theology – gPress Tres

Where Honor is Due

This is a classic gPress post, originally uploaded November 3, 2022.

Is President Biden worse than Nero?

Anyone acquainted with history might think this question is ludicrous, but it is a point of confusion in Christendom today. Many feel it is acceptable to indulge in hearing and spreading rumors about someone, or to deride them, or otherwise rail against them, provided that it is a political leader they disagree with.

Far from defending this practice, the Bible shows reasons why we should treat President Biden with respect, most of which are also true for other elected officials.

1) He is a ruler of our country.
Although there seems to be a trend not to recognize anyone you have not voted for, the Biblical perspective is that if someone has authority, they have been ‘set up’ in that position by God. This setting up is not limited to means that we personally approve of; whether the president was ‘duly elected’ seems moot when we recall that several Biblical rulers who were acknowledged as legitimate came to power through conquest or assassination!

1 Peter 2 says to ‘honor the king’. This was likely written in reference to the Roman emperor. It is unqualified, and in context, the statement to respect someone who tradition tells us was responsible for leading a great persecution and executing Peter himself removes from us any kind of excuse. If we find this difficult to practice, it is more difficult to argue that the president is responsible for more evil-doing than either the Roman emperors generally or Nero in particular, and that his rule is an extenuating circumstance.

If nothing else, the Biblical mandate to pray for our rulers, and the spirit of that mandate, opposes the attitude behind this manner of speech.

2) He is aged.
Many use this as a jumping-off point for further dishonoring the president. However, the Bible states in Leviticus 19 that the elderly are due respect, without qualification:

“Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God: I am the LORD.”

3) He is a person.
One of the best reasons to refrain from these kinds of comments about the president is that it is wrong to habitually talk about anyone in this manner, whatever their status in life.

It is one thing to criticize the administration’s policies, or to note when the president has done something wrong in his office as a political leader, whether it is immoral or merely imprudent. Even in this case, I would err on the side of silence, in the sense that dwelling on someone’s faults is not expedient, but I acknowledge there is an occasional need for discussion of the conduct of our government.

However, most conversation about political leaders consists of emotionally charged rhetoric, abusive language, and personal attacks. If you would not put up with hearing someone speak this way about you – or your family member, or your friend, or acquaintance – why should a stranger be any different, whatever their position? They are all humans made in God’s image.

I’m reluctant to write it out, but this point must be made. I’ve heard someone in the past thoughtlessly say that they wished for the president’s death. I wonder how many times we have entertained such ideas without understanding what is meant by it. If you say this, what you mean (intentionally or not) is that your disapproval of the president is so great that you, believing him to be a sinner, prefer him to immediately face the consequences of those sins, rather than repent. I hardly believe that Christians want this when they speak about someone, but if they don’t, they should pick a new manner of speaking.

Ultimately the president is a man like any other man. If we claim to be concerned about the salvation of the lost, the president and other political leaders are in as much a need of it as anyone else. We should not harshly reject and condemn someone whom God has not.

4) The speech is un-Christian in any case.
“Oh, so you’re a Christian? I never would have guessed.”
It is an understatement to note that someone who seems habitually angry is not modeling Christ. Reviling is no better than profanity or obscenities; the three often go together. Moreover, people judge you not only by how you treat them, but by how you treat others.

Although love, grace and peace are misunderstood nowadays, people can recognize that something is amiss when someone claims to possess these traits and yet is constantly offensive (in both senses of the word). If you can persuade a stranger that you hate a third person, you are well on your way to convincing them that you can’t love them either.

In conclusion, according to Scripture, the president of our country is due our respect, as are other public officials. You do not have to agree with or support someone’s decisions to extend them Christian love, much less the common courtesies that are ordinarily extended between strangers.

While the media wants to make us feel we are ‘familiar’ with these people we have never met, we cannot in good conscience let that supposed familiarity breed bitterness and contempt. If we do, we will have to account for it someday.

The Second-Person Plural Pronoun

This is a classic gPress post, originally uploaded April 4, 2022.

The shame of modern English’s lack of a second-person plural is that the damage is self-inflicted.

