August Music

 A composer wanted to write a particular song. The problem is that the entire orchestra had damaged their instruments to the point that the notes that those instruments now played were all off. When an A should have been played, a G was played instead. When an E was to be played, a B was played. On top of this, the individuals of the orchestra wanted to play these off notes all day long. 

So the composer decided to write his song by including the off notes of the ruined instruments, not by forcing the instruments to play the notes he wanted them to play but rather to restrict when the notes were played in the song. In this way, those with the off instruments would play a G when an A was called for but the composer had written the A into the music, so that even though a G was required, he knew an A would be played and he composed his music in such a way so that the A would make the music he had now written. 

He then decided to give a portion of the orchestra new instruments so that they would play the right notes at the right time. Sometimes the orchestra would return to their broken instruments and play the wrong notes but he had also anticipated when this would happen and incorporated those notes into his music as well.

In this way, all played the notes that they wanted and the notes that the composer wanted, even though the composer did not force anyone to play a particular note at all. One could see that his act to replace the broken instruments for some of the orchestra had a direct impact on what notes were played, but the incorporation of the off notes could not be said to be directly impacted by any actions of the composer. Yet, the music he wrote has been written.

The music was played. It was tragic but ultimately beautiful. 

Crocodile Tears

Crocodiles can't chew up their victims. They have to tear off chunks from their prey and this is hard to do unless the prey is somehow stationary. The croc can do a death roll and take off limbs here and there because the body provides a counterweight but most often what is needed is other crocs to grab onto the victim in order to position the prey in a way so that they can be fully devoured.

We have a contagion in this culture where we have become apologists for people who do evil rather than a defenders of the innocent where empathy is for the victim or victims. I've seen this in and outside the church. Those who do the evil are constantly excused under the guise of forgiveness and grace, and then the victims are often blamed or dismissed as bitter obstacles of Christlikeness, as though Jesus would justify the perpetrator and condemn the victim.

Let us be clear, Christ condemns the perpetrator and vindicates the victim. The perpetrator is condemned and must repent, not just say sorry, but cease from his evil and make amends in whatever way he can. If he has committed a violent crime, amends means execution, even if he is forgiven. If it's a pastor who has committed an equivalent spiritual crime, amends means being removed from his position, even if he is forgiven. 

There aren't a lot of people with whom Christ interacts in the Gospels who we see as repenting from a particular sin where restitution is needed but a huge example comes to us in the form of Zachaeus. It is interesting to note here that Christ does not pronounce salvation has come to Zachaeus and his household when he believes and asks Christ to dinner. He does not pronounce it as He walks through the door. He announces it only after Zachaeus promises to return what he has stolen from others sevenfold and to sell his securities and give the money to the poor. That is when Christ says that salvation has come to his household. Until then, Zachaeus was damned even though he had Christ in his house because his repentance needed to include amends.

But why amends? Because Christ is on the side of the victim, not the perpetrator. Until the perpetrator of an evil makes amends, Christ is against him. Grace and forgiveness do not remove the need to make amends, they come as a response to it. 

But this isn't merely a literary speculation. Christ actually says it outright. In Matthew 5:21-26, Christ states that unless amends is made with a brother against whom an individual has committed an evil, specifically here, the evil of attacking him even verbally in anger, no forgiveness will be offered by God and his worship is in vain.

Why? Because God is on the side of the victim, not the perpetrator.

So why are we defense attorneys for the perpetrators rather than prosecutors for victims like God and His Christ are? Because we're criminals trying to justify ourselves by turning grace into a license to excuse evil. We see ourselves as sinners so we don't want to condemn others who are sinners (as long as we aren't the victims of course--then we're all about the victims). That's where you get all the pronouncements, "I am Lindsay Clancy." 

Others do so out of partiality because the perpetrators are liked by them better than the victims. Hence, the perpetrators, their family or friends, must have had some good reason to do what they did, and even if not, they should just be forgiven without a repentance that makes amends. 

But both of these are actually the sin of partiality because both emphathize with the perpetrator due to some personal connection rather than seeking righteous judgment, which is the judgment of God upon the perpetrator for the vindication and restoration of the victim.

But only God can justify, so self-justification is the path to Hell for both those who do evil against the innocent and those who justify the wicked and condemn the innocent or those who represent them for daring to pursue amends from those who have harmed them. 

In other words, it is not merely those who do the evil who are damned without true repentance but also those who would proclaim them innocent or forgiven when no true repentance with amends has been made. These are they who "loose" the Law and the Prophets for others whether they do these things themselves or not (Matt 5:17-20). 

