A Poem for this Present Crisis

James Russell Lowell was one of the great literateurs of the last half of the 19th century, and he is still well worth reading today. I was struck by how appropriate his poem "This Present Crisis" speaks to our country at war in Iraq today just as well as it did in the dark days of the Civil War. Meditate on the following, especially the last two stanzas.

This poem is based on Russell's understanding of the freedom God desires for human beings from the things that bewitch, bother and bewilder us. Here is a portion of what he said in the poem, “The Present Crisis”

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,

In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;

Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,

Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right,

And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand,

Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land?

Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 't is Truth alone is strong,

And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng

Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong.

Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see,

That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion's sea;

Not an ear in court or market for the low, foreboding cry

Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fly;

Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by.

Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record

One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word;

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

………………

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;

They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth;

Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be,

Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,

Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key.

A Church Home for the Homeless

What a novel concept. Church not merely as a place for the homeless to get basic life services, but church as a worship experience for the poor and homeless. The story is in this morning's NY Times. Here's the link--http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/06/us/06homeless.html?th&emc=th

This is a story about taking church outdoors because the homeless and street people often will not come inside a church for worship. The remarkable thing about it, is that it is working. Sponsored mainly by Episcopal Churches in various large cities, they are taking the singing, homilies, and Eucharist to the streets. And interestingly, people are lining up to participate. It appears that if you will go to them and show up in a environment where they are comfortable much can be accomplished when it comes to the poor, the homeless, the addicts, and the prostitutes.

Tony Campolo tells a story about when he was in Honolulu to do a Christian event, and late one night could not sleep. So he goes to the local greasy spoon at about 3 a.m. The waiter has a dirty apron on, and Tony orders bad coffee and a doughnut.

The overweight waiter who is also the owner slaps it on a plate and then wipes his hand on his apron. Not long there after all these women come into the place. Its the local prostitutes. They sit on either side of Tony, some 8 of them sitting on stools and they start talking as if he is not there. The one to his left is named Agnes. The girl on his right is ragging on Agnes and teasing her. Agnes makes the mistake of saying that tomorrow is her birthday. "No big deal" says the other girl, "we all have them." Agnes says "Yeah, you're right no big deal. I've never had a birthday party anyway." Eventually the girls get up and leave.

Tony asks the owner--

"Do those girls come in here every night?"

"Yep", says Marty the owner, "why do you ask?"

"Well, what would you think about having a birthday party for Agnes tomorrow night right here, same time? I'll go get the cake in the morning."

Marty calls he wife in the back-- "Hey Louise, this guy thinks we should have a birthday party for Agnes... what do you think?" Well turns out they both think its a nice thing to do.

Marty says to Tony: "No way are you buying the cake. I'm making it."

"Fine" says Tony, "I'll get the balloons and stuff."

Well the day comes and goes, and Tony shows up at 3 again. They decorate the diner, and out comes a nice sheet with Happy Birthday Agnes on it and lots of candles. These girls are all in their late 30s and 40s. Sure enough they show up at 3:30 sharp, and Tony and the owners say "Surprise Agnes", and start singing Happy Birthday to you, and bring out the cake.

Well, Agnes is stunned, having never had a birthday celebration before. Marty says " Blow out the candles."

Tony interrupts and says "Wait, if you don't mind I'd like to say a prayer first for Agnes." And so he does--- thanking God for Agnes life and saying that she is a person of sacred worth created in God's image.

There is an awkward pause, and then Marty says again "Blow out the candles and cut the cake." But Agnes is crying and says, "Could I wait just a bit on cutting the cake? I'd like to take it down the block to my Mom's and show it to her first."

"Sure," says Marty, "It's your cake."

No sooner does she leave then Marty says to Tony, "Hey I didn't know you were a minister. You didn't tell us you were gonna get all religious. What kind of church do you serve?"

"A church where prostitutes are welcome", says Tony.

"Nah", says Marty, "There's ain't a church like that, because if there was I'd go there. I'd feel welcome to.

"Honest" says Tony, "You could come to my church, Jesus loves everybody and accepts them and starts with them where they are."

Well, turns out Tony is right. There are some churches where the homeless and the drug addicts and the street people and the prostitutes are all welcome. But sometimes you have to take it to the streets to serve them and help them worship the only God there is-- who is their God too.

We Are the Light of the World-- But Who Changed the Bulb?

How many Presbyterians does it take to change a
light bulb? None. God has pre-ordained when the lights will be on and
when they will be off.

How many Catholics does it take to change a
light bulb? None. They always use candles.

How many Episcopalians does it take to change a light bulb??
Ten. One to actually change the bulb, and nine to say
how much better they liked the old one.

How many Methodists does it take to change a light bulb??
"We choose not to make a statement either in favor of or against the need for a light
bulb. However, if in your own journey, you have found that a light bulb
works for you, that is fine. You are invited to write a poem or compose
a modern dance about your personal relationship to your light bulb and
present it next month at our annual light bulb Sunday service, in which
we will explore a number of light bulb traditions, including
incandescent, fluorescent, three-way, long-life and tinted, all of which
are equally valid paths to luminescence through Jesus Christ."

How many Baptists does it take to change a light bulb???? CHANGE ????????????

The Martyrdom of the Zebedee Brothers

Just before the final passion prediction of Jesus in Mk. 10.45, and after the Mount of Transfiguration episode we find the story of the Zebedee boys' request for the box seats in the Kingdom, on either side of Jesus when he comes into his glory (Mk. 10.35-40). Jesus tells them that it is not for him to grant them such seats, but he predicts the following: "You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with." Jesus is of course referring to his death, indeed a death as punishment for his beliefs and witness. In other words, a martyrological death. Did this prediction of Jesus come true?

Well this question is at least half way easy to answer. While Stephen may have been the first Christian martyr, he was not the only one. Notice that already in Acts 4. 3 we hear about the seizing of Peter and John and the putting of them in jail, awaiting trial before the Sanhedrin. These two men witnessed boldly and were released. But this was only a foreshadowing of the trouble that was to come. According to Acts 5.18 the Jewish authorities later arrested "the apostles" plural. They escape by miraculous means, but Peter and these apostles are brought before the authorities again at 5.29 to stop them from preaching in the Temple precincts. On this occasion the apostles, including Peter were flogged, warned and released (5.40). The pattern of increasing violence against Christian leaders was clear. This story is followed shortly thereafter by the story in Acts 6-7 of Stephen's martyrdom. But again this is hardly the end of the story.

Acts 8.1-3 says that Stephen's martyrdom led the young Saul, the over-zealous Pharisee to begin a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem "and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judaea and Samaria". It is added that Saul went from house to house beginning to destroy what was left of the church and dragging Christians off to prison, both men and women. Well now if all were scattered but the apostles, then these men and women were apostles. No doubt some of them lost their lives in the venture. And of course Saul thereafter, not content with destroying the church in Jerusalem headed off to Damascus, and was to return to Jerusalem only much later as a changed man.

This brings us to Acts 12. In 12.1-3 we hear about the seizing of "James the brother of John" who is executed by King Herod (Agrippa presumably). This event transpires sometime in the 40s. James Zebedee is put to death by the sword, thus fulfilling the prediction of Jesus, and it is noteworthy that John Zebedee who is mentioned briefly in the company of Peter in Acts 8.14 as going down to Samaria to check out Philip's work, but after that we hear nothing of the man, except his return to Jerusalem (vs. 25). It is like he fell off the planet after that.

At least in the case of Peter, we are told in Acts 12 that he went to another place, and he returns in Acts 15 for the Council meeting of A.D. 50. Notable for their absence is any reference to John at that meeting. Equally notable is the absence of any reference to John when Paul talks about "the apostles, the brothers of Jesus,and Cephas" in 1 Cor. 9.5. Yet John had been one of the inner circle of three within the Twelve. Where was he, if neither Acts nor Paul mentions him at all after Acts 8.14,25 which surely refers to an event in the late 30s? In my view it is likely that he was already martyred before the 50s, just as Jesus had predicted, and as had happened to his brother James. But when?

It is a mistake to build too much of an argument on silence, namely the absence of John from Acts 9-28, and his total absence from Paul's letters the first of which was written about A.D. 49. So we must look for clues. In Gal. 1.13 Paul admits that he had violently persecuted the church of God in Jerusalem and Judea and tried to destroy it. The report in Gal. 1.23 finds the churches in Judea hearing the report, but being leery of the man who formerly persecuted them.

Scholars have sometimes wondered at the emotional language of 1 Tim. 1.13. Paul has been saying that he is grateful for appointing him an apostle. Then he says "Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man." He then adds in vs. 15 that Jesus came into the world to save sinner "of whom I am the worst." What could he possibly be talking about? After all, if 1 Timothy is by Paul, which I have argued it is (though I think Luke wrote down these letters for him), can this be the same Paul who says in Phil. 3.6 that he was faultless under the Law when it came to righteousness?

I think we do know what he is referring to. The one thing that Paul constantly, early and late says he most regrets in life is his persecution, indeed violence against the Jerusalem and Judeaen Church. If Acts 8.1-3 is accurate, this means against the apostles. The man who stood as witness for Stephen's stoning, thereafter took matters into his own hands. Notice that what Jesus accuses Saul of in the Damascus road encounter is "persecuting me" (Acts 9, 22,26).

At Acts 22.4 we find the smoking gun. Paul admits "I persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them in prison." Acts 26.10 says that Paul voted for execution of the apostles, both men and women (see Acts 8.1-3 again) when he was a Pharisaic member of the Sanhedrin. The words 'to death' occurs in both Acts 22 and 26, not just persecution.

