Morals Post 5

My Answer Pt. 1

You guessed it, I think I have found an answer!

Before I spell it out let me put two possible cosmologies before you.

Only two because most of those held by 'primitive' peoples (such as the Australian Aborigine’s 'Dream-time' stories) are not tenable in the face of modern scientific knowledge. Which historically has had a devastating social impact on these peoples when the scientific world came to their doorstop in the form of white settlers.

So my two cosmologies are:

Atheist: there is no God, evolution is our maker

and

Theist : there is a God, evolution probably but not necessarily true.

They are of course mutually exclusive – if one is true the other must be false. However both are, from a sociological point of view viable cosmologies in the modern world.

I am only concerned with the question “how do we justify saying 'this is right / that is wrong'” at present. So let us see how these two stack up on that question.

1. If there is no God

a) All religious reasons for ethics vanish as the required justification.

Of course religious appeals not disappear. Throughout human history those in power or seeking it have appealed to religious beliefs or feelings for legitimation of their position. But in this scenario they survive purely as a method of persuasion at times when religious belief has or does exist. They are just part of a leader's bag of tricks to stay in power, just “the opiate of the masses”.

b) If evolution is our maker, does it also set the moral rules, if of course evolution has any morals?

As I said earlier, the fact is we humans DO have moral values and make moral judgments. I will take here those I know something about – the common moral sentiments of the English speaking peoples. How do some of these compare with evolutionary exigencies?

Evolution is survival of the fittest. That is its basic mechanism. But the world reacted in horror to the Nazi experiments in eugenics. On a smaller scale, half my children would have died but for antibiotics. I am totally thankful to modern medicine for their survival. But from an evolutionary point of view the weak should be allowed to die out.

In evolution the survival of the stronger gene strain is paramount. So the young lion who succeeds in driving the old lion out proceeds to kill all the cubs of the former alpha male. In lions we do not think that immoral – that is just evolution at work. But in humans we feel differently. It is tragic but true that among step-fathers (and in fairy-tales wicked step-mothers) there is a much increased risk to children of the previous 'husband'. That has echoes of evolution – but is morally abhorrent in our societies.

One could go on looking at examples, but I think the point is clear – that our concepts of right and wrong did not come to us through evolution.

This leaves the very real moral feelings we do have as some sort of social construct. So socialization, appeals to religion (if that works),  appeals to emotion, good old propaganda or scholarly philosophical discussion all boil down to being just tools of persuasion.

“right and wrong” are simply what some person or persons have been able to inculcate by whatever means into other people.

Which I suppose is in a quirky way evolutionary: “might is right!” (in this case “might” is the ability to influence people and hence change social mores.)

2. If there is a (real) God.

a) There is a higher point of reference. Evolution may still explain the origin of the species, but it does not have to explain our moral sense.

b) There is still Plato's dilemma: “Is it right because the gods command it or do the gods command it because it is right?” Good point – particularly considering the morals of the supposed Greek pantheon of gods.

But my answer is this:

Suppose God has a moral nature: Say God is the very epitome of love, justice, mercy, kindness, faithfulness. Say God has an innate moral revulsion to cruelty, unfaithfulness, robbery, oppression, murder, lying. Suppose again that in some way humans have inherited at least a pale shadow of this nature.

If God then gives commands such as “love your neighbour as yourself” or “do not commit adultery” which are expressions of God's moral character then it is simultaneously true that God commands it because it is right and it is right because God commands it. And Plato's objection disappears.

More than that: just as the “standard metre” in Paris is a standard by which all other metre rules can be checked. God's moral character is the absolute standard of morals.

In our parable the contestants could not directly access the standard in Paris. But they did have derivative standards – measures that had been checked against other measures right back to the real metre.

So with humans: Our knowledge of God's character is only partial. Also if Aristotle was right about the unity of the virtues, then God is, for instance, simultaneously perfect love, perfect mercy, and perfect justice. How humans could embody this in a particular instance may be incredibly complex. I do not mean to say it is impossible, just that it is ever so much more complex than using a metre rule!

But ….. more next week!

What Every Christian Needs Pt 3:

3. Prayer life

Part of being a Christian is developing our relationship with God. Part of developing any relationship is communicating. Us communicating to God is called praying. It doesn’t have to be in fancy language: you wouldn’t try that on your human friends! It doesn’t always have to be in words even. The important thing is communicating.

