Everyone around me is now divided on whether Section 377A, an outmoded law which criminalises homosexual acts between consenting adults, should be repealed. Churches seem to be quite eager to see that homosexuals remain branded as criminals. While that may be the official stand of the National Council of Churches, individual Christians are very much divided on this issue.
Showing posts with label Religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Religion. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 2, 2018
Friday, December 4, 2015
As We Approach Christmas
As we observe this season of Advent that leads to the Holy Incarnation which by all accounts is the most momentous event in theology, I am reminded of how I felt as a boy about the birth of the God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God. We can't forget this glorious birth of our Lord. Even before Advent, in late October, Christmas hymns were played in all shopping centres. Neglectful though we may be of our religious duties, the world will remind us of the birth of Jesus. As I hear the hymns played in secular establishments and particularly, as I hear the lyrics that include direct exhortations to 'Fall on your knees' and 'Behold your King! Before Him lowly bend', I cannot help but think that the biblical prophecy that 'every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord' has a ring of truth.
When I was very young, during Advent, I could always feel within me both a sense of the sacred and the expectant joy of Christmas. The joy of Christmas began to diminish little by little as I grew older and this is natural, as adults do not share the same exuberant joy that only children can experience, but the sense of the sacred or the divine remains fairly strong. And this is totally irrational, given my current stand on the supernatural.
When I first read in my youth the works of scholars who declared that the early stories of Jesus in the Holy Gospels were not authentic, I was devastated. I didn't want to believe what I read but my head told me that what the scholars said was perfectly rational. Despite my youth, I started to intellectually accept that what is ideal and what is desirable may not necessarily be true. But this is something many adults still cannot grasp even if they think they can. I have lost count of the number of times when grown men and women told me that Christianity had to be true because it was the most 'ideal, peaceful and loving religion' or some such words to the same effect. God must exist because otherwise there'd be no justice for good people can't be rewarded and the bad will remain unpunished. They are unable to accept that what is desirable need not be true.
But things got more depressing for me as I read more and more. I soon discovered that the Virgin Birth was the result of the alma-parthenos mistranslation. I wrote about this in greater detail a few years ago in this blog. Not having the 'wise men from Orient land' standing beside the infant Jesus in a lowly manger was bad enough. Not having the star from the East that is the subject of so many great hymns was unthinkable. But not having the Virgin Birth? That's heresy! Even today, whenever I recite the Creed, I will banish the truth from my mind and insist to myself that yes, Christ was born of the Virgin Mary. Rather than applying the head which is antithetical to faith, I will focus on the 'mechanics' of the ritual, for example, at which point of the Creed I have to bow and at which point I have to cross myself, and these are of course things I'm familiar with as a former altar boy.
There are two ways a person can read up more about his own religion. One way is to read only the Bible and the works of conservative or even fundamentalist scholars. If your diet consists entirely of these, chances are you will end up a conservative Christian with exclusivist views. But if you read widely and do not restrict yourself to only 'fervent Christian' writers or 'born-again Christian' writers, whatever term you choose to use, there is a high likelihood that layer after layer of what used to be viewed as conservative truths will be peeled off, exposing serious flaws in the religion. Just by way of an example, when I wanted to read more about the Canon of Scriptures, I chose three books by three scholars - Bruce Metzger, LM McDonald and FF Bruce. FF Bruce is conservative evangelical but the other two are not. As it turned out, FF Bruce alone would have been enough to overturn my hitherto conservative understanding of Scriptures because unlike his other books meant for the general public (eg The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? which answers the question with an emphatic 'YES'), his more scholastic books aren't that 'edifying'.
But the beauty of Christianity is it's open for a complete debate. There are critical scholars in renowned universities and they write authoritative books critical of biblical reliability and even the faith in general. These people are not threatened at all. There is no fatwa against them. They continue to teach and write books.
Immediately after the Islamic State's killing of the Jordanian pilot by burning him in a cage, many Middle Eastern countries including Jordan and Egypt tabled a list of actions and one of them was the possibility of reforming Islamic teachings. But I have not seen any follow-up from that. To reform Islamic teaching, you must allow for critical scholarship. And the scholars cannot be threatened with death and bombings. It will be great if Islam, like Christianity, has its critical scholars including scholars who are not even Muslims. But can critical scholars who criticise the Quran and the Hadiths or show them to be spurious (the way critical scholars treat the Bible and Church Traditions) be assured of their personal safety?
If it's any comfort to traditionalists, the unreliability of Scriptures need not necessarily affect faith itself. The same with many other aspects of religion if they are shown to be false. We may know the erroneous means by which the Virgin Birth came to be a doctrine of the Church but that doesn't mean anything to the faithful. We still recite the Creed and we will still hear the angel's proclamation of the Virgin Birth at Christmas whether in church or at the shopping centres and I know I will still be filled with wonder and awe at the glorious Incarnation when God took on flesh and became man through the Blessed Virgin. And as we look at the crib during its blessing, we (yes, even I) will be 'strengthened in faith and receive the fullness of life'.
A nativity scene I inexpertly photographed in a church.
When I was very young, during Advent, I could always feel within me both a sense of the sacred and the expectant joy of Christmas. The joy of Christmas began to diminish little by little as I grew older and this is natural, as adults do not share the same exuberant joy that only children can experience, but the sense of the sacred or the divine remains fairly strong. And this is totally irrational, given my current stand on the supernatural.
When I first read in my youth the works of scholars who declared that the early stories of Jesus in the Holy Gospels were not authentic, I was devastated. I didn't want to believe what I read but my head told me that what the scholars said was perfectly rational. Despite my youth, I started to intellectually accept that what is ideal and what is desirable may not necessarily be true. But this is something many adults still cannot grasp even if they think they can. I have lost count of the number of times when grown men and women told me that Christianity had to be true because it was the most 'ideal, peaceful and loving religion' or some such words to the same effect. God must exist because otherwise there'd be no justice for good people can't be rewarded and the bad will remain unpunished. They are unable to accept that what is desirable need not be true.
Another church nativity scene. You have to bear with my poor photography.
I do not like to steal other people's photos.
But things got more depressing for me as I read more and more. I soon discovered that the Virgin Birth was the result of the alma-parthenos mistranslation. I wrote about this in greater detail a few years ago in this blog. Not having the 'wise men from Orient land' standing beside the infant Jesus in a lowly manger was bad enough. Not having the star from the East that is the subject of so many great hymns was unthinkable. But not having the Virgin Birth? That's heresy! Even today, whenever I recite the Creed, I will banish the truth from my mind and insist to myself that yes, Christ was born of the Virgin Mary. Rather than applying the head which is antithetical to faith, I will focus on the 'mechanics' of the ritual, for example, at which point of the Creed I have to bow and at which point I have to cross myself, and these are of course things I'm familiar with as a former altar boy.
There are two ways a person can read up more about his own religion. One way is to read only the Bible and the works of conservative or even fundamentalist scholars. If your diet consists entirely of these, chances are you will end up a conservative Christian with exclusivist views. But if you read widely and do not restrict yourself to only 'fervent Christian' writers or 'born-again Christian' writers, whatever term you choose to use, there is a high likelihood that layer after layer of what used to be viewed as conservative truths will be peeled off, exposing serious flaws in the religion. Just by way of an example, when I wanted to read more about the Canon of Scriptures, I chose three books by three scholars - Bruce Metzger, LM McDonald and FF Bruce. FF Bruce is conservative evangelical but the other two are not. As it turned out, FF Bruce alone would have been enough to overturn my hitherto conservative understanding of Scriptures because unlike his other books meant for the general public (eg The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? which answers the question with an emphatic 'YES'), his more scholastic books aren't that 'edifying'.
But the beauty of Christianity is it's open for a complete debate. There are critical scholars in renowned universities and they write authoritative books critical of biblical reliability and even the faith in general. These people are not threatened at all. There is no fatwa against them. They continue to teach and write books.
Immediately after the Islamic State's killing of the Jordanian pilot by burning him in a cage, many Middle Eastern countries including Jordan and Egypt tabled a list of actions and one of them was the possibility of reforming Islamic teachings. But I have not seen any follow-up from that. To reform Islamic teaching, you must allow for critical scholarship. And the scholars cannot be threatened with death and bombings. It will be great if Islam, like Christianity, has its critical scholars including scholars who are not even Muslims. But can critical scholars who criticise the Quran and the Hadiths or show them to be spurious (the way critical scholars treat the Bible and Church Traditions) be assured of their personal safety?
If it's any comfort to traditionalists, the unreliability of Scriptures need not necessarily affect faith itself. The same with many other aspects of religion if they are shown to be false. We may know the erroneous means by which the Virgin Birth came to be a doctrine of the Church but that doesn't mean anything to the faithful. We still recite the Creed and we will still hear the angel's proclamation of the Virgin Birth at Christmas whether in church or at the shopping centres and I know I will still be filled with wonder and awe at the glorious Incarnation when God took on flesh and became man through the Blessed Virgin. And as we look at the crib during its blessing, we (yes, even I) will be 'strengthened in faith and receive the fullness of life'.
Saturday, October 24, 2015
Sex and the Church
What do you do when you receive your monthly church magazine? Most people just throw it away. But this month's magazine of my church has something that's really hilarious.
There's an article by a young father about how to be a good father. But the way he writes the article is truly hilarious.
This is what he writes which is sure to raise eyebrows. Mind you, this is in a church magazine.
This must be the first time I found an article in a church magazine so incredibly hilarious. I really think the church should employ a proofreader to go through all articles before distributing its monthly magazine to all parishioners.
The peculiarity of the language lies in the fact that while you can mother a child by looking after him and acting towards him like a mother, you can't say you are fathering a child by doing the same thing if you're a man. Fathering a child means an entirely different thing.
To father a child is, to use the delicate words of the OED, to 'procreate as a father.' But I prefer the more graphic description in the Cambridge Dictionary which simply says 'To father a child is to become the father of a child by making a woman pregnant.' What these dictionaries are trying to tell us and particularly, the writer of the article in the church magazine is there's a bit of the rumpy-pumpy in the whole idea, if you'll pardon my French. Don't talk loosely about fathering a child unless you really mean it. If what you mean is simply looking after a child, then say so.
As I've said earlier, you can talk about mothering a child if all you do is to act like a mother to the child and you can be as chaste as the Blessed Virgin herself. This meaning of 'mother' as a verb has been in use since the 19th century. But alas, there is no corresponding meaning for 'father' when used as a verb when all you want to say is that you are looking after a child like a father without any reference to 'making his mother pregnant', if I may borrow some of the words from the Cambridge Dictionary.
But there used to be a long time ago. From around the time of Chaucer and that's many hundred years ago, the word 'father' when used as a verb could also mean to act as a father to or to look after a child. But that meaning is now archaic and today, if you say someone fathers a child, it has only one unmistakeable meaning and it's not something you'd expect to read in a church magazine.
[EDITOR, 25 October 2015]: What I wrote above about the position of the Mormon Church is not incorrect at all. I've since looked up the internet on this matter and here's a good link that discusses the beliefs of the Mormon Church on the Incarnation of our Lord: CLICK HERE.
There's an article by a young father about how to be a good father. But the way he writes the article is truly hilarious.
This is what he writes which is sure to raise eyebrows. Mind you, this is in a church magazine.
This is what he says further:
And I don't think he's talking about sex therapists. He goes on to give the following advice:
I find this particularly amusing because as far as I know, the Bible does not say a word about HOW God fathers anyone, not even his only begotten son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
In the Gospel According to St Matthew, we are told that Mary was 'found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.' And the angel told Joseph that 'what is conceived in her (Mary) is from the Holy Spirit.'
I believe these vague and imprecise words are what led to some guesswork by the Mormon Church. From what I understand, the Mormons believe that there was some intimate union between God the Father and the Virgin Mary in order for Jesus to be conceived. But I'm not sure if this is nothing more than some scurrilous propaganda spread by mainstream Christians against Mormonism or if indeed the Mormons do advocate such a potentially blasphemous belief. If I'm mistaken, I apologise to all Mormons for this view which I must say is extremely common among most people. Just google it if you don't believe me.
But can the Mormons be blamed if indeed they hold such a view? I must confess that I have just deleted huge chunks of what I've written on this blog because I'm not sure if this subject is appropriate. Most of us have such a jaundiced view of sexual intercourse that we think anything that is even remotely connected to it must be filthy and sinful. But I'll heed the advice one of my readers gave me in an email to me. 'Please write more about language and less about religion'. And I think she's right. Nobody is offended when you criticise their language. Language is nothing more than mere words and a collection of noises whereas religion is potentially explosive. People get so worked up over it. Let's look at the language then and stay away from religion.
The writer of the article finally writes this:
The peculiarity of the language lies in the fact that while you can mother a child by looking after him and acting towards him like a mother, you can't say you are fathering a child by doing the same thing if you're a man. Fathering a child means an entirely different thing.
To father a child is, to use the delicate words of the OED, to 'procreate as a father.' But I prefer the more graphic description in the Cambridge Dictionary which simply says 'To father a child is to become the father of a child by making a woman pregnant.' What these dictionaries are trying to tell us and particularly, the writer of the article in the church magazine is there's a bit of the rumpy-pumpy in the whole idea, if you'll pardon my French. Don't talk loosely about fathering a child unless you really mean it. If what you mean is simply looking after a child, then say so.
As I've said earlier, you can talk about mothering a child if all you do is to act like a mother to the child and you can be as chaste as the Blessed Virgin herself. This meaning of 'mother' as a verb has been in use since the 19th century. But alas, there is no corresponding meaning for 'father' when used as a verb when all you want to say is that you are looking after a child like a father without any reference to 'making his mother pregnant', if I may borrow some of the words from the Cambridge Dictionary.
But there used to be a long time ago. From around the time of Chaucer and that's many hundred years ago, the word 'father' when used as a verb could also mean to act as a father to or to look after a child. But that meaning is now archaic and today, if you say someone fathers a child, it has only one unmistakeable meaning and it's not something you'd expect to read in a church magazine.
[EDITOR, 25 October 2015]: What I wrote above about the position of the Mormon Church is not incorrect at all. I've since looked up the internet on this matter and here's a good link that discusses the beliefs of the Mormon Church on the Incarnation of our Lord: CLICK HERE.
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Language, Truth and Hypocrisy
I have unintentionally pilfered two thirds of the title of AJ Ayer's remarkable book but I'll let the title remain because it suits the thrust of this post.
Just recently, I visited my mother and she was recounting stories after stories to me, many of which I paid hardly any attention to until she mentioned a recent "pot blessing" at her church. As a former altar boy and one who's thoroughly familiar with all the rituals of the Church, "pot blessing" rather floored me. What the devil is that? I'm familiar with the blessing of all kinds of inanimate objects from a large building to small items of jewellery but why on earth would a pot be blessed?
As it turns out, "pot blessing" is a common term in some church circles and it was first coined in the US, the land of fringe Christianity. The real word is "potluck" which also originates in the US. When my mother said she went to a pot blessing, it was only a potluck dinner she went to.
But why don't they say "potluck"? If you have moved in Christian circles for as long as I have, you will notice that there is a class of Christians who avoid all mention of the word "luck" or "fortune". To them, attributing anything to luck would be an affront to God who has a purpose for everything and controls everything. Whenever they encounter the word "luck", they change it immediately" to "bless". "Good luck!" becomes "God bless!" Although my mother is not that loony and she does say "Good luck" in her normal conversations, it's unfortunate that that monstrosity "pot-blessing" somehow crept into her vocabulary.
But this is nothing new. I have more than once been told that God was in charge of our destiny when I wished someone "Good luck", as if I didn't know that taking charge of people's destiny and, if I may add, often mucking it up, was a part of God's job description.
