Psalm 28

For my weekly quiet time, I will blog about Psalm 28. I have three items:

1. Psalm 28:3 states that the Psalmist's enemies speak peace to their neighbors, while evil is in their hearts. Moreover, according to Peter Craigie, vv 3-4 appear to carry a "curse-like character": the Psalmist does not want to be swept away with the wicked, but he hopes that God will render to the wicked what their deeds deserve. Craigie concludes that the wicked in Psalm 28 are covenant-breakers: a wicked person made a covenant with the Psalmist (speaking peace to him) and then broke it. For Craigie, the curses of vv 3-4 indicate that the issue in Psalm 28 is a broken covenant, for curses were attached to covenants for the parties that broke them.

But there's a problem, according to Craigie: In Psalm 28, the guilty party is not suffering any curses. Rather, the Psalmist appears to be the one suffering. He's the one who feels as if he's going down into the pit! And the Psalmist's enemy is asserting that the Psalmist is suffering because he---the Psalmist---was the one who broke the covenant! And so Craigie believes that the Psalmist was not only betrayed within a covenant, but also that he is being slandered, as if he broke the agreement. And so the Psalmist hopes that God will restore him and punish his enemy, not only because his enemy deserves punishment, but also so that the Psalmist's reputation can be vindicated.

Craigie may be on to something, or his thesis here may be a stretch. After all, do the wicked in Psalm 28 necessarily have to be covenant-breakers, or are there are other settings in which wicked people could deceive others by appearing to be friendly, when their real intent is to do harm? But Craigie's scenario does strike a cord with me because there are times when I am afraid that people will spread tales about me, and will smugly comment on whatever misfortune I happen to be enduring. On a certain level, I can identify with the powerlessness that the Psalmist feels. And, in his eyes, his only recourse is God. Fortunately, it doesn't have to be that way for everyone, who may have family and friends who can help (as I do). But the Psalmist is in a situation in which he feels helpless, and he cries out to God for help.

Another possible setting is that Psalm 28 is about the king, who faces a conspiracy against him. In this case, there would certainly be people who are obsequious to the king's face, while they seek to undermine him behind his back!

2. Does the Psalmist have faith in God in Psalm 28? In a sense, the Psalmist feels that God is deaf and mute in his relationship with him. Peter Craigie states that the Psalmist is affirming that he feels dead because he has not seen any indication of God's concern for him, for the Psalmist considered death to be a place of silence (Psalm 94:17).

But the Psalmist still believes in God. He does not want God to destroy him with the wicked, which does seem to indicate that he believes that God punishes the wicked. But his hope is that God will punish the wicked and deliver him from his own predicament. The Psalmist does not want God to lose sight of him in God's wrath. In vv 6-9, the Psalmist becomes more hopeful. This may be because a cult functionary reassured him that God heard his prayer, or a judge punished the wicked, or the Psalmist is looking forward to the future with the eyes of faith or prophetic insight, or the Psalmist wrote vv 6-9 after his deliverance. In any case, God showed himself to be faithful to the Psalmist, either through resolving his problems, or by giving him the strength to go on. And the Psalmist then moved his perspective from himself onto the community of Israel, as he prayed that God might shepherd his people---by feeding them and lifting them up continually.

3. The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages, which is a critical edition of Nizzahon Vetus, a medieval Jewish polemic against Christianity, presented an interesting insight on this Psalm. Against Christians who applied Psalm 28 to Jesus, the Nizzahon Vetus contended that there is a difference between the Psalmist here and Jesus. The Psalmist prayed that God might punish his enemies, whereas Jesus on the cross asked God to forgive those who were putting him to death, for they did not know what they were doing (Luke 23:34). The Nizzahon Vetus does not comment on whether or not Jesus' attitude is superior to that of the Psalmist, but, in my opinion, it does well to point out that there are differences between the Psalms that Christians have applied to Jesus, and what parts of the New Testament say about Jesus. Interestingly, Augustine related Psalm 28 to Jesus, and the result was a Jesus who was pretty vengeful---although, in many cases, Augustine prefers to interpret Psalms to mean that God is humbling the wicked and bringing them to repentance, as opposed to destroying them.

I'll stop here.