If we put all these pieces together it appears likely that Paul was the instigator of the demise of several apostles in the 30s before his conversion. One of them may well have been John. Acts 8.25 tells us, in the same chapter as Acts 8.1-3, that Peter and John returned to Jerusalem from Samaria. John would never be heard from again.

If then, finally we turn to John 21, we may have some new light to shed on the ending of that Gospel. As you know by now, I do not think that the Beloved Disciple was John son of Zebedee. The Beloved Disciple lived to a ripe old age, so old he calls himself 'the old man' in 2 John and 3 John. So old, that his followers thought he would not die until Jesus came back.

Now notice the dramatic difference in John 21.18-25 in the way the demise of Peter is referred to as opposed to the demise of the Beloved Disciple. In regard to Peter, Jesus predicts he will be taken captive (vs. 18) and the Evangelist tells us that this was the precursor to martyrdom (vs. 19). But about the Beloved Disciple Jesus predicted no such martyrdom. In fact Jesus is recorded as saying to Peter "If I want him to remain alive until I come, what is that to you?" And this saying is precisely what led to the rumor, a rumor still alive during the last 2 decades of the first century, that the Beloved Disciple would not die until Jesus came back. The reason for the casuistry and painful exegesis in vs. 23 is of course because the BD had finally died, but Jesus had not yet come back.

Now I put it to you this way. Jesus predicted the martyrdom of James and John, the Zebedee boys. He not only didn't predict the martyrdom of the Beloved Disciple, he even offered a saying that suggested to some Johannine Christians that he might live until the Second Coming! These two predictions are not commensurate and surely cannot refer to the same person, unless you are prepared to say Jesus was a false prophet on one or the other of these occasions. I am not prepared to go there.

This side of glory, we will never know for sure what happened to John Zebedee. My best guess is that Paul is the one who took him captive, and he was executed on Paul's vote and that of others in Jerusalem, suffering the same fate his brother did later under Herod Agrippa in the 40s. This really caused Paul to get emotional later in life, and to appreciate all the more the grace Jesus had shown him. This explains John's absence from Acts 15 and so many other texts written from A,D.49 on until the end of the NT period. Here we have more evidence to support my theory that the BD was certainly not John son of Zebedee.

A No Brainer-- The Joke of the Day

I was once told I had a brain like Einstein's.

I thought--- "Wow what a nice compliment."

Then the guy said:

"Its been dead since 1956".

The Latest God Moment in Kentucky-- Rescued by an Angel

I must admit Kentucky is a strange place to live, even for someone who comes from the nearby state of North Carolina.

Kentucky is the state which still brings you snake handling churches, as a fulfillment of the so-called long ending of Mark 16 (the bit that comes after Mk. 16.8), which we now know was no part of the original text of Mark's Gospel. But that is a story for another day. To give you the flavor of some of Kentucky consider the following story told by a Methodist bishop.

Bishop Duffy once told me about what it was like to minister in Appalachia, in eastern Kentucky in the Red Bird Missionary Conference where 'Christian weird' is an everyday experience. He tells the story of sending two young men from that region to seminary at Candler. They were back woods boys called into ministry whilst still rough and ready-- actually more rough, than ready.

Before the fall was out Dean Cannon wrote Bishop Duffy and said he was going to have to send these boys back as they were making D's and D-s. Bishop Duffy protested and said " Don't you dare send those boys back before graduation. I've got some D and D- churches here in these hills that need them!" Well, Kentucky is in some parts and in some ways a little shy of plumb. You get the picture.

So, I am always on the look out for strange religious phenomena in Kentucky, and prepared for most anything. I have to confess however, even I was not prepared for the serendipity that happened in Morehead Kentucky earlier this week, which made the evening news a couple of days ago.

Seems that a nice Christian lady was cruising along in her PT Cruiser (a recent gift from her loving husband) on a narrow road next to a deep stream or river in an isolated rather desolate spot near Morehead. She was minding her own business when she skidded, over corrected, and ended up in the swollen stream, her car sinking fast. Now this nice lady cannot swim, but she does know how to call upon the name of the Lord, which she did-- in earnest as she was going down fast!

She managed to get the window rolled down and force herself out the window and into the stream. It was icy cold, she couldn't swim but somehow she dog paddled her way to the edge and dragged herself up on the shore. She was freezing to death, it was dark, and the road was not heavily traveled. She muttered something to Jesus about please send someone, an angel to help her or she would freeze to death. It's been in the teens and lower around Morehead this week.

Suddenly she saw some car lights coming down her side of the road, and she staggered out to the edge of the road frantically waving her arms for help.

Sure enough, this first car stopped and it was someone who knew her, a man whose name was-- wait for it--- Angel! Yep, that's his last name. Brother Angel picked her up, took her to her house in town, and she is doing fine just now, minus one new PT cruiser. The Lord moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.

I am just wondering whether Rom. 8.28 might be an apt verse to reflect on just now, on how God does work things together for good for those who love him and call on his name. Just occasionally we get a picture of how God is working things out in our daily lives. Its worth remembering those images when the dark days come.

John Muir put it like this-- We look at life from the back side of the tapestry, and what we normally see is loose threads, knots, tangled warp and woof. But occasionally the light shines brightly through the tapestry and we get a glimpse of the larger design, how the darks and lights are woven together. Amen, give us that glimpse now and again.

What Have They Done with Jesus? An Online conversation with the Author

Here's an invitation for those of you who are interested to join our online conversation about my recent book What Have They Done with Jesus? The link is here to begin with---www.conversewithscholars.org. The time of the interview is at 9 p.m. eastern tomorrow night--- Thursday Jan 31. Ya'll Come.

Was Lazarus the Beloved Disciple?

If you want to cause Biblical scholars to get their knickers in a knot there are two sure fire ways to accomplish that end: 1) you can skewer a sacred cow whether a liberal or conservative one; 2) you can propose a theory that requires one to believe in the possibility of the miraculous to even entertain the thesis. If you can accomplish both with one theory, well, you've created a Mallox moment! I seem to accomplished this at the last SBL meeting in November when I gave the following lecture. I'll let you decide whether you find it illuminating or inflammatory. Flame On!

THE HISTORICAL FIGURE OF THE BELOVED DISCIPLE IN THE 4TH GOSPEL

I. The problem with the traditional ascription of this Gospel to John Zebedee

Martin Hengel and Graham Stanton among other scholars have reminded us in recent discussions of the Fourth Gospel that the superscripts to all four of the canonical Gospels were in all likelihood added after the fact to the documents, indeed they may originally have been added as document tags to the papyrus rolls. Even more tellingly they were likely added only after there were several familiar Gospels for the phrase ‘according to….’ is used to distinguish this particular Gospel from other well known ones.

This means of course that all four Gospels are formally anonymous and the question then becomes how much weight one should place on internal evidence of authorship (the so-called inscribed author) and how much on external evidence. In my view, the internal evidence should certainly take precedence in the case of the Gospel of John, not least because the external evidence is hardly unequivocal. This does not alleviate the necessity of explaining how the Gospel came to be ascribed to someone named John, but we will leave that question to the end of our discussion.
As far as the external evidence goes it is true enough that there were various church fathers in the second century that though John son of Zebedee was the author. There was an increasing urgency about this conclusion for the mainstream church after the middle of the second century because the Fourth Gospel seems to have been a favorite amongst the Gnostics, and therefore, apostolic authorship was deemed important if this Gospel was to be rescued from the heterodox. Irenaeus, the great heresiarch, in particular around A.D. 180 stressed that this Gospel was written in Ephesus by one of the Twelve--- John. It is therefore telling that this seems not to have been the conclusion of perhaps our very earliest witness—Papias of Hierapolis who was surely in a location and in a position to know something about Christianity in the provenance of Asia at the beginning of the second century A.D. Papias ascribes this Gospel to one elder John, whom he distinguishes presumably from another John and it is only the former that he claims to have had personal contact with. Eusebius in referring to the Preface to Papias’ five volume work stresses that Papias only had contact with an elder John and one Aristion, not with John of Zebedee (Hist. Eccl. 3.39-3-7) who is distinguished by Eusebius himself from the John in question. It is notable as well that Eusebius reminds us that Papias reflects the same chiliastic eschatology as is found in the book of Revelation, something which Eusebius looks askance at. Eusebius is clear that Papias only knew the ‘elders’ who had had contact with the ‘holy apostles’ not the ‘holy apostles’ themselves. Papias had heard personally what Aristion and the elder John were saying, but had only heard about what the earlier apostles had said.

As most scholars have now concluded, Papias was an adult during the reign of Trajan and perhaps also Hadrian and his work that Eusebius cites should probably be dated to about A.D. 100 (see the ABD article on Papias), which is to say only shortly after the Fourth Gospel is traditionally dated. All of this is interesting in several respects. In the first place Papias does not attempt to claim too much, even though he has great interest in what all the apostles and the Twelve have said. His claim is a limited one of having heard those who had been in contact with such eyewitnesses. In the second place, he is writing at a time and in a place where he ought to have known who it was that was responsible for putting together the Fourth Gospel, and equally clearly he reflects the influence of the millennial theology we find only clearly in the Book of Revelation in the NT and not for example in the Fourth Gospel. This suggests that the John he knew and had talked with was John of Patmos, and this was the same John who had something to do with the production of the Fourth Gospel. It is significant that Hengel after a detailed discussion in his The Johannine Question concludes that this Gospel must be associated with the elder John who was not the same as John son of Zebedee. More on this in due course. As I have stressed, while Papias’ testimony is significant and early we must also give due weight to the internal evidence in the Fourth Gospel itself, to which we will turn shortly. One more thing. Papias Fragment 10.17 has now been subjected to detailed analysis by M. Oberweis (NovT 38 1996), and Oberweis, rightly in my judgment draws the conclusion that Papias claimed that John son of Zebedee died early as a martyr like his brother (Acts 12.2). This counts against both the theory that John of Patmos was John of Zebedee and the theory that the latter wrote the Fourth Gospel. But I defer to my friend and colleague Richard Bauckham whose new book is a wealth of information about Papias and his conclusion is right--- we should take very seriously what Papias says. He knew what he was talking about in regard to both the earliest and latest of the Gospels.