I'm familiar with the lengths we go to in order to whitewash our wrongs. When I was a boy, my friends and I would say we "disliked" someone when we meant we hated him. While our sentiments for the person were precisely what the word "hate" most accurately describes, we thought that by using a weaker word, we could free ourselves from the sin of hating another. Today, I see grown men and women doing the same thing I did as a kid and they seem blissfully oblivious to their blatant dishonesty.
I'm familiar with the lengths we go to in order to whitewash our wrongs. When I was a boy, my friends and I would say we "disliked" someone when we meant we hated him. While our sentiments for the person were precisely what the word "hate" most accurately describes, we thought that by using a weaker word, we could free ourselves from the sin of hating another. Today, I see grown men and women doing the same thing I did as a kid and they seem blissfully oblivious to their blatant dishonesty.
The people who are quick to avoid the word "luck" seem quite at home with the days of the week. Pick any day. Tuesday is named after the god of battle Tiw in Norse mythology. This god is the same as Mars, the Roman god of war. "Wednesday" comes from Wodnesday and is named after the Germanic god Woden. Thursday is named after the god Thor (which most people today know best because of some Hollywood movie) and Friday after the Old English goddess Frigg, the equivalent of the Roman Venus. Saturday is of course named after the god Saturn. Even the Lord's day, Sunday is named after the sun which was once a god just as Monday is named after the moon which was once worshipped as a goddess.
Finally, the one word that takes the prize for hypocrisy must be "humble" used as a verb. In today's world, everyone, whether he's an Academy Award winner or a school prize recipient, no longer says he's proud to receive the award but rather, he's "humbled" by the award. But what I read in this month's church newsletter emphatically takes the cake. This is the title of the article:
It's an article written by a woman who attended a workshop to help those with financial difficulties. She was moved when she heard the stories of those who were struggling to make ends meet. But this is how she described her feelings:
I have removed anything that might even remotely reveal the identity of this good woman. The purpose of this blog post (like all my other posts) is not to single out any one specific person or to criticise him or her in any way. I'm more interested in the bigger linguistic picture but I have no choice but to take my examples from real publications.
What we have here is a woman who says she was humbled to hear of other people's financial challenges. Does she mean that she was moved? Or saddened? Or even that irritating word that is overused in Christian circles - edified? Perhaps she was edified by tales of how people in worse financial circumstances than she could continue to trust in the Lord? The English language is rich with a wealth of vocabulary that is capable of describing every single emotion that the human heart can feel. She was certainly not humbled and should not have used that word.
Why do people say they are humbled when they are clearly not? Now, I'm not talking about that good woman but I'm focusing my attention on the rest of the world including Oscar Prize winners. The reason is obvious. They are being hypocritical. It's the same old "I dislike him but I don't hate him" line that I used to mouth as a pious Christian boy who carried the silver candlestick to the altar every Sunday. It's the same "I hate the sin but not the sinner" line we hear from adult homophobes who love victimising the LGBT community and other defenceless minority groups but are too self-righteous to admit the truth.
When someone says, "I am humbled to receive this Award", what he really means is "I'm ecstatic to receive it but as a rank hypocrite, I want everyone to think of me as the paragon of humility even at this proud moment of my life."
Any living language is susceptible to change. As the world's most used language and one that has long transcended geographical boundaries to become the world's only neutral language that is not anchored to any one national culture, English undergoes such a rapid change that no book can definitively spell out all the current changes in the language. These changes which affect not only grammar and syntax but also the meanings of words are usually caused by ignorance of the English-speaking public. The masses who are not so knowledgeable about the niceties and nuances attached to each word, are apt to use a word in a way that is contrary to standard usage and over time, that incorrect usage becomes standard usage. I have no doubt that one day, the dictionaries will add a new definition to the word "humble" to allow for such a hypocritical use. And it will be a change brought about purely by our hypocrisy.
Finally, the one word that takes the prize for hypocrisy must be "humble" used as a verb. In today's world, everyone, whether he's an Academy Award winner or a school prize recipient, no longer says he's proud to receive the award but rather, he's "humbled" by the award. But what I read in this month's church newsletter emphatically takes the cake. This is the title of the article:
It's an article written by a woman who attended a workshop to help those with financial difficulties. She was moved when she heard the stories of those who were struggling to make ends meet. But this is how she described her feelings:
I have removed anything that might even remotely reveal the identity of this good woman. The purpose of this blog post (like all my other posts) is not to single out any one specific person or to criticise him or her in any way. I'm more interested in the bigger linguistic picture but I have no choice but to take my examples from real publications.
What we have here is a woman who says she was humbled to hear of other people's financial challenges. Does she mean that she was moved? Or saddened? Or even that irritating word that is overused in Christian circles - edified? Perhaps she was edified by tales of how people in worse financial circumstances than she could continue to trust in the Lord? The English language is rich with a wealth of vocabulary that is capable of describing every single emotion that the human heart can feel. She was certainly not humbled and should not have used that word.
Why do people say they are humbled when they are clearly not? Now, I'm not talking about that good woman but I'm focusing my attention on the rest of the world including Oscar Prize winners. The reason is obvious. They are being hypocritical. It's the same old "I dislike him but I don't hate him" line that I used to mouth as a pious Christian boy who carried the silver candlestick to the altar every Sunday. It's the same "I hate the sin but not the sinner" line we hear from adult homophobes who love victimising the LGBT community and other defenceless minority groups but are too self-righteous to admit the truth.
When someone says, "I am humbled to receive this Award", what he really means is "I'm ecstatic to receive it but as a rank hypocrite, I want everyone to think of me as the paragon of humility even at this proud moment of my life."
Any living language is susceptible to change. As the world's most used language and one that has long transcended geographical boundaries to become the world's only neutral language that is not anchored to any one national culture, English undergoes such a rapid change that no book can definitively spell out all the current changes in the language. These changes which affect not only grammar and syntax but also the meanings of words are usually caused by ignorance of the English-speaking public. The masses who are not so knowledgeable about the niceties and nuances attached to each word, are apt to use a word in a way that is contrary to standard usage and over time, that incorrect usage becomes standard usage. I have no doubt that one day, the dictionaries will add a new definition to the word "humble" to allow for such a hypocritical use. And it will be a change brought about purely by our hypocrisy.
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Jesus and Lee Kuan Yew
In a video that got 16-year-old Amos Yee into trouble for his insults aimed at Singapore's much beloved founding father Lee Kuan Yew, he likened Lee to Jesus and he said they were both "power-hungry", "malicious" and "horrible".
But was Jesus really all that? If Amos Yee's description of Jesus is correct, his criminal conviction for having offended Christians' religious sentiments surely cannot stand. Because if Jesus was really what Yee says he was, and if there is biblical scholarship that supports him, merely repeating what Bible scholars say cannot be a criminal offence against Christianity.
It's only fair and right if I state at the outset that I am a church-going, church-serving Christian but as always, I will examine the facts rationally and fairly. But before we examine the person of Jesus, it's important for us to understand that like all religious figures, Jesus can be looked at in his two personas. The first is the historical Jesus and the other is the Jesus of faith. The Jesus of faith is the Jesus created by the church. He is imbued with super-human power and is fully divine. He is also fully man. "Very God and very man" as the Creed tells us. The Jesus of faith is also the Son of God, the 2nd person of the Holy Trinity and his properties and nature can't be questioned but are to be accepted as dogma. That's the bummer about religion. There's no room for critical thinking. But nobody outside the church is interested in the Jesus of faith. If at all anyone is interested in Jesus, it's the historical Jesus that he's interested in.
The historical Jesus, assuming he exists, is the Jesus who really lived in Palestine some 2000 years ago. We cannot project the Jesus of faith into a historical setting. The historical Jesus has to be gleaned from various sources and no historian is going to accept any authority, be it so high an authority as the Church, to lay down dogmas about Jesus if they're not supported by evidence. We have to examine the facts.
Because Jesus was never mentioned in non-religious sources and the very few disputed sources where he is mentioned have been shown and accepted by Bible scholars to be forgeries by early Christians, there can be serious doubt about the historicity of Jesus. However, most historians are prepared to accept that Jesus really did exist and that is the view I will adopt for this post. But bear in mind that I do not totally dismiss the arguments of those who deny the historicity of Jesus. I admit they are compelling; but for the purposes of this article, I will take the position that Jesus did exist in history.
Because of the paucity of evidence for Jesus' existence in non-religious texts, we will have to examine the Holy Gospels in order to understand the historical Jesus. Now, you may legitimately ask that if I want to find out the character of the historical Jesus, surely going to the Holy Gospels will only reveal the Jesus of faith and not the historical Jesus. Surely the Gospels will only say good things of Jesus and it is unlikely that the Gospel writers would portray Jesus as anything but the ideal God-man, compassionate and loving and slow to anger. But because there is no secular record of Jesus in order for historians to base their assessment of Jesus, historians have no alternative but to seek recourse to the only available accounts of Jesus ie the Holy Gospels and they have to look for areas in the Gospels where the writers, despite their eagerness to describe a perfect Jesus, somehow inadvertently but truthfully disclosed the other side of Jesus. This is not a simple task. To look for the Jesus with warts and all in a religious text that glorifies Jesus as God is indeed a Herculean task.
Now supposing some early biblical manuscripts do show a description of Jesus that is less than ideal or even downright nasty. And subsequent manuscripts show a different reading and a kinder word is used to describe Jesus. How would you deal with that? Naturally, a historian will have to accept that it's more likely for the original writing to contain that nasty word and a subsequent scribe (always a monk) altered the word to reflect a Christology that is more acceptable to the teachings of the Church. So the nasty word is looked at very seriously by historians as more likely to be the original portrayal of Jesus. And that is of course fair.
As it turns out, there are countless examples especially in the earlier texts and in the older manuscripts where Jesus is portrayed in a rather poor light but I will give only two examples from the Holy Gospels in order for us to understand the historical Jesus' true character. If you are really interested in this subject and would like more examples, you may want to read the books of Bible scholars such as Bart Ehrman. Bart Ehrman is a renowned Bible scholar and historian. Trained in Moody Bible Institute, Ehrman continued his theological education in Princeton under the great Bible scholar, Bruce Metzger.
AN ANGRY JESUS?
I will first read from the Gospel according to St Mark. Mark's gospel is accepted by all Bible scholars to be the oldest Gospel of the four. Many scholars accept that the writers of the gospels of Matthew and Luke copied large chunks from Mark and there is compelling textual evidence to support this. Hence, to understand the person of the historical Jesus, it is always more accurate to look at what the earliest accounts say of him. Later books may be less accurate because the writer had had time to think of what prevailing church doctrines were and there was always the temptation to write a more sugar-coated account of Jesus.
In Mark 1, we read of Jesus healing the leper. I will first quote from the KJV:
Modern Bible translations today which seek to honestly and faithfully use words as close to the original manuscripts or at least adopt the readings in older and more reliable manuscripts retain the original "angry" when describing the emotion of Jesus at this scene. For example, the NIV which is a modern translation and one used by the majority of churches and Christians all over the world reads in Mark 1:40, 41:
But why was Jesus indignant? Here is where Christian apologists come in. These are defenders of the faith and they will spring into action the moment there is anything that may raise a doubt among the faithful in any way. Some apologists suggest that perhaps Jesus was angry with the disease. But that doesn't make any sense and there is no textual support for this. Others say Jesus was angry with the law that makes a leper an outcast in society. But that again doesn't make sense because it's God's law, the Law of Moses, that strips a leper of all his rights in society and makes him a total outcast. Further in verse 44 Jesus commands the leper to observe the same Law of Moses after he was healed so Jesus couldn't have been raving at the Law of God.
It is interesting to note that the earliest gospel, Mark, also describes Jesus as "angry" in at least two other occasions but when the writers of Matthew and Luke copied the text, they copied everything but left out any reference to Jesus' anger.
In Mark 3:5 Jesus is described as angry in the story of the healing of the man with a shrivelled hand but in the corresponding story in Luke's Gospel we see that the writer of Luke copied almost verbatim from Mark but left out any reference to Jesus' anger. Matthew re-wrote that story and he too left out the description of Jesus as angry.
Similarly, in Mark 10:14, we read of Jesus being angry yet again. The corresponding story as related by the writers of Matthew and Luke completely omitted any references to Jesus' characteristic anger.
There are many other references to Jesus' quickness to anger even on occasions that do not merit it but these would be beyond the scope of this blog post. This is not a theological thesis.
So we have a portrayal from the Holy Gospels of Jesus as one who is quick to anger. When most people would be filled with compassion for a leper, Jesus was filled with anger.
A RACIST JESUS?
This time, we don't even have to delve into the older manuscripts. We only need to look at one of our canonical gospels. That's because this story about Jesus was not removed in transmission and remains in Matthew's Gospel Chapter 15. You can find it in ANY version of the Bible. I'll print it here from the NIV from verse 21:
First, Jesus ignored the woman who was crying out and begging for mercy. Notice that Jesus' disciples did not once ask Jesus to attend to the woman. Instead they asked him to chase her away. Jesus' reply was that he would only attend to Jews. But the feisty woman knelt before Jesus and begged him for help. This time, he couldn't ignore her. But what did he say to her? You can read it for yourself Jesus' shocking words that I can't even bear to repeat.
It is well-known that Jews at the time of Jesus would never talk to a Canaanite woman. They were racists of course. Jesus showed himself to be no different from the average racist Jew in the first century. Calling a Gentile a dog was common in those days. In fact, even today, you may hear the same word used on Arabs by Jewish extremists.
THE HISTORICAL JESUS
For the historian, the historical Jesus was most probably an apocalyptic zealot. There were many such zealots in Palestine at the time of Jesus. In fact about a hundred years before Jesus, there was one such zealot by the same name as Jesus who was crucified for treason. Those who deny the historicity of Jesus believe that Jesus was a myth created a hundred years after the earlier Jesus was crucified. It is not within the ambit of this post to examine such a claim. All I wish to say here is that the historical Jesus, as the evidence stands today, may very well be an apocalyptic zealot.
An apocalyptic zealot believed that the Romans had to be thrown out of the holy land and a Messiah would be raised by God to lead the people in an insurgency against the Romans. There is a great deal of textual evidence for the argument that Jesus was an apocalyptic zealot and a case can be made for such a claim based solely on the Holy Gospels.
When someone calls Jesus a horrible person, he is referring to this historical Jesus. Some Christians may be annoyed because they fail to see that the criticism is not directed at the Jesus of faith, the godhead in the Holy Trinity but at the historical Jesus who, even from the two passages in the canonical Gospels that I quoted above, does appear quite horrible.
Left: Jesus cleansing the leper painting in a Sicily cathedral
Right: Lee Kuan Yew, Founding Father of Singapore
But was Jesus really all that? If Amos Yee's description of Jesus is correct, his criminal conviction for having offended Christians' religious sentiments surely cannot stand. Because if Jesus was really what Yee says he was, and if there is biblical scholarship that supports him, merely repeating what Bible scholars say cannot be a criminal offence against Christianity.
It's only fair and right if I state at the outset that I am a church-going, church-serving Christian but as always, I will examine the facts rationally and fairly. But before we examine the person of Jesus, it's important for us to understand that like all religious figures, Jesus can be looked at in his two personas. The first is the historical Jesus and the other is the Jesus of faith. The Jesus of faith is the Jesus created by the church. He is imbued with super-human power and is fully divine. He is also fully man. "Very God and very man" as the Creed tells us. The Jesus of faith is also the Son of God, the 2nd person of the Holy Trinity and his properties and nature can't be questioned but are to be accepted as dogma. That's the bummer about religion. There's no room for critical thinking. But nobody outside the church is interested in the Jesus of faith. If at all anyone is interested in Jesus, it's the historical Jesus that he's interested in.
The historical Jesus, assuming he exists, is the Jesus who really lived in Palestine some 2000 years ago. We cannot project the Jesus of faith into a historical setting. The historical Jesus has to be gleaned from various sources and no historian is going to accept any authority, be it so high an authority as the Church, to lay down dogmas about Jesus if they're not supported by evidence. We have to examine the facts.
