What the Pandemic Has Taught Me . . . So Far

 Observing the sluggard's formerly lush vineyard now a neglected field of weeds, thorns and broken walls, the compiler of Proverbs 24 tells us "I received instruction from what I saw".

Having observed the pandemic, the lockdown, the politicizing of mitigation measures, all the fallout, and too many hours of expert analysis, I've also received some instruction. It's very likely there are multiple lessons for me to learn, and I may miss some, but so far, from my vantage point within the church, I am seeing one feature of the Covid reality with startling, disturbing clarity.

It was intended as a dress rehearsal for the church.

I'm not sure what the Covid experience was supposed to have signaled to governments and public health officials, but I think God was telling people in the American church world that things will not always be as they've always been. We're crazy if we think we will be able to do church along the lines we've always been. Could the lockdown and shuttering of churches and church activities been God pushing us to explore new ways of doing church? Seriously. 

Most institutional models of the church experience in the west are built on large group gatherings, property ownership, professional clergy, church loyalty and predictable giving patterns. For some time those models have been hemorrhaging, showing signs of unsustainability. The high rate of church closures and clergy resignations more than suggest as much. Leaders, understandably anxious to preserve their families, health and sanity, are quitting in frustration and exhaustion. The notable big box success of some churches is simply a refinement and honing of a church growth model from an earlier and much different era. You can only double down on a declining strategy for so long and some of the successes appear to be fading. The bigger the box, the more unsustainable it will become.

During lockdown some churches experimented with different ways to do church, some resisted and others just whimpered and waited. Maybe God intended us to use the time to prepare for the next thing. Will a future pandemic close us down again? It's more conceivable than ever. Could we be swamped by a different, unforeseen public health crisis? Nobody saw Covid coming. Persecution? There's plenty of precedent for it. Loss of tax exempt status would result in loss of church properties. A faltering economy would drive operating costs and insurance beyond the reach of many congregations. Things could change really fast, rendering church as we conceive it impossible.

Something else is coming. It won't always stay the same for church leaders. Those who've been at it awhile know change is the name of the game. They could tell you the dozens of ways church life has changed since they began. Bigger change is coming and what different, untried ways of doing church could be learned and adapted while we wait? House churches, small groups, prayer chains, work based prayer groups, live stream forums, podcasting, chat rooms, Zoom counseling and Bible studies could all prove sustainable options if our preferred way of doing church were no longer open to us. 

The earliest church thrived without most of the trappings needed for our current institutional, centralized 1952 approach. An explosive first century Jesus movement had plenty of vicious opposition. It also had no designated church space and no large group gatherings. The Book of Acts cites almost seventy cases of first generation believer's use of public space - free space - to spread the message of good. Is a better, cheaper, untapped way of doing church staring us in the face?

Commanded by the resurrected Jesus in Acts 1:8, those who heard were reluctant to take the message to the wider world if it meant leaving the familiar, predictable pace of established Jerusalem church life. Persecution became the catalyst for them to scatter to Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth, living the words of their living Savior. They discerned a meaning and message in the discomfort. 

If God intended lockdown to be a dress rehearsal in finding new ways to be the body of Christ in our broken world, many churches squandered the opportunity, absorbed in tangential dust-ups over violated rights and government overreach. Some wasted it sitting in courtrooms and cozying up to politicians. Others just sweated the thing out. Once again, it looks like it was His friends who missed the voice of God. It's enough to make you cry.

Rather than end on a note of crippling morosity, let me see if I can't salvage something worthwhile with this message to church leaders:  it's not too late to try something new that's not dependent on a building or a big budget. 

The wise person in Proverbs wasn't instructed accidentally. Instruction only came after he reflected on the broken walls and unproductive fields. Reflection on the last 20 months tells me it wasn't a one off. We're crazy if we think there aren't more surprises coming. 

There's time to rethink the church. Now.

Sidewalk Theology: Questions I Get Asked a Lot #5

Q: What Does the Bible Say About Interracial Marriage?

Without question the Hebrew scriptures/Old Testament prohibited Israel from intermarrying with some nearby people groups (Deuteronomy 7:5). Interestingly, the prohibitions were always based on competing religious allegiances, never on ethnicity or skin color. 

