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.

Bloody Hand: the Sacrifice that God did not Stop

You could say that Jephthah’s daughter was wronged by the world, by her father, and by God. But her death has meaning across the millennia.

1. The story of Jephthah’s daughter’s death.

Jephthah was a judge – a leader – of ancient Israel. Surprisingly for a man who rose to that position, he was the son of a prostitute. His story is told in the biblical Book of Judges, starting at chapter 11. One part of his story is the death of his daughter, his only child.

Jephthah and Israel warred with the Ammonites. Jephthah vowed to God that if God gave him victory over the Ammonites, whatever emerged from his door on his return from battle he would sacrifice as a burnt offering. God gave him victory. His daughter emerged from his door to greet him. She emerged dancing.

Jephthah wanted to renege on his vow; his daughter would not let him. Instead, she asked that she be permitted to go up into the mountains for two months with her friends, who mourned with her that she would never marry. Then she returned and submitted to her father’s knife. She became smoke from an alter.

This gave rise to a tradition in Israel. At a certain season, daughters of Israel left for four days to commemorate Jephthah’s daughter.

This was right. These daughters had much to commemorate, much to mourn, for Jephthah’s daughter and themselves.

2. Much to mourn: proxies.

They could mourn because of the Ammonites. The Ammonites are a proxy for all wars, wars that devoured the loved ones of women and devoured women themselves. Maybe the Ammonites, a proxy for war, are also a proxy for all violence against women by strangers. They are a proxy for all such rapes, beatings, and robberies. They are a proxy for the recent attempted assassination of Malala Yousufzai by the Taliban, men who were incensed that a girl such as she should speak out to an international audience against their ban on the education of girls like herself. Malala Yousufzai and Jephthah’s daughter might have been the same age.

The Ammonites, like the Taliban, were an outside force. But Jephthah was no outsider; he was his daughter’s father. So the daughters of Israel could also mourn because of Jephthah. Jephthah’s rash vow led to his daughter’s death. In this way, he is a proxy for all violence against women by the hands of a near person. He is a proxy for incest, intimate rape, beating by a husband or brother. He is a proxy for honor killings, practiced today in some parts of the world.

The daughters of Israel could mourn because of God. Jephthah’s daughter is like Isaac, but also unlike. God told Abraham, Isaac's father, to sacrifice Isaac. But at the last moment, God stopped Abraham’s knife-hand from slicing into the flesh of Isaac. But at the last moment, God did not release Jephthah from his rash vow.

3. Much to mourn: the virtue of Jephthah’s daughter.

The daughters of Israel could mourn because of the death of someone as good as Jephthah’s daughter. Jephthah’s daughter is a Job-like figure. She was virtuous. She did not complain: she plainly saw that Jephthah had to fulfill his vow. She accepted death resolutely.

She had the virtue of Job. In fact, she suffered more deeply than Job. Job’s family, wealth, and health were taken from him. But Job was permitted to live; Jephthah's daughter was not. In this way, everything that was taken from Job was taken from Jephthah’s daughter. She lost her family, she lost the comforts of life. She lost everything that she cherished when she gave herself to her father’s knife.

And calamity fell upon Job. Suddenly it was there. But Jephthah’s daughter submitted to it. She went up into the mountains to mourn with her friends. After two months, the agreed time, she came down from the mountains.

4. Much to mourn: the love of Jephthah’s daughter.

And see who Jephthah’s daughter loved and feared. She loved her father. She accepted death for his sake, so that he would not go back on his vow to God.

She loved her nation. She accepted death for its sake, so that the leader of her nation would not incur guilt on its behalf by going back on a vow to God.

She loved her friends. She chose to prepare to die by going with them up into the mountains for two months to mourn. In a way, this foreshadows the Last Supper, where Jesus had fellowship with his disciples on the night that he knew he would be taken captive to be crucified.

She feared God. She realized that a vow to God had to be respected, had to be fulfilled. God was large to her, larger even than her love of life.

