II Chronicles 19

In II Chronicles 19:2, we read: “And Jehu the son of Hanani the seer went out to meet him, and said to king Jehoshaphat, Shouldest thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate the LORD? therefore is wrath upon thee from before the LORD” (KJV).

King Jehoshaphat of Judah entered into an alliance with the wicked King Ahab of Northern Israel.  Jehu the son of Hanani is criticizing Jehoshaphat for that.  Jehu asks if Jehoshaphat should help the ungodly and love those who hate the LORD.  Jehu’s implied answer to this rhetorical question is “no.”

But doesn’t God want us to love everybody?  Didn’t Jesus tell us to love our enemies, to do good to those who hate us, and to pray for those who mistreat and persecute us?  Did not Jesus say that God himself makes the sun to shine on the good and the bad, and the rain to fall on the righteous and the wicked (Matthew 5:44-45)?  Does not Proverbs 25:21 tell us to feed our enemy if he is hungry, and to give him a drink of water if he is thirsty (Proverbs 25:21)?  Are we not supposed to love and to help those who hate the LORD?

“Sure, you can do that, but you’re not supposed to be in an intimate relationship with those people,” some conservative Christians might answer.  They would point to II Corinthians 6:14, where Paul tells Christians not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers.  The way this is often explained is that unbelievers are going one way, and believers are going another way, and an intimate relationship between the believer and the non-believer would be difficult.  Not only are the two going in different directions, but the believer may also be pressured to compromise his or her Christian life in order to maintain the relationship.  But was not Jesus criticized for eating with tax collectors and sinners (Matthew 9:10-11)?  Did not Jesus do so because the sick were the ones who needed a physician?  Was not Jesus trying to enter into a relationship with them to encourage them to seek and to find a better way?

Another relevant passage is I Corinthians 5:9-13: “(9)I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators: (10) Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world.  (11) But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.  (12) For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within? (13) But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person” (KJV).

Paul is saying there that Christians can be around immoral unbelievers.  I don’t think that Paul means that Christians should enter into intimate relationships with them, however, for Paul’s point seems to be that Christians would have to take themselves out of the world altogether were they to follow a blanket prohibition on keeping company with immoral non-believers, and that is not feasible.  Paul appears to be saying that Christians can keep company with immoral non-believers, if they have to do so.  But when it comes to immoral believers, Christians should not eat with such a person, and should put that person out from their midst.

How that plays out on the ground can be tricky.  I have heard some conservative Christians use this passage to justify not eating with homosexual Christians, and some conservative Christian parents appeal to it to justify kicking their gay kids out of the home.  Yet, there are conservative Christians who believe in cultivating friendships with homosexuals to encourage them to come to Christ.  Pastor John MacArthur here gives advice to Christian parents on how to relate to a child who comes out to them, and his advice is essentially this: if the child professes Christ, confront him, and separate yourself from him (i.e., don’t eat a meal with him) if he refuses to repent (after the Matthew 18 process of confrontation); if he is a non-believer, however, confront him with the Gospel.  The thing is, in addition to being horrible, such a rule is not particularly helpful, for the dividing line between Christians and non-Christians is not always clear in this society.  Many of the gay people I was encouraged to “reach out to” as an evangelical Christian probably professed to be Christians
themselves, for Christianity is a significant part of our culture; plus, Christianity is pretty diverse.

Was Jehoshaphat wrong to help a man, King Ahab, who hated the LORD?  Well, one could say that Jehoshaphat could expose Ahab to righteousness by doing so.  The problem was, however, that the alliance may have led Jehoshaphat to compromise his convictions: in II Chronicles 18, Jehoshaphat asks Ahab to consult a prophet of the LORD who is not a yes-man, then Jehoshaphat proceeds to disregard the true prophet’s message.  Plus, would entering an alliance with Ahab be a tacit approval of Ahab’s anti-God policies?

