What Does It Really Mean to Be a Christian?

Many today lament the fact that the term “evangelical” has become so overused of anyone having an experience of what they consider “Jesus” that the term is now meaningless. But the truth is that the term “Christian” has been made into a far more nebulous term than that. Everyone and anyone considers himself a Christian in one way or another. But if everyone knew what the term really meant, and was honest, we’d have much fewer self-proclaimed Christians in the world today.

The place to start here is with the apostle John, since, as the last living apostle, he had more to say on the subject than anyone else. Notice what he says below.

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.” (John 13:20)

A similar statement is found in Matthew 13, where Christ chooses the apostles and commissions them with his teaching. He states,
 
“Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. The one who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward, and the one who receives a righteous person because he is a righteous person will receive a righteous person's reward. And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.”

John, now leaving this life, seeks to help the Church that follows to understand something vitally important, namely, that Jesus Christ gave the apostles the authority and ability to remember His teaching (John 14:25), and those who interpret Him differently, or depart from apostolic teaching, are not true Christians. Therefore, one is only a follower of Christ when he is a follower of the Christ of the apostles, and one is only a follower of Christ when he is a follower of Christ’s teachings through the apostles.

Hence, he draws upon Christ’s giving them authority in his Gospel and Epistles to show that Jesus Christ must be defined by apostolic teaching, and cannot be redefined by others according to their religious or philosophical beliefs. 

It is to the apostles, as opposed to the other disciples, that the Holy Spirit is given to remember His words. It is to the apostles that their testimony is considered on an equal plain with the testimony of the Holy Spirit and cannot be seen as different from it (John 15:26-27). It is to the apostles, as opposed to the other disciples, that apostolic representation of Christ is granted. It is to the apostles that continued direction and teaching from Christ through the Holy Spirit is granted (16:12-15). It is to the apostles, as opposed to the other disciples, that Christ gives the keys to the kingdom to bind and to loose in John 20:21-23 (i.e., to judge one who considers himself a Christian and either declare as saved or declare as one who is damned—in other words, to say who is a Christian and who is not). It is to the apostles that direct access to the Father is granted in the authority of the Son to see and understand Jesus Christ.

Hence, it is the apostles who see Christ and His teaching clearly, and they alone have the authority to set the boundaries of what we consider a Christian view of Christ and a Christian teaching; and therefore, they alone have the authority to set the boundaries for who and what is considered Christian. Take the following episode for instance.

Jesus could see  that they wanted to ask him about these things,  so  he said to them, “Are you asking  each other about this – that I said, ‘In a little while you  will not see me; again after a little while, you  will see me’?  I tell you the solemn truth,  you will weep and wail,  but the world will rejoice; you will be sad, but your sadness will turn into  joy. When a woman gives birth, she has distress  because her time  has come, but when her child is born, she no longer remembers the suffering because of her joy that a human being   has been born into the world.  So also you have sorrow  now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you.  At that time you will ask me nothing. I tell you the solemn truth, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you.  Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive it,  so that your joy may be complete.

“I have told you these things in obscure figures of speech;  a time  is coming when I will no longer speak to you in obscure figures, but will tell you  plainly  about the Father. At that time  you will ask in my name, and I do not say  that I will ask the Father on your behalf. For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. (John 16:16-27)

The purpose of this episode is to show that the apostles will be able to interpret Christ’s teaching and who Jesus is, precisely, because they have been with Him from the beginning, are given the Holy Spirit for the express and special purpose of interpreting Christ, and have direct access to the Father if they need clarification on anything. 

In other words, the apostles are not just the average Joe interpreting Christ with some religious experience he has had. He is the only one in the position to interpret Christ and His teaching correctly. And this brings us to another point that John has been making: Christ is His teaching.

Christ is the Word. Christ is known through what He has taught. One cannot know Christ apart from the truth that He spoke, both while he was here on earth and through the teaching He continued to give to the apostles. If one departs from this teaching, therefore, he or she does not merely depart from a particular apostolic teaching but still holds onto Christ, but has departed from Christ Himself. To reject apostolic teaching, according to Christ Himself, is to reject Christ. And to reject Christ is to reject God the Father. 

Hence, all of the teaching we get from the apostles in Scripture is Christ’s teaching. To reject it is to reject Christ; and hence, is to be an unbeliever, regardless of whether one claims to know Jesus. One cannot speak of being in the spirit of the apostles, or continuing the types of things they were doing, and reject the specific theological and ethical teachings they taught, since to be in their spirit is to continue the specifics, not to contradict them. 

