenerate with.

Not anymore. My world has bled into every home in America. And now, quite literally, the call is coming from inside the house.

What am I getting at?

Well, when addicts shoot up, they call their needle a “rig” or “works”

Guess what folks? We’ve got the greatest rig in the world in our smartphone. It dwarfs the amount of dopamine that any junkie’s works could dispense.

And if you think I am being overly dramatic in comparing narcotics to porn then go do a Google search on cocaine vs porn. Here’s a snippet of what you’ll find.

This infographic from 2014 is both informative & depressing.

• Nearly everyone by age 18 has viewed Internet porn versus 16% of adults who have tried cocaine in their lifetime.

• 24 million claim to have an online porn addiction versus 1.6 million cocaine addicts.

And the kicker is that both porn and cocaine share the same brain impact and addiction cycle. Consider this 2011 article from Surgical Neurology International.

• “A recent study supports growing evidence that compulsive sexuality can indeed be addictive. In 2007, a VBM study out of Germany looked specifically at pedophilia, and demonstrated almost identical finding to the cocaine, methamphetamine, and obesity studies. It concludes for the first time that a sexual compulsion can cause physical, anatomic change in the brain, the hallmark of brain addiction. A preliminary study showed frontal dysfunction specifically in patients unable to control their sexual behavior. This study used diffusion MRI to evaluate function of nerve transmission through white matter. It demonstrated abnormality in the superior frontal region, an area associated with compulsivity.”

• “In one study, sexual experience has been shown to induce alterations in medium spiny neurons in the nucleus accumbens similar to those seen with drugs of abuse.”

• And similar to drugs of abuse, pornography addiction “decreased interest in pursuing goal-directed activities central to survival”.

I could go on and on, but I’d prefer not to turn this into a book. Here then are a few more links to shine a light on how porn is impacting us:

• Covenant Eyes porn statistics with a link to an extensive PDF report.

• Fight The New Drug list of 20 porn statistics.

• Brain Buddy 2021 porn statistics.

• Utah State University research on the effects of porn on relationships.

• The Reward Foundation article on the physical effects of porn.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring up the impact that working in the sex trades is having on people. Just a mere decade ago, the chances of you knowing a prostitute or a porn actor were very slim. Maybe you knew some girl from high school that is now a stripper.

That world has changed radically with the ubiquity of smartphones with a camera & video. The ability to sext pics, the ease to upload amateur porn, and the tools to create on sites like OnlyFans is in the palm of your hand.

According to a NY Post article, “A third of Americans have shared a nude photo, and 73% do so as often as once a month”. Look at the person to your right then the person to your left, and chances are that one of you is an amateur dabbling in sex work.

But what about those making the pro jump to get paid for their sexual content?

Sounds like OnlyFans is the new post-pandemic goldmine!

But is it really?

According to this Tech Jury article, 82.4% of creators charge less than $20 a month, and the average creator has 21 subscribers and earns $180 a month.

It appears that selling your soul to the devil is pretty cheap nowadays.

And speaking of the devil…

I am Christian that believes there is a battle of good and evil going on in the world. Been going on for a long time. Go read the New Testament with that perspective and I think you’ll read it in a new light.

But I know I can get raised eyebrows when I bring up the topic of the devil or Satan.

So if that’s you, I ask that you give me a little grace in explaining how Satan is weaponizing sex. I promise I’m not a nutcase that sees Satan in every nook and cranny (I may be a nutcase, but not that type).

I think we can agree that Satan is pro-death and anti-life, and he’s fighting against Christ who is all about life: Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

So even if Satan knows that the war is lost, he’s trying his hardest to still lay waste to the battlefield.

And what type of stealth weapon can he employ to eliminate life, to not only deaden the souls of people but to interrupt the actual procreation of life?

Porn is that weapon.

You might be scratching your head and asking yourself how sex would lead to less procreation. Isn’t sex how we continue our species?

But what if porn is replacing actual physical sex?

There is a 2019 Institute for Family Study article that shows that fewer American high schoolers are having sex than ever before. The study sees this as a triumph: “These trends are part and parcel with a more general turn away from risky behavior among teens” and “Such unrelenting downward trends are cause for celebration”.

I’ll agree that it is a cause for celebration that teenagers are ditching risky behavior IF they aren’t replacing it with even more harmful behavior.

Look at the two graphs below which are from this study. It looks like the trends are relatively flat until 2013 when they start their drop. Then look at the 3rd graph from Zippia about smartphone usage. The drop in sex appears to correlate with the explosion in smartphone usage.

Is it possible that our teens are abandoning in-real-life (IRL) relationships for online ones that they find on their smartphones using Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok? And, if so, doesn’t it make sense they are abandoning IRL sex for online porn?

Additionally, the articles I referenced earlier note that all users of porn build a tolerance and need more edgy & graphic porn to stimulate dopamine release. Is it possible that IRL 18-year-old girls are not stimulating enough for 18-year-old boys?

Lastly, how bout erectile dysfunction? What happens if you do find an actual girl to have sex with, but because of your porn usage, you can’t get it up?

I’ve kept this argument for Satan weaponizing sex strictly in the arena of porn, but I could make similar arguments about casual sex, non-monogamous relationships, abortion, and the gender debates. They all put a damper on sex for procreation.

And if you can’t make the stretch to link it to Satan, I’m guessing you would agree that America’s enemies might see porn and sexual sin as our Achilles heel, and seek to weaponize it against us.

As I’ve got to wrap this up, my hope is that I’ve made a credible argument that sexual sin, led by the porn epidemic that we are awash in, is truly a crisis.

In my next post, I will try to drag sexual sin out into the light so we can know the crisis we face. And in my final post, I’ll discuss how shame is crippling the Christian community from addressing sexual sin and what we might do. But before I close, I would like to briefly touch on those two topics.

