The Idolatry of Children (Roll the Eyes)

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/troublerofisrael/2018/08/2136/

Biblical Theology XXXIII: Haggai

The Book of Haggai is set in the time of the return from the exile that occurred in the latter half of the sixth century B.C., somewhere around 520 B.C. The people were busy rebuilding and making their houses look nice, but were arguing that the time to rebuild the temple had not yet come. They would do it when they were finished establishing themselves. God rebukes them for not placing the rebuilding of the temple over their concerns of being established in every day life.

Theology: The presence of God is through the temple,  and it is having the temple at the center of the community that then connects God to all aspects of the community’s life. Hence, it brings the blessings of His presence into all of their lives. If God is withholding the blessings of His presence from His people, it is because His presence and work is not being supported by them as central.  Worship is at the center of life, and life is not meant to function without God at the center. Hence, to neglect His ministry as central is to neglect all aspects of one’s life, even when all other aspects of life are maintained.

The placing of priorities over God’s ministry is a placing of priorities over God Himself. This is a lack of fear of God, a lack of recognizing who He is as the center and authority of all life.

In this regard, God's ministry at the center of life a means by which God will bring about the new world.

Ethics: When God’s people think of His ministry among them as central to their lives, they will seek His presence through it first above all other priorities. When they work to build up their own lives over the work of God and His presence in the world, they cease to be agents of creation and order, and become agents of chaos instead. Hence, they are given chaos rather than creation and order, and nothing they do prospers them. Hence, the idea that one must get his life in order before he really pursues God and His work is the opposite of what God teaches here in Haggai. One must prioritize God and His ministry first in his life, and then God will order his life. In making him clean, the Lord commands them to remember what happens in terms of chaos/disorder in their lives when He and His ministry are not central.

To repent is to fear God and recognize His authority and who He is as Creator and Sustainer, the center of all life. When one does so, God and His ministry will be prioritized over everything else.

When His people prioritize His work above their own lives, even if the work seems small, God promises that their small part in His ministry will one day yield the whole of creation and the splendor of a finished temple/creation. In other words, the small work today is toward a cosmic work accomplished in the future kingdom.

God argues that because the people are unclean, they cannot make the temple of God clean. The ministry of God is holy, but it is defiled by unholy hands. Nevertheless, God Himself, being in the work, will make it clean and holy and bless the people through their participation in it.

Biblical Legal Codes Are Not the Result of Successive Redactions

"Many biblical scholars tend to see the Covenant Code as the result of a process of
literary revision and editing. This process, they say, corresponds to the development of law in ancient Israel from a primitive, family-based structure to a more sophisticated legal system in the monarchical period. This approach, however, fails to account for the literary-legal tradition in which the Covenant Code finds its heritage—namely, the cuneiform law-code tradition. When seen within that context, the ostensible discrepancies within the code do not require the kinds of source- and form-critical explanations previously offered. Rather, the Covenant Code presents itself as a coherent document, which scholars should expect to contain clear and understandable laws" (Synopsis of Chapter 4 in Law from the Tigris to the Tiber: The Writings of Raymond Westbrook, vol 1., 97).

Westbrook's observations of the legal material are parallel to my, and others', literary observations of narrative material in the Bible. The more I understand the literary context, the less I am convinced of any successive redactions in books like Genesis (the very text from which source arguments began). An original compilation of material into a unified literary work seems much more plausible given the evidence, rather than the incoherent redacted mess that is often presented as biblical literature to the academic world.

Biblical Theology XXXII: Zephaniah

The book of Zephaniah records a prophecy given to the prophet during the reign of Josiah between 641–609 B.C.  It is structured on a similar pattern with other prophetic books: God will judge the world by first judging His visible covenant community (1:1–2:3); the judgment of the rest of the world will follow (2:4–3:8); and then God will restore His visible covenant community, which will be made up of a remnant from His people and the nations that remain after His judgment (3:9–20).

Theology: God’s wrath is upon His own creation because it does not bring Him glory by worshiping Him as He made it to do. His wrath, therefore, is upon His own covenant community that also does not worship Him by giving Him glory, but rather worships other gods, created things, and governments. 

His judgment begins with His visible covenant community, as is commonly stated in the prophets.  It then spans out from there into all nations. His judgment is  described as a reversal of creation, even reversing the order in which things are made in Genesis 1, and describing their total destruction with the language of the flood in Genesis, creating an inclusion around the judgment of creation text in 1:2–3. He starts with His own covenant community who did not fulfill their role as priests who point the world toward the worship of YHWH, but rather were conformed to the world and were corrupted together with them.

The day of the Lord plays a prominent role, as in other books, as a day in which God will pour out His wrath upon the wicked world and all creation as a great purging event that will end the corruption in the world once and for all by removing all chaos and chaotic agents from it.

Instead of preserving His covenant community that has many wicked people in it, and preserving the rest of the world that is also filled with wicked people, God will remove them all in judgment and purify the creation by only letting the righteous remnant, both from Judah and the nations, dwell in it.

Ethics: There is an antinomian spirit present among the people. The nation is viewed as filled with darkness rather than being a light because of this spirit. In 1:12, God states: “At that time I will search through Jerusalem with lamps. I will punish those who are apathetic about their sin,

those who think to themselves, ‘The Lord neither rewards nor punishes.”