I listened to J. Vernon McGee’s commentary on II Chronicles 19, and it was interesting.  McGee was using II Chronicles 19:2 to criticize U.S. aid to Russia, and he also said that some of the people who professed to love him turned out to be trying to undermine him.  He said that all this rhetoric of loving everybody, when actually there are few people we truly do love, is hypocrisy.  McGee still was walking a fine line, though: he said that Christians should still love non-believers, but their hope should be that the non-believers embrace the Gospel.  I did not entirely like what McGee had to say, but I did like the part about hypocrisy.  It was honest: can any one of us—-even those Christians who like to toot their own horn and lecture others and bloviate about how they love everybody—-truthfully say that we love everybody?  I can’t.  Still, I believe in respecting people’s dignity, and I hope for a society in which people help each other out and do not fall through the cracks.

I just poured a bunch of paint onto the wall, paint with different colors.  Where do I land?  Well, I can see a certain logic in the different guidelines: we have to respect our own walk of a righteous path and remember how relationships can impact that; we should love others, even if they don’t believe as we do; a community should stand for something.  I don’t care for what John MacArthur says in that video, even if he can back it up with proof-texts, for it does not come across to me as particularly loving.  “But it is loving, since it encourages the gay son to repent,” one might say.  Not really.  For one, the gay son may feel that he should not have to repent about who he is.  Second, the result of the sort of policy that MacArthur recommends is often a permanent alienation between the parents and the child.  On a related note, see this post by Rachel Held Evans.

Anyway, those are some ramblings.

Book Write-Up (Loosely-Speaking): Where Courage Calls

Janette Oke and Laurel Oke Logan.  Where Courage Calls.  Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2014.

A little background on why I decided to read this book:

I am part of Bethany House Publisher’s blogger review program.  Each month, I receive two newsletters from them.  On one, I can request a non-fiction book from Bethany House to review on my blog.  On another, I can request a fiction book to review.  People in the program are offered choices in both, and they can only select one fiction and one non-fiction book.  It’s on a first-come-first-serve basis, too.

One of the fiction books stood out to me was Where Trust Lies, by Janette Oke and Laurel Oke Logan.  The description of the book said: “After a year of teaching in the West, Beth Thatcher no longer feels at home among her wealthy Eastern family. Torn between two worlds, will she find the place where her heart belongs?”  That intrigued me: a person coming back home after a time of service and having a new perspective.  I enjoy books in which life changes a person.

I saw that Where Trust Lies was the second book of the Return of the Canadian West series, so I thought that I should read the first book, Where Courage Calls, which is about the time that Beth Thatcher was teaching in Western Canada.  I also noticed that there was an even earlier series than that, Canadian West, and that some of this concerned Beth’s cousin Elizabeth going out to the Canadian West and teaching.  But I decided not to attempt to read all of those books before I got Where Trust Lies.  And, after reading Where Courage Calls, my conclusion is that I did not need to read the entire Canadian West series to understand Where Courage Calls.  Still, as I read some of the Amazon reviews of Where Courage Calls, I did see that reading the Canadian West series can give readers a certain perspective of Where Courage Calls.  One of the reviewers wondered how Beth’s parents could have become so socially-snobbish (not that this is entirely the case, for Beth’s father seemed pretty level-headed).

Well, I requested that my local library put Where Courage Calls on hold for me.  I was expecting for Bethany House to send me Where Trust Lies, since it has sent me every book I have requested so far.  Bethany House then told me that I would not be receiving a review copy of Where Trust Lies because the quota of people requesting it had already been reached.  I then debated with myself: should I cancel my hold of Where Courage Calls?  I decided not to do so, since I would not want to put my local library in the position of receiving the book, then having to send it back to the other library.  Plus, I figured that Where Trust Lies would eventually be in the library system anyway—-and it is, though most of the copies are currently checked out.  So I chose to go ahead and read Where Courage Calls.  I got that book, and also Lynn Austin’s book on Reconstruction, All Things New, which I wrote about here.

