The Weakling, Outsider King

The virgin birth of Jesus and Jesus rising from the dead are to many folks things of fiction, hope for the simple, flip-the-page fables.

To believers, they are simple truth. Why not? You can peer from the side of a mountain at sunrise. The distance of the stars, the sun rising, birdsongs as the sun brightens the land, the busy-ness of nature that uncurls with the sun’s rolling warmth – these make it believable that a virgin can give birth, and the dead can live again. If nature came from nothing, what is impossible?

1. The most amazing passage in the Bible?

That’s why, more than the immaculate conception, or the resurrection, or the Exodus from Egypt, or the four horsemen of Revelation, this might be the most amazing passage in the Bible. And there’s nothing supernatural about it. It’s very human. It takes place after Jesus is arrested.

[A]fter flogging Jesus, [Pontius Pilate] handed him over to be crucified. Then the soldiers led him into the courtyard of the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters); and they called together the whole cohort. And they clothed him in a purple cloak; and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on him. And they began saluting him, "Hail, King of the Jews!" They struck his head with a reed, spat upon him, and knelt down in homage to him. After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him. [Mark 15:15-20 (NRSV).]

2. Cruelty has reasons.

Why did these soldiers crudely disrespect Jesus? Maybe because:

He was a Jew. To Roman soldiers, that made Jesus an outsider. It’s the same when a White looks down on a Black; or a Muslim on a Christian; or an Indian on a Pakistani.

Also, he was weak. He was completely under their power.

And he was a law-breaker. So, as they saw it, he deserved the welts and bleeding slices on his back. Soon he would die a slow, painful death, and they were fine with that.

And he was a "king". And likely these Roman soldiers hated kings – or centurions, or emperors, or anyone else who they had to bow to, who kept them from having their own way.

3. Weakness.

It’s the weakness that most amazes. A cohort of soldiers pushed around, mocked, and spat upon the human expression of the God of gods.

And God permitted it.

This is the God who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah with fire. This is the God who in one night slaughtered 185,000 soldiers besieging King Hezekiah’s Jerusalem. This is the God who calmed a storm with words.

This God stood by.

This forbearance was not an act of power. It was an act of character. The character, in its way, amazes more than the power.

Jesus’s act was an act of submission to humankind. And it was not submission to humankind in its nobility, wisdom, and compassion. It was not Good clasping respectful hands with Good. It was submission to humankind the shallow bully. It was submission to a cohort of soldiers that acted like a pack of jackals and debased a man about to suffer and die. They desecrated God, and God let them.

4. The Messiah.

The people waiting for the Messiah were waiting for a Psalm 66 Messiah. They were expecting, and wanting, a Messiah that would make his enemies "cringe", even if he also let others roll chariots over their heads.

They were expecting a Psalm 2 Messiah, who would break the kings of the earth with an iron rod and smash them like clay pots.

5. Jesus the un-God.

This Jesus was the Messiah? The world must wonder if we expect anyone to accept this. It goes against intuition. It does now. It did then.

But I choose not to fight that fight every day. The fight that breaks out in my mind more often than whether God is God or Jesus is Jesus, is this: what kind of Lord is he?

Everyone has a god. If they crave wealth, wealth makes them hop. If it’s beauty, or drugs, or liberalism, or learning, so be it.

But I want these words of Joshua tattooed on my heart:

Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord." [Joshua 24:15 (NRSV).]

Every day I pray for a pure heart, because I don’t have one. But the God of infinite might who gives his son over to treatment by we men described in Mark 15 – this God is perfect. He’s the God I want to serve.

6. The Jesus who is.

And this Jesus is the opposite of his oppressors.

They hated him because he was an outsider, and he was. But he spoke with the Samaritan woman. He told the story of the Good Samaritan. Jews hated Samaritans, but Jesus did not. And Jesus told his disciples to make disciples of all nations. There is no outsider with Jesus.

They hated him because he was weak, and he was. But he is close to the broken-hearted. He cares for the poor. And the blind. An the sick. And the dying.

They hated him because he was a law-breaker, and he was. But he kept company with sinners, and seemed to prefer them to the so-called righteous.

They hated him because he was a king, and he is. But Jesus loves his God and Father, and he submits completely to his father’s will.

I trust this Jesus. My salvation is safer in his hands than in my own.

7. Prayer.

Lord Jesus, day by day, bit by bit, please make me like you. Amen.

Sowing with Tears

Three decades ago, I asked God who I should marry. I got a forceful answer that seemed supernatural. It was a woman I knew from church. She was nice, but I didn't want her for a wife.

So I read books about supernatural guidance; but I did so like a lawyer, looking for a loophole. After that, I rejected what seemed to be God's clear guidance in other ways on other substantial matters.

Then, without drugs, my life collapsed spectacularly, in ways that usually only illegal drugs can bring about. My hope left. It has since been restored.
 
With Jesus, some people ask questions and get answers. Some people get better. Some people get angry. And some people seem to want their question back, like me; like the young man who kneels before Jesus to ask the way to eternal life.

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.’" He said to him, "Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth." Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, "You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. [Mark 10:17-22 (NRSV).]

1. A story without an end?

We don’t know whether the young man sells everything he has and follows Jesus.

The young man goes away grieving. But grief often has stages, and the last stage can be acceptance. So: for all we know, it could be that the young man got to the end of his grief and did what Jesus said to do.

After all, his zeal was clear. He ran to Jesus. He knelt at his feet. He followed all of the laws of Moses. If he did so humbly, out of deep longing for God - if Psalm 119 was written on his heart, maybe this meeting between the young man and Jesus led to an excellent result.

2.  Three kings.

When the Israelites under slavery ask Pharaoh for freedom to go to the desert for a festival to the Lord, Pharaoh refuses, and he makes them make bricks at the same pace as before. But he makes them gather their own straw for the bricks; before, he supplied the straw.

When the Israelites come to Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, they ask him to lighten the tax burden that his father had laid on them. He refuses. He says that his little finger is thicker than his father’s loins. He says that his father whipped them with whips; he will whip them with scorpions.

And Jesus, loving the young man who ran to him and knelt, gave him more to give up than the young man thought that he could.

This gives new meaning to the phrase "To those who have, more will be given; and from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away." (Mark 4:25.) I usually think of this as spiritual wealth added to spiritual wealth; but, here, the young man has the law of Moses on his back, and Jesus tells him to carry it without his riches, adding poverty to his burden.

3. A pattern.

When the young man knelt in front of Jesus, Jesus’s disciples had already left everything to follow him (though most of them started with less than the young man). Peter points out their sacrifice. And Jesus promises them reward. But see the warning here, wedged between blessings, easy to overlook:

"Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. [Mark 10:29-30 (NRSV).]

Persecutions. Those who yearn for God above children, parents, brothers and sisters, and material wealth – they will be persecuted. Which, apparently, is the calling of Christians.

Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same intention (for whoever has suffered in the flesh has finished with sin), so as to live for the rest of your earthly life no longer by human desires but by the will of God. [1 Peter 4:1-2 (NRSV).]

In case this bitter herb were not abundant enough in Mark 10, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, come to Jesus and tell him "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you." (Mark 10:35 (NRSV).) Jesus doesn’t choose door-number-one; he asks them what they want before he makes any promise. They tell him that they want to sit at his right hand and his left when he comes into his glory.

Jesus then equates pain and promise -- at least, promise in the afterlife. "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" (Says the man who will, in love of humanity and obedience to God, give himself up to be whipped, spat upon, beaten, basically tortured – the man who will die thirsty under the sun unable to move because his hands and feet are nailed to timber.)
 

James and John say that they can. And Jesus acknowledges that they will – suffer, that is. (Mark 10:29.)

The other disciples apparently aren’t quite paying attention, because they’re resentful of James and John.
 

In Mark 10, people start asking for things in verse 13: parents want Jesus to bless their children.

4. Leaving clothing behind.
 

The caboose in the Mark 10 caravan of gimme’s ends with blind Bartimaeus casting off his cloak, receiving his sight, and following Jesus. And I wonder if Bartimaeus’s gesture, casting off his cloak and going to Jesus to get his sight, is a freighted literary gesture. I wonder if it ties the chain of connected stories that start at Mark 10:13 to something that happens in chapter 14.
 

Because after Jesus is arrested, Mark 14 ends with this:

A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked.

I have no proof, but I like to think that this is the young man who knelt before Jesus, who, in the end, gave up all he had to follow his Savior.

5.  A man after Jesus's own heart.

It's easy think of the young man who knelt in front of Jesus and mentally rebuke him. But that overlooks that Jesus looked on him and loved him. We know that Jesus is love personified, but biblical declarations of Jesus's love for a specific person stand out.

