A (Potential) Bad Decision

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 video is wonderfully straightforward. And while there are a couple of things I’m not necessarily interested in (the conspiracy theory mentality is just a little thick in this video, and the promotion for his foundation is beside the point for my purposes), I don’t think I would or could add much to his argument. As someone who is around universities and students for my job every day, I can tell you that this problem is real.

And that probably makes me a really bad campus minister.

But I don’t actually believe it does. I do think there needs to be a market adjustment on the industry of secondary education, but I don’t believe (nor does Mike Rowe) that the institution itself is broken. The university is still an essential place where many vocational pursuits receive specialized training necessary for a given job. I can hardly imagine a world without people trained in medical or legal fields. Engineering allows so much of our world to exist effectively and efficiently. And I need people trained in history, economics, political science, and the like to help lead us.

But what Rowe said in this video is so true. This is not how we’ve been selling university education.

When I was in high school (and I’m not aware of this changing much in recent years), the impression was that college is an absolute must if I want to be “successful” or even simply survive with a family in the future. I got lucky: I went to a very affordable Bible college and was able to, with the help of my family, escape without student loans. But this is becoming more and more of a miracle in today’s experience. And while undergraduate and graduate level training is actually quite effective and useful in many ways, it is not delivering what we were promised. It is developing us as human beings (at least in some ways), but it is not producing jobs.

It used to be true that if you went to college, you were almost guaranteed a starting position in your career field. That is no longer true. Such education used to be affordable; but as you saw depicted the video, this is no longer true. College is no longer (for many) the ticket it used to be, and it is no longer (for many) a wise investment. But we were all told that this is where the path to success starts. For far too many, it is no longer leading to the same destination.

I can tell you that classmates who did not go to college are a few steps ahead if they simply applied themselves and began a practice of hard work. To be sure, their earning potential is often much less than my college-trained counterparts, but the latter are so saddled with crippling debt and had such a slow start on their earning potential that they cannot round the curve.

Meanwhile, an entire generation has bought into a counter-productive narrative (when thinking of the Kingdom of God) that fills them with insecurity and leaves them empty of meaning.

It may be time we quit feeding the same trope of what leads to success and start teaching how to ask a better set of questions. To be sure, I hope our college campuses continue to be filled with people who are convinced of their calling and driven to be trained in their specialized field. I hope these students experience training that is more intentional and a job market that is more balanced with people who have a better understanding of what they do — but even more importantly, who they are.

If we are an organization that believes when we impact the U, we impact the world, then we have to take that logic out beyond the walls of the university campus. To be sure, tomorrow’s leaders are on our university campuses. But they can also be at our trade schools and our community colleges. They can be taking classes in the School of Life Experience. These people, with or without four-year degrees, will be tomorrow’s parents, artists, small business owners, and church leaders. We might even see a world where they can be our political leaders and representatives.

If all of this is possible without being enslaved to crippling debt, this world will be a better place. I hope for people to be found in our university classrooms, but I hope those rooms are filled with more and more of the right people. I hope those who have been fed a line will find the right place in a world that needs their leadership so badly — a place just as fulfilling and necessary.

REVELATION: Ephesus and Their First Love

The first “letter” written within the book of Revelation is the letter to the church in Ephesus. Many scholars have pointed out that the order of the seven churches comes in the order the postal delivery route traveled in the first century. The letter begins in Ephesus, for that is where the letter is most likely penned. This is where the apostle John ended up being stationed as the “Pastor to Asia,” and Church tradition holds that he lived here with Mary (the mother of Jesus).

Ephesus was written about by some as “the head of the snake” in reference to the Christian movement. While many people speak of Antioch being the headquarters of Christianity, this was only a reality for a small period of time. As this early movement exploded throughout the world of biblical Asia and Asia Minor, Ephesus (the second largest city in the Roman empire) was centrally located and became the likely port city for the movement to call its home. Because of this, one of the battles Ephesus constantly had to fight was that of false apostles, false teaching, and all kinds of bad orthopraxy.

This appears to be something they handled quite well, at least if the letter to Ephesus is any indication. Let’s look at that now.

“To the angel of the church in Ephesus write:

These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands. I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.

Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. But you have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.

Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.”

You can see John mentions more than once their faithfulness and endurance in the realm of not tolerating wicked people, of testing things for the act of discernment. John also references the Nicolaitans. From what we know in history, our best understanding of the Nicolaitans is that they were a group of people who proposed full engagement with the pagan Roman culture. Probably influenced by the same Gnostic heresies the New Testament writers are often battling, these false believers had proposed that one could engage the pagan practices in the flesh, while keeping their spirit pure and totally devoted to God.

