Jesus at the Hard Rock Cafe

Photo by Paweł Sikora Sikorr

Larry Hurtado who is a favorite Bible scholar of mine and whom my wife, son, and I got to hear lecture recently, is probably the world's leading expert on how exactly Jesus' followers wrapped their minds around what for them psychologically was an utter impossibility: that this guy they knew was actually God. We can go into that sometime.

Another topic he is studying is just how unique in the world the early Christian movement was. He recently wrote a book called Destroyer of the gods:  Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World, where he points out that a lot of what we take for granted about the whole idea of religion came from Jesus' movement, from Christians.  (*Unfortunately Professor Hurtado passed away in 2019).

A little while back he blogged on one example he came across...

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Passing by the Hard Rock Café in Edinburgh today, I noticed again their slogan: “Love all, serve all,” and noted that it reflects the (likely unconscious) influence of the NT upon western culture.  For the motto self-evidently owes to the sentiments first expressed in NT passages such as Matthew 5:43-48, with its distinctive injunction to “love your enemies” as well as your “neighbour”, and Matthew 20:26 (and Mark 10:43-44), with the striking demand that “whoever would be great among you must be servant of all.”

I suspect, however, that neither the founders (nor the Seminole Indians of Florida who now own the restaurant chain) are aware of this.  It just shows how the values and themes of the NT have now become part of the conceptual “ground water” of western culture.

My recent book, Destroyer of the gods:  Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World (Baylor University Press, 2016) makes the points that early Christianity (in the first three centuries) had distinctive features, and that these once-distinctive features have now become cultural commonplaces for us.  I don’t refer to the Hard Rock Café or its slogan, but there’s lots of other (and, hopefully, more interesting) stuff that I hope will address our “cultural amnesia.

What is All Saints Day All About?

Death does not win

Photo by Holger Motzkau

If you've read back through the posts in Authentic Light or looked at the "Movement" section up above, you know that Christianity is an alien civilization with its own calendar. This day -- November 1st -- on that calendar is called "All Saints Day." Now, I know that the word "saint" is usually a signal to the brain to fog over, but stick with me. I'm planning to be brief.

First point: There was wide disagreement in Jesus' day about the afterlife. Many people aren't aware of that fact but it's where we need to start. For example, one group called the Sadducees (i.e., basically rich priests) didn't even believe in an afterlife at all. Other groups were all over the map: you went to heaven (Alexandrian Jews), you went to heaven and were later resurrected (some Pharisees ), you just ceased to exist but were resurrected (other Pharisees ), and so on.

Life

Jesus of Nazareth taught that there was a life after death. For the Sadducees, who only used the five books of Moses as their Bible, he demonstrated it from a passage they had apparently never considered. When he and two criminals were being tortured to death by crucifixion Jesus comforted one of them by promising on his authority as Messiah, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise," (Luke chapter 23 verse 43).

"The one who believes in me will live even if he dies, and the one who lives and believes in me will never die,” (John 11.25-26) Jesus said. Death does not win, life does. The question of the day at every human death is, "Do you believe this?"

So Jesus here and other places taught that, ideally, after your death you are a.) still alive, b.) with him, and c.) in a place called Paradise. Of course, everyone knows there are a lot more questions that this doesn't answer ("Do you mean everybody? Could Hitler-like people go to Paradise? Is Paradise the same as Heaven? What about the resurrection? etc., etc."), but we'll go into that in future posts. I wanted to get us to this point so we could talk about All Saints Day.

Triumphant

So say you are a faithful follower of Jesus of Nazareth (which is basically what that word "saint" means, although in most of the Christian movement it is often reserved for heroically faithful followers) who reaches the end of your time on earth. You step over from the human life you've been living into Paradise. Jesus is there. Also there, we can logically infer, are all the other faithful followers of Jesus from the past 2000 years. Actually longer than that to judge from that debate with the Sadducees. Your grandma, the great-uncle who vanished in the Bermuda Triangle, and ancestors from AD 1865, 1247, and 321 are all there.

All these people are part of what is called the "Church Triumphant" -- triumphant because they made it! That sad, unfair, often unfulfilling, grinding, and increasingly achy life is over for them. Now they live in a place where God, "will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will not exist any more—or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the former things have ceased to exist," (Revelation 21.4).