If the follower who left his garment in the hands of the pursuers was this young man, his change of heart came quickly. This likely would not have happened if he had  rejected what Jesus said. Grief is one thing; rejection is another. The young man grieved. That left open the possibility of change. "May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy." (Psalm 126:5.)

6.  Why the young man was better than me.

I wrote about my rejection of God's guidance. To be clear: to investigate supernatural guidance is a good idea. Not all guidance comes from God. But there were three vital differences between this young man and me.

First, my heart was not right. I was stubborn, proud, and selfish. Thirty years on, after pain, humiliation, and grief, I am less so. I'm more like the young man. Now I fear and trust God more than I did. Those two attitudes toward God might seem paradoxical, but they aren't.

Second, I was determined to go against God's guidance. I wanted to say "No." That was wrong. God defies neat rules, but I think that saying no to God was like stopping my ears and stomping off. It cut off my ability to hear him. God did not have to withdraw his holy spirit or take away his blessing. I cast them out.

Third, I argued with God, but I didn't enter into a conversation with him. Praying always for willingness to do God's will, and, hopefully, meaning it and getting it, I could have said what I thought, speaking openly and honestly with him. The conversation might have been short, or it might have gone on for a time. God might have changed my mind; or he might have shown me that I misunderstood his will; or, maybe, he might have relented. I will never know what the outcome would have been, because I never humbly entered into that conversation.

And that's why the young man in Mark 10 was a giant, compared to me.

 

7. Prayer.

Lord God, your son who freed us from our sins taught us to pray, "do not bring us to the time of trial." We offer that prayer. We also offer ourselves to your will, to your love, to your wisdom, hoping for eternal life. We plead for strength and patience, so that suffering will not strip away our hope. All glory and authority to the one who suffered every sin of the world to be taken into his own body. Amen.

Losing the World

Boris Berezovsky made billions buying assets of the former Soviet Union.

But he quarreled with Russian president Vladimir Putin, and he had to flee to England. There, he lost his fortune in a lawsuit. The judge issued a ruling that called him an "inherently unreliable witness, who regarded truth as a transitory, flexible concept". (Financial Times.) He had another lawsuit pending, which his lawyers told him to settle. They told him that he was not a reliable witness. He was broke.

Then recently, he was found dead in his bathroom. "According to police, he was found with a ‘ligature’ around his neck, his death consistent with hanging." (Financial Times.)

His circumstances before his death bear comparison with a man of ancient times who had vast wealth, a family that he loved, and good health. Then his wealth was swept away, his children were obliterated, and his health was ruined. Once a great man, he sat in ashes, in poverty, in loneliness, in sickness, and he scratched with broken potsherds the sores that covered his body. His name was Job.

Berezovsky responded to his ruin with despondency:


The journalist from Russian Forbes magazine who met him hours before his death said Berezovsky seemed "distressed", his hand shaking, and had said his "life had lost meaning". [Financial Times.]
When he received the news that his wealth and his children were torn away, Job said this:
"Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." [NRSV.]
There was a psychological hardiness to Job that eluded Berezovsky.

Job had a firm foundation of strength that he could stand upon when the rock of his wealth crumbled. In a time when many, like Berezovsky, would lose even the will to live, Job even had the strength to defend himself against his friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, who tried to convince him that he, Job, must have invited catastrophe upon himself by sin. And in making his defense, Job showed the rock of his inner strength.

When Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar tell Job that he must deserve what he got, Job tells them of his works of love, his works of obedience to God. He clothed the naked. He took the side of the widow and the orphan. He helped the poor.

     I delivered the poor who cried,
          and the orphan who had no helper.
     The blessing of the wretched came upon me,
          and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy.
     I put on righteousness, and it clothed me;
          my justice was like a robe and turban.
     I was eyes to the blind,
          and feet to the lame.
     I was a father to the needy,
          and I championed the cause of the stranger.
     I broke the fangs of the unrighteous,
          and I made them drop prey from their teeth. [Job 29:12-17 (NRSV).]

Job’s virtue was not coincidental to his strength. Jesus spoke about the difference between people who hear what he says and do it, and people who only hear. The difference is the difference between Job and Berezovsky. This is what Jesus said in Luke chapter 6:
"Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you? I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, hears my words, and acts on them. That one is like a man building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock; when a flood arose, the river burst against that house but could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not act is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the river burst against it, immediately it fell, and great was the ruin of that house." [NRSV.]
Trouble comes. The world is taken away from every man and every woman. Every bond with life on earth is broken. One day, every man and woman becomes Berezovsky. Or Job.

I do not live like Job. I am not blameless before God. No matter how hard I try to live right, I will in the end depend upon grace.

But I make an effort. If God gives me wisdom I will not ignore him while I have strength and resources. I will live in thankfulness for present blessings and labor to build my house upon a rock of obedience to the word of God. I hope that in my time of trauma like Job I may bless the name of the Lord.

I would love to be able to look back on my life and say that I died a little every day, so that at the end death has no sting. Maybe that’s for me an impossible goal. But it’s a goal.

The Stoning of Shelomith’s Son

If people think of the biblical Book of Leviticus, they usually don’t think of love. Leviticus, after all, is the book of the Bible that says that the penalty for killing a person is death. It is literally the book of eye-for-an-eye.

Yet it is also the book where the command first appears to "love your neighbor as yourself." It commands kind and fair treatment of the aliens among the Israelites. There is a commandment not to pick clean a field, but to leave some remainders of its grain or fruit for aliens and the poor to glean.

And there is a story that at first seems to illustrate harshness. But it also a sorrowful story of love.

1. The story of Shelomith’s son, part 1.

The story involves a man who in a fight blasphemed against God. Here is the story from Leviticus 24:

10 Now the son of an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father went out among the Israelites, and a fight broke out in the camp between him and an Israelite. 11 The son of the Israelite woman blasphemed the Name with a curse; so they brought him to Moses. (His mother’s name was Shelomith, the daughter of Dibri the Danite.) 12 They put him in custody until the will of the Lord should be made clear to them.

13 Then the Lord said to Moses: 14 "Take the blasphemer outside the camp. All those who heard him are to lay their hands on his head, and the entire assembly is to stone him. [NIV.]

The man was stoned to death.

This might seem like a straightforward tale of crime and punishment. But it’s not. It solicits compassion from the reader.

That’s true for a couple of reasons. There’s enough detail in this story that a thoughtful reader can see the side of the nameless blasphemer. For example, we know that his father was Egyptian. Entering into this tale with imagination, we can see what his life might have been like among the Israelites.

He was the son of one of the oppressors from whom God rescued Israel. How much was he accepted by his mother’s people? How much was he an outsider? How much was daily provocation a catalyst of the fight that he got into?

I believe that when the Bible gives a detail, it gives it for a reason. So I believe that the story suggests that this unnamed man’s life was hard, his life was lonely, he felt like an outsider, and the fight might not have been completely his fault.

And because he was an outsider, he might have believed that the God of Israel was not his God. At least, he might have thought that God was not his God like God was the God of the insiders who made him feel like less than them.

So in his rage he was provoked to fatal speech about that God. Again, the otherwise unimportant details of this story invite the reader to see why this hot-blooded man might have blasphemed foolishly.

There’s more. Aside from Moses, one person in that story is named. The name of the blasphemer is lost to memory. The name of the man he fought is lost to memory. The names of the witnesses to the fight and to the stoning are lost to memory. The names of the ones who threw the stones are lost to memory. But we know the name of the blasphemer’s mother; her name was Shelomith.

There was a point to giving her name. By naming her, and by naming her alone, Leviticus directs the reader to think on her. It’s like a picture, and everyone is shown in black-and-white except for Shelomith, who is shown in color. This focus on her invites us to weigh her response to this tragedy.

Her husband, the Egyptian, very well might have stayed in the comfort of Egypt, rather than to pack his bags with the slaves. If that’s true, then it might have been  that Shelomith's future support and welfare depended largely on her son. The loss of him would have been everything to her, even beyond the natural love she had for her son.

So this is not a simple morality tale of just deserts. It’s a tale of sorrow.

2. The story of Shelomith’s son: Part 2.

This is an exercise in imagination, about the stoning of Shelomith’s son.

Shelomith’s son missed his father. His father had said, "Why should I carry my property in a cart with slaves into the wilderness instead of eating melons in my own land?" But Shelomith’s son went with his mother.