More Reflections on Sabbatarianism

I talked in my last post about what I thought about Christians who were not Sabbatarians, back when I was a Sabbatarian (an observer of Saturday as the Sabbath). What I said yesterday is that many of us Sabbatarians saw them as clueless, even as we acknowledged that there was a time when many of us were clueless ourselves. And so I wondered: What does it take to make a person question a trend, and then to buck it? Many of us just assume the validity of the customs and beliefs that are around us, without even thinking of questioning them.

Yesterday, I expressed doubt that many of the Sunday-keeping Christians I knew as a boy even read the Bible enough to ask why they keep Sunday instead of Saturday. But, as I think more about this topic, I doubt that this is completely accurate. I wouldn't say that my insight is totally erroneous, but it doesn't cover everybody who observes Sunday---and I'm speaking here of your average person in the pew, who may have reflected on the issue. There are a lot of people who know from their own reading of the Bible---and from church---that there is such a thing as the seventh-day Sabbath. But they don't believe that Christians are required to observe it. They may say that God commanded the Sabbath for the Jews only, or that the Sabbath foreshadowed the rest that believers would have in Christ, or that Paul told the Galatians that they didn't have to observe the Jewish law, or that Christians are not under the Old Covenant, or that they worship on Sunday because Christ rose on the first day of the week, or that Paul in I Corinthians 16 calls for a collection on the first day of the week. And so they can offer a reason that they honor Sunday but not the seventh-day Sabbath. At least the question is on their radar, even if it doesn't make the radar of many other people!

I think that where Sabbatarians have an advantage is that there is no explicit New Testament passage that says, "You don't have to keep the Sabbath", or "You should keep Sunday". That's why there are Sabbatarians who offer a hundred-or-so dollars to anyone who can show them from Scripture that they should keep Sunday. There is no such explicit passage. And the Sabbatarians who make those sorts of offers recognize that there are people who haven't researched the issue for themselves, but rather have trusted their preachers, or have gone along with what others are doing, and so they're trying to encourage people to read their Bibles. But, even if someone takes up the offer and shows the Sabbatarian a passage that could imply that Sunday was important to the early church (such as Acts 20:7), the Sabbatarian would not cough up the dough, for the passage doesn't explicitly say "Keep Sunday".

When I was growing up, I thought that the Christianity of the rest of the world was inadequate, for it was doing things that were not explicitly commanded in the Bible---such as honoring Sunday. But I came to the point where I concluded that even my own version of Christianity---the one I gained from the Armstrongs---was inadequate as well. There were passages in the New Testament---such as Acts 15 and Galatians---which appeared to say that Gentiles did not have to observe certain things that the Jews did under the law of Moses. Granted, there were also passages in which Paul affirmed the law and its authority, even to Gentiles (I Corinthians 9:9). But I had a hard time swallowing the spin that the Armstrongs and their followers placed on Acts 15 and Galatians. Aren't things supposed to become plain when one enters the "truth"? But, instead, Sunday-keeping Christianity did not make sense to me, and neither did Sabbatarian Christianity. Both tried to explain away elements of the Bible that did not coincide with their own positions.

Many of you reading this may ask, "Who cares?" Personally, I do think that there are vastly more important issues than what day a person keeps, if any. But I hope that I communicated something of value to you in this post and the last one---even if you feel that the issue is unimportant. I think that I've touched on important topics, such as why we believe what we do, what prompts people to go against the grain, how different communities explain away things that are contrary to their own worldview, and, for me at least, how it's hard to find anywhere a worldview that is without problems!

Bucking the Trend (or Not)

An ex-Seventh-Day Adventist friend of mine posted a question that got a lot of replies: When you were a Seventh-Day Adventist, what was your opinion of non-Seventh-Day Adventists?

I myself was never a Seventh-Day Adventist, though I attended Adventist churches for about a decade. But I grew up as a Sabbatarian, one who honored Saturday as the seventh-day Sabbath. At times, my family would attend offshoots from Herbert W. Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God, or offshoots from offshoots. At other times, we would go to a local branch of the Church of God (Seventh-Day), from which the Worldwide Church of God was an offshoot! And there were some occasions when we would attend an offshoot from the Seventh-Day Adventist church.

My friend's question got me thinking about how I used to perceive people who did not honor the Seventh-Day Sabbath.

