No Such Thing as a Bad Job

Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post here.



This is a great conversation to follow our last post where we talked some about persevering in the face of rejection. In this video, Rowe shares more stories about his youth and what he learned about work. His point in this video is that every job is an opportunity to be shaped and to learn. This is good wisdom, rarely spoken of or promoted as worthwhile.

And yet, I know many of my students would struggle with exactly how to apply this truth. Do you just say yes to every opportunity that comes your way? Usually not. Especially as life begins to progress and take off, you will be given more and more opportunities; and in fact, saying no to things will be the bigger challenge. There are some chapters in life where you are not given multiple opportunities. You feel like you aren’t being given any shots, and you take the first thing that comes along. Yes, this happens as well. Life is full of complexity and just about every experience you can imagine. We aren’t talking about formulas, but general principles and conventional wisdom.

What do you do when you graduate with your degree, and you are looking for that career? I know many, many students who are paralyzed by the fear of screwing their life up at that moment. Young adults at this age are crippled by the choices, often believing if they make the wrong decision in these moments, they will drastically change the trajectory of their life.

This may be true. But that is what life is about, and you have no other options — except, of course, to do nothing.

We do the best with what we have; we make the best decisions we can. What I see most of my students doing is trying to remove all uncertainty from the equation before they move forward. This is foolishness — the opposite of wisdom. All of life is a calculation of high/low risk, high/low reward situations. You make the best choices you can with the best conventional wisdom you can muster. You make the decision, and you move forward.

As much as I might have tried to convince myself otherwise, I have never made a life decision with a complete absence of uncertainty. There is always the unknown. Sometimes I have made decisions where I felt 90% confident (and I’ve been wrong about some of those, by the way). I often make decisions about things that I feel 75% sure about. And sometimes life has thrown me situations where I needed to make a decision immediately, or in the near future, and I made decisions I felt only 50.1% sure about (in non-mathematical terms, an “I have no idea, but I’m just barely leaning this way” decision). This is a part of life and a part of moving forward. It is necessary.

We will make mistakes; we will judge things wrongly. We will make honest mistakes, and we will make mistakes where we certainly knew better and chose wrongly anyway. This is all a part of life.

And every chapter we walk into will provide us with an opportunity to learn and be shaped by our circumstances. The moment after we make these decisions, it is no longer about the decision, but about the way we respond to the circumstances. What we learn, what we take with us, the way we will be different because of this chapter. These are the things that matter.

So press on and make decisions. Know that you will probably have to do things you hate and go through periods where you don't have “the right fit” and struggle to find yourself. This is a normal part of the human experience in the modern world. Resist the existential crisis and push on to the good stuff that will go with you into the “next.”

MAKING AN IMPACT: Character

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the third week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

The next value we will talk about with our MAKING AN IMPACT series is one that is stated in almost every organization, is incredibly important, and is yet a struggle for so many churches, organizations, and fellowships. This is the value of CHARACTER.

Why is this such a struggle for the Christian world? I think the short answer is that we are just a bunch of people who are screwed up. That is true, but how many of us are tired of reading what feels like a continuous news feed of Christian organizations that harbor abusers, struggle with sexual conduct, mistreat women, and succumb to other “moral failures”? It’s exhausting.

I think the answer is that theology matters. I won’t be taking this time and space to pull apart the pieces of theology I think are most responsible for these stories, but I will say that our theology is often the bedrock we build our culture on. The way we understand the nature of who God is and what He is doing in the world, the way we understand the nature of humanity, and the way we define the gospel, breeds a particular culture in the missional communities we belong to. If we foster a theology that believes God is looking for the unflinching devotion to a moral code, we will simultaneously breed a culture that puts on a show, afraid to be vulnerable to the struggle we all experience to become the kinds of whole people God has designed us to be.

So what do we do? Impact Campus Ministries has said — like so many others — that we want to be people of integrity and great character. How will we succeed where so many others seem to fail?

A large part of this will reside in our commitment to community and each other (more on this value in another post). The greatest form of accountability will be the fact that we don’t do life (or ministry) alone. Of course, this commitment is only powerful if we trust each other enough to be vulnerable. We have to work hard to build a culture of openness and honesty from the top of our organization all the way down to the bottom. We don’t want to be people who fight for privacy, but fight for each other.

This isn’t to say that privacy is not important or that wisdom would dictate open vulnerability with all people in all circumstances — it would not. But within our family at ICM, we need to learn how to trust each other with our struggles and our failures. This means we can’t be quick to punish others when they slip up, but we also need to be resolute in our commitment to each other, to help each other become the people God is inviting us to become.

Hopefully you can see how well our value of character works alongside the tension of excellence and compassion. We have to have a commitment to excellence in our integrity, but that will only be achieved if we can be gracious in our failures. I really believe that the destructive and harmful failures in character come as the byproduct of a culture that doesn’t foster healthy growth and compassionate belonging. When those things don’t exist, we begin to hide. When we begin to hide, our lack of character begins to fester until it erupts in something horribly destructive.