To be honest, I did not really enjoy Where Courage Calls.  I was just bored with it.  The writing-style was all right, I guess—-it was grammatically correct and the author was trying to be reflective—-but the book did not grab me.  At the book’s end, when Beth was saying good bye to the people in the Canadian West, I wanted to feel something, but I struggled to do so.  I did not particularly care about what was going on.  Also, Where Courage Calls required a bit of an adjustment after I had read All Things New, which was an awesome book, one that drew me into the plot.

Don’t get me wrong.  The book did have some excellent things.  I could identify with Beth, one who did not like her friend Edward and was looking forward to going away so she would not have to see him anymore.  Christians can find themselves in that sort of situation?  They’re not perfect and in love with everybody?  Apparently so.  What I like about Christian fiction is that it acknowledges that even Christians are not perfect.  I also appreciated the homespun Christian wisdom that Beth received from Molly, who lived in the West, and who gave Beth sound advice on pursuing a calling and honoring her parents.  On pursuing a calling, Molly said that Jesus promised that his burden would be light, and so, if one finds that one’s burden is too heavy, maybe Jesus does not expect her to carry it.  On honoring parents, Molly said that Beth can honor her rather controlling mother in her thoughts, even if she does not in her feelings, and that she can work that out with the Lord.  Molly’s advice can probably be fleshed out, but I appreciated it for this reason: Christianity gives us all these commands that are hard to live up to, and it’s nice when one can have a mentor to help her obey them, without beating up on herself for being imperfect.

The visit of Beth’s sister Julie to the Canadian West was also rather interesting.  Julie was technically polite, but her scorn for the people in the West still managed to come through.  I struggle with that, albeit not in the way that Julie did: I try to be polite, people may detect that I’d rather not interact with them, I get rejected, and I wonder what exactly I did wrong!  Beth apologizes to Molly for Julie’s behavior, and Molly responds that Julie may have some rough edges, but nobody’s perfect.  Beth had to laugh at what Molly said about Julie having some rough edges, for Julie had been trained in the fine art of social etiquette!  Notwithstanding Julie’s flaws, Julie tried to change after Beth challenged her.  Julie became caring to the people in the Canadian West, and she offered Beth insight about where their mother was coming from, so that Beth would not resent her mother so much.  The scenes in which Beth had brought different people together and Beth came to empathize with her mother after a certain experience were also all right, even if they were not effectively executed.

In criticizing Where Courage Calls, I am not saying that I can do any better.  Writing a fiction book can be difficult.  I am just sharing my reaction as a reader.  I was wondering if I should read other books by Janette Oke or if they, too, would bore me, but I read Amazon reviews that said that the Canadian West series and other Janette Oke books were good, even if Where Courage Calls was not-so-good.  I’ll still feel free to read Janette Oke.  I may even read Where Trust Lies sometime in the future.  I may go through it quickly to get it over with, though!

Vaccines (Not That I Am Qualified to Opine)

I was going to write about the current vaccination controversy today, but I am a bit hesitant to do so.  A lot of people trust what they read online, and that can include my little blog.  I don’t want people’s lives to be on my hands!  “Get over yourself, James, you’re not that important.”  Yeah, true.

I did not get my shots when I was a little kid.  It was mainly for health reasons: we thought that there were health risks in getting them.  One of our sources for this was Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, who wrote Confessions of a Medical Heretic and How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor, and who debated medical doctors on programs (see here for wikipedia's bio).  Because of our stance, I had to carry a note to school saying that I would not receive vaccinations, and it appealed to the legal exemption of philosophical reasons.  I did that throughout much of my education: in elementary school, high school, and college.  As a matter of fact, when I was in junior high, I had to stay home from school for a couple weeks because the school was giving the measles vaccine.  By the time that I was entering my second graduate school, I decided to stop fighting the system and got my MMR vaccine.

When I hear about Governor Chris Christie saying that the rights of parents not to have their children vaccinated should be respected, that brings back personal memories.  While it seems, though, that many conservatives are championing the rights of parents while a number of liberals are pushing for vaccination, many conservatives do not consistently favor non-traditional medicine or shy away from substances that some believe could be dangerous—-consider their support for the pharmaceuticals, chemical companies, etc.