I think that the question that went through my mind when I was a child was this: How can people not keep the Sabbath? It's in the Bible, after all! The Bible said that God rested on the seventh day, which is Saturday. The fourth commandment concerns resting on the seventh day, the Sabbath, or Saturday. So why did people around us work on Saturday and go to church on Sunday? Certainly they can read, can they not? How did they miss the plain teaching of the Bible?

The answer we usually got was that they were deceived by Satan. And, although on this blog I have expressed disgust with that sort of answer---seeing it as a condescending dismissal of other points of view---I must admit that the people who made this claim were not exactly saying that they themselves were deceit-proof. They sincerely thought that God had opened their eyes to truths that the rest of the world did not have, and that they couldn't legitimately pat themselves on the back and congratulate themselves for arriving at those truths on their own. Why? Because there was a time when they themselves were just like the society around them. For some time, they went to church on Sunday, kept Christmas and Easter, worked at their jobs on Saturdays, and ate pork bacon for breakfast, without it even dawning on them that they should question what they were doing. Why did they reach a point where they thought that what they were doing was wrong, and that the Bible was presenting them with an alternative way of doing things? And in an obvious sense, too! After all, there's nothing in the Bible that explicitly commands people to go to church on Sunday, or to keep Christmas, or Easter. But there is in the Bible a command to honor the seventh day as the Sabbath. I think that people who joined the Armstrong movement wondered how they missed that for so long, and also how the rest of the world missed it. The world being deceived was one explanation that they settled on. God opening their own eyes to the truth corresponded to that.

And they also made another observation: There are many religious people who don't read the Bible for themselves, but rather they settle on what their preacher tells them, or what society tells them.

I can't really say that I hold this Armstrongite sort of worldview anymore. But there's something about it that intrigues me: How people could arrive at a point where they questioned what they and the society around them were believing and doing, and embark on a path that appeared to be so bizarre to others. And they weren't exactly pulling these beliefs out of the clear blue sky, for they could point to passages in the Bible in which God commanded the observance of the Sabbath (whether they correctly applied those passages, or not). It's surprising to me that they bucked the trend, but, in a sense, it's also surprising that so few others did. Why did so few people ask why they kept Sunday, but not Saturday? Did the rest of society even think of reading the Bible to see if their beliefs and practices matched up with it? Not really. They just went with the flow. For those who joined the Armstrong movement, the fact that they themselves bucked the trend was nothing short of miraculous!

When I Don't Look Open to Change

Yesterday, I wrote about evangelical Christians who are not open to change, and who repeat the same points over and over, without giving any indication that they have learned anything from others. Although I upheld myself as a noble exception to that rule, I think that there are cases in which people can say that I'm the exact same way. And so I have another pet peeve, which is the reverse of the pet peeve that I expressed yesterday!

I was one time talking about evangelical small groups with an evangelical Christian, and he was telling me why he was in a small group, and why he felt that it was important for Christians to be in small groups. And, I must admit: I did something similar to what I was criticizing yesterday. Shortly after that conversation, I made my usual complaints about evangelical small groups, without giving much of an indication that I had learned from what that person had said before!

I also think back to an experience I had in a small group in college---which didn't exactly concern me, but rather somebody else. One of the members of the group was having problems with the evangelical Christian stance on homosexuality (not that he himself was a homosexual, but he knew people who were, and so the evangelical stance did not seem to him to be the end-all-be-all of the issue). He had a discussion with the leader of the small group which lasted for about four hours. The next day, when this person said that he still had problems with the evangelical position on homosexuality, the leader replied, "I thought we already settled that."

I guess that my pet peeve is this: Some conservative evangelicals act like my concerns are supposed to evaporate as a result of their arguments! I'm not that good of a debater, and so, in many cases, when I'm discussing an issue with somebody, the other person will get the last word. But that does not mean that my concerns or my feelings or my opinions have changed. Just because someone told me some good reasons to be in small groups, and talked about how he had a bad experience in one and yet had a better experience afterward in another one, that did not make me more comfortable about being in a small group. Not only am I uncomfortable socially in those sorts of settings, but I also resent the group-think in them.

(But, to be fair to this particular evangelical, he was probably getting tired of hearing me complain about evangelical Christianity on a continual basis. It's one thing for me to have problems with evangelicals. It's another thing entirely for me to express such concerns to evangelicals on a continual basis, as if I'm expecting them to be concerned about me and my wounds, when they're just trying to live their own lives.)