In a sense, it would be like somebody crossing their fingers behind their back while they offer incense to pagan gods. The explanation goes something like this: “I’m not truly worshipping those gods. God knows what’s in my heart.” And what is so damning for many of us is how much we find that thinking prevalent in our own lives and hearts — if we are willing to look closely.

There are many other details in the letter to Ephesus we simply don’t have clear ideas on from history. It is the wrong church letter to teach the greater principles about the methodology of John in Revelation, so we’ll keep moving in order to see those principles more clearly. However, rest assured that we won’t be leaving the overall discussion about Ephesus, but only the letter in chapter two. Since Ephesus was the place where the letter was penned, we will find its culture and imagery come up over and over again as we study.

Don’t fret. We’ll return to Ephesus in good time.

Receiving a Stone (part one)

Jesus moves on to talk about storing up treasures in heaven. There is a way to make “life investments” in such a way that they have an eternal ring to them. So much of what we do doesn’t live on beyond this world of moth and rust, but Jesus is here to tell us how we can make these heavenly investments.

Unfortunately, Jesus starts speaking cryptically about good eyes, bad eyes, light, and darkness.

This isn’t a teaching about seeing the optometrist. In fact, there is great documentation about this Hebrew teaching idiom and the “good eye.” One of the most understandable ways to approach this teaching (along with many others) is in Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus by Lois Tverberg. When a Jewish teacher references the “good eye,” it is a figure of speech about generosity. Having a good eye means that you are generous; having a bad eye means that one is stingy.

In a teaching that would have made a good Herodian wince, Jesus affirms you cannot serve God and money; such an effort is impossible and results in idolatry. In fact, the only way to make heavenly investments is to see through a good eye — through God’s eyes — and to be generous. Generosity is how a person lays up for themselves treasures in heaven.

Which raises a question: What keeps us from being generous? Isn’t it worry? We’re worried that if we’re generous with our resources — our time, our money — there won’t be enough for us. It’s interesting that Jesus’s very next teaching point will be a point about worry. Worry will cripple our ability to be generous. Worry will stifle our desire to lay up treasures in heaven.

Worry gives us bad eyes.

Instead, Jesus invites us to trust. He invites us to trust that God has our best interests in mind — to trust that God knows what we need and will give us everything just at the right time. He invites us to live by every word. There’s no sense in worrying about clothes; God does a great job clothing the earth. There’s no sense in worrying about the things we need to consume; God feeds the birds of the air without any effort. Jesus invites us to trust the story. You see, it’s just what we said over a year ago: trusting the story sets us free to be generous.

Trust gives us good eyes.

Jesus then moves on to talk about judgment:

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

“Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.”

More talk about eyes. More cryptic teachings. This time, Jesus seems to be losing his mind over pearls, pigs, and dogs. What is he talking about?

It’s important to know that in Jesus’s day, the Pagan nations were often referred to as dogs. This wasn’t as derogatory as it sounds; it was more like a figure of speech. Jesus even uses this language in a later story when he tells a Gentile woman, “It’s not good to take the bread from the children and throw it to the dogs.” It is a direct reference to Jesus’s ministry to the Jewish people and this request from a Gentile woman (more on that later). I would suggest that a reference to pigs would communicate the same assumptions. One of the largest exports of the Decapolis region (the land of the Pagans), outside of grain, was pigs. Dogs and pigs are two images that would have made Jesus’s Jewish hearers think of the Pagans.

Knowing this brings context to the teaching. A pearl is often used to discuss rabbinic teachings (Tverberg, in her other book, will also talk about how Jews would speak of “stringing pearls”). Jesus is saying that people who claim to speak for God cannot take and throw their morality before people who have not agreed to follow it. This may seem like a no-brainer, but I’m telling you, we religious people do this all the time. We love to speak about our views of righteousness and morality, good and bad, light and darkness, right and wrong — and we expect the world to listen to us. Why would they? Have they agreed to God’s Word as His measuring stick for their own lives? Again, this statement is not meant to carry a derogatory tone, but you cannot throw your teachings before swine and expect them to enjoy it. Quite the opposite — the swine might actually respond with hostility.

This Jesus guy is pretty smart.

Nevertheless, I probably should have made this teaching a separate post. I mean, none of this business about judging has to do with treasures in heaven, generosity, and worry, right?

Of course, there’s that business about the “eyes”… good, bad… planks, specks…

But these are different teachings.
        …right?

THE SILENT YEARS: Sadducees/Herodians

So the Hasidim moved up north to walk the path of God as faithfully as possible. But what happened to everyone they left behind in the south?

In short, they continued to walk the path as they saw fit upon their return from captivity. This group of people who had worked at trying to figure out how you live within empire and then influence it for the Kingdom of God, who developed the approach Brueggemann calls “accommodation/resistance,” established a lifestyle they believed was a response to God’s calling to live in shephelah and be at the crossroads of the earth.