Unfortunately, this culture of hiding is often cultivated in our faith communities.

We want to be better than this. We want to be the kind of family — brothers and sisters — who make sure we all have a place to belong and that the space can be trusted. We want to build a culture that says, “I am FOR you!” — and doesn’t doubt the sincerity of that stance. Only then can we be honest about who we truly are and who we are trying to become. And only when we are honest can we find family who help us strive to develop as we pursue character in our organization.

This will be an ongoing struggle. We are far from perfect.

But may God bless ICM’s efforts to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly [together] with our God.

CHURCH HISTORY: AD 1300 thru AD 1550

NB: For readers who missed it, I suggest going back to review my setup to this section on church history to know about my disclaimers. For the graphics used in this post, the timelines are not to scale, and the dates represented are not intended to be exact. They are meant to be visual aids for understanding the larger conversation.

So Christendom emerges from the period of the Crusades in horrible shape: completely beaten up, completely broken. Having spent everything they had on war and conquest, they now turn their sights toward rebuilding. In order to do this, they need to find a way to get resources.

Well, in a world that is largely illiterate, where the educated are priests and leadership, studying the Text that is written in an archaic, foreign language is difficult. It becomes simple to manipulate the truth that the masses depend on you to communicate. With a little shaping here and a little gloss there, the narrative of God quickly becomes something that can enslave people in a system of fear, guilt, and control. At its best, you had priests and Church leadership who were maintaining a commitment to sound doctrine, modeling a self-sacrificial life, and instilling a message of hope into people who needed the gospel so badly.

At its worst, we saw the rise of the Age of Indulgences. While the entire conversation is incredibly complex and usually oversimplified (as even I am about to do for the sake of brevity), the general understanding of the problem is relatively accurate. As parishioners came for their typical interaction with the sacraments, the Church leveraged this need to help control the general populace.

To understand this conversation, one needs a basic understanding of sacraments. To the orthodox faith of the Middle Ages, people believed you would interact with the many different practices of the Church in order to experience the grace, mercy, and forgiveness of God. You might remember the liturgy and order we spoke of when we talked about the contribution of Gregory the Great. The Church had identified seven sacraments to serve as corporate practices for experiencing the dispensation of grace. For these early thinkers, there is nothing magical about the sacrament itself, other than its service as a conduit to receive the grace of God into your life. Things like baptism, the Eucharist, confession, marriage — these all allow the grace of God to flow into your life.

You can imagine, as people come to engage these sacraments and anticipate the reception of God’s grace in their lives, it is a short leap for the Church to start manipulating this system for their ends. At some of its worst moments, the Church was even offering forgiveness at a monetary price. Come to confession and absolve your sins by going through the appropriate motions — and offering the appropriate gift.

In short, we are seeing a rabid abuse of Church leadership and priesthood.

Not all the educated were prepared to turn a blind eye to these abuses. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are littered with names of those who stood up against this corruption and fought to reveal the gospel as it ought to be seen. Two popular names in the world of scholasticism are Wycliffe and Hus.

John Wycliffe — Wycliffe was known for consistently attacking the imperial privilege of the Church at large. He hated the separation between the clergy and the laypeople and thought the gap should be dissolved. While he railed against the pomp of the high Church system, he also argued that the Text should not be held captive in an ancient language. He wanted the Scriptures to be accessible for all and thought they should be translated into the common vernacular for people to understand in services. In a lot of ways, Wycliffe paved the way for the Reformation.

John Hus — Sometimes referred to as the true father of the Reformation, it’s hard to see Hus apart from the work of Wycliffe. Hus led an informal resistance to the papacy and was eventually executed for leading what history knows as the Bohemian Revolt. There were two successful regional Crusades against the reigning papacy. While his methods may be subject, his thinking deeply shaped the thought process in western Europe and definitely laid the groundwork for what we know as the Protestant Reformation.

Part of the issue in this period of Catholic history was the geopolitical context. With a new sense of what I call “medieval nationalism,” the power structures in the world were shifting entirely. No longer was the world ruled by one giant papacy; as Christendom tried to figure out how to hold onto their outdated systems of governance, the world changed around them. People were seeing their allegiance aligned more with the powers of the state and country than they were with a foreign church. People associated with being French or German as a more immediate identification than they did with being “Catholic.”

This made it easier and easier to reject foreign papacy and rule. The papacy of Avignon actually shifted the seat of power away from Rome and into France for a period of seven popes, leading to what would later be called the “Western Schism” — when the Western Church was spilt between western and eastern Europe.

The Church continued to suffer from divisions and schisms.

In light of the many abuses of religious power, the Protestant Reformation was simply waiting for good leaders. How “good” these leaders were is left to historical debate. I will leave my personal opinions out of it; so much material has been written about the Reformation and I encourage you to do your own study. Needless to say, people like Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, and John Calvin led reformations away from the Catholic Church in their respective lands, each with their own nuances to their understanding of theology.