It is true. They are Lindsay Clancy. They are the murderers who justify other murderers, and they shall share her condemnation. They also forge a path for other murderers since now murder has been excused. As it is here, so also in the church. Those who excuse the unrepentant guilty because of partiality have joined them in their damnable sins and shall share in their judgment.

After all, it takes a group of crocodiles to rip apart the prey caught by the jaws of only one of them. They have all taken a piece out of the victims. They shall all share the same end.

A Serious Note on Post-Partum Depression

 Having joked obviously in my last post, I want to say that this is a real concern. Postpartum is an issue for a variety of reasons. I'm sure the fluctuation of hormones is a nightmare to deal with and it messes with the mind like crazy. What does not help, however, is the plethora of false views concerning children, life, unbiblical religious beliefs, etc. that now work in the woman with postpartum to cause her to think even for a moment that killing her children is desirable.

Andrea Yates is a good example of this. She murdered five of her children by drowning them in a bathtub and blamed it on postpartum. What you don't often hear is that she was also taught the false doctrine of the age of accountability and believed that if she killed her children they were all guaranteed to go to heaven, so yes, murder is bad, but if her children grow up and don't accept Christ in her baptist view then they would be eternally murdered. Such nonsense works on the fragile mind.

But it causes us to wonder if all of the feminist rhetoric of the past 100 years that has painted staying at home and having children as something that causes women to miss out on a better life, and to be degraded from humans to incubators, plays both a role in the depression itself as well as working with the depression to turn the woman against her very children. 

Intoxication tends to collapse inhibitions in areas toward which the person has temptations. If there are no temptations that would tempt someone to remove their children from their lives, one would have to wonder why any sort of emotional state would lead one to do it.

Now, of course, there are mental illness of delusion where one hallucinates, so this would not cover all mental illness.

At the end of the day, however, I would hope any one of our women would seek out help from us as elders if they are struggling as we would not seek to judge them over it but to help in whatever we can. That is what love looks like. No one should be embarrassed at asking for help. These struggles are real and these cultural deceptions are sinister.

But it should be noted that the Bible does not care why someone murders another person. It side-steps the mental illness issue because it views murderers as needing to be removed because of their threat to humanity. Hence, even an ox that gores must be removed, not because it is necessarily some homicidal force, but because anything that kills another human, and it is not an accident, must be removed from the created order. 

Time to Re-evaluate All Murderers

 Guys, here's the thing. Everyone is talking about the Lindsay Clancy case but since it's being argued that mental health should cause us to identify any crime committed as a no-fault crime, I'd like to advocate for a couple innocent boys who were traumatized in their youth and ended up committing acts of violence due to their mental health conditions.

One boy was actually bullied and set on fire by the neighborhood kids and suffered horrific burns as a result, and only through some supernatural miracle did he survive it. He ended up forging some knives as weapons and putting them on his hands just to defend himself. Can we really blame him if anything bad happened from that point on?  The other boy drowned in a lake when at camp one summer with no one to help due to the negligence of the camp counselors. Luckily, he was able to survive only to be taunted by the lives of camp counselors who kept coming back to the site and reminding him of his trauma. He was so disturbed by what happened that he couldn't even show his face and had to wear a hockey mask. 

Did they kill people? Yes. Was it really their fault? How can we blame the mentally ill for anything they do? Is it not really the fault of bullies? Is it not really the fault of camp counselors? Is it not really the fault of the water and the fire that traumatized these poor, innocent boys who were really the victims of carelessness and malice?

Maybe it's time to blame the negligent people at Camp Crystal Lake or the bullies who lived on Elm Street. It's time to stop blaming monsters and to start blaming the monsters of circumstance, hormonal imbalances, inanimate substances, and especially husbands since we know that no husband is a good husband unless he's a feminist simp. Of course, these two didn't have husbands, so we'll blame the next best thing: bad experiences, which apparently are unique to murderers.

I mean, haven't we all had those bad days where we feel like hacking up a few annoying college kids? 

Maybe instead of being so judgmental we should be starting GoFundMe accounts for the poor Vorhees and Kruger families, You Judgmental Judgers Who Are Judgie. 

Well, that's just my two cents. May we all grab our machetes and forge a new path through the younger generation that is more tolerant and understanding of those who lash out, not because they're bad people, but because bad things have happened to them (in Lindsay's case having the blessing of a child) and because hurt people hurt people. Let us all remember the immortal words of Jack the Ripper to his many victims, who said, and I quote, "It is not I who kill you, but my mental illness."