Too often the secular world believes Christians are moralizing to them about sex. Additionally, we come across as authoritarian. And the secular world responds: “its none of your business; keep your religious beliefs out of my bedroom”.

That same moralizing and judgment also drives Christians who struggle with sexual sin underground. Sexual sin is a huge minefield in the Christian world, and if you think we are bad to the secular world, it ain’t nothing compared to what we do to our own.

I can see how this article might even rub some of my secular friends and wary Christians the wrong way. Its hard to talk about sex without sounding judgmental, especially when I drag out the word sin (I’m going to really get into why sin gets a bad rap in the next post).

So, I invite you to read the next two posts with this promise:

No judgments.

If you’re an adult, go ahead and do sex however you want; as long as its with another consenting adult. You wanna be vanilla? Great. You wanna fly your freak flag? Go fly it. I’m not here to tell you how to live your life.

But if you’re like my buddy who thinks its not holy, but you suspect that it should be then stick around. And if you’re like my female friend who is uncertain about threesomes, but you suspect something is off then read on.

And to my last group, if you are someone stuck in depths of sexual addiction, regardless if you are Christian or not, I really hope you come back for the next two posts.

God bless you and remember…

Jesus loves you.

(If you are a Christian man who struggles with addiction, I recommend that you look into the Samson Society. The Samson Society is a fellowship of Christian men who are serious about authenticity, community, humility & recovery.)

Photo credit of Rip Van Winkle: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/digital-rip-van-winkle-marketing-gowthaman-ragothaman/

Photo credit of smartphone: https://prime.sg/digital-drug/

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” Matthew 7:21-23 (ESV)

About a year ago, I wrote a Facebook post for a friend of mine who was terrified by the “I Never Knew You” verse.

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I stand by my exegesis in the Facebook post (which you can read here and which I posted a screenshot of below). Particularly the part where I explain to my friend that Jesus isn’t addressing you; He is addressing the “know it all’s” (pun intended) who seem to have it all figured out. I wrote:

And who he is warning are those elitists who think they have it all figured out? The “important people”. And so when we get to the passage that has you freaked out, He is again warning those people who are technically fulfilling the Law but out of duty, out of selfishness, but not out of pure love of God; He is telling them “hey, you don’t know Me; you know you as your own God”.

What made me revisit this saying was an experience I had on Sunday that really drove home to me the meaning of Jesus knowing, or not knowing, someone.

But before I get to that experience, I think there’s an elephant in the room that I need to address and that I should have addressed in my Facebook post.

If Jesus is part of the Godhead (which I 100% affirm) then how in the heck can He not know someone?

And it’s not just Jesus, by the way. It appears that God the Father might not know you as well!

Look at 1 Corinthians 8:3, “But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.” Does that mean if you don’t love God then God doesn’t know you? Or how bout Galatians 4:9, “But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God”. When Paul says “but now”, is he implying that before “now” you weren’t known by God?

This is giving me a headache.

How can either Jesus or the Father not know someone? They created us after all!

John, talking about Jesus, says “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3) and in the verse before “He was in the beginning with God” (John 1:2).

The two of Them HAVE to know us, right?

This surely wouldn’t hold up in a court of law.

Prosecutor: You claim that you created everything?
Jesus: Yes, sir.
Prosecutor: All things, which includes humans, were made thru you?
Jesus: Yes, sir.
Prosecutor: So, you admit to creating the plaintiff, John Doe?
Jesus: Yes, sir.
Prosecutor: Then you admit that you know the plaintiff, John Doe?
Jesus: No, sir.
Prosecutor: Your Honor, this witness has clearly perjured himself!

So how do we resolve this?

I suspect the issue is with the translation of the original Greek to English. What we translate as “knew” comes from the Greek word “ginóskó” and as often is the case, the Greek word has a much richer definition than its English counterpart.

The definition of ginóskó, according to the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, is as follows: “The ordinary use is for intelligent comprehension (to perceive, to understand, to know), at first with a stress on the act…This act embraces every organ and mode of knowledge, e.g., by seeing, hearing, investigation, or experience, and of people as well as things.”

“With a stress on the act” and “embraces every organ and mode of knowledge”. Hmmm…this sounds very intimate and in-depth.

As a matter of fact, Dr. John Bechtle at the Ezra Project notes that intimacy when he comments:

The word ginóskó, on the other hand, often describes the kind of knowledge involved in building an intimate relationship with a person. In fact, ginóskó is tied so tightly to relationships that it is used to describe the sexual relations between a husband and wife (Matthew 1:25; Luke 1:34).

Dr. Bechtle also notes in reference to John 10:14-15:

The apostle John loves to use ginóskó to describe this deeper, person-to-person knowledge that characterizes God. Jesus chose ginóskó to describe the intimacy between the Father and the Son, as well as the connection between Himself and His sheep.

I think the key here is that we are talking about the back-and-forth participation of BOTH parties in a person-to-person relationship.

Imagine a woman who births a child. She has created that child and, in a loving relationship, the child comes to know its mom, and mom certainly, as every mischievous kid can attest to, comes to know her child.

Now imagine a child that does not share themselves with the mother who created them. I know it’s difficult to imagine but picture a child that does not respond to the mother’s love. A child in full and complete rebellion against their mother!

That mom would have knowledge about the exterior of the child; their appearance, their height, their weight, but she wouldn’t know anything intimate about her child.

Jesus is talking about an intimate relationship that He does not have when He says “I never knew you”. And how do we know this? Let’s look at the verses that precede this statement.

Matthew 7:15-20 (ESV):

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.

Look at “who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves”. Doesn’t that sound like a mother who would recognize the exterior of her child but not know anything intimate about them?

So how are they to be recognized?

By their fruit.