At this point, we begin to split over the smallest of nuances. No longer held together by a common hierarchy or papal leadership, we were free to disagree over the smallest details, often fueled by our nationalistic identifications. However, each national identity will get a denominational affiliation: Germans would be Lutheran, the French might be Calvinistic Reformers, and the Swiss would follow Zwingli.

Their many opinions splintered the faith of Christendom, and we don’t have time for that full conversation. However, as far as the good this movement did, it is hard to overstate. The invention of the printing press allowed the widespread distribution of the Text in the language of the common person. The Reformation changed the face of education and cinched up the gap between the educated and the uneducated, especially in reference to theology — both orthodoxy and orthopraxy.

And while this might seem like an unbelievable amount of change for the world to endure, the change is only beginning.

CHURCH HISTORY: AD 300 thru AD 500

NB: For readers who missed it, I suggest going back to review my setup to this section on church history to know about my disclaimers. For the graphics used in this post, the timelines are not to scale, and the dates represented are not intended to be exact. They are meant to be visual aids for understanding the larger conversation.

The tension between this growing movement and the empire of Rome continued until just after AD 300. Persecutions would intensify and subside at different points along this curve, usually in response to political necessity and upheaval. The early Christian movement happened to be the second fastest growing religion in the Roman empire for two centuries. The fastest growing religious movement was that of Mithra (a Roman offshoot of what is typically called “Zoroastrianism”). Emperors were sometimes known to claim to be Mithra incarnate, and the last emperor who made such a claim was Chlorus, the father of Constantine. His birthday happened to be December 25, and the Constantinian Dynasty (started by Chlorus) enacted an imperial Advent celebrating his birth — but I digress.

Most people familiar with this period of history will know that Chlorus’s son Constantine changed the course of Christian history. While the story is generally understood, the details are quite muddy depending on exactly who is telling the story and what their ultimate goal is. Constantine found himself battling over a strategic bridge; should this bridge be captured, many said the fall of Rome would be imminent. As history tells the story, Constantine seemed to be backed up against enormous odds. According to his testimony, as Constantine considered the possibilities of retreat, surrender, or certain death, he had a vision where the Christian God showed him a shield with the Greek letters “chi” (Χ) and “rho” (Ρ) on it. He understood the meaning of these inscriptions to be, “In Christ you will conquer.”

The stories differ (one record is from Lactantius and the other is from Eusebius), but it seems that Constantine was “converted” that day, before the battle. He put this new chi rho symbol on the soldiers’ shields and they went on to victory. Constantine would credit this great Roman victory to the Christian God who delivered him from certain death.

Historians are all over the map on the truth of Constantine’s testimony. Many think the story is completely legitimate. Some say Constantine was a political genius and knew the writing was on the wall as Christianity continued to take a toll on the crumbling Roman empire, with now more than 80% of the empire being Christian. According to this theory (which happens to be my own opinion), Constantine took an opportunity to seize the momentum of popular opinion and attempted to synchronize the paganism of his father’s Mithra worship and the growing Christian momentum. Others claim there is some truth in the middle, that Constantine had some experience, maybe even misinterpreting the vision, and then later struggled to figure out what this change in worldview meant politically for an already divided Roman empire.

Nevertheless, this moment in Roman history changes the course of the Church forever — and as I see it, certainly not for the better. Many folks will flippantly state that Constantine made Christianity the state religion; this is simply not true. Constantine made it legal in the Roman empire to be a Christian. There were no more penalties and persecutions for Christians. It wasn’t until much later in the century that Theodosius would enact new legislation to give incentives to those who claimed the Christian faith (practically making Christianity the “imperial religion”).

This newfound freedom meant Christians didn’t have to run for their lives anymore. Great, right? Maybe. The problem was that ever since the breakup of Jews and Gentiles, the Christians had fallen prey to that pesky Gnostic Crisis. While they struggled to stay alive, these larger theological issues stayed on the back burner. But now that folks were free to return to lives of “normalcy,” these issues took center stage. The different effects of Gnosticism drove the Christians in this almost-completely-Gentile movement to argue about the nature of Jesus. Was he man? Was he God? Was he somehow both? As they struggled to find answers to questions the Bible wasn’t asking, they needed to make a decision on what we would later call “orthodoxy” before the movement completely splintered.

This led to almost two centuries of councils — church meetings where the movement sought to make decisions on how to move forward. While this medium had worked before (think Jerusalem Council), I think it was set up for a rougher road now that the movement was divorced from the Jewish backbone of truth and Text. While there were seven major councils in all, there are four that seem to stand out historically. I will attempt to close this era of history by simplifying (and oversimplifying) them and their major decisions here.