II. The growing recognition of the Judean provenance and character of this Gospel

Andrew Lincoln in his new commentary on the Gospel of John has concluded that the Beloved Disciple was a real person and “a minor follower of Jesus during his Jerusalem ministry” (p. 22). While Lincoln sees the BD traditions as added to the Gospel as small snippets of historical tradition added to a larger core that did not come from this person, he draws this conclusion about the Beloved Disciple’s provenance for a very good reason—he does not show up at all in this Gospel in the telling of the Galilean ministry stories, and on the other hand he seems to be involved with and know personally about Jesus’ ministry in and around Jerusalem.

One of the things which is probably fatal to the theory that John son of Zebedee is the Beloved Disciple and also the author of this entire document is that none, and I do mean none, of the special Zebedee stories are included in the Fourth Gospel (e.g. the calling of the Zebedees by Jesus, their presence with Jesus in the house where Jesus raised Jairus’ daughter, the story of the Transfiguration, and also of the special request for special seats in Jesus’ kingdom when it comes, and we could go on). In view of the fact that this Gospel places some stress on the role of eyewitness testimony (see especially Jn. 19-21) it is passing strange that these stories would be omitted if this Gospel was by John of Zebedee, or even if he was its primary source. It is equally strange that the Zebedees are so briefly mentioned in this Gospel as such (see Jn. 21.2) and John is never equated with the Beloved Disciple even in the appendix in John 21 (cf. vs. 2 and 7-- the Beloved Disciple could certainly be one of the two unnamed disciples mentioned in vs. 2).

Also telling is the fact that this Gospel includes none or almost none of the special Galilean miracle stories found in the Synoptics with the exception of the feeding of the 5,000/walking on water tandem. The author of this document rather includes stories like the meeting with Nicodemus, the encounter with the Samaritan woman, the healing of the blind man, the healing of the cripple by the pool, and the raising of Lazarus and what all these events have in common is that none of them transpired in Galilee. When we couple this with the fact that our author seems to have some detailed knowledge about the topography in and around Jerusalem and the historical particulars about the last week or so of Jesus’ life (e.g. compare the story of the anointing of Jesus by Mary of Bethany in John to the more generic Markan account), it is not a surprise that Lincoln and others reflect a growing trend recognizing the Judean provenance of this Gospel. Recognition of this provenance clears up various difficulties not the least of which is the lack of Galilean stories in general in this Gospel and more particularly the lack of exorcism tales, none of which, according to the Synoptics, are said to have occurred in Jerusalem or Judea. Furthermore, there is absolutely no emphasis or real interest in this Gospel in the Twelve as Twelve or as Galileans. If the author is a Judean follower of Jesus and is not one of the Twelve, and in turn is sticking to the things he knows personally or has heard directly from eyewitnesses this is understandable. This brings us to the question of whom this Beloved Disciple might have been.


III. The "one whom Jesus loved"--- the first mention--- Jn 11 or Jn 13?

It has been common in Johannine commentaries to suggest that the Beloved Disciple as a figure in the narrative does not show up under that title before John 13. While this case has been argued thoroughly, it overlooks something very important. This Gospel was written in an oral culture for use with non-Christians as a sort of teaching tool to lead them to faith. It was not intended to be handed out as a tract to the non-believer but nevertheless its stories were meant to be used orally for evangelism. In an oral document of this sort, the ordering of things is especially important. Figures once introduced into the narrative by name and title or name and identifying phrase may thereafter be only identified by one or the other since economy of words is at a premium when one is writing a document of this size on a piece of papyrus (Jn. 20.30-31). This brings us to John 11.3 and the phrase hon phileis . It is perfectly clear from a comparison of 11. 1 and 3 that the sick person in question first called Lazarus of Bethany and then called ‘the one whom you love’ is the same person as in the context the mention of sickness in each verse makes this identification certain. This is the first time in this entire Gospel that any particular person is said to have been loved by Jesus. Indeed one could argue that this is the only named person in the whole Gospel about whom this is specifically said directly. This brings us to Jn. 13.23.

At John 13.23 we have the by now very familiar reference to a disciple whom Jesus loved (hon agapa this time) as reclining on the bosom of Jesus, by which is meant he is reclining on the same couch as Jesus. The disciple is not named here, and notice that nowhere in John 13 is it said that this meal transpired in Jerusalem. It could just as well have transpired in the nearby town of Bethany and this need not even be an account of the Passover meal. Jn. 13.1 in fact says it was a meal that transpired before the Passover meal. This brings us to a crucial juncture in this discussion. In Jn. 11 there was a reference to a beloved disciple named Lazarus. In Jn. 12 there was a mention of a meal at the house of Lazarus. If someone was hearing these tales in this order without access to the Synoptic Gospels it would be natural to conclude that the person reclining with Jesus in Jn. 13 was Lazarus. There is another good reason to do so as well. It was the custom in this sort of dining that the host would recline with or next to the chief guest. The story as we have it told in Jn. 13 likely implies that the Beloved Disciple is the host then. But this in turn means he must have a house in the vicinity of Jerusalem. This in turn probably eliminates all the Galilean disciples.

This identification of BD= Lazarus in fact not only clears up some conundrums about this story, it also neatly clears up a series of other conundrums in the Johannine Passion narrative as well. For example: 1) it was always problematic that the BD had ready access to the High Priest’s house. Who could he have been to have such access? Surely not a Galilean fisherman. Jn. 11.36-47 suggests that some of the Jewish officials who reported to the high priest had known Lazarus, and had attended his mourning period in Bethany. This in turn means that Lazarus likely had some relationship with them. He could have had access to Caiphas’ house, being a high status person known to Caiphas’ entourage. ; 2) If Lazarus of Bethany is the Beloved Disciple this too explains the omission of the Garden of Gethsemane prayer story in this Gospel. Peter, James and John were present on that occasion, but the Beloved Disciple was not; 3) It also explains Jn. 19.27. If the Beloved Disciple took Jesus’ mother ‘unto his own’ home (it is implied) this surely suggests some locale much nearer than Galilee, for the Beloved Disciple will show up in Jerusalem in John 20 immediately there after, and of course Mary is still there, according to Acts 1.14 well after the crucifixion and resurrection of her son. 4) How is it that the Beloved Disciple gets to the tomb of Jesus in Jn. 20 before Peter? Perhaps because he knows the locale, indeed knows Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, being one who lived near and spent much time in Jerusalem. One more thing about John 20.2 which Tom Thatcher kindly reminded me of—here the designation of our man is a double one—he is called both ‘the other disciple’ and also the one ‘whom Jesus loved only this time it is phileō for the verb. Why has our author varied the title at this juncture, if in fact it was a pre-existing title for someone outside the narrative? We would have expected it to be in a fixed form if this were some kind of pre-existing title. Notice now the chain of things—Lazarus is identified in Jn. 11 as the one whom Jesus loves, and here ‘the other disciple’ (see Jn. 20.1-2) is identified as the one whom Jesus loves, which then allows him to be called ‘the other disciple’ in the rest of this segment of the story, but at 21.2 we return once more to his main designation—the one whom Jesus loved=Lazarus. All of this makes good sense if Jn, 11-21 is read or heard in the sequence we now find it. 5) of course the old problem of the fact that the Synoptics say all the Twelve deserted Jesus once he was taken away for execution, even Peter, and record only women being at the cross, is not contradicted by the account in Jn. 19 if in fact the Beloved Disciple, while clearly enough from Jn. 19.26 a man (-- called Mary’s ‘son’, and so not Mary Magdalene!) is Lazarus rather than one of the Twelve. 6) There is the further point that if indeed the Beloved Disciple took Mary into his own home, then we know where the BD got the story of the wedding feast at Cana—he got it from Mary herself. I could continue mounting up small particulars of the text which are best explained by the theory of Lazarus being the BD but this must suffice. I want to deal with some larger issues in regard to this Gospel that are explained by this theory, in particular its appendix in Jn. 21 But one more conjecture is in order here.

Scholars of course have often noted how the account of the anointing of Jesus in Bethany as recorded in Mk. 14.3-11 differs from the account in Jn. 12.1-11, while still likely being the same story or tradition. Perhaps the most salient difference is that Mark tells us that the event happens in the home of Simon the Leper in Bethany, while Jn. 12 indicates it happens in the house of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus in Bethany. Suppose for a moment however that Simon the Leper was in fact the father of these three siblings. Suppose that Lazarus himself, like his father, had also contracted the dread disease and succumbed to it (and by the way we now know for sure that the deadly form of Hanson’s disease did exist in the first century A.D.). Now this might well explain why it is that none of these three siblings seem to be married. Few have remarked about the oddness of this trio of adults not having families of their own, but rather still living together, but it is not at all odd if the family was plagued by a dread disease that made them unclean on an ongoing or regular basis. It also explains why these folks never travel with Jesus’ other disciples and they never get near this family until that fateful day recorded in Jn. 11 when Jesus raised and healed Lazarus. Jesus of course was not put off by the disease and so had visited the home previously alone (Lk. 10.38-42). But other early Jews would certainly not have engaged in betrothal contracts with this family if it was known to be a carrier of leprosy.