Often hostile neighboring groups were dedicated to championing rival gods who were largely corrupted agents of chaos in the heavens who passed those corrupting and chaotic traits on to their earth bound worshippers. Intermingling with these earthly agents of chaos could and, later in the national life of Israel, would result in abandonment of the Most High God (El Elyon). The exclusive, never before covenant relationship between Israel and her deliverer God - one who was above all rival gods - is what would make her a light to the nations and a fulfillment of the Most High God's promise to Abraham, the nation's founder and father. Daily recitation of the Shema ("hear/listen") prayer of Deuteronomy 6 reinforced the uniqueness of the relationship - "Hear O Israel, the LORD our God is one LORD". Israel can lay claim to the LORD/Yahweh/Most High God as "our God" who is uniquely "one LORD" - not simply numerically unique but a "One and Only LORD" without rival. Neighboring people groups were dedicated to lesser rival gods wit vastly different agendas and much lower natures.

Intermarriage with those devoted to lesser rival gods would jeopardize the entire scheme of God toward Israel and severely alter world history. But again, the prohibition was strictly religious and it was in no way based on ethnicity or skin tone. 

Opponents of interracial marriage have long invoked a dire sounding New Testament warning on unequal yoking in marriage. A careful reading tells you inserting race and ethnicity in the passage is a bogus use of the injunction. 

In 2 Corinthians 6:14 the caution to Jesus followers against unequal marriage yoking is consistent with the warnings to ancient Israel, being similarly based on relationship to God. The unequal pairings in the passage are believers with unbelievers, righteousness with unrighteousness. Only the most obtuse and ignorant would see in the third unequal partnering of light and darkness a reference to skin tone. To argue color or ethnicity as constituting an unequal yoking would be a weak argument from silence, which is to say no argument at all. There are no biblical prohibitions against interethnic or interracial marriages. 

In marrying each other, Moses and Tzipporah married outside their ethnic groups. Their differing skin tones brought out the bigot in his siblings, whose nasty, racist criticisms were soundly and dramatically condemned by God.  Both enter the narrative as worshippers of God Most High and by Paul's New Testament definition were equally yoked. Additionally her father was a devotee and priest of the same God as Moses and presumably raised her in that tradition.

Ethnicity is not a factor or cause for division in marriage, the church or the wider kingdom of God since the exposure and naked artificiality of all ethnic, class and gender barriers occurred at and was demolished by the Cross so that "you are all one in Christ" (Galatians 3:28). 

The Bible seems to be in agreement with much recent thinking in the social sciences which describes racial categories as mere human constructs with no bases in biology. In his presentation of the risen Messiah to Athens' intelligentsia, Paul cites the common origin of all people as a basic tenet of his good message that includes the brotherhood of man, the Fatherhood of God and the messiahship of Jesus Christ.

"God that made the world and all things therein . . .hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth . . . that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us." Acts 17: 24-27 KJV

No dividing walls. One blood. Finding a God who's never been that far away. Rightly related to God and each other. Pretty good arrangement, wouldn't you say?

Sidewalk Theology: Questions I Get Asked a Lot #4

 Q: Could you recommend some resources to help me study the Bible?

Most bizarre interpretations and weirdo Bible talk comes from sloppy reading habits, so getting beyond a comfort food reading of the Bible is a great thing. According to the New Testament, serious study of scripture invites an approval from God that superficial reading does not.

A Bible That Fits

The best answer to the 'which translation is best' question is, the one that you will actually use. The King James Version is a fine translation if you remember words can change meaning in four centuries and if you have no problem with Shakespeare or the metaphysical poetry of John Donne. The New American Standard is my preferred choice for serious study, but the New International and English Standard versions are also good. Pick one that has a decent margin so you can jot notes. I prefer a single column format because it better presents the poetic passages (and there are tons of them in the Hebrew scriptures/Old Testament - more than the Psalms). Avoid paraphrases like the Living Bible, the Passion Translation or the Message. They can be helpful, especially in a devotional sense, but aren't true translations and can limit careful study. Also, avoid doctrinally driven versions or annotated study Bibles. You can add those later and there are some that are worthwhile, but they have the added purpose of reinforcing a specific point of view.