COUNCIL OF NICAEA (AD 325): The divinity of Christ. Ordered by Constantine himself, this council convened to deal with the teaching of Arianism (among other topics). Arianism is the belief that Christ is separate from God the Father. Out of this council, they drafted the Nicene Creed, which declares Christ is of one substance with the Father.

COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE (AD 381): The humanity of Christ. Ordered by Theodosius I (mentioned above), this council convened mostly to deal with the teaching of Apollinarism, the belief that Christ was not truly human. They eventually expanded the Nicene Creed, making adjustments that expounded on their previous ideas. They added Apollinarism to their small, but growing, list of heresies.

COUNCIL OF EPHESUS (AD 431): The singularity of Christ’s personhood. Theodosius II called this council to deal with the teaching of Nestorius, who taught (although history is divided on whether or not it was him) that Christ was actually two distinct ‘persons,’ existing as God in one and man in the other. The council declared that Christ was in fact one person at all times; they also declared no one was allowed to publish any teachings rivaling that of the orthodoxy declared in these councils. Furthermore, they discussed the teaching of Pelagianism, which rejected the idea of original sin and complete human depravity (taught in Augustinian theology). The Church sided with Augustine and rejected Pelagianism.

COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON (AD 451): The fullness of divinity AND humanity in Christ. Convoked by Marcian, this council dealt with the teaching of Eutychian heresy, declaring that Christ, while being one person, was not completely God and completely man simultaneously. Known as the “Hypostatic Union,” the council’s declaration spoke to the fact that Christ was both 100% God and 100% man simultaneously.

If all of this sounds just a bit ridiculous, as if we’ve lost the plot of the story, I would say yes and no. These theological issues are actually very significant. However, it does seem as though we’ve lost the plot of God’s great narrative entirely. This might not have been necessary if — again — we hadn’t lost touch with our Text and the methodology of relationship with God (as we’d understood it for 1000 years prior through Judaism), and if we hadn’t let Gnostic ideas invade our faith. This is the beginning of a downhill slide I’m not sure we’ve ever recovered from. (But I have hope!)

It’s not long after this when Rome falls. This was not a surprise; the original strength of the empire had disappeared even before Constantine. The Romans were in constant flux and political instability. Eventually the Roman empire loses the vastness of its reach and becomes what history knows as the Byzantine Empire.

REVELATION: Pergamum and Satan's Throne

The next church addressed in Revelation is the church in Pergamum. Pergamum was a cultural center in the early Roman empire, and Augustus even declared the city his capital in the province of Asia. Sitting atop the acropolis of Pergamum to this day are the ruins of the vaulted platform that held the temple to Caesar Augustus (later redone under the name of Tiberius and other later emperors). This temple to Caesar had an altar that doubled as a “throne” (very common in Greco-Roman altars; the altars were often shaped like thrones to communicate the rule and presence of the god). Some historians spoke of how you could see the shining temple atop the acropolis in Pergamum from miles out to sea.

Because of the political prominence of Pergamum, the city was also given what was known as poteste gladii, or “power of the sword.” The Romans had a double-edged sword known as the symbol of power. If a city or colony had the “power of the sword,” then they had been given the right to make decisions with the authority of Caesar. Their rulings were as true as if they had been uttered by Caesar himself.

But this wasn’t the only throne residing on Pergamum’s acropolis. In fact, decades ago, the gigantic altar to Zeus was moved to a museum in Berlin (you can see pictures of it by doing a Google image search for "pergamon altar of zeus"). This altar sat just a couple hundred yards away from the temple to Caesar. Covered in gold leaf, this “throne” stands 44 feet tall from the base of the stairs (which still sit in Pergamum), and would have been another attribute to make the acropolis visible from miles away.

But there aren’t only two thrones that sit in Pergamum. No, Pergamum also served as the neochorus (think “capital”) of Dionysius, the Greco-Roman god of wine and orgy. The temple to Dionysius served as the starting point for what was called “the Sacred Way,” and also warranted the construction of the tallest theatre in the ancient world, still an acoustic marvel to this day. The Sacred Way weaves its path down the acropolis and past some seventeen other temples to major Greco-Roman gods. Without a doubt, the pagan worship present in Pergamum was second to none. This Dionysian worship culminated in the annual festival to Dionysius every year where there would be consumption of raw meat, drinking of incredible amounts of wine, and indulgence in rampant sexual immorality. Local law stated that a woman was not free to marry in this pagan culture unless she had lost her virginity in the Dionysian festival. One of the stops I make with participants on my trips is at the ruins of a three-story storefront. The first floor had the remains of giant wine vats (used for serving, not for storage or selling), the third floor has tricliniums (the three-sided banquet table of the first century), and the second floor has large vats that are plumbed for drainage. The archaeological team that did the work there believes these storefronts, found on the Sacred Way, were used during the Dionysian festival to serve wine and raw meat to the public. They would dine and party until sick, at which point they would descend to the second floor and vomit into the vats.