Because Jesus was never mentioned in non-religious sources and the very few disputed sources where he is mentioned have been shown and accepted by Bible scholars to be forgeries by early Christians, there can be serious doubt about the historicity of Jesus. However, most historians are prepared to accept that Jesus really did exist and that is the view I will adopt for this post. But bear in mind that I do not totally dismiss the arguments of those who deny the historicity of Jesus. I admit they are compelling; but for the purposes of this article, I will take the position that Jesus did exist in history.
Because of the paucity of evidence for Jesus' existence in non-religious texts, we will have to examine the Holy Gospels in order to understand the historical Jesus. Now, you may legitimately ask that if I want to find out the character of the historical Jesus, surely going to the Holy Gospels will only reveal the Jesus of faith and not the historical Jesus. Surely the Gospels will only say good things of Jesus and it is unlikely that the Gospel writers would portray Jesus as anything but the ideal God-man, compassionate and loving and slow to anger. But because there is no secular record of Jesus in order for historians to base their assessment of Jesus, historians have no alternative but to seek recourse to the only available accounts of Jesus ie the Holy Gospels and they have to look for areas in the Gospels where the writers, despite their eagerness to describe a perfect Jesus, somehow inadvertently but truthfully disclosed the other side of Jesus. This is not a simple task. To look for the Jesus with warts and all in a religious text that glorifies Jesus as God is indeed a Herculean task.
Now supposing some early biblical manuscripts do show a description of Jesus that is less than ideal or even downright nasty. And subsequent manuscripts show a different reading and a kinder word is used to describe Jesus. How would you deal with that? Naturally, a historian will have to accept that it's more likely for the original writing to contain that nasty word and a subsequent scribe (always a monk) altered the word to reflect a Christology that is more acceptable to the teachings of the Church. So the nasty word is looked at very seriously by historians as more likely to be the original portrayal of Jesus. And that is of course fair.
As it turns out, there are countless examples especially in the earlier texts and in the older manuscripts where Jesus is portrayed in a rather poor light but I will give only two examples from the Holy Gospels in order for us to understand the historical Jesus' true character. If you are really interested in this subject and would like more examples, you may want to read the books of Bible scholars such as Bart Ehrman. Bart Ehrman is a renowned Bible scholar and historian. Trained in Moody Bible Institute, Ehrman continued his theological education in Princeton under the great Bible scholar, Bruce Metzger.
AN ANGRY JESUS?
I will first read from the Gospel according to St Mark. Mark's gospel is accepted by all Bible scholars to be the oldest Gospel of the four. Many scholars accept that the writers of the gospels of Matthew and Luke copied large chunks from Mark and there is compelling textual evidence to support this. Hence, to understand the person of the historical Jesus, it is always more accurate to look at what the earliest accounts say of him. Later books may be less accurate because the writer had had time to think of what prevailing church doctrines were and there was always the temptation to write a more sugar-coated account of Jesus.
In Mark 1, we read of Jesus healing the leper. I will first quote from the KJV:
And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean.We read in this passage that Jesus was "filled with compassion" when approached by a leper for healing. This may seem like a simple statement of fact to us lay folks but scholars have agonised over this for a long time. You see, the Koine Greek word for "filled with compassion" is SPLANGNISTHEIS (I'm on my phone and I have no access to the Greek alphabet and we'll have to make do with a transliteration). This word is found in many of the later manuscripts. But the earlier and more reliable manuscripts use a different word, ORGISTHEIS which means "filled with anger" or "becoming angry". Our earliest text, Codex Bezae which is supported by 3 Latin manuscripts and which textual experts concede goes back to at least the 2nd century uses this word which describes Jesus as angry.
Modern Bible translations today which seek to honestly and faithfully use words as close to the original manuscripts or at least adopt the readings in older and more reliable manuscripts retain the original "angry" when describing the emotion of Jesus at this scene. For example, the NIV which is a modern translation and one used by the majority of churches and Christians all over the world reads in Mark 1:40, 41:
A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, ‘If you are willing, you can make me clean.’ Jesus was indignant. He reached out his hand and touched the man. ‘I am willing,’ he said. ‘Be clean!’So, the NIV retains the word used in the most reliable manuscripts and describes Jesus as indignant.
But why was Jesus indignant? Here is where Christian apologists come in. These are defenders of the faith and they will spring into action the moment there is anything that may raise a doubt among the faithful in any way. Some apologists suggest that perhaps Jesus was angry with the disease. But that doesn't make any sense and there is no textual support for this. Others say Jesus was angry with the law that makes a leper an outcast in society. But that again doesn't make sense because it's God's law, the Law of Moses, that strips a leper of all his rights in society and makes him a total outcast. Further in verse 44 Jesus commands the leper to observe the same Law of Moses after he was healed so Jesus couldn't have been raving at the Law of God.
It is interesting to note that the earliest gospel, Mark, also describes Jesus as "angry" in at least two other occasions but when the writers of Matthew and Luke copied the text, they copied everything but left out any reference to Jesus' anger.
In Mark 3:5 Jesus is described as angry in the story of the healing of the man with a shrivelled hand but in the corresponding story in Luke's Gospel we see that the writer of Luke copied almost verbatim from Mark but left out any reference to Jesus' anger. Matthew re-wrote that story and he too left out the description of Jesus as angry.
Similarly, in Mark 10:14, we read of Jesus being angry yet again. The corresponding story as related by the writers of Matthew and Luke completely omitted any references to Jesus' characteristic anger.
There are many other references to Jesus' quickness to anger even on occasions that do not merit it but these would be beyond the scope of this blog post. This is not a theological thesis.
So we have a portrayal from the Holy Gospels of Jesus as one who is quick to anger. When most people would be filled with compassion for a leper, Jesus was filled with anger.
A RACIST JESUS?
This time, we don't even have to delve into the older manuscripts. We only need to look at one of our canonical gospels. That's because this story about Jesus was not removed in transmission and remains in Matthew's Gospel Chapter 15. You can find it in ANY version of the Bible. I'll print it here from the NIV from verse 21:
Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, ‘Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.’
Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, ‘Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.’ He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.’
The woman came and knelt before him. ‘Lord, help me!’ she said. He replied, ‘It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.’
‘Yes it is, Lord,’ she said. ‘Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.’
Then Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.’ And her daughter was healed at that moment.This is not an easy passage for the church to deal with. I have read every attempt at explaining away Jesus' racism and cruelty and I must say none of them is valid. Some apologists have tried to show that calling the woman a dog was done as a term of endearment. I'm sure I need not explain to my readers how insane such a suggestion is.
First, Jesus ignored the woman who was crying out and begging for mercy. Notice that Jesus' disciples did not once ask Jesus to attend to the woman. Instead they asked him to chase her away. Jesus' reply was that he would only attend to Jews. But the feisty woman knelt before Jesus and begged him for help. This time, he couldn't ignore her. But what did he say to her? You can read it for yourself Jesus' shocking words that I can't even bear to repeat.
It is well-known that Jews at the time of Jesus would never talk to a Canaanite woman. They were racists of course. Jesus showed himself to be no different from the average racist Jew in the first century. Calling a Gentile a dog was common in those days. In fact, even today, you may hear the same word used on Arabs by Jewish extremists.
THE HISTORICAL JESUS
For the historian, the historical Jesus was most probably an apocalyptic zealot. There were many such zealots in Palestine at the time of Jesus. In fact about a hundred years before Jesus, there was one such zealot by the same name as Jesus who was crucified for treason. Those who deny the historicity of Jesus believe that Jesus was a myth created a hundred years after the earlier Jesus was crucified. It is not within the ambit of this post to examine such a claim. All I wish to say here is that the historical Jesus, as the evidence stands today, may very well be an apocalyptic zealot.
An apocalyptic zealot believed that the Romans had to be thrown out of the holy land and a Messiah would be raised by God to lead the people in an insurgency against the Romans. There is a great deal of textual evidence for the argument that Jesus was an apocalyptic zealot and a case can be made for such a claim based solely on the Holy Gospels.
When someone calls Jesus a horrible person, he is referring to this historical Jesus. Some Christians may be annoyed because they fail to see that the criticism is not directed at the Jesus of faith, the godhead in the Holy Trinity but at the historical Jesus who, even from the two passages in the canonical Gospels that I quoted above, does appear quite horrible.
Sunday, March 8, 2015
Philip Ng on the meaning of wealth
A friend of mine just posted on Facebook this article which was published almost a year ago about a talk on wealth given by Philip Ng, CEO of Far East Organisation, and one of the richest men in Singapore. Instead of talking about the strategies in accumulating wealth, Ng, who is a devout Christian, quoted St Matthew 19:24 which reads, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
This is a story from the Holy Gospel about Jesus' meeting with the rich young ruler who asks Jesus what he has to do to "have eternal life". Jesus' reply is that he has to do good and obey the commandments. The rich man explains that he has done all that from his childhood. Jesus then says he has failed in one area - he should sell ALL that he has and give them all to the poor. The man is unable to do that and he walks away sadly. Jesus then turns to his disciples and tells them that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
If you look at the comments at the bottom of the article, you will see the comments by some of the readers who expressed surprise. Was Philip Ng going to sell all he had to give to the poor? Obviously not. Then why did he quote this part of the Holy Gospel?
Here is where non-Christians, quite rightly and reasonably, do not understand how a Christian thinks and I don't blame them one bit. Although I'm a devout Christian myself, I must confess that we Christians are so conditioned that we are unable to see anything that is wrong with our Gospel stories or how they don't gel with reality or how much at variance biblical teachings are from our own personal lives. We have through years of conditioning become so inured to biblical errors and discrepancies that we don't really see them at all. And when they are shown to us, we will find some way, however ludicrous, to justify the biblical text.
I'll tell you how a Christian mind works. This applies to followers of all other religions too but I'm more familiar with my own religion. I'll take an example from an article I wrote in this blog years ago. As I've shown in that article, Jesus promises in at least 5 different places in various gospels that his Second Coming would take place in the lifetimes of some of his disciples and hearers. Apart from these unambiguous words of Jesus, this is also how the early Christians and St Paul understood Christ's Second Coming to be - while most of them were still alive or in any case not later than the first century.
But as I wrote in that article, some scribes even tried to alter some of these verses around 200AD. They were worried that since it'd been 200 years after Christ and he still hadn't come, how likely was his coming, given that he had broken his own promise in the Gospels? But it's been 2,000 years now and we still continue in the same faith without a problem. How is that possible?
You see, the religious mind works this way. You put the cart before the horse. You first decide that the Bible is the word of God and the Holy Gospels tell only the Gospel truth. If reality tells you that certain things didn't come to pass as foretold by Jesus, it CANNOT be that Jesus was wrong because after all, he is God Almighty himself and Second Person of the Holy Trinity. And the Gospels can't be wrong either because they are a part of God's holy word.
So proper Christian exegesis will have you understand that Jesus DIDN'T MEAN that he would be coming back in the lifetime of the disciples. Why? Because it didn't happen so he couldn't have meant that. This has led some Bible scholars to concoct a principle of interpretation which is sometimes called the Principle of Compression. According to biblical scholars, Ridderbos and Leon Morris, prophecy usually compresses time so that the time of Jesus' resurrection up to his Second Coming is compressed to read as one event. So, Jesus' resurrection which the disciples must have seen (if you believe the Gospels) and Jesus' Second Coming which they didn't see because it hasn't happened yet - even though separated by more than 2000 years - are essentially one event. Leon Morris says, "They would see the early manifestation in the resurrection and what followed immediately, though the final fulfilment of the words is yet future."
But of course this is terribly dishonest. Jesus says in the Gospels that his hearers would see him coming in the clouds in all his glory with the angels and these scholars are saying that although Jesus' hearers didn't see that, they must have seen his resurrection and let's pretend both events (the resurrection and the Second Coming) are one and the same in order to make the words of Jesus true.
Leon Morris writes further, "Some such understanding of Jesus' words is surely required." Why is it required? Otherwise, Jesus wouldn't be telling the truth.
This exercise may seem strange to the atheist who is not familiar with the need of the religious person to justify the claims of his religion.
So when Philip Ng quotes Matthew 19:24, he fails to consider the fact that his words would be quoted to non-believers and they will find it hard to understand what he's saying.
From the clear words of Jesus, a rich man CANNOT enter the kingdom of God. He can't have eternal life (to use the rich young ruler's words). There is no mistake about this. It means the same thing whether you are reading the English translation or you're reading it in Koine Greek. But what constitutes "rich"? Bible scholars and historians are agreed on this. In the eyes of anyone living in the time of Jesus, all of us who can read my blog on their computers or iPads or tablets or mobile phones are filthy rich. We are all barred from entering heaven and there's no way you can honestly dispute that and of course Philip Ng, by virtue of his immense wealth, is barred a thousandfold.
So the Christian looks at the verse again and he tries to re-interpret it. One way is to pretend that the eye of the needle is really some other object and camels do go through it. This is a common way for Christian apologists to justify or alter the meaning of a biblical verse and its falsehood is usually not apparent to the deeply religious who are desperate to grasp at any straw. But if you read the entire passage, it's obvious Jesus is saying no rich man can enter heaven and that's that.
I recall reading in one of James Joyce's novels a priest reading this same passage in church. Joyce intends it to be satirical and I remember feeling rather edgy as I read the novel because naturally this is one of the many passages we Christians are uncomfortable about when it's handled by a non-believer.
If you look at the historical context, you will understand why the Gospel passage says that. All known writings at the time about the Christian community in the first century tell us that Christianity was the religion of slaves and very poor people. Even the early Church Fathers accepted this without question. Certainly at the time when the Synoptic Gospels were written, every Christian was poor. Those who had money or property had to sell away everything they had and give it to the Christian community. Early Christians were perfect Communists. This can be seen in Acts 5 where Ananias sold his property but kept a portion for himself and gave the rest to the church. Because he deceived the church into thinking he didn't keep any proceeds for himself, he was instantly struck dead by God, or so the story goes.
Given that this was how the early church was like, it's not surprising to read in the Gospel of Jesus slamming rich people. But of course unknown to the Gospel writers, the church became very successful and one of the richest men in history, the Roman Emperor, even accepted the faith 300 years later and then suddenly, this passage becomes painfully anachronistic. But the religious mind is very malleable. Christians no longer look upon the rich as automatically debarred from heaven. We merely say this passage is a reminder to us not to love Mammon and to hold our wealth as stewards for God. Hey, that's not what Jesus says in the passage but we have more important things (such as our investments) to think about.
This is a story from the Holy Gospel about Jesus' meeting with the rich young ruler who asks Jesus what he has to do to "have eternal life". Jesus' reply is that he has to do good and obey the commandments. The rich man explains that he has done all that from his childhood. Jesus then says he has failed in one area - he should sell ALL that he has and give them all to the poor. The man is unable to do that and he walks away sadly. Jesus then turns to his disciples and tells them that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
If you look at the comments at the bottom of the article, you will see the comments by some of the readers who expressed surprise. Was Philip Ng going to sell all he had to give to the poor? Obviously not. Then why did he quote this part of the Holy Gospel?
Here is where non-Christians, quite rightly and reasonably, do not understand how a Christian thinks and I don't blame them one bit. Although I'm a devout Christian myself, I must confess that we Christians are so conditioned that we are unable to see anything that is wrong with our Gospel stories or how they don't gel with reality or how much at variance biblical teachings are from our own personal lives. We have through years of conditioning become so inured to biblical errors and discrepancies that we don't really see them at all. And when they are shown to us, we will find some way, however ludicrous, to justify the biblical text.