Basic pronouns, modern English

	Singular	Plural
First	I/me/my/mine	We/us/our/ours
Second	You/you/your/yours	N/A
Third	He/she, him/her, his/her, his/hers	They/them/their/theirs

You can address or refer to anyone using the pronouns on the above table, unless you are directly addressing a group. In that case, you are forced to either:

1) Say only “you” and hope people infer that you meant the whole group
2) Use a lengthy combination of words: “you all”, “all of you people”, “you guys”, “ladies and gentlemen”, “to the group of human beings I am addressing”
3) Invent a new word: “y’all”, “youse”, “yinz”, “youins”

There’s an ongoing debate about which of these solutions is best. What is little-known is that we have had a solution to this all along, and the cause of our problem is cultural niceties.

Before discussing that, I feel it is helpful and educational to bring up the basic system of Spanish pronouns. This is what helped me to understand the history and development of our English language, by the parallel to another well-known language. The list will not be complete, but it will be enough to give a brief overview.

Basic pronoun forms, modern Spanish

	Singular	Plural
First	Yo	Nosotros
Second	Tú, usted	Vosotros (in Spain only), ustedes
Third	Él/ella	Los/las

At a glance, you can see that Spanish has all of the major fields covered, and then some. Why the extra ‘usted’ form, though?

The short answer is, words have connotations beyond their grammatical usage. These forms are either ‘familiar’ or ‘formal’. ‘Usted’ is the form you use when addressing someone who is socially superior, or perhaps someone else you don’t want to risk offending. (The corresponding English practice these days is to generously sprinkle ‘sir’, ‘ma’am’, or ‘miss’ through your sentences.)

The problem with having ‘formal’ and ‘familiar’ forms is the duality; if ‘formal’ language indicates respect and an acknowledgement of social standing, what does using the ‘familiar’ form imply?

Back when social statuses were clearly delineated, this wasn’t a problem, but as the world became democratized, using usted/ustedes became the practice in most of the Spanish-speaking world. Only Spain still uses the ‘vosotros’ form, and this distinction, speaking “el español del rey”, would cause you to stand out in a Latino crowd.

With this foundation laid, let’s have another look at English, or rather, English as it was.

Basic pronouns, Elizabethan English

	Singular	Plural
First	I/me/my/mine	We/us/our/ours
Second	Thou/thee/thy/thine	Ye/you/your/yours
Third	He/she, him/her, his/her, his/hers	They/them/their/theirs

These should be familiar to anyone who has read either the King James Version Bible or Shakespeare. Because those sources are also likely to be the only place they are seen, they are misunderstood, to the point that ‘thees and thous’ have become a byword for things which are considered complicated, archaic, and ‘unnecessary’.

People know the ‘thou’ form because it is a pronoun used to address God in the KJV, but they don’t know why it is used. The reason is shown in the above chart: it is the second-person singular pronoun, and God is a single person, so when someone is directly addressing God, correct Elizabethan grammar demands that form. Meanwhile, the ye form is like the modern-day ‘y’all’.

We lost this system for the same reason that the Spanish language was transformed: the forms acquired connotations of respect or disrespect, and people switched to using the ‘formal’ form all the time. English doesn’t have a dedicated formal form, so ‘you’ was made to do double-duty, as either the second-person plural or the formal second-person singular. I suspect the logic behind that choice was like that of the ‘royal we’.

Incidentally, the King James’ English is said to have been archaic even for its time. When the translators were putting together the work, the thees and thous were on their way out; they chose to stick with those words on the grounds that it was the most direct translation of the original pronouns (which it was, and still is). This choice was said to get criticism from readers who felt that the use of the familiar ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ disrespected God.

At any rate, people forgot over time that ‘you’ was supposed to be a second-person plural, which meant that we ceased to have one. But there are inevitably cases where that form of grammar is helpful, which has since become obvious. Thus, we now have a plethora of conjunctions designed to address this need, as alluded to at the beginning of this post.

The trouble is that they all have the same problem as what got ‘thou’ canned in the first place: they’re perceived to be informal!