Where is God while you are talking to him? You are now a child of God; the Holy Spirit now lives in you. (Being spirit he can do that and live simultaneously in any number of other people) So your prayers don’t have to “go” anywhere, God has come you.

You cannot tell God anything he doesn’t already know, but he still likes you to tell him. That is how relationships grow. Also part of telling him things is for our benefit. He is day by day changing our attitudes and habits of mind to make us the person he would like us to be. That is to be a person who is uniquely “us” but who is imitating Jesus in all important aspects. As we tell him how we see things, if we will let him he can start to help us understand how he sees them, and that is really important in our growth.

Yes of course God knows what we need before we ask. Tha is not the point. The point is we are developing a relationship with him. He likes us to ask!
One reason is given in Psalm 50.15 “and call on me in the day of trouble; 
   I will deliver you, and you will honor me.”

When we ask and he helps us, we know it was him and can honour him for it.

Another reason is that asking can be a growth experience. Will God give you anything you ask for? No. I don’t mean God ever lacks the power to do anything he wishes to do. That is never his situation. But there are reasons why he will not do everything we ask. Here are some common ones:-

1. God is utterly good, and there are many things we humans do – and may ask him to do - which he would never even think of doing. God would never tell a lie. God would never break a promise. God would never do anything unfair or unjust. As baby Christians some of our prayers are going to be for things that seemed OK to us before we became Christians, but which are not God’s way of doing things. If we pray for these things, God will not do them – no matter how grand a tantrum we throw - and that can be a learning opportunity for us.

2. We are spiritual babies. Even human parents safeguard their children by saying “No” to requests that would be dangerous.

If a child saw their parent preparing dinner with a sharp knife and wanted mummy or daddy to give them the knife to play with. Would a good parent would give it to them?3. We never know everything. We will to the end of our days be asking God to do things we think would be good which he does not do. Sometimes we get to look back and realize “Am I ever glad God did not answer that prayer! What I wanted then would have been a disaster”. Sometimes we don’t get this hindsight and just have to trust that he knew something we didn’t.

The best human parents will often refuse to give their child junk food just before dinner, or let them watch just one more TV show before bed no matter how much their child demands it. But should that same parent hear a scream of terror from their child they will come running and prepared to fight to the death to save their baby. God is to us a perfect parent. There are things he will not do no matter how much or how well we pray but even the most inarticulate desperate cry to him for help from one of his little ones can result in a more powerful miracle then all the prayers of some great saint.

There is nothing we can ask God to do for others or for his work in the world that he could not perform without our asking. But he seems to like to take us into a sort of junior partnership, where parts of his work he shares with us by letting us ask, and then he does the part requiring his power. One example from the Bible is Paul’s request for the believers to pray for his work spreading the gospel in Colossians 4 “ ² Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. ³ And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. ⁴ Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.”

Three common abuses of prayer you are likely to encounter are these.

A). Treating prayer as a way to manipulate God to get what we want, not as part of our relationship with a loving heavenly father.

At the light end of this practice, people can talk about “prayer achieving this or that”. It then develops into an attitude that somehow we make it happen by doing this thing called prayer. It is a bad attitude, and really needs to be nipped in the bud. It is God who does things. When he lets us share his work by letting us pray, or prompting us to pray and then doing his act of power it is thrilling and exciting and wonderful – just as long as we remember to picture ourselves as the toddler “helping” daddy carry the heavy bucket of water! It is a thing God is doing with us because that is the sort of thing that good fathers and their little kids do together.
Just remember NOT to imitate the spoilt toddler who throws a tantrum because daddy steers the bucket to the rose garden not to the mud pit the toddler wants to make to play in! Spiritually, just as humanly, that behaviour is bound to end in tears!

At the really bad end we end up trying to be magicians – using “prayer” as some sort of magic to bring about what we want supernaturally regardless of God’s purposes. This one does not just end in tears: unless we are rescued, it ends in hell! There is a great description of an event in Acts that resulted in converts confessing that they had just added Christianity to their store of magic. I this instance they repented.
(Acts 19. 13-20) ¹³ Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, “In the name of the Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.” ¹⁴ Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. ¹⁵ One day the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?” ¹⁶ Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.

 ¹⁷ When this became known to the Jews and Greeks living in Ephesus, they were all seized with fear, and the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high honor. ¹⁸ Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed what they had done. ¹⁹ A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas.^[c] 20 In this way the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power.