One can certainly develop the implications of the whole of their teachings, but in "complementation," not contradiction. If what is “developed” contradicts a specific teaching of the apostles, then it is a teaching that is anathema. And the person who advocates it is likewise anathema if he or she does not repent of it, as only one who is united to the true Christ is blessed with salvation.

The idea, therefore, that one can believe in a Jesus, but not the Jesus of the apostles, and still consider himself a Christian is a delusion. Paul speaks of another Jesus and that such is delivered to men by false apostles who work for the devil, not for God. John, likewise, states that “they went out from us because they were not really of us. If they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they all went out that it might be made plain that they are not of us” (1 John 2:19). The “us” there refers to the apostles. John makes it clear in the epistle that one must have fellowship with the apostles in terms of their teaching in order to have fellowship with the true Jesus and God.

This is what we proclaim to you:  what was from the beginning,  what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and our hands have touched (concerning the word of life – and the life was revealed, and we have seen and testify and announce  to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us). What we have seen and heard we announce  to you too, so that  you may have fellowship  with us (and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ). (1 John 1:1-7)

Hence, the idea that one can disagree with the apostles in the specifics, while trying to make the argument that he agrees with them in terms of their general reforming spirit is nonsense. The one who departs from their teaching, departs from Christ and God. This is, as John is clear to say, the spirit of antichrist, not the Spirit of God who binds His children to the true Jesus and His teaching revealed through the apostles.

Christ is the gospel of the apostles, not your gospel. Christ is the apostles’ teaching about the Church, not your idea of “church.” Christ is the apostles’ teaching of God, not your view of God. Christ is the apostles’ teaching concerning the nature of truth, sexual ethics, gender roles, etc., not your postmodern views of those things. If you want everyone to follow you, then call your religion what it is, and add an “ism” to your name; but Christians follow Christ through apostolic teaching. If the apostles teach an exclusive gospel, Christians follow what they taught. If the apostles teach one must hear and exercise faith to be saved, Christians believe it. If the apostles condemn homosexuality as a sign of the wrath of God upon a people, Christians accept that as the absolute truth. False Christians don’t. They’re religion is personalized. It is adapted to their cultural and religious preferences and understandings, and hence, they’re Christ has been adapted and personalized. But their Christ is not the One who lived and died and lived again. Only the apostles know that Christ, and we must come to know Him through them.

Christ and the teaching that characterizes Him shouldn't be redefined and misidentified, precisely, because He isn't an idea or made up character like Santa Claus. He's a real Person, and to know Him is to know Him as a Person and all of the truth and good that is consistent with who He is. The only humans who know that real Person were the apostles, and it is through them, therefore, that we have come to know Him.

What this means is that the term “Christian” means “one who is in submission to the apostolic teaching and interpretation of Christ and His teaching.” If one wants a Gnostic Jesus, a solely human Jesus, a modern Jesus, a postmodern Jesus, and all of the teachings his particular Jesus would support or condemn, and that Jesus and his teachings contradict the Jesus and teachings of the apostles, his claim to be a Christian is false. The term is being watered-down to fit a larger group of people under it, but this redefinition makes it meaningless.

In reality, the term has meaning in what John has argued above. A Christian is one who follows Christ through the apostolic teaching. Hence, those who claim to be Christians, but do not submit to apostolic teaching are liars who are deceiving themselves and the truth is not in them. As John said, “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test  the spirits to determine  if they are from God, because many false prophets  have gone out into the world (1 John 4:1). Likewise, do not believe everyone who claims to be a Christian, but test their claim to determine if they are from God, because many false Christians have gone out into the world.

Teach them and exhort them about these things. If someone spreads false teachings and does not agree with sound words (that is, those of our Lord Jesus Christ) and with the teaching that accords with godliness, he is conceited and understands nothing, but has an unhealthy interest in controversies and verbal disputes. This gives rise to envy, dissension, slanders, evil suspicions, and constant bickering by people corrupted in their minds and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a way of getting ahead in life. (1 Tim 6:2-5)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Notice that the love of God is displayed and should be praised in His works of creation that include the destruction of chaotic agents. We ought to thank God for His creating life and space for His people and His victory over our enemies. Thank You for all Your good works against chaos/evil on behalf of Your children, Lord God. Your love endures forever.

Psalm 136

¹ Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.
His love endures forever.
² Give thanks to the God of gods.
His love endures forever.
³ Give thanks to the Lord of lords:
His love endures forever.

⁴ to him who alone does great wonders,
His love endures forever.
⁵ who by his understanding made the heavens,
His love endures forever.
⁶ who spread out the earth upon the waters,
His love endures forever.
⁷ who made the great lights—
His love endures forever.
⁸ the sun to govern the day,
His love endures forever.
⁹ the moon and stars to govern the night;
His love endures forever.