All Saints Day is to celebrate members of the Christian movement who have been martyred, to remember their accomplishment of remaining faithful to the Messiah through their lives, down to the bitter end. In the late AD 300s Ephrem the Syrian was the first to mention that Christians had a special day to commemorate all of these people. There is actually another day, "All Souls Day" on November 2nd, that celebrates all the rest of the Church Triumphant. 

In the ancient Christian poem that this whole site is structured around -- the Apostle's Creed -- these people are mentioned along with all of us. "I believe... in the communion of saints" refers to the awesome reality that Jesus' followers today "are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses," that every last member of the Christian movement from AD 33 through to this very second, in Paradise or on earth, comprise together Jesus' one church -- his Kingdom.

Same Old, Same Old With the Son of God

Boredom

Photo by Adam Jones adamjones.freeservers.com

"On the 5th Day of Christmas my true love gave to me... downtime."

In the version of the Christian calendar followed in the western world this is the 5th Day of Christmas -- the one where your supposed to get those famous "five golden rings." But despite that, there are no holy feasts today, no commemorations like the one I mentioned the other day marking the first martyrdom in the Christian Movement. If you happen to be a big fan of Thomas Becket this would be the day you remember him, though it has nothing to do with Christmas (although he was yet another martyr...).

But there is a lesson in this day. After all, even life with the newborn Son of God wasn't a miracle-a-minute. There were no doubt weeks and months where nothing happened outside of ordinary, droning, peasant family life. Even the fact that they were refugees in Egypt for some time wouldn't have altered the mundaneness of the life of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus much.

Days like the 5th Day of Christmas, which basically just tick off time in the commemoration of Jesus' young life, help bring home the reality of all this. They hint that, despite all the wonders that swirl around the Holy Family at crucial moments, they were much more like us with all our prosaic concerns than we may think. As the Gospel of Luke tells us a little later on, most of Jesus' early life could be described this way: "The little boy Jesus was developing into a mature young man, full of wisdom. God was blessing him," (Luke, chapter 2 verse 40, ERV).

But that's to be expected. It is in legends and fairy tales that miracles happen every minute; here we are dealing with history. It just happens to be history in which God is with us.

The Story

(This is a repeat of a previous post while I am at a conference.)

So what do we mean when we talk about the "revelation" Jesus brought or the "deposit of faith" or the faith "given once and for all to the saints?" What was it that the Apostles were so busily "passing down" to the members of the Christian Movement? Yes, certainly the New Testament, but read on for a minute to see where I'm coming from. Before word one of the New Testament was committed to writing, Jesus' emissaries were teaching this revelation face to face.

I'm taking this from my site's 'Prologue' up at the top of the page. The other red boxes break up and discuss what this Prologue says. It's fairly short and I'll expand on it in future articles, but I'd ask that you notice two things as you read it through: First, how bare-bones it is. Jesus left a lot of the work up to his Movement. Another topic for a future post, I think!

And second, notice... that it's a story! The revelation Jesus left us with did not consist of a list of rules or a detailed chart of how Bible prophecy works out. When the last Apostles died they left us with a story.

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Personally, I like a religion that can be summed up in a short poem.

In ancient times, when someone decided to follow Jesus of Nazareth, they would first have this poem recited to them, line by line. And after each line they would be asked, "Do you believe this?" "Yes," they would respond, "I believe."

Then they would be baptized.

That poem, of course, is the Apostle's Creed, dating back to the earliest days of the movement Jesus founded. During the first ages of that movement, Christian documents were expensive, cumbersome, and prone to be confiscated and burned by the authorities. But, although you might not be able to carry the Bible with you, you could carry this poem (composed of artfully arranged quotes from Scripture) in your mind.

Today, whatever else they may squabble about, Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Protestant are united on the truth of these words. Even those groups that claim to eschew creeds will usually agree with it's teachings.

