Tag Archives: Bible

America’s sacred animal

01 Friday May 2015

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It is well known that cattle are sacred to the Hindus of India. Recently there have been news stories about a law passed in the west Indian state of Maharashtra which prohibits the killing of cattle and the sale, possession, or consumption of beef. Even tigers and other carnivores at the Mumbai zoo are being made to eat white meat instead of red meat.

While the sacredness of cattle to the Hindus seems ridiculous to many people, and rightly so, I would like to suggest that the United States is in the process of making dogs (and their biggest wild relative, the wolf) a sacred animal. It seems that at least once a week I see a story on the local news in which someone is being prosecuted for killing a dog or for failing to properly care for a dog. Recently an overwhelming majority of voters in Michigan voted against allowing wolf hunting, even though biologists say that the wolf population is as high as or higher than it should be. Most people in Michigan and other states view the shooting of a wolf as something qualitatively different than the shooting of a deer, even though deer are docile animals and wolves are predators. (The wolves are eating so many deer that the DNR may cancel this year’s deer hunt in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for the first time ever.) This is not just an American phenomenon, either—recently a group of Chinese animal rights activists laid down on the road in front of a truck that was carrying Tibetan mastiffs to a slaughterhouse, and proceeded to provide medical care for the dogs after “rescuing” them. (The popularity of Tibetan mastiffs in China declined sharply after numerous instances where they attacked and killed people.) Animal rights groups also objected several years ago when Baghdad police began to shoot some of the 1.25 million stray dogs in the city after they had developed a taste for human flesh and had begun attacking humans.

In the United States, it is illegal to sell dog or cat meat. In some states, it is illegal to eat dog meat for any reason. This is not too much different than laws in India which prohibit the butchering of cattle. Although I have never personally tasted dog meat, some of my Korean friends say that it is their favorite kind of meat, that it tastes like beef but is more tender. They can’t understand why it is illegal to sell and eat dog meat in the United States.

Since I don’t have pets, I am not exactly sure what the law requires of dog owners. But I wonder if someone could go to jail for not paying for surgery and chemotherapy if his dog has cancer. It seems that dog hospitals and clinics with 24-hour emergency rooms and advanced medical equipment keep proliferating, and health insurance for dogs is becoming commonplace. I would not be surprised to see the next version of Obamacare make health insurance for dogs mandatory. Nor would I be surprised to see hate speech laws expanded to criminalize derogatory remarks about dogs. Already in Michigan there are frequent rallies in defense of the pit bull, which is the most dangerous of all dog breeds.

I do not advocate unnecessary cruelty to animals, but at the same time it should be recognized that there is considerable confusion today about the difference between man and animals, due largely to the teaching of Darwinian evolution. I do not understand why people think that stray dogs and cats should be captured, then neutered and spayed or put in cages in the Humane Society, rather than shot and buried. I do not understand why a man who accidentally leaves a dog in a hot car, resulting in its death, should go to jail. That is an unfortunate accident, but from a biblical point of view killing a dog is not morally different than killing a rat.

The Bible teaches that man is qualitatively different than a dog or any other animal, because man alone was created in the image of God (Gen 1:26-27; 9:5-6). People who talk about their pet dogs as their “children,” as many now do, are seriously mistaken. The word “murder” is used less and less today where it should be. Where news headlines used to read “Police investigating murder” they now read, e.g., “Police investigating shooting death” or “Police investigate fatal stabbing.” A murderer is now called a “homicide suspect” or a “man convicted of killing.” Perhaps this is because the word “murder” implies moral guilt, whereas problems today are said to be the result of environmental or psychological factors and not willful sin. But where I do hear the word “murder” used with greater frequency is with respect to people killing dogs. From a biblical point of view, animals can be killed, but they can never be murdered. Only man can be murdered, since only man is created in the image of God.