The more things change, the more they stay the same…

On God’s Will – An Exploration

Let’s follow some logical series of steps. Each letter is a premise, building up to a conclusion, the bolded number. Remember, in logic, if the statements are logically valid, and the premises are true, then the conclusions must also be true.

a. Something is either God’s will or it is not.
b. God does not will things that are mutually exclusive.
c. Someone can only be doing one thing at any given point in time.
1. So, God only wills one thing at any given point in time.

This conclusion, which is key to the rest of this line of reasoning, has difficulty answering the intuitive possibility that God can want certain (say, two) things to be done within a certain time range, and isn’t particular about their order.

We can strengthen this conclusion by adding another premise: “Given two options, God is never undecided; He always has a preference.” However, there are some hypothetical questions where even that seems difficult to defend.

Suppose the following example:
It is God’s will that a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich be made.

Is it God’s will that the peanut butter be put on one slice of bread first, and jelly on the other, and the second slice put on the first? Or the other way around? Or should the peanut butter be put on one slice, then the jelly on top of that, and then the remaining plain slice?

One can argue that one way is more rational than the other, perhaps because of risk of condiment spillage, but it is intuitively odd to say one is sinful. Something being unintuitive isn’t sufficient reason to reject it, but God has presumably given us these kinds of feelings for some purpose, so it doesn’t follow that they should be ignored, either.

While this example seems absurd, if we accept that God is interested in everything we do, it is as valid a subject for a discussion on God’s will as something apparently weightier would be.

Suppose we use a similar case where it’s even less clear what a ‘logical’ choice might be:
It is God’s will that clothes be taken out of the washing machine and be put in the dryer.

What should go in the dryer first, the shirt or the socks?

They’re all about to be dried! Who cares? Well, if we accept that God’s will is always so specific, not just about the events but the timing, we’re saying that God does care, and if God cares, that suggests that the shirt first versus the socks first is not just a problem regarding a hypothetical optimal laundering technique, but a moral issue, as the next two arguments will show.

a. If something is not God’s will, it is self-will.
b. Self-will is iniquity. (Matt. 7:21-24, Ezek. 28:15, Isa. 14:12-14, 1 Sam 15:23, Jer 7:24, Jer 17:9)
c. Iniquity either is sin or is the source of sin.
d. God hates sin.
2. So, if something is not God’s will, God hates it.

*

a. If God only and always wills one thing at a given point in time, anything else that might be done at that given point in time is not God’s will.
3. Thus, for any given point in time, there is only one thing that is God’s will, and any other thing that might be done at that point in time, God hates.

This is logically derived from the previous two conclusions; if they are both true, this must also be true. The difficulties and dangers resulting from this line of reasoning are beginning to take tangible form here.

a. Someone who does something that is not God’s will is a worker of iniquity.
b. No worker of iniquity will enter the kingdom of heaven.
4. Thus, anyone who does something at a given point in time that is not God’s will, will not enter the kingdom of heaven (provided they don’t repent).

This seems to follow deductively from conclusion 2 (and Scripture). This isn’t strictly required for the final conclusion, and it is implied in any case, but I thought it was worth spelling out, for the sake of showing the risks associated with being wrong when you have this mindset.

a. If God only and always wills one thing at any given point in time, then each point in time has one thing that God wills for it.
b. Someone’s earthly life consists of a consecutive series of points in time.
5. Thus, someone’s earthly life has a consecutive series of single things that God wills for it!

This follows directly from 3, and reveals the core of the problem, by suggesting people are supposed to follow an exact series of steps (or a ‘script’) in their lives.

If God reveals all those steps, they are instructions, which means that God wants robots – robots being machines that follow consecutive series of instructions for their entire ‘lifespans’.

If He doesn’t reveal (some, or even one, of) those steps, it’s still His will, so by definition, He still wants people to do those things. So in this case, they’re left to guess what God’s will is. Given the multitude of possibilities, they will probably fail. In fact, the argument can be made that even if they happened to correctly guess what God had wanted, they would still have failed, because they made their own decision about it.

In either case, someone who doesn’t follow God’s will exactly is a worker of iniquity (based on point 4).

Neither of these scenarios (wanting robots, or setting people up to fail) seem to be a positive portrayal for God.