I'll tell you how a Christian mind works. This applies to followers of all other religions too but I'm more familiar with my own religion. I'll take an example from an article I wrote in this blog years ago. As I've shown in that article, Jesus promises in at least 5 different places in various gospels that his Second Coming would take place in the lifetimes of some of his disciples and hearers. Apart from these unambiguous words of Jesus, this is also how the early Christians and St Paul understood Christ's Second Coming to be - while most of them were still alive or in any case not later than the first century.
But as I wrote in that article, some scribes even tried to alter some of these verses around 200AD. They were worried that since it'd been 200 years after Christ and he still hadn't come, how likely was his coming, given that he had broken his own promise in the Gospels? But it's been 2,000 years now and we still continue in the same faith without a problem. How is that possible?
You see, the religious mind works this way. You put the cart before the horse. You first decide that the Bible is the word of God and the Holy Gospels tell only the Gospel truth. If reality tells you that certain things didn't come to pass as foretold by Jesus, it CANNOT be that Jesus was wrong because after all, he is God Almighty himself and Second Person of the Holy Trinity. And the Gospels can't be wrong either because they are a part of God's holy word.
So proper Christian exegesis will have you understand that Jesus DIDN'T MEAN that he would be coming back in the lifetime of the disciples. Why? Because it didn't happen so he couldn't have meant that. This has led some Bible scholars to concoct a principle of interpretation which is sometimes called the Principle of Compression. According to biblical scholars, Ridderbos and Leon Morris, prophecy usually compresses time so that the time of Jesus' resurrection up to his Second Coming is compressed to read as one event. So, Jesus' resurrection which the disciples must have seen (if you believe the Gospels) and Jesus' Second Coming which they didn't see because it hasn't happened yet - even though separated by more than 2000 years - are essentially one event. Leon Morris says, "They would see the early manifestation in the resurrection and what followed immediately, though the final fulfilment of the words is yet future."
But of course this is terribly dishonest. Jesus says in the Gospels that his hearers would see him coming in the clouds in all his glory with the angels and these scholars are saying that although Jesus' hearers didn't see that, they must have seen his resurrection and let's pretend both events (the resurrection and the Second Coming) are one and the same in order to make the words of Jesus true.
Leon Morris writes further, "Some such understanding of Jesus' words is surely required." Why is it required? Otherwise, Jesus wouldn't be telling the truth.
This exercise may seem strange to the atheist who is not familiar with the need of the religious person to justify the claims of his religion.
So when Philip Ng quotes Matthew 19:24, he fails to consider the fact that his words would be quoted to non-believers and they will find it hard to understand what he's saying.
From the clear words of Jesus, a rich man CANNOT enter the kingdom of God. He can't have eternal life (to use the rich young ruler's words). There is no mistake about this. It means the same thing whether you are reading the English translation or you're reading it in Koine Greek. But what constitutes "rich"? Bible scholars and historians are agreed on this. In the eyes of anyone living in the time of Jesus, all of us who can read my blog on their computers or iPads or tablets or mobile phones are filthy rich. We are all barred from entering heaven and there's no way you can honestly dispute that and of course Philip Ng, by virtue of his immense wealth, is barred a thousandfold.
So the Christian looks at the verse again and he tries to re-interpret it. One way is to pretend that the eye of the needle is really some other object and camels do go through it. This is a common way for Christian apologists to justify or alter the meaning of a biblical verse and its falsehood is usually not apparent to the deeply religious who are desperate to grasp at any straw. But if you read the entire passage, it's obvious Jesus is saying no rich man can enter heaven and that's that.
I recall reading in one of James Joyce's novels a priest reading this same passage in church. Joyce intends it to be satirical and I remember feeling rather edgy as I read the novel because naturally this is one of the many passages we Christians are uncomfortable about when it's handled by a non-believer.
If you look at the historical context, you will understand why the Gospel passage says that. All known writings at the time about the Christian community in the first century tell us that Christianity was the religion of slaves and very poor people. Even the early Church Fathers accepted this without question. Certainly at the time when the Synoptic Gospels were written, every Christian was poor. Those who had money or property had to sell away everything they had and give it to the Christian community. Early Christians were perfect Communists. This can be seen in Acts 5 where Ananias sold his property but kept a portion for himself and gave the rest to the church. Because he deceived the church into thinking he didn't keep any proceeds for himself, he was instantly struck dead by God, or so the story goes.
Given that this was how the early church was like, it's not surprising to read in the Gospel of Jesus slamming rich people. But of course unknown to the Gospel writers, the church became very successful and one of the richest men in history, the Roman Emperor, even accepted the faith 300 years later and then suddenly, this passage becomes painfully anachronistic. But the religious mind is very malleable. Christians no longer look upon the rich as automatically debarred from heaven. We merely say this passage is a reminder to us not to love Mammon and to hold our wealth as stewards for God. Hey, that's not what Jesus says in the passage but we have more important things (such as our investments) to think about.
Saturday, February 7, 2015
The Real Reason for the Muslim World's Outrage
I'm sure most people have seen the horrific video of the burning of the Jordanian pilot and it is indeed gruesome but let's put in perspective - there have been much worse videos I've seen from the Islamic world. You may remember the beheading video of Nick Berg by another Muslim terrorist group in 2004, long before the formation of the Islamic State. This was quickly followed by the video of the beheading of a South Korean called Kim. In both videos, the victims had their heads sawn off by a dagger. I thought those videos were much worse than the recent video of the burning of the Jordanian pilot and I remember feeling faint after watching them. Perhaps between then and now, I've been inured to violent videos now that the world is seeing more and more Islamic terrorist groups in action. Just days before this video of the Jordanian pilot's murder was released, the Islamic State released videos of the beheading of two Japanese men. There was no outcry from the Muslim world.
My first thoughts did not do justice to the Arab world or to Muslims. I thought they were just exhibiting their tribal clannishness or cliquishness and they had nothing but indifference for the deaths of non-Muslims or non-Arabs. But that's not true. The Islamic State is known to be hostile to Muslims too. They view Shiites as apostates and they aren't particularly kind to non-extreme Sunnis either.
Why then are Arab nations only united in their anger for the Islamic State's murder of the Jordanian pilot? Why is the Muslim world jointly and vociferously outraged only now? It was only after I read the words of the Grand Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the head of Al Azhar, that I understood perfectly the reason for the Muslim world's outrage. Al Azhar is the seat of Sunni Islam and Al Azhar is to the Sunni Muslim world what the Vatican is to Roman Catholicism. What Muslims are most unhappy about is the METHOD by which the Jordanian pilot was executed - by way of immolation while locked in a cage. Sheikh Tayeb, after condemning the Islamic State for burning the Jordanian pilot, goes on to call for the Islamic State’s extremists to be “killed, or crucified, or their hands and legs cut off.” The incongruity of what he is saying is of course lost on him, so staunchly is he upholding the methods of killing that are approved in Islam and of which he is suggesting should be the fate of the Islamic State criminals.
I have seen the barbaric slaughter by Islamic groups of innocent people and I must say the burning video is not so horrific as some of them. I've seen a video of a thieving boy having his hand cut off after a shariah court meted out the punishment. Beheadings which are gruesome to us are nothing new to the average Muslim in the Arab world. Public beheadings are carried out in Saudi Arabia to this day. The worst video I've ever seen showed the stoning to death of a woman allegedly guilty of something as minor as adultery. And if you are familiar with Islamic jurisprudence, you will know that an adulteress in the eyes of the Shariah court may really be as innocent as a new-born babe. Victims of a gang rape are frequently sentenced to death in the Arab world and it used to puzzle me to no end until I discovered the reason for this. In Islamic law, a man can only be convicted of rape if there are testimonies from 4 eye-witnesses who must be adult Muslim men as to his guilt. It's very hard to find even an eye witness in a rape case and of course if it's a gang rape, the four or more Muslim men present at the rape scene are almost always the accused rapists themselves and it's not surprising that they usually testify that the woman is a prostitute and the Shariah court has no alternative but to find her guilty of adultery and death is the right punishment.
Why is the Arab world outraged by this and not by the stoning of rape victims even if some of their death sentences are commuted to life imprisonment? I've seen a stoning video and I must say that if I have to choose my mode of execution, I would rather be burnt like the Jordanian pilot rather than be stoned to death. The burning may be dramatic but it is swift.
The Arab world is not disturbed by the executions of rape victims because they are all done in accordance with Islamic teachings. What disturbs them about the burning of the Jordanian pilot is their belief that only Allah has the right to burn people.
The Hadith by Imam Abu Daud and Imam Ahmad says this:
I don't want to adjudicate on this and decide which side is right or wrong. But there's so much biased and unfair reporting in all the major newspapers which repeat ad nauseam the position given by Muslim clerics in Jordan and Egypt on this issue but they do not publish the arguments of the Islamic experts from the Islamic State.
What we have here is a theological dispute between Muslims on whether an execution by fire is legitimate in Islam. It's no different from a disagreement over the meaning of the Eucharist - is it the body of Christ or is it a symbol of the body of Christ. Give religious disputes some time and you can have even more variations - perhaps it's neither the body of Christ nor a mere symbol of it but could it be that the Eucharist CONTAINS the body of Christ? But not all religious disputes are as gruesome as the current dispute between the Islamic State and moderate Muslims on what method of killing is legitimate. For the Eucharist, whether you believe it's the body of Christ or it contains the body of Christ or it's merely a symbol of the body of Christ, you are still consuming the same wafer and all 100 calories of it.
My first thoughts did not do justice to the Arab world or to Muslims. I thought they were just exhibiting their tribal clannishness or cliquishness and they had nothing but indifference for the deaths of non-Muslims or non-Arabs. But that's not true. The Islamic State is known to be hostile to Muslims too. They view Shiites as apostates and they aren't particularly kind to non-extreme Sunnis either.
Grand Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb
Why then are Arab nations only united in their anger for the Islamic State's murder of the Jordanian pilot? Why is the Muslim world jointly and vociferously outraged only now? It was only after I read the words of the Grand Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the head of Al Azhar, that I understood perfectly the reason for the Muslim world's outrage. Al Azhar is the seat of Sunni Islam and Al Azhar is to the Sunni Muslim world what the Vatican is to Roman Catholicism. What Muslims are most unhappy about is the METHOD by which the Jordanian pilot was executed - by way of immolation while locked in a cage. Sheikh Tayeb, after condemning the Islamic State for burning the Jordanian pilot, goes on to call for the Islamic State’s extremists to be “killed, or crucified, or their hands and legs cut off.” The incongruity of what he is saying is of course lost on him, so staunchly is he upholding the methods of killing that are approved in Islam and of which he is suggesting should be the fate of the Islamic State criminals.
I have seen the barbaric slaughter by Islamic groups of innocent people and I must say the burning video is not so horrific as some of them. I've seen a video of a thieving boy having his hand cut off after a shariah court meted out the punishment. Beheadings which are gruesome to us are nothing new to the average Muslim in the Arab world. Public beheadings are carried out in Saudi Arabia to this day. The worst video I've ever seen showed the stoning to death of a woman allegedly guilty of something as minor as adultery. And if you are familiar with Islamic jurisprudence, you will know that an adulteress in the eyes of the Shariah court may really be as innocent as a new-born babe. Victims of a gang rape are frequently sentenced to death in the Arab world and it used to puzzle me to no end until I discovered the reason for this. In Islamic law, a man can only be convicted of rape if there are testimonies from 4 eye-witnesses who must be adult Muslim men as to his guilt. It's very hard to find even an eye witness in a rape case and of course if it's a gang rape, the four or more Muslim men present at the rape scene are almost always the accused rapists themselves and it's not surprising that they usually testify that the woman is a prostitute and the Shariah court has no alternative but to find her guilty of adultery and death is the right punishment.
Why is the Arab world outraged by this and not by the stoning of rape victims even if some of their death sentences are commuted to life imprisonment? I've seen a stoning video and I must say that if I have to choose my mode of execution, I would rather be burnt like the Jordanian pilot rather than be stoned to death. The burning may be dramatic but it is swift.
The Arab world is not disturbed by the executions of rape victims because they are all done in accordance with Islamic teachings. What disturbs them about the burning of the Jordanian pilot is their belief that only Allah has the right to burn people.
The Hadith by Imam Abu Daud and Imam Ahmad says this:
Do not punish anybody with Allah's punishment (fire). Only Allah can punish anybody with (fire).The Arab world is outraged only because the Islamic State is usurping Allah's monopoly over the use of fire as a form of punishment. But contrary to Obama's and the Western world's insistence that the Islamic State is not Muslim, the Islamic State was formed to preserve the sanctity of Islam and the teachings of the Prophet. And they have their Islamic scholars too. As soon as the video was released by the Islamic State, they issued a fatwa to explain that the execution by burning was perfectly in accordance with Islamic teachings and they cited precedents of such a punishment being meted out in the past by Muslim saints and even Muhammad himself. I don't want to go into the gory details of what Muhammad and his Companions actually did with fire on their hapless victims but because their actions might seem to contradict the Hadith that says fire is to be used solely by Allah, the Hanafis and Shafi’is (two major Sunni schools - almost all South East Asian Muslims are Shafi'i Sunnis) have distinguished that saying in the Hadith as an "affirmation of humility". As Al-Muhallab says, “This is not an absolute prohibition, but rather it is the path of humility." In other words, if you don't kill a man with fire, you are just being humble; you are, in humility, reserving fire purely for Allah's use. But the use of fire as a means of execution is not strictly prohibited.
I don't want to adjudicate on this and decide which side is right or wrong. But there's so much biased and unfair reporting in all the major newspapers which repeat ad nauseam the position given by Muslim clerics in Jordan and Egypt on this issue but they do not publish the arguments of the Islamic experts from the Islamic State.
What we have here is a theological dispute between Muslims on whether an execution by fire is legitimate in Islam. It's no different from a disagreement over the meaning of the Eucharist - is it the body of Christ or is it a symbol of the body of Christ. Give religious disputes some time and you can have even more variations - perhaps it's neither the body of Christ nor a mere symbol of it but could it be that the Eucharist CONTAINS the body of Christ? But not all religious disputes are as gruesome as the current dispute between the Islamic State and moderate Muslims on what method of killing is legitimate. For the Eucharist, whether you believe it's the body of Christ or it contains the body of Christ or it's merely a symbol of the body of Christ, you are still consuming the same wafer and all 100 calories of it.
Sunday, January 25, 2015
St Paul the Reformer
Today is the day when churches all over the world remember the conversion of St Paul and what better church to go to on this day than St Paul's Cathedral? But I'm always very uneasy on this day with the readings in church. The first reading is usually from the familiar passage in Acts 9 about St Paul's conversion to Christianity which would have been fine if the church stops there. But the second reading, as always, is from Galatians. Anyone who is familiar with the Bible must know that you're placing two contradictory passages before parishioners when you have the Acts 9 reading immediately before Galatians 1. But the church is no fool. The reading stops at Galatians 1:16a and for a very good reason too. I will come to that soon.
You see, most historians (except those who are led by their personal religious beliefs to go against the historical evidence) are of the view that St Paul started a new religion that was very much in contradiction with the teachings of the real apostles, particularly, St Peter and St James. The epistles of St Paul are full of grievances against the real apostles who did not accept him as one of them. In 2 Corinthians 11:5, St Paul claims that he is not inferior to those "super-apostles". But it's in the Epistle to the Galatians that St Paul uses the strongest words against the real apostles. He refers to them as "accursed" and "cursed". He warns his readers not to listen to or be influenced by these Judaizing apostles. Elsewhere in other epistles, St Paul is extremely firm against these Judaizers. He preaches a non-Jewish version of Christianity and he will allow nothing to stand in his way.
Nowhere in St Paul's epistles is there any indication that the rift with the real apostles is healed at any point in time. It's only in the book of Acts that we read of the real apostles agreeing with St Paul and are willing to accept Gentile Christians who do not convert to Judaism as long as they abstain from blood and idolatry. We also read in Acts that St Peter, because of a mere dream, is willing to turn non-kosher overnight. That's of course hilarious and no serious historian can accept that.