But if he was his mother’s son, he was also the son of an Egyptian, and it was rare for him to have friends among his mother’s people. For that matter, his mother too was slighted for her marriage to an Egyptian. People said, "Were the men among her own people hiding down a well? Did she have to marry with a cock that broke our backs?"

Shelomith’s son and his mother were kind to each other. Few others were.

Shelomith’s son herded goats. On this day, he was bringing his goats back from watering them. He suffered the usual taunts. The taunts were about himself, about his father, about his mother.

Close to his tent, he passed one of his usual provokers. The words stung. They always stung. Every time he took an insult and did not respond, he felt a little of his manhood slip away.

A kinsman of his mother was nearby. He was big, beefy, handsome, and he was younger that Shelomiths’s son. Shelomith’s son always assumed that this kinsman would get a good marriage. His family was well regarded, unlike his own.

The kinsman stepped beside Shelomith’s son and put his hand on his shoulder. He told the taunter to settle down – to leave alone this son of his kinswoman.

Shelomith’s son eyed his kinsman. However the kinsman meant his intervention, to Shelomith’s son it was condescension. It was a pronouncement that Shelomith’s son needed to be defended by his big, beefy, handsome, young kinsman.

Shelomith’s son slapped his kinsman. He slapped him across the face.

Shelomith’s son discovered that that felt good. He tried to do it again, but his kinsman pushed away the second slap. And he pushed away every slap after that that Selomith’s son tried to land on him.

Finally, the kinsman raised his fist as if he were going to strike Shelomith’s son. When Shelomith’s son ducked his head to avoid the blow, the kinsman locked his strong arm around Shelomith’s son’s head. Shelomith’s son wrestled furiously to escape, but his kinsman was too big and strong. A crowd gathered. Finally, Shelomith’s son stopped struggling. Then his kinsman pushed him to the ground.

Shelomith’s son lost any remaining dignity when he landed first on his buttocks and then on his back. His head struck a fist-sized rock, hurting him further.

He clambered to his feet. He shouted, "I spit on your God! I spit in the face of your God!"

The crowd erupted. Shelomith’s son suddenly was afraid. The crowd surged at him and grabbed him. He couldn’t move. Then they bound his hands and feet and lay him on his stomach.

They carried him to Moses. Shelomith’s son waited on his face. Then Moses pronounced judgment. The crowed carried Shelomith’s son, still bound, out of the camp.

There, he lay on his back surrounded by many. He could see faces. Some were angry. Some were glad. Some were grim. Some were blank.

He saw his kinsman. His kinsman’s face was sorrow.

Back in the crowd, he caught a glimpse of his mother. Compared to his kinsman, her face was a mirror of deeper sorrow. And Shelomith’s son knew that she could not save him; nor, in years to come, could he protect her or comfort her.

Then the stones came.

3. The implications of the stoning of Shelomith’s son.

I believe that we are supposed to feel compassion for Shelomith and her son.

In times to come, we would see this compassion in Jesus. Men of high position would wonder aggressively why, if he was a righteous man, he spent time with sinners. Simon the Pharisee would wonder why, if Jesus were a prophet, he permitted an immoral woman to bathe his feet with tears and wash them with her hair.

Jesus was invited to condone the stoning of the women caught in adultery. He saved her life; then he forgave her.

Sometimes I look at people I know with the eyes of Simon the Pharisee. As I judge them, these people exasperate me. The story of the stoning of Shelomith’s son reminds me to have compassion. It is compassion that Jesus taught. These are people he died for.

Salvation is a matter of high stakes. The future of humankind and every human is determined by choices people make from the beginning of history to the end. The ultimate choice was made by Jesus, but the Bible from beginning to end is a story of choices.

In the story of the stoning of Shelomith’s son, we see that choices have consequences. We also see compassion. It is a story of sorrow, but in that story love is the other side of sorrow.

Guided to the Good God Wants

"Many Americans not only believe in God in some general way but experience God directly and report repeated contact with the supernatural." [T.M. Luhrmann, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God (Knopf, 2012).]

 

1. One of many.

I claim to be among the "many" that Professor Luhrman talks about.

I don’t boast in this. It’s just a fact of my life. Communication with God is something that I’ve sought and obtained.

I share here what I believe to be a message from God personal to me. I share what was communicated, my grudging response to it, the after-effect of yielding to it. I cast about for the why of it. I discuss its importance to me.

This isn’t a Message to America. It isn’t an Oracle to the Human Race. The subject will seem ordinary.

Why God involves himself in the details of our lives, and in my life in particular, is a question that I won’t try to answer. I’ll just point to a question raised by a very flawed, very great man who loved God with his whole heart:

What is man that You take thought of him, And the son of man that You care for him? [Psalm 8:4 (A Psalm of David) (NASB).]

 2. Jesus.

Jesus is above me as high as the moon is over the Mojave Desert.

But to be like him is my goal and the goal of any Christian. I won’t reach that goal while I walk this planet. Still, I want to do my best to imitate him and, to that end, I contemplate the closeness between Jesus and God.

Jesus submitted to God in all that he did. This is from the gospel of John:

Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner." [John 5:19 (NASB)].

Not only did he do what he saw his Father doing, he said what he heard his Father say:

Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works. [John 14:10 (NASB).]

This relationship is evident, even if sometimes it’s not indicated in so many words. There’s a backstory to the account of the Greek woman who came to Jesus pleading for him to heal her daughter. Her daughter was possessed by an impure spirit. Jesus said to her, "Let the children be satisfied first, for it is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs." (Mark 7:27 (NASB).)

After Jesus spoke, the Greek woman said back, "Yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the table feed on the children’s crumbs." (Id., 7:28 (NASB).) For that answer, Jesus told her that her daughter was healed. The woman went home and her daughter was well.

Jesus was not cruel. He knew something from God, or God knew something and told Jesus what to say. Jesus said what he said to bring the woman to some realization, some repentance, perhaps some needed humility – Mark does say. But the existence of that backstory seems clear.

Nobody has ever had Jesus’s closeness with God. I’ve heard that prioress Hildegaard von Bingen longed to be a "feather on the breath of God", but I haven’t heard that she achieved that.

And that’s the human condition. For the most part, we’re left to ordinary resources for choices in our life.

3. My own choices

But sometimes God makes his will known. In a perfect world our response to God would be automatic. God commands, we obey.

To my shame, I have defied that perfect, four-word formula.

a. Marriage.

Twenty-some years ago, I believed that God directed me to marry a specific woman. I was praying. I asked God who I should marry. Immediately, the image of the face of a woman I knew came strongly upon me. The image came, I think, three times.

But I wanted to marry someone else. This other woman who I wanted to marry was smart, charming, beautiful, and professionally accomplished. We had dated.

So I resented direction to marry somebody who wasn’t her.

So instead of pursuing the woman of the vision, I started to study about divine guidance. Frankly, I was hoping to alibi myself out of doing what I didn’t want to do; though, in my defense, I was not altogether insincere. I read, I consulted others. I could never bring myself to act on the apparent response to my question to God.

It’s good that I didn’t marry the woman that I wanted to marry. We often were not kind to each other – there was conflict. Also, she was smarter and emotionally stronger than I was. If I had married her, I would have become her satellite. She would have been unsatisfied with that, and I would have been unhappy because she was unhappy.

It’s a pity that I didn’t marry the woman of the vision. I can now see how it could have been a good marriage. But I didn’t think so at the time.

I didn’t marry the woman that I wanted, and I didn’t marry the woman that I thought God wanted me to marry. Decades of loneliness followed.

b. House.

Around the time that I was refusing to marry the woman that I thought God wanted me to marry, I bought a house in Pasadena. It was small but charming.

But before I signed the papers to buy the house, a very clear voice came to me at night. I saw the house in my mind’s eye, and I heard: "No!"

But bought it anyway, although with anxiety.

House prices soon plunged, and the house became a burden. I unloaded it at a substantial loss.

c. China.

Around that time, I happened to see an advertisement from a Christian service organization about short-term teaching assignments in China. I called to ask about those.

When they found out that I was a lawyer, they strongly urged me to go to China long-term. They wanted me to teach international business law. The idea was attractive. Work at the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office had become a great strain because of conflict with my supervisor.

But again there was a warning. I do not remember now the exact circumstances, but I remember a voice that said, "Stay home and take care of your father." Dad was old, and he was lonely after the death of my mother.

But I was fixated on doing the good that I wanted, not the good that God apparently wanted, so I went to China. I taught there for two years.

I have good memories of China. But my time there ended with dread, with a belief that I had been opportunistically blamed for injury to a pedestrian who had walked into the side of a moving bus. I was not responsible. But in my last months in China, I always believed that I was about to be arrested.

