Warren's Inauguration Prayer

Rick Warren, the pastor of an mega-church in California, was selected by President-Elect Obama to give the prayer at the inauguration. It has stirred some controversy because of Warren's position with respect to gay marriage. Here is a very interesting interview with Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, on the subject.

Living the Dream

Summary from class on October 5, 2008.

What does paradise mean to you?  Many people dream of winning the lottery and enjoying life with millions of dollars in the bank.  No more work to keep you from doing what you want when you want.  Economic freedom which would mean that you wouldn't have to listen to anyone.  Rich people get to do what they want and answer to no one.  Would that be paradise?

Christians have the benefit of knowing what exactly paradise is and what it was meant to be.  In Genesis 2 Moses described God's design of paradise: the Garden of Eden.

Working Paradise.  On a tough day at work in our sinful world, it's not hard to imagine that paradise would mean no job to be done.  We can see Adam sitting around eating grapes and relaxing.  That is not in God's plan.  "The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it."  Before sin entered the world, man was intended to have a job.  Whether you are 20 or 80, work is part of our service to God.  Paul made this point clearly in Collossians 3:23, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men."  Isn't that the key, any job can be satisfying and meaningful if we do it not for men but for God.

For those who are still in the workforce, that means that you should treat your job as being done for the Lord.  When I go to work as a lawyer, I need to think about doing my job the best I can, not to bring glory to myself, but to bring glory to God.  Retired Christians should still be at work.  Many people see retirement as the time that they can focus on pleasing themselves.  That is not what God has in mind for us.  Retirement is a time when Christians can work in the church or performing good deeds which bring glory to God.

Obedient Paradise.  It is natural to think that it would be paradise to live without any rules.  We tend to think that if we only got to do whatever we wanted, we'd be happy.  Remember, God made us and knows what is best for us.  From the very beginning we had rules imposed by God for our good.   "The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.  And the Lord God commanded the man, 'You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; buy you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."  All of God's rules are for our benefit and, if our attitude is right, they are not burdensome.  I John 5:1-4.   God's rules also bring us peace.  Psalms 119:165.  Why wouldn't we want to do the things that God knows are best for us.  

 There you have it.  Paradise as God planned it includes work and following the rules.  Enjoy!

What Does the Creation Story Tell Us About God?

Summary from class on September 28.

With such luminaries as Augustine and Calvin unable to agree on whether the creation story is allegory or should be interpreted in a strictly literal sense, where does that leave us lesser souls?  No matter how you interpret the story, God tells us wonderful and important things about Himself in the first chapter of Genesis.

Creator God.  One thing that we all Christians can agree upon and is that God created it all.  Unlike the creation myths of the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians, Genesis tells us that God created the universe out of nothing.  The first words of the Bible make this clear:  "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."  This most fundamental of facts is the millstone around the neck of naturalism and atheism.  Without God, they have no rational answer for the question of where everything came from.  I suggest that if you are going to debate a naturalist or an atheist, don't waste you time with evolution, go right to the heart of the matter.  Where did it all come from without God to create it?

God is Not Limited by the Instruments He Chooses to Use.  Have you ever noticed that while day and night were created by God on day 1 of the creation story, the sun is not created until day 4?  Also, God created the plants on day 3 before the sun.  How could you have day and night and plants without the sun?  The simple answer is that God does not need the sun to have day and night.  He does not need the sun to make plants grow.  He may use the sun to do such things, but he does not need it.  So what does that mean to me and to you?  It means that the God who promised to take care of us does not need the instruments that we think He needs in order to do that.  If you think God needs you to have money in the bank or a good job in order to provide for you, you are mistaken.  He does not need those instruments of care any more than he needed the sun.  In these uncertain economic times, it is good to know that God can take care of us even if we don't have the things that we think are necessary.

God Sustains All Things.  Like the previous point, this one is based on the fact that day and night and the plants proceeded the sun.  Calvin argued that God performed creation in this order so that we would know that it was Him, and not the sun that really makes the plants grow.  Like the plants, it is God that sustains us in all things.  We may believe that we are responsible for taking care of our families and children.  Of course, we are supposed to work and to strive to do so, but ultimately, we can only trust and rely upon God, and not our own efforts, for sustenance.

Battles about the proper interpretation of Genesis chapter 1 seem to distract us from the meaningful truths about God that are there for our edification.  At the end of time, we will all know the truth about how God created it all, in the meantime, let's focus on what is truly important instead.

We've Been Debating This for How Long?

Is the creation story in Genesis to be interpreted in a straight, literal manner ( six 24 hour days of creation) or was it meant as allegory? Some think the debate over this question arose out of Darwinism, modern geology and the secularization of Western society. They could not be more wrong. The debate is as old a Christianity, and probably Judaism, itself.

I have set forth below a number of quotes from church fathers and Christian scholars about this issue.

Augustine (354-430 AD) said "The Spirit of God who spoke through them did not choose to teach about the heavens to men, as it was of no use for salvation." He also wrote the following in On the Literal Meaning of Genesis:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens,
and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars
and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of
the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and seasons, about the kinds of
animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being
certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.... Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by these who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.

Bruce Walke is a current Christian Hebrew Scholar. He writes in his commentary on Genesis:

One of  the ways in which the text distances itself from a bare facts retelling of the events of creation is its metaphorical language. As soon as we talk about God in heaven, we are in a realm that can only be represented by earthly figures. The narrator must use metaphor and anthropomorphic language so that the reader can comprehend. When the text says that God said, commanded, called, and saw, are we to understand that God has vocal cords, lips, and eyes? Obviously this language is anthropomorphic, representational of the truth that God creates. If the narrator's descriptions of God are anthropomorphic, might not the days and other aspects also be anthropomorphic? The anthropomorphic allows us to enter into and identify with the creation account. The time of creation is presented in the anthropomorphic language of days so that humankind might mime the Creator. Since we cannot participate in vast stretches of time, how else could we imitate the creator, except with finite terms such as a week?

John Calvin took the position that God performed creation in six 24 hour days.  In his commentary on Genesis he wrote:

Here the error of those is manifestly refuted, who maintain that the world was made in a moment.  For it is too violent a cavil to contend that Moses distributes the work which God perfected at once into six days, for the mere purpose of conveying instruction.  Let us rather conclude that God himself took the space of six days, for the purpose of accommodating his works to the capacity of men.

If the great minds of the faith can not resolve this issue, it seems to be reckless on our part to think that scripture requires one reading or the other.  It is best to consider the issue with humility and agree that Bible believing Christians may, in good faith and conscience, disagree on how to interpret this portion of scripture while being true to a literal interpretation of scripture.

You may ask, how could one interpret a portion of scripture as allegory and still be a Bible literalist?  To take the Bible literally means to take it in the author intended.  See Report of the Creation Study Committee  of the Presbyterian Church of America here.  If the author meant it as allegory, then a literalist reads it as such.  Jesus' parable are an example of this.  When Jesus told the parable of the seeds falling on the good ground and the bad, nobody asserts that Jesus was telling a story of something that was really happening.  He was telling a story to illustrate a point.  It would a violation of Biblical literalism to suggest otherwise.

The Evangelical Presbyterian Church does not take a position on the interpretation of the days of Genesis.  The Presbyterian Church of America, another conservative denomination, produced an 84 page report in 2000 to say that it was not taking a position on the issue.  See the link to the report above.  

I humbly suggest that the answer to this question is not an essential of the faith.  If it is not an essential, then there is liberty to hold different views and no one should be dogmatic in their assertion of their own view.