The Sin of Ham: A Case of Exegesis versus Eisegesis

 Deja vu often occurs because a vague sense of familiarity causes our minds to think that we've been in the exact place and moment before, even if we never have. The mind will often do the same thing with familiar words when we interpret the Bible. I think this has happened in the text we're looking at today: Genesis 9:18-29. The text is as follows.

The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the people of the whole earth were dispersed.
Noah began to be a man of the land, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and he uncovered himself in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned backward, and they did not see their father’s nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said, “Cursed be Canaan a servantof servants shall he be to his brothers.” He also said, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem; and let Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant.” 
After the flood Noah lived 350 years. All the days of Noah were 950 years, and he died.

First, it should be noted that this narrative within the larger flood narrative is itself within the framework of a genealogy. The toledoths of the book frame Genesis and not only signal sections in the book, they also trace a line from Adam to Israel as the recipients of the task of the image of God. They are not meant to describe a literal history of the world. One should think of the elements that surround the genealogies as place-holder history for things unknown and things about which the author is not primarily concerned. The point being made, that Israel, as the rightful recipients of the image of God, are the rightful heirs of the land that God as marked out for himself as opposed to the Philistines and other groups grouped together as the Canaanites or Amorites. The land of Israel is Eden. The people of Israel are Adam. That is the point. The attempt itself to make the text about other issues is itself already an eisegetical tendency to want the Bible to speak to other issues with which the modern reader is concerned rather than the ones with which the ancient author is concerned.

Second, the theme of partaking of fruit and sexual immorality, I would argue, appears in the book at the beginning of its three main sections (2-3, 9-10, and 18-19). Adam and Eve partake of the forbidden "fruit," and both Noah and Lot partake in the fruit of the vine. Whereas the serpent functions as the vehicle of temptation in Genesis 3, the other two have the overconsumption of wine function in that role, perhaps indicating that drunkenness is a satanic influence. 

This all sets the sin that is about to be committed but here is where some interpreters eisegete familiar terminology from another text into this one that fails to observe what is actually said here, so let's look at the details closely.

The claim is that to "uncover the nakedness of your father" is to have sex with the wife of your father. Hence, the sin here is either Ham or Canaan having sex with his father's wife. 

Here is why this is eisegetical and not exegetical in nature. 1. The terminology in Leviticus 18 has to do with doing the uncovering of the nakedness. To have sex with someone is idiomatically described as "to uncovering the nakedness of someone. The problem is that the text here states that Noah uncovered himself. It does not even say he uncovered his nakedness. That's contextual but not semantic which is what is needed for the idiom. In other words, the eisegete is reconstructing the idiom out of terms in this text when the text itself does not contain the phraseology of the idiom. There is nakedness mentioned. There is uncovering mentioned. But they are not put together as "and Ham/Canaan uncovered the nakedness of his father," which is the way the idiom is stated throughout Leviticus 18. Noah uncovers himself, which, if that referred to his wife, would mean that he slept with his wife. The verb is a Hithpael, which is primarily the reflexive stem in Biblical Hebrew, X did this to himself. So Ham/Canaan isn't the one uncovering the nakedness. 2. There is absolutely no mention of Noah's wife in the situation. She is read in by the eisegete. In Leviticus 18, it is explicitly mentioned because the text is trying to teach the Israelites that to sleep with the wife of one's father is to sleep with one's father. This is not something they naturally understand. Hence, it's explicitly stated. Likewise, the number one rule of exegesis is that if the text does not state it explicitly, it needs to be implied by something else in the text. This is where the attempt to read in the idiom fails to function as this implicature because it isn't the actual idiom. So neither the idiom or the explicit mention of the wife, as it is explicitly mentioned in Leviticus 18, are present in the text. 3. The explicit manner of the sin is described by both the positive and negative references to "looking at" Noah being naked. In verse 22, Ham "saw" the nakedness of his father. Again, he did not "uncover" his father's nakedness but "looked at" it. In contrast, the two other sons put the garment on their shoulders and walk backward to "cover the nakedness of their father" with their faces faced away from him so that they did "not look at their father's nakedness" (v. 23). The emphasis on "looking at" rather than "uncovering" is not the idiom referring to having sex with anyone. It is sexual, but not an idiom for sex. 

Hence, everything in the text would indicate that the wife is not involved, nor is any sexual act involved, but rather it is strictly a sexual "looking at" his father and then telling the brothers about it is an incestuous evil the two other boys are not willing to "look at" their naked father who has uncovered himself and lies naked in his tent. 

