Archive for April, 2007

God Hates His People

Monday, April 30th, 2007

Or at least that’s what the church teaches. They quote Paul’s sermon on Mars Hill in which he said, “And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commands all men every where to repent.” (Acts 17:30) Then they quote Yeshua’s statements along the lines of “You have heard it said thus, but I tell you differently.” The end product is a teaching that God’s law no longer applies and at least partly consisted of God winking at sin. The Law was incomplete and Jesus fixed it.

They don’t know what they’re talking about. That’s not hyperbole. I have to wonder if those theologians have ever actually read their proof texts before. Neither Yeshua nor Paul was addressing the Law of God. Yeshua was correcting the traditions of men, which misrepresented the Law, and Paul was speaking of the total ignorance of the Law, which, for the sake of your faith in him, God overlooks until you are able to learn it.

The idea that God deliberately designed his Law to overlook certain sins means that God hates his own people whom he claims to love.

You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall always rebuke your neighbor, and not allow sin on him. (Leviticus 19:17)

If God compromised his Law in deference to the prevailing culture (you know, that Egyptian culture of idolatry and incestuous marriage), then, by his own standards, he hated Israel even while he proclaimed his love. If the church is right, that God established sin in his Law, then God is a liar and a hater of mankind.

What man is there of you, if his son asks a loaf, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks a fish, will he give him a snake? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father in Heaven give good things to those who ask Him? (Matthew 7:9-11)

Which, of course, means that Yeshua was also a liar and evil. His execution was deserved, and we have no hope of salvation. Ever. The entire history of God’s interaction with man has been a long, cruel joke. The manna was poisoned, and the lamb was diseased.

But I don’t believe it. I believe that David knew of what he spoke when he said that “The Law of Yahweh is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of Yahweh is sure, making the simple wise. The Precepts of Yahweh are right, rejoicing the heart; the Commandments of Yahweh are pure, giving light to the eyes.” (Psalm 19:7-8) I believe that when Yeshua said, “If you love me, keep my commandments,” he meant all of his commandments, and not only the ones that he had to tell us twice.

I believe that God loves his people, that his Word is true, that obedience to his Word brings life, and that he never changes. What was a sin three thousand years ago remains a sin today. What was not a sin three thousand years ago is still not a sin today.

Because God is love.

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K’doshim 5767 – Keep It Simple

Wednesday, April 25th, 2007

When Peter asked the Pharisees, “Why do you tempt God by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples, a yoke which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear,” he was not talking about God’s Torah as written by Moses. He was talking about the traditions, the rules of the so-called Oral Torah, which the rabbis had built up around the written Torah. Moses told the Israelites, “The secret things belong to YHWH our God, but the revealed things belong to us and to our sons forever, so that we may do all the words of this Law….For this commandment which I command you today is not hidden from you, neither is it far off. It is not in Heaven, that you should say, Who shall go up for us to Heaven, and bring it to us, so that we may hear it and do it? Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, Who shall go over the sea for us to the region beyond the sea, and bring it to us, so that we may hear it and do it? But the Word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, so that you may do it. Behold! I have set before you today life and good, and death and evil, in that I command you today to love YHWH your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, so that you may live and multiply. And YHWH your God shall bless you in the land where you go to possess it.” To keep His commandments, including remedies for failures, is not beyond our reach. Peter did not call Moses a liar.

Most of the Torah is very simple. It can be summed up in two commands or in ten. This week’s Torah portion begins with another summary of the law: Be holy for I am holy. “Holy” means separate or different. Moses followed that summary with another summary:

  • Be respectful of your parents.
  • Do not employ idols.
  • Express your gratitude. Don’t fake it. Don’t make a show of it.
  • Leave a little extra for the poor and the traveler.
  • Don’t steal, cheat, or lie.
  • Don’t take unfair advantage of others.
  • Don’t punish the rich for being rich.
  • Don’t gossip.
  • Don’t retaliate, and don’t hold a grudge.
  • Love your neighbor as yourself.

These rules aren’t entirely unique to the Torah. Except for the part about idols, they are pretty standard religious fare. (As far as I know, only the religious traditions that grew out of Judaism prohibit the making and use of idols.) Other than the rules themselves, there are two vitally important things to understand about being k’doshim to God.