Jesus does a fine job of explaining how fruit tell the tale, so I won’t rehash that. Fruit, though, can’t be counterfeited. You can’t pass off a rock as a juicy apple.

But it can be tricky in determining man’s fruit. You can do a lot of talking the talk, but fruit is walking the walk. Yet it can be difficult for us to see the difference.

But not for Jesus.

In Matthew 7:22, they tell Jesus we did prophesy, we cast out demons, we did mighty works “in your name”.

In your name, but not in Christ.

He’s saying “you can name drop Me, but if you aren’t drawing on Me it isn’t legit”.

Its like being in a car with no fuel. You can press the gas, roll the windows down, and toot the horn, but you ain’t going anywhere without gas in the tank.

So He tells them “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness”. You ain’t got no gas in your tank!

So let me tie this into my experience that I had this past Sunday. I detailed it in this Facebook post which is in the screenshot below, but I’ll give you a quick synopsis here.

I was on my way to work when I saw a hitchhiker. I stopped, told him “sorry, I’m not going your way”, then drove off to work. But it ate at me, so I got off at the next exit, went back and got him, then drove him as far as I was going.

This might sound like an “in your name” story and your welcome to think this is a 1500-word ego stroke. I promise you though, it isn’t.

I’m telling you this story because I didn’t want to help this guy, but something inside me compelled me to. Jesus compelled me to.

My good fruit is from my branch, but that branch is connected to Jesus. “I am the vine; you are the branches” (John 15:5).

(Sidebar: I love reading the Apostle John. He has such a beautiful way with his words, and everything he writes is just overflowing with this type of message. Ginóskó is used 220 times in the New Testament, and John uses it 57 times in his Gospel and 25 times in 1 John. 1 John is a short masterpiece that really drives home relationship. Go read it! But I digress)

And I know I’m connected to Jesus because I can feel Him flowing thru me like electrical current when I picked that guy up.

This thing I call faith is a symbiosis that feeds itself if I just allow Jesus to “know me”. He fills my tank and I take my life for a drive; yelling out the window and tooting my horn.

This is faith.

Not belonging to a church. Not knowing Bible verses. Not tithing on Sunday.

Its all good and well to do those things. It’s the best, as a matter of fact, if I’m a sheep. I just can’t be wearing sheep’s clothing, though; I got to be a sheep. Otherwise, then I’m just doing “in your name” stuff and He doesn’t know me!

I’m gonna close by saying I feel like I never have the words to describe what it means to me to be “in Christ”. So I end up writing these rambling dissertations or I verbally vomit on people my testimony.

But if you saw me on Sunday then you saw what it means for me to know Jesus and for Jesus to know me. If you haven’t felt that yet, I promise you He is waiting to know you. I’d start with talking to Him from your heart; it can change your life.

Amen.

(PS: I’m not endorsing picking up hitchhikers. That’s not for everyone. But tapping into Jesus is so go find your own version of giving someone a lift!)

References:

Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., Bromley, G. (1985). Theological dictionary of the New Testament, abridged in one volume. Eerdmans.

Whoever assembled the New Testament sure wasn’t a marketing guy.

Let me explain.

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As someone who has spent many a night strung out in cheap motels, I could always count on a Gideon Bible being in the nightstand drawer. And, on occasion, when I felt low enough to consider divine intervention, I cracked open this Bible.

Now I didn’t start with Genesis. Even I knew that I wanted nothing of that mean Father from the Old Testament. Nope, if I was gonna consider getting straight, I was looking for hand up from Jesus and He doesn’t show up until Part 2 of this Book.

So, I flip thru about ¾ of the Bible until I come upon the New Testament. What I’m hoping to find is some comforting prose (which I later discovered as a Christian was a few more Gospels in). Instead, though, I come across this opening in Matthew 1:1-17 (NKJV):

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham:

Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, and Jacob begot Judah and his brothers. Judah begot Perez and Zerah by Tamar, Perez begot Hezron, and Hezron begot Ram. Ram begot Amminadab, Amminadab begot Nahshon, and Nahshon begot Salmon. Salmon begot Boaz by Rahab, Boaz begot Obed by Ruth, Obed begot Jesse, and Jesse begot David the king.

David the king begot Solomon by her who had been the wife of Uriah. Solomon begot Rehoboam, Rehoboam begot Abijah, and Abijah begot Asa. Asa begot Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat begot Joram, and Joram begot Uzziah. Uzziah begot Jotham, Jotham begot Ahaz, and Ahaz begot Hezekiah. Hezekiah begot Manasseh, Manasseh begot Amon, and Amon begot Josiah. Josiah begot Jeconiah and his brothers about the time they were carried away to Babylon.

And after they were brought to Babylon, Jeconiah begot Shealtiel, and Shealtiel begot Zerubbabel. Zerubbabel begot Abiud, Abiud begot Eliakim, and Eliakim begot Azor. Azor begot Zadok, Zadok begot Achim, and Achim begot Eliud. Eliud begot Eleazar, Eleazar begot Matthan, and Matthan begot Jacob. And Jacob begot Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ.

So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations, from David until the captivity in Babylon are fourteen generations, and from the captivity in Babylon until the Christ are fourteen generations.

I’m sorry…but you don’t start a story like this. I’d rather watch hours of infomercials while coming off a 2-day bender than try to make sense of all these “begots” and names I can’t pronounce.

This just isn’t written for me.

BUT THAT’S EXACTLY THE POINT!

Matthew wasn’t writing his Gospel to me.

He had a specific audience in mind, a 1st Century Jewish/Christian audience. And a genealogy to that audience meant something. Additionally, this particular genealogy was something radically different than what his audience was expecting. The sum added up, but no one would have thought that these parts would add up to this sum.

As is the case with many parts of the Bible, even though this text was written for an ancient audience there is a powerful message here for a modern audience as well.