However, not all of them were well intentioned. Josephus tells us that not long after the Maccabean revolt, the current leadership under the Hasmoneans became as Hellenistic as the Greeks. When this self-serving worldview came in contact with power, the situation was ripe for corruption. The Hasmoneans ruled for just over a century when they looked up to see the Roman empire dominating the horizon. They knew that there would be no standing against this new world rule and began to position themselves politically for survival. The system of tithes and offerings had served this ruling elite quite well. Now that there were millions of Jews living in the land, and thousands of priests, the system that was built for a much smaller Israel wandering through the desert was now producing quite a bit of wealth for those in charge. The arrival of Rome threatened their very lifestyle.

And so the Hasmonean family took their daughter and married her to a neighboring ruler, the man we know as Herod the Great. Herod was the man who inherited from his father the Nabatean/Idumean kingdom that we spoke about in the book of Obadiah. This group of traders had become incredibly wealthy and powerful; to this day, scholars are baffled by the social and economic accomplishments of this nomadic group of people who began to build cities in the eastern desert.

According to some estimates, Herod was the richest man ever to live (including through today). According to history, his income sat at well over a hundred times his country’s GDP. If this is even remotely true, Herod could have bought the Roman empire a few times over. This gave Herod incredible clout in a political conversation. Rome, however, had all of the power and might, so Herod feared for his safety. As long as the two agreed to play nice, the relationship would be incredibly beneficial for both parties. Herod would enjoy great regional power and immeasurable wealth; Rome would have a leader with enough influence to rule a very difficult and tumultuous region.

And so the Hasmoneans arranged for this brilliant political situation and positioned themselves to enjoy a dynasty under Roman rule. One of Herod’s first acts would be to find a new high priest for the Jewish Temple system. He held the office up for bid to the Hasmoneans. The Hasmonean leadership was made up of seven families who were directly descended from Zadok, the high priest from the days of Solomon. These descendants were called Zadoki or Zadokim, which we translate as “Sadducee.” While the term Sadducee originally referred to the direct descendants of Zadok, it eventually became used of the priesthood to describe any descendant of Aaron. The term became used more to speak of a “party,” rather than a descent.

However, these seven families will be spoken of in Scripture as the “chief priests.” These seven families, or chief priests, were offered the high priesthood by Herod to the highest bidder. (Please understand, this was a total corruption of the system.) Amongst these seven families, the house of Ananus (we often translate as Annas) bought the high priesthood and his house would hold it until the destruction of Jerusalem. The corruption was well known and grew to such an extent that the best way to understand the chief priests would be to see them as a mafia.

Here are some details we know from history (mostly from Josephus):

 – The chief priests only paid the other priests for the two weeks they worked each year, keeping the remaining tithes for themselves.

 – The chief priests owned the system of money-changers and merchants who sold on the Temple Mount; they were called “the booths of Ananus” and they were built off of a complete ownership of the economic system AND the regulations that oversaw the system.

 – The chief priests had their own Temple Guard, who were notorious for carrying out behind-the-scenes executions of their enemies.

 – The chief priests had their own “Sanhedrin,” who met in the private home of the High Priest and functioned outside the formal Sanhedrin, who were made up of both Pharisees and Sadducees.


And we need to clear up some terms, so that we understand the writings of the gospels:

 – The “chief priests” are the leading families of the priesthood, descended from Zadok, who function as a mafia.

 – The High Priest is their leader and continues to function as the leader described in the Books of Moses, although much of the public understands the system to be completely corrupt and no longer bearing any resemblance to the Levitical priesthood. The Mishnah is brutal in its description of the priesthood under Herod and the corruption of God’s Levitical standard.

 – “Sadducee” is a term that refers to a party (think Republican/Democrat) and is any member of the serving priesthood who sees themselves as a part of the priestly system. While they may or may not share directly in the corruption of the chief priests, they are giving their passive nod to the system they oversee.

All of those mentioned above would be priestly descendants of Aaron.

However, there would also be a portion of the general public that would approve of the Hellenistic lifestyle. They would rejoice in the world that the rule of Herod has ushered in. While they certainly would not rejoice in the corruption of the Temple, they turn a blind eye to it and continue to carry on with business as usual. This group of non-priests who share the same worldview are called Herodians.

To be certain, the entire spectrum of responses to Hellenism and obedience to God’s way would be represented in the Herodian worldview. There certainly would have been Herodians seeking to love God with all their heart, soul, and might. Although we have cast this discussion in a fairly negative light, it is very important to realize that not all Herodians were self-seeking people turning a blind eye to corruption. A Herodian simply believed that they could follow God and be a part of the Hellenistic world that Rome offered them. They did not see those two things as mutually exclusive. This separated them from their brothers in the north, the Hasidim.

