If a captain twice abandons his ship and crew when the seas get rough, would you trust him at the helm of a much larger ship that is already listing and taking on water?
Archive for the ‘Marriage’ Category
A Leopard and His Spots
Thursday, January 19th, 2012Shmot 5772 – Pharaoh’s Bad Marriage
Saturday, January 14th, 2012Exodus 1:10 Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land.
And we all know how that worked out.
There are four ways to preserve a relationship that has begun to deteriorate:
- Disable the other person. Through emotional abuse, you can make a person doubt themselves and their ability to survive on their own. Through physical abuse, you can confine or even cripple a person so that they are physically incapable of leaving. Perhaps the most common method today of disabling a person to keep them in a relationship is by keeping them financially dependent. Your credit card issuer and your neighbor with two upside down mortgages can tell you how effective this tactic can be.
- Instill fear of the unknown. Convince the other person that there is a big bad wolf hiding behind every tree outside the door, that every person they encounter will take advantage of them, and they will be very reluctant to strike out alone. This method has worked very well for politicians throughout history.
- Bond. Be friends. Spend time together in situations that develop emotional attachment. Study, explore, play, fight, and work together. Have an adventure.
- Improve yourself. Make a relationship with you look more attractive than a relationship with someone else by becoming a better you. You have probably heard it said that you can’t change someone else. You can only change you. I haven’t read it yet, but Athol Kay’s Married Man Sex Life Primer appears to be based on this idea. It’s on my reading list.
Each of these methods works to a greater or lesser extent and there is a time and place in which each would be appropriate. A healthy relationship, however, will be almost exclusively characterized by methods three and four. Pharaoh tried to keep the Hebrews in Egypt by physically and financially hobbling them. Although they wanted more than ever to leave Egypt, they had no ships, no weapons, no chariots, and no gold with which to obtain such things. They had no allies. They came to believe that they were too weak to face the Canaanites and that their God was too weak or too busy to rescue them. Pharaoh’s strategy might have worked if he had not dismissed Joseph’s God along with Joseph himself. God is the champion of the oppressed and does not allow his people to be abused, enslaved, and terrorized forever.
Good Article for Women
Friday, February 18th, 2011Tracy McMillan lets women off a little too easy on a few points, but overall, she wrote a good article for the Huffington Post. Here’s a summary:
- You’re a bitch
- You’re shallow
- You’re a slut
- You’re a liar
- You’re selfish
- You’re not good enough
The last paragraph is especially good:
The bottom line is that marriage is just a long-term opportunity to practice loving someone even when they don’t deserve it. Because most of the time, your messy, farting, macaroni-and-cheese eating man will not be doing what you want him to. But as you give him love anyway — because you have made up your mind to transform yourself into a person who is practicing being kind, deep, virtuous, truthful, giving, and most of all, accepting of your own dear self — you will find that you will experience the very thing you wanted all along:
Love.
On Joyce Meyer
Wednesday, August 25th, 2010A while back I slammed Kathryn Kuhlman for some of her poor decisions. For a counter example, see Joyce Meyer, tpreacher, mother, and wife of Dave. I have no problem recommending her as a preacher worth hearing.
Patriarchy Is Good for Women
Tuesday, July 20th, 2010Matriarchy might look good in theory, but it’s about as useful as having all feet and no hands. (See 1 Corinthians 12.)
Says the Elusive Wapiti:
But what feminists didn’t realize at the time they took patriarchy out back and shot it is that patriarchy, among other things, lassoed men into socially constructive behavior and dutiful service of society as a whole. And women in particular. Freed from patriarchy, men were free to throw off the yoke of duty and other-focused behavior and could pursue their own self interests full-tilt. Which quite a few dudes did, and found that a world without patriarchy–the world that women all yelled and screamed and marched and burnt bras for–suited them just fine. And they thought that this world was the one that women wanted.
Balak 5770 – A Chink in Your Armor
Saturday, June 26th, 2010Numbers 22:2-25:9
Micah 5:6-6:8
I Corinthians 1:20-31
Proverbs 26:2 As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse causeless shall not come.
There seems a discrepency between the idea that we are created in God’s image to the extent that our words have creative force, that there is power in our prayers, and the opposing idea that a curse has no power unless it is deserved and that a prophet can speak neither blessing nor curse unless God allows it. There is truth on both sides if properly understood.
We were created in God’s image, but we are not exact copies, the earthly tabernacle was a corruptible copy of the one in Heaven, the feast days are shadows of the reality that is the Messiah, and mankind is an imperfect, much scaled down replica of God. Unlike him, we cannot create something out of nothing by merely speaking. We need something on which to build. We are unable to get our own dirt, so we have to make do with what we can find.
When Balaam tried to curse Israel, he failed because, as a prophet, he could only prophecy what God told him. His patron, Balak, understood the principle of Proverbs 26:2, that a curse undeserved has no effect, so he took Balaam to first one place and then another, thinking that a different perspective might give Balaam the hook he needed to make the curse stick. But he misunderstood the nature of a real prophet: prophesy comes from God and no other. If a prophet speaks truth, then his words are the words of God, and God can no more curse the righteous than could Balaam. Hence Balaam’s statement that “[YHWH] has not seen iniquity in Jacob, neither has He seen perverseness in Israel.” It was not that Israel had no sin at all, but that God had chosen to forgive them. Like a husband who chooses to overlook his wife’s flaws, from God’s point of view, Israel had no sin to which a curse could attach.