The view from the Dionysian temple, looking towards the Asclepion

And this wasn’t the only pagan worship that found itself centered in the city. Pergamum was also home to the largest Asclepion in the ancient world. Asclepius was the god of healing, and the Asclepion was their equivalent of a hospital. One could think of the Asclepion in Pergamum as the “Mayo Clinic” of their day — the best of the best medical treatment the pagan world had to offer. One would check in to the Asclepion, wash themselves for spiritual purity, make offerings and gifts to the gods, and proceed to treatment. The treatment was incredibly holistic and included education (each patient had to study their disease/condition in the massive library), entertainment (the drama of the Asclepius myth was displayed twice a day in the theatre on the grounds), medical diagnosis, and spa treatments at the bathhouse and mud treatment center. When patients were healed, they would return to write their name and their healed condition on one of the many white stone pillars that stood in the courtyard. In the center of this courtyard, to this day, sits a spring they plumbed throughout the facility in order to give the acoustic ambient sound of rushing water, which they believe was the voice of Asclepius himself and had healing properties.

We could easily write three times as much about the relevant context of Pergamum, but that should set the stage for us to look at the letter to Pergamum:

“To the angel of the church in Pergamum write:

These are the words of him who has the sharp, double-edged sword. I know where you live—where Satan has his throne. Yet you remain true to my name. You did not renounce your faith in me, not even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was put to death in your city—where Satan lives.

Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: There are some among you who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin so that they ate food sacrificed to idols and committed sexual immorality. Likewise, you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.

Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.”

“… who has the sharp, doubled-edged sword.” or “… fight against them with the sword of my mouth.” These are references to the poteste gladii that was present in Pergamum and a cross-reference to the power and authority of Christ. While we didn’t have time to unpack the temple and library of Athena that sits on the acropolis, as well, the “sword of my mouth” reference only gets juicier as we realize the power of words — or, more particularly, God’s Word.

“I know where you live — where Satan has his throne. … where Satan lives.” Whether this is a reference to one of those particular thrones we mentioned (Caesar, Zeus, Dionysius, or the myriad others), or a blanket reference to this incredibly pagan city, the cultural reference is unmistakable.

“…the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin so that they ate food sacrificed to idols and committed sexual immorality.” John nails the message to the neochorus of Dionysius right on the head. This annual festival was steeped in idol meat and sexual immorality. To live in Pergamum would be to reject the daily temptation to give into the cultural narrative of your day.

“I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it…” This is a reference to the healing God offers and a subversive reclamation of the practice so prevalent in the local Asclepion.

By now we should be getting the idea that Revelation is deliberately playing off of the cultural context of its original audience. These aren’t vague references to future entities, but direct references the original audience completely understood without hesitation. But there is a new idea we need to introduce ourselves to, one likely to make our minds explode as we realize what John is doing in the writing of this incredible letter. It’s one thing to use the culture to brilliantly craft a teaching the audience needs to hear. We would call that clever.

John is doing so much more than that.

Besides culture, where is John pulling his material? While we hinted at this earlier in our discussion of Revelation, it’s time to bring it back and put it to work here in our study. John is getting all of his content from the Hebrew Scriptures. Everything John is writing about in his references to culture also comes from the Tanakh! And often, these references are coming from other pieces of apocalyptic literature — books like Daniel, Ezekiel, and Zechariah. This is almost impossible to grasp immediately, and I had to study this concept in Turkey for some time before it finally settled in my consciousness.

Here’s an example from Pergamum: Why does God choose to use Balaam as his reference to the people of Pergamum? Because the book of Numbers provides the contextual (think remez) material for the lesson John is trying to teach. As we mentioned in our study of Jude and 2 Peter, Jewish tradition teaches that Balaam was the one who told Balak to entice the Israelites into sexual sin (Numbers 25). By using Balaam as his reference to the Tanakh, John teaches an entire sermon without writing it down. Every Jew who hears that reference is going to understand that John is saying, “Hey! We’ve been here before! We can’t fall into temptation here in Pergamum!”

The same principle could be used for every reference. “Sword of my mouth” or “where Satan has his throne” or “a new name” written on a white stone. Where is John getting his material? Obviously from the culture, but each one of these references comes from the Old Testament!

Next we will take these principles and apply them to the letter written to Thyatira.

JUDE: False Teachers

Before we get started in the book of Jude, it might be helpful to go back and review the letter of 2 Peter. The two are incredibly similar in their content and structure, and the student of the two would swear they were together as they penned their respective letters. The context of Jude is similar to that of 2 Peter in that Jude is concerned about the false teachers who are leading God’s people into horribly destructive practices. These pagan practices are leading God’s people to compromise in the areas of idolatry and sexual immorality because they want to advance in the Roman system, hungry after wealth, prestige, power, and influence. One might remember the guild systems we’ve spoken of before, where sexual immorality and idolatry ran rampant, and recall that if one is going to find financial peace and security in the Roman world, it’s going to come at a price. They will have to sell themselves to the idolatry of their culture.

