Ben Beilharz / 29th February 2008
/ Ministry
In the March issue of The Briefing, Martin Pakula answered the question, ‘Who is a Jew and why should we care?’. As is the case for many ‘why should we care’ questions, the short answer is that the Bible does.
Related to this is the matter of how we should talk about Jewish people when preaching. Out of their concern for this issue, Richard Gibson and James Mendelsohn have produced a Guide For Preachers on behalf of the British Messianic Jewish Alliance. They explain their concern in the introduction:
In recent years many members of the British Messianic Jewish Alliance have been deeply hurt by the negative attitudes towards the Jewish people, thoughtless comments about Jewishness and hostility to the state of Israel they have encountered in churches, university Christian Unions, books and the Christian press. Consequently many British Messianic Jews are beginning to feel disenfranchised from the wider body of Christ to which they belong.
The guide includes the following in its advice to preachers, service leaders, and others who speak in churches:
- Use the term ‘Jewish people’ rather than ‘Jews’.
- When preaching on the Gospels, distinguish between the first-century religious leadership and Jewish people generally.
- Be aware of particularly sensitive issues such as the Holocaust, the Crusades, the Pogroms and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
- Be tactful when mentioning Martin Luther because of his latter-year venomous attacks against the Jewish people.
- Pray publicly for ‘the peace of Jerusalem’ and the salvation of the Jewish people.
- Refer to ‘Israel’ and ‘the Palestinian Authority-controlled areas’ rather than ‘the Holy Land’.
For the reasoning behind each of these points, read the full document.
Ian Carmichael / 28th February 2008
/ All around the world...
Most of the people who work here at Matthias Media have never heard of Larry Norman. They are too young.1
But for me and for many others of my vintage, Larry Norman and his music were a big part of our early Christian life. So I was very saddened to hear that he passed away a couple of days ago (see the Larry Norman website for news of his death and his final words to his fans). But I am glad that he was faithful to the Lord Jesus until the end and that he looked forward to heaven. I'm also glad that we were recently able to publish an article from Philip Cooney about Larry in The Longing, so that those younger than me can understand the influence and impact he had on a generation of Christians.
1 Editor's note: Beilharzs excepted: Ben and I are both under 30 and we know about Larry Norman. We own three of his CDs. In addition, Ben is familiar enough with the words and chords to some of Larry's songs that he could play them for you on request.
Gordon Cheng / 28th February 2008
/ Media Watch
Recently, Paul Sheehan had an extremely silly article encouraging bored and frustrated middle-aged women to be unfaithful to their husbands. A few days later in The Sydney Morning Herald, Andrew Cameron, ethics lecturer at Moore College, responded:
In his clarion call for “middle-aged” women to leave their arid marriages, Paul Sheehan effects the posture of gallant ally to unhappy women in the struggle against “routine, obligation, fear, guilt and the dogma of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religious tradition” (“In praise of desire and infidelity”, February 18).
But sexual politics can blind us to the obvious. Put his rhetoric of liberation on hold and consider: what would we have thought if the cardigan-wearing cynic, and the fat slob with the remote, were women? What if men were urged not to pretend they are “middle-aged”, and to go forth and renew their sensuality with nubile young things?
...
In an argument throughout the Gospels, Jesus attacks his contemporaries for their divorces of convenience to remarry young things, and “everyone who looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew chapter 5, verse 28). The point is not to amplify male guilt. He wants men to direct their sexual energy toward their wives, as in the ancient proverb “Take pleasure in the wife of your youth ... be lost in her love forever.”
There are many other good things in Andrew's response so make sure you have a read.
Tony Payne / 27th February 2008
/ Fallacy Watch
A very common Bible-reading fallacy involves giving a meaning to a word in one place by noticing what it means somewhere else. At first glance, this might sound like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. If you're trying to work out what any word means, you have to look at all the ways it is used. This is how the Oxford Dictionary was compiled: an army of word-hounds found usages of words in real sentences, and sent them in so that all the different senses and connotations of a word could be listed and illustrated by quotations.
The problem comes when we take how a word is used in one place and then arbitrarily drag that meaning into its usage in a different place. So imagine that on page 3 of the newspaper we read, “The thieves broke into the bank, and made off with a million dollars”, and then on page 47 of the same newspaper, we read, “The coach said that he wouldn't bank on Wilson being ready for the match on Saturday”. Imagine that some learned person then made this comment:
What is the author trying to say about the thieves and their forceful entry into the ‘bank’? Given that on page 47 in the same newspaper, the word ‘bank’ is used in the sense of ‘rely upon’ or ‘trust in’, it is very possible that the author's real point is not that an actual financial institution was robbed but that the thieves have destroyed our trust in financial institutions. This is what they ‘broke into’ in reality.
This is laughable. The context of the page 3 article makes it very clear what sort of ‘bank’ is being talked about—a real bricks-and-mortar one. And the fact that the same word is used in a different sense on page 47 has nothing to do with it.
However, somehow, when we come to the Bible, we don't find this technique so hilarious. In fact, it has a kind of scholarly ring to it. Christians perpetrate this fallacy quite often—usually out of a commendable desire to read Scripture in line with other Scripture, and to understand God's word more clearly.
For example, here's one I quite happily accepted myself for many years. When trying to work out what ‘the knowledge of good and evil’ means in Genesis 3, some commentators have noticed that the same phrase ‘know good and evil’ is used by Solomon in 1 Kings 3:9: “Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern [literally, ‘know’] between good and evil, for who is able to govern this your great people?”
Solomon seems to be asking for the ability to ‘decide’ what is good and evil in particular cases as he judges the people. So, the argument goes, what Adam and Eve are really grasping for in Genesis 3 is the right to decide for themselves what good and evil are—the right to declare moral autonomy from God and make up their own rules. From seeing that ‘know good and evil’ can have the connotation of ‘decide what is ‘good and evil’ in one place (1 Kings 3:9), it is argued that it has this same meaning in another place (Gen 3).
Now, theologically, I love this. To say that ‘knowing good and evil’ means making up my own rules and declaring moral autonomy from God—this is exactly what sin is all about. But even if ‘knowing good and evil’ means this in 1 Kings 3:9 (and it might), is that what the phrase means in Genesis 3?
Well, no. The context shows decisively that ‘know’ in Genesis 3 means what ‘know’ means in most of its contexts (both in Hebrew and English): to perceive or apprehend something. Before they eat from the tree, Adam and Eve do not realize they are naked (Gen 2:25). But they eat the fruit of the tree, their eyes are opened and they ‘know’ (same word) that they are naked (Gen 3:7). And so they cover themselves. Then God comes along and says, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree?” (Gen 3:11). The meaning of ‘know’ in this context could not be clearer. There was something they were ignorant of before. They ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and then they perceived or understood it.
Now, working out the implications and significance of this new-found knowledge is no simple task. What sort of knowledge have they come to exactly, and how does it relate to ‘wisdom’ and morality in general? Why is nakedness such a big deal? These are not straightforward questions.
But we can't evade them by freighting in what the word ‘know’ might mean somewhere else, when it clearly doesn't mean that in this context.
Have you ever fallen into this trap?