On the issue of homosexuality, an evangelical leader can drill into my head over and over that we should believe in the Bible and that God knows better than we do, and I can agree with him or say that I see his point in order to avoid conflict, but that doesn't mean that my concerns have miraculously vanished! I still think it's unfair for God to allow people to have same-sex attractions, even as he commands them to be celibate for the rest of their natural lives!

Still, going back to my post yesterday, I'd like to think that I'm at least listening to others. Even if I decide not to join a small group, for example, that person's points are still in my mind, and I consider them valid reasons to be in a small group. Even if I still have issues with the evangelical stance on homosexuality, evangelicals still raise an important question: Can one be a true Christian while disagreeing with elements of the Bible? I can listen to people's arguments, and, often, these arguments won't make me change my mind. But they're still in my head, somewhere (for better or for worse).

Being Open to Change

James McGrath had a post recently, It's Hard to Be "Biblical", in which he states the following:

"The Bible says a lot of different things, and I personally think that the whole notion of being 'Biblical' is problematic. What sense does it make to say that one’s beliefs or practice conform to a collection of writings by different authors who do not all say exactly the same thing?

"But if there is a thread that runs through the Bible from beginning to end, it is an emphasis on (or better, warning about) the fact that we as people can delude ourselves into thinking we are Biblical, or moral, or right, or whatever, when in fact we are not.

"Yet it is precisely those who most avidly proclaim their 'Biblical' character, and most emphasize that this is the way everyone should be, who tend to be the least open to correction, to challenge, to being shown that they are not on the right path."

I agree with a lot of what James McGrath is saying here. I used to hang out on an evangelical Christian dating site, and one of my pet peeves was not so much the beliefs that the people there held, but rather that some of them were so unwilling to learn from others. I could have a discussion with them, in which I'd make my points, and they'd make their points, and I'd store their points in my memory bank, whether I agreed with them or not. But later, when there was a discussion about the same topic, they would make the exact same points that they made in the discussion with me---sometimes even going so far as to copy-and-paste their points! It was like I hadn't even talked with them!

Don't get me wrong: I'm not expecting people to be floored by my wisdom. I'm not that vain! But I myself tend to modify my positions in some manner when I discuss them with other people. Even if I still hold the same position, what the other person has said still influences how I shape, define, or formulate that position. In short, I'm not the exact same person after the discussion that I was before the discussion---for the other person has given me things to think about, or to take into consideration. Granted, there are times when I will use some of the same arguments that I used before, but I still acknowledge that other people have their own way to get around those arguments, and I take that into consideration.

And so, in light of how I try to be (probably more so now than in the past), it just irks me when people repeat the exact same arguments, over and over, without giving any indication that they have learned from previous discussions. It's like I'm bending, and they're not, and I just get to the point where I don't want to discuss issues with them anymore---since I'm tired of them making the same arguments over and over, and I resent that I'm at least trying to understand where they are coming from, whereas they are not extending to me the same courtesy.

Okay, so there's my pet peeve, whether it's right or wrong! Some will probably say that I sure do attach conditions onto my love, and maybe they're right! But, at this time, I want to acknowledge a time when a right-wing evangelical Christian I know at least was open to changing his mind---or to modifying how he did things in light of information that he received. This fellow was at an evangelical Bible study that was going through the Book of Acts, and Acts 23:5 stood out to him. The passage is a quotation of Exodus 22:28, and it says that you are not to speak evil of a ruler of your people. The apostle Paul was quoting this passage when he was apologizing to the high priest for calling him a whited sepulchre, who did not obey the law that he professed to uphold. After reading this passage, my friend was convicted about the times that he had spoken evil of President Obama. There were commenters on his thread who tried to absorb that verse into their own anti-Obama worldview---as they said that Obama technically is not the ruler of the United States, for the rulers of the United States are the American people. (I don't think that these commenters were making a "birther" sort of argument!) But my friend stood firm with his new insight, and he responded that, with that sort of reasoning, one could bypass any rule in Scripture, period! My friend is still a conservative. But, in this case at least, he was open to learning and changing.