IV How seeing that eyewitness as Lazarus himself explains both the ending of the Gospel and its character

Most scholars are in agreement that John 21 makes clear that while the Beloved Disciple is said to have written down some Gospel traditions, he is no longer alive when at least the end of this chapter was written. The “we know his testimony is true” is a dead give away that someone or someones other than the Beloved Disciple put this Gospel into its final form and added this appendix, or at a minimum the story about the demise of the Beloved Disciple and the conclusion of the appendix. This line of reasoning I find compelling. And it also explains something else. We may envision that whoever put the memoirs of the Beloved Disciple together is probably the one who insisted on calling him that. In other words, the Beloved Disciple is called such by his community perhaps and by his final editor certainly, and this is not a self designation, indeed was unlikely to be a self-designation in a religious subculture where humility and following the self-sacrificial, self-effacing example of Jesus was being inculcated. This then explains one of the salient differences between 2-3 John and the Gospel of John. The author of those little letters calls himself either the ‘elder’ or ‘the old man’ depending on how you want to render presbyteros. He nowhere calls himself the Beloved Disciple, not even in the sermon we call 1 John where he claims to have personally seen and touched the Word of Life, which in my view means he saw and touched Jesus. We must conjure then with at least two persons responsible for the final form of the Fourth Gospel while only one is necessary to explain the epiphenomena of the Johannine Epistles. This brings us to the story itself in John 21.20-24.

Why is the final editor of this material in such angst about denying that Jesus predicted that the Beloved Disciple would live until Jesus returned? Is it because there had been a tradition in the BD’s church that he would, and if so, what generated such a tradition? Not, apparently the BD himself. But now he has passed away and this has caused anxiety among the faithful about what was the case with the BD and what Jesus had actually said about his future in A.D. 30. I would suggest that no solution better explains all the interesting factors in play here than the suggestion that the Beloved Disciple was someone that Jesus had raised from the dead, and so quite naturally there arose a belief that surely he would not die again, before Jesus returned. Such a line of thought makes perfectly good sense if the Beloved Disciple had already died once and the second coming was still something eagerly anticipated when he died. Thus I submit that the theory that Lazarus was the Beloved Disciple and the author of most of the traditions in this Gospel is a theory which best clears up the conundrum of the end of the Appendix written after his death.

And finally there is one more thing to say. It is of course true that the Fourth Gospel takes its own approach to presenting Jesus and the Gospel tradition. I am still unconvinced by the attempts of Lincoln and others to suggest that the author drew on earlier Gospels, particularly Mark. I think he may have known of such Gospels, may even have read Mark, but is certainly not depend on the Synoptic material for his own Gospel. Rather he takes his own line of approach and has an abundance of information which he is unable to include in his Gospel, including much non-Synoptic material (see John 20.30 and 21.25) because of the constraints of writing all this down on one papyrus. He did not need to boil up his Gospel based on fragments and snippets from the Synoptics. On the contrary, he had to be constantly condensing his material, as is so often the case with an eyewitness account that is rich in detail and substance. But it is not enough to say that the author was an eyewitness to explain its independence and differences from the earlier Synoptic Gospels. There are other factors as well.

As I pointed out over a decade ago, this Gospel is written in a way that reflects an attempt to present the Jesus tradition in the light of the Jewish sapiential material (see my John’s Wisdom ). Jesus is presented as God’s Wisdom come in the flesh in this Gospel, serving up discourses like those of Wisdom in earlier Jewish Wisdom literature, rather than offering aphorisms and parables as in the Synoptics. I have suggested that this reflected Jesus’ in house modus operandi for his private teaching with his own inner circle of disciples. We need not choose between the public form of wisdom discourse found in the Synoptics (i.e. parables and aphorisms) and the private form of discourse (see e.g. Jn. 14-17) in John when trying to decide which went back to the historical Jesus--- both did, but they had different Sitz im Lebens and different functions. But I have concluded even this line of thinking is insufficient to explain the differences from the Synoptics we find in the Fourth Gospel. There is one more factor in play.

Our author, the Beloved Disciple, had been raised not merely from death’s door, but from being well and truly dead--- by Jesus! This was bound to change his worldview, and did so. It became quite impossible for our author to draw up a veiled messiah portrait of Jesus like we find in Mark. No, our author wanted and needed to shout from the mountain tops that Jesus was the resurrection, not merely that he performed resurrections, that he was what E. Kasemann once said about the presentation of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel—he was a God bestriding the stage of history. Just so, and our author pulls no punches in making that clear in various ways in this Gospel, especially by demonstrating that everything previously said to come only from God, or the mind and plan of God known as God’s Wisdom is now said of and said to come from Jesus. He is the incarnation of the great I Am.

The Beloved Disciple would not have been best pleased with modern minimialist portraits of the historical Jesus. He had had a personal and profound encounter of the first order with both the historical Jesus and the risen Jesus and knew that they were one and the same. This was bound to change his world view. It is no accident that the book of Signs in the Fourth Gospel climaxes with the story of Lazarus’s own transformation, just as the Book of Glory climaxes with the transformation of Jesus himself. Lazarus had become what he admired, had been made, to a lesser degree, like Jesus. And he would have nothing to do with mincing words about his risen savior and Lord. Rather he would walk through the door of bold proclamation, even to the point perhaps of adding the Logos hymn at the beginning of this Gospel. This was the Jesus he had known and touched and supped with before and after Easter, and he could proclaim no lesser Jesus.

This then leads us to the last bit of the puzzle that can now be solved. How did this Gospel come to be named according to John? My answer is a simple one—it is because John of Patmos was the final editor of this Gospel after the death of Lazarus. Once Domitian died, John returned to Ephesus and lived out his days. One of the things he did was edit and promulgate the Fourth Gospel on behalf of the Beloved Disciple. Somewhere very near the end of John’s own life, Papias had contact with this elderly John. It is not surprising, since this contact seems to be brief, that Papias learned correctly that this John was not the Zebedee John and that this elderly John had something to do with the production of the Fourth Gospel. This I think neatly explains all of the various factors involved in our conundrum. It may even have been Papias who was responsible for the wider circulation of this Gospel with a tag ‘according to John’. It is not surprising that Irenaeus, swatting buzzing Gnostics like flies, would later conclude that the Fourth Gospel must be by an apostle or one of the Twelve.

If I am right about all this it means that the historical figure of Lazarus is more important than we have previously imagined, both due to his role in founding churches in and round Ephesus and of course his role in the life of Jesus and Jesus’ mother. Jesus must have trusted him implicitly to hand over his mother to him when he died. Lazarus was far more than one more recipient of a miraculous healing by Jesus. He was “the one whom Jesus loved” as the very first reference to him in John 11 says. We have yet to take the measure of the man. Hopefully now, we can begin to do so.

Hearing the Voice of God

Samuel heard it and mistook it for the voice of the priest. It was an audible voice, just like a human voice (1 Sam. 3). Moses heard it too. Elijah had to go all the way to Mt. Horeb to hear it, and then it came in a still whisper. Jesus heard it at his baptism in a vision and so did Paul, and we could go on. Throughout the history of God's people and even unto today people have been hearing God's voice. What characterizes most, if not all these direct communications (without aid of cellphone) is that they are brief and direct, and often they involve the direct calling by name of the human being involved.

One of the reasons this phenomenon interests me so much is that it happened to me--- once and only once. It was in the turbulent times when I was at Carolina at the beginning of the 70s. Our national support for the Vietnam war was waning or winding down, but still we were being drafted to go and fight. I remember vividly watching TV in Graham Dorm with my friends when they showed the draft lottery for that day. One of my friends was drafted no. 1-- he put a chair through his TV and went off and joined the Peace Corps immediately. Me, I was just praying hard. My number was 192. I had real issues with this whole involuntary process. I had even gotten the papers to file to be a conscientious objector on religious grounds, but then I never filled them out. I was in a lot of internal turmoil and I was pretty distant and alienated from God. I was even angry with God some, because of the war and what it was doing to my friends.

But God was coming after me it seems, in the person of several of my roommates and friends, most of whom were devout Christians. At this point something strange happened. No, I was not smoking dope, nor dropping acid. I didn't ever do those kinds of things anyway. I was a musician and drugs mess with your voice and abilities to play. I liked having a clear head, so I mostly didn't drink either--- just the occasional glass of wine or beer with a friend at a meal. Like I said, I liked being clear headed.

But pressure was building up inside me. I went to the UNC clinic one day because my ears were ringing and I was having a bout of high blood pressure. When they couldn't find anything wrong with me, they sent me to the counselor. After a superficial chat he decided that what I needed was a girlfriend. That wasn't the problem-- I needed God. One night, late one night, I was walking across the quad mulling my life over when I heard a voice. Now at first I thought it was a friend shouting across the quad at me-- the voice kept saying "Ben, Ben". I looked everywhere, and there was absolutely no one around. I do mean no one. No human soul was there at that hour in the wee hours of the morning but me. This experience was unsettling. I was not expecting it, it literally came out of the blue. I wasn't in a time of prayer or anything like that. My memory is I was heading out to go get one of my favorite North Carolina doughnuts--- Krispy Kreme, which originated in Winston Salem. That's my story and I'm stickin to it--- I went looking for a doughnut and found God.

Later on when I was puzzling about this experience a friend pointed me to a Bible verse. I really didn't know the Bible all that well. The first time I tried to read the whole thing front to back I got stuck in the early 'begats' and Levitical rules and gave up. What a weird book, I thought. These particular verses however seemed to have been written just for me--- John 10.3-4- "He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out...and his sheep follow him because they recognize the sound of his voice." I have to tell you when I read those verses it freaked me smooth! You see, my name 'Ben' means 'son' in Hebrew. And when I heard that voice it sounded so much like a familiar voice calling my name, like it could almost be my Daddy calling me, which was impossible since he was in Charlotte working away. Hearing that voice, set me on a different path, one I am still treding today.