Just how reliable is the book of Acts? The writer tries a little too hard to make the relationship between St Paul and the real apostles seem more hunky-dory than it really is. The reading in Acts tells us of St Paul after his conversion and while he's still in Damascus spending several days with the apostles. What we see is a picture of close fellowship between the real apostles and St Paul.
But if one were to continue reading after Galatians 1:16a (which is where the reading in church ends), St Paul's tells a very different story. See Galatians 1:16b to 20: "...my immediate response was not to consult any human being. I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went into Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus. Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days. I saw none of the other apostles – only James, the Lord’s brother. I assure you before God that what I am writing to you is no lie."
St Paul is eager to assure his readers that he is not telling a lie. I believe him. I believe it's the book of Acts that has altered the facts to make St Paul appear to be in the good books of the real apostles. Now, you can see why the church stops the reading of Galatians at 1:16a. To continue reading just a few verses more and any parishioner who is not yet asleep in church will surely spot the contradiction with Acts 9.
St Paul may have betrayed Jesus and subverted his true teachings and the teachings of his real apostles but we can look upon St Paul more as a reformer than a traitor to the faith. Don't forget Jesus' real attitude to Gentiles as can be seen in St Matthew's gospel where he calls Gentiles "dogs". St Paul has merely reformed Jesus' teachings and turned another parochial Jewish sect into a whole new religion fit for not just wealthy Greek merchants but the Roman Emperor himself. If Christianity had remained true to its original teachings as a Jewish sect, it would have died the way the real apostles' religion died off in the first century itself. History tells us that the Ebionites were the most faithful to Jesus' original teachings and their religion fizzled out after the first hundred years or so only to be superseded by the Pauline version of Christianity, which is the Christianity of today and it doesn't matter if you're Protestant, Orthodox or Roman Catholic.
As the church ponders on the conversion of St Paul today, let's not forget his role in the formation of Christianity as we know it today. Without St Paul, there'd be no Christian religion and what a sad world this would be.
Monday, January 19, 2015
Thinking of Charlie
Yesterday in church, the sermon, as expected, touched on the Charlie Hebdo massacre. But the vicar while condemning the massacre as totally repugnant to all that is holy exhorted the faithful to turn the other cheek and to bridle the tongue as the epistle of St James tells us to do. The Christian duty not to cause offence must override our desire for free speech.
As a Christian, I am unable to fault the sermon in any way. Christianity always places the Christian at the losing end in any situation. He's to turn the other cheek, if any asks for his coat, he should give his shirt as well, if asked to walk a mile, a good Christian should do two. If there is a religion of peace on this planet, Christianity certainly is the best candidate for such an honour.
But the Charlie Hebdo editors are not Christians. I should have said "were" since most of them were brutally gunned down. Even if they were Christians, so what? It may be right that the Christian should go out of his way not to cause offence to others but what has that got to do with the massacre? It may be right for those of us who were properly brought up in polite society to greet one another when we meet but any one of us can flout the rules of courtesy any time we wish. The correct response to a rude person is a frown and nothing more.
That's precisely my point about the Charlie Hebdo episode. The editors were just guilty of rudeness. But it's their job as the editors of a satirical newspaper to be rude. They were just doing their job. Charlie Hebdo has satirised just about every religion on this planet and nobody has even bothered with them or given them any notice until the two Muslim brothers slaughtered them.
What I find truly outrageous is there is nothing offensive about the cartoons of Muhammad that the newspaper published. Pope Francis recently remarked that if someone swore at another person's mother, he would probably receive a punch in the face. But that's a silly remark because a person's mother is not a historical figure. Muhammad is and like all historical figures, he is naturally subject to the same treatment as Abraham, Moses, Jesus, St Paul, Buddha and many other religious figures from Zeus to Joseph Smith.
Making religious jokes is common anywhere in the world. When I was an altar boy, I made a lot of jokes about almost every sacred object in church. The chief brunt of my jokes was the holy oil which came in vials from the Bishop and which my vicar used to treat with an inordinate amount of respect. Years later, when I taught Sunday School in church, the other Sunday School teachers and I (and sometimes the students as well) would come up with the best religious jokes, some of which were uproariously funny.
When I was very young, I even engaged in inter-denominational banter with a classmate who was an altar boy in a different church. Those from my church would make jokes about his church and we'd tease him about being "touched" by his priest (the notoriety of his church was well known even in the days when I was a young lad). One day, he told me a joke which was quite good. A nun went for confession and she whispered to the priest that she was once a prostitute. The priest turned ashen and hit his fist against the wall of the confessional. "What did you say?" he roared. The nun was trembling in fear and she repeated her words, "I'm sorry but I was once a prostitute". The priest took out his handkerchief and wiped the perspiration from his brow. "Phew! That's quite all right, child," he said. "I thought you said you were once a Protestant".
I couldn't help laughing at the joke but I immediately cooked up another joke and this time it was a boy who went to his Protestant vicar for auricular confession and he said he was once a catamite. You probably know the rest of the story. Don't ask me how I knew the word "catamite" as a young boy but I assure you the priests of my church were all happily married men.
But it's not just Christians who have a sense of humour. The followers of many of the world's major religions do not treat the divine with murderous seriousness. There is even a dish in the Far East blasphemously called "Buddha Jumps over the Wall". That's the dish that is reputed to be so tasty that Buddha himself had to jump over a garden wall to taste it. If you're thinking of ordering it the next time you go to a Chinese restaurant, perish the thought. It's a most disgusting broth that smells like a Chinese medicinal shop. Buddha may have jumped over the wall to eat it but I would jump over a wall and several rivers to be away from it.
After what has happened in Paris, you would think that Muslims are the only ones who have no sense of humour. I don't know what the percentage is of Muslims who have a sense of humour but let me tell a story from my own experience. There was a time in my life when I was terribly insensitive and would say the wrong things without realising it. I was chatting with a Muslim friend who was extremely pious. He's an educated and respectable man who later became a member of Parliament but his daughters were all educated in a Muslim religious school. I noticed that his wedding band was worn on the finger of his right hand which is of course unusual. In reply to my query, he explained that the prophet was known to have worn his wedding ring on a finger of his right hand. At that moment, a very witty thought came to my head and I said something really brilliant but it would not just be lost on someone who had no sense of humour; it would probably offend him. There was another friend of ours who heard our conversation and he jokingly said that my Muslim friend might just pull out a dagger and stab me with it. Now, that is the kind of unfair opinion many people had of Muslims even then. But my Muslim friend laughed good-naturedly at my little joke and he said that I was factually correct since Muhammad really had twelve wives and would presumably have twelve rings.
A lot of people treat Muslims as if they were all terrorists waiting with scimitars to hack you to pieces which is really quite unfortunate. Many people are unable to separate Muslims from Muslim terrorists and these are the people who are doing Muslims a huge disservice. I have been rebuked in the past for slamming Muslim terrorists by non-Muslims who mistakenly thought that insulting terrorists was synonymous with insulting Muslims.
But some Muslims who try to play up the "offensiveness" of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons by comparing them with jokes about the Holocaust are in fact doing their religion a disservice. There is obviously a huge difference between a joke about 6 million Jews who were slaughtered and a cartoon of Muhammad. Holocaust jokes cannot be likened to a mere cartoon of Muhammad. A better analogy of a Holocaust joke would be a joke about the cruel ethnic cleansing by the Serbs in which many Muslims were killed. That would be an example of a truly inappropriate joke and no newspaper however satirical would publish such a joke. Not even Charlie Hebdo. But when educated Muslims bring up Holocaust jokes and pit them against Muhammad cartoons, one cannot help but wonder if their inability to see the huge disparity between the two might have arisen from the same innate anti-Semitism that drove the Charlie Hebdo murderers to attack a Jewish supermarket.
The world should never treat all Muslims as terrorists. There are many Muslims who are wonderful people. We must always distinguish a Muslim terrorist from a Muslim. We must not treat Muslims as if an insensitive word would mean a dagger to our throats. We must treat Muslims like we do people of other religions or no religion. The Charlie Hebdo editors did precisely that. They wanted to treat Muslims no differently from people of other faiths. They have satirised the church, the Pope and Jesus himself. If they could draw cartoons of Jesus who is God himself in Christianity, why shouldn't they satirise Muhammad who was only human and not deified in Islam? Unfortunately, the carnage would only blur further the line between Muslims and Muslim terrorists in the minds of many people. There may be no logic in that but that's how people will think.
I thought I should refer to the sermon in my blog and so I took a
stealthy pic. I hope the parishioner seated next to me will forgive
me for the impertinence but he's obviously the prayerful kind
who would be happy to dish out forgiveness quite liberally.
As a Christian, I am unable to fault the sermon in any way. Christianity always places the Christian at the losing end in any situation. He's to turn the other cheek, if any asks for his coat, he should give his shirt as well, if asked to walk a mile, a good Christian should do two. If there is a religion of peace on this planet, Christianity certainly is the best candidate for such an honour.
But the Charlie Hebdo editors are not Christians. I should have said "were" since most of them were brutally gunned down. Even if they were Christians, so what? It may be right that the Christian should go out of his way not to cause offence to others but what has that got to do with the massacre? It may be right for those of us who were properly brought up in polite society to greet one another when we meet but any one of us can flout the rules of courtesy any time we wish. The correct response to a rude person is a frown and nothing more.
That's precisely my point about the Charlie Hebdo episode. The editors were just guilty of rudeness. But it's their job as the editors of a satirical newspaper to be rude. They were just doing their job. Charlie Hebdo has satirised just about every religion on this planet and nobody has even bothered with them or given them any notice until the two Muslim brothers slaughtered them.
What I find truly outrageous is there is nothing offensive about the cartoons of Muhammad that the newspaper published. Pope Francis recently remarked that if someone swore at another person's mother, he would probably receive a punch in the face. But that's a silly remark because a person's mother is not a historical figure. Muhammad is and like all historical figures, he is naturally subject to the same treatment as Abraham, Moses, Jesus, St Paul, Buddha and many other religious figures from Zeus to Joseph Smith.
Making religious jokes is common anywhere in the world. When I was an altar boy, I made a lot of jokes about almost every sacred object in church. The chief brunt of my jokes was the holy oil which came in vials from the Bishop and which my vicar used to treat with an inordinate amount of respect. Years later, when I taught Sunday School in church, the other Sunday School teachers and I (and sometimes the students as well) would come up with the best religious jokes, some of which were uproariously funny.
When I was very young, I even engaged in inter-denominational banter with a classmate who was an altar boy in a different church. Those from my church would make jokes about his church and we'd tease him about being "touched" by his priest (the notoriety of his church was well known even in the days when I was a young lad). One day, he told me a joke which was quite good. A nun went for confession and she whispered to the priest that she was once a prostitute. The priest turned ashen and hit his fist against the wall of the confessional. "What did you say?" he roared. The nun was trembling in fear and she repeated her words, "I'm sorry but I was once a prostitute". The priest took out his handkerchief and wiped the perspiration from his brow. "Phew! That's quite all right, child," he said. "I thought you said you were once a Protestant".
I couldn't help laughing at the joke but I immediately cooked up another joke and this time it was a boy who went to his Protestant vicar for auricular confession and he said he was once a catamite. You probably know the rest of the story. Don't ask me how I knew the word "catamite" as a young boy but I assure you the priests of my church were all happily married men.
But it's not just Christians who have a sense of humour. The followers of many of the world's major religions do not treat the divine with murderous seriousness. There is even a dish in the Far East blasphemously called "Buddha Jumps over the Wall". That's the dish that is reputed to be so tasty that Buddha himself had to jump over a garden wall to taste it. If you're thinking of ordering it the next time you go to a Chinese restaurant, perish the thought. It's a most disgusting broth that smells like a Chinese medicinal shop. Buddha may have jumped over the wall to eat it but I would jump over a wall and several rivers to be away from it.
After what has happened in Paris, you would think that Muslims are the only ones who have no sense of humour. I don't know what the percentage is of Muslims who have a sense of humour but let me tell a story from my own experience. There was a time in my life when I was terribly insensitive and would say the wrong things without realising it. I was chatting with a Muslim friend who was extremely pious. He's an educated and respectable man who later became a member of Parliament but his daughters were all educated in a Muslim religious school. I noticed that his wedding band was worn on the finger of his right hand which is of course unusual. In reply to my query, he explained that the prophet was known to have worn his wedding ring on a finger of his right hand. At that moment, a very witty thought came to my head and I said something really brilliant but it would not just be lost on someone who had no sense of humour; it would probably offend him. There was another friend of ours who heard our conversation and he jokingly said that my Muslim friend might just pull out a dagger and stab me with it. Now, that is the kind of unfair opinion many people had of Muslims even then. But my Muslim friend laughed good-naturedly at my little joke and he said that I was factually correct since Muhammad really had twelve wives and would presumably have twelve rings.
A lot of people treat Muslims as if they were all terrorists waiting with scimitars to hack you to pieces which is really quite unfortunate. Many people are unable to separate Muslims from Muslim terrorists and these are the people who are doing Muslims a huge disservice. I have been rebuked in the past for slamming Muslim terrorists by non-Muslims who mistakenly thought that insulting terrorists was synonymous with insulting Muslims.
But some Muslims who try to play up the "offensiveness" of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons by comparing them with jokes about the Holocaust are in fact doing their religion a disservice. There is obviously a huge difference between a joke about 6 million Jews who were slaughtered and a cartoon of Muhammad. Holocaust jokes cannot be likened to a mere cartoon of Muhammad. A better analogy of a Holocaust joke would be a joke about the cruel ethnic cleansing by the Serbs in which many Muslims were killed. That would be an example of a truly inappropriate joke and no newspaper however satirical would publish such a joke. Not even Charlie Hebdo. But when educated Muslims bring up Holocaust jokes and pit them against Muhammad cartoons, one cannot help but wonder if their inability to see the huge disparity between the two might have arisen from the same innate anti-Semitism that drove the Charlie Hebdo murderers to attack a Jewish supermarket.
The world should never treat all Muslims as terrorists. There are many Muslims who are wonderful people. We must always distinguish a Muslim terrorist from a Muslim. We must not treat Muslims as if an insensitive word would mean a dagger to our throats. We must treat Muslims like we do people of other religions or no religion. The Charlie Hebdo editors did precisely that. They wanted to treat Muslims no differently from people of other faiths. They have satirised the church, the Pope and Jesus himself. If they could draw cartoons of Jesus who is God himself in Christianity, why shouldn't they satirise Muhammad who was only human and not deified in Islam? Unfortunately, the carnage would only blur further the line between Muslims and Muslim terrorists in the minds of many people. There may be no logic in that but that's how people will think.
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Is Obama right? Is ISIS really non-Muslim?
In his recent address, President Obama makes it clear that the US will strike ISIS or ISIL or the Islamic State and demolish them. He added that ISIL is not Muslim. Is he right? Is the Islamic State really non-Islamic?
You will probably notice that the only people who declare ISIS to be non-Muslim are non-Muslims themselves. I have yet to see a single Muslim group or council that declares the members of ISIL or ISIS to be non-Muslim. That is something that has puzzled me for a long time. For example, why are suicide bombers and Muslim terrorists NEVER ex-communicated? I've been told that there is no ex-communication in Islam but that's not true. We know how Muslims in Egypt have tried repeatedly to get Nawal El Saadawi excommunicated and her crime was merely the writing of a book on women's rights. Why then is there NEVER a single attempt by moderate Muslims to excommunicate Muslim terrorists, members of ISIS or Osama bin Laden when he was still alive? This reluctance or even refusal to excommunicate terrorists is one thing. But you will recall that when Osama was announced to have died, many moderate Muslims were anxious if he had been given proper Muslim rites in the disposal of his body.