Finding no fault in Israel, Balaam showed Balak how he might create one that God could not overlook by seducing them into idolatry. This is the “doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stumbling-block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit fornication.” (Revelation 2:14) Eating “things sacrificed to idols” does not refer simply to eating meat from sacrificial animals, but to actively participating in the sacrifice. Those who teach God’s people that it is acceptable to engage in pagan rituals and abandon God’s law so long as their “hearts are in the right place” are today’s Balaam. They cause God’s people to commit sins that he cannot overlook, opening them to whatever curse the enemy might choose to throw.
Acharei Mot-Kedoshim 5770 – Relating to God
Tuesday, April 20th, 2010These two Torah portions are about how we are and are not to relate to God. Since marriage is an image of our relationship to God, they contain many examples of forbidden human relationships.
- Leviticus 16 – Approaching God as a nation.
- Levitucus 17 – Approaching God as individuals. Things that will prevent closeness.
- Leviticus 18 – Mistakes other peoples made in their relationships. Judgment as a nation and as individuals.
- Men with women
- The offspring of relationships between men and women
- Men with men
- Men and women with animals
- Leviticus 19 – Being set apart from other nations by a healthy relationship with God and each other.
- Leviticus 20 – Refusing to be different creates unhealthy relationships with God and each other. Don’t blow it.
Manual for Priests
Monday, March 22nd, 2010Ariel ben-Lyman HaNaviy makes a very good point in his teaching on Tzav this week. (Part A is great. Part B contains too much rabbinic mythology.) The book of Leviticus (aka Vayikra) is a manual for priests. Christian men claim to be the priests of their homes. LDS men claim to be priests of another sort. The Torah says that Israel is to be a kingdom of priests to the world, and John wrote that Yeshua has made all those who believe on him to be kings and priests. Here in Leviticus we have a manual for priests. Even though it was specifically addressed to the Levitical order, it is full of principles and patterns that apply to all priests of whatever order.
P.S. Here is an interesting thought. I have heard it taught that David was able to eat the bread of the Tabernacle without repercussion because he was also a priest, but of a different order. Being a foreshadowing of the Moshiach ben David, he too was a priest of the order of Melchizedek, which consists of a royal priesthood, men who are both kings and priests simultaneously. If Yeshua has made all those who believe on him to be both kings and priests, then this line of reasoning implies that all believers have the same (or parallel) responsibilities and privileges as the Cohanim. That does not mean that they are above the Law any more than David was. On the contrary, both priests and kings are held to a higher standard. I am not saying that this is a correct interpretation, only that it is a possibility worth considering.
Tetzaveh 5770 – Set Apart and Carried Away
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010Some Torah portions are much harder to study and teach than others. I love everything about Genesis; it’s stories lend themselves very well to theological concepts. Exodus and Leviticus with their detailed descriptions of the priestly duties, the tabernacle, and the various articles of worship is not so easy to parse. On one level, it is very simple: make this object in this manner and do this with it. There’s nothing complicated about that. However, God threw a very large wrench into this simplistic understanding when he said to Ezekiel,
Ezekiel 43:10-11 You, son of man, give the children of Israel an account of this house, so that they may be shamed because of their evil-doing: and let them see the vision of it and its image. (11) And they will be shamed by what they have done; so give them the knowledge of the form of the house and its structure, and the ways out of it and into it, and all its laws and its rules, writing it down for them: so that they may keep all its laws and do them.
Huh? Israel is supposed to look at God’s house, note the dimensions and materials…and be ashamed? How could the ins and outs of the Tabernacle or the Temple make the people ashamed of anything? It was built by people who lived long before Ezekiel and was used almost exclusively by the priests. What does any of it have to do with Joe the Shepherd or Tina the Chef?
If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, then you’ll know that I don’t believe anything in the Torah has only one meaning. Very little, if anything, in this universe is single dimensional. It turns out that there are so many things to talk about in these seemingly dry, technical passages, that I have difficulty focusing on any one thing! In Tetzaveh we can learn about the character of God, the role of the Messiah, our relationship with both of those, salvation from sin and judgment, the role of a father in his family, and much more. Let me give you just one example that shows how much God loves his people.
Exodus 28:36-38 And you shall make a plate of pure gold, and carve on it, like the engravings of a signet, HOLINESS TO YHWH. (37) And you shall put a ribbon on it, and it shall be on the miter; to the front of the miter it shall be. (38) And it shall be on Aaron’s forehead, so that Aaron may bear the iniquity of the holy things which will sanctify the sons of Israel in all their holy gifts. And it shall always be on his forehead, so that they may be accepted before YHWH.
The High Priest wears a gold crown of sorts. Engraved across the front, resting on his forehead, are the words, “Set Apart to YHWH.” This torah portion tells us that this is because he takes onto himself the “iniquities of the holy things.” What a contradiction! How can holy things be sinful? These things are holy because they are set apart from other things, not because they are perfect. The Hebrew word for holy is kadosh, and it literally means “set apart.” The holy offerings of Israel are like you and me. In fact, they are you and me. We aren’t perfect, and we never will be. There is no way in heaven or on earth that you and I can present ourselves to God perfectly unblemished. We need a High Priest who will take our meager, pathetic offerings and take responsibility for their faults onto himself. Through the blood of Yeshua, our Messiah, shed by the thorns dug into his forehead, our inadequacies are lifted off our own heads and placed on his. Without God’s grace to accept that shift, we would be without hope. We would be condemned as forever separated from our Creator, set apart forever, but away from him and not to him. In his mercy, he provided a way for us to approach him, to offer him our broken and scarred hearts as if they were a perfect and holy living sacrifice, completely acceptable in the highest court of Heaven.
What greater love could there be?