A message, ironically enough, that would have hit me hard in that motel room had I known the context of it. A message for the poor & the powerless, the depressed & the downtrodden, the outcasts & the miscreants. A message for all of us feeling left behind.

To get at that message let’s start with a brief explanation of Matthew’s audience and the importance of genealogies.

Scholars are in a large agreement that the author (who, for simplification’s sake, I’ll presume to be Matthew) was writing for a primarily Jewish/Christian audience.

And a Jewish/Christian audience would have put great stock in genealogies. As Craig Keener notes, “The Jewish people regarded genealogies as important to establish the purity of their lineage”. Or as theologian N.T. Wright states, “telling the story of one’s ancestry is as important a way of disclosing one’s identity as producing a good curriculum vitae (CV) is when job hunting in the modern world”.

Oh…so a genealogy was the ancient version of a CV or what us less academically inclined might call a resume.

Matthew 1:1-17 is Jesus’ resume.

I don’t know about you, but over my 35 years of being an adult, I’ve had to create many resumes. You might think that it would be as simple as just adding my latest job to the resume, but its never that simple. I’m always tweaking my job history and the description of my jobs to best suit my prospective employer. If I’m applying for a casino job my sales history is featured less prominently and vice versa when I’m seeking a sales job.

I’m never lying on my resume, but I am trying to put my best foot forward. I’m assembling the parts of my work history to best fit the job I’m applying for.

So Matthew is putting forward Jesus’ genealogy as proof that He is worthy of being the Jewish people’s Messiah. And he starts off strong by tying Jesus into the lineage of Abraham and David. Abraham is who God made His original covenant with and David represents the peak of Israel’s history.

But just as I took liberty with arranging my work history, Matthew does the same with Jesus’ lineage and theologians & laypeople alike have been trying to make sense of Matthew’s genealogy ever since.

I don’t have the space here to do justice to how perplexing Matthew’s genealogy is, but I’m a big fan of how theologian Raymond Brown addresses some of these issues in his book, The Birth of the Messiah:

• “Who Was Jesus’ Grandfather? This question, which may seem naively curious, is raised by the blatant disagreement between Matt 1:16 which identifies Joseph’s father as Jacob, and Luke 3:23, which identifies that gentleman as Eli.”

• “Fourteen – The Magic Number…even God did not arrange things so nicely that exactly fourteen biological generations separated such crucial moments in salvation history as the call of Abraham, the accession of David, the Babylonian Exile, and the coming of the Messiah.”

• “Could Matthew Count? Although Matthew (1:17) insists on the presence of the 3x14 pattern of generations…when one actually counts the generations in the three sections of the list, it seems Matthew’s arithmetic leaves something to be desired.”

Frankly, none of that ever bothered me when I became a Christian (and it doesn’t seem to bother Mr. Brown or most scholars as well). Yes, this is another thing for atheists to argue with, but when you can wrap your mind around the Incarnation and the Resurrection of Jesus, Matthew’s creative genealogy is small potatoes.

But what did catch my attention, as a savage seeking Jesus’ salvation, was the cast of characters that Matthew included. He’s got some truly shady dudes in this lineage; go look up Rehoboam, Jehoram, or Ahaz…they wouldn’t have made my resume if I was applying for the job.

But who really stands out are the four women that Matthew mentions: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba.

First off, Mr. Brown states “their presence in a genealogy is unusual according to biblical patterns”. Typically, in the Jewish world, genealogies would be entirely male. But it’s not that they are just women, but what type of women they are.

As Rodney Reeves writes in his commentary, “Tamar acted like a prostitute to become pregnant by her father-in-law; Rahab was a prostitute; Ruth approached a man to sleep with him; Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, committed adultery with David.”

Yikes!

Why is Matthew including these four?

Mr. Brown proposes that these four women share something in common with Mary the mother of Jesus: “(a) there is something extraordinary or irregular in their union with their partners – a union which, though it may have been scandalous to outsiders, continued the blessed lineage of the Messiah; (b) the women showed initiative or played an important role in God’s plan and so came to be considered the instrument of God’s providence or of His Holy Spirit.”

Matthew is saying, God is doing salvation His way.

It’s not going to be some sanitized lineage that will play well in the Temple (or a 21st Century church). Nope, humanity is a mess, and I’m going to drop my Son right into the middle of it as a descendant of the wicked and the debauched.

And guess what else? He’s going to be born to a virgin as well!

As Mr. Reeves writes, “Matthew wants to make it plain: Jesus didn’t “become” one of us. He is one of us—all of us—the good, the bad, and the ugly. His genealogy proves it.”

I know that prior to encountering Jesus, I felt alienated in this world. I tried to feel whole by chasing artificial highs wherever I could find them, but it never filled me. And at my worst, it landed me in cheap motels wondering if there was any hope to be found in this Book in the nightstand.

Yes, there is hope.

A scandalous amount of hope.

I like telling these stories because they aren’t readily apparent. We aren’t 1st Century readers. We’re modern people and many of us are just struggling to get by.

As a Christian, my job isn’t to fix people; its to turn people on to the Fixer.

To share with them this outrageous good news in short little snippets about Jesus. To share with them Jesus by loving on them. And to love them as they are, not as we wish them to be. To let them know that no one gets left behind because He came for all of us and all of us have a role in God’s plan.

At least that’s how I read His resume.

Amen.

Photo Credit:

https://drinkswithdeadpeople.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Gideons.jpg

References:

Brown, R. (1993). The birth of the Messiah: a commentary on the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke: new updated edition. Doubleday.

Keener, C. (2009). The Gospel of Matthew: a socio-rhetorical commentary. Eerdmans.

Reeves, R. (2017). The Story of God Bible Commentary: Matthew. Zondervan.

Wright, N.T. (2004). Matthew for everyone, part 1. Westminster John Knox.