THE SILENT YEARS: Culture

So the Jews come back with a renewed vigor for the Text. But there’s one more major historical shift that sets the stage for the arrival of Jesus.

There was a cultural change that affected the course of human history more (in my opinion) than any other shift in history. We saw this shift just begin to peek it’s head through the curtains during the reign of the Persians, but it never really made an entrance. We spoke of the kingdom of Persia and the differences inherent in their methods of ruling the world. They sought to rule through your surrender and acceptance of their rule, rather than destruction and domination of everybody and everything. This is because the Persians were at least somewhat influenced by the Greeks to the West.

The Greek philosophers had been contemplating some of the most complex questions that mankind had ever considered. It was a completely different way of thinking and asked radically different sets of questions. While most of the world had been focused on the concrete and practical things, this new Western world was asking big questions about the abstract and the unknown. This led to some new convictions.

At the heart of this new worldview lay a core premise and belief. One can find many different Greek philosophers who mention this idea, but Protagoras is often given credit for stating that “man is the measure of all things.” Now, that may not strike you as all that loaded of a statement, but this became the fundamental shift that brought about the worldview known as Hellenism. Hellenism (named after “Helles”) is usually used to speak of the spread of the Western worldview that had made a major shift. No longer were the gods or God at the center of man’s existence; now, MAN stood at the center of his own existence.

Hellenism certainly never did away with the gods — that would be foolish. Hellenism simply shifted their place from the center of the universe to one of many other categories of thought. Man was now at the center; man is the measure of all things. This idea quickly begins to bear fruit in the world. No longer is man made in God’s image, but the gods are made in man’s image (think of Greek mythology and how the gods are often pictured as foolish super beings who look and act a whole lot like men). At this point, our worldview begins to revolve around ourselves and a different set of priorities begin to emerge: power, pleasure, luxury, leisure, and comfort.

When Greece took over, their greatest weapon was not their military — it was their new worldview. Greece came bringing what they called euangelion. We translate this word “gospel” or “good news.” Greece had a gospel. They had good news to share. This good news was that the kingdom of Greece was here. We often talk about Alexander the Great as an amazing military commander (and he was), but Alexander was much more than a military officer; Alexander was an evangelist. And no, that’s not me waxing eloquent; I mean that Alexander was an evangelist. He was convinced that if he could take control of an area and simply build his Greek cities, the indigenous people would flock to this newfound worldview.

If you build it, Alexander said, they will come.

And it worked. Alexander changed the world forever.

And please don’t hear me as trying to be dramatic. I’m trying to make a point that sits right under our noses. If you are an American, you live in the most Hellenistic culture in human history. The Greco-Roman world is still the world that serves as our blueprint for society. In the universities I work with, we are unashamed to teach the Greco-Roman way. From our economics, to our politics, to our architecture, athletics, art, and social infrastructure — we are Greek.

Now, there’s not necessarily anything wrong with that, but it’s essential to understanding what is happening in history when God wraps Himself in flesh and joins the story. It’s critical to realize that we are no longer dealing with “some other ancient culture.” We have now entered OUR world.

“You deserve a break today.”
“Have it your way, right away.”
“Just do it.”
“You’re worth it.”
“You deserve the best.”

I hate to break it to you, but Alexander the Great won. There are Golden Arches in every country I’ve ever been in — even in countries where a cheeseburger isn’t kosher! The Greeks had traded the immortal God for the images of mortal man, and they loved it.

And the world loved it.

They couldn’t get enough of it. They welcomed the Greco-Roman world with open arms. This new day was bringing power, security, comfort, leisure, pleasure, and entertainment. It brought a new kind of infrastructure that provided healthcare and education. It entertained you with media, art, and competition. This same competition called out the best of humanity and drove us to continue to become better and better and better.

And it still is. We’re still breaking world records.

Isn’t mankind amazing?

And yet, somewhere, God got lost. And don’t worry, people have found Him again; every now and again we try to dust Him off and make sure we give Him the prominent place on our mantels where He belongs. We even use Him to try to get more stuff and bigger houses with better mantels to put Him on.

There’s a word for this: idolatry.

But there were a few groups of people who saw this all coming. They refused to buy the greatest lie of human history and fought to stand against the kingdom of self. Some of them missed the point, and all of them struggled. Every attempt to stand against it was flawed, but there were groups of faithful God-followers who sought to hang on to the way God was trying to redeem the world.

The world Jesus was born into was deeply entrenched in cultural struggle and in the midst of a battle of worldviews. Before we start to look at the New Testament, we need to understand how some different Jewish groups were responding to this new worldview shift. It will help us realize who Jesus is working with and talking to in the gospel accounts.

And it just might help us find our place in the story.