In the meantime, Dad came under the influence of a manipulative woman who labored to divide him from his sons.

Each choice that I made, about marriage, about buying a house, about going to China, came with consequences. In fact, I still suffer consequences of those choices. And I may be largely unaware of all of the consequences that flowed from those poor choices. I note in passing that within a few years after I came back from China, I was fleeing vast conspiracies and looking for places to sleep out of the wind in ditches, in orange groves, and under shrubbery next to freeways.

4. No swimming.

This history of disobedience and disaster informs my response to guidance that I think I have had recently.

I was swimming regularly. I had for years. The thought occurred to me that I should give up swimming. As I thought about this, I felt an inner weight, which I interpreted to be the Holy Spirit signaling that this was from God. This thought was persistent.

This thought was not welcome. Swimming is my exercise, my hobby, and my enjoyment. Swim meets are my avenue of physical competition. It makes me proud to swim well and to be strong and fit. It’s good for my appearance, and I’m so vain that I like to see my broad chest and shoulders as I shave in the morning. I have friends that I know through swimming. And, after all, doesn’t the Bible say "Physical training is of some value"? (1 Timothy 4:8 (NIV).)

I weighed what to do. I went through some of the classic stages of grief. There was denial – does God really want this? There was bargaining – God, what if I don’t swim or compete on Sundays; then is it OK?

5. Caution.

It’s right to be cautious about supernatural guidance. I have to approach supernatural guidance with special caution because I have been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic– or, more exactly, as having something like paranoid schizophrenia. I take medicine.

But that doesn’t make me automatically dismiss the idea that God might speak to me. My times dominated by that disease are marked, first, by paranoia. I suffer alarm about an apparent conspiracy to harm me. As the disease progresses, the conspiracy seems to grow, and my alarm deepens. Only then do the voices and visions come. I assume that if I were listening to disease and not to God, before that I would be in flight from a vast conspiracy.

And to acknowledge my disease is not to say that I can never be supernaturally guided. That would be like saying that because I have ringing in my ears, nobody ever presses my doorbell.

Yet I have had supernatural-seeming thoughts that turned out not to be from God. Once I was leaving my home, and I had a strong sense, not unlike the sense I had about swimming, that I would never return to it again. It’s from that home that I now write. I’ve also heard voices with more alarming messages that I now know were not from God.

So not every voice, not every supernatural-seeming thought, comes from disease; nor does it necessarily come from God. If a voice told me to harm someone, I would know that it came from something evil that had access to my mind.

6. Discernment.

So I had to decide whether this thought about swimming really came from God. I convinced myself that it did by driving into mountains, finding a quiet, shaded spot, and being alone to think.

For the most part in my hours in the mountains I did not address the immediate issue of swimming. I began by reading a few chapters of scripture. Then I worked on an essay about the fear of God. At the end of several hours, I felt peace and comfort about the idea of giving up swimming.

Maybe I’m wrong. That’s always possible, and it’s good to be humble about the possibility of making a mistake. But all you can ever do is what you think is right after giving the matter careful thought.

7. Why this has happened.

Naturally I have wondered why God apparently banned me from swimming.

"Why" questions with God are perilous. He often does not give us the "why" of what he wants. And compared to God each of us is like a pawn or a bishop or a knight on an infinitely large chess board. We see only what is immediately around us. God sees the whole board. So sometimes we just have to trust.

In the first chapter of Mark, Jesus heals a leper. He strictly tells the leper not to tell anyone about how he came to be healed. But in his enthusiasm, the one-time leper told everybody. It’s right, isn’t it, to give glory to God? But afterward, the throngs of people made it impossible for Jesus to minister in towns, according to Mark. After that Jesus’s ministry was for a time confined to the countryside. (Mark 1:40-45.)

So God has his reasons, which we might not know. But here are reasons that make sense to me.

It might have happened in answer to a prayer. Months ago, seeing how tottering was my walk with God, I asked him to "quicken" me. I meant "quicken" in the sense of changing me from passively religious to actively engaged with God and doing his will. And I often pray for wisdom.

And my exercise regimen has been spectacular, but my prayer-life and Bible-study have been comparatively grudging and meager. Maybe God wanted to shake things up.

And I think of Jesus and the rich young ruler. He came to Jesus and asked what he should do to gain eternal life. Jesus told him to obey the scriptural commandments. But he pressed Jesus. He said that he had done that from childhood. Then Jesus told him to sell all he had and give the proceeds to the poor; then he would have treasure in heaven. Then, Jesus said, the young man should follow him. (Luke 18:18-23.)

Maybe I am like the rich young ruler, without the wealth. I have no great wealth to give up. But I can surrender this thing, swimming, that is such an important part of my life. Maybe my swimming is the wealth that makes me stumble in my walk with God.

And, apart from all of that, maybe what I heard was just a sovereign choice by God.

8. Effect.

I notice things about myself now that I don’t swim. I’ve had a quickening of ideas. I’ve had flashes of love for strangers – wholly uncharacteristic of me. These might be breadcrumbs from God dropped in my way to lead me to know that I’ve done right.

And now that I’ve given up something costly, I’m less patient with my lax religious practices. When I waste time, It seems to me that I risk forfeiting any benefit that I might gain from my sacrifice.

It used to be that the first thing I would do on waking in the morning was go online. Lately, the first thing I do is read the Bible.

And before, at night, I typically put off reading the Bible until shortly before sleeping. But by then I was so tired that I retained almost nothing of what I read.

So giving up swimming has shifted my priorities and made me walk better with God.

9. Hard.

Giving up swimming has been hard in two ways. It’s hard to give up something that I love. Also, it’s hard to know that I’m rightly interpreting God’s will. I’m glad for these two difficulties.

The value of what I’ve given up increases the value of what I gave it up for. Think of Thomas Paine. Think of what he wrote in a time when the American revolution had suffered military setbacks in New York. Paine wrote these words in his booklet The Crisis:

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.

Giving up swimming is, in fact, a low price for a closer walk with God. But it is costly in my mind.

It’s also hard to know that I am not being fooled. But the fact that I struggle with this is some comfort.

Bryan Garner is a writing guru. He’s written many books, including two books he co-wrote with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. I’ve heard Garner say that the difference between a good writer and a bad writer is that a good writer thinks writing’s hard; a bad writer thinks it's easy.

Maybe that’s true with spiritual things, too. So the fact that I wrestle with my apparent messages from heaven might be a good thing.

10. The limits of supernatural guidance.

I am mindful that by far most of what I do and think will continue to come from my own thoughts. I’m not Paul that I learn all of what I know of Jesus by direct revelation. I need to study my Bible. And when I work at my law practice, I have to look for the law, and I have to think hard, and I have to labor at my advocacy.

Yet even most of the time, I hope and believe that God, if he chooses, might be guiding me, even if that’s not apparent. It might be that God speaks to us through our own thoughts, but he speaks to us below the level of our awareness.

11. The limits of my sacrifice.

I chose to interpret this supernatural guidance narrowly: not to give up all exercise, but only swimming. I took up running. But I wrestle with whether I am called to give the guidance a broader interpretation and to sacrifice all exercise for the sake of gaining more focus on God.

12. The limits of my sanctity.

Communication with God doesn’t make me a saint. I don’t love as I should. I waste a lot of time that God has given me. I spend too much time arguing about politics. Even as I post a snarky comment about a politician, I know that it doesn’t make me grow closer to God.

I walk with God haltingly. I hope that God will make me his foot-soldier. My hope is not to be exalted but acceptable. For a man who spent a decade convinced that he was lost to God, this hope is spectacular.

Obama and Strange Fire

Jesus said to his disciples: "Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. [Luke 17:1 (NIV).]

I hope I am not a rock of stumbling. This isn’t for my friends only; it’s for me, too.

1. Obama-hating.

I believe that some people hate Barack Obama more than they love America. When the economy ticks up, they’re not glad. They see America’s climb from this slump through the crystal of Obama’s re-election chances. So good news is, to them, bad news.

Likewise, a friend of mine heard early in the Obama administration that Defense Secretary Robert Gates was going to resign. My friend couldn’t conceal his percolating glee. He didn’t regret America’s loss of a competent leader; he rejoiced in potential disruption of the Obama administration.

2. More Obama-hating.

But it’s more than a willingness for America to sink as long as Obama sinks with it. Recently, partisans have been exploiting Obama’s verbal hiccup in his you-didn’t-build-that speech. In context, it’s clear that Obama knows that people build businesses by their initiative and hard work; his point was that America helps. His point was that the help that America gives includes help from our government. Government supplies (for example) roads, educated workers through free public education, fire protection, and police protection (so that you don’t need an armed posse to keep your business relatively safe). Non-partisan fact-checkers have shown that the partisan attacks on this speech are untruthful.