I have been enjoying reading Don Miller's popular book Blue like Jazz of late. There is a wonderful passage in it where he tells a story about his friend Penny who was born to two hippies (who named her Plenty-- which she managed to change later). She grew up in an atheistic environment and went to perhaps the most 'free thinking' non-Christian college in America-- Reed College in Portland. She met Don there however and she told him an amazing story--- Don and Penny were having a chat and then she said: (Blue like Jazz pp.48-49)

"Now you have to promise to believe me."

"Promise what?" [Don said]

"Okay but I'm not crazy." She took a deep breath. "I heard God speak to me."

"Speak to you?" I questioned.
"Yes"
"What did he say?"

He said "Penny I have a better life for you, not only now but forever." When Penny said that she put her hand over her mouth, as if that would stop her from crying.

"Really,' I said, "God said that to you"

"Yes" Penny talked through her hand "Do you believe me?"

"I guess."

"It doesn't matter whether you believe me or not." Penny started walking again. "That is what happened, Don it was crazy. God said it... I should read you my journal from that night. It was like, oh my God, God talked to me. I am having this trippy God thing right now. God talked to me. I kept asking Him to say it again, but He wouldn't. I guess its because I heard Him the first time, you know."

Don then asked her if that is when she became a Christian. She said no, and he asked why.

She said "I was drunk and high, Don. You should be sober when you make important decisions."

"That's a good point." I agreed But I still thought she was crazy. "So what happened next?"

"Well" Penny started, "A couple of nights later I got on my knees and said I didn't want to be like this anymore. I wanted to be good, you know. I wanted God to help me care about other people,because that's all I wanted to do, but I wasn't any good at it." And that's when Penny became a Christian.


The thing I find so striking about this story is the similarities to my own, minus the drugs and booze. God spoke to her once to get her to or past the point of crisis and decision I suppose. The same happened to me. I haven't heard from Him in that way sense. But then, I wasn't reading his Word then--- I've been doing that ever since and both the Word and my life make much better sense now :)

So how about you? Have you ever audibly heard the voice of God? I would like to hear from you if you have. After the posting I did a few weeks ago about the phone call from God one of my fellow NT scholars in the guild Dale Allison sent me an email with a book title-- turns out lots of folks have gotten actual phone calls from the deceased, and they are not all certifiably crazy. Indeed most of them are quite sane-- Here's the book title--- "Phone Calls from the
Dead", the authors D. Scott Rogo and Raymond Bayless.

Are you listening????

Hearing the Voice of God

Samuel heard it and mistook it for the voice of the priest. It was an audible voice, just like a human voice (1 Sam. 3). Moses heard it too. Elijah had to go all the way to Mt. Horeb to hear it, and then it came in a still whisper. Jesus heard it at his baptism in a vision and so did Paul, and we could go on. Throughout the history of God's people and even unto today people have been hearing God's voice. What characterizes most, if not all these direct communications (without aid of cellphone) is that they are brief and direct, and often they involve the direct calling by name of the human being involved.

One of the reasons this phenomenon interests me so much is that it happened to me--- once and only once. It was in the turbulent times when I was at Carolina at the beginning of the 70s. Our national support for the Vietnam war was waning or winding down, but still we were being drafted to go and fight. I remember vividly watching TV in Graham Dorm with my friends when they showed the draft lottery for that day. One of my friends was drafted no. 1-- he put a chair through his TV and went off and joined the Peace Corps immediately. Me, I was just praying hard. My number was 192. I had real issues with this whole involuntary process. I had even gotten the papers to file to be a conscientious objector on religious grounds, but then I never filled them out. I was in a lot of internal turmoil and I was pretty distant and alienated from God. I was even angry with God some, because of the war and what it was doing to my friends.

But God was coming after me it seems, in the person of several of my roommates and friends, most of whom were devout Christians. At this point something strange happened. No, I was not smoking dope, nor dropping acid. I didn't ever do those kinds of things anyway. I was a musician and drugs mess with your voice and abilities to play. I liked having a clear head, so I mostly didn't drink either--- just the occasional glass of wine or beer with a friend at a meal. Like I said, I liked being clear headed.

But pressure was building up inside me. I went to the UNC clinic one day because my ears were ringing and I was having a bout of high blood pressure. When they couldn't find anything wrong with me, they sent me to the counselor. After a superficial chat he decided that what I needed was a girlfriend. That wasn't the problem-- I needed God. One night, late one night, I was walking across the quad mulling my life over when I heard a voice. Now at first I thought it was a friend shouting across the quad at me-- the voice kept saying "Ben, Ben". I looked everywhere, and there was absolutely no one around. I do mean no one. No human soul was there at that hour in the wee hours of the morning but me. This experience was unsettling. I was not expecting it, it literally came out of the blue. I wasn't in a time of prayer or anything like that. My memory is I was heading out to go get one of my favorite North Carolina doughnuts--- Krispy Kreme, which originated in Winston Salem. That's my story and I'm stickin to it--- I went looking for a doughnut and found God.

Later on when I was puzzling about this experience a friend pointed me to a Bible verse. I really didn't know the Bible all that well. The first time I tried to read the whole thing front to back I got stuck in the early 'begats' and Levitical rules and gave up. What a weird book, I thought. These particular verses however seemed to have been written just for me--- John 10.3-4- "He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out...and his sheep follow him because they recognize the sound of his voice." I have to tell you when I read those verses it freaked me smooth! You see, my name 'Ben' means 'son' in Hebrew. And when I heard that voice it sounded so much like a familiar voice calling my name, like it could almost be my Daddy calling me, which was impossible since he was in Charlotte working away. Hearing that voice, set me on a different path, one I am still treding today.

I have been enjoying reading Don Miller's popular book Blue like Jazz of late. There is a wonderful passage in it where he tells a story about his friend Penny who was born to two hippies (who named her Plenty-- which she managed to change later). She grew up in an atheistic environment and went to perhaps the most 'free thinking' non-Christian college in America-- Reed College in Portland. She met Don there however and she told him an amazing story--- Don and Penny were having a chat and then she said: (Blue like Jazz pp.48-49)

"Now you have to promise to believe me."

"Promise what?" [Don said]

"Okay but I'm not crazy." She took a deep breath. "I heard God speak to me."

"Speak to you?" I questioned.
"Yes"
"What did he say?"

He said "Penny I have a better life for you, not only now but forever." When Penny said that she put her hand over her mouth, as if that would stop her from crying.

"Really,' I said, "God said that to you"

"Yes" Penny talked through her hand "Do you believe me?"

"I guess."

"It doesn't matter whether you believe me or not." Penny started walking again. "That is what happened, Don it was crazy. God said it... I should read you my journal from that night. It was like, oh my God, God talked to me. I am having this trippy God thing right now. God talked to me. I kept asking Him to say it again, but He wouldn't. I guess its because I heard Him the first time, you know."

Don then asked her if that is when she became a Christian. She said no, and he asked why.

She said "I was drunk and high, Don. You should be sober when you make important decisions."

"That's a good point." I agreed But I still thought she was crazy. "So what happened next?"

"Well" Penny started, "A couple of nights later I got on my knees and said I didn't want to be like this anymore. I wanted to be good, you know. I wanted God to help me care about other people,because that's all I wanted to do, but I wasn't any good at it." And that's when Penny became a Christian.


The thing I find so striking about this story is the similarities to my own, minus the drugs and booze. God spoke to her once to get her to or past the point of crisis and decision I suppose. The same happened to me. I haven't heard from Him in that way sense. But then, I wasn't reading his Word then--- I've been doing that ever since and both the Word and my life make much better sense now :)

Rob Bell tells a quite similar story as well. He was teaching water skiing in Wisconsin one summer and they had Sunday chapel at the camp and he found himself volunteering to do the sermon-- out of the blue. The day came and he says he heard a voice deep in his soul, not an audible outer voice say "Teach this book, and I will take care of everything else." (Velvet Elvis, p.40). Now this is a call story, not really a conversion story. The same can be said of Samuel's story and Elijah's story and Jesus' story. Sometimes they are call experiences, sometimes conversion experiences. And to be sure, everyone Jesus converts, he calls to do something.

So how about you? Have you ever audibly heard the voice of God? I would like to hear from you if you have. After the posting I did a few weeks ago about the phone call from God one of my fellow NT scholars in the guild Dale Allison sent me an email with a book title-- turns out lots of folks have gotten actual phone calls from the deceased, and they are not all certifiably crazy. Indeed most of them are quite sane-- Here's the book title--- "Phone Calls from the
Dead", the authors D. Scott Rogo and Raymond Bayless.

Are you listening????

The Virginal Conception and Political Deception

In the "this takes the cake" department, I have two stories for you to refer to. But first a question-- which is more unlikely, the birth of baby animals after a virginal conception, or Fox News deliberately reporting false information about Barack Obama?
However unlikely it may seem to you, both things are true.

First the story about parthenogenesis (reproduction without the aid of a male). Here's the link---
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16784022/. It's a very interesting story about Flora, the female komodo dragon who without ever having or having been with a male partner conceived and gave birth to five little sprogs. I'm thinking if Flora can do, so could the Virgin Mary :)

The other story is less interesting but actually more disturbing. Here's the link--- http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/1/24/213257/082. The story is about the claim that Barack Obama was educated by his Muslim father and possible in a Muslim school of sorts in Jakarta. It has been repeated in several places and in several ways. It was even in Insight Magazine in some form.