¹⁰ to him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt
His love endures forever.
¹¹ and brought Israel out from among them
His love endures forever.
¹² with a mighty hand and outstretched arm;
His love endures forever.

¹³ to him who divided the Red Sea^[a] asunder
His love endures forever.
¹⁴ and brought Israel through the midst of it,
His love endures forever.
¹⁵ but swept Pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea;
His love endures forever.

¹⁶ to him who led his people through the wilderness;
His love endures forever.

¹⁷ to him who struck down great kings,
His love endures forever.
¹⁸ and killed mighty kings—
His love endures forever.
¹⁹ Sihon king of the Amorites
His love endures forever.
²⁰ and Og king of Bashan—
His love endures forever.
²¹ and gave their land as an inheritance,
His love endures forever.
²² an inheritance to his servant Israel.
His love endures forever.

²³ He remembered us in our low estate
His love endures forever.
²⁴ and freed us from our enemies.
His love endures forever.
²⁵ He gives food to every creature.
His love endures forever.

²⁶ Give thanks to the God of heaven.
His love endures forever.

A Note to My Lay Readers

I wanted to help my lay readers a moment by saying something important to you, and that is this:

Stop using Strong's and Vine's to look up Greek and Hebrew words!

These works are atrocious. They are archaic works that came to their definitions in a more linguistically naive age, and they are going to be flat out wrong and lead you to conclude all sorts of false things about what the text actually says. Words are given their nuances through context, so you need to read the context of the entire book, and the immediate context (and even the author's works as a whole) in order to understand the word better in a particular text. That means that it's going to be a much more laborious task in attempting to interpret Scripture in the original languages on your own. If you don't want to do that then get good current commentaries on the book that will help you look at the words you want to study (get a list from someone who you trust knows what good commentaries are out there).

I hope that helps. God bless you in your study and desire to rightly divide the word of truth.

A Simple Argument against Abortion that Even Liberals Can Understand

http://bnonn.thinkingmatters.org.nz/a-simple-argument-against-abortion-that-even-liberals-can-understand/

Mythic and Phenomonological Language Use as Description for What Is Unknown

Nick Norelli recently posted his doubts that certain diagrams of the ancient Near Eastern conception of cosmography (such as the one above) could be gained with much certainty, and Kyle Essary, one of his readers, sent over a paper affirming the same suspicion. You can read that here:
http://rdtwot.wordpress.com/2012/11/16/the-hebrew-conception-of-the-universe/

There was some doubt expressed in the comments about doubting such a supposedly wide array of evidence that scholars use to reconstruct such a cosmography; but I wanted to throw in my hat here, affirm Nick's doubts, and say what I alluded to in my book on Genesis, namely, that scholars have shown very little caution and sophistication in their methodologies in obtaining said reconstructions.

For instance, much of the material that is marshaled in order to reconstruct this cosmography is mythic or poetic. It should be understood that such is not appropriate material to use for this purpose. Nor is it a strong objection to suggest that if one sees a widespread use of such language, it must mean that the reconstruction is more certain. We use the phraseology of the sun rising and setting across a wide spectrum of literature and with some great uniformity, and yet, it does not explain our cosmography proper.

Now, one might say we know the form of the object and its literal ontology and the ancient Near Easterner did not; but this misses the point. I am not saying that the ancient observer held to a modern scientific view of the universe. Instead, I'm saying that (1) together with Dr. Walton, the ancient mind is not as concerned with the form as it is with the function (likely only when speaking of things where the form was elusive), and (2) even if it had known the form in general, the lack of specifics caused the ancient observer to speak of things in more imaginative ways, using either phenomenological language, or more often, mythic terms.

In other words, when specifics were not available of an event or object, it was spoken of in more mythic terms. We can see this not only of objects (such as the ancient Egyptians depicting the universe as being held up by Nut, as though she were forever bent over the earth in a backbreaking position to hold up waters above it), but also of events, such as primeval history, where the details of the events are not necessarily known.

Every young scholar seems enamored with getting ancient cosmography from works like Enuma elish, but very few note the uniqueness of that work as a mythological presentation of the creation event as a means toward ceremony (i.e., as a way of functioning both as the exaltation of Marduk over chaos and fulfilling the excitement of storytelling). When this same creation event is spoken of again in another text, we just see Marduk piling up dirt on a primordial raft and creating the world without conflict from Tiamat, who in this text, is depersonified. The text is still mythical, but it's a different myth that describes the event. That very fact should cause us to take caution in assuming that the ancient observer is literally attempting to construct a cosmography when, in fact, he is most likely only seeking to describe these objects and events dynamically in his use of mythic language. The specifics of the universe and its history are unkown. He cannot describe them literally, and my point is that he is not attempting to do so in the first place.