For a long time, I could not understand why moderate Muslims behaved in this manner. After all, I can imagine if a Christian were to commit even a fraction of the carnage that Osama bin Laden had inflicted on the human race, not only would churches renounce him as a non-Christian and instantly excommunicate him and have nothing to do with him, it would be very hard to find a single church that would be wiling to conduct his funeral upon his death.
I decided to do a little research of my own. I went into Muslim websites and Muslim forums (the non-radical ones) just to understand a little about the Muslim mindset.
You see, as long as a Muslim recites the Shahada and maintains himself to be a Muslim, no other Muslim is permitted to question the validity of his faith. Another Muslim may not agree with his actions but he must still treat the person he disagrees with as a fellow Muslim brother or sister and accord him or her the full privileges of a Muslim. Osama bin Laden killed thousands of people in his lifetime. Muslims may be quick to point out that the Quran abhors the killing of innocent people. To kill an innocent person is akin to killing the whole of humanity, they are quick to quote from one of their holy books. Yes, Osama might have been guilty of countless murders but there is no doubt in anyone's mind that Osama recited the Shahada (probably more faithfully than most moderate Muslims I would imagine) and of course he regarded himself as a faithful Muslim. That made Osama a Muslim in the eyes of the entire Muslim world (moderates included) till his very death.
The same can be said of every member of ISIS and every Muslim terrorist. Nawal El Saadawi is different. Because of her progressive writings especially on women's rights, it's easy for radical Muslims to suspect that perhaps she has given up her religious beliefs. But Saadawi in fact countered the accusations of her detractors and her excommunication was overturned.
Takfir or the act of declaring a Muslim to be a kafir or a non-Muslim is a very serious matter. If it's incorrect, it's considered a major haram and is akin to blasphemy. As long as someone continues to recite the Shahada and declares himself a Muslim, he is a Muslim and that's that.
Let's now turn our attention back to ISIS and President Obama's statement that they aren't Muslim. ISIS members probably recite the Shahada more than the average Muslim. The Shahada is written on their black flags and the Shahada is recited every time they cut off the heads of their victims in the videos that I could not get myself to sit through. There is no question that they recite the Shahada.
So while President Obama and other non-Muslims may be quick to declare the members of ISIS to be non-Muslims, Muslims on the other hand are understandably silent. They may condemn the actions of ISIS as wrong and sinful but you will never catch them declaring the members of ISIS to be non-Muslims. And if ISIS members die, the wider Muslim community would expect that their bodies be given Muslim rites. As long as they continue to recite the Shahada and ISIS members do recite it ever so often and even while they are committing the most heinous atrocitites, they are brothers and sisters in the Muslim faith to the wider Muslim community which includes the moderates.
President Obama would do well to find out more about Islam before making hasty pronouncements that the Muslim world does not accept.
You will probably notice that the only people who declare ISIS to be non-Muslim are non-Muslims themselves. I have yet to see a single Muslim group or council that declares the members of ISIL or ISIS to be non-Muslim. That is something that has puzzled me for a long time. For example, why are suicide bombers and Muslim terrorists NEVER ex-communicated? I've been told that there is no ex-communication in Islam but that's not true. We know how Muslims in Egypt have tried repeatedly to get Nawal El Saadawi excommunicated and her crime was merely the writing of a book on women's rights. Why then is there NEVER a single attempt by moderate Muslims to excommunicate Muslim terrorists, members of ISIS or Osama bin Laden when he was still alive? This reluctance or even refusal to excommunicate terrorists is one thing. But you will recall that when Osama was announced to have died, many moderate Muslims were anxious if he had been given proper Muslim rites in the disposal of his body.
For a long time, I could not understand why moderate Muslims behaved in this manner. After all, I can imagine if a Christian were to commit even a fraction of the carnage that Osama bin Laden had inflicted on the human race, not only would churches renounce him as a non-Christian and instantly excommunicate him and have nothing to do with him, it would be very hard to find a single church that would be wiling to conduct his funeral upon his death.
I decided to do a little research of my own. I went into Muslim websites and Muslim forums (the non-radical ones) just to understand a little about the Muslim mindset.
You see, as long as a Muslim recites the Shahada and maintains himself to be a Muslim, no other Muslim is permitted to question the validity of his faith. Another Muslim may not agree with his actions but he must still treat the person he disagrees with as a fellow Muslim brother or sister and accord him or her the full privileges of a Muslim. Osama bin Laden killed thousands of people in his lifetime. Muslims may be quick to point out that the Quran abhors the killing of innocent people. To kill an innocent person is akin to killing the whole of humanity, they are quick to quote from one of their holy books. Yes, Osama might have been guilty of countless murders but there is no doubt in anyone's mind that Osama recited the Shahada (probably more faithfully than most moderate Muslims I would imagine) and of course he regarded himself as a faithful Muslim. That made Osama a Muslim in the eyes of the entire Muslim world (moderates included) till his very death.
The same can be said of every member of ISIS and every Muslim terrorist. Nawal El Saadawi is different. Because of her progressive writings especially on women's rights, it's easy for radical Muslims to suspect that perhaps she has given up her religious beliefs. But Saadawi in fact countered the accusations of her detractors and her excommunication was overturned.
Takfir or the act of declaring a Muslim to be a kafir or a non-Muslim is a very serious matter. If it's incorrect, it's considered a major haram and is akin to blasphemy. As long as someone continues to recite the Shahada and declares himself a Muslim, he is a Muslim and that's that.
Let's now turn our attention back to ISIS and President Obama's statement that they aren't Muslim. ISIS members probably recite the Shahada more than the average Muslim. The Shahada is written on their black flags and the Shahada is recited every time they cut off the heads of their victims in the videos that I could not get myself to sit through. There is no question that they recite the Shahada.
So while President Obama and other non-Muslims may be quick to declare the members of ISIS to be non-Muslims, Muslims on the other hand are understandably silent. They may condemn the actions of ISIS as wrong and sinful but you will never catch them declaring the members of ISIS to be non-Muslims. And if ISIS members die, the wider Muslim community would expect that their bodies be given Muslim rites. As long as they continue to recite the Shahada and ISIS members do recite it ever so often and even while they are committing the most heinous atrocitites, they are brothers and sisters in the Muslim faith to the wider Muslim community which includes the moderates.
President Obama would do well to find out more about Islam before making hasty pronouncements that the Muslim world does not accept.
Friday, July 18, 2014
It's a deep dark secret but I'll tell all
I read online just a few days ago that Shanmugam tells a group of Muslims to be watchful of religiosity and I can't help remembering what Lee Kuan Yew wrote in his book in which he advised Muslims to be less rigorous in their religiosity (I'm paraphrasing here because I can't remember his exact words but they were something to this effect) and although I fully agree with both of them, I have to say that they should be saying the same thing (and perhaps with greater emphasis) to some extreme Christian churches. And I'm saying this as a devout Christian myself.
I know I'll be accused by some Christians of being a "traitor" but this is my own blog and Christianity has been my religion all my life and I have served the church ever since I was a toddler and I know I will love the Church and serve the Bride of Christ until I breathe my last. But there is a secret that all religious people carry with us and we do discuss it among ourselves but we normally would not talk about it to others. I will break that unspoken rule of silence and tell all here.
My religious perspective is rather wide-ranging: from a High Church Christian sacramental tradition to an evangelical tradition but what I say here is probably applicable to every religious tradition.
I have always believed in God who of course must be in Three Persons - the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Any other expression or representation of God is anathema. I believed strongly and wholeheartedly in salvation only for those who accepted this particular God. Everyone else, regardless of his background would burn for all eternity in hell. That's what I used to believe. Now, you may think this is an extreme view of religion and only a minority of radicals believe in this but here's where you are wrong. In the Church today (even in my rather liberal church), anyone who does not accept that salvation belongs only to Christians (and they've got to be the "right" kind of Christians or "true Christians" as we would call ourselves) and all others to be consigned to perdition is usually accused of being a rank liberal, an atheist, a wolf in sheep's clothing or even an anti-Christ. Some clergymen in my church are liberal but they are careful never to express their view that non-believers need not be burned in hell for all eternity. If they so much as say that openly, you can be sure parishioners will give them hell. Many years ago, a clergyman in my church said that the spirit of God was alive in people of other religion as well and that immediately attracted a backlash from the congregation. The church had to hold a discussion session with the laity and subsequently, there was a statement made in the church bulletin to reaffirm the view that salvation belonged only to those who believed in Jesus. I would be concealing the truth if I didn't disclose the fact that I was one of the outraged parishioners.
When I was a Sunday School teacher, I was told how my church had to be careful in circumventing some government policies. My church runs schools which are required to comply with the directives of the Ministry of Education. I was told that a long time ago, there was a policy that when a classroom had enough students of any religion who wanted lessons on that religion to be taught, the school was obliged to conduct classes of that religion for the students. I was told that it was a tough time for the church then because they had to reshuffle students in the school so that there would not be enough students in one class who would be taking non-Christian religious lessons. Sometimes, they had to talk to the students to persuade them not to opt for religious lessons but to take a secular lesson in civics studies. That way, the schools of the church managed not to hold religious classes of other faiths.
I would be dishonest if I spoke as if I was totally disapproving of such a stand. I must confess that at that time, I actually felt relieved that the schools of my church did not have to offer lessons in a non-Christian religion. I was no different from most other Christians in Singapore and I honestly believed that a non-Christian religion was the surest path to eternal perdition. When we later prayed to God for his protection over the institutions of my church and to thank him that he had thwarted the influx of false beliefs into our schools, I was truly sincere in my prayer.
And then I got married and had kids of my own and the day came when my son entered Primary 1. Of course he was in the school of my church. The first day of school is always a trying time for kids and that school was no exception. But volunteers from the school chapel were prepared for this. The kids were all taken to the school hall and Christian parents were enlisted to help out. As a Christian, I naturally joined in to assist the church volunteers. What happened in the school hall was nothing less than an indoctrination session. Some boys cried because they were uncomfortable in a new environment but they were all told that whenever they felt fear, they should call on Jesus. To be fair, I don't think the adult volunteers only had indoctrination in mind. They probably wanted to comfort the boys and "running to Jesus" was something they were familiar with themselves.
All around the hall, church and parent volunteers gathered in groups of three to five to pray for the boys. I was in one of these groups and it's not surprising that we prayed that God would comfort the boys and lead them to accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Saviour. I was again sincere in my prayer because I really believed that these boys would burn in hell for ever if they died as non-Christians.
I have to say something about our sincerity. Many non-Christians think Christians are insincere when we try to get someone to join our faith. But that's not true. The volunteers who are so eager in converting the boys to the Christian faith are extremely sincere. They don't stand to benefit at all from all this. Their sole motivation is the love they have for the children and the belief that all these boys are heading for destruction if they don't accept Jesus as their Lord. As a very important person in that school told me when I attended the prayer sessions for fathers, he considers it his primary duty to bring the good news of Jesus to everyone in the school. Not just the pupils but also the teachers and staff. During the prayer sessions, special attention was always given to the Mother Tongue Language teachers because, as I was told, this group of teachers was the most resistant when it came to accepting the Christian faith.
If you believe with all your heart that everyone is going to be tortured for all eternity and they can escape the torture by merely accepting Jesus as their Lord, wouldn't you do all you can to try to get everyone to accept Jesus? That's precisely what all these Christians are doing. It's wrong to say they are insincere. They genuinely want to save people from the hellfire they truly believe in. They really mean well.
Martyrdom has earned a bad reputation with the recent cases of Muslim terrorists blowing themselves up together with innocent people. But the idea of martyrdom in the Christian sense is different. Martyrs suffer for their faith by not renouncing Jesus even in the face of adversity and death. Martyrs spread the good news of Jesus to non-believers even when they have to risk bodily harm and death in doing so. In Christianity, martyrdom does not mean the killing or hurting of others. You don't even hurt a fly. The martyr is the only one who gets killed for his faith. He just dies for refusing to renounce Jesus or refusing to worship other gods or insisting on leading others to Jesus even if it's against the law. Yes, even if there is a law that you should not do that and it's punishable with death, a good Christian should be willing to preach his religion against the law and if he's caught and killed, he dies a martyr.
When I was still in primary school, I would read the newsletters from someone called Richard Wurmbrand. His newsletters were more a news report of Christian martyrs from all over the world, particularly those who suffered persecution and death in communist countries. My brother and I would be so moved by the newsletters that we would earnestly pray that we too would one day die as martyrs spreading the good news of Christ to those who were not Christians.
This brings me to my main point which people who are not of a monotheistic religion of Middle Eastern origin such as Christianity and Islam will find hard to understand. Many of us will stop at nothing to thrust the gospel down people's throats. Even if there is a law prohibiting proselytising, many committed Christians will flout the law even if the punishment is death because they would rather obey Christ's Great Commission than a man-made law. It's the same thing when it comes to Christian morality. We will do all we can to ensure that the whole world (if that is possible) conforms to the Christian standard of morality. The reason is simple. Christians believe that any act that is inconsistent with our idea of morality is deeply displeasing to God and pleasing God is what we have all been trained to do from the cradle. Even if the act is committed by a non-Christian, it's still offensive to God and if we can nip the act altogether in the bud, we are really serving God by pleasing him.
It is for this reason that I personally believe that it's very hard for a committed Christian to be objective in his dealings in this secular world. Whenever I read of controversial actions taken by someone in a position of authority (eg the recent library pulping of books that had a gay theme), I always wonder what the person's religion is and if I hear that he or she is a Christian, I'm afraid I will have serious misgivings about how objective his decision is and how much of it is in fact really influenced by his desire to please God.
Let me examine myself and not turn my attention to others. How objective am I? I'd like to think of myself as extremely objective. When I see mistakes (and there are many) in the Holy Bible, I will openly declare that there are mistakes. Many of the postings in this blog concern the inadequacy of my own religion and the flaws in my own holy book. While I can be very objective when I discuss issues in my blog, I don't think I'm all that objective when it comes to my personal life. But there is one huge difference between me and many pious Christians. I only apply my bigotry to myself and nobody else (not even my own children). For example, I'm totally opposed to gambling and have never gambled in my entire life, not even a single cent, but I'm not opposed to the building of casinos and having facilities for people to gamble. I'm absolutely opposed to divorce and I firmly believe that my marriage must be for life but I do not object to other people getting a divorce nor do I campaign for the abolition of divorces. I am dead opposed to abortion and if my wife had carried a foetus with a serious congenital disease or condition, I would be prepared to look after the child for the rest of his life and I would never contemplate an abortion but I have no problem with other people aborting their foetuses nor will I support a campaign to criminalise abortions.
But many Christians will say that I'm not a true believer because a true believer must believe in the goodness of God's laws and morality for all people and not just for themselves. And because I no longer believe in the idea of heaven and hell as accepted by most fundamentalist Christians, I look upon all acts of proselytising as embarrassingly intrusive.
But Middle Eastern religions of which Christianity is one are known to be notoriously divisive and tribal. As our Lord himself says, "He who is not with me is against me". You are either a follower of Christ or an enemy of Christ.
Some biblical verses can appear deceptively universal in its love and application. Many Christians will quote John 3:16:
I firmly believe that the liberals in all religions should be more vocal. If the voice of liberals is not heard, the world will be drowned by the shrill and strident screams of fundamentalists.
I know I'll be accused by some Christians of being a "traitor" but this is my own blog and Christianity has been my religion all my life and I have served the church ever since I was a toddler and I know I will love the Church and serve the Bride of Christ until I breathe my last. But there is a secret that all religious people carry with us and we do discuss it among ourselves but we normally would not talk about it to others. I will break that unspoken rule of silence and tell all here.
My religious perspective is rather wide-ranging: from a High Church Christian sacramental tradition to an evangelical tradition but what I say here is probably applicable to every religious tradition.