An example of the difference between what the Bible means by prayer and what people often mistake it as can be found in 1 Kings 18.

The King of Israel had married a feisty Sidonian princess named Jezebel. She worshiped the Sidonian god Baal, who they thought controlled the weather. Jezebel promoted Baal worship in Israel, and by the time she had either killed or forced into hiding all the ministers of God, Baal worship took over. God sent his prophet Elijah to throw down the gauntlet by announcing a drought. After three years with no rain Elijah challenged the king to assemble all the ministers of Baal to a contest on Mount Carmel. They could build an altar to Baal but not light the fire. He would build an altar to God, but not light the fire. The ministers of Baal would pray, Elijah would pray. The deity that answered by setting fire to his altar was the real god.

(I Kings 18. 25-39)²⁵ Then Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, “You go first, for there are many of you. Choose one of the bulls, and prepare it and call on the name of your god. But do not set fire to the wood.”

 ²⁶ So they prepared one of the bulls and placed it on the altar. Then they called on the name of Baal from morning until noontime, shouting, “O Baal, answer us!” But there was no reply of any kind. Then they danced, hobbling around the altar they had made.

 ²⁷ About noontime Elijah began mocking them. “You’ll have to shout louder,” he scoffed, “for surely he is a god! Perhaps he is daydreaming, or is relieving himself.^[b] Or maybe he is away on a trip, or is asleep and needs to be wakened!”

 ²⁸ So they shouted louder, and following their normal custom, they cut themselves with knives and swords until the blood gushed out. ²⁹ They raved all afternoon until the time of the evening sacrifice, but still there was no sound, no reply, no response.

 ³⁰ Then Elijah called to the people, “Come over here!” They all crowded around him as he repaired the altar of the Lord that had been torn down. ³¹ He took twelve stones, one to represent each of the tribes of Israel,^[c] 32and he used the stones to rebuild the altar in the name of the Lord. Then he dug a trench around the altar large enough to hold about three gallons.^[d] 33 He piled wood on the altar, cut the bull into pieces, and laid the pieces on the wood.

   Then he said, “Fill four large jars with water, and pour the water over the offering and the wood.”

 ³⁴ After they had done this, he said, “Do the same thing again!” And when they were finished, he said, “Now do it a third time!” So they did as he said, ³⁵ and the water ran around the altar and even filled the trench.

 ³⁶ At the usual time for offering the evening sacrifice, Elijah the prophet walked up to the altar and prayed, “O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,^[e] prove today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant. Prove that I have done all this at your command. ³⁷ O Lord, answer me! Answer me so these people will know that you, O Lord, are God and that you have brought them back to yourself.”

 ³⁸ Immediately the fire of the Lord flashed down from heaven and burned up the young bull, the wood, the stones, and the dust. It even licked up all the water in the trench! ³⁹ And when all the people saw it, they fell face down on the ground and cried out, “The Lord—he is God! Yes, the Lord is God!”

The ministers of Baal thought “prayer” worked (in the magic sense) and they did it with a passion, and all day – but nothing happened. Elijah believed God had sent him with instructions to set up this contest so that God could perform a great sign to convince the people and that God could be trusted to carry out his part.. His prayer was simple, short and said plainly: ““O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,^[e] prove today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant. Prove that I have done all this at your command. ³⁷ O Lord, answer me! Answer me so these people will know that you, O Lord, are God and that you have brought them back to yourself.” The answer was a really spectacular miracle.

B). Content-less prayer.

You will hear this in the public prayers in many churches. Now of course public prayer is a bit different to private prayer. It is corporate, that is it is the action of a body of believers, even though just one person may be saying the words. So the person saying the prayer does have to be careful to pray things the whole body of believers can say “Amen” to. That does limit what one aught to pray publicly for: but you still have to be specific about what you are asking God to do. Prayers that run like “We pray for the church in Africa, we pray for the United Nations, we pray for …” are like posting letters without writing anything on the inside.

So if you are to pray for, say, the church in Africa, well what do you as a congregation want God to do for your brothers and sisters there? I suspect the lack of content of these prayers is often the result of a lack of belief that God is real or capable of doing anything.