I promise you this isn’t going to be a “bah humbug” type of post. Because while I’m not a Christmas type of guy, I’m also not someone who wants to rain on anyone else’s parade.

So, I ask you to bear with me while I explain what Christmas means to me.

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I was raised as an only child by two parents, Ray & Nancy, who believed in God, but didn’t have much use for the trappings of religion.

Ray was hardwired as a Catholic but the only hint I saw of that as a child was the ceramic statue of Jesus that sat on his dresser. Religious services to him meant Cubs baseball in the Spring & Summer, and the Church of the NFL in the Fall & Winter.

He was an uber-practical man who was too busy providing for his family to allow something as ethereal as God, religion, or church to intrude on his daily routine.

No, the Cubs or the Bears were his idea of resting on the 7th day, and they were a certainty to deliver the joy or, more often than not, the disappointment that he needed as a respite from the tireless work routine he kept.

Nancy, on the other hand, was the polar opposite of her husband. She was as free spirited as he was practical. He bought her a sporty red Toyota in the early 70’s when no one was driving Japanese cars and no moms were zipping around the neighborhood. But mine was.

She also could drink beer like a champion, and I often wonder whether my beer can collection was really my hobby or just the remnant of her large appetite for life.

See we have a deadly genetic disease that runs thru our family tree, and I think she knew that she better pack as much living into life when things were good because soon enough things would be bad. By that happenstance, one of the few characteristics she shared with her husband was that she wasn’t going to let God, religion, or church intrude on her limited time as well.

Christmas in my household, then, didn’t have much to do with Christ, but it was a big event that started as the Thanksgiving meal was being served.

That’s when Mom would start with her Christmas albums on our big console stereo in the living room. I don’t remember a ton of music being played normally, but during the Christmas season it seemed like Paul Anka and Andy Williams were on 24/7.

As a spoiled only child, I loved the obscene number of gifts that Christmas morning brought, but I was no fan of the 30-day musical death march that preceded it. Her wall of sound was so effective that I think the Marines copied her tactics to drive Noreiga out of the Vatican embassy. But I endured it each year with the promise of toys to be played with “sans music” as of the morning of the 26th.

So, if you are imagining Ray & Nancy as two normal parents who went above and beyond for their self-indulgent child, you got the picture right. And if you’re a therapist, you got a data point that explains much of my self-seeking life.

But for the sake of this post, I hope you also see why Christmas never meant much to me.

It certainly had no Christ connotation, nor any church tradition tied to it. And as soon as I left home, I had no use for its secular accoutrements. Well, that is until I found myself with a wife whose taste for Christmas tradition rivaled my mother’s, and two young children as accomplices to help her pull it off each year.

Out of obligation and basic decency, I tried to be a willing participant. It wasn’t my cup of tea, but if it brought joy to my kids and wife then it brought joy to me. But as the kids are now adults and my ex-wife has a new husband to celebrate with, I’ve been allowed to mostly retire from my Christmas duties.

Here I am, an 8-year Christian with very little use for Christmas.

If you know me, you know I half-jokingly claim on Facebook each year that Jesus’ birthday really falls on April 17th which also just happens to be my birthday. My brain just doesn’t make a natural connection between Jesus and December 25th.

But my brain is connected to Christ’s Mass.

The word “Christmas” comes from the Old English “Cristes-messe” which literally translates to Christ’s Mass and Christ’s Mass means to me a celebration of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ.

It took me nearly a half century to see it, but Christ’s Mass is the most important day of the year, and it happens every day of the year when I have the good sense to allow it to.

Trust me folks, I know I can sound like a broken record, and I know every conversation with me is a short hop away from my version of “do you have a minute to talk about our Lord & Savior, Jesus Christ?”

But 8 ½ years ago, I hit the lottery when I met Jesus. Everyday now is Christmas, and just like I couldn’t wait to show my friends what I found under the tree when I was a child, now I find the same burning desire to show them what I found in Jesus.

And recently, my Jesus experience is also giving me some purchase on understanding why Christmas is so special to others, and especially to my Mom.

See I think my Mom understood God a lot more than I have ever given her credit for.

She understood that God was the thread that holds our relationships together. But she understood that in a visceral sense, not in a theological or religious manner. She knew that Christmas season was a time where the day-to-day struggles could be paused, and her husband & son could be corralled into joining her celebration.

It was as if this was an end of year victory parade that validated that her family was thriving, alive, and doing well. That everything she needed was under her roof, and she was going to sing praises of validation via the tunes of Anka & Williams.

We didn’t have much religion in that house, but there sure was a lot of love.

My Mom & Dad never got to know me as a Christian. I’m certain there would have been raised eyebrows the first time I would have mentioned being “born again”, but I also know they would have been relieved to see the peace I have found.

They also would have been proud of the man Jesus is shaping me into because they started that process. They were far from perfect but everything worthwhile in me came from them. I got sidetracked for a number of decades, but I don’t think I could have ever turned to Jesus without the love they provided me. Their love was the thread that held us together and the thread that Jesus reeled me in with.

Before I close, I’m going end with two Christmas wishes. It is the season after all to make a wish and to see if it ends up unwrapped on Christmas morning. Well, my wishes aren’t meant to be under the tree, but I hope they are gifts just as well.

To Ray & Nancy, Mom & Dad, my wish is to have one more Christmas season with you, one more 30-day non-stop musical march of holiday tunes, capped by Christmas Day with me playing on the floor while Mom knits on the couch and Dad yells at the Bears on TV.

I know that wish will have to wait till I join you on the other side, but I promise you that I’ll have the good sense to be better at Christmas if I get another chance with grandchildren.

And my second wish is for a special group amongst the rest of you.

If you haven’t felt the presence of Jesus the Christ, I invite you to do so. This isn’t an invitation to religion or church. It’s the opportunity to feel the source of life and love daily, and it’s the greatest gift you can ever receive.