I have debated what Obama said with my friends. I have pointed out what the fact-checkers say. And I have pointed out other parts in his speech where he pays tribute to the initiative and hard work that business owners dedicate to their businesses.

What amazes me is this: some of my friends now think that context doesn’t matter. If somebody says something that sounds crazy, these friends now don’t think it’s necessary to look carefully at what that person said to make sure that they really meant that crazy thing. It’s legitimate, apparently, to lift a statement out of context, and impose on the speaker a belief that he doesn’t hold, and to judge him harshly if that belief happens to be crazy.

In other words, my friends hate Obama so much that they are willing to abandon logic, reason, and truth in the service of their hatred.

3. Defining evil and good by what Obama is and is not.

I lived in China for two years. A Chinese man compared America unfavorably to China. He said that America is young, implying that it is immature compared to China, who’s civilization goes back thousands of years. When I pointed out that the United States is older than the Republic of China, he missed a beat. Then he rejoined that China is "young and vigorous". In other words, whatever China is, that is good. Whatever America is, that is bad.

I find hatred of Obama is like this. Just like good or bad is defined to this Chinese man by China in comparison to America, so also, to Obama-haters, bad and good are defined by what Obama does or does not do.

No act by Obama is too trivial to overlook in the gathering of scorn. Do Obama and his wife tap their knuckles in exuberance and joy? That becomes a "terrorist fist-bump". Does Obama drink a Budweiser? Budweiser is foreign-owned!

Some hatred is directed at actions not so trivial. Obama kept America’s economy from sinking by bailing out American car companies. This saved jobs not only at those companies, but also at the American companies that supply parts to those companies. Almost all of that bail-out money has come back to the treasury now that those American car companies have regained their footing. Was this a worthy policy? Not to hear some say. To them, it was "socialism".

Recently, Obama expressed solidarity with families of victims in Aurora, Colorado. His said that his daughters like to go to movies; he expressed what it would be like for him if they were harmed in a movie theater. Naturally, this mourning with those who mourn (Romans 12:15) was a bad thing. According to Rush Limbaugh, it was "egomania" because it showed that to Obama the tragedy in Aurora was supposedly all about himself. Limbaugh is widely followed; I assume that that means that his words find many listening ears.

3. Obama-hating as a rock of stumbling.

It dis-eases me a little bit to tease out the implications of all of this. One of those dis-easing implications is this: if my friends hate Obama more than they love truth, then I worry that they hate Obama more than they love the one who is truth personified, namely God.

This is truly a dreadful thought. But it is not shocking.

We love God with our lips, if not with our hearts. Jesus knew this. "But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people." (John 2:24 (NIV).) One evidence of this is our preference for our own comfort. When we cherish our comfort instead of helping our needy brothers and sisters in Christ, we show where our loyalty lies. (1 John 3:17.) I don’t exclude myself from this judgment.

Barack Obama is a Christian. He is a flawed Christian like the rest of us, but a Christian nonetheless. He attended a Chicago church with his family. He professes Christianity. Recently, he recited very appropriate scripture when speaking words of comfort about the tragedy in Aurora, Colorado.

My brothers and sisters stumble over Obama. If we trembled before the word of God, and we don’t, we would tremble before this:

Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. [1 John 4:20 (NIV).]

If these words don't stir the waters by themselves, consider them with these words:

Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.  Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching.  [John 14:23-24 (NIV).] 

4. Furnaces of hatred.

Jesus said to his disciples: "Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come." Luke 17:1 (NIV)

We spend an hour or two in church; more time in front of the television. Some media companies are in American society great furnaces of hatred. Fox News might as well call itself the 24/7 hate-Obama network. And Keith Olbermann used to hate deeply on MSNBC. (I’ve watched almost no MSNBC lately, so I don’t know any current haters.)

This is the problem: we become what we behold. That’s why we are urged to keep our eyes on Jesus. (Hebrews 12:1-2.) Keeping our eye on the media haters, their strange fire touches us like a profane Pentecost, and we ourselves become little furnaces of hatred.

6. Hatred separates us from God.

As we hate, hatred marbles itself into our psyches. It becomes increasingly ingrained in our thoughts.

Jesus knew the danger of hating. That’s why he warned us not to oppose evil people, but to yield to them rather than to struggle against them. (Matthew 5:39-41.) (Yes, I know it’s hypocritical for a litigator to point this out.)

7. Better fire.

Not to finish down, but up:

"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." [John 13:34.]

Also: John 13:35; Romans 12:10; Romans 13:8; Galatians 5:13; Ephesians 4:2; 1 Thessalonians 4:9; 2 Thessalonians 1:3; Hebrews 10:24; 1 Peter 1:22; 1 Peter 3:8; 1 John 3:11; 1 John 3:23; 1 John 4:11; 1 John 4:12; 2 John 1:5 (in case we didn’t get it the first time).

I write this essay as much for myself as for my friends. I will try to regard those I disagree with with sympathy. Maybe this will ripen into kindness, which will ripen into love. By grace.

I, Libertard.

I remember reading about a Union soldier and a Confederate soldier found dead after a Civil War battle. Each gripped the other, and each had thrust his knife into the other’s side. They lay together in death.

That epitomized the hatred in that conflict, a hatred still un-healed.

So. I was researching on the internet the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (known to its detractors as "ObamaCare"). People have written things like, "This explanation is so simple that even a Republican can understand it." Or, "Send this to your libertard friends and watch their heads explode"– or something like that.

On Facebook, liberals and conservatives often hate on each other.

1. A house divided against itself.

Abraham Lincoln said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." And he was quoting a higher authority. What Lincoln said was true then: hundreds of thousands died in a war to uphold a nation divided against itself.

An what he said is true now. In our hatred, we risk burning our abode. Some people hate the other party, or a particular person, such as Barack Obama, more than they love their country. They'd burn down their own house to kill their "enemy" in it.

For a scientific point of view, study Harvard professor Martin A. Nowak's article in the July 2012 Scientific American, called "Why We Help". Cooperation helps organisms survive.

2. Harming ourselves.

When we call someone a "libertard" or a "tyrant" or a "Republiscam" or a "fool" we muffle our own intelligence.

We could have a chicken-and-egg argument about whether movies and television dramas and popular fiction make us shallow, or whether producers make shallow entertainments because we are shallow. The fact is that it’s the rare movie or television drama that has a villain with any complexity.

Shows with complex characters become iconic. The Sopranos is an example. Tony Soprano was a thug. But he was a complex thug. He loved his family, and he was capable of kindness, for all his wrongful ways.

And that’s why Shakespeare endures. Nobody could read everything that has been written about Shakespeare and his plays, even if he spent a lifetime trying. When I lived in China, I knew a Chinese scholar who studied Shakespeare – not to teach, but to learn.

Shakespeare’s characters were complex, even the villains. Richard III is a rogue, but an interesting one. Macbeth murdered his king, but he is a human character with pathos.

The point is that when we summarize a person into a pejorative, like fool, we overlook richness and complexity in the personality of another human being. We make ourselves shallow when we regard others with small eyes.

And to those who care what God thinks, he is clear: hard judgments are a conduit to condemnation.

But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell. [Matthew 5:22 (NIV).]

3. The first step.

The first step to un-divide our house is not from those who do wrong; it’s from the wronged. It’s forgiveness.

I try. When I first saw it, I was burned by the term libertard. Hated it. I'm fine with it now.

Didn’t Jesus say that his kingdom was made for the simple, not the smart? Didn’t he say that who he was was for the simple to know? "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children." (Matthew 11 (NIV).) Maybe if I'm a libertard, I'm simple enough to see God. So I forgive libertard.

The importance of fogiveness is a core christian  belief. "And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins." (Mark 11.) This is a big idea that appears many places in the New Testament.

But to ground this piece in science, I'll refer again to Why We Help. That article discusses five distinct patterns of cooperation that favor an individual or group in evolution. One is called "direct reciprocity". On its basic level, it's tit-for-tat. One monkey grooms another so that the other monkey will groom him.

The author described the use of complex computer simulations to show how this kind of cooperation could evolve. Describing these computer-simulation results, he said:

What made our early computer simulations even more interesting was the revelation that there are different kinds of direct reciprocity. Within 20 generations the initial tit-for-tat strategy had given way to a more generous strategy in which players might still cooperate even if their rival defected. We had in essence, witnesses the evolution of forgiveness -- a direct-reciprocity strategy that allowed players to overlook the occasional mistake.