Something that I heard a while back was that Roe vs. Wade actually protects the rights of parents not to have their kids vaccinated.  I have not read the entirety of the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision, which primarily concerns abortion rights.  It was interesting, though, to read libertarian Judge Andrew Napolitano argue along the same lines in his latest column.

Nowadays, vaccines are not entirely like what was around when I was a kid, especially after thimerosal was removed from them.  Still, there are even some medical professionals who question the wisdom of pushing vaccines on kids at a young age.

I am not a doctor, though.  I do not even know much about medicine and science!  If you are a parent, you should do your own research.  I’m writing this post to share how this issue intersected with my life, since that is one thing that blogging is about—-sharing.  But I also hope to add a bit of perspective to the debate, since some see parents who don’t have their kids vaccinated as selfish or as the equivalent of flat-earthers.  It’s a bit more complicated than that.

Did the Bible Predict Television?

An argument that I have heard from some Christians is that we can know that the Bible is divinely-inspired because it predicts the coming of television.  I’m not saying that sophisticated Christian apologists like William Lane Craig use this argument—-they would probably shy away from it, shun it completely, or ridicule it.  But I have heard this kind of argument from some Christians.

Their reasoning goes like this: the Book of Revelation predicts that all people or people of various nations will see certain events.  Revelation 1:7 says that every eye shall see the future coming of Christ.  Revelation 11:9 states that people of the kindreds, tribes, and nations will see the dead bodies of the two witnesses for three-and-one-half days.  But how can everyone, or people from various nations, see a single event, especially if that event occurs in one particular location?  The answer that some Christians give is that people will see the event on television.  The Bible, therefore, predicted television about a thousand years ago.  God must be its author!  Or so their reasoning goes.

I was wondering if other ancient literature has a motif of everyone seeing a particular event.  I found one place: IV Maccabees 17:14.  IV Maccabees is about Antiochus IV’s torture of seven devout Jewish brothers, who refused to eat the unclean meat that the king put before them.  IV Maccabees 17:14 states: “The tyrant was the antagonist, and the world and the human race were the spectators” (NRSV).

The question would then be how the world and the human race were spectators to Antiochus’ torture of the devout Jewish brothers.  Why did IV Maccabees say that?  Maybe the world and the human race are spectators in that they have heard about the events, through word-of-mouth of Jews in the Diaspora, or through word-of-mouth of some of the Seleucids.

Are Revelation’s references to every eye seeing Jesus’ return and various nations seeing the two witnesses’ corpses a prediction of television, and thus an indication of the Bible’s divine inspiration?  IV Maccabees says that the world and the human race saw the resistance of the devout Jews against Antiochus, and that was about a time long before television.  Revelation is most likely partaking of an ancient motif rather than predicting television.

Book Write-Up: All Things New, by Lynn Austin

Lynn Austin.  All Things New.  Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2012.

I read Lynn Austin’s trilogy about the American Civil War, so I decided also to read her book about the Reconstruction Period.  This book is All Things New.  There are a number of characters in this book, but here are the main ones, or, at least, the ones whom I found most compelling:

Eugenia Weatherly: Eugenia is the matriarch of her Southern plantation, and she has difficulty adjusting to the changes that the Civil War has brought.  She wants to return things to the way that they were before the Civil War, with the aristocracy, the wealth, the lavish parties, and the servants.  She is rather haughty, class-conscious, racist, and nagging, so I enjoyed the scenes in which her servant, Lizzie, got a bit mouthy with her, something Lizzie would never have done in the days of slavery.  But Eugenia can be a caring person.  She is there for her struggling friend, and she cares for her daughters, Josephine and Mary.  Eugenia wants her daughters to find lifelong security in marriages with aristocratic husbands, even though that is not really what her daughter Josephine wants to do.  Eugenia is also concerned that some of Josephine’s radical views about race and equality may alienate Josephine from the Southern community, whose support the family needs in these rough times.  While Eugenia appears to be prim and proper, however, she has not always followed the conventional path in her own life.  Moreover, her late husband’s kindness to the slaves instilled in her a certain moral code about how to treat slaves, even if she did not regard the slaves as her equals.  Consequently, she is appalled by what her son Daniel is doing to the freed slaves and the Freedmen’s Bureau, and there is a possibility that she can change her attitudes in a progressive direction.