In the Bible, dogs are portrayed as among the basest of all animals (cf. 1 Sam 17:43; 24:14; 2 Sam 3:8; 9:8; 16:9; 2 Kgs 8:13; Job 30:1; Ps 22:16; Isa 66:3). Male prostitutes are called “dogs” in Deuteronomy 23:18. Paul calls false teachers “dogs” in Philippians 3:2. Jesus warned more than once against giving good things to “dogs” (Matt 7:6; 15:26; Mark 7:27). The book of Revelation uses the term “dogs” to represent people who are loathsome and unclean (Rev 22:15).

While as an unclean animal dogs could not be eaten under the Mosaic Law, the New Testament affirms that all types of animal meat—including dogs—are now permissible to eat, since the Law was fulfilled in Jesus Christ (Mark 7:19; Acts 10:9-16). Before the Mosaic Law, as well, it was perfectly permissible to eat dog meat (Gen 9:2-4). Dogs can make fun pets and can be useful for such tasks as protection and hunting, but they are animals—they are not human. Even in comparison to other animals, dogs do not have superior status; they are, in fact, singled out in the Bible as among the most despicable of all animals. The veneration of dogs in the United States would seem, then, to be a mark of a society that has departed from God and from a biblical way of thinking.

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What is the Bible about?

15 Sunday Mar 2015

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I recently published a revised edition of volume 1 of my Interpretive Guide to the Bible, in which I added a short introduction that deals with “big picture” questions. One of these is the subject of the Bible, which answers the question, “What is the Bible about?”

A popular response to this question by an older generation of Bible expositors was “Jesus Christ.” In fact, this seems to be affirmed in Article 1 of the doctrinal statement of Dallas Theological Seminary, which includes the following sentence: We believe that all the Scriptures center about the Lord Jesus Christ in His person and work in His first and second coming, and hence that no portion, even of the Old Testament, is properly read, or understood, until it leads to Him. Some Bible teachers have gone so far as to say that the main point of every book of the Bible, and even of every chapter of the Bible, is to reveal Christ. This then forces them to allegorize the text in order to find how Christ is revealed in, for example, the life of Joseph or the Song of Songs.

It is better to develop the subject of the Bible from a study of the biblical text itself, rather than developing the subject through a seemingly arbitrary theological assertion, and then trying to find a way to read the Bible to fit one’s theology. It is also best to view the Bible as a whole when developing a statement of its subject, since the main subject of a book may not be the main subject of every paragraph or every section of the book. A biography of Abraham Lincoln, for example, could include a chapter on Lincoln’s wife or a chapter on social conditions in the antebellum South. Such chapters, in which Abraham Lincoln would not be the main subject, would not destroy the subject-unity of the book; they would simply function to give background information that is necessary to more fully understand and elucidate the overall subject of the book, to which the book would always return.

As a career Bible scholar who has read through the Bible more than a dozen times, I have no hesitation when identifying the subject of the Bible. Clearly the subject of the Bible is God. The Bible is a book about God, about who He is and what He does. Since the Bible was written to man, in order to reveal God to man, it has much to say about God’s dealings with men and His plan for the human race. Since God exists in trinity, the Bible reveals God as triune, and contains a considerable description of each member of the holy Trinity. It especially has much to say about God the Son (Jesus), since He bridges the gap between God and man by becoming incarnate, and He is the perfect revelation of the Father. Persons and nations who occupy a central place in God’s historical dealings with men also receive much attention in the Bible—positively, the nation of Israel, the patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles, and other men of God; negatively, Satan, the antichrist, great world empires, and other notable opponents of God’s people. Theological (rather than historical) issues are a greater focus in the New Testament than in the Old. In the New Testament the church arises as a non-national people of God, the Holy Spirit is sent to indwell every believer in Jesus, and the theological mysteries of salvation and last things are more fully revealed.

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Is imprisonment as a punishment for a crime biblical?