5. The meaning of Jephthah’s daughter: eternity.

There’s more to the story of Jephthah’s daughter than sorrow and love.

The Bible does not say the season when this story took place. But it appears that in Old Testament times there were fighting seasons, as there are in Afghanistan today. In the biblical book of 2 Samuel, the story of King David and Bathsheba is introduced with the phrase, "In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war . . ..." (NIV.) This story took place after that fighting season, when Jephthah returned from war.

Summer is suggested by other circumstances aside from fighting seasons. Jephthah’s daughter and her friends retreated to the mountains for two months. It's likely that the mountains teemed with food; certainly Jephthah's daughter and her friends would not have carried two months worth of food into the mountains.

This meant that Jephthah’s daughter was in the wilderness in the season of nature’s aliveness. On the edge of death, in that two months, maybe she contemplated the seasons, the yearly cycle of life and death in nature. Maybe she saw in this eternal cycle a hope of the renewal of her own life, like the renewal of life in the growing seasons. The succinct biblical narrative does not say.

Jephthah’s daughter is not known by name. I don’t know why. It might be that by the time that the story was written down, her name had been consumed in the forgetfulness of years.

But one thing is certain: she is known to God. And he is the God of the living, not the dead.

Wildness and the Word of God

Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be just like him. [Proverbs 26:4 (NIV).]

Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes. [Proverbs 26:5 (NIV).]

I accept that all of scripture is "God breathed." (2 Timothy 3:16.) So I wrestle with what it means that the Bible says one thing in one place, but another thing in another place.

1. Apology.

Let me be clear: I’m fine with anyone who takes the Bible as historically accurate in all its parts, and without contrast from one part to another. I respect that person. I crave that person’s prayers. I am not superior to that person; I know that, and God bless him or her. I know persons who know the Bible better than I do, and they accept it as literal, perfect history and completely consistent throughout. That’s fine.

Arguments over Biblical literalness and consistency might be like the "foolish controversies" condemned by Paul. (Titus 3:9.) I have no wish to press against anybody a "foolish controversy".

This is written for people who read the Bible, like me, and who find contrasts among its parts. This is for people who wonder: what does this mean?

2. Historical contradictions.

These are examples of what I’m talking about. History in the Bible varies from one part to another.

Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 differently describe the creation of the world. For example, in chapter 1, animals were created before man, and man was created to have dominion over them. In chapter 2, man was created first, and the animals were then created to be companions to him. Also, note that in chapter 1 God separated the light from the darkness twice.

David met Saul under two circumstances. A mighty warrior, he was called to sooth King Saul’s tormented spirit with music. (1 Samuel 16.) This is the first description of their meeting. But in 1 Samuel 17, David came to Saul because, as a lad, he slew Goliath.

In Matthew 27, Judas the betrayer hanged himself. In Acts 1, he pitched forward in a field, and his intestines spilled out.

3. Doctrinal differences.

Biblical doctrine also varies from one part to another.

a. Prayer.

Different Gospels say different things about prayer. This is Matthew chapter 6, which encourages short prayers:

And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. [NIV.]

And yet, Luke chapter 18 has the parable of the persistent widow. An unjust judge gave her justice because she gave him no rest from her petitions. Jesus compared her to believers who come before God with prayer:

And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. [NIV]

b. God’s treatment of the righteous and the wicked.

The speeches of Job’s accusers aren’t wrong. Scripture does say that God punishes the wicked and blesses the righteous. Compare Psalm 34 to Job 36 (speech of Elihu). Compare Psalm 112 to Job 8 (speech of Bildad the Shuhite). Compare Proverbs 12:21 to Job 22 (speech of Elipaz the Temanite). Yet Job was righteous, and Job was afflicted. This was true despite these scriptures and the words of Job's accusers. That’s the point of the Book of Job.

c. The Laws of Moses.