I have always believed in God who of course must be in Three Persons - the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Any other expression or representation of God is anathema. I believed strongly and wholeheartedly in salvation only for those who accepted this particular God. Everyone else, regardless of his background would burn for all eternity in hell. That's what I used to believe. Now, you may think this is an extreme view of religion and only a minority of radicals believe in this but here's where you are wrong. In the Church today (even in my rather liberal church), anyone who does not accept that salvation belongs only to Christians (and they've got to be the "right" kind of Christians or "true Christians" as we would call ourselves) and all others to be consigned to perdition is usually accused of being a rank liberal, an atheist, a wolf in sheep's clothing or even an anti-Christ. Some clergymen in my church are liberal but they are careful never to express their view that non-believers need not be burned in hell for all eternity. If they so much as say that openly, you can be sure parishioners will give them hell. Many years ago, a clergyman in my church said that the spirit of God was alive in people of other religion as well and that immediately attracted a backlash from the congregation. The church had to hold a discussion session with the laity and subsequently, there was a statement made in the church bulletin to reaffirm the view that salvation belonged only to those who believed in Jesus. I would be concealing the truth if I didn't disclose the fact that I was one of the outraged parishioners.
When I was a Sunday School teacher, I was told how my church had to be careful in circumventing some government policies. My church runs schools which are required to comply with the directives of the Ministry of Education. I was told that a long time ago, there was a policy that when a classroom had enough students of any religion who wanted lessons on that religion to be taught, the school was obliged to conduct classes of that religion for the students. I was told that it was a tough time for the church then because they had to reshuffle students in the school so that there would not be enough students in one class who would be taking non-Christian religious lessons. Sometimes, they had to talk to the students to persuade them not to opt for religious lessons but to take a secular lesson in civics studies. That way, the schools of the church managed not to hold religious classes of other faiths.
I would be dishonest if I spoke as if I was totally disapproving of such a stand. I must confess that at that time, I actually felt relieved that the schools of my church did not have to offer lessons in a non-Christian religion. I was no different from most other Christians in Singapore and I honestly believed that a non-Christian religion was the surest path to eternal perdition. When we later prayed to God for his protection over the institutions of my church and to thank him that he had thwarted the influx of false beliefs into our schools, I was truly sincere in my prayer.
And then I got married and had kids of my own and the day came when my son entered Primary 1. Of course he was in the school of my church. The first day of school is always a trying time for kids and that school was no exception. But volunteers from the school chapel were prepared for this. The kids were all taken to the school hall and Christian parents were enlisted to help out. As a Christian, I naturally joined in to assist the church volunteers. What happened in the school hall was nothing less than an indoctrination session. Some boys cried because they were uncomfortable in a new environment but they were all told that whenever they felt fear, they should call on Jesus. To be fair, I don't think the adult volunteers only had indoctrination in mind. They probably wanted to comfort the boys and "running to Jesus" was something they were familiar with themselves.
All around the hall, church and parent volunteers gathered in groups of three to five to pray for the boys. I was in one of these groups and it's not surprising that we prayed that God would comfort the boys and lead them to accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Saviour. I was again sincere in my prayer because I really believed that these boys would burn in hell for ever if they died as non-Christians.
I have to say something about our sincerity. Many non-Christians think Christians are insincere when we try to get someone to join our faith. But that's not true. The volunteers who are so eager in converting the boys to the Christian faith are extremely sincere. They don't stand to benefit at all from all this. Their sole motivation is the love they have for the children and the belief that all these boys are heading for destruction if they don't accept Jesus as their Lord. As a very important person in that school told me when I attended the prayer sessions for fathers, he considers it his primary duty to bring the good news of Jesus to everyone in the school. Not just the pupils but also the teachers and staff. During the prayer sessions, special attention was always given to the Mother Tongue Language teachers because, as I was told, this group of teachers was the most resistant when it came to accepting the Christian faith.
If you believe with all your heart that everyone is going to be tortured for all eternity and they can escape the torture by merely accepting Jesus as their Lord, wouldn't you do all you can to try to get everyone to accept Jesus? That's precisely what all these Christians are doing. It's wrong to say they are insincere. They genuinely want to save people from the hellfire they truly believe in. They really mean well.Martyrdom has earned a bad reputation with the recent cases of Muslim terrorists blowing themselves up together with innocent people. But the idea of martyrdom in the Christian sense is different. Martyrs suffer for their faith by not renouncing Jesus even in the face of adversity and death. Martyrs spread the good news of Jesus to non-believers even when they have to risk bodily harm and death in doing so. In Christianity, martyrdom does not mean the killing or hurting of others. You don't even hurt a fly. The martyr is the only one who gets killed for his faith. He just dies for refusing to renounce Jesus or refusing to worship other gods or insisting on leading others to Jesus even if it's against the law. Yes, even if there is a law that you should not do that and it's punishable with death, a good Christian should be willing to preach his religion against the law and if he's caught and killed, he dies a martyr.
When I was still in primary school, I would read the newsletters from someone called Richard Wurmbrand. His newsletters were more a news report of Christian martyrs from all over the world, particularly those who suffered persecution and death in communist countries. My brother and I would be so moved by the newsletters that we would earnestly pray that we too would one day die as martyrs spreading the good news of Christ to those who were not Christians.
This brings me to my main point which people who are not of a monotheistic religion of Middle Eastern origin such as Christianity and Islam will find hard to understand. Many of us will stop at nothing to thrust the gospel down people's throats. Even if there is a law prohibiting proselytising, many committed Christians will flout the law even if the punishment is death because they would rather obey Christ's Great Commission than a man-made law. It's the same thing when it comes to Christian morality. We will do all we can to ensure that the whole world (if that is possible) conforms to the Christian standard of morality. The reason is simple. Christians believe that any act that is inconsistent with our idea of morality is deeply displeasing to God and pleasing God is what we have all been trained to do from the cradle. Even if the act is committed by a non-Christian, it's still offensive to God and if we can nip the act altogether in the bud, we are really serving God by pleasing him.
It is for this reason that I personally believe that it's very hard for a committed Christian to be objective in his dealings in this secular world. Whenever I read of controversial actions taken by someone in a position of authority (eg the recent library pulping of books that had a gay theme), I always wonder what the person's religion is and if I hear that he or she is a Christian, I'm afraid I will have serious misgivings about how objective his decision is and how much of it is in fact really influenced by his desire to please God.
Let me examine myself and not turn my attention to others. How objective am I? I'd like to think of myself as extremely objective. When I see mistakes (and there are many) in the Holy Bible, I will openly declare that there are mistakes. Many of the postings in this blog concern the inadequacy of my own religion and the flaws in my own holy book. While I can be very objective when I discuss issues in my blog, I don't think I'm all that objective when it comes to my personal life. But there is one huge difference between me and many pious Christians. I only apply my bigotry to myself and nobody else (not even my own children). For example, I'm totally opposed to gambling and have never gambled in my entire life, not even a single cent, but I'm not opposed to the building of casinos and having facilities for people to gamble. I'm absolutely opposed to divorce and I firmly believe that my marriage must be for life but I do not object to other people getting a divorce nor do I campaign for the abolition of divorces. I am dead opposed to abortion and if my wife had carried a foetus with a serious congenital disease or condition, I would be prepared to look after the child for the rest of his life and I would never contemplate an abortion but I have no problem with other people aborting their foetuses nor will I support a campaign to criminalise abortions.
But many Christians will say that I'm not a true believer because a true believer must believe in the goodness of God's laws and morality for all people and not just for themselves. And because I no longer believe in the idea of heaven and hell as accepted by most fundamentalist Christians, I look upon all acts of proselytising as embarrassingly intrusive.
But Middle Eastern religions of which Christianity is one are known to be notoriously divisive and tribal. As our Lord himself says, "He who is not with me is against me". You are either a follower of Christ or an enemy of Christ.
Some biblical verses can appear deceptively universal in its love and application. Many Christians will quote John 3:16:
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.However, what we often leave out from the quotation when we try to make our faith appealing to non-Christians is the line two verses later:
Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.Monotheistic religions are usually very clear in their warning against the worship of other gods. The First of the Ten Commandments is "Thou shalt have no other gods before me". This "we versus the rest of the world" mentality breeds tribalism and separatism which are perfectly fine in a society where everyone adheres to the same religion and is of the same religious "tribe" but in a multi-religious, globalised society such as the one we live in, it spells disaster if the liberals within the religion remain silent.
I firmly believe that the liberals in all religions should be more vocal. If the voice of liberals is not heard, the world will be drowned by the shrill and strident screams of fundamentalists.
Friday, July 11, 2014
Isn't the Bible anti-gay?
Recently, I received a flurry of emails and messages accusing me of spurning biblical teachings and God's "truths" just because I wrote this post in defence of a minority group. A few more reasonable Christians asked me politely what I understood specific verses in the Bible to mean. These are verses that are commonly seen as anti-gay. I've seen the arguments for both sides on the interpretation of these verses. Gay-friendly exegesis of the Bible will always differentiate the act condemned by the Bible from general homosexual activities while a homophobic interpretation will always identify any homosexual sex act as coming within the prohibition in these verses.
I have been asked by quite a few of my blog readers what stand I take and how I interpret these verses. I subscribe to neither view or to both views but before I am accused of being homophobic or gay-friendly (depending on which camp you are in), please hear me out and let me explain my position.
In this post, I want to show my readers that there is a totally different approach we can take. I believe that my approach is entirely consistent with that taken by Jesus himself whose name we bear and whose teaching we must follow if we consider ourselves (even if only culturally) Christians.
Let's be honest. The Bible says the darnedest things. If you don't accept this, I can only conclude that you either haven't read the Bible much or you just refuse to be honest about this. I don't want to go into the details of what God has been accused by the Bible of doing. If I accept the entire litany of crimes against humanity that the Bible claims God is guilty of, I would be making God out to be the world's greatest criminal and every church will be no different from that disgraceful Yasukuni shrine which houses emblems in honour of convicted war criminals. If you are a true Christian who has read the Bible, you will know what I'm talking about and you certainly won't dare to challenge me to list God's crimes against not just humanity but other creatures too. But if you are not a Christian and you don't know what incredibly immoral things the Bible has accused God of doing, forget what I've just said. This post is addressed and is only relevant to my fellow Christians who, I hope, will learn to have the moral courage to do what is right just as our Lord Jesus has done.
What is truly important for us Christians is to see how our Lord handles some of the Old Testament teachings. Did he just accept them as the Word of God, especially the nasty bits?
I will pick three examples and arrange them in order of increasing importance, ie, the last example is the most important one.
The first example is on divorce. The Pharisees come to Jesus one fine day and ask him if he accepts the divorce law as contained in the Law of Moses and written in the Old Testament of the Bible. The Law of Moses allows a man to unilaterally divorce his wife. They ask him for his thoughts on the matter. This is a sexist law of course so, let's see how Jesus deals with it. Jesus could have said, "Well, since it's in the Bible, the Word of God, I can't change my own words, can I?" But he doesn't say that. Instead he says this whole bunkum about divorce is in the Law because of the "hardness of your hearts". Jesus is saying (if I may paraphrase because I haven't got the Bible with me at the moment), "Sorry guys! You're stuck for life to the woman you've married. You can't divorce her and I don't give a damn what the Old Testament says and neither should you".
Now, I'm bringing up this example not because I think divorcees are all evil. Jesus was addressing the problem of his day. Men were sexist pigs in those days (some of us still are today) and they were getting rid of their wives every now and then by just relying on the sexist Old Testament law. What can Jesus possibly mean when he says there should be no divorce at all but divorces are allowed because of the "hardness" of their hearts? Does Jesus mean that God gave a wrong law just to accommodate evil people? Of course not. I think the best interpretation one can logically give to what Jesus is saying is that the law came about because of the hardness of people's hearts. In other words, divorce should not be a part of the law but people made it up because of their evil obstinacy. Whatever your take on this, Jesus is casting aside what's written in the Bible.
I've said earlier that I'm giving my three examples in the order of increasing importance. Let me move on to my second and more compelling example.
In the Old Testament, God makes it very clear that a person who commits adultery must be stoned to death. The Word of God allows for no exception. In other words, if you have caught an adulterer or adulteress, he or she must be stoned to death and you can't even take time off to consult God to see if he will make an exception and allow him or her to be forgiven. It's straight to the gallows or rather, the stoning gallery with no reprieve.
Many apologists have tried to explain away John 8 where we read of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery as an instance of Jesus exercising his power, as God, to forgive the woman. They try very hard to conceal the fact that Jesus actually contravenes the Old Testament law that REQUIRES the woman to be stoned to death with no exception. When Jesus is asked by the Pharisees if the woman should be stoned to death according to the law of Moses, he simply replies that the person without sin should cast the first stone. Now, that's not in line with the law of Moses at all. In the millions of cases of people stoned to death for adultery throughout the bloody pages of Israelite history, those who cast the first stones knew perfectly well that they weren't without sin. Jesus is effectively saying that he doesn't agree with the Old Testament law.
My third and last example which should put the final nail in the coffin of the nasty bits of the Bible and which, I hope, will convince you that Jesus considers a lot of the Old Testament as nonsense has something to do with the Fourth Commandment and I will need to explain (again without the help of the Bible) to those who are not familiar with the Christian faith.
For some reason, the Old Testament writers have this obsession with the 7th day of the week. When they write about God's creation in Genesis, they have to stress that God did his creation work for 6 days and on the 7th day, God rested. This implies that this fascination for the 7th day or the Sabbath has been around even at the dawn of creation. The observance of the Sabbath day as a strict day of rest is required in the 4th Commandment and in Old Testament law, any failure to observe the Sabbath day rest is punished with, yes you have guessed it, death by stoning, God's preferred mode of execution.
The Old Testament even has a dreadfully cruel story about a poor man who was out picking firewood one cold winter's day when the other villagers caught him and guess what? It happened to be the Sabbath day and he was picking firewood on the Sabbath day! What an evil thing to do on God's holy Sabbath. They arrested him and brought him to God himself.
Just in case you think I've made up this story, let me quote it to you from the Bible itself, the online version of which I now have access to. I'll use the NIV which is the most popular version today. It's found in Numbers 15:32 onwards.
Now, this is an apologist's nightmare. As any Christian knows, a Christian apologist whose job it is to defend the faith will say the most ludicrous things to earn his bread. And even funnier is the fact that many of the faithful are willing to accept whatever rubbish the apologist says. Some apologists I've read have gone so far as to say that the man was stoned to death because he was a spy and gathering wood was just an excuse. That's a lie because the Word of God (which you can read for yourself above) doesn't say that. The Book of Revelation calls on God's curses for any person who adds to the Bible so similarly, I call upon God to curse any man who adds to this passage and if he's an apologist, he should receive a double portion of God's curses because he should know better than to violate the Word of God with his own words. The Word of God tells us that the man was stoned because he was gathering wood in the wilderness on the holy Sabbath day. We know how cold the wilderness can be at night but it's better to freeze than to go against the Fourth Commandment.
So, now that we know what the Bible says God's stand is with regard to the Sabbath, let's look at what Jesus has to say in the Holy Gospels. In St Mark's Gospel, we read that Jesus and his band of merry disciples were passing through grainfields when they began to pick up heads of grains to eat. The Pharisees remonstrated that Jesus was flouting the Sabbath day law. Let's look at how Jesus responded.
Before I go on, I should say something about some dishonest apologists whose books I've read. Many of them insist that Jesus and his merry men did not violate the Sabbath day law when they picked the grains to eat. That's of course a dreadful lie. Picking up grains from a grainfield is as much a violation of the Sabbath day law as picking up wood that we have just read in the book of Numbers.
Don't listen to these lying apologists. Listen to what Jesus himself said. Jesus didn't defend himself and his disciples by denying that he had flouted the Law of Moses. That's because the truth is what Jesus and his disciples did was directly in contravention of the Fourth Commandment and the Old Testament law. Instead Jesus defended himself by saying it's ok to break the Sabbath. This is Jesus' answer to the Pharisees in Mark 2:25 onwards:
Now consider this for a minute. Would a person who says, "The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath" command that a man who gathered wood on the Sabbath day be stoned to death? Obviously, Jesus was cocking a snook at the Old Testament law and the story of God commanding the death of a man who gathered wood on the Sabbath.