04 Wednesday Feb 2015

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The United States is probably the world’s greatest proponent of imprisonment as punishment for crimes. For the recent past, the United States has consistently had the highest incarceration rate of any large country in the world. Most of the rest of the world has followed the United States’ example, and prison is the generally accepted method of punishing crime in the world today. It will be shocking to many Americans and Europeans to hear that the whole idea of a prison system does not have biblical support, and there are good reasons to believe that it is unsound.

The Law of Moses sets out what is, without a doubt, the ideal system of criminal justice. It must be the ideal, since the Law was devised directly and entirely by God Himself, as Israel’s King. It is striking, then, that there is no jail in the Law of Moses. Punishment is by physical and financial damages or death. Outside of the Mosaic code, jail is mentioned occasionally in the Old Testament (Gen 39:29–40:23; Jer 37:11-21), which shows that it existed at the time, though there was no jail in Hammurapi’s ancient law code, either. In Numbers 15:34, a man was held in custody pending a verdict, but it was assumed that the verdict would not be that he should remain in jail. So jail did exist at the time of Moses, but only as a place to temporarily hold the accused pending an investigation and trial. Jail finally became the societal norm by the time of the Greco-Roman world of the New Testament, although the Romans used their jail system in combination with other forms of punishment.

Jail is a terrible place that forces otherwise good men to act as criminals, and subjects them to great abuse from other criminals and from guards. It creates a great financial burden on society to care for the prison population. It creates a great social and financial burden for families who lose members of their family to jail. It condemns the incarcerated to a terrible living death. It is well established that in any country that has a prison system, otherwise good people who enter the prison system for minor offenses will often come out of jail as hardened criminals. Many are forced to join gangs, often along racial lines, as a means of surviving in prison. Many are horribly beaten, abused, and even killed; there were 9,000 reported instances of (homo)sexual assault in U. S. prisons in 2011 alone, and many more that were not reported. In America, about 70 percent of prisoners are rearrested within three years of their release. Society, meanwhile, loses the services of people who otherwise could be doing productive labor, and instead has to pay to take care of them. The idea of jail as punishment for crime ultimately comes from the Greco-Roman classical world—and, more recently, from England—not from the Bible.

(As an application, the Bible never recommends jail as discipline for children. The Bible recommends rebuke and non-injurious corporeal punishment for the discipline of children [cf. Prov 13:24; 19:18; 23:13-14; 29:15, 17]. The idea that it is better for parents to send children to their rooms than it is to spank them does not come from the Bible, although the Bible does not forbid parents from sending children to their rooms. In my own experience, adults who are the best disciplined and best behaved are the ones who were disciplined physically as children, not the ones who were grounded and sent to their rooms.)

One of the fundamental flaws of the jail system (and also of extrabiblical ancient Near Eastern law codes, such as Hammurapi’s) is that it lacks a sense of punishment in proportion to the crime. Under the Mosaic Law, a thief had to make restitution for the thing which he stole, adding 20 percent to its value (Lev 6:4-5). If a man dug a pit and failed to cover it, and another man’s ox fell into the pit and died, the man who dug the pit was given the dead ox, but had to pay the price of the ox to the ox’s owner (Exod 21:33-34). The overall principle of justice in the Mosaic Law was equal recompense: eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life (Exod 21:23-25). The punishment was to be exactly equal to the crime committed—no more, and no less. A murderer was to be put to death (Num 35:17). A man who knocked out his neighbor’s tooth was to have his own tooth knocked out (Lev 24:19). A false witness was to be given the sentence that would have been given to the man whom he falsely accused (Deut 19:16-19). In certain cases the judges could prescribe a limited number of lashes as punishment for unspecified crimes (Deut 25:1-3). Various other punishments are prescribed in the Mosaic Law for specific offenses, but always with the aim of equal recompense and preserving the moral fabric of society. This is a great contrast to the modern American legal system, in which often light sentences are given for serious crimes, while some minor offenses result in a long jail sentence and a heavy fine. Little or no concern is given to how the sentence might negatively impact the guilty person, his family, or all of society. The perfectly equal nature of the criminal justice system set out in the biblical Torah led Moses to boast, “What great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law, which I set before you today?” (Deut 4:8).