The latter can only be sidestepped if we assume that every moment that God has not revealed His will for is a time that God doesn’t intend for the person to do anything, but rather wait until He does reveal His will.

* * *

Perhaps the strongest argument against this way of viewing God’s will is practical experience, as revealed in both Scripture and our lives.

When understanding God, it is helpful to look at God’s original plans and designs. Whether people were compliant or not, those things nonetheless were what He intended. Since God doesn’t change, this is presumably still His ideal, and thus what mankind will be returning to at the end of time (provided that He hasn’t clarified, like with human marriages, that things will be different).

In Genesis, God gives a few commands:

1. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

2. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

So:
1. Be fruitful and multiply.
2. Replenish (meaning “fill”) the earth, subdue it, and have dominion over every living thing.
3. Eat of every herb bearing seed, and of the fruit of every tree, except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (If ‘green herbs’ are different from the ‘herbs bearing seed’, those would also presumably be forbidden, being reserved for animals, but it’s fair to assume this isn’t a temptation that would afflict man in their original state. Even people today don’t generally have a problem with not eating grass.)

There’s no indication that there were any more specific commands than that. As a commentator pointed out, Adam named the animals; it doesn’t say that he learned the names that God already had for them.

One of the gravest difficulties associated with this theory of will is that it denies the proposal that man should make use of the creative impulse. He and she inherit it by birthright, being made in God’s image. But if God always has specific steps to follow for every moment of someone’s life, then they are called to suppress this part of their nature, now and forever, because a being that only acts on someone else’s specific instructions cannot be truly creative. Including such a major feature in man’s makeup and never intending for it to be used seems cruel in a way that is incompatible with God’s revealed nature. Just as importantly, it is incompatible with what Genesis actually said happened. We are forced to conclude that in paradise, at least, God’s will is not always so specific.

It is reasonable to suppose that God continued to interact with humanity closely after the fall. Cain wasn’t surprised when God spoke to him, and after his exile, the Scripture notes that Cain ‘went out from the presence of the LORD’. This suggests that the others, like Adam, Eve, and their ‘other brothers and sisters’ remained there. It’s possible that God did give direct instructions to them, but this is unrecorded until Noah. God gives Noah requirements for the Ark, but as a set of plans, it leaves a bit unaddressed. Either the Genesis account is not a complete rundown of God’s instructions, or there were some details that God didn’t speak about at the time.

Sometime later, the practical experience of the patriarchs and matriarchs, and their contemporaries, seems to be that they didn’t receive specific information for very much of their daily lives. The norm was to receive a vision or a dream by night: Job’s friend Eliphaz testified of a vision that he had some time before. Elihu was familiar with the practice and said that God often spoke in this manner and was simply not being heard (though this could not in any case inform every step taken during the day). Abimelech king of Gerar talked with God in a vision. Abraham and Jacob received periodic instructions, sometimes years or decades apart, concerning major life decisions. Laban received a warning ‘by night’. Isaac has only two recorded direct communications from God (other than his being with Abraham on Mt. Moriah), the first in which he is told not to go to Egypt, the second where he is simply affirmed in the covenant blessing. Joseph presumably had more specific interactions with God when he gave interpretations for dreams, but it isn’t clear that he was so closely directed in every act of his life. Dreams continued to be the norm in non-Jewish societies for centuries later, and were of great interest to their recipients, people as varied as Nebuchadnezzar and Pilate’s wife.

The first person recorded who definitely received ongoing, specific directions for a great quantity of things is Moses, and it is likely he received instructions on other things not recorded. Joshua’s early campaign was also closely planned out, with one notable blunder, the incident with Gibeon, on one of the occasions they did not explicitly get God’s guidance. However, in at least one of the later battles (Josh 10), Joshua receives merely an assurance of victory, with no specific details about how it is to be done. Given that those details were given in similar earlier passages, it’s possible that Joshua simply did not receive detailed instructions in the later battles.

This sets the pattern for most of the rest of the Old Testament. Other than receiving revelation in dreams, there were two common means of inquiry in Israel: by the priest, or by a prophet.