For an example of public prayer that does have content the old Anglican prayer book is a good model, the authors managed to compose prayers that were so general they could be used in different situations century after century but which still asked God to do something. If we are going to pray in church for current circumstances and the present needs of others we should be able to do better, not less than this model! Here is just one example:

“Almighty and everliving God,
who by thy holy Apostle hast taught us to make prayers, and supplications, and to give thanks for all men;
We humbly beseech thee most mercifully to receive these our prayers, which we offer unto thy Divine Majesty;
beseeching thee to inspire continually the Universal Church with the spirit of truth, unity, and concord:
And grant, that all they who do confess thy holy Name may agree in the truth of thy holy Word, and live in unity, and godly love.
We beseech thee also to save and defend all Christian Kings, Princes, and Governors; and specially thy Servant ELIZABETH our Queen; that under her we may be godly and quietly governed:
And grant unto her whole Council, and to all that are put in authority under her, that they may truly and impartially administer justice, to the punishment of wickedness and vice, and to the maintenance of thy true religion, and virtue.
Give grace, O heavenly Father, to all Bishops and Curates, that they may both by their life and doctrine set forth thy true and lively Word, and rightly and duly administer thy holy Sacraments.
And to all thy people give thy heavenly grace; and especially to this congregation here present; that, with meek heart and due reverence, they may hear, and receive thy holy Word; truly serving thee in holiness and righteousness all the days of their life.
And we most humbly beseech thee, of thy goodness, O Lord, to comfort and succour all those who, in this transitory life, are in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity.
And we also bless thy holy Name for all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear; beseeching thee to give us grace so to follow their good examples, that with them we may be partakers of thy heavenly kingdom.
Grant this, O Father, for Jesus Christ's sake, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen.”

C). Praying to something other than God.

Over the years we have had various Roman Catholic friends who were a great inspiration and model to us for the way they could talk freely and naturally about their Christian faith. But all the same some of them have had attitudes to prayer that were not good. I know they were just doing what they were taught from the cradle, and indeed God seemed to cut them a great deal of slack and obviously answered their prayers ! But that is no excuse for anyone else to adopt habits of prayer that the Bible clearly shows are deficient if not downright forbidden!

One dear lady used to pray to her dead mother in law, because as a good woman she would be in heaven and be able to take it up with Mary, and then if Mary asked Jesus well as a good son he would do what his mother asked! OK that is very human but it is also very wrong!

What does the Bible say?

a) We are adopted sons and daughters with direct access to God, Father Son and Holy Spirit

John 1¹² Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— ¹³ children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

Romans 8.15¹⁴ For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. ¹⁵ The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship.^[h]And by him we cry, “Abba,^[i] Father.” ¹⁶ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.

Ephesians 2.18¹⁸ For through him (Jesus) we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

b). Jesus told us that the Holy Spirit would come and dwell in our hearts, and through the Spirit he and the Father would be in us. So we can pray to Father Son and Holy Spirit because they are in us. We cannot pray to dead people, even saints or Mary because they do not live in us!

We are also strictly forbidden in the Bible from trying to talk to dead people.

John 15  ¹⁵ “If you love me, keep my commands. ¹⁶ And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— ¹⁷ the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be^[c] in you. ¹⁸ I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. … … ²³ 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. 

Isaiah 8.19¹⁹ When someone tells you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living? 

c) It can lead to giving glory to something other than God. Which God hates.

For instance when we visited the island of Corfu we were told of the deliverance of the city during the Ottoman attack in 1716. here is a clip from the Wikipedia article:
“After a great storm on 9 August—which the defenders attributed to the intervention of Corfu's patron saint, Saint Spyridon—caused great casualties among the besiegers, the siege was broken off on 11 August and the last Ottoman forces withdrew on 20 August”
The defenders had apparently been praying for deliverance, but when there was great storm which caused the attackers to retreat did they attribute it to God? No! What they did, and still do was to praise St Spyridon for it! In the church in the city is his coffin to this day with a continuous line of people filing past presumably praying to his corpse!

This is not Christianity! It is human religion pretending to be Christian. Spyridon (AD 270 – 348) himself was by all accounts a fine Christian, in which case we can say he is now with Christ in heaven. The corpse in the casket is not the living Spiridon, it is just human remains: but it has become an idol and if there is anything spiritual associated with it then according to the Bible it is a demon (Deuteronomy 32 : “¹⁶ They made him jealous with their foreign gods and angered him with their detestable idols. ¹⁷They sacrificed to demons, which are not God—“ and 1 Corinthians 10 “²⁰  the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons.”)