If Jesus could do that to God's law in the Old Testament, we who are followers of Jesus should learn to do that to the entire Bible whenever the Bible says the darnedest things. And the Bible does say the darnedest things sometimes.
You see, morality changes with time. What was moral or immoral at one time may very well be the opposite in today's world. The truth is the church is aware of this and the church does not follow the Bible all the time. But the church is usually not honest enough to say it openly especially to non-believers. Like the dishonest apologists, the church will come up with all kinds of excuses not to follow the Bible in areas where the Bible is telling us to be downright immoral.
I'll give an example. When I was a boy, I thought the ancient Romans were evil people when I read about how in Roman times, men from good families cut their hair short to show their intact ears. The reason for this is rather ghastly. In Roman times, slaves had a large hole bored into each ear and when a slave was freed by his master and became a freeman, he would grow long hair to cover his ears and the embarrassing evidence of his past as a slave. As a boy, I was repulsed by such cruelty until I discovered to my horror that this whole idea of boring a hole in the ear of a slave predates Roman history. It's actually the brainchild of the God of the Bible and if you read Exodus 21, you will know what I mean. God commanded that a slave's ears be bored with an awl.
Of course apologists will scramble with their lies to try to explain away this truth but if you are honest about it, slavery is really a holy institution of the God of the Bible.
Oh, you may say, that's all in the Old Testament. Surely the New Testament does not approve of slavery?
On the contrary, the New Testament continues to keep the hallowed institution of slavery very much alive. Even when Jesus tells his parables, he sometimes equates God to a slave-master who tortures his slaves. At no point does Jesus tell his disciples that slavery is wrong. St Paul, in his epistles, advises Christian slave-masters (yes, you read that correctly, Christian masters of slaves) not to be cruel to their slaves and warns the slaves to obey their masters. In his epistle to Philemon (which is a part of the New Testament and is therefore the inspired Holy Word of God), we learn that a slave runs away from his Christian master and Paul finds the slave and converts him to Christianity (as if the slave had a choice in the first place). In his epistle to Philemon who is a Christian owner of slaves, St Paul tells Philemon that the escaped slave is now a Christian and he has persuaded the slave to return to his former role as a slave in Philemon's household.
I have read what dishonest apologists say about this. They say that St Paul had no time to talk about slavery or to change the social order in the Roman times. That's rubbish. If St Paul actually believed it was bloody immoral of anyone to own a slave, he would have told Philemon to release all his slaves. Some apologists say the slaves needed to work as slaves to survive but again, that's rubbish. St Paul could have asked all Christian slave owners to turn their slaves into paid servants with a list of rights as free people. And any suggestion that St Paul was too busy to address his mind to slavery is again a blatant lie. In his epistle to the Corinthians, St Paul is very quick to punish a man with excommunication for having gone to bed with a woman. If he had time for such petty acts between two consenting adults, he must have had time to tell Christians not to own slaves if he really thought of it as immoral.
But kudos to the church that despite the strong biblical support for slavery, the church somehow decided that this hallowed institution of God as supported by both the Old Testament and the New Testament be looked upon today as a heinous sin. It speaks a lot of the goodness of the church to fly in the face of the Holy Bible in order to do what is right. This is the kind of religion that Christ wants us to have. If the Bible is wrong, we should not be afraid to say it's wrong and to go against it. Christ did that to the Old Testament and surely he expects us to do the same to the entire Bible and the fact that the church today goes against slavery shows that we are doing precisely that.
Those who feel compelled by the Bible to denounce homosexuality or lesbianism must ask themselves honestly why they don't subscribe to slavery. If we are truly honest, we'll have to admit that slavery offends our sense of right and wrong but a denunciation of homosexuality doesn't affect us one bit because we're heterosexuals and we find homosexuality a bit repulsive anyway. We pick and choose what we like from the Bible.
I'm not asking my fellow Christians to suddenly change their stand on anything; they probably can't. I'm asking them to at least be honest with themselves and recognise how we are all motivated by our personal prejudices and preferences.
I have been asked by quite a few of my blog readers what stand I take and how I interpret these verses. I subscribe to neither view or to both views but before I am accused of being homophobic or gay-friendly (depending on which camp you are in), please hear me out and let me explain my position.
In this post, I want to show my readers that there is a totally different approach we can take. I believe that my approach is entirely consistent with that taken by Jesus himself whose name we bear and whose teaching we must follow if we consider ourselves (even if only culturally) Christians.
Let's be honest. The Bible says the darnedest things. If you don't accept this, I can only conclude that you either haven't read the Bible much or you just refuse to be honest about this. I don't want to go into the details of what God has been accused by the Bible of doing. If I accept the entire litany of crimes against humanity that the Bible claims God is guilty of, I would be making God out to be the world's greatest criminal and every church will be no different from that disgraceful Yasukuni shrine which houses emblems in honour of convicted war criminals. If you are a true Christian who has read the Bible, you will know what I'm talking about and you certainly won't dare to challenge me to list God's crimes against not just humanity but other creatures too. But if you are not a Christian and you don't know what incredibly immoral things the Bible has accused God of doing, forget what I've just said. This post is addressed and is only relevant to my fellow Christians who, I hope, will learn to have the moral courage to do what is right just as our Lord Jesus has done.
What is truly important for us Christians is to see how our Lord handles some of the Old Testament teachings. Did he just accept them as the Word of God, especially the nasty bits?
I will pick three examples and arrange them in order of increasing importance, ie, the last example is the most important one.
The first example is on divorce. The Pharisees come to Jesus one fine day and ask him if he accepts the divorce law as contained in the Law of Moses and written in the Old Testament of the Bible. The Law of Moses allows a man to unilaterally divorce his wife. They ask him for his thoughts on the matter. This is a sexist law of course so, let's see how Jesus deals with it. Jesus could have said, "Well, since it's in the Bible, the Word of God, I can't change my own words, can I?" But he doesn't say that. Instead he says this whole bunkum about divorce is in the Law because of the "hardness of your hearts". Jesus is saying (if I may paraphrase because I haven't got the Bible with me at the moment), "Sorry guys! You're stuck for life to the woman you've married. You can't divorce her and I don't give a damn what the Old Testament says and neither should you".
Jesus cursing the Pharisees
Now, I'm bringing up this example not because I think divorcees are all evil. Jesus was addressing the problem of his day. Men were sexist pigs in those days (some of us still are today) and they were getting rid of their wives every now and then by just relying on the sexist Old Testament law. What can Jesus possibly mean when he says there should be no divorce at all but divorces are allowed because of the "hardness" of their hearts? Does Jesus mean that God gave a wrong law just to accommodate evil people? Of course not. I think the best interpretation one can logically give to what Jesus is saying is that the law came about because of the hardness of people's hearts. In other words, divorce should not be a part of the law but people made it up because of their evil obstinacy. Whatever your take on this, Jesus is casting aside what's written in the Bible.
I've said earlier that I'm giving my three examples in the order of increasing importance. Let me move on to my second and more compelling example.
In the Old Testament, God makes it very clear that a person who commits adultery must be stoned to death. The Word of God allows for no exception. In other words, if you have caught an adulterer or adulteress, he or she must be stoned to death and you can't even take time off to consult God to see if he will make an exception and allow him or her to be forgiven. It's straight to the gallows or rather, the stoning gallery with no reprieve.
Many apologists have tried to explain away John 8 where we read of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery as an instance of Jesus exercising his power, as God, to forgive the woman. They try very hard to conceal the fact that Jesus actually contravenes the Old Testament law that REQUIRES the woman to be stoned to death with no exception. When Jesus is asked by the Pharisees if the woman should be stoned to death according to the law of Moses, he simply replies that the person without sin should cast the first stone. Now, that's not in line with the law of Moses at all. In the millions of cases of people stoned to death for adultery throughout the bloody pages of Israelite history, those who cast the first stones knew perfectly well that they weren't without sin. Jesus is effectively saying that he doesn't agree with the Old Testament law.
My third and last example which should put the final nail in the coffin of the nasty bits of the Bible and which, I hope, will convince you that Jesus considers a lot of the Old Testament as nonsense has something to do with the Fourth Commandment and I will need to explain (again without the help of the Bible) to those who are not familiar with the Christian faith.
For some reason, the Old Testament writers have this obsession with the 7th day of the week. When they write about God's creation in Genesis, they have to stress that God did his creation work for 6 days and on the 7th day, God rested. This implies that this fascination for the 7th day or the Sabbath has been around even at the dawn of creation. The observance of the Sabbath day as a strict day of rest is required in the 4th Commandment and in Old Testament law, any failure to observe the Sabbath day rest is punished with, yes you have guessed it, death by stoning, God's preferred mode of execution.
The Old Testament even has a dreadfully cruel story about a poor man who was out picking firewood one cold winter's day when the other villagers caught him and guess what? It happened to be the Sabbath day and he was picking firewood on the Sabbath day! What an evil thing to do on God's holy Sabbath. They arrested him and brought him to God himself.
Just in case you think I've made up this story, let me quote it to you from the Bible itself, the online version of which I now have access to. I'll use the NIV which is the most popular version today. It's found in Numbers 15:32 onwards.
32 While the Israelites were in the wilderness, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. 33 Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, 34 and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. 35 Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.’ 36 So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the Lord commanded Moses.
Now, this is an apologist's nightmare. As any Christian knows, a Christian apologist whose job it is to defend the faith will say the most ludicrous things to earn his bread. And even funnier is the fact that many of the faithful are willing to accept whatever rubbish the apologist says. Some apologists I've read have gone so far as to say that the man was stoned to death because he was a spy and gathering wood was just an excuse. That's a lie because the Word of God (which you can read for yourself above) doesn't say that. The Book of Revelation calls on God's curses for any person who adds to the Bible so similarly, I call upon God to curse any man who adds to this passage and if he's an apologist, he should receive a double portion of God's curses because he should know better than to violate the Word of God with his own words. The Word of God tells us that the man was stoned because he was gathering wood in the wilderness on the holy Sabbath day. We know how cold the wilderness can be at night but it's better to freeze than to go against the Fourth Commandment.
So, now that we know what the Bible says God's stand is with regard to the Sabbath, let's look at what Jesus has to say in the Holy Gospels. In St Mark's Gospel, we read that Jesus and his band of merry disciples were passing through grainfields when they began to pick up heads of grains to eat. The Pharisees remonstrated that Jesus was flouting the Sabbath day law. Let's look at how Jesus responded.
Before I go on, I should say something about some dishonest apologists whose books I've read. Many of them insist that Jesus and his merry men did not violate the Sabbath day law when they picked the grains to eat. That's of course a dreadful lie. Picking up grains from a grainfield is as much a violation of the Sabbath day law as picking up wood that we have just read in the book of Numbers.
Don't listen to these lying apologists. Listen to what Jesus himself said. Jesus didn't defend himself and his disciples by denying that he had flouted the Law of Moses. That's because the truth is what Jesus and his disciples did was directly in contravention of the Fourth Commandment and the Old Testament law. Instead Jesus defended himself by saying it's ok to break the Sabbath. This is Jesus' answer to the Pharisees in Mark 2:25 onwards:
“Have you never read what David did when he was in need and he and his companions became hungry; 26 how he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the consecrated bread, which is not lawful for anyone to eat except the priests, and he also gave it to those who were with him?” 27 Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath."Jesus did not once declare that his action was not in contravention of the Sabbath law. It was. He explained that it was ok to break the Sabbath. And he said something revolutionary - the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.
Now consider this for a minute. Would a person who says, "The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath" command that a man who gathered wood on the Sabbath day be stoned to death? Obviously, Jesus was cocking a snook at the Old Testament law and the story of God commanding the death of a man who gathered wood on the Sabbath.
If Jesus could do that to God's law in the Old Testament, we who are followers of Jesus should learn to do that to the entire Bible whenever the Bible says the darnedest things. And the Bible does say the darnedest things sometimes.
You see, morality changes with time. What was moral or immoral at one time may very well be the opposite in today's world. The truth is the church is aware of this and the church does not follow the Bible all the time. But the church is usually not honest enough to say it openly especially to non-believers. Like the dishonest apologists, the church will come up with all kinds of excuses not to follow the Bible in areas where the Bible is telling us to be downright immoral.
I'll give an example. When I was a boy, I thought the ancient Romans were evil people when I read about how in Roman times, men from good families cut their hair short to show their intact ears. The reason for this is rather ghastly. In Roman times, slaves had a large hole bored into each ear and when a slave was freed by his master and became a freeman, he would grow long hair to cover his ears and the embarrassing evidence of his past as a slave. As a boy, I was repulsed by such cruelty until I discovered to my horror that this whole idea of boring a hole in the ear of a slave predates Roman history. It's actually the brainchild of the God of the Bible and if you read Exodus 21, you will know what I mean. God commanded that a slave's ears be bored with an awl.
Of course apologists will scramble with their lies to try to explain away this truth but if you are honest about it, slavery is really a holy institution of the God of the Bible.
Oh, you may say, that's all in the Old Testament. Surely the New Testament does not approve of slavery?
On the contrary, the New Testament continues to keep the hallowed institution of slavery very much alive. Even when Jesus tells his parables, he sometimes equates God to a slave-master who tortures his slaves. At no point does Jesus tell his disciples that slavery is wrong. St Paul, in his epistles, advises Christian slave-masters (yes, you read that correctly, Christian masters of slaves) not to be cruel to their slaves and warns the slaves to obey their masters. In his epistle to Philemon (which is a part of the New Testament and is therefore the inspired Holy Word of God), we learn that a slave runs away from his Christian master and Paul finds the slave and converts him to Christianity (as if the slave had a choice in the first place). In his epistle to Philemon who is a Christian owner of slaves, St Paul tells Philemon that the escaped slave is now a Christian and he has persuaded the slave to return to his former role as a slave in Philemon's household.
I have read what dishonest apologists say about this. They say that St Paul had no time to talk about slavery or to change the social order in the Roman times. That's rubbish. If St Paul actually believed it was bloody immoral of anyone to own a slave, he would have told Philemon to release all his slaves. Some apologists say the slaves needed to work as slaves to survive but again, that's rubbish. St Paul could have asked all Christian slave owners to turn their slaves into paid servants with a list of rights as free people. And any suggestion that St Paul was too busy to address his mind to slavery is again a blatant lie. In his epistle to the Corinthians, St Paul is very quick to punish a man with excommunication for having gone to bed with a woman. If he had time for such petty acts between two consenting adults, he must have had time to tell Christians not to own slaves if he really thought of it as immoral.
But kudos to the church that despite the strong biblical support for slavery, the church somehow decided that this hallowed institution of God as supported by both the Old Testament and the New Testament be looked upon today as a heinous sin. It speaks a lot of the goodness of the church to fly in the face of the Holy Bible in order to do what is right. This is the kind of religion that Christ wants us to have. If the Bible is wrong, we should not be afraid to say it's wrong and to go against it. Christ did that to the Old Testament and surely he expects us to do the same to the entire Bible and the fact that the church today goes against slavery shows that we are doing precisely that.
Those who feel compelled by the Bible to denounce homosexuality or lesbianism must ask themselves honestly why they don't subscribe to slavery. If we are truly honest, we'll have to admit that slavery offends our sense of right and wrong but a denunciation of homosexuality doesn't affect us one bit because we're heterosexuals and we find homosexuality a bit repulsive anyway. We pick and choose what we like from the Bible.
I'm not asking my fellow Christians to suddenly change their stand on anything; they probably can't. I'm asking them to at least be honest with themselves and recognise how we are all motivated by our personal prejudices and preferences.
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