There are several other errors in the reasoning behind the prison system. One is the idea that all punishment that causes sensory pain is evil, whereas imprisonment is compassionate because it does not cause sensory pain (the same idea behind the movement to ban the spanking of children). However, I guarantee you that if you asked people who were being sentenced for a crime to choose between twenty years in prison or forty lashes, most of them would choose the forty lashes. They might be sore for a while, but they would still be free and able to work and to be at home with family. This shows that prison is actually a far more terrible punishment than lashes. God Himself often afflicts His people with physical problems in order to teach them lessons, and certainly God is not unjust. Even within the prison system, it is unfortunate that prisoners are punished for misbehavior by being placed in solitary confinement, rather than by being punished physically. Studies have repeatedly shown that solitary confinement creates mental and physical problems that are far more serious than the temporary, superficial injuries caused by appropriately administered physical punishments.

Many people today hold the mistaken notion that the purpose of the criminal justice system is not actually to inflict punishment on criminals, but is rather to isolate dangerous people from the rest of society and to rehabilitate them. The Bible, however, teaches that retribution is the basic purpose of the punishments inflicted by a criminal justice system (Rom 13:4). Another purpose of the criminal justice system is to restrain sin, whether by punishing people who commit crimes, or by others hearing of this punishment and being afraid to commit the same trespass. The ultimate deterrent to crime is capital punishment (cf. Deut 13:5, 11; 17:7, 12-13; 19:19-20; 21:21; 22:21-24; 24:7). Under the Mosaic Law, people who were so thoroughly wicked that they had to be removed from society—such as sorcerers (Exod 22:18), apostates (Deut 13:1-18), and uncontrollable rebellious teenagers (Deut 21:18-21)—were to be executed, rather than locked up in prison.

If people are in jail, they should have to work (or at least be given the opportunity to work), so as to make them productive contributors to society. But the American model is generally for the prisoners to be cared for at the public expense. Prisoners in America are given free meals, free medical, dental, and vision care, free clothes, free housing, 24/7 protection, and so forth—benefits that poor, hardworking people do not receive. Some of the worst criminals receive these benefits for decades, and the financial cost to society is enormous. According to a New York Times study, the city of New York’s annual cost per inmate was $167,731 in 2012. Nationwide, the average annual cost per inmate is a little more than $30,000. The moral cost to the prisoners themselves and to their families is even more devastating. Prison is an unbiblical idea that society truly cannot afford.

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A funeral, and some reflections on death

06 Saturday Dec 2014

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Yesterday was the funeral for my maternal grandmother, who was my last surviving grandparent. This has prompted a few thoughts on death and dying.

First, an outline theology of death and dying from the Bible.

  1. The Bible presents death as an enemy, both of man and of God (1 Cor 15:26). Death was never part of God’s original plan for the human race; it came into the world as a punishment for Adam’s sin (Rom 5:12-21). Death is emotionally and psychologically difficult for us to deal with because it is something that God did not originally intend for us to have to deal with.
  2. Jesus Christ has conquered death (Acts 2:24; Rev 1:18).
  3. Satan uses the fear of death to enslave (Heb 2:14-15).
  4. Believers in God have passed out of death into life (John 5:24).
  5. The one who keeps Christ’s Word does not see death (John 8:51, referring to eternal or ultimate death).
  6. The one who is “in Christ” has shared in His death and resurrection (Rom 6:3-4). Jesus tasted death for every man (Heb 2:9).
  7. God has written the last chapter to show how it all turns out. This brings us hope. One preacher said, “I read the back of the book, and we win.” No matter how much grief and suffering we may endure in this life, for those who have accepted God’s offer of salvation there will come a day when all grief, pain, and sorrow will be ended forever (Rev 21:4).