What is the truth of the matter: 1) Obama's father was an atheist; 2) Obama's school was not a Muslim school; 3) Obama professes to be, and has publicly shared his testimony as a Christian. He belongs to a church in the Chicago area.

What troubles me about this latter story is the issue of ideology trumping the facts, or leading to 'trumped' up versions of a person's curriculum vitae. I personally do not know what to think of Barack Obama yet, any more than I know what to think about some of the eight other Democrats and nine other Republicans already in the Presidential sweepstakes. Time will tell.

But what I do know is that Christians should not put up with lies about anyone just because they like or dislike somebody's politics. The big problem with ideologically driven news channels and stories (and there is plenty enough bias to go around from both ends of the political spectrum)is that when they don't even do good reporting, don't even check the facts, don't even bother to correct themselves or apologize for smearing another human being needlessly or making errors, then we should simply not listen to such sources of reporting. I want accuracy first, and opinions last in my news. I do not want ideology first and a fast and loose way of handling the facts, however comforting the ideology may be to my predilections.

What has been my experience with the media? Well its not a scientific sample that's for sure but I will share a couple of experiences. I have done a great deal of TV over the last decade, especially since the James ossuary story came out (and by the way Yuval Goren of the IAA now admitted under oath at the trial of Oded Golan that there is genuine patina in two of the letters of the name Jesus on the James box-- in other words, that word is clearly ancient and genuine. The box will be vindicated! More on this later).

In the first place, I have found the old major networks CBS, ABC, NBC, and some of the cable channels particularly Discovery Channel, National Geographic, to be very careful both in the reporting of facts and in allowing a person to share their own point of view fairly. Almost any interview I have done with those folks I was told to be myself and say my piece, and after the fact I never felt misquoted or misrepresented, though there have been plenty of times I wish they used more of the interview of course. There is a difference however between doing an interview for the news side of a network and doing an interview for the entertainment side of a network. The latter asks you to sign a waver, the former does not because of the issue of journalistic ethics. By this I mean the news side of a network is held to a higher standard of accuracy, the entertainment side is allow to be more creative not surprisingly.

My experience with the old non-cable networks, including working with Bob Simon and Miguel Sancho at CBS, Stone Phillips at NBC and Peter Jennings and Liz Vargas at ABC has been at the other end of the spectrum from my experience with working with one particular Fox show---the O Reilly show.

For an hour before an interview I was to do on O'Reilly at Easter time a couple of years ago, I was drilled by the producer on the cell phone about not quoting the Bible, not saying anything theological, and only answering the direct questions of O' Reilly succinctly. After listening to this lecture politely I finally asked the producer wasn't he concerned about offending his conservative Christian audience by stifling me and not really allowing me to share what I was there on the show to share about Jesus' bodily resurrection. His response was chilling-- "we are more worried about offending our secular conservative audience." I guess he assumed that conservative Christians have no other channel or programs to turn to for their information so he was less worried about offending them.

And then the interview happened. O' Reilly asked me if I had seen the Shroud of Turin. I simply said no as did the other guest, John Dominic Crossan. He then went on about having seen it. It seemed to me like the lecture I got was all about not showing up O'Reilly, and about stroking his ego, as apparently he doesn't know much of the Bible or the history of the study of the resurrection, but he had seen the Shroud in Turin.

In the old sense of the word 'liberal' as in open-minded and trying to be fair I would much prefer the 'liberal' networks to this, as they allow you to have your say. Yes, I often disagree with some of the politics and viewpoints I hear from those folks, but frankly I want a 'free' press to be 'free'-- not pre-censored like that Fox show. I want to hear a variety of points of view, and I want to make up my own mind. I frankly don't trust folks who are prepared to report false facts for the sake of their own opinions, regardless of whether I agree with some of their other views or not.

And herein lies one of the big problems in conservative Christianity. Evangelicals are not encouraged to think for themselves, not encouraged to do critical thinking, not encouraged to be open minded in the good sense of that phrase. They have too often been taught to blindly accept what they are told. This of course becomes dangerous when it is applied to watching the news and we are dealing with vital life and death matters and some aspects of politics. Of course it is true as my granny used to say that "we should not be so open minded that our brains fall out". Christians should be leading the search for the truth. Christians should be committed to finding out the truth, however uncomfortable and however much it makes us adjust our political or even religious views. The question is can we handle the truth? Nuff said.

The Smoking Gun--1600 Page Global Warming Report Out Soon

1600 pages is a big report. Trouble is, it is only the first of four parts, the result of an enormous and some have said definitive report demonstrating beyond reasonable doubt that there is human causation of several sorts when it comes to global warming. The first part will be out in early February. America's top climate scientist, Jerry Mahlman joined with Canada's leading climate scientist, Andrew Weaver in saying the evidence is now compelling and beyond dispute. In fact he says of the report: "This isn't a smoking gun,climate is a battalion of intergalactic smoking missles." You can read the AP story here at the following link---
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16760730/.

I will not belabor the point since we have been talking about it already this week. I will simply say this report is written by 600 scientists reviewed by 600 others from 154 countries. That is what we call definitive and compelling. And one important thing about scientists. They tend to be very cautious as a group. They use words like maybe, possibly, or probably. They hardly ever say something is definitive, or beyond argument. This is what makes this peer reviewed detailed report so remarkable.

Cynthia Rosenweig from NASA authored the chapter which details the already very evident effects on human health, species engineering and food production of global warming.

Read the article and see what you think.

Since the rapture is not a Biblical doctrine at all but rather something dreamed up by a teenage girl in about 1820 at a revival in Glasgow Scotland and then preached by Darby and Moody neither of whom were ever Bible experts, perhaps we had better pay attention and see what a proper Christian response should be to this crisis, especially for the sake of being a good witness.

Global Warming and Evangelicals Part Deux

After setting up the initial post on global warming I had a further chat with my wife. She points out that the ice core samples go back thousands of year and make perfectly clear that there has been a dramatic acceleration of the rise of the temperature of water in recent times. My son then chipped in with the following piece which is worth reading---

Global Warming Skeptics: A Primer
Guess who's funding the global warming doubt shops?



In 1998, Exxon devised a plan to stall action on global warming. The plan was outlined in an internal memo that promised, "Victory will be achieved whenuncertainties in climate science become part of the conventional wisdom" for "average citizens" and "the media." (Read the memo [PDF].)

The company would recruit and train new scientists who lack a "history of visibility in the climate debate" and develop materials depicting supporters of action to cut greenhouse gas emissions as "out of touch with reality."

While there is no indication that ExxonMobil paid the climate skeptics directly and the scientists may have their own motivations for participating, the company poured millions of dollars into spreading its message worldwide. Here's where some of that money went.

The following information is from Exxon documents and the organizations' web sites. (Specific sources and links are listed below the table.)
Organization Receiving ExxonMobil Funding 2002-2003 2004 2005
Competitive Enterprise Institute $870,000 $270,000 $270,000
American Enterprise Institute $485,000 $230,000 $240,000
American Council for Capital Formation $444,523 $255,000 $360,000
Frontiers of Freedom $282,000 $250,000 $140,000
George C. Marshall Institute $185,000 $170,000 $115,000
National Center for Policy Analysis $105,000 $75,000 $75,000
Tech Central Station Science Foundation $95,000*
Heartland Institute $92,500* $100,000 $119,000
Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow $72,000* $125,000 $90,000
Fraser Institute $60,000* $60,000
International Policy Network $50,000* $115,000 $130,000
Center for Study of Carbon Dioxide & Global Change $40,000* $25,000
American Council on Science and Health $35,000 $15,000 $25,000
Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy $27,500* $75,000 $30,000
Cato Institute $25,000* $15,000
Consumer Alert $25,000 $25,000
Independent Institute $20,000 $30,000
Advancement of Sound Science $20,000 $10,000

*These numbers are for the year 2003 alone.

The information above is from Exxon documents and the organizations' Web sites: Exxon's 2002 contributions [PDF], Exxon's 2003 contributions [PDF], Exxon's 2004 contributions [PDF] and Exxon's 2005 contributions [PDF].

Find Out More
They're taking their act on the road: Global warming skeptics shower their climate denials onto the U.K., according to the Guardian (1/27/05)

For more information on the science of global warming and the politics of combating climate change, go to our Global Warming issue page

You may find further information on ExxonMobil's funding of global warming skeptics by visiting the Exxonsecrets.org database web site.

For details on the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act, the most effective bipartisan legislation to reduce America's emissions of greenhouse gases, visit www.undoit.org.


This particular piece which I have reprinted here can be found at http://environmentaldefense.org/article. cfm?ContentID=4870.


The further point needs to be stressed. In the specialized field of climate scientists there is almost no debate on the topic of global warming. There is a near unanimity on the topic. Guess where you find most of the doubters-- they work for companies like Exxon. Hmmmm...... I don't suppose that might reflect a conflict of interest.

Here's my point for Evangelicals. Do you want to be a good witness to people who do care about this world and our ecosphere? If you don't you should. Thus I would suggest that you accept, for the sake of argument, that there is such a thing as global warming (remember that hole in the ozone and what was said to cause it?). Assume that we have some serious responsibility for causing this problem. How then would be the best way to witness to people who do care about the environment. I would suggest that one way is to show we also care about it and about things like global warming because we have a theology that says God has given us a big beautiful world and called us to take good care of it until he returns. 'Nuff Said.