If you have no idea of how to feel His presence, just turn and ask Him. And feel free to reach out to me, it’s my favorite topic.

That is my Christmas wish for you and I’ll be praying that’s what you get this Christmas.

My parents moved to Park Ridge, Illinois in 1971 when I was 5 years old. Across the street from us was an old weathered white farmhouse that didn’t fit with the rest of the brick construction homes on the block. It was a holdover from when the town was just a cow pasture and it had remained as progress had crept in on it.

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What had also remained was the old lady who lived in the house. I can’t remember her name or face; all that remains of my memory is that she was a very old lady. I’m guessing she was in her 80’s or 90’s so she very well could have been 93 which would have made her 5 years old in 1883.

So, what is special about the year 1883?

As I was recovering on the couch from a bout with the flu last week, I binged the Yellowstone TV series prequel, 1883.

1883 might be the best TV series I have ever watched. The writer who narrates the main character has an aptitude with words that is beyond the horizon of my skillset, and I am equal parts of awe and jealousy.

But what struck me most about 1883 was how much the world had changed in a relatively short period of time. That the world I knew as a 5-year-old in a safe Chicago suburb looked like nothing like the world that 5-year-old John Dutton in the TV series was experiencing. And that my neighbor was the living bridge between both of those worlds.

I’m guessing that its human nature to reflect on how the world changes from one generation to the next, but perhaps it’s only a modern trait as the pace of change is now palpable.

The most modern places in the late 1800’s have more in common with prior 18 centuries than the last 150 years, and the wild west setting of 1883 gave me more of an insight into my Biblical forefathers than any book ever has.

Sure, the Oregon Trail isn’t 1st Century Jerusalem, but the insights I found weren’t surface level either. No, what I connected with for the first time, was the primal mindset that we keep buried in the back of our First World closet. We see glimpses of it in times of stress, it has leaked into modern anxiety, and, at our worst, we drag it out to super-fuel our savagery, but it isn’t a constant companion.

No one I know views a river as a life and death boundary. When I took my children to the banks of the Illinois River to skip stones, I never felt an existential dread that the pioneers felt upon seeing the Brazos.

No one I know lost 7 children as the Dutton’s aunt did. And no one I know would find that ordinary if they knew of someone who did. But that was part & parcel of that world.

And there is no sitting on the couch to recoup from the flu in the frontier of 1883. That world gives no respite.

Yet here I am, a Jesus follower in our world, doing just that. And my initial tendency is to give as little respite, as little grace to these people as the world doles out to them. Because I have a teacher in Jesus who commands me to love, to love my enemy, to be non-violent, to be without sin, and I’m not seeing a variety of candidates to pass thru His narrow gate in the characters from 1883.

At least not from a modern Jesus’ perspective.

Hold up.

A “modern Jesus’ perspective”?

As modern Christians we feel entitled to the luxury of a modern Jesus’ perspective, but that is merely a delusion of our ignorance. There is a Jesus’ perspective, but we are fools if we only see it thru our own eyes.

The characters of 1883 divide into two groups: the soft who tend to be slaughtered and the hard who tend to survive.

The hard characters do many things that offend our First World sensibility. They shoot first, they cull the human herd, and they make cringe worthy hard decisions.

They don’t resemble my idea of a Christian, but my idea of a Christian would be foreign to them. And to be honest, it might be foreign to Jesus as well.

The world of 1883 is a hard world just as the world of Jesus’ Jerusalem was a hard world. In 2022, we’ve inoculated ourselves in the First World to much of the hardness, but the hardness can still be found around the globe.

And inoculation to hardness can be inoculation to Jesus.

How often do we want to avoid the Old Testament because of the violence? Every atheist I know has thrown that violence into their argument, and we either defend the violence or make excuses to avoid it. But we rarely just sit and contemplate violence as the core feature of the human condition.

How many of our churches have become like fortresses in our own societal wild west? Places where we cling to our ideas of holiness, purity, and sanctity. But are they built onto the rock of Jesus or on religious dictates that offer a First World illusion of stability?

In the First World, we have been spared the day-to-day struggle just to survive which spares us the apparent day-to-day need for Jesus. Why build on a rock when we have no worry about foundations?

But there is no true inoculation from the hardness of life. Modernity has slowed the frequency of life’s bitterest pills, but no one gets to avoid death calling on family and friends. Death is the most consistent aspect of life, yet modern people are shocked when death makes an appearance.

Then we often curse God or walk away from Him because we have chosen false foundations and inoculated Jesus from the equation.

Look, I’m not claiming to have good answers. I’m the guy who calls off from work at even the hint of a cold, and I’m thoroughly inoculated from day-to-day hardness.

But watching this TV series took a machete to my high minded judgmentalism.

Many of the “hard characters” in 1883 were men and women who were Christian. And while I struggle to see Christ in many of their actions, I would be wise to see them wrestle with their faith out on the frontier.

Likewise with my smug judgment of the characters from the Old Testament. I’m not advocating for sanctioning violence, but there is insight to be found if we can view the violence thru ancient eyes.

Perhaps, though, that link to ancient eyes is what we are missing.

Up till the birth of my old neighbor, generations had passed down the same basic wisdom that life is hard, and wise Christians turned to Jesus to make sense of it.

But somewhere during the life of this lady, a period by the way that saw the greatest loss of life in the history of the planet to war, famine, and disease, that wisdom was forgotten.

It makes me wish I would have gotten to know my old neighbor rather than see her as a relic of a time passed. To ask her what lessons should be learned even if they might seem obsolete. To ask her what her eyes see that mine don’t.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two.” Matthew 5:38-41, NASB

I’ve heard many non-believers say, “I like Jesus, but I’m not fond of Christians”. I understand that sentiment (and that’s a topic for another day), but I have a confession to make. Before I had a Jesus experience…

I didn’t like Jesus.

