The Revisionist Bible

Thoughts on the Sabbath School Lesson fr 1.19.13

Once upon a time, the world happened, possibly with the help of some Higher Being. Finally, men and women came along. They began to worship the Higher Being and to tell and to write down stories about It (the Higher Being). In some of the stories, the Higher Being was called God. One of the stories described how some of the people thought God created the world and all the animals and people in six days. Another story was about a flood that God sent when the people weren’t paying enough attention to Him.     After that the stories were about lots of people who tried to do the right things to make God happy but they kept messing up so He gave them a set of rules that they had to follow. There are stories about wars and people who were good and people who were not.  The people wrote some poems to God. Some people wrote about things they said God told them were going to happen in the future.

After a long time, a baby named Jesus was born and he grew up and was a good man. He made some of the people who believed in God so angry that they killed him. But some people thought he was sent by God and they worshiped him and wrote about the things Jesus said and did while he was on Earth. Finally the people wrote a book about how God would get revenge on all the people who didn’t follow His rules. The End.

I just found out that Thomas Jefferson actually put together his own version of the Gospels. He called it, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. What he did was, he took six bibles – two in English, two in French and two that were in Greek and Latin. Then he actually cut passages out of the Gospels and pasted them back in another book, in chronological order. He put the same passages in English, French, Latin and Greek next to each other so he could compare them.

The final book, called The Jefferson Bible, is 86 pages long and is still around. The Smithsonian bought it from Jefferson’s great-granddaughter in 1895 for the huge sum of $400.

Pretty cool, right? Well, it was a good idea. But what Jefferson actually did while he was cutting and pasting was take out everything except 

“those parts that can be identified through reason and thought, … So out goes [sic] the miracles, out goes [sic] the resurrections and what remains is what he thinks is the life and morals of Jesus, the true teachings."
Jefferson even changed the grammar at one point. “On one page, he apparently didn't like the number of prepositions in a verse from Matthew that started, ‘For as in the days that were before the flood ...’ He cut out the word ‘as,’ changing the scripture to ‘For in the days that were before the flood ..."[1]

Here’s the whole text: 

“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only. But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.” Matthew 24:36-39

I don’t know, maybe leaving out a word here or there isn’t that big of a deal, but leaving out anything that can’t be “identified through reason and thought?” (Well, right off the bat, I object to the assertion that things that require faith exclude both reason and thought, but that’s a whole different article.)

What was Jefferson really trying to do though? The same thing people have been trying to do since just about right after the Fall. He was trying to take the “Godness” out of God.

If God is just a social construct (something that humans made up) and Jesus was just a really good guy, then we don’t have to believe in anything hard like a real six day creation, a catastrophic flood, a virgin birth, or a resurrection. If we can look at the Bible as a compilation of some really good stories that teach some good lessons, then we don’t have to believe anything that makes us uncomfortable like the Ten Commandments or a final accounting for the way we’ve lived our lives. We don’t have to be changed by a relationship with the God who made us … because, “if we admit that He made us,” as a friend of mine said, “we have to admit that He can tell us what to do – He has a right to be interested/involved in our lives.” That makes a whole lot of people really uncomfortable.

The truth is, whether we like it or not – whether we can understand it or not, the Bible is true. God created the world in six days and rested on the Sabbath. If we discount the Genesis account of Creation, then what’s to stop us from discounting any other part of the Bible that we can’t understand? And, once we start cutting and pasting only the parts we can understand, we’ll find that we’ve cut out God. After that, there’s nothing left.  

“God is the foundation of everything. All true science is in harmony with his works; all true education leads to obedience to his government. Science opens new wonders to our view; she soars high, and explores new depths; but she brings nothing from her research that conflicts with divine revelation. Ignorance may seek to support false views of God by appeals to science; but the book of nature and the written word shed light upon each other. We are thus led to adore the Creator, and to have an intelligent trust in his word.” E.G. White, Christian Education, p 196

"In the beginning [before all time] was the Word (Christ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God Himself. He was present originally with God. All things were made and came into existence through Him; and without Him was not even one thing made that has come into being. In Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of men.  And the Light shines on in the darkness, for the darkness has never overpowered it [put it out or absorbed it or appropriated it, and is unreceptive to it]." John 1:1-5AMP

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[1] Sally Holland, “Saving Thomas Jefferson's scrapbook Bible,” CNN, http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/11/thomas-jeffersons-scrapbook-bible/

Loving the Fence

Thoughts on the Sabbath School Lesson for 12.8.12

Have you ever seen those dogs who can go outside with their people and they don’t need a leash or a fence? They just stay right in their yard or beside their person. We had a dog like that once. He was a border collie and his name was Shadow. He knew exactly where our (unfenced) yard stopped and didn’t stray from it unless he was walking beside one of us. It was a beautiful thing. Many years later my family owned a beautiful Boxer named Bach. He didn’t understand the concept of “yard.” He understood running, everywhere.