  1. God doesn’t care all that much about ritual or prayer or self denial. All those things have their place, but what’s really important is love. Not feelings, but real, active love.
  2. It isn’t the content of our rules that separates us from the world; it is their source and our obedience to them.

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Ryan.Mad.Son and Beth Preston

Monday, April 23rd, 2007

The Laughing Goat is becoming a habit with me. The pomegranate green tea is alright, but the jasmine is better. I also liked last week’s art work better. The stuff that was on the walls this week? I wouldn’t have put it on my walls. Just FYI.

I went to hear Ryan Madson, but I was pleasantly surprised by Beth Preston. She has a unique style of play and a great voice to match it. There were a couple of problems I noticed right off: The volume was too high, sometimes making her words difficult to understand. She also spent too much time switching guitars, especially during the first set. I thought she seemed to be deliberately hiding her obvious natural beauty behind cultivated plainness and goofy, ill-fitting clothes.

By the time her second set was underway, I had to ask myself, What else would she wear? How else should she look? With her dazzling smile and infectious cheeriness, it all just seemed to fit. Glam would have detracted. We would have seen less of Beth, and that would have been a shame.

Ryan was pretty good too, but maybe a bit less polished. Maybe that was just nervousness owing to a table full of family members at front center. Like Beth, Ryan has a unique style, but his uniqueness is more vocal. While Beth’s voice was too loud for the small venue, Ryan’s was sometimes too quiet. I didn’t care much for the fast and slow changes of “Drive with Your Eyes Closed” but other songs were excellent. “Lullaby” featured some pretty fancy fingerwork.

Both artists were worth the trip, and I came away with a great experience. And two CD’s to boot. Ryan gave away autographed (OK…hand-labeled) copies of his latest, unreleased and untitled CD. Beth had CDs for sale, and gave hugs for free. Neat.

Ryan is local, so you can count on him playing somewhere nearby sometime soon. Beth is visiting from California, but she’ll be playing several gigs in the area this week. Ryan and Beth, along with Acoustic Rosh (also good), will be playing at Cafe Soleil on Saturday. You can check out Ryan’s schedule and music at http://www.myspace.com/RyanMadson, and Beth’s at http://www.bethpreston.com/.

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The Symbolism of Rings

Friday, April 20th, 2007

Throughout history rings have been used to symbolize affinity, devotion, and authority, as well as stores of value. Hebrews gave earrings, nose rings, and bracelets as signs of betrothal. Egyptians and Canaanites both wore earrings and nose rings to symbolize devotion to their deities. Lifelong slaves wore earrings as symbols of their master’s authority. Tribes wore rings of various kinds to advertise their belonging. Rulers wore signet rings, crowns, and torques as statements of wealth and authority.

In the Bible, a nezem (earring or nose ring) can be functional as a store of value, ornamental, or symbolic. Some examples of symbolic uses of rings:

  • Genesis 24:22 Eliezer gave Rebekah an earring and two bracelets as a sign of betrothal to Isaac.
  • Exodus 32:2-3 Aaron told the Israelite men to surrender the earrings of their wives and children for use in the golden calf. He did not ask for bracelets, necklaces, or other jewelry which would have contained a much greater amount of gold.
  • Judges 8:24-26 Gideon asked for the earrings of the slain Ishmaelites and used them to make an idol.
  • Ezekiel 16:11-12 God gave bracelets, a nose ring, earrings, and a crown to his bride.
  • Hosea 2:13 God used earrings in a double entendre to refer to the ornamentation of a harlot and the symbols of idolatry.
  • Job 42:11 According to the Septuagint, each of Job’s friends gave him an “unstamped” gold earring. Most translations only say “earring.” I suspect the ancient translators of the Septuagint meant to emphasize that these were not religious tokens. The need for such an emphasis would be significant in itself.
  • Proverbs 25:12 A wise authority figure is a carved earring in an obedient ear.

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Scarecrow Got a Brain

Friday, April 20th, 2007

but can he learn to use it?