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I wasn’t fond of the large swath of Christians I had met, and the only thing I knew about Jesus was that He had told people to turn the other cheek. Bad fanbase and a weak team? Nah, that wasn’t going to work for me.

I suspect that you aren’t as harsh on Jesus as I was, but I also suspect that even if you never came right out and said it, that you wondered if Jesus was a wimp.

C’mon, be honest. This “turn the other cheek” thing has stuck in your craw as well.

Especially in the muscular strain of American Christianity where we trot out “GI Jesus” whenever we go to war somewhere around the globe.

But even in mainstream Christian academic circles, where I’m more likely to encounter a less muscular, but nonetheless courageous Jesus, I have found a theory of non-retaliation that turns my stomach.

Theologian Craig Blomberg writes in his commentary on Matthew, “Each of these commands requires Jesus’ followers to act more generously than what the letter of the law demanded. ‘Going the extra mile’ has rightly become a proverbial expression and captures the essence of all of Jesus’ illustrations.”

Theologian R.T. France argues that non-retaliation “involves acceptance of ill-treatment, even, as the following examples will show, willing compliance… These verses are not, therefore, a prescription for non-violent resistance (as they are often interpreted), but for no resistance at all, even by legal means.”

This Jesus isn’t just passive, He’s enthusiastically so.

I don’t like this Jesus. And frankly, this version of Jesus never meshed with the Jesus I had an encounter with.

Fortunately, early in my walk with Jesus, I came across theologian Walter Wink.

The recently departed Walter Wink was renowned for his advocacy for non-violence and interpreting Jesus thru that lens. He is best known for his “Powers Trilogy”: Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament, Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence, and Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination.

He also wrote a compendium of the trilogy called The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium which is what I will be referencing in this post.

The trilogy and compendium discuss our societal systems that are fallen and have become corrupt; what Saint Paul in Ephesians 6:12 (NKJV) called the “powers and principalities” and what Wink called the “Domination System”.

And this “Domination System” is fueled by violence; it teaches it, governs it, and, grotesquely, welcomes it as a response.

That response can be found in the heart of the Old Testament in Exodus 21:23-25, Leviticus 24:19-20, and Deuteronomy 19:21.

But Wink theorizes that Jesus came to offer a different response than repaying violence in kind. And Wink didn’t think that was the passive, wimpy response that many academics had pinned on Jesus.

No, Wink posited that Jesus offered an alternative.

But before we discuss that alternative, let’s get a little background on 1st Century Judea.

The Jewish world that Jesus was born into was starved for a hero. It had been under the boot of neighboring empires for hundreds of years with the Romans as their current master and the corrupt King Herod as their Jewish puppet ruler.

They were looking for God to send a muscular Messiah in the vein of King David who would go “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth” and throw off the bondage they were under and restore Israel to its glory.

Alas, Jesus had a different plan.

As Jesus makes abundantly clear in the opening of the Sermon on the Mount, in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12), the inauguration of a new Kingdom is coming and underway in Him, but that isn’t going to change the present circumstances of the Jewish people. Verses 3 thru 10 (ESV) has two “theirs is the kingdom of heaven” statements bracketing six “they shall” statements. And Verse 11 & 12 (ESV) conclude the Beatitudes with, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Clearly, Jesus isn’t swaggering in like the new sheriff in town. This is all Lamb and no Lion, and its not what people were looking for from their Messiah.

So, what are you to do if you are common Jew in the 1st Century? Should you ignore Jesus and rebel and be crushed? Or should you take his words to mean that you should roll over and be dominated?

No. Jesus offered what Wink described as a “Third Way”:

Jesus is not telling us to submit to evil, but to refuse to oppose it on its own terms. We are not to let the opponent dictate the methods of our opposition. He is urging us to transcend both passivity and violence by finding a third way, one that is at once assertive and yet nonviolent.

And that Third Way is seen perfectly further into the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:38-41.

(Note: I’m going to quote Wink liberally from Chapter 5 of The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium throughout the rest of this post as his description is a tour de force. Sometimes, its better to get out of the way and just let a genius speak!)

But Wink has his hands full right off the bat where in Matthew 5:39, Jesus says “do not resist an evil person”. Perhaps theologian R.T. France is right when he says Jesus isn’t offering a prescription for resistance?

As is often the case with the translation of the Greek, what we perceive an English meaning to be is not what the Greek meaning “might” be.

(Sidebar: I’m highlighting “might” because I know R.T. France to be a phenomenal scholar, but I believe one’s theology comes into play when translating and doing exegesis. So, we have a case of Wink and France interpreting the Greek differently with me not silly enough to claim that Wink must be right and France wrong)

Wink writes,

The Greek word translated "resist" in Matt. 5 :39 is “antistenaz” meaning literally to stand (stenai) against (anti). What translators have overlooked is that “antistenai” is most often used in the Greek version of the Old Testament as a technical term for warfare… In short, “antistenai” means more here than simply to "resist" evil. It means to resist violently, to revolt or rebel, to engage in an armed insurrection.

And Wink wraps up his thoughts on resisting by stating,

Jesus is not telling us to submit to evil, but to refuse to oppose it on its own terms.

But if we cannot resist evil on its own terms then how are we to do so?

Jesus in the same verse gives us the first of His three examples answering this question (the same example that turned me off to Him):

The practice of turning the other cheek.

Wink gives a great summation of what turning the other cheek really means:

The examples that follow confirm this reading. ‘If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also’ (Matt. 5:39b). You are probably imagining a blow with the right fist. But such a blow would fall on the left cheek. To hit the right cheek with a fist would require the left hand. But the left hand could be used only for unclean tasks…To grasp this you must physically try it: how would you hit the other's right cheek with your right hand? If you have tried it, you will know: the only feasible blow is a backhand.