Well, after trying to teach him the boundaries of our yard, we read about something called an invisible fence. Have you ever heard of it? It consists of a length of wire that is attached to a transformer much like a regular electrified fence, except that the wire is buried. The dog then wears a collar that has a little sensor on it that will give the dog a shock when he gets near the wire. The idea is that the dog will learn to stay away from the wire to avoid the shock and learn the boundaries of the area in which he is allowed to run.

Yeah, well, that didn’t work for Bach. I’m sure there are lots of dogs who have lived their lives successfully within their invisible fence, but not Bach. Oh sure, he didn’t like the shock that he would get when he crossed the wire, but he learned very quickly (so we knew he wasn’t completely stupid) that the shock only lasted a couple of seconds and then he was free on the other side. So, if he saw something outside his “yard,” like the little neighbor girl calling him, he’d take a running start and take the shock. Now coming back home was more of a challenge. Once we’d go get the leash and fetch him home, he seemed to know exactly where the wire boundary was and would whimper and resist going back over the same wire he gladly took the shock from a few minutes before. We still have the wire and transformer if anybody’s interested.

Anyway, so we finally had to actually fence in our backyard. You’d think Bach would have been satisfied – he had a full fenced acre where he could romp and chase things – but no. We had to sneak out the front door and make sure it was always closed tightly behind us because he never stopped trying to run out the front door. Bringing groceries was a challenge.

The weird thing was, he really wasn’t interested in running away so much because if you left him alone and the front door open, pretty soon he’d come back in. If you tried to encourage him to come back in before he was ready, on the other hand, he’d run farther away…he loved to be chased. (Infuriating)

Anyway, later in his life he discovered that he could dig his way under our chain link fence and escape that way. (Who ever thought an 85 lb. dog would be able to dig under a fence?) We spent a lot of time finding and filling in his escape holes.

The funny thing was, he almost always escaped from our yard into another fenced lot. He thought he was free, but he was still fenced in. He just wasn’t in his own yard anymore.

I miss Bach even though he was an infuriating dog, but I learned some important lessons from his Houdini like behavior.

1. There are boundaries everywhere, even if we can’t see them.

2. The boundaries were put there to keep us safe and happy.

3. Things outside of our boundaries will call to us.

4. Getting outside our boundaries sometimes takes quite a bit of work.

5. Being outside our boundaries is often not as much fun as we thought it would be. 

6. Sometimes, when we think we’re free, we’re just fenced in as we were before but by a different set of boundaries.

7. Coming back home sometimes seems more painful than leaving.

8. No matter how many times we escape, Someone will always be looking for us. He may not chase us, but His door will always be open for us to come home.

God gave us a set of boundaries, the Ten Commandments. From everything I’ve heard and read, God, Himself lives within the boundaries set by the Ten Commandments along with all of Heaven. 

“The law of God is the foundation of his Government in Heaven and in earth, …” (E.G. White, Signs of the Times, March 30, 1888, graph 7)

Doesn’t that mean that the same rules God gave us here on earth apply to Heaven as well? What if we don’t like the rules? If we feel trapped by them here, wouldn’t we feel trapped by them there? I say yes, what about you?

Although we know that our entrance into Heaven is not dependent on our ability to keep the Ten Commandments, our enjoyment of Heaven is.

“By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.” 1 John 5:2-3

“His commandments are not grievous.” Hm, That’s kind of the same as saying, we won’t hate them, right? Well, the writers of the Psalms go even farther than that.

“And I will delight myself in thy commandments, which I have loved. My hands also will I lift up unto thy commandments, which I have loved; and I will meditate in thy statutes.” Psalm 119:47-48

Can you honestly claim that you delight in God’s commandments? Are you like my dog, Bach, always trying to find a way over, under or through the fences that God has placed around us for our own safety and protection? 

God has shown us the boundaries of Heaven. Jesus died to make sure that anyone who wants to can live within those boundaries with Him. 

The Ten Commandments give us a picture of Heaven – a place where sin does not exist, where Satan can no longer touch us, and where we’ll be able to talk with Jesus face to face.

“For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that He [even] gave up His only begotten (unique) Son, so that whoever believes in (trusts in, clings to, relies on) Him shall not perish (come to destruction, be lost) but have eternal (everlasting) life. For God did not send the Son into the world in order to judge (to reject, to condemn, to pass sentence on) the world, but that the world might find salvation and be made safe and sound through Him.” John 3:16-17AMP

Who Are You? Hoo Hoo – Hoo Hoo

Thoughts on the Sabbath School Lesson for  7.9.11

Pretty much from the moment Adam and Eve listened to the serpent, God has had to demonstrate who He is.  Every now and then we get it, but it’s like the Camelot thing – “one brief shining moment” – and then, POOF! it’s gone.

I mean, Adam and Eve had it for a little while, and then Eve got distracted and started listening to the serpent. Enoch got it, and managed to hang on.  Noah and his family seemed to understand who God was, right up until the time they got off the ark.  Things went haywire again.