Biologist Philip Benfrey has discovered yet another checks and balances system built into living things. In short, there are two proteins, dubbed Scarecrow and Short-root and found in the root tips of plants, that balance each other to enable cells to filter nutrients out of ground water. Short-root promotes growth inside the root, but activates the genes that produce Scarecrow in the outermost cells. Scarecrow checks the further diffusion of Short-root. If this system fails, the plant becomes either waterlogged or malnourished.

A Science Daily article quotes Benfey as saying, “Knowing more about how plants developed this key ability to keep water out and let nutrients in is another step toward engineering plants that may be used to replace fossil fuels.”

Umm, no. First off, plants don’t develop abilities. They don’t go to school. They don’t perform experiments. They don’t invent. Like the complex interactions of proteins and genes, they simply are. Knowing how plants develop abilities will teach you no more than knowing how plants commune with Klatu. On the other hand, knowing how plants function can certainly help us develop new abilities as well as refute commonly held–and repeatedly disproven–notions of spontaneous generation.

That knowledge is also, as Benfey put it, “another step toward a better understanding of how humans work.” Since the same Engineer created both mustard plants and humans, it makes perfect sense that principles at work in one will also be at work in the other.

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Metsora 5767 – Salvation, Sanctification, and Ordination

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

Leviticus 14:1-32. 

The person who has been healed of leprosy is to present himself to the priest at the Temple. The Temple provides two birds, a piece of cedar, a piece of scarlet cloth, a branch of hyssop, and an earthen jar. Someone is to put into the jar a small amount of water from a natural source of “living” water. Next, the priest has someone else kill one of the birds so that its blood drips into the jar and mingles with the water. The priest takes the second bird and dips it, along with the cedar, cloth, and hyssop, into the bloody water. He sprinkles the healed leper seven times, pronounces him clean, then lets the bird go free.

Our High Priest was dressed in scarlet, nailed to a wooden cross, offered vinegar on hyssop, and buried in an earthen vessel. He was willingly killed by the hand of another so that we could be washed in his blood and set free from our sin. Like the healed leper, there is nothing we can do to save ourselves and join the kingdom of the Messiah except place ourselves at his mercy. The birds are Yeshua who was killed for us, rose from the tomb, and ascended to heaven. We are the leper sprinkled seven times as a sign of completion, as if to say, “It is finished.”

After being sprinkled with the bloody water, the cleansed leper shaves his entire body and washes his clothes and body. He then moves into the camp, but doesn’t enter his own tent for seven days. At the end of the seventh day, he shaves his entire body and washes again, then he is finally clean.

A new believer is declared clean by our High Priest, but must still work at cleaning his life before he can assume any kind of authority or official role in the kingdom. Only after he has proven himself should he be called a bishop, elder, or deacon.

On the eighth day, the cleansed leper takes to the Temple two male lambs and one female yearling lamb, three omers of flour mixed with oil, and one log of oil. The priest kills one lamb as a guilt offering and one as a sin offering. After the sin offering, the priest anoints the right ear, thumb, and big toe of the leper with lamb’s blood. He then waves the oil and anoints the leper with oil on top of the blood. The remainder of the oil is poured over his head. Finally, the priest kills the third lamb and burns it along with the flour.

The cleansed leper offers three lambs and measures of oil and grain on the eighth day. Eight is the number of new beginnings, and the leper has already begun his new life. The two birds sacrificed on the first day are provided by the Temple, and these sacrifices are offered only after he has been cleansed. No offering or sacrifice we can make has anything to do with our salvation. Anything we do is done only in response. Once our guilt and sin have been removed, we are commanded to hear Torah (the ear), do Torah (the thumb), and walk in Torah (the toe). The anointing oil is placed on top of the anointing blood. Learn the Word, be filled with the Spirt, and then teach the Word. I’m not sure of the meaning of the burnt offering at this point. Perhaps it means that by the time we are able to teach, we should be mature in our faith with nothing left of our flesh but ashes.

Four of the five types of sacrifices are made in the cleansing of a leper: guilt, sin, grain, and burnt. The final sacrifice of the thanks offering is not commanded, but it is expected, and will be blessed. Following the rules can be a good thing, but it is God alone who heals and saves. Be sure to give glory where glory is due.