Josephine Weatherly: Josephine is one of Eugenia’s daughters.  Unlike her sister Mary, Josephine is a bit of a misfit.  She is plain and socially-awkward.  She often withdraws from conversation, yet she manages to find her voice.  To the dismay of her mother, Josephine gets to know one of the slaves, Lizzie, and Josephine does work that her mother considers to be too menial for her social position.  Josephine has doubts about God on account of the ills that her family is suffering after the Civil War.

Daniel Weatherly: Daniel is the younger son of Eugenia, and he is returning from war.  His older brother died in war, and the older brother was the one who was expected to take over the plantation.  Daniel is now expected to be the man of the house, but he does not have much training for it.  Like his mother, Daniel misses the old days.  He also resents the continued Northern interference in the South.  With his friends, Daniel attacks freed slaves who hide in the woods (those woods are his property), organizes nightly patrols to keep African-Americans off the streets at nights, favors a vagrancy law to jail African-Americans who cannot demonstrate that they have gainful employment, and burns down the school for African-American children and the Freedman’s Bureau.  Daniel believes that he is keeping his and other white families safe from freed slaves, whom he fears might seek revenge.  And he does not trust the Freedman’s Bureau to look out for his family’s best interests.

Alexander Chandler: Alexander is from the North and runs the local Freedman’s Bureau.  The goal of the Freedman’s Bureau is to help the South rebuild after the war.  It provides food, and also guidance on how the ex-slaves can find gainful employment through sharecropping—-the slaves would farm on plantations and be able to keep some of the crop for themselves, while the rest of the crop goes to the plantation owners.  Alexander is a Christian, specifically a Quaker, and he has religious discussions with Josephine, encouraging her to look at the bright side and to be honest with God about her anger.  He feels guilty that he betrayed his Quaker upbringing by fighting in the Civil War, and he thinks that the war was a disaster for both sides, even the North, which won.  Still, he believes that the Civil War was somehow part of God’s plan to free the slaves and to liberate women.  Alexander is cheerful, caring, and pleasant to everyone, even though he is widely rejected, especially by the white aristocracy.

Dr. Hunter: Dr. Hunter is a Southern doctor and friend of the Weatherlys.  He mainly treats white people, even though he has occasionally treated African-Americans who have needed help.  He has feelings for Eugenia, and Eugenia develops feelings for him in the course of the book, even though she had long regarded him as her social inferior.  Dr. Hunter’s mother was part of the aristocracy but left that life to marry a doctor for love.  Dr. Hunter has progressive ideas.  He believes that the South should embrace change rather than fighting it, and he thinks that the South is suffering because it enslaved an entire group of people and profited from their free labor.  He is not outspoken about these beliefs in public, however, for he is rather meek, even when he disagrees with people, and he usually says what he thinks in private conversations.

Priscilla Blake: Priscilla is a friend of Eugenia and is the matriarch of her own plantation, which was suffering before she agreed to sign a Freedman Bureau contract.  After she did that, her plantation was thriving.  Priscilla enjoys the company of Josephine, who helps her around the house and takes care of Priscilla’s bitter son, Harrison.

Harrison Blake: Harrison has returned from war crippled, and he is bitter because he feels helpless.  He also feels guilty about something that he did to a slave years earlier.  Josephine cannot stand him, but she challenges him to think of other people (like his mother), and also to become a positive influence on Daniel and his friends, who respect Harrison because he commanded them in the Civil War.

Lizzie: Lizzie is a freed slave.  For a while, she takes on most of the load because the other slaves have run off.  Lizzie is annoyed by Eugenia’s continual nagging, especially that bell that Eugenia rings to summon Lizzie!  She wants a life in which her family can support itself and be free.  Lizzie has a beautiful daughter, Rozelle, who is half-white, and she is afraid when she sees Daniel talking with Rozelle.  Lizzie is hardworking, defiant, and fiercely protective of her husband Otis, her sons, and Rozelle.