Then there is the controversy over what parts of the Law of Moses survive in the New Testament era. Here’s Matthew chapter 5, where the Law is preserved intact and in its entirety:

For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.[NIV.]

Contrast the letter of the Apostles and Elders to believers in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, about whether those believers should accept circumcision and follow the Law of Moses (from Acts 15). This is a pocket-ready version of the Law:

It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. [NIV.]

d. Faith or faith and works?

And then there is the question: is salvation by faith, or by faith and works? Romans 3:28 says:"For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law." (NASB.) James 2:24 says: "You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone." (NASB).

Martin Luther believed that these passages could not be reconciled; he wondered if James belonged in the Bible. Attempts to reconcile James and Romans spew like sparks from a fountain-style firework. (Go ahead, Google it.)

As to faith and works and James and Romans, I don’t know if this part of Matthew ties the twain, or if it makes a middle ground:

Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. [Matthew 7:24-27 (NIV).]

But reconciliation might not be needed.

4. Plausible explanations?

There are plausible explanations for these differences.

a. Scope to the writers.

All scripture is God-breathed. (2 Timothy 3:16.) But that doesn’t mean scripture is God-dictated. God gave scope to the writers for their own personalities and opinions and traditions to enter into what they wrote. And because their personalities and opinions and traditions differed, the writings differed.

b. The Bible is pastoral.

Also, the Bible is pastoral; it leads people to God and salvation. Contrasts could be explained in that vein.

So differences among writers in the Bible might reflect differences among believers or circumstances. It might be important for some believers to pray persistently and at length, like the widow who sought justice from the unjust judge. But God might want to assure other believers that he will not neglect their prayers only because their prayers are brief.

Smug believers might need to hear that God will judge them by what they do or by what they don’t do. Struggling believers who labor and strive and become disheartened by their perpetual failure might need to hear the word of grace.

c. Tethering to the Holy Spirit.

God might not want us to be solely tethered to a book, even the Bible.

The Bible is very, very important to a believer. A believer who doesn't travel deeply into the Bible neglects a resource that can draw him upward to God.

But God might not intend for us to rely upon the Bible to the neglect of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate. The mysteries of scripture bring us to God in prayer, and certainly it is a mystery why the Bible says one thing in one place and another thing in another. When we come to God in prayer, that invites the Helper to guide us. And that help might be so important that anything that brings us to it is a boon and not a detriment as some see it.

5. The vitality of the word.

Here’s a thought: maybe the whole issue of consistency and inconsistency needs to be hissed at.

The Bible is a book apart. The Word of God has a unique brilliance. In its brilliance there is something wild and unmanageable.

In The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis said of his Christ-figure, the lion Aslan, that he was "not a tame lion." Maybe if we worry about contrasts in the Word of God, we err by trying to impose on it a buttoned-down quality, a tameness.

So in judging the Word of God like we might judge a witness in a theft trial or a mere philosophical essay, we fail to see its wildness and its vitality. This is a vitality that no mortal mind can contain. It stops us from judging the Bible as we might judge lesser literature.

6. The writers weren’t troubled.

The holy persons who wrote scripture fully knew of the contrasts among its parts. The two proverbs at the beginning of this piece, about answering a fool, appear literally side-by-side. Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are sequential chapters. The two ways that David met Saul are only one chapter apart.

If making the Bible less mysterious were the first goal of the writers of scripture, the solution would have been easy. They simply could have deleted one version or the other.

But that wasn’t done. And that tells me that the writers of the Bible were not unduly troubled by what might trouble a modern believer or by what might excite an unbeliever looking for a reason to un-believe.

The writers of the Bible saw and believed. Believers today can read and likewise believe.

7. The final word is God’s.

Perhaps it’s right to think of the Bible, at times, as a debate about God and about God and history. In a way, this debate is like the debate among Job and Eliphaz and Bildad and Zophar and Elihu. None of them were per se wrong. But the winning word, as in the book of Job, will be God’s.