And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back and glorified God with a loud voice. And he fell down on his face at His feet, thanking Him. And he was a Samaritan.

And answering, Jesus said, Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine? Were none found who returned to give glory to God except this foreigner? And He said to him, Rise and go; your faith has cured you.

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The Jacket

Monday, April 16th, 2007

Adrien Brody plays Jack Starks who suffers a head wound in Iraq in 1991 and loses the capacity to remember. (That sounds familiar.) He then becomes the unwilling subject of psychiatric experiments that trigger bizarre flashbacks of things past and future. (Hmm. That sounds familiar too.) He bounces back and forth between the present and the future, setting up patricidal-like paradoxes in the lives of everyone around him. (Deja vous. Weird.) Surprisingly, somewhere between Memento, Jacob’s Ladder, and The Butterfly Effect, this movie still manages to be pretty good.

It doesn’t hurt that the amazingly hot, no-longer-skin-and-bones Keira Knightley plays second.

2005. Also stars Kris Kristofferson and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

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the paper stars at The Laughing Goat

Monday, April 16th, 2007

The Laughing Goat really is a great place to hang out. The staff is always friendly and helpful, and the fare isn’t too bad either. The jasmine green tea goes great with the vegan poppy cakes. Fern and Reaca weren’t there tonight, but the beautiful barista and her artistic sidekick were a more-than-adequate substitute. I ordered a cafe florentine when I first arrived, but the whipped cream really makes a mess of my ’stache, so–no whipped cream. Instead, the aforementioned artisan added a flourish of swirls and streaks in white foam and chocolate.

I went to see the paper stars who were every bit as good–and better–in person as the demos on their MySpace page. The whole band wasn’t there, but the L.G. stage would have been ridiculously cramped if they were. Tres Altman opened the night solo singing and playing acoustic guitar, then was joined by Scott Parker Mast on drums and Daniel Pettys on electric guitar. After a few more songs, Julia Sanders (*sigh*) added her voice to Tres’.

Tres has a fantastic soulful voice that was a perfect match for his sad songs of loves lost and opportunities missed. At first, I thought they could use a little more variety in both subject and style, but they branched out as the night progressed. Tres said the night felt low key, so they played slower versions of songs that they would normally play louder and faster. The L.G. is a very small, intimate place, so I was grateful. Loud has it’s place, but it’s not ten feet away.

Daniel, Scott, and Julia (*sigh*) kept to the background most of the night, supporting Tres’ acoustic instead of drowning it out. There were a few songs on which they came to the fore. Once or twice Daniel’s playing really reminded me of some of the 77’s work on Sticks and Stones, which, in my opinion, is still their best stuff ever. Much of the time, I had a hard time hearing Julia’s voice, but I detected a distinctly country timbre.

They all did a great job, and I will definitely try to see them play again.

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Crazy People Hear God

Sunday, April 8th, 2007

Crazy Person Instruction Set One: Draw a picture of Jerusalem and then attack it with miniature siege engines. Next, take an iron skillet and set it up like a wall between you and the city. Lay on your left side for however many days you want Israel to suffer for her crimes. Then turn over and lay on your right side for however many days you want Judah to suffer for her crimes. Lie on one side or the other for a total of 390 days. Next, make bread out of a mix of beans and grains, and bake it over human dung. Each day you lie on your side, eat ten ounces of this bread and drink one liter of water and nothing else.

Crazy Person Instruction Set Two: Take your son, whose conception and birth was a miracle, to the top of a hill. Cut his throat and burn him to a crisp.

Crazy Person Instruction Set Three: Preach naked and barefoot for three years to really give the Egyptians and Ethiopians a fright.

Crazy Person Instruction Set Four: When I kill your wife, you will not mourn for her. You will dress like any other day and behave as if nothing is wrong. Later, take two sticks, bind them together, and write on them.

Conclusion: You have to be a bit crazy to hear God when he speaks to you.

 

And he does speak to you.

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Stress

Wednesday, April 4th, 2007

I’m way too stressed out right now to write anything. The whole world is so full of fecal minded swindlers!

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