Otis: Otis is one of Eugenia’s slaves.  He is strong and easygoing, and he is a comforting presence to Lizzie.  Otis loves Rozelle as a daughter, even though she is not his daughter biologically.  Otis is a Christian.

I was hoping for more information about how the doctor arrived at his progressive ideas,  since one wonders what would lead a person to question the beliefs of the environment around him.  Maybe his mother’s defiance of convention was what encouraged him to do so.  Moreover, it seems to me that the more devout Christians in the book are progressive and egalitarian (in terms of race and gender), and I doubt that things always lined up that way in those times, since there were plenty of religious people who were socially regressive in their attitudes.  Overall, however, this is an excellent book.

Book Write-Up: Aloof, by Tony Kriz

Tony Kriz.  Aloof: Figuring Out Life with a God Who Hides.  Nashville: W Publishing Group (An Imprint of Thomas Nelson), 2014.  See here to purchase the book.

Tony Kriz wanted for God to pay attention to him, but he often found God to be aloof.  Kriz suspects that this is the case for a number of people.  His book Aloof is about the highs and lows of his faith journey and his speculations about why God so often seems to be aloof.  For Kriz, sometimes it is God’s choice, and sometimes it is on account of our mindsets, which can hinder our perception of God.  Still, Kriz affirms that God is always there and we already have God’s attention, whether we feel it or not.

I had a wide range of emotions and responses in reading this book.  I had happiness as I laughed at some of Kriz’s stories.  I was jealous of Kriz when he talked about his experience of Christian community in college, and the times when God seemed to be near to him (though he also explores other ways to account for those experiences).  I identified with Kriz’s stories about his struggles, his attempts to feed his starving soul, and his times of spiritual doubt.  I was moved by Kriz’s story about Rembrandt’s two renditions of the prodigal son’s return, the latter one reflecting Rembrandt in his older years when he was worn down and broken by life.  For a while, as I was reading Kriz’s book, I had a solipsistic acceptance of how I was, even if that did not meet the approval of others, and that was encouraged by Kriz’s honesty about himself, warts and all.  Then Kruz talked about how we can be challenged by people who are different from us, and that shook me out of my solipsism (fortunately!).

I can give examples of the stories and insights in Aloof that were meaningful to me, but there were so many!  My overall response to the book is that I wish that I could give it more than five stars.

I received a complimentary review copy of this book through the BookLook Bloggers (http://booklookbloggers.com/) program.  The program does not require for my review to be positive, and my review reflects my honest reaction to the book.

Someone to Tell Us What to Do and Think

The theme of this morning’s church service was Jesus as teacher.  The Call to Worship in our bulletin contained the following exchange:

Leader: What have you come expecting?

People: We want someone to tell us what to do and think.

My jaw almost dropped!  “I don’t want anyone to tell me what to do and think,” I thought to myself.  That’s an aspect of Christian evangelicalism that has long repulsed me: people dogmatically and rigidly telling me what to do and think.

But part of me would like to be told what to do and think.  I’d like guidance.  My deeds and thoughts don’t always work out that well for me.

What I’d prefer to receive are suggestions, not commands.  That’s what I like—-suggestions!  I was thinking this to myself during the service.  Then I heard my pastor preach about the Gospel reading, which said that Jesus spoke with AUTHORITY!  Eek!

An aspect of Jesus speaking with authority is that he taught us the right way to live.  It’s wrong to hate, for example, even though so many of us fall short of that command.  I believe that the principles that Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount are true principles.  Applying them, however, may be complex.  Plus, I do not reduce Christianity to the Sermon on the Mount, for there is also what Paul said about how the law cannot save us, for we are carnal human beings in need of grace—-not just forgiveness, but also divine empowering to do what’s right.  We need more than commands, whether that be the Torah or Jesus’ teachings.  I’d say that we need Jesus himself.

Try to make sense of that, if you will!  I’m off to do some homework.