Another reflection: it is evident from the way most people treat death today that they do not believe in an afterlife. It used to be in America, that rich and prominent people sought to be remembered after they died by building great monuments at their planned gravesite—mausoleums, chapels, pillars, and so forth. They did this because they believed there is life after death, and they wanted to leave a continuing legacy and a remembrance of themselves. In fact, it was normal for people to visit cemeteries to remember the dead and pay their respects, with the understanding that the dead person’s soul was still in conscious existence, and that the dead body in the ground still belonged to that person and would someday be raised. (Side note: Bellefontaine Cemetery was the most-visited tourist attraction in St. Louis circa 1900.) Throughout the whole history of the world, it has been common for prominent men to build great grave markers for themselves, and for others to come and visit their gravesites. Today, however, the dominant attitude seems to be, “Death is eternal annihilation, so I’ll just live for the here and now, and I don’t care what they do with my corpse or how they will remember me after I’m dead.” There are few great tomb monuments these days, and many cemeteries and funeral parlors are struggling for business.

The great increase in cremation is another sign that most people no longer believe in an afterlife, resulting in a failure to view the body as sacred or spiritual. A dead body is viewed as nothing more than a clump of matter, to be disposed of in an environmentally friendly and cost-effective manner. But historically, and in the Bible, a proper burial was viewed as an honorable thing, while the burning or desecration of one’s corpse was a great dishonor (cf. 2 Kgs 9:35-37; Eccl 6:3; Jer 22:19; 36:30; Amos 2:1). While God is able to raise a cremated body back to life, Christians traditionally buried their dead, placing their bodies in the ground in hope of resurrection. The body was treated as a sacred thing, not as garbage, since it was recognized that it was made in the image of God, and that it will be used again in a new form.

Our society tries to sterilize death, and to avoid truly coming to grips with one’s eternal destiny. The death of a family member is a time when the subject cannot, and should not, be avoided.

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The war in the heavenlies

09 Sunday Nov 2014

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In my last post, I described what I think are the most significant battles in military history. In this post, I will give an overview of the war the Bible describes between spirit beings in heavenly realms. The two greatest battles in this conflict occur at the beginning and end of world history, but the Bible teaches that there is a constant, ongoing struggle between Satan’s forces and God’s forces.

The war in the heavenlies began when Satan, who like the other angelic beings was created morally perfect but with the ability to choose to confirm this perfection or to rebel against it, pridefully coveted God’s lordship of the universe and determined to rebel (Isa 14:12-14; Ezek 28:14-15). (For more detail regarding the interpretation of Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, see volume 4 of my Interpretive Guide to the Bible.) Satan left his station as the cherub who covered God’s throne (Ezek 28:16) and persuaded large numbers of other angels (one-third, according to Rev 12:4) into following him in an attempt to take over heaven (Isa 14:12-14; Rev 12:3-12). Presumably Satan promised to make them princes in his new world order. Satan then attempted to storm God’s throne and take it for himself. Although Satan could never win a direct battle with God, in fact he was not even able to break through to the divine Presence: a great battle was fought between Satan’s angelic army and God’s angelic army, and God’s angels won this battle decisively. Satan and his angelic followers were cast down to earth for a time (Isa 14:12; Ezek 28:16; cf. Rev 12:9), and the lake of fire was created immediately to be the place of eternal punishment for the devil and his angels (Matt 25:41). Satan then continued his war against God on the earth by tempting Adam and Eve to sin (Gen 3:1-6), and the rest of the Bible tells the story of how God comes to the rescue of the fallen human race.