The backhand was not a blow to injure, but to insult, humiliate, degrade. It was not administered to an equal, but to an inferior. Masters backhanded slaves; husbands, wives; parents, children; Romans, Jews. The whole point of the blow was to force someone who was out of line back into place.

But by turning the other cheek, you are now forcing the “superior” to strike the “inferior” in an equal manner.

Wink notes that

Such defiance is no way to avoid trouble. Meek acquiescence is what the master wants. Such "cheeky" behavior may call down a flogging, or worse. But the point has been made. The Powers That Be have lost their power to make people submit. And when large numbers begin behaving thus (and Jesus was addressing a crowd), you have a social revolution on your hands.

The actual power may not shift but the dynamic of power has been altered.

So, let’s now look at Jesus’ second example: give them your coat as well.

According to Wink,

Jesus' second example of assertive nonviolence is set in a court of law. A creditor has taken a poor man to court over an unpaid loan. Only the poorest of the poor were subjected to such treatment. Deuteronomy 24:10-13 provided that a creditor could take as collateral for a loan a poor person's long outer robe, but it had to be returned each evening so the poor man would have something in which to sleep.

Those debtors find themselves in debt not because they resemble the credit foolhardiness of the 21st Century but because the structural world of the 1st Century is rigged against them. Wink sees Jesus telling them “who have nothing left but the clothes on their backs, to use the system against itself.”

But how does that turn the system against itself?

Wink writes,

This would mean stripping off all their clothing and marching out of court stark naked! Nakedness was taboo in Judaism, and shame fell less on the naked party than on the person viewing or causing the nakedness (Gen. 9:20-27). By stripping, the debtor has brought shame on the creditor.

Imagine the debtor leaving court naked. His friends and neighbors, aghast, inquire what happened. He explains. They join his growing procession, which now resembles a victory parade. This is guerrilla theater! The entire system by which debtors are oppressed has been publicly unmasked. The creditor is revealed to be not a legitimate moneylender but a party to the reduction of an entire social class to landlessness and destitution. This unmasking is not simply punitive, since it offers the creditor a chance to see, perhaps for the first time in his life, what his practices cause, and to repent.

But where Wink really hits the nail on the head is here,

The Powers That Be literally stand on their dignity. Nothing deflates them more effectively than deft lampooning.

Again, actual power may not shift, but those wielding power can be deflated.

Jesus final example is to walk another mile.

Wink explains:

Going the second mile, Jesus' third example, is drawn from the relatively enlightened practice of limiting to a single mile the amount of forced or impressed labor that Roman soldiers could levy on subject peoples. Such compulsory service was a constant feature in Palestine from Persian to late Roman times. Whoever was found on the street could be coerced into service, as was Simon of Cyrene, who was forced to carry Jesus' cross (Mark 15:21).

What isn’t said in Jesus’ words is that carrying a soldier’s pack for more than a mile was an infraction of military code. Wink explains why that is important:

Jesus was surely aware of the futility of armed insurrection against Roman imperial might; he certainly did nothing to encourage those whose hatred of Rome would soon explode into violence…The question here as in the two previous instances, is how the oppressed can recover the initiative and assert their human dignity in a situation that cannot for the time being be changed. The rules are Caesar's, but how one responds to the rules is God's, and Caesar has no power over that.

So now when the Jew volunteers to carry the pack for another mile, the soldier’s head is spinning. As Wink states,

Why would he want to do that? What is he up to? Normally, soldiers have to coerce people to carry their packs, but this Jew does so cheerfully, and will not stop! Is this a provocation? Is he insulting the legionnaire's strength? Being kind? Trying to get him disciplined for seeming to violate the rules of impressment? Will this civilian file a complaint? Create trouble?

And now for a third time, actual power hasn’t been transferred, but the dynamic of how that power can be applied has been altered.

These words from Walter Wink sum up that shifting dynamic well:

He is helping an oppressed people find a way to protest and neutralize an onerous practice despised throughout the empire. He is not giving a nonpolitical message of spiritual world transcendence. He is formulating a worldly spirituality in which the people at the bottom of society or under the thumb of imperial power learn to recover their humanity.

My cup has runneth over for this post, but I thought it important to run on long so I could share the words and reasoning of this great theologian. His theology has had a HUGE IMPACT on my ideas about Jesus, and I think it could really reshape yours as well.

I strongly recommend that you do yourself a favor and read The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium (I’ll give it to you if you can’t afford it; that’s how strongly I feel about this book). Wink’s thesis about Jesus’ Third Way is merely one chapter in the book, and he spends the rest examining how human nature is attached to violence and how we can overcome it thru Jesus.

Jesus is inaugurating something new, but we who have been nursed on the teat of violence just can’t wrap our heads around it. He has decided to start a game of chess on our checkers board, but we just can’t fathom playing a new game.

But seeing you have a problem is the first step to addressing it.

And thanks to Walter Wink, I no longer struggle with shoehorning the Jesus I know from experience into this wimpy character that He is often portrayed as.

Amen.

References:

Blomberg, C. (1992). Matthew (New American Commentary). Broadman.

France, R.T. (1985). Matthew (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries). IVP Academic.

Wink, W. (1998). The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium. Doubleday.

Starting this week, I will be posting content weekly on Tuesdays.

Emails tend to get overlooked on Mondays, and as we build the Jesus.Place community, I would like to be proactive in trying to optimize my content being seen. Likewise, social media posts tend to do worse on Mondays compared to the other weekdays.

Additional content will be posted on Thursdays & Saturdays assuming I ever find the time for additional content.

So Tuesday it is and I think you’ll like my Tuesday post where I ask “Was Jesus A Wimp?”

As always, I thank you for supporting my writing and encourage you to share Jesus.Place with your friends, family, and that odd guy in the work breakroom.