O.K., I'm back for another installment--I'm stealing a few minutes from the morning to get back to you, but I don't know how long I have, so I can't say how far I'll get. But I'll continue your letter where I left off.
"I hate people who are holier-than-thou. That is the whole point of Jesus' teachings - we are all the same in God's eyes - God is no respecter of persons. Can I get an Amen??"
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We could debate for years regarding "the whole point of Jesus' teachings", and never agree. One of the problems we would face is that we have four records of his life each written by a distinct individual with an editorial agenda--that is, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each wrote his own account of the life of Christ to make a point, and so told those aspects of His ministry which supported that point. Matthew seems to have wanted to capture how Jesus reached out to the chosen people of God, the Hebrew nation, with a message for them first; his volume is filled with expansions on the concepts in the Old Testament and evidences that he fulfilled prophecy and otherwise demonstrated his position as Messiah. Mark in some ways is the most direct of the four; it appears to have been written to capture the events as briefly as possible. Luke clearly wished for his readers to understand that from the beginning the gospel was intended for more than just the Jews--it is he who gives us all the stories of Jesus' interaction with Romans and other gentiles, and with women (instead of just preaching to men). One cannot read John's gospel without recognizing that the person of Jesus as God is the focus. With only seven miracles (if memory serves), he uses each to point up the nature of God in Christ, and to illustrate the block of teaching which accompanies it. Thus we have four distinct accounts telling us very different aspects of the same life, and deciding what the "whole point" of that ministry is proves rather daunting.
But is this a bad thing? Biographers in our day are forced to choose those aspects of a life they deem significant, and will often disagree among themselves as to the relative importance of different points. Perhaps we could have had a single and much longer record of the life and ministry of Christ; but it would have been of less value in two ways. First, by having four records, we are able to focus on particular aspects of that ministry which contemporary writers considered important. I imagine that were biographers to look at my ministry, they would disagree sharply as to what were the important points. Is my thought more the product of the years of Bible study in college, or the exposure to so broad an array of denominational ideologies? Is the time I spent in radio the pinnacle? I reached thousands of people there in a brief time, and changed many lives; but to me, the music ministry was always the more intense and the more personal--although it is doubtful whether it ever touched so many. And now there is my work on the Internet, by me done more as an avocation while I work on promoting the Multiverser game, but with the potential to reach more people than I had imagined in my grandest fantasies. Each of those is important--and yet it may be that I had more impact in helping particular individuals along the way who are now pastors and teachers themselves. To put all of the aspects of one person's life and ministry in one book forces you to narrow your focus, and we would have lost so much.
At the same time, having four biographies is instructive in another way. Although each volume shows different aspects, we find that they all tell of the same man. If we read of Socrates (who like Jesus we know only through the writings of his disciples), the Socrates we know is the one reported by Plato; but other disciples of the philosopher tell different stories, paint a different picture. The Socrates of Plato teaches us perhaps less of his own philosophy and more of Plato's. But the Jesus in each gospel is the same man despite the varied foci of the writers. From an historical perspective, this is a compelling argument for the authenticity of that image.
Indeed, "God is no respector of persons." But does that mean that he treats each of us alike? I think this will not bear the simplest examination. My physical condition has never been good, and has worsened over the years. Why have I never been athletic? Why do I now have such severe asthma? Why have I worn glasses since the fourth grade? Certainly God has given me many abilities; I also carry quite a few disabilities. But should I be treated as if I were identical to everyone else? For that matter, should everyone else be treated as if they were identical to me? Being no respector of persons means that God will treat us all fairly, and is not impressed by our accomplishments or social status or abilities.
A Bible teacher reported a man coming up to him once and saying, "I wouldn't want to be in your place." The teacher asked why, and the man said, "Don't you know that you're responsible for everything you teach?" The teacher looked back at the man and replied, "Don't you know that you're responsible for everything you hear me teach?" As true as this is, it is clear that there is a distinction here. "To whom much is given, from him much is required" is, I believe, the text. Would you trade your life for that of Elijah? John the Baptist? Peter? James? Paul? God spoke to these men; he also demanded much from them. I'm sure if you're interested in giving your life and time into His service to that degree, there's a good probability that He'll speak to you, too. This isn't to say that He won't speak to you otherwise; it's just that He's a lot less likely to have something to say. It's been said he doesn't waste words. That means several things. It means He's not going to spend a lot of time explaining to you aspects of the gospel which you can read and understand for yourself--he explained it to the apostles, and they wrote it down rather well. It means He's not going to tell you what to do next if you've already determined that you're not going to do what He told you to do last. It means He's not going to keep calling your name if you're not listening.
"Just read the red letters of the new testament. Don't read the other stuff that other people said."
I'm not certain why so many people get the idea that the words of Jesus as reported by the scriptures are so much more important than the text which accompanies them. But then, I believe the "plenary verbal" theory of inspiration. In short, God had a message to deliver, and He carefully selected the individuals who were to deliver it, and directed their lives and circumstances and ministries so that they would come to the point at which they would write books and letters which expressed the truths He taught them in precisely the way He wanted them expressed. Thus each word in the Bible is the word chosen by God to be there, while at the same time it is the expression of the thoughts of the man whom God chose to deliver it.