The last form of cooperation that the author described, which applies to "all manner of organisms, from amoebas to zebras", is the performance of "selfless acts for the greater good, as opposed to abetting a single peer."  No doubt forgiveness can be such an form of cooperation. It enhances group cohesion.

A happy confluence of science and religion exhaults forgiveness.

4. The second step.

The second step is to forebear from harsh words against people we disagree with. It divides the house against itself.

I say this fully aware of my own blog posts, such as "When Christians are Assholes." http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/08/when-christians-are-assholes.html I also remember blog posts that take down certain republican candidates. E.g.: http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2012/02/mitt-romney-up-tree.html And I have been happy to share on Facebook non-partisan fact-checker analysis that calls persons out for pants-on-fire political statements.

So you can call me hypocrite. I prefer complex.

Please remember that I have also called for prayers for Mitt Romney. http://www.justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2012/05/prayers-for-mitt-romney.html  And I wrote a post call Ten Things I Admire about Conservatives. Among others. http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2012/02/ten-things-i-admire-about-conservatives.html

5. The third step.

The third step is to pray for each other. Pray for blessings on people we oppose. Who knows? Maybe we will find it harder to find fault after that. Maybe that will be because God will change them. Or maybe God will change us.

The Strength of a Conqueror

On Friday, a daredevil crossed over Niagara falls on a cable. As he crossed, he could not step to the right or the left. He had to keep the moving cable beneath his feet. He wore a safety harness.

When Jesus walked the Earth, he also could not step out of place, out of the will of God. The devil was vigilant for a mistake. Jesus wore no safety harness.

Before his ministry began, Jesus fasted in the wilderness for forty days. Then, the devil tempted him. The devil tempted him with his immediate need, hunger. And the devil tempted him to doubt who he was.

And the devil took Jesus up on a very high mountain and showed him all of the kingdoms of the world. He told Jesus that Jesus could have these. But first Jesus had to fall down and worship him.

1. Great temptation.

Let’s be clear. The devil offered Jesus all of the riches and the honor and the power and the pleasures of the world. No kingdom of Earth has ever been as great as the kingdom that the devil offered Jesus. Jesus could have lived in any way he wanted. Jesus, who grew up with a poor carpenter as his father, would have had greater scope and power than any king who has ever lived. He could have spent his life adding pleasure to pleasure. Or he could have spent his life making the world just.

2. Temptation and me.

I once wrote that if the devil showed me or my friends the kingdoms of the world and offered them to us, we would at least think about it. That might be the dumbest thing I ever wrote. I soon changed my post.

Because we would not think about it. At least, I would not. I would be awed. I would instantly fling myself on the offer.

I am certain of this. I am certain because I know that the devil doesn’t have to offer me the world. I’m far far easier to bribe.

I have done wrong by God for ambition. For the sake of a career that is floating garbage compared to all of the kingdoms of the world, I have sinned.

I have done wrong for women. For the sake women who were attractive and charming but not the wondrous women that the ruler of the world could have, I have fallen down.

I have done wrong for money. Not the virtually unlimited money of all of the kingdoms of the Earth, but for a comparatively paltry amount.

Come to think of it, I have done wrong to save myself a minute in the grocery check-out line.

Come to think of it, I have fallen down for no reason at all.

3. Temptation and a man like myself.

I don’t think I’m alone. I met a man at a campground. He was a good man in the eyes of the world. He was an upstanding citizen and a churchgoer. But he fell short, like me. His sons were addicted to alcohol. That might be why his conscience told him not to drink. I didn’t ask why, but he was clear: his conscience counseled against his drinking. And he drank.

Alcohol is not a sin in itself. But if your conscience tells you not to drink, and you drink, you err. (Romans 14.) This man resisted God for an evening glass of wine.

4. Temptation and an American hero.

John McCain has lived an amazing life. I used to admire his straight talk. I admire his heroism in Vietnam. I admire his brilliant career. I admire his toughness.

But to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, he said that South Carolina had every right to fly the confederate flag over its capitol. He later admitted that it was wrong for him to endorse a symbol under which men fought for the right to keep slaves. McCain did not stumble over all of the kingdoms of the world. He stumbled over the chance to win the highest office in America, an office that he could keep for no more than eight years.

He divorced his first wife, the one who was faithful to him during his captivity. He divorced her to marry a rich young beauty.

In McCain’s recent re-election for his Senate seat, he was challenged in the Republican primary by a Tea Party candidate. He hewed to the right to beat back his challenger. To safeguard his nomination, he even claimed that he would not vote for an immigration bill that he himself had introduced in the Senate.

I can’t criticize John McCain from on high. I freely admit: John McCain is a better man than I am. He was tortured and lived under inhuman conditions as a P.O.W. in Vietnam. And as the son of a high American admiral, he was offered his freedom.

He refused.

That was courage. That was honor. That was dignity. That was patriotism. That was love of country. That was something that I would not have done, except in my dreams.

But this brave, honorable, dignified, patriotic man has stumbled over far far less than Jesus overcame. And I am not worthy to carry McCain’s briefcase. And McCain is not worthy to hold the robe of John the Baptist. And John the Baptist was not worthy to untie the sandal of Jesus.

5. The point.

The point is two-fold.

It gives glory to God to know how profound it was for Jesus to overcome the wiliest temptations of the devil. And the temptation in the wilderness was after forty days of fasting. After forty days with no food, I would have given in for a bowl of fruit.

And we must remember to be humble. Humility doesn’t come easily to me. For all I have just said about myself, I am sure that I think of myself more highly than I ought.

So I pray for humility. Only by being humble can we know how strong and wise and good Jesus is. Knowing the truth about our strong and wise and good god is a boon and benefit to ourselves.

Do Liberals Resemble Jesus? (Yes, but Very Imperfectly.)

In The Whites of their Eyes, historian Jill Lepore tells of her experience with the Tea Party. Her book is in no danger of being sold at Tea Party rallies, but Lepore sometimes speaks warmly of the people she met, and she credits their sincerity.

But at one point, she writes, a Tea Party woman asked her if she was a liberal. Before she could fully answer, the woman grabbed her and demanded fifty dollars. This was because, according to that woman, liberals give money to everyone who asks for it.

Ms. Lepore didn’t say what she said back. But she might have said, "You’re thinking of Christians". (See Luke 6:30.)

In what ways do liberals imitate Christ? I can think of ten ways.

1. Liberals care about the poor.

When someone takes up the cause of the poor, it's usually a liberal.

See Matthew 25:40,45. ("[W]hatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.") See also the story of poor Lazarus and the rich man. (Starting at Luke 16:19) The story ends happily for Lazarus, not for the rich man:

"Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.’"

2. Liberals sit down with sinners.

Republicans agitate and foment about Bill Ayers. Their claims about Ayers and Obama are greatly exaggerated. But this guilt by association is a uniquely Republican argument, like what the Pharisees said about Jesus. And, of course, conservatives, more than liberals, berate criminals and those who defend them. Criminal-defense attorneys skew liberal.

Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?" [Luke 5:29-30.]

3. Liberals care about health care, even health care for the poor.

I can hunt down many, many cases in the Gospels of Jesus healing - the blind, the leprous, the paralyzed, the chronically bleeding. Jesus might have performed healing miracles more than any other kind.

Liberals passed health-care reform, with help from Democratic moderates. Health care reform will mean that sick will not die because they are poor.

4. Liberals believe in paying taxes.

Conservatives seem to want to throttle government by cutting off revenue to it. Liberals typically believe in paying for programs through funding that includes taxes.

Jesus approved paying taxes, and he paid taxes. Matthew 22:16-21:

“Teacher,” they said, “we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are.  Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?”

But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me?  Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius,  and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”

  “Caesar’s,” they replied.

Then he said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

Also Matthew 17:27: Jesus pays the temple tax with a coin from a fish’s mouth.

5. Liberals believe in reasonable restraint on business.

Under the rubric of "free enterprise", conservatives beat the drum of repealing virtually all regulation of business. Liberals believe that reasonable regulation is necessary.

Jesus didn’t have an idolatrous regard for free enterprise. See, Matthew 21:12:

Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves.

6. Some liberals are rich, but, like Jesus, they don’t adulate the rich.

Jesus wasn’t real crazy about the rich. I referred to the story of Lazarus and the rich man already. Also Mark 10:25: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the kingdom of God."

And Matthew 19:30: "[M]any who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first."