What does the Bible say about how God views this sort of behavior…

Deuteronomy 6.14¹⁴ Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you; ¹⁵ for the LORD your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and his anger will burn against you, and he will destroy you from the face of the land. 

Isaiah 42:8 ⁸ “I am the LORD; that is my name! 
   I will not yield my glory to another 
   or my praise to idols. 

So, if you are going to pray: pray to God, Father Son Holy Spirit. If you are going to give praise for answered prayer: give it to God alone. Anything else is idolatry!

…………………………..

I should of course not leave the topic of our prayer life without pasting in some of Jesus teaching from Matthew 6.

“ ⁵ “When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. I tell you the truth, that is all the reward they will ever get. ⁶ But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.

 ⁷ “When you pray, don’t babble on and on as people of other religions do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again.⁸ Don’t be like them, for your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him! ⁹ Pray like this:

   Our Father in heaven,
      may your name be kept holy.
   ¹⁰ May your Kingdom come soon.
   May your will be done on earth,
      as it is in heaven.
   ¹¹ Give us today the food we need,^[a]
   12 and forgive us our sins,
      as we have forgiven those who sin against us.
   ¹³ And don’t let us yield to temptation,^[b]
      but rescue us from the evil one.^[c]

 ¹⁴ “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. ¹⁵ But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.

Next week: Heresy Alert! Heresy Alert! ...

Sermon 26/May/2013 - Trinity

DOWNLOAD sermon Mp3I  talk about how exciting it is that God shows us his character of love,mercy, faithfulness, justice and hatred of evil that so far exceeds anything we could dream of or even dare to hope for: and also gives us this tiny glimpse of his inner triune nature  and even that glimpse is totally beyond our ability to comprehend.  In the end we can only say "I believe in one God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit."

3 things every Christian needs ... Pt 2

2. Bible Reading.

If you want to rerad what God is like and how he wants us to live, the primary and only authoritative source of information is the Bible.

As a brand new baby Christian you may need at first to imbibe the Bible’s teaching in a regurgitated form from older Christians who are acting like spiritual parents towards you. But all the same you need to grow up and get reading it for yourself as soon as you can.

Because the Bible is so vital to spiritual growth be warned that the devil will try to stop you reading it. Beware of anyone trying to get you off reading the Bible itself and on to reading books (or listening to DVD’s) about the Bible. Christian books and video sermons and the like can be helpful but never, never as a substitute for reading the bible itself! The Bible really is God’s word … anything else is anyone’s guess.

Historically one ploy of the devil to stop people away from the Bible was to keep the Bible out of the language ordinary people spoke. In the Middle Ages when the Bible was in Latin, only the priests and scholars could read it – and the people had to believe their interpretation of it. Around the 1400’s people who tried to translate the bible into English and distribute it were burned at the stake by church authorities. Eventually in England every church had to have a Bible in English where anyone could come in and read it for themselves, and it had to be read to the people at every service. This was a radical and tremendously important breakthrough and gave rise to a resurgence of belief throughout England.

Nowadays some tele-evangelists and ministers who imitate them are trying to turn the clock back to be in the position of medieval priests. They tell their people only to read the King James Version – which is so different to modern English that the people cannot possibly understand it, so are forced to rely on this new version of the medieval priest interpreting it for them.

(PS this applies to the post World War II generations only. My 98 rear old mother was brought up on the KJV – and does understand its language. She probably does not realise that she was at the same time taught sufficient ancient Greek and Hebrew grammar and idiom to make it understandable – for instance she may not know that “im” is the usual Hebrew plural ending – like “s” in English – but she certainly understands “chrubim and seraphim” to mean the plural!).

However the barely literate 13 year old girl who proudly told me “The King James Bible is good enough for [named famous tele-evangelist] so it is good enough for me!” certainly could not understand it!