Daniel 10 describes how Satan and his angels are fighting God’s angels in the present age. It describes how heaven’s second most powerful angel (excluding the four cherubim) was sent to deliver a critically important message to the prophet Daniel, but was blocked en route to Daniel by Satan. While Satan and this powerful angel were fighting each other, many other good angels and evil angels joined the fray; however, Satan successfully blocked this angel’s path for twenty-one days. Daniel continued to pray throughout the twenty-one days, until finally God dispatched Michael, the chief angel (archangel), who freed the other angel from Satan’s grasp and enabled him to reach Daniel. Before this angel revealed his prophetic message to Daniel, he described how he had been engaged in a constant conflict with Satan since the establishment of the Persian Empire, with the object of their struggle being influence over the king of the empire. He described, further, how he would return to this conflict with Satan immediately after he left Daniel, and how this conflict would continue in the new Greek empire after Alexander the Great had conquered Persia. Angelic beings are capable of exerting a powerful influence over human thought and behavior in ways that we do not fully understand, and Satan’s forces are fighting God’s forces for influence in the governments of every country in the world. The conflict which the prophecy of Daniel 11 describes between kings, between governments, and between wicked rulers and the people of God, is the visible manifestation of the invisible conflict between armies of angels; what is happening in the spiritual realm drives what happens in the physical realm.

Since the object in the war between good and evil angels is influence in the human realm, it stands to reason that Christians are participants in this spiritual battle. Indeed, Ephesians 6:10-20 teaches that the Christian’s real and primary battle is in the spiritual realm. However, we do not fight this battle the way the angels do, since we do not possess supernatural powers. We fight this battle by using all the tools at our disposal—prayer, the Bible, fellow believers, and the exercise of our faith—to lead a righteous and holy life that is pleasing to God. This is the way to resist the devil’s influence, and thereby to win victory in our spiritual war. James 4:7 teaches that by subjecting ourselves to God we are resisting the devil, and he will flee from us.

Christians also have a duty to pray for the leaders of government, in order to have peace and stability in their land (1 Tim 2:1-2). While there is a spiritual battle being waged in every country in the world, I believe that today powerful Satanic forces are fighting in Washington, D. C. with the angel who appeared to Daniel, in order to influence the government of the world’s most powerful country. Michael is identified as the special guardian angel of the nation of Israel (Dan 10:21; 12:1), which means that he is very likely in Jerusalem today, fighting with powerful Satanic forces who want to block the fulfillment of biblical prophecy by removing the Jewish people from their land. The prayers of believers have a profound effect on these struggles, as demonstrated by Daniel 10.

At some point after the fall of man, Satan and his angels (the demons) were given access to heaven once again, but only to present themselves before God (not to fight—see 1 Kgs 22:19-23; 2 Chr 18:18-22). Satan’s main activity in heaven in the present age consists of slandering God’s people on earth for their real or alleged faults (see Job 1:6-12; 2:1-6; Rev 12:10). But at the end of history, when he knows his time is short, Satan will make one more attempt to do what he originally set out to do—to gather all his forces and make an all-out assault on heaven in order to cast God off His throne (Rev 12:7). The release of large numbers of particularly bad demons from the abyss (Rev 9:1-11) will augment Satan’s forces, and Satan’s henchmen (the antichrist and the false prophet) will be in the process of seizing political power over the earth at the same time (Rev 13). However, Satan’s second attempt to storm heaven will be just as unsuccessful as his first attempt, and when Satan and his angels are cast out of heaven by Michael and his angels, they are expelled for all time (Rev 12:7-10). The final 3½ years of the tribulation period, which occur after Satan’s final fall from heaven, will be particularly difficult from a spiritual point of view because the energies of Satan and his forces are focused exclusively on the earth (Rev 12:12-17).

The resolution of the war between spirit beings comes at the second coming of Jesus Christ to earth, when Satan is bound for a thousand years (Rev 20:1-3) and his angels are judged by the saints and sent to the lake of fire forever (Isa 24:21-23; 1 Cor 6:3; Rev 20:4). The ensuing thousand years (the “millennium”), in which Jesus and the resurrected saints rule over a human population with mortal bodies, will be a time of great peace and order, since the world will be entirely free from the destructive influence of Satan and his angels. But at the end of the thousand years, Satan is briefly released from his prison in order to reveal which people are genuine followers of God and which were insincere (it turns out most were insincere—Rev 20:7-8). Satan shows that he has not changed, as he leads the people of the world to surround Mount Zion in yet another attempt to cast God off His throne. Satan’s followers are killed, but are raised shortly thereafter for the final judgment, while Satan himself is immediately sent to the lake of fire for all eternity (Rev 20:9-15). In the final creation (the “eternal state”), the saints are entirely separated not just from their own personal sin, but from the very presence of evil, which is confined to the lake of fire (Rev 21:1–22:5). The spiritual conflict which is now being fought in the heavenlies will have been won forever, with God, God’s angels, and God’s saints fully triumphant.