7. Liberals believe that the poor, if they contribute little, are equal to the rich who contribute much.

Liberals believe in the progressive income tax. Conservatives often want a flat tax.

Jesus believed that the poor who contributed little were entitled to more honor than the rich who contributed much.

Luke 21:1-4:

As Jesus looked up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. "Truly I tell you," he said, "this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on."

8. Liberals are open to other cultures and nationalities.

Conservatives often hate foreigners. (Lately, especially the French and the Mexicans and the Muslim.) Liberals, not so much.

Jesus loves all nations. Matthew 28:19: "[G]o and make disciples of all nations . . .."

 9. Liberals believe in mercy.

Liberals, more than conservatives, believe in second chances and mercy. Liberals, more than conservatives, oppose California’s Three Strike law, under which a man with two serious prior felonies can get a life sentence if he steals a packet of aspirin for his ailing wife. Liberals, more than conservatives, oppose the death penalty.

The mercy of Jesus breaths in the Bible.

His life was mercy.

John 8:1-11 is the story of the woman caught in adultery, who was about to be killed. Jesus wrote in the sand, and the crowd peeled off until they all were gone. Jesus asked who was left to condemn her. She said nobody. Then he told her: "Then neither do I condemn you," . . ... "Go now and leave your life of sin."

He told the criminal dying on a cross next to him: "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise." (Luke 23:43.)

Matthew 9:13: "I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

Luke 11:4: Jesus teaches us to pray: "Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us."

Luke 7:3-4:

"If a brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them."

In the story of murderous Saul called to become an apostle to preach the gospel, mercy is huge. (Acts 9.)

10. Liberals believe that private property can be appropriated for the common good.

Conservatives consider private property sacrosanct. Liberals, within reason, not so much.

And Jesus: not so much.

Matthew 8:28-32:

When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. "What do you want with us, Son of God?" they shouted. "Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?"

Some distance from them a large herd of pigs was feeding. The demons begged Jesus, "If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs."

He said to them, "Go!" So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water.

Of course, one of many differences between Jesus and liberals is that liberals have to compensate owners who’s property is taken. (They know they’re not Jesus. And they aren’t.)

Honestly, I've listened to conservative preachers and liberal preachers, and I prefer the conservatives. But there's something in liberalism that imitates Christ.

Now, I'm only half-serious here, so I assume that my conservative friends will be only half-angry. (If that.)

________________________________

Biblical quotes are from Today’s New International Version.

Does God Have an Immigration Policy?

"Use every man after his desert, and who should ’scape whipping?" – Hamlet, by William Shakespeare

We have a disconnect between how we judge others, and how we hope God will judge us.

1. The never-ending debate.

I have friendly debates with friends about illegal immigrants. From my point of view, people have assumptions about illegal immigration, and these assumptions don’t hold up. For example, people assume that there are a limited number of jobs, so that every job taken by an illegal immigrant is a job lost to a citizen.

This assumption doesn’t hold up when it’s studied by economists. Economists find that illegal immigrants create as many jobs as they take. Money doesn't go to illegal immigrants and stop. They spend it. That spending creates jobs. So illegal immigrants don’t just eat the pie; they make more pies. They make pies as fast as they eat them.              .

So I don't think that the facts are on the side of my debate partners. But sooner or later in my friendly debates, the argument becomes a moral argument. Sooner or later, my friends resort to this argument: people shouldn’t come to the country and break the law. And by coming to the country, illegal immigrants are breaking the law.

It’s a fine argument. After all, people should obey the law. Who can endorse law-breaking?

Who wants to be on the side of law-breakers?

2. God and grace.

Well, Jesus.

Yeah, him.

The guy who said:

But go and learn what this means: "I desire compassion, and not sacrifice," for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners. [Matthew 9:13; NASB.]

To know God and to know yourself is to know that "[B]y grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast." (Ephesians 2:7-9; NASB).

We need grace when we stand before God so that our own too-scrupulous words don’t return to judge us when we crave mercy. I would not want to be judged by the parable of the slave who’s debt was forgiven by his king, who then threw into prison a debtor who could not pay a debt to him. (Matthew 18:23-35.)

"On Earth as it is in Heaven" means that we must strive to be like Christ.

3. On Earth as it is in Heaven?

That doesn’t mean that we lock up the Penal Code instead of locking up law-breakers. It does mean we pray for the grace to know that we need grace. It does mean we pray for the grace to know when we should confer grace, and when we should withhold it. It does mean we think hard about these things.

When I was a relatively new Christian, I worked at a law firm and had a secretary who undermined me in every way she could. Yet I knew that Christians had to forgive, so I tried and tried to forgive her and to return good for evil. All I ever got back was evil. I finally decided that if it was alright with God for me to hold that job, it was alright with God for me to try to get that secretary fired. Which I did. That is, I tried. In fact, she wasn’t fired until the day I quit the firm.

The point is that I know that it’s hard to model God’s grace; sometimes, it’s impossible. For me, that’s true.

But it’s more possible than a lot of people think.

At the very least, we should not necessarily demand strict obedience to laws, when no harm actually is being done. We should understand that judging others in legalistic strictness is not the righteous, unanswerable argument that it seems to be.

4. Obama, immigration, and grace.

The Obama administration is coming under predictable attack for extending grace to good kids – kids who came to the country illegally as children, who have stayed out of trouble, who want to go to college or join the military. The Obama administration has decided not to bring deportation proceedings against these good kids. Instead, the Obama administration wants to use more resources to eject illegal immigrants who commit crimes and harm our country.

I think that’s a sensible policy. I’m proud of the president for it.

I prefer the president’s plan to the attitude of my friends.

5. My hypocrisy.

But I’m a hypocrite. I pretend to be gracious, but I’m not, because I judge my friends. I act like they are hypocrites, who rely upon grace but are not gracious. Well, they are human, so that’s probably true. But it’s true of me, too, every day.

Maybe they just calibrate grace differently than I do.

But that’s the debate: it’s not law-breaking versus not-law-breaking. It’s lawbreakers learning by grace how much law-breaking we should tolerate, especially when that lawbreaking does no harm.

And it’s knowing that we're not born citizens of Heaven. We don’t earn citizenship. If we enter Heaven, we enter by grace, and by grace alone.

____________________________________

The Obama Administration policy:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/us/19immig.html?scp=2&sq=illegal%20immigrants&st=cse

A paper on the net effects of illegal immigration:

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/reports/2010/09_immigration_greenstone_looney/09_immigration.pdf

Sean Hannity Died for Your Sins

Actually, he didn’t.

That’s the point.

Because I see Hannity’s point of view more prominent than that of Jesus.

I never understood the expression, "You are what you eat." But I truly believe that you are what you behold. If you spend your time watching God, godliness arises in you. Paul always looked to the author of his salvation. And he could say that Christ lived in him. (Galatians 2:20.) He could say that the spirit of God lives in us; if the spirit of Christ does not live in us, we do not belong to him. (Romans 8:9)

But America today is not Paul. We Americans collectively spend more time beholding Hannity than beholding Jesus. Our thoughts are not Christ’s. Our thoughts are Hannity’s. Our priorities are not Christ’s. Our priorities are Hannity’s.

So the question is: on the last day, will we know Jesus? Or will we know Hannity?

I see America becoming false. In my professional life, I deal with liars like never before. And in public life, I see lies, lies, lies. I wonder what started this flight from godliness.

I see a willfulness. I see politicians willing to ruin the country and bring suffering to its people, for political gain. This is a new thing. There are no rules. There are only winners and losers. Patriotism exists in name only, especially among those who appeal most loudly to patriotism.

And the reason is that Christianity is being eclipsed by politics.

People regard Hannity because they are convinced that his message is important for today. Because the immediate enemy is not the devil; it is the Democrats. Like a clanging cymbal, Hannity proclaims the evil of Democratic influence. The prospect of Obama having two terms looms as a greater crisis than the prospect of eternal damnation.

People regard liberal media stars, too.  But I talk about conservative stars, because they are more likely to be the darlings of the religious.  If any liberal reads this and thinks my message is only for conservatives, they misread me.

As for Jesus? Beating back socialism will take work, but salvation is easy. It’s taken care of. It’s a done deal. No worries.

As if confirmation were needed – we go to church. We approve when Glenn Beck speaks admiringly of Christian martyr Dietrich Bohnoeffer. We hate Muslims – that’s the same as loving God, right? We disapprove of secular humanism – isn’t that Christ within us? We believe in the Bible word for word – isn’t that faith?