Topical Bible

Everyone wants to start with commentaries. There are good ones, better ones and poor ones but beginning study there may narrowly inform your understanding rather than broaden it. As you wade into the any text - secular or sacred - you want an expansive vision of the landscape and settling too early on one scholar's conclusions could short circuit your own investigation. If you're paying for the dinner, you want to chew it yourself - for several good reasons.

Start with a good topical Bible. They aren't exhaustive, but do arrange a ton of passages by general topics - pride, death, miracles, prayer, money, etc. and in most cases the  entire passage is presented. At a glance you can take in most of the main verses dealing with a wide variety of Bible topics, allowing you to quickly compare scripture with scripture. You can then look at each passage in your Bible in its larger context, getting closer to the original meaning and any current application.

A good one is Nave's Topical Bible. Get a recent edition with an index.

Concordance

This tool contains most words in the English Bible - including, as Dr. Suess says, "little words like if and it." and lists where you can find them. It becomes a valuable go-to tool for doing word studies and comparing how the word was used in different settings by different biblical authors and how frequently.

Young's Concordance and Strong's Concordance are both very good. The numbering system in Strong's is used by other reference works you may want to get later, making it a little better investment.

YouVersion

This free app is a must have. Dozens of translations will be available for quick comparison. Owning them all would be a sizeable investment and take a up a lot of shelf space. Having them at your fingertips on phone or computer means you can access them faster than you could turn pages at your desk or workspace if they were physically open in front of you. 

Bible Dictionary

This is good for place names or unfamiliar characters and customs you'll run into in the text. Harper-Collins, Zondervan, Nelson and Holman all have good ones. Make sure it's a recent edition.

Okay, Okay! Commentaries

There are different kinds of commentaries: Textual, historical, homiletic, critical, devotional and some of them require a knowledge of ancient languages or technical jargon making them almost unusable to most of us. Some writers assume the Bible is inspired and some don't. Some are friendly to the text and some hostile. You can dump a load of money without much return on investment so, be guided by your own research and go slow in locating a tool that will actually help you and answer your particular questions. Over time you will find voices you can trust. Maybe in a later post or on our Thursday night Ask Me Anything live stream I'll recommend a few.

Lucky You

A lot of these resources are available online at sites like Crosswalk.com, BibleHub, Bible Gateway and others.

So . . .

That will get you started in the right direction. Get serious and you'll probably sacrifice some sleep because the quiet of late night is the best time to wander through the incomparable Hebrew scriptures and New Testament writings, connecting dots and making discoveries. You'll see why holding up this inexhaustible library for a closer look made the hearts of some early Jesus followers burn within them. 

Sidewalk Theology: Questions I Get Asked a Lot #3

Q: What's the Bible good for?

The influence of the ancient Hebrew scriptures and New Testament on visual arts, literature, social structure, worldviews, criminal justice, benevolent institutions, history, education, music, family structures, social order, race relations, economics and nearly everything else in the Western world and a lot in the non-Western world makes this a bigger question than is usually jammed into five short words. 

Face it, the Bible is a big deal. This sometimes unwelcome scriptural juggernaut with it's enormous shape-shifting pressure has been shoving it's weighty pages around for a long time. It's had colossal influence on how we humans have been doing life. You can like the Bible or skip it, be a friend or critic, but this crazy-quilt library of sixty-six books, by forty authors written over sixty generations has been about as influential as controlled fire or the inclined plane. You don't have to like it, but the Bible has had a significant impact on a significant number of communities and billions of people. Smart kids now tell us its cultural influence is diminishing, but it looks like the Bible's massive fingerprints will be detectable for awhile yet, even without crime scene dusting and Sherlock's magnifying glass.

Our short, superb question necessarily begs further questions: in this thousands years long  human experience, how helpful has the Bible been? How harmful? How much of what's praiseworthy can be laid at the feet of behavior motivated by a correct understanding of the Bible?  How much blamable Bible influence in history comes from silly or accidentally flawed explanations, impressions or interpretations? National and personal tragedies, even horrors and genocide have been perpetrated because of cravenly deliberate distortions by friends of the Bible.  Balling it all up with our seemingly simple, original Earth sized question presents us with a puzzler the size of thirteen expanding universes. It's too big for my feeble brain for sure.

But . . . I can tell you how a lot of people misuse the Bible. I can also tell you where I am right now on best practices for how it's supposed to be used.