Of course, my friend would say that he's following the "Bible", as if the Bible is monolithic, even though, in my opinion (and also James McGrath's), the Bible can be used to support all sorts of positions. One can say that Jesus speaks evil of the Pharisees in Matthew 23, or that the Psalmist and the prophets often speak out against oppressive power structures. I am glad that my friend is willing to go with the charitable parts of the Bible. And yet, even then, my personal solution would not be to discard the parts that appear to be not-so-charitable. This is an issue for which the Bible can be used to start a discussion, not end it (as Rachel Held Evans likes to say), as people ask when it is appropriate to speak out, and when it is better to stay silent, and how one can oppose evil, while still being loving.

My Trip to New York City

I went to New York City recently. I lived there for two years, when I was attending Jewish Theological Seminary. But my visit this time was an eye-opening experience! For one, I was shocked by the vast number of people! I took the Amtrak from Albany to New York City. In Albany, the train station is small, and there aren't that many people traveling. And so, once I got out of the train in New York City, I was surprised to be swimming in a sea of people! I felt as if I was in other people's way, or that they were in mine. But, over the course of my day, I noticed something: Although I was hauling around a heavy bag and was sometimes swimming against the pedestrian traffic, I never seemed to be in people's way. My bag did not run over anybody's foot. When I went against traffic, people didn't appear to mind. They must be used to that sort of thing!

Second, after I took my test and returned to the train station, I was expecting the station to be like an airport: Sure, I may arrive early, but I'd know where to go to wait for my train---or at what gate my train would arrive. But it wasn't like that at all. When I asked one of the workers at what gate my train would come, he replied, "Maybe five or six." I was thinking, "You don't know?" But, over time, I noticed that people were standing around looking at a placard, which said at what gate a train would take off, usually fifteen minutes before the train actually did take off! And so I learned the rules of the game. That's why people were continually monitoring the placard!

Third, while I was waiting in the lobby of the station, I noticed a pigeon walking around, and then flying. To me, that pigeon certainly stood out! It would be like seeing a pigeon at an airport! But the New Yorkers didn't appear to care, if they even noticed! This was a surprise to me, probably because I've grown accustomed to pointing out the cute things that the animals (in my case, cats) at my home do, and my Mom and her husband then look at them and laugh. But, at the train station, nobody cared that a pigeon was flying around! It must be a regular occurrence.

There were times when I had a romantic feeling about New York City---especially while I was walking in the morning. I enjoyed seeing all of the small shops, and the hot-dog stands, and scenery, as I sniffed the city air. But my romantic feeling somewhat vanished as I was trying to find my destination by looking at the numbers of the streets, and the numbers vanished into street names! So I took a cab. But I started to feel good again after I finished my test, and I was sitting in the cool train station, sipping on strawberry-flavored water.

I'll be returning to New York City shortly to take another test. Next time, I'll know more what to expect!

Ascension Sunday

Today at church, we had a baptism, celebrated the Lord's supper, and recognized Ascension Sunday.

I remember celebrating Ascension Thursday at the Latin mass that I attended in Cincinnati. The priest who preached about love was speaking at that service, and his emphasis was on what happened to humanity when Christ became a man and took his human nature into heaven. The priest connected this with humanity's destiny to become God---and, by this, he probably meant something different from what Armstrongites mean, though both would agree that humanity was exalted in some sense by the incarnation, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. Or, more specifically, Christians were exalted.

The pastor at my Presbyterian church this morning focused more on what happened to God as a result of Jesus' incarnation, resurrection, and ascension. The pastor was saying that God no longer knows about what it's like to be human merely in an abstract sense, for there is a piece of the Godhead that actually knew what it was like to be a human being.

The pastor said some other things this morning that stood out to me, for he made me wonder if he had read Bishop Spong. The pastor said that the ascension of Jesus is about God, not so much about a man floating up into heaven. This stood out to me because I remember Bishop Spong mocking the idea that Jesus floated up into heaven, as if that was unscientific. But the ascension of Jesus never struck me as a significant problem for Christianity. It's not as if, in this case, the fossils say one thing, and the Bible says another. Rather, Christianity is just saying that a man ascended into heaven, and, even though our current conception of "heaven" may be larger than and different from that of the ancients, a God-man can still ascend past the stratosphere into outer space---up to the throne of God. Why not? Jesus could survive outer space!

The pastor also said that it was not merely the idea of Jesus who went to heaven. I wonder if he has come across some liberal theologians, who deny that Jesus Christ literally rose from the dead. I think of Wili Marxen, who said that the resurrection is a metaphor for the cause of Jesus going on. But my pastor doesn't buy that!