Here Come the Pentecostals

It all began 106 years ago in Kansas when a woman broke out of normal speech into glossolalia. It was but a foreshadowing of a mighty wave of the Spirit which has still not crested as it has gathered momentum around the world. I was in Moscow to teach and my hosts asked me if I wanted to go to the big joint worship service in the old Soviet Convention Center. I said of course. I was not expecting what I experienced. Russia is dominated by two major church groups-- the Orthodox Church of course which is the 'official' church of Russia, and all those Baptists of various sorts. But without question a group on the rise is the Pentecostals of various sorts. What I experienced was vigorous heart-stopping non-stop singing by hundreds of young people in choirs and in the stands, powerful testimonies, and then, unfortunately 'prosperity Gospel' preaching. Well, two out of three ain't bad. I was kind of hoping the Russian Pentecostals wouldn't be making some of the same mistakes of some American ones. But this phenomenon is in fact sweeping around the globe. I was in Singapore last May, before that in South Africa, before that in Austrailia, and I could go on. It's almost everywhere. In fact, it is the fastest growing religious phenomena in South America as well. Much of the two-thirds world is riding the crest of this wave. So we ought to pay attention, and ask what is God doing?

Though I have been a life long Methodist, for most of my adult life I have also been very involved in the life of the Spirit. This goes back to attending Gordon Fee's Bible study in his home with my wife to be in 1975 where I first heard speaking in tongues. Then there was the day I was at a healing and exorcism service in Tremont Temple in Boston and the next thing I knew, I was speaking in tongues. I need to tell you while of course there are always counterfeits when it comes to spiritual gifts, the genuine experience is simply one that comes unbidden and sweeps over you. Like grits on a southern breakfast plate, it just comes. And while you can stop it, its a pretty overwhelming experience. You don't have to be in an emotional state for it to happen. You don't have to be revved up by the praise band. You don't have to be praying for it--- it just comes. And why should this surprise us. The Holy Spirit is so much more powerful than we are and our little wills, and the Spirit does not want to be quenched by us as Paul reminds the Thessalonians in 1 Thess. 5.

And one of the things the Spirit does is break down barriers that humans build up, just like at the first Pentecost in Jerusalem. Pentecostal services not only minister to the down and out, but also the up and in. They are often racially inclusive services. You will have men preachers, women preachers, and children preachers. And sometimes the best ones are the children-- its amazing what happens when children are full of the Holy Spirit. In November 2005 I was asked to come to Valley Forge and preach at an Assemblies Church. I have never seen such a clearly inclusive service as this. It was a congregation which met in the local high school to save money for other ministry ventures. The composition of the congregation was about 40% white, another 25% black, 25% Hispanic or Oriental, and then another 5% of other sorts of folks, all praising the Lord in a mighty way. They also expected a 40 minute sermon-- I just smiled and said "No problem". That's one thing about a Pentecostal service-- its unlikely to start or finish at a preordained moment. There's a general starting time, but it keeps going as the Spirit leads.

Now of course lots of folks are scared of the Holy Ghost. Indeed, there are whole denominations who try to domesticate and keep the Spirit within specific bounds. I ought to know. I'm part of such a denomination that used to be mostly like that, and still is to some extent. When I was ordained in the 1970s I was sent to the conference counselor before ordination. They closed the door, turned on the banks of cassette recorders and proceeded to ask me some questions: 1) did I believe in a personal Devil--- yep I said; 2) well did I believe in demons and exorcisms?-- yep I said, its in the Book; 3) did I believe in charismatic gifts-- yep I said; 4) did I believe in speaking in tongues-- yep I said, been there done that; 5) what did I think of ordination-- I respect it but church ordination is just a public confirmation and recognition of the gifts God has given me. He's the one who anointed and appointed me in the first place. It kind of went like that. Thereafter they delayed my ordination for a year. I guess I was seen as too hot to handle.

Now you may well run into cessationists, in fact you may be part of such a church. The cessationists argue that God ran out of juice. He used to give people these sorts of gifts in the apostolic age, but once that era was over, and once the canon showed up, such extraordinary spiritual gifts ceased. The chief proof text for this view is, believe it or not, 1 Cor. 13.8-12 which reads "Love never fails. But where there are prophecies they will cease; where there are tongues they will be stilled; where there is knowledge it will pass away. For we know in part and prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child. I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult I put childish ways behind me." Of course that is not all this paragraph says. It goes on to say 'Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror, then we shall see to face to face."

What is Paul talking about? When will we see face to face, and know as we are known? Well for sure it was not when the second century A.D. began, nor when the Scriptures were canonized in the fourth century. The cessationists have tended to argue: 1) the word 'perfection' refers to the coming of the canon. When the NT showed up we didn't need these extraordinary spiritual gifts any more. Of course the major problem with that exegesis is that no one in Corinth in the A.D. 50s could possibly have understood Paul to mean 'the NT canon' by the word 'perfection'. And in fact this is not what Paul meant-- he's referring to the eschaton when we see Jesus face to face, when perfection really comes in the person of the Lord, when we finally know Him as we are known. Then indeed we will not need prophecy or tongues, and then indeed our knowledge will cease to be partial. Indeed, then faith will become sight, and hope will be realized, and love will be perfected and go on. There is no chance that the word 'perfection' means the canon here. The context is eschatological, and Paul is looking forward to what will be the case when Jesus returns. This is so very clear in 1 Cor. 15, the resurrection chapter, as well.

2) And of course if you are a student of Church History you know perfectly well the Holy Spirit has not run out of unction to function. Those spiritual gifts have been being poured out in every century since the second century until now. In America of course the Azuza Street Revival in 1905 was a landmark event for Pentecostals. Their growth has been pretty steady since then. We might as well just accept it and come to grips with it, even if its not our cup of tea.

Now like any lay led (or for that matter clergy led) spiritual movement there are some theological problems with the way the Bible is read in this tradition. The top five mistakes are as follows: 1) Acts 2 is not about glossolalia-- its about the miraculous giving of the ability to suddenly speak in these various foreign languages; 2) Acts 2 is also not about a post-conversion experience of being baptized in the Spirit. Acts 2 is about the birthday of the church. One should not see John 20 and the upper room "receive the Holy Spirit" story as a preliminary reception of the Spirit. The story is about a prophetic sign reassuring the disciples that the Spirit would soon come on them once Jesus went away (remembering that Jn. 13-17 says that Jesus must first go away back to heaven before the Spirit could be sent); 3) speaking in tongues is not the initial evidence that one has the Holy Spirit in everyone's life. As the end of 1 Cor. 12 makes evident, not all born again Spirit filled Christians speak in tongues. That gift is simply not given to everyone, and anyway its the Spirit who decides who gets what gift; 4) the beginning of 1 Cor. 12 makes clear that being baptized by one Spirit into one body is language referring to the point of conversion and becoming part of the body of Christ, not some post-conversion experience. The NT certainly doesn't rule out post-conversion dramatic experiences in the Spirit, but they do not involve 'the baptism of the Spirit' nor the reception of 'more of the Spirit' Why? Because 5) the Holy Spirit is a person, not a mere power or force. You can no more have a little bit of the Spirit in your life than you can be a little bit pregnant. The Spirit is a living being living within you, and while that Spirit can get hold of more aspects of your life and personality once he is in your life, you get the whole presence of the person of the Spirit in your life when he first enters your life at conversion. Period. Thus while we can talk about the second, third, fourth, or however many works of grace or blessings after conversion, these are works in the Spirit, not receptions of more of the Spirit.

I could go on, but here I would encourage you to read the encouraging story of a small Pentecostal Church made up mostly of ex-Dominican Republic residents who now live in New York City. The NY Times has give us two clear and powerful stories about their life and ministry to the least, last, and lost in NY. Here are the links--

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/14/nyregion/14storefront.html?th&emc=th

and

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/nyregion/15storefront.html?th&emc=th


These stories are well worth the read, as you will learn something about storefront churches, and also about the life of Pentecostals. It is interesting that public figures as divergent as Sen. John Ashcroft and Rev. Al Sharpton are Pentecostal ministers. The Pentecostal phenomena crosses all sorts of cultural lines. So my question for you is--- What is the Holy Spirit doing in your life? Have you listened to the exhortation in 1 Thess. 5.19 not to put out the Spirit's fire or treat prophecies with contempt? How about the one in Ephes.5.18 to be filled in the Spirit speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs? Are you making a joyful noise unto the Lord? I hope so. If not, what are you waiting for?

Evangelicals and Climate Scientists Agree on Global Warming

Well its about time. We finally have a group of Evangelical ministers who are fed up with the junk science and head in the sand denials of some of their fellow Evangelicals in attempts to ignore that there is such a thing as global warming. Here is a brief excerpt from the story---

"The Rev. Rich Cizik, public policy director for the National Association of Evangelicals, and Nobel-laureate Eric Chivian, director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, were among 28 signers of a statement that demands urgent changes in values, lifestyles and public policies to avert disastrous changes in climate.

“God will judge us for destroying the Creation. Therefore, we as evangelicals have a responsibility to be even more vigilant than others,” Cizik told a news conference."

Indeed, he is right about this. God set us up to tend and care for our beautiful world in a way that is good for all living things, not just for the profits of a few Western human beings. If you want to read the entire article here is the link-- http://www.msnbc.nbc.com/id/16677104/.

Having personally seen the effects of global warming on the Sawyer glacier in Alaska, and having seen irrefutable evidence of the existence of greenhouse gases produced by the use of fossil fuels including coal and oil, I insist its time for more Evangelicals to wake up and take a stand on this issue, and stop being in denial. The evidence is all around us. I leave you with a final example.

When I was a child we used to go to Mt. Mitchell state park on the Blue Ridge Parkway in N.C. It was beautiful and the top of the mountain was covered with beautiful fur trees. Today? Not so much. Scientists from around the world have studied why all the trees about the 5,000 feet line have died. Their report was unanimous. The pollution from belching factories in western N.C. weakened the trees which made them subject to beetles (no not Paul and Ringo), and they became diseased and died. The human responsibility for this defoliation and destruction is beyond dispute.