I don't want to minimize the importance of the words of Jesus; but I think that many people think that because some sections aren't in red, they aren't important. I've never found those red letter editions useful--for one thing, it's one more thing for me to ignore. I'm already trying to condition myself to ignore the chapter and verse numbers--the most influential and unrecognized commentary on the scripture in the world--the often incorrect decision of an unknown monk as to where the thought breaks are. Now someone is deciding where the words of Jesus are. For the best example, read the third chapter of John, and ask yourself who actually spoke the words in John 3:16. Is this a continuation of Jesus' soliloquy to Nicodemus, as it appears it might be? Or is it John's commentary on that discussion, given that it is so like much he has injected in earlier chapters? As Bob Mumford once said, not only do we not truly know what it means, we don't even know who said it. But is it that important? God said it; He wanted us to know it. Whether the thought was John's, or John merely recorded words of Christ he thought important, we understand that it needed to be said at that point in the message, and we need to grasp it within that context.
"Did it ever occur to you that (as Mark will attest) the Bible was compiled many years after the individual texts were written? These texts were compiled by a bunch of people who felt that they were at the top of the religious food chain. (And we all know what the bible says about people who think they are at the top of anything.) Apparently they took all of the religious texts that they could find and weeded out the unimportant ones and the ones that they didn't agree with and came up with the basic text that all Christian religions are to follow. Who were these people?"
These people were the appointed elders of all the Christian churches in the civilized world--that is, each city had a church, and each church selected someone who was thought to be one of the wisest and most knowledgeable members in that city. These men were given care of the collection of books and letters which had been handed down and copied with care for generations, and sent to discuss them. They considered such things as whether they knew who wrote the book, and whether it was generally agreed that that person was the author--although the Epistle to the Hebrews was generally agreed to have apostolic authority despite the fact that none of them knew who wrote it beyond that most of them had kept it with their collection of the letters of Paul, and didn't think him the author. Some books and letters were rejected because these men didn't believe they were authentic--the Gospel of Thomas was correctly thought to have been written long after Thomas died by someone who wanted to promote a philosophy foreign to that in the other gospels. What they did was compile a list of those New Testament books about which they all agreed that the church in their city believed them to be authentic writings of the apostles and their closest companions.
And they did not choose themselves for this task nor this task for themselves. They were chosen (or perhaps some would prefer to say recognized as chosen by God) by the churches whom they represented.
This is the situation with regard to the New Testament; the Old Testament is a bit more complex. In short, the leaders of the Jews met in a place called Jamnia around A.D. 90, and made a determination of which texts they considered scriptural at some level; the divisions of "Law", "Prophets", and "Writings" already existed, and they determined which books each included. But we are not privy to that meeting, and our knowledge of which books they included was based on which texts we found in the abandoned synagogues in the Roman empire after the Jews were driven out by persecution. Some of these scrolls contained books which were not found in others, and thus the "apocrypha" was born, comprised principally of intertestamental literature which some synagogues read for edification and enjoyment but which were not generally accepted by the Jews. This has resulted in the discrepancies between the Catholic and Protestant canon, as the western church accepted many (but not all) of the books so found, and the eastern (Orthodox) church did not, and the Protestants followed the shorter canon (which has proved in retrospect to be the one acknowledged by the Jews, although they give differing weight to different sections).
"Who guided them? Does God come down now and guide you to do your day to day tasks? Why would he then? Why did these people feel the need to edit the religious texts? Why did they include the "begats"? do they have some meaning that I don't understand?"
Concerning the begats, their place in the Old Testament has a lot to do with the heritage and politic and faith of the Hebrew nation. In that world, it was very important to whom you were related and how closely. The only chains of ancestry in the New Testament are those of Jesus. It is generally agreed that Matthew reports the lineage of Joseph, and Luke (the physician) tells that of Mary, so it is clear that Jesus is a son of Abraham and descendant of David both biologically (through his mother) and legally (through his putative father). There actually is much buried in them, often in the lives of those named and their place in the promise. Matthew names five women, each of whom was in some sense the wrong person--one is Bathsheeba, called only Uriah's wife, who bore David's son. Each is instructive. Matthew also puts an emphasis on the number 14--14 generations from here to there, from there to the other place, and from the other place to the end--because like many ancient peoples the Jews used letters to represent numbers, and 14 is the number of the name David. But these are things written for those who wish to dig deeply into the text and understand the nuances of the thinking of the authors; they hardly rise to essentials of the faith.
On the matter of guidance (and I must wrap up with this--I'm needed elsewhere), I've already written an extensive piece. I think it will answer many of your questions related to how, when, and why God speaks to people--and save space in this letter. I'll pick up from here next time.
Hope this helps some. .
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Read about the Multiverser role playing game--accused by some critics of being "too Christian".
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