As a Bible consumer, I'm to use it primarily to judge myself. Scholars talk about a 'canon of scripture'. A canon is a standard or measuring rod. The Bible is to be my touchstone or reference point, informing me about my behavior toward God and other humans. The way I read it, the Bible tells me pretty directly that God's two great purposes for my life are,  

1) that I be in right relationship with God and 

2) that I be in right relationship with other people. 

Borrowing from the Jewish holy book we call the Old Testament, Jesus distills it all into two great relationship commands: First, with all you've got, love God whom you can't see, then with the same fervor, love the humans you can't help but see. Those two high purposes can't be divorced. 

Bible Pop Quiz - what is the one, honest-to-goodness, legitimate use of this 1700 page tangle of miracle stories, palace intrigues, prophesies, biography, love poetry, history, laws and unreasonably long lists of people who should have changed their name at Ellis Island and spared us all? I'm to use it to examine me and how well I'm doing with the Bible's catch-all commands to love God and love people.  That's how I should use it, but when I aim the Bible at other people, I weaponize it. To weaponize it is to deform and distort it.

Oddly enough, both those who believe and defend and those who don't can be guilty of weaponizing the Bible. Sneering believers have been guilty of rifling through its onionskin pages, skipping the calls for self examination while gleefully seizing on phrases that pin a scarlet A or equivalent on the less believing crowd whose deeds cause the gasping believer much sputtering and pearl clutching.  That's repulsive but the real problem is they've turned an ancient and beautiful repository of documents from another time and place into a present day cudgel. 

The person approaching the Bible with neutrality or even hostility also weaponizes it when they demand the believing enemy live by the unbeliever's/non-user's understanding of it. They've also put themselves in the screwy position of beating someone with a club they don't believe in.

Some legalist eagle may say, "What do you mean the Bible isn't a weapon? It calls itself a sword!" True, but notice in Ephesians 6 the sword is to be wielded against ugly supernatural world powers of darkness described as evil principalities, powers and rulers. In Hebrews 4:12 it's to be used in performing delicate and restorative soul surgery. It's not to be used to trash gay people, annoying religious types, political opponents, flag burners, flag wavers, lawyers, televangelists or even telemarketers. I'm afraid the 70x7 forgiveness thing is still in effect even for chirpy people who clutter up our phones with stuff we don't want.

If you read the Bible, my advice is, go slow and read it to yourself. For yourself. Once you do, as a favor to me, please don't write a book about how it's shot with holes and damaged your life or given you the vapors. Resist too the opposite temptation to publish those dandy Bible revelations known only to you that got you the car, cash, spouse, two-and-a-half kids, and house in Malibu you always wanted along with the full name and shoe size of the Anti-Christ. 

I'll end up with the vapors.

Sidewalk Theology: Questions I Get Asked a Lot #2

 Q: Does God get anything out of prayer or is it just a bunch of noise for Him?

From your good question I can tell you suspect prayer is a personal thing for God. Your suspicions are a direct hit on an aspect of prayer that has been missed - even by those who see value in it and have done a lot of it. 

From the Bible and a little bit from experience, my impression is that God loves prayer because it's a relationship thing. He loves being in relationship with His creation, especially when it's with others, like Himself, who can make real, free decisions that have real consequences. 

Within Himself, God is a thriving, vibrant relationship of Father, Son and Spirit and recasting the familiar first words of the Bible, "In the beginning, God" as "In the beginning, Relationship" isn't far from the mark. It's a Relationship of perfect love and harmony that only gets better with the enlarging of the relationship circle. The more free beings who are in it, the better it gets. Jesus' request in John 17:21 meant something, "Father . . . let them (you and me) be in Us." Wow! We don't become what God is - don't get carried away, but we are included in that Relationship somehow. Double Wow! That's why all the New Testament talk of being "in Christ" and also why God prefers calling us children over servants and there's more Bible talk of adoption and family than justification and duty.

"God is love" only makes sense if we first recognize that God is a Relationship and not as a solitary. A solitary could not not be described as love because love needs an object and the best kind of love is mutual and fully reciprocal. Remember junior high crushes on someone who didn't crush back? That stunk, didn't it? You can't experience love that's worth much if you're a stand alone. It will only drive you crazy and make you write bad words on somebody's locker.