The book of Genesis tells one story after another about the trouble people had hanging on to any understanding of who God is.  By the time Moses meets God at the burning bush, most folks really didn’t have any idea who God was.  Thankfully, Moses understood, so God took him back to start the arduous process of re-introducing Him to the Children of Israel.

 

The Children of Israel proved to be very difficult to teach (not unlike us), but God didn’t quit trying.  He used miracles, manna, water from rocks, pheasants, and the Ten Commandments.

Yes, you read that right.  I believe the Ten Commandments are God’s self-portrait, maybe even His autobiography.  I believe that they say more about Him than they do about us.

Now, I know lots of folks are going to disagree with me.  Most people who think of the Ten Commandments at all, think of them as a list of restrictions that God put out so He could catch people breaking the rules and then punish them.  Or, probably more accurately, rules that some people threw together to control other people. 

In fact, Haddon Robinson implies that if there were no rules, people wouldn’t think to break them. 

“The law can prompt us to sin. I am told that several years ago a high-rise hotel was built in Galveston, Texas, overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, they sank pilings into the gulf and built the structure out over the water. When the hotel was about to have its grand opening, someone thought, What if people decide to fish out the hotel windows? So they placed signs in the hotel rooms, "No fishing out the hotel windows." Many people ignored the signs, however, and it created a difficult problem. Lines got snarled. People in the dining room saw fish flapping against the picture windows. The manager of the hotel solved it all by taking down those little signs. No one checks into a hotel room thinking about fishing out of the windows. The law, although well-intentioned, created the problem.”[1]

Is Robinson really saying that the Ten Commandments are what make us sin?  That’s what it seems like to me, but I could be wrong.  I’d love to know what you think.

On the other hand, there’s Randy Cohen who’s comments seem to imply that people only need a suggestion of the appropriate behavior.

“In New York at 33rd and Broadway, it's a big transportation hub. Penn Station's right there. A lot of commuter trains stop there, a major subway stop. Thousands and thousands of people pouring out…and what everybody wants more than anything else is: They want a taxi.
“And the most appalling episodes of violence I've seen since I've been here—and I've been in New York for 30 years—were committed there. People did just terrible things.
“Then about 10 years ago, someone—I guess, the Taxi and Limousine Commission—they did something very simple. They painted a yellow strip down the sidewalk and they stenciled two words on the sidewalk: Cab Line. It utterly transformed behavior there. It's the most astonishing thing. Nearly everyone, almost all the time, simply waits in line. It's magnificent. It's never enforced—there are no "line" police there. But we changed the physical conditions and made it possible for people to behave, invited them to behave, and they do![2]

The thing is, that however we feel about them as rules, I believe that the Ten Commandments are the clearest representation that the people who lived between Eden and Jesus had of just who God is. 

“You shall have no other gods before me.”  Exodus 20:3 God is loyal to His people and asks for theirs in return.  “and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”  Matthew 28:20

“You shall not make for yourself an image…” Exodus 20:4  God knows how fruitless it is for us to put our faith in anything other than the God who created us.  He wants to spare us the heartbreak that would inevitable come from worshiping the wrong thing.

“You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God…”  Exodus 20:7 God respects and values every human being who has ever or will ever live, regardless of gender, wealth or race.  He wants to teach us how to extend that respect to each other by learning to respect Him.

“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.”  Exodus 20:8 God has put time with us on His calendar.  He knows He can spend time together anytime, but He wants to make sure we have that fenced off, uninterrupted time together so we don’t grow apart.

“Honor your father and your mother,…”  Exodus 20:12 God wanted us to experience the relationship that He has with Jesus and the Holy Spirit – individuals who are unified by their love for one another.

 “You shall not murder.  You shall not commit adultery.  You shall not steal.  You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.”  Exodus 20:13-16 God wants everyone to know that each of us is valuable to Him.  When we injure each other, whether it’s physically or emotionally, He experiences that pain too.  His heart is broken when our hearts are broken.

“You shall not covet…”  Exodus 20:17 God longs to give us the desires of our hearts, but if we allow ourselves to want wrong things, He can’t give them to us.  When our hearts are aligned with His, we will want only what He can give us.

The Ten Commandments can’t just be rules to us or we’ll begin to worship the rules and not the Ruler of the Universe.  Rules for the sake of having rules are about power and control.  The Ten Commandments are about love and protection.  If you think about it, the Ten Commandments are the rules of Heaven.  If they feel like bondage now, how will they feel for eternity? 

Satan works really hard to make sure that people believe that the Ten Commandments are God’s way of controlling the population of Heaven; that they’re the barbed wire around eternity.  He wants us to feel pricked and chafed by them.  But that’s not what God intended.  He wants us all there.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  John 3:16

The question is, do you want to be with Jesus for eternity?  I do. 

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[1] Haddon Robinson, Biblical Preaching (Baker Academic, 2001), p. 100

[2] From an interview with Randy Cohen, "Jesus Has a Lot of Explaining to Do!" Homiletics (September/October 2004) p. 67