The Bible also indicates this by presenting the creation event in a variety of ways. The text of Genesis itself presents two descriptions of creation, both using mythic language. This is not even to bring up all of the descriptions found in the Psalms that use the same types of language in different ways, and in Proverbs, where wisdom itself is personified in creation, yet another imaginative way of describing the event.

So these reconstructions, in my mind, are completely bogus. They help us understand ancient Near Eastern language and religious/social concepts, but they don't help us understand the ancient view of the universe, as though the ancient observer thought himself capable of such a literal construction.

Now, just as a final note, it should be said that one cannot say that everyone in the ancient Near East believed this or that. Some people probably did believe the mythic language was literal. Some people probably did not. Some people probably believed a mixture. One of the gigantic holes in scholarly methodology is assuming that one can say, "the ancient Near Easterner believed so and so" by merely pointing to a few texts. What we really should say is that such and such a concept seen in this or that text may help us understand this text as well; but we cannot say that everyone believed the same thing about the same things anymore than we can say that about people today. We ourselves can only speak about specific texts, but not the culture and each individual within it as a whole.

I try to show in my book that the time of creation is spoken of in such a variety of ways simply because it cannot be spoken of in terms of literal time, since time does not yet exist, nor is the event known to the ancient mind. Hence, in ancient texts, the original time of creation is spoken of generically (as "when," "in the beginning," "on the first occasion,") or in a variety of numerical designations ("on a day," "on the first day," "in ancient days," "in ancient days and nights," "in ancient years," etc.). The point is that the time period is not known, and hence, one is free to speak of it as he wishes, filling in what is unknown with mythic description for the purposes of filling out the story or just as a way of giving the speaker, who would otherwise be incapable of speaking literally about an object or event, an ability to talk about objects and events that are unknown.

The problem with the modern scholar is that he is a product of the Enlightenment-oriented need to know everything and believe he is superior to those who came before him. He must see the ancient as a lesser evolved tribal primate who has ridiculous beliefs. In this way, we can discount whatever else he says, and mock anyone who may speak of such things in a similar manner; or more likely, due to his need to wage war upon the Bible and the Church, the central authority of Western society, by presenting its ancient (and mythic) language used as intended factual propositions that one can now prove to be false if taken literally. Many such paradigms as this, therefore, grow more out of a need to present an apologetic for one culture's superiority over another; and many times to ease one's conscience in rejecting the Scripture. Others may simply come from the employment of improper methodologies and a mistaken interpretation that misses the purpose of a particular text and language used. Either way, I don't trust these paradigms for purposes of literally reconstructing an ancient view of a conception never held in the first place. Ancient man was often more humble in what he thought he could know (humility was still a virtue in the ancient world), and hence, he may not have been the complete dupe the modern Western scholar often makes him out to be after all.

Poetry at 3am

I can't sleep, so I'm up and decided to write. The problem is that I'm in that state where my brain won't shut down but it doesn't want to work too hard either. So what better than to settle between writing something I can publish and writing nothing at all? That's right. Metrically-challenged, grim poetry. Enjoy.

Of Fools and Their Unrestricted Pursuits

Where the Pollywogs Play

There is a pond where the pollywogs play, where their predators swim in the deep.

Their mothers attempt to dissuade them, but they find it too much of a treat.

So the pollywogs swim to the chagrin of their mothers who say their goodbyes.

For not a single one ever returns from that thrilling place where it dies.

Transgressing the Fence

A young drifter came upon a fence in the midst of his traveling road.

He, without thought, tore down the fence, as was his usually mode.

He walked only a few short steps before he learned why the fence was there put.

And then death came to claim him,

As the ground began to cave in,

And he was buried from head to foot.

Little Billy Blunder

Little Billy Blunder knew more than wisdom and age could say.

He needed not listen to the voices that petitioned when in the road he wished to play.

He knew better, so he said, than the rest of the dead who he joined as he ran in the way.

Roaring Ronny Rocket

Roaring Ronny Rocket ignored the red light just as he had done before

His plane flew just fine, just like any other time, so he paid little attention anymore.

But Ronny Rocket soon grew a frown as the plane went down

And it was death that made the last roar.


He that refuseth correction harms his own soul; but he that hearkens to reproof getteth understanding. (Prov 15:32)

I Can't Wait for This to Come Out