"God is love." Since love is God's nature and He loves relationships, God finds prayer/conversation useful, meaningful, interesting and consequential. He wants to participate.

One more thing: God is a one-of-a-kind Relationship who can simultaneously carry on billions of consequential conversations with people in every imaginable developmental, emotional, intellectual and spiritual state - pristine saint to debauched, boozing lech - and remain fully engaged with each one, actively arranging the best possible outcome every time for everybody. In most cases He is more fully engaged than the earnest saint or much more earnest boozer could ever hope to be.

The temporal outcomes of His involvement with us in prayer are better than can be imagined in many cases and the eternal outcomes are better in all cases. He does it all flawlessly even if our comprehension and perspective is blurred by bad information, irritation, fatigue or inferior, misplaced expectations, He flawlessly upholds His end. Now, here's the kicker, kids. While carrying on a thriving, loving, completely satisfying Relationship within Himself, He never takes His hands off the wheel of an ever expanding universe, all the while caring for you and me and Aunt Minnie. And the sparrows.

That is our God. Amazing.

Sidewalk Theology: Questions I Get Asked a Lot #1

 Q: If God already knows everything, including what I need, why do I still need to pray?

This one has been a consistent favorite from young and old. The old are  a little embarrassed to ask and sometimes have to work up to it. The younger folks just blurt it out. I like it when people blurt. Here's an email answer, pretty much as I sent it about a month ago to a young enquiring mind. 

Dear Curious George (name changed),

I'll take a stab at it.

First, I'll be referring to God as 'HE' but not because I think He's a boy with boy parts. God is no more male than female and we know that's so because we're told that men and women are equally made in the image and likeness of God. Both are equal imagers because God is equally both. I could use 'IT' but that sounds so impersonal and since God is intensely personal, is actually false. God is in fact not a solitary being but is an eternal, personal relationship. Because of our language, I'm left only with 'HE' or 'SHE' and 'HE' is merely historically more familiar though not more correct.

Part of the premise of your question is spot on: God knows everything and where a thing, being, truth or event is placed in time is no barrier to His knowing it. Of course He knows the outcome before we ask since it's His nature to know everything. He can't help but know.

Here's the thing though: from all I just said you can't assume or infer that God causes everything to happen as it does at the time it does. Prayer is an independent initiative on our part and plays a role, as do our actions or inactions. The universe we live in isn't closed or totally predetermined. It's in a state of becoming, if that makes sense. I think there's more wiggle room in reality than some of the old preachers have told us. They were kindly gents who should have looked a little more critically at great grandfathers' theology and at least attempted to better square it with the craziness of life tumbling all around us.

Now, it's true that God will accomplish a BIG PLAN, but within the plan we are permitted by our actions/inactions, prayers/no prayers to have some effect on the outcome of the BIG PLAN. It's going to happen but maybe, within limits, we affect the timing or the clarity with which we or others see the outcome.

If every activity, word, syllable, prayer, movement, response and counter response that ever happened or will happen were a direct decree from the mind of God, that would be an amazing feat requiring a super intellect beyond imagining. If we once grasped the size and scope of it, awe would be involuntarily wrung from us and properly so. BUT, if His plan becomes a reality while also allowing us some part in making real decisions with real consequences, good and bad, that is an act of sustained wisdom, variable coordination and chaos management that is light years beyond mere decrees. That is our God. He's worthy of much more than open mouthed awe, but I'm not sure what it's called really.

So, yes, God knows what will happen before we pray, but it doesn't automatically follow that He directly and personally makes it happen. We have some effect and that gives us motivation to pray. We  also have a monstrous responsibility to learn how to pray because it's participation somehow in what God is up to. I think He allows us tremendous freedom and latitude - it's called human life - while still accomplishing His ultimate plans. Simply because He is aware something will happen doesn't force us to say He makes everything happen. It's the difference between what theology calls foreknowledge and foreordination. I don't feel like dusting off the theology books, but you're nibbling at something pretty amazing Curious George. Tossing orders is celestial child's play. God is way beyond that.

Spending quality time reflecting on the nature and activities of God is mind expanding really. Our minds can entertain nothing bigger or grander. I think that makes it a very healthy thing.