So, I’m editing and putting the finishing touches on the fourth modesty posts right now, as well as writing the fifth and sixth.  I’m also biting off far more than I can chew with my youth group: I’m doing a total Bible overview in six-seven weeks (talk about an ambitious project with junior/senior high kids).  I’ll probably put that overview on here at some point as well, though in a slightly extended form.

Still, I’m trying to make time to toss a few small things up from time to time.  Here’s some random tidbits:

1. I was trying to track something down on Facebook recently and randomly saw that an old eschatology post had reached a rather eschatologically ironic number of people.

I’d be a little worried, but the word on then internet is that John MacArthur has said something about having a “666” as being all right, so I’m good.

2.  Over the last few years I’ve cultivated a few online friends/associates that write as well.  Seeing that you’re on here and reading, you likely read other stuff too.  Believe it or not, I almost never read blogs; I don’t really have time.  When I was sick I had a ton of time, but that has changed with the return to work and re-tooling for an entirely different career path.  I do listen to some Podcasts though, but even making it through a single Podcast often takes me a week since I only get 10 minute snippets here and there.  Either way, if you’re wanting to get your mind going with a some thoughts that will be edifying and encouraging, here’s a few places to check out:

a.  Michelle Lesley’s Blog

b.  Entreating Favor

c.  The Cripplegate (I know, I used to write there and possibly may in the future, but it’s one of the better biblical resources online!)

d.  Hip and Thigh (Fred Butler should be on everyone’s reading list)

e.  Dan Phillips’ Blogs: Biblical Christianity and Pyromaniacs

f.  Bylogos (John Byl; a great writer and theologian in my own neck of the woods)

g.  Veritas Domain (SlimJim comments on here from time to time and has a fantastic apologetics-oriented site)

h.  Alpha and Omega Ministries (Dr. James R. White)

i.  Dr. Reluctant (Dr. Paul Martin Henebury).

j.  Dr. Andy Naselli

k.  Erin Benz’s Blogs: Do Not Be Surprised and Equipping Eve

l.  Parking Space 23 (another great team blog with a bunch of great guys)

m.  Memoir and Remains (the blog of Ed Wilde: the smartest guy you’ve never met)

I’d also encourage you to read the blog of the Squirrel, but after talking about Chic-Fil-A he apparently was so overcome with sorrow that he couldn’t bring himself to write anymore.

I understand.  I love Chick-Fil-A too.  Maybe thinking of the trays of chicken sandwiches that are only 293.3 miles away will console him.

…or that might have just made things worse.

Also, some of those blogs have podcasts, but there’s one podcast that you need to check out that isn’t part of an infamous blog: The Carnivore Theology Podcast.  They’re all smart and influential dudes who hobnob with seminary presidents and Christian celebrities and stuff, but they still allow us to glean theological crumbs from their table via their podcast.

Hopefully that may introduce you to something of benefit to you.

May you be blessed and grow in the Lord.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “I can’t believe he reopened that MacArthur/Mark of the Beast can of worms!” Unger

In the previous post, we learned that women’s clothing in ancient Rome was not terribly varied: respectable women worn the stolla and palla and differentiated themselves from one another with variations of color and jewelry.  Adulteresses and prostitutes were most notably marked by the wearing of the toga, or at times a stolla that was made of thin and revealing Coan silk. A woman’s moral nature was indicated by her choice of clothing, and prostitutes were marked by either various degrees of nudity or the willful rejection of “female” dress.[1]

The previous post dealt a blow against the myth that says “the problem in 1 Tim. 2 and 1 Pet. 3 is one of women dressing immorally, as indicated by their prostitute-like hair.”  In recognizing that hair didn’t indicate that someone was immoral, the previous post also posited the question:  What did ” braided hair and gold or pearls” indicate?