Jude seems to be concerned.

Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James,

To those who have been called, who are loved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ:

Mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance.

Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people. For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.

There are apparently teachers within the movement who are using God’s grace and promise of free forgiveness to say it’s acceptable to engage this Roman culture of debauchery. They are saying compromise is the way of success, but Jude says they make a mockery of the way of God. He also claims this problem is nothing new; God’s been speaking to His people about this for some time. Jude’s now going to show that to be the case.

Though you already know all this, I want to remind you that the Lord at one time delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling—these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day. In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.

Notice the three groups Jude points out, drawing off of Hebrew Text and midrash. He speaks of the destruction of the idolators who were destroyed at the Golden Calf. He draws off of the midrash of 1 Enoch (a pseudepigraphal work that shows up in ancient midrash all throughout Jewish literature) and speaks of the fallen angels — a reference to the “sons of God” in Genesis 6:1–4, where Enoch says they were punished for their disobedience. For those familiar with how this plays into Greek mythology (an explanation of which would be beyond the scope of this writing), you will realize this is a reference to wanting advancement through disobedient means.

Jude also references Sodom and Gomorrah, a story that is about our call to love and show hospitality to all people. It should be noted that this is the only biblical reference connecting Sodom and Gomorrah to sexual immorality (the handful of references throughout the Old Testament always link the idea to pride, wealth, and failing to take care of the poor; see Ezekiel 16:49 and context). The reason for linking this story to sexual immorality is the cultural context of Jude. His larger point is that they are neglecting their true calling (love and hospitality) and engaging instead in the sexual immorality of their Roman world.

My point is to help us notice how culturally perfect these references are.

In the very same way, on the strength of their dreams these ungodly people pollute their own bodies, reject authority and heap abuse on celestial beings. But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not himself dare to condemn him for slander but said, “The Lord rebuke you!” Yet these people slander whatever they do not understand, and the very things they do understand by instinct—as irrational animals do—will destroy them.

In another reference to the midrash (this time to “the Testament of Moses,” another pseudepigraphal work), Jude talks about these false teachers who slandered true authority for the sake of advancement. One might also note the reference to the “beast nature” or sarx that we talked about in Romans, or the larger conversation we had years ago surrounding Adam and Eve.

Woe to them! They have taken the way of Cain; they have rushed for profit into Balaam’s error; they have been destroyed in Korah’s rebellion.

These people are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm—shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted—twice dead. They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever.

Notice again, the intentionality of the references. There is a reference to Cain, which you might remember is a story about wealth and acquiring (Cain’s name means “to acquire”). There is a reference to Balaam, who — according to the midrash — told Balak to destroy the Israelites by enticing them into sexual immorality (and idolatry) with the Moabite women. There is also a reference to the story of Korah, who rebelled against authority.

The same three themes — over and over again.

Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about them: “See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone, and to convict all of them of all the ungodly acts they have committed in their ungodliness, and of all the defiant words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” These people are grumblers and faultfinders; they follow their own evil desires; they boast about themselves and flatter others for their own advantage.

Here Jude quotes directly from the book of 1 Enoch. Although this raises all sorts of good questions, it’s not the point we are making now. The point is that Jude is quoting from their context, to their context, to make an incredibly relevant point.

But, dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold. They said to you, “In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires.” These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit.

But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.

Be merciful to those who doubt; save others by snatching them from the fire; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.

To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy—to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.

Jude then reminds his readers to be faithful to the same three things we’ve been discussing the whole time. He calls them to purity and obedience. He calls them to respect the authority God places in their lives. He calls them to remain steadfast to the work of love and hospitality, committed to others, pure in their walk, respecting the teaching of the apostles — not giving in to the temptations and idolatry of their world.

2 PETER: The Other Side of the Conversation

In addition to 1 Peter, we have a second letter from Peter to what we would assume is the same region. While the first letter was written to almost all of the region of Asia and Asia Minor — which would have included a Jewish population of around 20% — it is my opinion that his next letter, while meant to be heard by both Jewish and Gentile audiences, is aimed more specifically at the struggles of these Gentile converts. I believe this because of Peter’s address:

Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ,

To those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours:

Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

For a Jewish teacher, righteousness is the idea of generosity and kindness. I read Peter’s address to say, because of the kindness and generosity of Jesus, the Gentiles have also received a faith just as precious as the Jewish faith. His next comments really define what he’ll spend his time arguing for. Peter tells them that they (the Gentiles) have God’s divine power helping them deal with escaping the temptations of their pagan world, and their sinful desires to indulge in those practices.

Peter is going to go on to make very Jewish, rabbinical arguments, which are even rooted in the midrash. Does this mean I’m wrong in my assumption of a Gentile audience? Does it mean a trained Gentile audience? Does it mean the Jewish audience is going to assist in the reading and learning of these teachings? Or does it simply show that Peter is trying to put God’s Text into context and let His words go to work?