Don’t let tricksters fool you. Get a copy of the Bible in language you can understand! The New Testament was originally written in the worldwide trade version of ancient Greek. Ordinary people everywhere could understand it. Get a Bible you can read and understand! Two translations I find useful are (a) the “New Living” for reading large slabs because it has tried to use modern English expressions and (b) the “TNIV” which is slower reading because it still carries over a little bit of Hebrew and Greek grammar and idioms which are not used in modern English. But as you progress in your study og the Binle and have learned these or if you’ve actually studied Greek and Hebrew at some stage they do add to the vividness and show you where you need to pause and think about double meanings etc. (the “New RSV” is like “TNIV” only I think it is harder for modern English speakers to understand because it carries over more of the Greek and Hebrew way of expressing ideas rather than translating them into English and its clunky to read: but having said that if you find it suits you then use it)

Those are my favorites. But what I am really trying to say is that you should find translations that use the sort of language you use every-day and that you find easy to read and understand.

My personal suggestion is to make a start with the New Testament and try to read through to the end even if some bits you find perplexing. One reason I say this is that even a good human teacher makes their point many times in different ways because people are different and some will understand a thing most easily when it is explained in one way, and other people will understand it most easily when it is explained in another. If humans are smart enough to know that, we should expect God to have all his important themes stated in the Bible multiple times in different ways to get through to different people.

So a thing may seem puzzling because it is a puzzle or it may just be that it seems puzzling because it is being presented in a way that doesn’t “click” with your personality but does for other people.

In the latter case reading on is sensible on the basis that somewhere else it will be presented in a way that you will find easy to absorb. Then next time you read through you will be able to see what the formerly puzzling bit means because you have already learned what it is teaching in another part of the Bible.

The Old Testament is important. It is inspired by the same God and teaches the same things about God and humans and how God wants us to live. Don’t let anyone lead you astray by trying to carve off the Old Testament from the New – the Bible is both together! As with reading the New Testament, the important thing at first is to get an overview and a feel for the general sort of things it teaches. Because the important lessons are repeated over and over, a quick read through – yes even skipping the boring bits – for the first, and maybe even second and third time will help your understanding, and protect you from con artists.

A True Example

Here is an example of how a false teacher that claimed the spiritual life of one of my recently converted people years ago.

Let us call this man “Fred”. Fred came up to me after church and told me I that had got it all wrong about prayer. He had been reading books that had let him see the truth. He explained this “truth” which basically boiled down to this proposition “We are the masters and God is our slave. We must command God to do what we want”

Boiled down to its basics I hope all of you can see that this is the exact opposite of what the Bible teaches! Of course the books he read will have built up to it much more subtly, and I suppose they wound him in like a fisherman gently reeling in a fish until it can be scooped into the boat. But if Fred had read big chunks of his Bible he would have felt there was something wrong straight away. But he hadn’t and he didn’t.

When I tried to reason wit him Fred said it was what the Bible said. Fred then quoted his proof text “Thus saith the Lord … concerning the work of my hands command ye me”. Point proved. Case closed! Or was it …

Remember I warned you against people who insist on the King James Version. Well those words only appear in the KJV. Charlatans love to use it because it’s not in understandable language and unscrupulous people ca put their spin on it and their victims can’t tell its just spin. Warning bell No. 1. beware of quotations from obsolete or oddball translations. Solution: check a couple of different modern translations!

Quoting a short string of words out of the Bible is not quoting the Bible. What I mean is the Bible is a big book, it is not that hard if you look far enough for you to find a string of words in it that taken just on their own say just about anything. Put them back in their context as part of a chapter or a whole narrative and they don’t mean that at all. It is a favorite trick of people from complete charlatans to honest folk who want to get an edge in an argument to delve into the Bible and dig out sound bites. Soundbites work. They stick in people’s heads, they win arguments. But that way the Bible can be made out to say just about anything. Warning bell No.2 : Short quotations may be misquotations. Solution: read a slice either side until you can see what the whole passage of the Bible is saying.

Just as “one swallow doesn’t make a spring” One statement in the Bible - even if you have checked the two warnings above, cannot establish anything important. As I have already said the important lessons run like a thread right through the Bible.

Also some parts of the Bible are hard to understand, or can be interpreted different ways. The rules are:

1. use the really clear bits of the Bible to set the interpretation of difficult or ambiguous bits.
2. never accept an interpretation of one part of the Bible means to opposite of what the Bible says in other parts.
   
   

Warning Bell No.3 Important lessons are repeated often in the Bible: Solution if you are reading slabs of the Bible you will automatically (and the Holy Spirit will help you too) start get a feel for what is important.

So let me play out the three warning bells in this case. I’ll go from 3 to 1 for some dramatic effect.