No. And if your burning heart doesn’t tell you that, this short essay won’t either. If the decline in American morals doesn’t frighten you, these words won’t. But I remember what we were 30 years ago, and I see what we are now. And I'm afraid. Because I see in the soiling of America proof of God’s withdrawal from us.

There is a popular saying that goes, "Don’t let the best be the enemy of the good." In other words, don’t be so determined to bring about the best solution that you forsake a good solution and instead get nothing.

But religion is the opposite of that. To love your brothers and sisters, spouse and children, and father and mother is a very good thing. But Jesus said, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:26 (NIV).) That is, to Christ, the good is the enemy of the best.

Think of whether the "good" or your news outlet, the "good" of your political party, crowds out the "best" of salvation.

Think of whether any other "good" thing crowds out God.

I’m thinking that it does.

I’m thinking that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a long trip through harsh conditions. And to make it safely to the end, you have to leave everything behind that will hinder you. I remember reading about pioneers. Often, at the beginning of their journey, they would take everything that was dear to them, only to leave their once-precious cargo along the way, when sheer survival compelled them to know the difference between luxuries and necessities. Cut loose the unnecessary early; it holds you back.

I speak what I do not do – I have my heroes, although they are liberal, not conservative. But I think I speak the truth. And I think I’m wiser for doubting my salvation than those who are sure of their place in Heaven.

The Bible on Itself

The Bible says a lot about itself.

1. (Imperfect) knowledge.

 In scripture we know God, but our knowledge will be imperfect.

So says the apostle Peter in his second letter. He speaks of the "lamp" of scriptural prophecy that shines in the "dark place" of our times. He contrasts that lamp shining in a dark place with the coming light of dawning day. 2 Peter 1:19 (ASV):

And we have the word of [scriptural] prophecy made more sure; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts.

Peter’s point that scripture illuminates and his point that it does so (relatively) dimly are expressed elsewhere in scripture. For example, Jesus appears unrecognized to certain disciples, after his resurrection. He explains to them how his sufferings were foretold in scripture. He reveals himself, he leaves, and his disciples said, "Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?" (Luke 24:32 (ASV).) This shows the illuminating power of scripture.

The imperfect quality of our present knowledge is also told elsewhere in scripture. The apostle Paul says:

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. (1 Corinthians 13:12 (KJV).)

And the apostle John says that we are children compared to the adults that we will become in the presence of God. 1 John 3:2 (KJV):

Beloved, now are we the sons (NIV:children) of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.

2. Important to the believer.

The Bible makes clear that scripture is important to the believer. 2 Peter, quoted above, makes this point well when it speaks of the scriptural prophecy as a lamp in a dark place. Other biblical passages also discuss the believer’s need of scripture.

Scripture is useful for our learning, and it gives us comfort and hope. Romans 15:4 (KJV):

For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.

Scripture gives wisdom. Paul speaks to his disciple Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:15 (KJV):

[F]rom a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

Jesus was led to the desert to fast. After he had fasted for 40 days, the devil came and tempted him. Every time, Jesus answered the devil with scripture. Matthew 4:3-10(KJV):

And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.

But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple,

And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.

Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.

Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;

And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.

Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

Even before he began his ministry, we see Jesus immersed in scripture. Jesus’s parents left him behind in Jerusalem, realized their mistake, went back, and found him in the Temple, with the teachers. Luke 2:46-47 (ASV):

And it came to pass, after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both hearing them, and asking them questions: and all that heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.

So scripture is a lamp; it gives us hope, comfort, and wisdom unto salvation; it gives answers.

3. Potentially dangerous.

But the believer must approach scripture humbly and carefully. Jesus in the desert answered the devil according to scripture, but also the devil used scripture to tempt him.

2 Peter 3:16 cautions the believer against being misled by scripture. Peter speaks of Paul’s letters and of scripture:

[I]n [Paul’s letters] are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. [ASV]

So scripture can lift up, but it can also cast down.

4. Moved by God and God-breathed.

The Bible speaks of divine influence in the origins of the Bible. 2 Peter speaks of prophets – "holy men" – speaking as God "moved" them to speak. 2 Peter 1:20-21.

Elsewhere, the Bible speaks of itself as being "God breathed". 2 Timothy 3:16 (ASV):

Every scripture inspired of God (NIV: "God-breathed") is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness.

This is poetic language. It’s meaning is not obvious. In the Bible, the breath of God has different meanings.

Sometimes it means the destructive power of God. So, for example, 2 Thessalonians 2:8 (ASV) says:

And then shall be revealed the lawless one, whom the Lord Jesus shall slay with the breath of his mouth . . ..

Also, for example, Isaiah 40:7 (ASV):

The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the breath of Jehovah bloweth upon it; surely the people is grass.

And Ezekiel 21:31(ASV):

And I will pour out mine indignation upon thee; I will blow upon thee with the fire of my wrath; and I will deliver thee into the hand of brutish men, skilful to destroy.

Other times, the Bible speaks of the life-giving breath of God. For example, Genesis 2:7(ASV):

And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Also, Job 33:4 (ASV):

The Spirit of God hath made me, And the breath of the Almighty giveth me life.

Sometimes the breath of God is the act of creation. Psalm 33:6 (KJV):

By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.

So the breath of God can stand for a number of things.

5. God-breathed like humanity.

 Here are my imperfect thoughts on the meaning of God-breathed.

Whatever else God-breathed means, it means that scripture reveals God. Paul says that the Bible is God-breathed; the Bible says that Man was created by the breath of God. Breath and breath. God-breathed Man is God’s likeness. (Genesis 5:1; James 3:9.) Just so, the God-breathed Bible reveals God.

I don’t think that God-breathed means that God himself created scripture in the sense of Psalm 33:6, where the "breath of God’s mouth"created the stars. I don’t think it means that God created scripture in the same way that he created the Ten Commandments. Exodus 24:16 says that God wrote the Ten Commandments and gave them to Moses:

And Jehovah said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount, and be there: and I will give thee the tables of stone, and the law and the commandment, which I have written, that thou mayest teach them. [ASV]

Exodus shows that the Bible can say that God wrote something – like it says that God wrote the Ten Commandments. But it makes no such claim in general about scripture.

Scripture doesn’t start with the words: "God said:" It doesn’t end with the words, "So said God." Where it quotes God, or it quotes Jesus, it makes clear that it is quoting. When that is not made clear, we are left with poetic words moved and God-breathed to describe God’s role in shaping the words of the Bible. For all we know, that poetic language means different things in different parts of the Bible.

6. Not from the Lord.

God is a moving force behind scripture. But perhaps not all of scripture.

Paul, if fact, makes a point of saying that some of what he says in his letters is not "from the Lord": 1Corinthians 7:10-13 (ASV):

[U]nto the married I give charge, yea not I, but the Lord, That the wife depart not from her husband (but should she depart, let her remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband); and that the husband leave not his wife. But to the rest say I, not the Lord: If any brother hath an unbelieving wife, and she is content to dwell with him, let him not leave her. And the woman that hath an unbelieving husband, and he is content to dwell with her, let her not leave her husband.

This is another reason to be careful with scripture.

7. Sufficient.

 Maybe the Bible says as much about the origin of scripture as we need to know. Maybe the Bible itself must be a mystery, like the mystery of the meaning of many of its parts. Maybe in the brilliant compactness of the Bible, a hint of the Bible’s origin is sufficient.

There are other places to go to learn about the mechanics and origins and inspiration of the Bible. History books can tell us about why certain books were put into the Bible and others were left out. People study the history of the Bible for decades, and among them there is widespread common ground that sometimes even a single book of scripture is spliced together from the writings of more than one author. People have studied non-Jewish texts from before the Hebrew Bible was written. These people have seen a likeness between those texts and parts of the Bible such as some Psalms and Proverbs.

But the Bible does not lay out these mechanics and origins and inspiration. Perhaps this is because these things are external to the purpose of the Bible: they do not make us "wise unto salvation".

8. Conclusion.

 I started out talking about Peter’s second letter, which suggests that our knowledge will be imperfect in this world. Paul supports this. And John.

So if scripture is like a lamp compared to dawning day, if we see as through a glass darkly, if we are as children until we come into God’s presence, so be it. We can plumb scripture from youth to old age, and never reach its depth, or the depth of God, in this world.

Paul had a bodily ailment that he prayed for God to cure. But God told him, "My grace is sufficient for thee: for my power is made perfect in weakness." (2 Corinthinas 12:9 (ASV).)

I hope I don’t stretch scripture too far to say that God’s word to Paul could apply the same way to our imperfect knowledge from the lamp of scripture. We might want answers more exact than the Bible gives us. But God’s power is made perfect in weakness.