In the first case, the leading priest with the high priest’s equipment somehow inquired by the special Urim and Thummim. The norm seems to have been that the questioner asked God a specific question and got a succinct response, usually either a yes/no, or a selection from a list of options (Judges 20:18). David’s inquiry about the Ziphites in 1 Sam. 23 seems indicative of this means. At one point, he asks a complex question and only receives an answer to the second part of it, requiring him to ask the first part again, showing limitations in the system. On the bright side, when the priest was available and no sin had been committed (1 Sam 14:37), this seemed a reliable way to get direction ‘on demand’ when the questioner needed it, good for urgent situations. This was likely primarily used by the king, or other important state officials, for national problems. By Ezra’s time, there were no priests available who could use this means, and history indicates that there never were again.

In the second case, one could inquire of a prophet; provided that they were a true prophet and had inspiration, they could give you an answer. This would typically be lengthier and more conversational, and provide details, instructions, and explanations that were lacking from the priestly answers. The only ‘downsides’, as it were, were that it depended on such a prophet being available (which wasn’t always a given), and that the messages didn’t always arrive in a predictable fashion. While there are cases where the prophet responded or prophesied instantly, sometimes those statements were prepared by God in advance (such as Ahijah replying to Jeroboam’s wife). There are other times when it only came during the night, or after some kind of event. When David told Nathan about his desire to build a temple, Nathan didn’t give him an immediate prophetic response, but rather his personal opinion that it sounded like a great idea; he only got the word from God that said otherwise that night, and gave it to David the next day.

The prophets were likely more accessible for most than the priest. In Samuel’s time it was not unheard of to inquire of the ‘seer’ for minor or domestic problems, like missing livestock.

Sometime after Malachi, in accordance with Amos 8:11, there were no active prophets in Yehud/Judaea, especially not any who left a written record. An apocryphal book of Maccabees states outright that there were none in their day, indicating that this was common knowledge. (However, this apparently does not mean that there were no people who heard from God for hundreds of years, or that there were absolutely never any more prophets until John, because Luke states that at the time Jesus was born, Simeon had heard from the Holy Spirit that he would not die without seeing the Christ, and also that Anna was a prophetess.)

Finally, it was also not unheard of to cast lots, a process similar to rolling a die or drawing a paper out of a bag, to determine a course of action. The Proverbs seem to speak on it favorably (in 16:33, and 18:18), and note that its decision ‘comes from the LORD’. The process seemed primarily used in land or position distribution cases where one person’s claim was no better than another’s, although Saul apparently resorted to it when a priestly inquiry failed. The practice also found acceptance among heathens, as shown in Jonah, where the sailors cast lots to determine who was responsible for their plight. There’s no evidence that this was ever a major, much less preferred, means of settling a matter or finding God’s will.

In conclusion to this section about the Old Testament period, it is fair to say that most people during this time did not get regular ongoing instructions from God, and even when they did inquire by the means available, they didn’t always receive exhaustive answers.

How did things happen in the New Testament?

Given that Jesus was fully God and fully man, it is difficult to understand the exact interaction between His dual natures. We know that He lived a sinless life, and was astounding teachers of the law at a young age, so it is surprising to find that He somehow ‘grew in wisdom’, according to Luke. Some knowledge was apparently not made available to Jesus in the earthly sense, as He notes that nobody, not even the Son, knows the time of His return but the Father. But in any case, He commented that He ‘only did what He sees the Father doing’, and that the ‘Father shows Him all He does’.

When Jesus was physically there, He apparently did not give the disciples continuous instructions in the sense of telling them what to do every moment of the day. There were a number of cases where they did receive clear instructions, but more often than not, Jesus seemed more interested in having a dialogue and asking questions to show them the state of their hearts and minds. He does mention that at some point in the future, when they are being prosecuted and persecuted, they should take no thought to what they will say, because the Spirit, not them, would speak through them. He states at one point that after He leaves, the ‘Comforter’ will come, teach them ‘all things’, and ‘bring all things to remembrance’ (in that case, the things Jesus had already said to them). While Jesus spent forty days with them after the resurrection, surprisingly little of it that is recorded is in new instructions.