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A biblical perspective on Tuesday’s elections

02 Sunday Nov 2014

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Government is a necessary, God-ordained institution whose primary purpose is to restrain sin by maintaining law and order in society (see Rom 13:3-4; 1 Pet 2:13-14). Christians who live in a democracy should seek to influence the government by casting their vote—though, admittedly, sometimes we feel that we are voting for the lesser of two evils. Some Christians are even called to a career in government and politics, although this is becomingly increasingly difficult in the American context.

This Tuesday, November 3, is an important “midterm” election for congressional and state officials. How can we put this election in biblical perspective? First of all, we can say that it is a mistake to place your hope for the future on the results of this election. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that if the Republican party can just win control of Congress, followed in two years by the White House, they will fix the spiritual problems in America. While there are some evangelical Christian politicians in the Republican party, most Republicans are essentially secular, and most have a secular agenda. Even if all the Republican politicians were Bible-believing Christians, there still is just not much interest in the Christian gospel in America today. If the Republicans regain control of the Senate, this will, at best, only slow down America’s moral and spiritual decline.

Our hope as a Christian has to do with the world that is to come—that world where the redeemed are raised from the dead, where there is no pain, no suffering, and no death, and where God Himself is ruling directly and visibly. If you set your hope on anything in this world, you will be sorely disappointed, because this world and everything in it is passing away. Don’t hope for a political party or a politician to solve the world’s problems. Don’t think that government, science, or business will solve the world’s problems. Put your hope in Jesus Christ, who is the only Solution to the world’s problems. Jesus will in fact solve all the problems in the world at His second coming to earth; until then, people everywhere are called to receive Him as their Savior in order to obtain a place in that glorious world to come. It is okay to be involved in politics, but the church needs to stay focused on spiritual causes. If you choose to give money to a political cause, make sure that the bulk of your giving is still going to the church, which is where it will really make a difference.

I know many Christians who are fearful of the political future of America. Is there a big economic collapse coming in America, as the doomsayers perennially forecast? Neither party wants to hurt the economy; the economy will probably grow no matter which party is in power, though in different ways and at different rates. The prospect of religious persecution of evangelical Christians is much more real, though it is still unclear exactly how and when this will unfold. Should the rising tide of anti-Christian sentiment scare us? Not if we see our duty as simply being faithful to God, which is something we can do in tough times as well as in good times. (By the way, most American Christians that I know who are very worried about the direction of their country, and who are praying fervently for political change, seem to feel “locked in” to life in America. But if pressure on Christians in America becomes too great, there is nothing in the Bible that says Christians cannot move to another country for their own safety. It would probably actually be good for the spread of the gospel if more American Christians moved overseas [cf. Acts 8:1-4; 11:19].)

The Bible teaches that God is sovereign over rulers and nations; in fact, this is the theme of the book of Daniel (2:21; 3:29; 4:32; 5:21; 6:26; 7:27). So if people who are opposed to God, and who are opposed to biblical principles, win Tuesday’s elections, does that mean God has lost control? Should it shake your faith? By no means. In fact, God will not impose direct political control over the earth until Jesus Christ returns to set up His kingdom. The Bible reveals that the end of the present age is marked by a great rebellion against God, in which the world will continually grow worse until it finally unites in worship of a man known as the antichrist (cf. 2 Thess 2:1-12). The antichrist will lead the world to the ultimate expression of evil, such that God will finally have to intervene and put an end to the kingdoms of this world. Since this is how the Bible reveals the age will end, it should not surprise us when leaders and cultures in the world grow ever more anti-Christian. When things go from bad to worse to worse yet, it is because God’s sovereign plan is unfolding to bring the powers of this world to an end. Our job is to be separate and faithful. By doing so, we obtain a share in the spoils of victory when Christ returns to conquer the world.