It is this poem that we present here. These are the core truths Jesus and his Apostles taught. This is what the ancient martyrs died for. This is the Authentic Light.

~~~

I believe in God the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth.

And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead, and buried.
He descended into hell.

On the third day he rose from the dead;
he ascended into heaven,
and sits on the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
From there he shall come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

the holy catholic Church,

the communion of saints,

the forgiveness of sins,

the resurrection of the body,

and the life everlasting.

Amen.

'Memento Mori'

For more about the Christian teaching on life and death (the real teaching, the one we started out with and actually still teach without most people noticing) visit our page on 'LIFE.'

memento mori

Photo courtesy of Leo Reynolds

Sorry to bring this up on a nice, relaxing weekend. I know you'd probably rather not hear it, uncomfortable subject that it is. But death, after all, is an integral part of Jesus' teachings. He spoke on it and its ramifications at length. As they used to say during the Middle Ages, "memento mori" -- "Remember, you too must die." So for your Sunday meditations I present one of the great teachers of the Christian Movement, followed by several scriptures to back her up.

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Remember you have but one soul; you will die but once; you have only one life, which is short, and which you must live on your own account; there is only one heaven, which lasts forever—this will make you indifferent to many things.

Teresa of Ávila  (AD 1515 - 1582)
Minor Works of St. Teresa, p. 198


As for me, my days are sprinting by like a runner. Seeing nothing good, they seek escape... Humankind, born of woman, has a few brief years with much suffering.

Book of Job 9.25 and 14.1, Voice


You have determined the length of my days, and my life is nothing compared to You. Even the longest life is only a breath.”

Book of Psalms 39.5, Voice


A voice says, “Declare!” But what shall I declare? All life is like the grass. All of its grace and beauty fades like the wild flowers in a field. The grass withers, the flower fades as the breath of the Eternal One blows away. People are no different from grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; nothing lasts except the word of our God. It will stand forever.

Book of Isaiah the Prophet 40.6-8, Voice

The Verse That Keeps Me Christian (It's probably not the one you think)

Read Part 2 >>

Van Gogh's 'Sorrowing old man'
("At Eternity's Gate")

Sometimes you just feel like your whole life has been a waste. At least I do, and I can't imagine that I'm the only one. Sometimes it just impacts you that your life hasn't turned out at all the way you wanted, that all those hopes and dreams have come to nothing. Sometimes it seems that nobody really cares about you, that no one actually loves you, and when you look at yourself you really can't blame them. Sometimes you just reach bottom -- the bottom of bottom, and it really aches.

Now I hasten to point out that generally I'm a happy-go-lucky, easygoing guy. Ask anybody. But I have been right down in that dark hole. Maybe you have too. The worst part is that it's almost impossible to communicate what you're feeling to anyone else. Nobody seems to get it. You're in that hole by yourself.

Everybody, I would think, handles 'the hole' differently, hopefully in healthy ways (e.g., not drinking yourself into a stupor and deciding to live there). Being a follower of Jesus of Nazareth you'd think I should be able to pull out a magical Bible quote to sustain my soul. And I do have a verse... but it's probably not the one you think.

The Depressing Book

Back in the Old Testament there's a rather depressing little book called Ecclesiastes (or sometimes Qoheleth, after the title of the person who wrote it). It's one of those books that theologians -- Jewish and Christian alike -- have wondered what the ancients could have been thinking when they included it in Scripture. But there it is. Ecclesiastes is the kind of book that doesn't encourage you with the idea that one day you'll go to Heaven; it says, "Who knows?"

That's the book that helps me when I'm in the hole.  My 'magic Bible verse' is in the 2nd chapter:

This made me hate life. It was depressing to think that everything in this life is useless, like trying to catch the wind.

Ecclesiastes 2.17, (ERB).

Not exactly the 23rd Psalm. But this guy gets it, at least for me.  This is God saying, "Welcome to the hole. Yes, I even know about this place."

In my life I have found that what helps me in the depths is not all the encouragement in the Bible, but God's frank acknowledgement and full comprehension of the fact that at that point I hate life and it looks useless.

I have often thought that without a book as 'real' as Ecclesiastes in the Bible, I probably wouldn't trust it as much as I do. The Christian God isn't a fluffy bunny God who doesn't want to hear about certain parts of our little human lives because he'd rather ignore the hard stuff. He's not a Disneyland God; he's a battlefield God, a bad-side-of-town God.

Somehow this sharp little verse sums that up for me.