Less Smart than we Think

We are often overconfident. Sometimes that wrecks lives.

1. The case of a serial rapist.

A man was raping elderly women in Long Beach. This man would find apartments of elderly women, strip off his clothes, enter the apartment (usually through an open window), and sodomize his elderly victims. The Long Beach Police were frantic to end the lengthening chain of violated elderly women.

They brought in tracking dogs. The tracking dogs followed a scent, allegedly, to an apartment building. The scent, allegedly, led to a particular floor. On that floor, there was an apartment with the lights on. The police knocked on the door, but nobody answered. The police concluded that the perpetrator was in that apartment, and that he did not answer the door to impede the investigation.

The police learned who lived in that apartment. It was a man named Jeffrey G. They put together a photo lineup with his picture in it. The lineup had five Hispanics and one White guy. The White guy was Jeffrey G. An expert, a former detective who was also the former chief of an urban police department, later said that that was the most suggestive photo lineup he had ever seen used. Most of the victims identified the photo of Jeffrey G. as the perpetrator from the suggestive photo lineup.

The police arrested Jeffrey G. for the serial rapes. He worked for the City of Long Beach, and, when the police came to arrest him, he thought that his fellow city-employees were pranking him. His mother hired my firm to to defend him.

We started to accumulate evidence of innocence. We found that on the night of one Long Beach rape, our client had been visiting his mother in Grand Terrace. He drove back to Long Beach in the morning. On his way back, he got a traffic ticket. Also, within twenty minutes of another rape, Jeffrey G. was 15 miles away in a grocery story, cashing a check. The check had a time-stamp.

The police were accumulating evidence, too. But we learned that the police were shading their recollections to tilt the evidence toward proving the guilt of Jeffrey G. In fact, the real perpetrator committed one of his signature rapes while Jeffrey G. was in custody. The police suppressed news of that. They did not tell us that the Long Beach serial rapist had struck again while Jeffrey G. was in jail for  being the Long Beach serial rapist.

But Jeffrey G. caught a break. In one of the rapes, the perpetrator had ejaculated on his victim. The perpetrator tried to lick off the semen, but he missed a little. This semen was collected as evidence. In another case, after he sodomize his victim, the perpetrator exited through a window. As he exited the window, a little fecal matter, with a little semen on it, fell from the tip of his penis onto the window sill. This evidence also was collected. These two incidents, one at the beginning of the chain of rapes, and one toward the end, gave DNA to compare to the DNA of Jeffrey G. It did not match.

We were not surprised. But everybody in law enforcement was stunned, from the detectives to the prosecutors. They were so certain that Jeffrey G. was guilty that they concluded that somehow the wrong DNA had been tested. So they sent a detective by airplane to hand-carry the DNA samples to the Justice Department laboratory in Sacramento, to make sure that the right samples were analyzed. The results were the same: Jeffrey G. was innocent.

The case was soon dismissed. But the Long Beach police continued to be certain that a guilty man had somehow been freed.

Years later, the actual perpetrator was caught. He was not even the same race as Jeffrey G. He and Jeffrey G. did not look alike. Jeffrey G. also was much taller. But the perpetrator’s DNA matched.

This tale should make us humble and cautious. The Long Beach detectives did not think they were sending an innocent man to prison for the rest of his life. They were sure that Jeffrey G. was guilty. Their certainty grew from the moment nobody answered the door of Jeffrey G’s apartment. Jeffrey G. wasn’t home. He had left the lights on to fool potential burglars.

The Long Beach detectives drew a conclusion that they should not have drawn from so little evidence. Being certain, they then started sculpting the evidence to create the appearance that Jeffrey G. was guilty. For example, a detective told us about certain evidence that she had observed; when we pointed out that that evidence actually helped our client, she gave different testimony under oath.

This points out a human trait: we tend to form conclusions before the evidence supports them. We are sure about things that we should not be sure about. This can lead to terrible consequences. It almost sent an innocent man to prison for the rest of his life.