So, petitions are nice, but what are we going to do about it? One suggestion is to do our best to go green when it comes to cars, trucks, and the like. It is a small start, but I can tell you that car makers will indeed make more hybrid vehicles if we will buy them. We have one hybrid car and we are planning to trade in our other one for Highlander hybrid which is all electric around town, where pollution is the biggest concern. And no, these vehicles are not so much more expensive in price that it is not worth the change. Check out the Honda Civic hybrid (ours gets 50 on the highway, and burns no gas when it comes to a stop anywhere in town).

Think on these things.

Grisham's "The Innocent Man". Is Capital Punishment Biblical?

John Grisham has made his fortune writing legal thrillers. Some eighteen of them. Up until his most recent work, "The Innocent Man" (Doubleday, 2006), which is yet another legal tale, he had never attempted writing a work of non-fiction. But the story of Ron Williamson and his friend Dennis Fritz, both wrongfully convicted of rape and murder in Ada Oklahoma in the 1980s was too powerful too resist, apparently.

In his personal comments at the end of the book he admits that this particular case, where a mentally ill person is convicted of a murder he never committed, brought him into the seamy and unseemly world of 'legal' injustice. He puts it this way "The journey also exposed me to the world of wrongful convictions, something that I, even as a former lawyer, had never spent much time thinking about." (p. 356)

This is a surprising admission considering that Grisham is both a former lawyer and also a Christian. Surprising because of course we know how fallible humans are, and so lacking in either omniscience or even good judgment about so many things, including life and death matters. But perhaps it is not so surprising since conservative Christians are often some of the staunchest proponents (and opponents) of capital punishment. Obviously the pursuing of the writing of this particular book was something of a wake-up call for John Grisham. My hope is that it would be a wake-up call for all Christians, especially in the wake of yet another highly publicized case of a total miscarriage of justice on '60 Minutes' last night-- I am referring to the prosecution of three Duke Lacrosse players, whom the DNA evidence exonerated from having raped the plaintiff, an 'exotic' dancer. In the end it was the DNA evidence which exonerated Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz as well.

Any time this kind of mess happens, where there is such a huge miscarriage of justice, it raises the question about capital punishment in general, especially when the statistics suggest that many, many cases exist of persons on death row who are not there because they are guilty of the crime. What they are guilty of is having bad legal representation, or even worse they are guilty of being poor or mentally incompetent to defend themselves. Sometimes as well, they are 'guilty' of being the wrong race in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And here is the moral dilemma put bluntly-- Is it ethically a worse thing to have a criminal justice system that lets a guilty felon go unexecuted (being given instead perhaps life in prison without parole) or to have a system which regularly executes people who are not guilty of a capital crime? Which is a worse miscarriage of justice, the former or the latter?

In my view, condemning even one innocent man or woman to death is frankly one too many. It cannot be written off as collatoral damage or just the price of swift justice or the like. It is a horrible sin and crime, perpetrated by a 'justice' system itself against some of its own innocent citizens, and as the Bible says, such innocent blood cries out to God for redress of this situation. Never mind that the criminal justice system is supposed to uphold 'justice' for all, even the poor, even the mentally ill, even those who are not of the same ethnic group as most Americans. As so many statues of Lady Justice remind us, justice is supposed to be blind to any considerations which might skew justice being done. Justice denied to anyone, is justice denied potentially to everyone. And it is perfectly clear to all who are observant that those with more money and better lawyers have much better chance of being exonerated of a crime than those who have neither, whether the exoneration is just or injust.

At this point you may be objecting and saying-- "But now we have the hard scientific evidence of DNA which eliminates the guess work in capital cases". Under these circumstances shouldn't we think that capital punishment becomes more infallible and permissable a kind of punishment? On the one hand, while DNA evidence can provide conclusive evidence that someone DIDN'T do something, it cannot prove that someone DID do something. Take for example the classic case of a prostitute who is raped and murdered. DNA testing can show who did not have sex with the woman in question near the time of her death, and it can also show who did. But the person who has sex with a person may not have killed her. DNA doesn't prove who the killer necessarily is unless there is other evidence as well.

Suppose, as in the Duke case the testing shows multiple persons had sex with the woman in question, some of it consenual and even legal, some of it not? Suppose it shows that none of the accused had sex with her. That should exonerate the accused from the crime, but it does not necessarily incriminate all those who did have sex with her. In other words, there are very few clear cut cases where the DNA can nail one and only one person for the crime committed. Hair samples are also notoriously unreliable evidence, as are saliva tests as well in at least 20% of all cases (read Grisham's book). In other words, there is rarely a slam dunk case on the basis of such 'scientific' evidence, even today. Juries can be blinded with science and rush to judgment, but Christians need to think things through thoroughly and carefully and prayerfully.

But what exactly does the Bible say or suggest about such issues? If one examines the Mosaic Law code, two things are clear. The lex talionis "an eye for an eye, a hand for a hand,... a life for a life" was a law given, as Jesus was later to suggest, due to the hardness of the human heart. In context the law was meant to limit revenge taking not license it. In other words, the phrase in question could be translated "only an eye for an eye, only a hand for a hand.... only a life for a life". The issue of capital punishment then, as now, was taken as a separate issue from war, and the killing that happens during a war. Capital punishment has always been part of a system where the basic assumption is that the society in question is at peace and under the rule of law, but has problems with some isolated individuals who are criminals who had to be dealt with.

But the second thing to be said about the Mosaic law code when it comes to this issue is that the ten commandments make perfectly clear that God's highest and best for his people was 'thou shalt not murder', a commandment that Jesus reiterated. In context this commandment refers to pre-mediated murder or execution by one of God's people. It does not refer to accidental killings, nor does it refer to actions of war. It refers to God's people pre-mediating and carry out a killing, whether one is a private citizen or a public official. For either such person, this banning of murder is absolute. And of course capital punishment, it must be admitted, is indeed a form of pre-mediated killing. It falls within the Mosaic ban, whether we are happy to call it murder or not. It is just one legally sanctioned form of killing in some places in the world by some legal systems.

And that brings us to what Jesus requires of his own followers in these matters. The issue for the Christian is not what is 'legal' or 'permissible' for some secular government to do which is not obligated to follow the Gospel. The issue is what should Christians do who are so obligated.

Here dictums like turn the other cheek, practice non-resistance, love your enemies, follow Jesus' own example, remember Jesus said that those who live by the sword die by it, and so on, come into play. But lets take one particular teaching of Jesus-- his teaching about forgiveness. The issue is how Christians should respond to being wronged, even criminally wronged. Paul is clear and succinct about this matter in Rom. 12.17ff.-- "do not repay anyone evil for evil...Do not take revenge, my friend but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written 'It is mine to avenge; I will repay,' says the Lord." Paul then goes on to quote Prov. 25.21-22: "If your enemy is hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink, In doing this you will heap burning coals on their head." This is sometimes called killing them with kindness, but in fact what it is is breaking the cycle of revenge-taking by blessing someone who curses or harms you. Paul's final warning is "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." Of course this is not a natural human response of a fallen human being. But it is one that a Christian by grace can practice.

Jesus is equally emphatic on this point in Mt. 18.21-22. Peter asks whether he should forgive someone who sins against him, and he magnanimously suggests up to seven times. After all its a good big Biblical number for perfection. Surely seven times would be enough.

Jesus answers "not seven times but seventy seven times." Now what is not normally noticed about this is Jesus is alluding to the famous dictum of Lamech in Gen.4.24 which reads "If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times." In other words, Jesus is saying his disciples should practice as much forgiveness, in effect infinite forgiveness, as Lamech swore he would practice revenge taking.

The basic principle is this-- vengeance should be left in the hands of God. And perhaps it needs to be said that what this means is that Jesus disciples should not take revenge on anyone. Those to whom God has forgiven everything unconditionally should practice unconditional forgiveness as well. And of course it needs to be said that sometimes revenge taking has nothing to do with justice. Sometimes it is just a retailiation against someone, anyone, for being wronged or harmed in some way. There is a reason why Jesus requires us to pray "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us". The lack of doing the latter can impede our receiving the former. The two dimensions of forgiveness, received and offered, vertical and horizontal, are intertwined.

One can also argue on the basis of what follows Rom. 12, namely Rom. 13.4 that while individual Christians should not take revenge, non-Christian governments can be the instruments of God's wrath. This is true enough, but what Paul is talking about there is not capital punishment at all but rather the right of the tax police to carry a defensive weapon, and indeed to enforce the law. Nothing is said here about the use of lethal or deadly force, even in the case of the government.

How do I sum up the Biblical evidence? First it must be freely admitted that different Christians and equally good scholars will weigh these texts, and which ones seem more important, differently. That is true.

In my view following the example of Jesus (who would not even sanction one of his disciples chopping off the ear of someone prepared to lead him off to an unjust crucifixion) means that we must take the Sermon on the Mount, and teachings such as we find in Rom. 12 with utmost seriousness as commands of the Lord and of his apostles. In other words, the commitment not only to non-violence, but the commitment to forgive and do good to those who harm us is top priority.

We need to leave vengeance or justice in God's hands. We are supposed to be agents of grace and forgiveness in a world already too prone to using violence to solve its problems. And for me, this means I cannot support, nor could I participate in an act, whether legal or personal, which involves taking away another person's life and thereby probably taking away their opportunity to repent, be forgiven and be saved.

Whatever your views on this matter, read and ponder Grisham powerful book. It reveals how sin and self-centered behavior and our obvious lack of omniscience plagues even the best of human institutions.