Commitment

George Muller

George Muller is one of my spiritual heroes. In the 19th century he famously established a huge orphanage that rescued thousands of children from the streets, and did it entirely through prayer and faith. Purposely, he never asked for money as a public demonstration that God still answered prayer as he did in the Bible.

He was also a famous writer and speaker. In a conference address called "Jealousy for God in a Godless World", Muller made these remarks, which are quite timely today.

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As we are drawing nearer and nearer the close of the present dispensation, spiritual darkness, departure from the Holy Scriptures, and consequent ungodliness, we have reason to believe, will increase more and more, though coupled with a form of godliness (see 2 Timothy 3.1–5). Therefore the path of a true disciple of the Lord Jesus will become more and more difficult; but for this very reason it is of so much the more importance to live for God, to testify for God, to be unlike the world, to be transformed from it. If we desire that thus it may be with us, it is needful that we give ourselves to the prayerful reading of the Holy Scriptures with reference to ourselves. The Bible should be to us the Book of books; all other books should be esteemed little in comparison with the Bible. But if this is not the case, we shall remain babes in grace and knowledge. 

And now, beloved fellow-disciples, how many of us are in heart purposed to live for God, to be zealous for God, and to be truly transformed from the world? We have but one brief life here on earth. The opportunities to witness for God by our life will soon be over; let us therefore make good use of it. Let none among us allow his life, nor even a small part of it, to be wasted, for it is given to us to be used for God, to His glory, in this godless world.

George Muller
Jehovah Magnified: Addresses
"Jealousy for God in a Godless World"

What Preaching Should Do

Preaching must either break a hard heart or heal a broken one.

--John Newton


Preaching (including internet preaching) is foolish, you know. The Apostle Paul said so himself:

Since in the wisdom of God the world by its own wisdom did not know God, God was pleased to save those who believe by the foolishness of preaching. (1 Corinthians 1.21)

"Preach" is something of a dirty word today: "Don't you preach at me!" Preaching today is usually assumed to be criticism.  But in reality, Christian preaching is supposed to be about the Gospel, the message Jesus sent us to spread all over the world.  And the Gospel is really an announcement -- the Great Announcement as we like to call it on this site: "The universe has a king, namely, Jesus of Nazareth! His Kingdom is here, now and will put everything right! Come join it; everyone is invited."

Oh, and as part of the bargain, every wrong, selfish thing you've ever done will be forgiven forever.

This is not criticism, it's good news.

As this blog frequently points out, Paul also said that this announcement, "is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes," (Romans 1.16). This announcement, itself, is charged with that power.

When people hear it -- truly hear it -- the hardest hearts can break with compassion for their fellow beings, and the most injured hearts can heal.

All Live

by RadicalBender

So all live to God.

Gospel of Luke 20.27-38, Voice



God lives in eternity, outside of time. When he looks at us humans he sees all of us all at once from the beginning to the end, everyone who ever was or ever will be. And so, "All live to God."

And also -- everyone who ever lived, lives now, or ever will live in the future will continue to live. We are not eternal, of course, because we had a starting point but after that point we will continue to live -- somewhere.

God's bias on the subject of where you should continue to live is plain. In one of our ongoing series here, here, and here so far) I'm spelling out what details we have about where we go when we die, but we all do go somewhere.

And so, "All live to God."

Flawed

Judah Gives his Signet and Staff to Tamar

One of the main reasons I like the Bible is that it's such a real book. None of the characters in this book are lily-white, 2-D, cardboard cutouts; they're flawed, messed up people wrestling with life and with God, just like us. This morning I was reading the nasty little story found in the 38th chapter of Genesis, which reminded me of this fact like a 2 x 4 between the eyes.

I'll leave it to you to click on the link I just made in the last paragraph and read it for yourself, but I'd like to point a couple of things out.

Your Sister-in-Law?

First, the marry-your-sister-in-law-so-she-can-have-kids thing can be a bit puzzling (to say the least) to us sophisticated inhabitants of the 21st century AD. But this story takes place in the 21st century BC. It's a window into a time when the main business of life still was just surviving. At this point we'd made some progress but it was quite possible for, if not the entire human race then at least your part of it, to be entirely erased from history. All it took was a particularly bad famine, or a plague, or a family unable to leave any descendants behind when they died.