2. The case of the self-made man or woman.

Sometimes, we enjoy a measure of material success in life. Our business thrives. Our investments prosper. Like the Long Beach detectives, we infer from that what is not warranted. We might conclude that we have prospered because of our own virtue, talent, and effort.

And, in our pride, we might condemn those who have not prospered. We might consider them less worthy than ourselves.

In the eyes of the world, this is right. The idea of a self-made man or woman is prominent in our culture.

3. The Bible’s point of view: Hannah.

But it defies the Biblical point of view. The Biblical point of view is that we are all subject to God, time, and chance.

A woman named Hannah who lived in ancient Israel was childless. She was devastated because of that. She prayed to God to open her womb. A priest saw her praying in the temple. He thought she was drunk because her lips moved, but he heard no words. (Apparently, that was not customary in that era.) She mad a vow to God, if only he would give her a son.

And God did. That boy became the prophet Samuel.

That woman’s prayer of gratitude will live forever (1 Samuel 2:1-10 (KJV)):

1And Hannah prayed, and said, My heart rejoiceth in the LORD, mine horn is exalted in the LORD: my mouth is enlarged over mine enemies; because I rejoice in thy salvation. 2There is none holy as the LORD: for there is none beside thee: neither is there any rock like our God. 3Talk no more so exceeding proudly; let not arrogancy come out of your mouth: for the LORD is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed. 4The bows of the mighty men are broken, and they that stumbled are girded with strength. 5They that were full have hired out themselves for bread; and they that were hungry ceased: so that the barren hath born seven; and she that hath many children is waxed feeble.

6The LORD killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up. 7The LORD maketh poor, and maketh rich: he bringeth low, and lifteth up. 8He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are the LORD's, and he hath set the world upon them. 9He will keep the feet of his saints, and the wicked shall be silent in darkness; for by strength shall no man prevail. 10The adversaries of the LORD shall be broken to pieces; out of heaven shall he thunder upon them: the LORD shall judge the ends of the earth; and he shall give strength unto his king, and exalt the horn of his anointed.

Hannah's prayer gives glory to God for raising up and for putting down

4. The Bible’s point of view: David.

David, a man after God’s own heart, fought Goliath. When David approached Goliath, Goliath told David that he would kill David and give David’s flesh to the birds of the air. David answered. And he did not speak of his own prowess as a fighter. He spoke of the power of God. He said (1 Samuel 17:45-47 (KJV)):

45Then said David to the Philistine, Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied. 46This day will the LORD deliver thee into mine hand; and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee; and I will give the carcases of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. 47And all this assembly shall know that the LORD saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the LORD's, and he will give you into our hands.

5. The Bible’s point of view: Job.

The book of Job is the story of a good and prosperous man who had everything taken from him, and then he was restored by God to his former prosperity. In his suffering, his friends came and, for a time, sat in silence. But then, in the certainty of their knowledge of God, they spoke out. And they said that Job must have offended God to be brought so low. In fact, the point of the book of Job is that it was Job’s very righteousness that made him a target of a bet between Satan and God.

6. The Bible’s point of view: Ecclesiastes.

And one of the Bible’s more famous passages occurs at Ecclesiastes 9:11 (KJV):

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

7. Defiance.

So, for all this Biblical witness, why do we insist that there are self-made men and women? A believer cannot.

We cannot believe that we are completely in charge of our own prosperity or poverty; intellect or ignorance; faith or un-belief; salvation or damnation.

Certainly, we have to cooperate with God to bring about good things. There would be no point to the urging in Proverbs to do right and be diligent if we had no responsibility to choose to do right or to be diligent. We do. The point is only that there are forces unseen that have a great deal to do with the rise and fall of persons, companies, churches, nations, and peoples. To say otherwise is to defy the Bible.

So if we know something, let us be humble about our knowledge.

If we have something, let us be humble about what he have.

If we keep from evil, let us be humble about our righteousness.