Great judgment will come upon them. They must realize their vulnerable position in God’s judgment (e.g., 1:18–2:1, His judgment is a fire and they are like straw) and must repent during the brief time they have left to do so. The righteous are also challenged to keep worshiping Him in obedience so that they are not destroyed by the judgment (2:3).

The nations who mocked and oppressed the righteous of His people will perish in His judgment. Only the repentant righteous within them will survive it and give praise to God (3:8–9), along with the repentant remnant of Judah (3:11–13). Hence, the creation to come will consist of those who are righteous and repent of their sins, and worship YHWH. 

This vision of God’s completion of His creation both through the forgiveness of sins of the repentant and through the violent act of judging the unrepentant that create chaos in finality leads to His praise and fills His people with joy (3:14–20).  God removes chaos from creation by removing it from within His people and removing chaotic agents, i.e., the unrepentant wicked, from that creation. 

Hence, He removes evil from the world once and for all by these two means, i.e., His justice and His love. The skepticism of the antinomians who do what they please because God has not judged the whole world immediately is, therefore, misplaced. As God judged Judah almost immediately after Josiah’s reign (i.e., a microcosmic down payment of the larger judgment to come), He will judge the world in due time, and the message of the prophet is that the reader will want to assess whether he is in the group that will live on in the creation or the group that is removed from it.

The Fool Trudges On

The mortal seed, so invigorated and new,

blossoms death within an hour or two

The brightest candle its wick burns out.

A whisper ends the loudest shout.

The boldest life wears out its part.

Time intervenes and stabs its heart.

The scoffer of preparation will, on the morrow,

weep and mourn in pain and sorrow

For what is not eternal is chaff in the fire,

where hopeless ends prove bravado a liar.

Caught now finally in Grim’s cold stare,

careless fairies begin to care

About a soul for which they gave little thought,

and a life lived that was all for naught.

Cold is the strangle of death’s strong grip.

Heavy the anchor of damnation’s ship.

Lost is the voice never again to be found,

Gone in the darkness without a sound.

As greedy as the grave, as insatiable as hell,

time eternal exile can never dispel.

The Wise, in warning, call

out to one and out to all,

“Sowing night reaps futility at dawn!”

But the fool trudges on.

Biblical Theology XXXI: Habakkuk

The Book of Habakkuk is likely written in the late 7^th Century.  Many scholars think he is a temple prophet due to the use of instruments in their liturgical prophecies. The book is a dialogue between the prophet and God, written for those who are frustrated with God for not ridding the world of evil sooner. The message of Habakkuk is called a burden, as in other prophets (e.g., Zech 9:1; 12:1; Mal 1:1). The idea is that the message God has for His people is a burden to carry for the prophet.

Theology: The Book of Habakkuk is a book of questioning God’s righteousness. It begins by asking why God is not answering the prophet’s prayers to bring judgment upon the wicked in his community (1:1–4). God then answers by saying that He is bringing the Babylonians to bring down the people of Judah (1:5–11). Habakkuk then responds by asking how this is just since the Babylonians are worse than those in Judah (1:12–2:1). How is God just for allowing a more godless nation to destroy one that is less godless? 

God answers by stating that He will destroy the Babylonians too. They are merely an instrument of His justice, but they too will feel His wrath, as will the whole world (2:2–20). 

The book, therefore, argues that God merely tolerates evil for His purposes. The lack of immediate judgment is not due to God’s indifference toward what is being done within both His covenant community and the world. It is simply God abiding His time and using even the wicked to accomplish His goals.  When He does judge, it will end in the destruction of the current created order and a reckoning with all who live there. This will be a day of great terror, as the prophet himself freezes in terror at the thought of it; but He will judge the wicked in order to preserve His people and His Messiah (3:13).

Ethics:  There are quite a few things to take from the book. The first is that Habakkuk conveys his frustration with God tolerating evil at the beginning of the book, but by the end of the book, he acknowledges God’s justice and asks for mercy (3:2). Perhaps, if Christians actually knew what judgment looked like, they would ask God to give others more time before judgment rather than to judge them immediately. 

Second to this, God is just. His delay in judgment has nothing to do with injustice, but tolerance of the wicked until they have served the purpose He set for them to serve. This should cause the reader to also tolerate the evil among them in the sense that they know it will be judged and that God is letting it reside for a time to complete a greater goal with it.  Hence, although the one who questions  with a wicked mind will be overcome by the evil in the world and the question concerning God’s indifference, the righteous man will live by faith (2:4). In the context of the book, that means that they trust in God’s character and His promises to judge the wicked and to reward the righteous. Rather than going by their experience of seeing evil all around in the world, and getting their theology of God from that, they trust in the revelation they have been given by God (2:2–3).

The righteous, because they live by faith, after they question God and listen to His answers, will praise and glorify Him (Chapter 3). If this is not the response of questioning, it is not because God has not answered it, but because the person asking does not have an upright mind in asking them (2:4). Something to which many apostates attest by the rebellious lifestyles they choose to live out once they unshackle themselves from God due to their justification that God either does not exist or care because of the evil in the world.

Finally, questioning God is perfectly fine when one listens to the biblical answers God gives via revelation. A questioning that ignores the answers God gives is rebellious, but the type seen here in Habakkuk, one that ends in the praise and glorification of God, is actually a type of righteous questioning that does not bottle up in bitter sentiments toward God, but is honest with Him in seeking to worship Him through the questions.