After the Ascension and before Pentecost, the apostles felt the need to replace Judas with another man who had been with them from the beginning, and couldn’t see anything qualifying one of the candidates over the other. In this case, they resorted to the unusual expedient of casting lots. This apparently resolved their problem, but it’s worth noting there’s no record of any believer doing so again afterwards.

Visions and dreams were still a common means of learning God’s will, agreeing with Joel’s prophecy. Cornelius received a vision of an angel telling him to send men to bring Simon Peter. Peter, before Cornelius’ men came to the house he was staying, he received a certain vision, and apparently reacted the same way, three times. Peter also initially mistook his deliverance from prison for a night vision. Saul encountered Christ in a vision on the way to Damascus. Some years later, after having attempted to go to various places and having been somehow forbidden by the Spirit (by what means is not clear), he had a vision of a Macedonian man which inspired him to take the team to Macedonia. Finally, perhaps the best-known New Testament vision was when John received an intense vision revealing Christ as king, along with many end-time events.

Angels sometimes made appearances, whether in visions or not. Zechariah, Mary, and Joseph all received messages from angels (albeit this was before the church period). Philip received instruction from ‘the angel of the Lord’ telling him to go to the desert (before he met the Ethiopian eunuch). The angel of God appeared to Paul one night while he was on a ship to Rome, giving an assurance that only the ship would be lost. Paul called down a curse on anyone, even ‘an angel from heaven’, who would teach a gospel other than what the church had already been taught.

After Pentecost, although there are a number of cases where God, or the Spirit, speaks, or prevents someone from going somewhere, there’s no indication that the majority of believers received continual instructions from God for their daily lives, in the sense of having every moment spoken for. The need for a council for the decision about whether Gentile converts should be Judaized, and the disputes and mistakes of various apostles seem to prove this point. The fact that Barnabas and Paul could not agree on something, and that this major argument (rather than a mutual agreement) caused them to part ways, indicates that at least one of them, if not both, were not receiving specific guidance for each step of the process in that situation. If the ‘greats’ of the book of Acts, who wrote the New Testament, and in many cases personally saw Jesus, didn’t continually experience this, it seems unreasonable to expect to do much better today. And given the great quantity of explicit teaching, it seems that a major focus of the New Testament is on transformation of the mind and heart with doctrine and principles, not only or even primarily with step-by-step instructions. If this could be true back then, and the believers be in God’s will then, it seems reasonable to expect, given that it’s the same church, that things can’t be different now.

* * *

This exploration caused me difficulty. The logic was there, and had yet to be mathematically refuted, and yet, practical experience (in Scripture, no less) strongly indicated that the conclusions can’t be true. Given the choice between the two, I had to conclude that there was something wrong with the logic, but what that was remained to be seen.

Out of curiosity, I asked Google Gemini to evaluate the logic of these statements, and it hit on a point which I had never noticed before: the weakness of c1, in its assumption that a person can only do ‘one thing’ at a time.

This was based on my understanding gained from scientific reports suggesting that people can only fully concentrate on one thing at a time, so that there is no such thing as true ‘multitasking’. When we appear to be doing several things at once, we are really just rapidly switching between tasks. I was also perhaps influenced by the play of a chess game, in which players make a series of single decisions.

But even if this pattern describes human behavior on some level, it doesn’t do so in a manner that is sufficient to back up the conclusions. We often do two things at once: we can type and think about what we’re about to type at the same time, or we can make a sandwich while contemplating what we’re going to have for dinner. The point can be made that the thought is ‘conscious’ and that the action is more ‘automatic’, but do we claim, then, that the physical activity, taking action on a previous thought, does not count as a ‘thing’ that we are doing? That seems absurd.

We can attempt to salvage it by combining the two, so that ‘one thing’ refers to the totality of what is being performed (all thoughts and actions, collectively), but by doing so, we butcher semantics. Whatever ‘one thing’ may be, it is a crime against language to use it, without qualification or explanation, to refer to a group of actions. If we had meant a group, we should have said so in the first place. But if we did that, we would be allowing that there might be several actions that are not mutually exclusive, and then the argument would be defeated before the first conclusion.

While we still may not know, from this exploration, what God’s will is, we can at least come away knowing something about what it is not: a great mystery that must doom human attempts to follow it.