Come, Lord Jesus! (Rev 22:20)

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A biblical perspective on the World Series

27 Monday Oct 2014

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Game 6 of the World Series is tomorrow, and millions of Americans will be watching. Nearly everyone in America (or, at least, nearly every male) spends a significant amount of time watching sports of some kind year-round, whether it is baseball or one of the seemingly endless variety of other athletic competitions that are televised today. But did you know that the early church was opposed to sports? (Read Tertullian’s On the Games/De Spectaculis, for example.) Sports were also rejected by observant Jews before the time of Christ’s first advent, in part because training in sports and participation in the games was one of the major emphases of Antiochus IV’s attempt to Hellenize the Jewish people.

What does the Bible have to say about sports? First, the Bible is clear that God is not impressed by athletic ability, but only by godly character. Psalm 147:10-11 says, He does not delight in the strength of the horse; He takes no pleasure in the legs of a man. The LORD takes pleasure in those who fear Him, in those who hope in His lovingkindness. When the prophet Samuel was initially very impressed by the physical appearance of David’s oldest brother Eliab, and assumed that Eliab should be anointed king on this basis, God told Samuel, Do not look at his appearance, or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For [the LORD sees] not as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart. (1 Sam 16:7).

I have a very hard time believing that God is impressed by how hard a pitcher can throw a baseball, or by how far a batter can hit it.

The apostle Paul once participated in an athletic competition, though not by choice: he evidently was thrown into a ring with wild beasts at the Ephesus amphitheater and was forced to fight them in a life-or-death match as a public spectacle, as a punishment for preaching the gospel (1 Cor 15:32; cf. 2 Cor 1:8-11). But in describing this event in 1 Cor 15:32, Paul says that if he fought with wild beasts “after the manner of men” it would have been of no profit for him. That is, had Paul fought with the motive of the gladiators—worldly fame and fortune, or a love of sport—it would not have been of ultimate value for him, because the world’s glory is passing away. However, Paul fought with wild beasts with the motive of serving the risen Christ, which has an eternal reward. He was fighting by compulsion, not by choice, and he glorified God by demonstrating that God could deliver a man who was in his fifties and not trained as a gladiator from the mouth of the lion (cf. 2 Tim 4:17). The inspired view of sports which Paul gives in 1 Cor 15:32 is that if sports are played for any of the usual motives for which sports are played—to win fame, glory, money, and so forth—they are unprofitable for the players. They are, in a word, worthless.

Even non-competitive bodily exercise, which clearly has health benefits, is said by Paul to be merely of “a little” profit in comparison to the more important exercise of one’s faith unto godliness, since godliness has value both for the present life and for the life to come in eternity (1 Tim 4:7-8).

In the grand scheme of things, it is stupid to be awed by someone’s ability to whack a golf ball or to toss a basketball. It is stupid for coaches, fans, and players to treat the games they play with great seriousness and passion, as if they are a very significant thing. Sports competitions accomplish nothing of any value, since they are worthless insofar as eternity is concerned, and they cannot even be considered productive work vis-à-vis the present world. (Yes, everyone needs a break from work, but do we “need” professional sports?) In fact, sports glorify man, rather than God, and they set up a conflict between rival players and fans for no good reason. Even from the standpoint of fitness, sports create frequent injuries and long-term wear and tear as players push their bodies to the limit and do things that the body was not designed to do. It is better to follow a simpler exercise regimen, and to do so only to maintain one’s health for service to God.

Whether the subject is sports or something else, the things we really care about should be the things that really matter.

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