But there is more than this. We might ask how Genesis describes sex with someone. In the other two passages mentioned, the first describes it metaphorically as partaking of fruit and the other describes it as "laying" with their father. This term is the term used over and over again. In other words, when not using a metaphor, the idiomatic description Genesis uses to refer to sleeping with someone, including incestuously as in 19:31-35 (Potiphar's wife uses the same term in 39:7, 12). The other idiom is the term "knowing." So Adam knew his wife. Another literal description is "he went into her" (38:18). The term of uncovering the nakedness of someone is never used in Genesis, and as argued above, it isn't used here either. 

Now, one thing that confuses people is that they first confuse it in Leviticus 20:17 that says that looking upon the nakedness of one another is because a man has uncovered the nakedness of a sister. They think this is a synonym rather than understanding that the idiom isn’t the “seeing” but the “uncovering.” Hence, these texts are just arguing that looking upon a sister sexually and a sister looking upon a man is a part of the sexual act. Not that it is synonymous with it.

So why do eisegetes think it's here? Because that which is generally familiar is read into the text and verified, not through the linguistic evidence within the context itself but by a feeling that they are the same thing. In other words, it's a case of "soundslikegesis." It sounds like X, so it is X. But the text itself would never yield that conclusion. One must go outside the text, ignore the actual wording of the idiom, and then force that illegitimate reconstruction of the idiom back into the text.

The sin, according to the exegesis of the text is that Ham, not Canaan, looked at his naked father who had uncovered himself in a drunken stupor. The two more righteous sons cover his nakedness (if nakedness referred to sex what exactly would that mean?) and refuse to look at his nakedness. Now, it may be that "nakedness" here refers to his male member, so that would be perhaps a metonymy of adjunct, but it isn't an idiomatic expression of the full sexual act, and it certainly doesn't indicate that anything sexual was done with Noah's wife. (As a side note, Noah only has one wife throughout the narrative and this would mean that Noah's wife is Ham's actual mother. When incest is referred to in Leviticus 18:8, it is likely referring to the wife of the father who is not the mother of the son, which is a more likely scenario. In fact, Leviticus talks about uncovering the nakedness of the father by saying it is uncovering the nakedness of one's mother, and states that one is uncovering the nakedness of his mother [Lev 18:7]. Since this is likely Ham's mother, one would think it would include that the mother's nakedness is uncovered in the same way it is in the Levitical text. It isn't because it's not referring to a sexual act with the mother. Hence, it does not say that the son commits incest because he sleeps with his mother but rather another woman who is joined as one flesh with his father.)

This indicates, if anything, that sexual immorality begins with even looking upon the nakedness of someone who is forbidden. This would mean that God does not limit incestuous acts to physical acts alone but even extends it to an intentional look, conveying how much God hates such activity. 

But what it primarily teaches is that Canaan has no right to the land. As his father disqualifies his son from inheriting the land of Israel, the Canaanites are disqualified by their perverse sexual activity described later in Leviticus 18. This is the sin of the Amorite for which they are removed from the land.

Fathers, Manage, But Do Not Micro-Manage Your Spiritual Children

 1 Peter 5:1-7 is continually abused and misused by egalitarian pastors who want to see elders as just one of the gang. Any exercise of authority is seen as abusive and then viewed as "lording it over" the people because, apparently, "lording it over" means "telling me what Scripture tells me to do when I don't want to do it and making me feel bad about not doing it."

The passage is actually about willingly shepherding without external motives that have nothing to do with loving God or his people, but are rather expressions of love of self. So the elders are told to not shepherd under compulsion but willingly. 

They are also told not to katakurieuontes. This is the word most abused. What does katakurieuontes mean? Well, if we do the etymological thing, which doesn't always yield the right answer, it's made up of two constituent words kata "down" and kurieuo "to exercise ownership over." The kata would indicate a negative type of doing this. Hence, to "lord over" would refer to exercising ownership over others in a bad way, specifically in a "down" way, i.e., an oppressive way. 

More information is given to us in the use of the word by Christ in Matthew 20:25-28. Despite all of the hullaballoo of Peter being behind the Markan account, Peter seems to refer to Matthew's Gospel in his first letter which makes this quote by Jesus in Matthew significant.

Christ says, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Here, we can see that Christ is contrasting the way the pagans exercise ownership over their people versus how Christ calls us to think of ministry. The contrast, however, is not between serving/sacrificing and exercising authority. In fact, the translation of the NIV here is unfortunate, since the word for authority here also has the kata preposition on it indicating that this is an oppresive authority, not just an exercise of authority which Jesus clearly gives to his apostles and elders of the church.