Either way, Peter references some real “humdingers” of teachings. The bulk of his letter is a plea to the Gentiles not to give in to the teaching of false teachers. Now, in our typical evangelical world, we immediately start thinking in terms of orthodoxy, assuming there are teachers who are teaching incorrect doctrine and enticing them into wrong belief. But this is obviously not the case with a careful reading of the letter. These false teachers are leading them into wrong practice, and Peter’s main concern is orthopraxy.

Peter and Jude (to be studied later) are going to draw on the same stories from the Text and teachings in the midrash to make their case. I am going to draw these arguments out in detail when we study the book of Jude, but for now, I want the reader to examine the second chapter of Peter’s letter and realize that Peter is talking about these false teachers in the terms of their refusal to acknowledge 1) the ungodliness and idolatry of their culture, 2) their desire for prestige, power, wealth, and influence, and 3) the sexual immorality that is incongruent with the way of Jesus.

When viewed alongside Peter’s first letter, this becomes a great one-two punch addressing the struggle of the Greco-Asian church. You have to overcome the persecution and the suffering you endure in order to be different and tell a different story in the world. But you cannot give in to the ways of culture and lose your testimony, either. You have to remain committed to the mission of God.

If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because it is. We talked about this all the way back in the books of Joshua and Judges. We were shown what it looks like in the life and ministry of Jesus. And we are reminded of it again now.

God has always wanted a people at the crossroads of the earth — a kingdom of priests ready to show the world what God is like. But the temptation to give in to the ways of culture will be strong, and we must be sure we don’t have any pig bones. The mission of God has always been the same. It has always been one story, and God has always been looking for partners. At different points in history, God has sometimes found those partners and sometimes struggled.

What chapter of history will we be?

COLOSSIANS: Gnostic Heresy

Paul also pens a letter to the church in Colossae, a small city off the main road that runs through Hierapolis and Laodicea. I’ve always found the conversation that surrounds Colossae moving, because this church is the recipient of one of Paul’s letters, and yet the entire city doesn’t survive but a few decades after the establishment of the church. We have mentioned before the many earthquakes that decimated cities throughout the Roman empire. Many of these cities would be central to Roman infrastructure; unfortunately for the people of Colossae, their city did not make the list. The earthquakes of the AD 60s leveled the city, and it was never rebuilt. To this day, the tel of Colossae — a small hill in the Turkish countryside — sits unexcavated, if not nearly forgotten.

The unexcavated tel of Colossae

From a literary perspective, Colossians mirrors the structure of Ephesians point by point. Most scholars believe they were penned together. While Paul didn’t have the ability to use the “copy and paste” function, he definitely uses the same literary technique in the two letters. Here’s what I mean.

Ephesians is six chapters long and Colossians is a little shorter at four chapters. If you look at the first half of both letters, you will notice that Paul talks theology, or what I like to call ‘orthodoxy’ (removed form it’s cultural usage, the etymology of the term refers to “right belief”). The last half of each letter speaks very deliberately of ‘orthopraxy’ (“right practice or behavior”). If you compare Ephesians 4–6 to Colossians 3–4, you will see an identical pattern. Paul speaks about household behavior as it relates to husbands and wives, parents and children, and masters and servants.

It’s the first half of the letters that differ in content. This is because of the context of the recipients. I say that based on assumption because there is so much we don’t know about Colossae (since it lies unexcavated). What we do know comes from the few finds that were scattered along the fields of the local farmers and other things like currency. However, one of the things that seems apparent is the struggle in Colossae with the dangerous teachings of Gnosticism.

Now, the moment you begin talking about Gnosticism, you have entered into tricky waters, because the word can refer to so much and a student of philosophy and Greek belief has many strong opinions about the topic. I’m no expert, so I’ll quote one of my favorite excerpts on the issue from NT Wright. In Surprised by Hope (p. 88), Wright describes Gnosticism as it relates to biblical theology:

For Plato, the present world of space, time, and matter is a world of illusion, of flickering shadows in a cave, and the most appropriate human task is to get in touch with the true reality, which is beyond space, time, and matter. For Plato, this was the reality of eternal Forms.

To oversimplify once more, we may say that Plato’s picture was based on a rejection of the phenomena of matter and transience. The mess and muddle of the space-time-matter world was an offense to the tidy, clean, philosophical mind, which dwelt upon eternal realities. […]

The Platonic strain entered Christian thinking early on, not least with the phenomenon known as Gnosticism. Since the Gnostics have been making something of a comeback recently, a word about them is appropriate. The Gnostics believed, like Plato, that the material world was an inferior and dark place, evil in its very existence, but that within this world could be found certain people who were meant for something else. […] The Gnostic myth often suggests that the way out of our mess is to return to our primeval state, before the creation of the world. In this view creation itself is the fall, producing matter, which is the real evil. I hope it is clear both how closely this view parodies some aspects of Christianity and how deeply and thoroughly it diverges from it.