Warning Bell 3; Does that teaching crop up all through the Bible? … Fred has read this “wonderful” book that tells him that we humans should give the orders and God should obey them. Proof text “Command ye me saith the Lord” (Isaiah 41.11(b)). Even if you have only read a tiny bit of the Bible does that sound right? No! You can’t get very far in the Bible without finding that we humans are meant to obey God not the other way round! ( Example read through John chapters 14 & 15 and see how many times Jesus things like “if you love me you will obey my commandments”!

So Fred should have been on guard, he should have suspected he was being deceived into deserting God. Then he could have done some digging for himself in the Bible and really quickly satisfied himself that obedience to God’s commands is what the Bible teaches, and he could have thrown that book out. But he didn’t.

Warning Bell 2: Do the words bear that interpretation in context. ….. Fred has been sold on this slice of words “command ye me saith the Lord” with the interpretation that God says that we his masters and inviting us to give him our orders. Well those words – cut out as they are from any background – could mean that. They are in KJV English and our language has changed so much in 400 years that we may be totally misunderstanding even these words, but for the moment we will play along with the trickster and use the KJV ourselves. Oh yes, we can beat this one even playing with his loaded dice!

Look at Isaiah 45 in KJV. (I will summarize some bits but feel free to check yourself) Chapter 40 in Isaiah heralds a change in theme from events of King Hezekiah’s time before the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and took the people off into exile in Babylon, to a message of hope for the survivors some 70 years after the exile and getting them ready for God’s plan to bring them back to Jerusalem. Chapter 40 begins with the stirring “Comfort, comfort my people …. Tell them …. Their warfare is ended … they have been paid double for all their sins … make a highway in the desert …. Tell the towns of Judah ‘Your God is coming’…” and then it talks about how much greater God is than the “gods” of the nations. Then by chapter 43 God is assuring them that he has it all planned, he is going to destroy the Babylonians who took them captive. God has ordained it that Jerusalem will be rebuilt. Then God drops the bombshell at the beginning of chapter 45: he is going to do this by the hand of Cyrus the Persian, a pagan who does not even know God exists! I am going to suggest that that would be a real problem for the devout Jews who heard it. I am going to suggest that the next section – which I will paste in from the KJV – is God saying essentially “look people, it’s my way or … my way! I AM God!)

 ⁹Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou? or thy work, He hath no hands?

 ¹⁰Woe unto him that saith unto his father, What begettest thou? or to the woman, What hast thou brought forth?

 ¹¹Thus saith the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker, Ask me of things to come concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands command ye me.

 ¹²I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded.

 ¹³I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will direct all his ways: he shall build my city, and he shall let go my captives, not for price nor reward, saith the LORD of hosts

So even in KJV that word string “command ye me” at the end of verse 11 cannot mean what the false teachers were claiming !… Is God inviting them to tell him how to run the show? Not at all

Right from saying clay doesn’t tell the potter what to do (v9) through to “I have raised him (Cyrus) up and I will direct all his ways: he shall build my city (Jerusalem), and he shall let go my captives (the Jews)” the message is: God rules!

So “concerning the work of my hands command ye me” has to be a question with the answer understood: No! “Don’t even think about it!”

Warning Bell 1. Try other translations. I had to save this till last because it would have blown their claim out of the water straight off. That would have been too simple!

Look at just v. 11 from some other translations:

New Living Bible
¹¹ This is what the Lord says—
      the Holy One of Israel and your Creator:
   “Do you question what I do for my children?
      Do you give me orders about the work of my hands?

Contemporary English Version
¹¹I am the LORD, the Creator, the holy God of Israel.
   Do you dare question me about my own nation
   or about what I have done?

TNIV
¹¹ “This is what the LORD says— 
   the Holy One of Israel, and its Maker: 
Concerning things to come, 
   do you question me about my children, 
   or give me orders about the work of my hands?

How did it end for Fred? I tried to explain from the Bible but he had already been hooked. That is one reason I am writing this book, in my experience once people have been “hooked” by false teaching they frequently cannot hear the truth. As I stood there, open Bible in my hand pointing out what it really said, he replied simply: “this bible teacher has a multi-million dollar TV ministry: you just have a small church. I must believe him!” Some months later Fred (by then openly contemptuous of our “spiritual inferiority”) left our church, and I never saw him again.