In that type of society, clinging in many cases to existence by their fingernails, the attitude of women to what constituted success was wildly different from today. 4000 years have gone under the bridge since then. Think yourself into their sandals. They were quite aware that the survival of their community depended on them. In this context, having a system set up to ensure you could produce more humans for your family even if your husband died made sense. Tamar, the heroine in this story did her level best to fulfill her duty to the species.

Pigheadedness

Second, her original husband, Er, and the replacement husband/brother-in-law Onan, were both
"particularly wretched human beings in the eyes of the Eternal One." And Onan especially, not because of what he's usually accused of, but because his pigheaded selfishness was keeping Tamar from carrying out her duty to the community despite her best efforts. And doing something like this must have been difficult on her part to say the least.

Both of these fellows were so reprehensible to God that he ended their lives. How evil is that?

So who gets blamed in all this? Tamar.

Judah, the very patriarch whose family Tamar is trying to save, decides Tamar must be the problem. She must be cursed or something because his sons keep dying. It couldn't have anything to do with them being particularly wretched guys, could it? So Judah refuses to let her have her rightful third chance, deciding instead to keep this "deadly woman" away from his 3rd son.

Tamar's Solution

Now take a look at Tamar's admittedly illegal but rather creative solution.  Point A, she is absolutely sure, no doubt due to the patriarch's reputation, that if you put a temple prostitute in Judah's path he will have sex with her, no questions asked.  This man, I must remind you, is the direct ancestor of the renowned King David and Jesus of Nazareth himself.

Point B, faced with an accusation of sexual misconduct by his daughter-in-law, Judah shows no sympathy for what he and his sons have put her through, and not a hint that he's even aware of his own hypocrisy as a man you can depend on to visit every woman he meets who does what Tamar is accused of.  Instead, he condemns her to a particularly horrible death, so bad in fact that you hardly see it anywhere else in the Bible: "Bring her out and expose her for what she is, and then let her be burned!"

But Point C, at least he didn't try to cover up the evidence Tamar produced. Maybe I'm cynical, but he could have done that. He was the patriarch after all; his word was law. But no, he finally comes clean: "She is more in the right than I am. I did not keep my word and give her in marriage to my son, Shelah."

A little bit of redemption for the very flawed Judah.  And Tamar was finally able to carry out her duty despite the rather incredible opposition she had to face.

Nobody came out smelling like a rose in this story. It's almost embarrassing to read. You keep asking, "What in the world's wrong with these people?"

And that, my friends, is why I love the Bible.

Life After Death, Part 1

Read more in Part 1a>>

What happens to us when we die? Do we lie there moldering in our graves? Do we head off to Heaven to live a disembodied eternity with God? Are we conscious or do we "soul sleep" until the resurrection?

As the Apostle Paul said in the scripture I posted Sunday (1st Letter to the Corinthians chapter 15 verses 22 - 24), whatever it is that happens to us, it will be the same thing that happened to Jesus when he died. Followers of Jesus live "in Christ," bonded together with him. Like him we will die and be resurrected; only the timing is different. As the Messiah, he went first, and we will all follow him by being bodily resurrected when it's our turn -- "when Christ comes again."

Jesus' younger brother once wrote, "A person’s body that does not have a spirit is dead." Christ's body, we know, died and was buried in a tomb for 3 days, but what about his spirit? Where was the spirit of the Son of God during what the Christian Movement has long called "Holy Saturday" -- the time between his burial and resurrection?

Wherever it was, or whatever condition Jesus' spirit existed in, our spirits will experience the same thing between our deaths and resurrections -- with one important caveat: the universe was altered on a cosmic scale with the death and resurrection of the Messiah. That was sort of the point, after all: "The Son of God came for this: to destroy the devil’s work," (1st Letter of John chapter 3 verse 8, ERV). So conditions may have changed even in the world of the dead since those epic 3 days, but the overall situation of those who will be resurrected remains.

 It's never been our main topic of conversation (that, of course, would be the announcement of the arrival of the Lord Messiah and his Kingdom) and we never fleshed it out as much as you and I might like, but the early Christian Movement was aware of where Jesus was, and where we go, between death and resurrection.

So this will begin a series of posts on the after life. The scholar N.T. Wright famously calls being resurrected "life after life after death," something Jesus and his Apostles were much more interested in. But we won't go quite that far for now. We'll be looking at what they taught about what comes before that: "Life After Death."

Read more in Part 1a>>