Wright will go on to explain how some Bible students will go to great lengths to show how some elements of this thought are preserved in the New Testament, but he will spend the rest of the chapter showing how dangerous this way of thinking is to biblical theology.

Paul seems to agree. His first half of the letter to the Colossians talks very directly about this false idea propped up by Gnosticism. Consider the following passage:

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Notice the tense of the statement. Paul says not that God will deliver us, but that He has. The next verses continue even further into this.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

Paul makes sure to use the most inclusive language possible for the incarnation and reconciliation of all things. He speaks of all things and makes sure to clarify that these are from heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. He speaks of how all these things were created through him. He speaks of how all of creation is held together in him. And, for good measure, adds that the complete fullness of God dwelt in the Christ.

Paul will go to play with this idea in the second chapter, at times very tongue-in-cheek.

It certainly behooves the Church today to consider the words of Wright above, that these Gnostic ideas “deeply and thoroughly diverges from” the teachings of the Apostles. The truth is that far too much Gnosticism has crept into Christian theology. The idea that we are spirits trapped in prisons of flesh, walking in a world that is doomed to destruction, just waiting for “some glad morning,” is not the mission God called us to and is not congruent with the teachings of Jesus, let alone Paul and the New Testament.

The Kingdom of God is here — deeply engaged with this world of flesh and blood, soil and spirit.

1 CORINTHIANS: Broken Body (part two)

We previously discussed the context of Corinth and its impact on the setting for Paul’s Corinthian letters, and while we made mention of the cultural diversity that drove deep divisions into the people of God, we hinted at another problem glaring at us from the pages of 1 Corinthians. With Corinth being a centerpiece of goddess worship, particularly with the worship of goddesses like Aphrodite and Artemis, sexual immorality ran rampant in Corinth in a way that was unique to most of the rest of the empire.

Consider the following passages:

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate: A man is sleeping with his father’s wife. And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have gone into mourning and have put out of your fellowship the man who has been doing this? For my part, even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit. As one who is present with you in this way, I have already passed judgment in the name of our Lord Jesus on the one who has been doing this. (5:1–3) 

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies. (6:15–20)

Paul then goes on to quite a teaching about marriage in 1 Corinthians 7. I know that for me, as a young person, this was one of the most confusing passages in the Text. Did God not want us to get married? Was married a “second-best” plan for God’s people? It certainly can read that way, but knowing more about the context of Corinth has helped me put everything in its appropriate place (at least within my mind). You might remember when we talked about the Narrative as a whole, we said that Paul’s letters need to be read in context, because he was trying to help each of those churches live out the message of Jesus within their own unique setting. In the context of Corinth, Paul is inviting them to tell a different story with their lives. In a world obsessed with sex, Paul invites the people of God to consider a testimony of abstinence. Paul is not making a declaration of biblical morality, which explains why there are so many qualifying statements [“I give this command (not I, but the Lord)…”, etc.] and suggestions, as opposed to imperative commands (which Paul loves to use elsewhere).

But this isn’t the only issue of compromise the church in Corinth is struggling with. We also mentioned that Corinth brought an incredible amount of vocational diversity. In the Roman Empire, vocations were tied to a system of “guilds.” To understand an ancient Roman guild, I always picture the brotherhood of a fraternity combined with the commitment of a labor union. These guilds were vocational factions that provided a system of brotherhood and camaraderie. They looked out for each other.

The problem with this system, besides the fact that it only fostered more division, is that each guild also worshipped one of the Roman gods. The “guild feasts” of the first century were, almost without exception, filled with drunken debauchery and sexual immorality. These events, held regularly, revolved around intense amounts of drinking and feasting around ceremonial (pagan) foods. With this in mind, we can hear these words:

Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry. I speak to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf.

Consider the people of Israel: Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar? Do I mean then that food sacrificed to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons. Are we trying to arouse the Lord’s jealousy? Are we stronger than he?(10:14–22)

These same feasts also created quite the ethical dilemma. They would often have leftover meat from the celebration. This meat would be sold at a discount meat market within the agora. Could these earlier believers buy this discounted meat? It had been sacrificed to idols! Into this, Paul speaks many words of wisdom:

So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that “An idol is nothing at all in the world” and that “There is no God but one.” For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

But not everyone possesses this knowledge. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat sacrificial food they think of it as having been sacrificed to a god, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do.

Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. (8:4–9)

A proper understanding of the context of Corinth helps us interpret this book more accurately. It’s safe to say that these Corinthians had a very hard task living in the midst of the culture of Corinth. They had many challenges that may speak into our own culture (just like our previous conversation).

But how is this body supposed to move forward? How can they deal with this division and idolatry that seeks to tear the mission of God apart?

It is to this end that Paul closes his letter.