So we must ask, in what way do the pagans oppress their people and rule over them? They tax them beyond what they should for personal luxuries. They place all sorts of their personal preferences over them so that everyone has to conform and practice their personal preferences. They place laws over everything. They demand to be exalted in praise and in seating and in being served in gatherings. They view their people as existing for them rather than them as existing for their people.

So what does "lording it over" mean? It doesn't mean exercising authority and demanding that people do what God has told them to do, for that would be functioning as a herald and a servant of God and the people as many a prophet has done throughout history. It seems to mean using people for one's personal benefit and comfort. This expresses itself often in manipulating people and micro-managing their lives so that one's personal preferences are forced upon the people. 

This seems to correspond to the exhortation of the fathers in Ephesians to not "exasperate their children." Micro-managing people with one's own laws of preference and personal servitude can exhaust and frustrate them so that they just give up. Christ calls his shepherds to father his family in such a way so as to be examples of wisdom rather than constantly heap up laws upon people because we think doing things this way or that way are the best ways since its the way we do them. He also calls us to refrain from heaping financial burdens and burdens of favors upon people as though they exist to serve us. We are their servants as fathers are servants of the household in their authority and they need to use their authority for the good and well-being of the household.

I have seen so many pastors use people for their personal gain and have no regard for how it will harm the people, the children of God. Hence, as Paul instructed biological fathers so Peter instructs spiritual ones. Do not use your authority for your own selfish ends. 

It has nothing to do with harsh rebuke. It has nothing to do with exercising authority or discipline. It has nothing to do with telling people to do what God told them to do. It has to do with one thing and one thing only, using one's authority for selfish reasons instead of sacrificial reasons that would build up rather than tear down the children of God's household.

"He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him [doing so] with all propriety. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?) (1 Tim 3:4-5)

Honor Thy Spiritual Mothers

 In a similar fashion to that of spiritual fathers in the church, spiritual mothers are to be honored as well, and I would then also make the parallel to biological mothers as I did between the two kinds of fathers.

In 1 Tim 5:1-16 states:

Do not rebuke an elder harshly but exhort him as a father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity. Give proper recognition to those widows who are really in need.  But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God. The widow who is really in need and left all alone puts her hope in God and continues night and day to pray and to ask God for help. But the widow who lives for pleasure is dead even while she lives. Give the people these instructions, so that no one may be open to blame. Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. No widow may be put on the list of widows unless she is over sixty, has been faithful to her husband, and is well known for her good deeds, such as bringing up children, showing hospitality, washing the feet of the Lord’s people, helping those in trouble and devoting herself to all kinds of good deeds. As for younger widows, do not put them on such a list. For when their sensual desires overcome their dedication to Christ, they want to marry. Thus they bring judgment on themselves, because they have broken their first pledge. Besides, they get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also busybodies who talk nonsense, saying things they ought not to. So I counsel younger widows to marry, to have children, to manage their homes and to give the enemy no opportunity for slander. Some have in fact already turned away to follow Satan. If any woman who is a believer has widows in her care, she should continue to help them and not let the church be burdened with them, so that the church can help those widows who are really in need.

 This passage essentially argues that older women are to be honored as mothers, and that when they can no longer be supported by a husband as widows and their children cannot or will not support them, they are to be financially honored and supported by the church. Notice that younger widows of marrying age are not in the same category. Women who also have grown old but have not acted as mothers through the example of their good deeds toward the children of the church, brothers and sisters, in terms of the things listed by Paul here are not given that same title of mother and honor is not obligated.

The same condemnations occur when one does not honor his mother as representing his father in Scripture. This is how the older woman in the church is a mother. She displays the teaching of the fathers in her conduct. Hence, she is a teacher of the family through wisdom and conduct as the father is a teacher through both conduct and wisdom, albeit in a different role since she is not in a role of authority. However, this does not mean that she is not in a role of honor, so we see here that she is in a role of honor as a mother without her own authority, but rather by subjecting herself to the authority of the fathers in her obedience/submission to the elders, she carries with her the honor of the fathers.  

Hence, to disregard her, mock her, treat her as lesser, ignore her financial needs, etc. is damnable. This is why the obligation to the widow is a display of true religion in the Bible. To honor her is to honor God who is represented by the old mother who represents the father who has passed away.

With that in mind, read again the post concerning honoring the mother in the household. It will be enlightening and perhaps give a better understanding of how the women who meet this description ought to be treated.

Likewise, this passage talks about women who have not represented the fathers but rather have divorced themselves from their teaching in their conduct and disobedience even though they still hang around the church. These women are not mothers and ultimately should be put out of the church (i.e., the opposite treatment of those who actually represent the fathers/elders of the church).