This brings us today to the topic of hair.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HAIR

Seeing that Roman culture provided far less variety of choice for women on the front of clothing, women mainly set themselves apart from one another with their hairstyles. In New Testament times (and far before and after), “hair was a major determinant of a woman’s physical attractiveness and was thus deemed worthy of considerable exertions to create a flattering appearance.”[2] In fact, Roman culture was somewhat different than our own in that female hair was the main course of fashion. In Roman culture, clothes were of far lesser significance than hair.  Hair “functioned as marker of status” and “seems to have been for some the seat of female attractiveness.”[3] In other words, a woman’s hair was the major factor in determining her physical attractiveness.[4]

In the New Testament era, given that their clothing options didn’t really include anything that was physically flattering, a women’s hair was one of her main outlets of her individuality. Hair communicated a world of details about a woman; social status, personal morality, submission to social norms, and even political leanings.[5] To the Romans, “natural” looking hair was hair “suggesting a lack of civilization and social control – a state close to beasts and barbarians” and grooming was seen as a handmaiden of literacy and culture.[6] Therefore, all Roman women groomed their hair. The nature and level of elaboration of the hairstyle, along with the types of additional elements (i.e. decorations, wigs, etc.) clearly communicated a woman’s status.

Before exploring the various components of Roman women’s hairstyles, it’s worth noting just how much hair communicated.

Hairstyles did change in Roman culture, but slowly and often with far more significance than simply indicating changes in fashion trends. Often the hairstyle of the reigning monarch became a multi-decade standard fashion.  Dr. Kelly Olson writes, “some famous Roman women – Livia or Faustina the younger – never (or rarely) changed their hairstyle.”[7]  Alexandra Croom writes that “women wishing to be fashionable, wherever they lived in the Empire, could use the official statues and coin portraits to follow the latest hairstyles from the Imperial court if they so wished.”[8] What’s more interesting is that Bartman notes “Faustina the Elder had nine official portraits made over her reign that showed changing hairstyles, where as the coins minted during her reign had the same hairstyles.”[9] Bartman suspects that the coins reveal an idealized image presented by the government to the empire, but seeing that the various hairstyles of the portraits corresponded with other known hairstyles of other important women (both contemporaneous and of the past), the official statues reveal “responses to dynastic politics rather than changes made in the actual coiffure she wore.”[10]  In other words, Faustina provided contemporary political commentary by means of her hairstyle.  Croom notes that Imperial women often introduced new fashions “to distinguish herself from her predecessor” but “some women presumably continued to wear the fashions of previous empresses.”[11] The reasons for this certainly involved an aversion to change (tradition is a powerful force), but hairstyles were also subtle ways of showing an affiliation to a previous monarch’s person or political policies.

There were further messages communicated by women’s hair. Roman women wore their hair up on their heads at all times, with two public exceptions. The first exception was for mourning or being part of a funeral procession; adult women letting their hair down was associated with death.[12] The second exception was for children. Elizabeth Bartman writes,

“We also see a marked difference in the hairstyling deemed acceptable for preadolescent girls, such as long hair cascading loosely onto the back, compared to that for sexually mature women – equally long hair but controlled through wrapping, tying, and braiding.”[13]

There was also one private exception, which would be one of a sexual nature.   Women would “let their hair down” with their husbands; something that was far more erotic than one might initially suspect.  Due to the intrinsically erotic nature of hair, it was “a lightening rod for anxieties about female sexuality and public behavior. Hence the ancient sources preserve many references to veiling and other strictures regarding female headware.”[14] The Roman god Venus was often shown wearing her hair cascading down over her shoulders, but this was an image that was overtly pornographic in Roman culture. Bartman writes,

“An attribute of Venus, shoulder locks are worn by Roman women to evoke the goddess and the qualities connected with her: beauty, sexuality, and fertility. As divine signifiers they are no different in their associate role from nudity or the gesture of the hand covering the pubis…”[15]

So all this gives a simple and obvious message: in ancient Rome, a woman’s hair was not just hair. This also should certainly give Christians a greater understanding of the cultural background behind the talk of veiled hair in 1 Corinthians 11. It’s not an interpretive key by any means, but it certainly adds some understanding of the gravity present in the Corinthian predicament.

Addressing the idea of veiling as a bit of a side-note, it is actually significant to note that all the surviving portraits (read “statues/busts”) of Roman women have their hair unveiled, most likely “in order to display her elaborate hairstyle to the viewer.”[16] It is likely that those same women would have been unable to wear such elaborate hairstyles out in public without uncovering them, since the palla “would have crushed the rows of curls and braids”.[17] Then again, they probably didn’t wear those sorts of hairstyles too often in public.  It’s likely that when sitting for a portrait, a women would have had her hair done up as ostentatiously as possible, in order to present herself as extravagantly as possible and to preserve her astonishing coiffure for posterity.

CREATING THE ‘DO

Not all coiffures were extravagant, but women’s hair was highly significant in Roman culture. Lengthy grooming sessions weren’t just tolerated, they were encouraged for women.[18] There certainly wasn’t a certain hairstyle, but all women wore their hair up and the social scale involve increasing levels of ornate hairstyles.[19] If “natural” hair was the mark of illiterate barbarians, the whole point of Roman women’s hairstyles was to make woman’s hair look as unnatural as possible, with mounds of curls, color, texture and sheen.[20]

So what were the typical hairstyles?

The basic style involved parting the hair in the middle of their head, pulling it back into various styles of braids and buns.[21] Lower class women had simple hairstyles, “usually with the hair drawn back and knotted into a simple bun.”[22] Lower class women would have kept their hair in place with a hairpin, which would have generally been a functional rather than decorative piece. Women of some means would have had more elaborate hair pins that were ornamental and designed to display their wealth.[23]

As in contemporary culture, hairstyles and fashion weren’t driven by the lower classes. The wealthy and elite citizens of the empire established and maintained the standards of fashion, and in the Roman empire the more elaborate the hairstyle, the better.

Roman women who were in the upper classes had exceedingly ornate hairstyles. Hairstyles kept the basic division in the middle of the head but involved increasingly elaborate braids, buns, pins, and decorative elements including ornaments made of gold or ivory, and even various mounds of curls that crowned the forehead, often involving both a woman’s own hair and a wig.[24] This forehead crown was the most distinctive element of Roman women’s hairstyles, often being a stack of curls that was impossibly high.[25] These elaborate hairstyles were held down firmly in place with hairpins, nets and snoods.[26] In the first century, around the time of the pastoral epistles, some women even wore hairnets made out of gold.[27]

Women who wore the most ornate hairstyles would have had their hair done daily by hairdressing slaves called Ornatrices, simply because it would take multiple sets of hands several hours to do the elaborate hairstyles that the wealthy women wanted.[28]  Here you can see a wealthy Roman woman with four ornatrices (with one holding a mirror for the woman to observe the affair).

The most elaborate hairstyles, reserved for women with significant means, ”were probably sewn together without the need of hairpins, creating very stable hairstyles that could be slept in if necessary”[29] The richer the women, the larger and more elaborate the mound of hair upon her head. Across the first century, women’s hair was swept “off the face into towering mounds.”[30] Even though Roman women frequently utilized wigs to get maximum effect, many women had “Ample locks, possibly even below waist-level” that were the foundation of their amazing hairstyles.[31]

The point of a wig was to add color to a woman’s hair, but wigs were quite expensive. Women who couldn’t afford a wig could still try to color their own hair, making their hairstyles stand apart from those of their peers. To dye their hair black, women would apply “a mixture of leeches which have rotted for 40 days in red wine” or a mixture of kermes that had soaked in water “until tender and rotten”.[32] To dye their hair red, women would apply “a mixture of very young walnuts” or saffron.[33] To lighten their hair, women would apply sapo, “a mixture of goat’s fat and beechwood ash, molded into balls.”[34] As good as these treatments sound, they weren’t as desirable as having a wig.

The wigs used were wither the half wig (galerus or galerum) or the full wig (capillamentum).[35] Common wigs were frequently made from the hair of slaves, but more expensive wigs had hair of specific colors. The natural color is what made foreign wigs so desirable. Black wigs were imported from India and were very exotic, but blond wigs were brought back from Germany as a spoil of war. This blond/gold “captured hair” was far more exotic and as such was easily the most expensive.[36] Incorporating a foreign and costly wig into a complex and ornate hairstyle would certainly set a woman apart, as “the long commitment of time and the skilled ornatrix needed to produce such a (sp) ornate hairstyle would have marked the woman as a lady of standing, and was a sign of social rank and power.”[37]

Bartman writes that wigs were worn by choice as a fashion accessory, not because of a fault or flaw in the wearers’ hair.[38] I suspect that this is only partially true.  Roman women’s hair was also regularly damaged as part of the process of creating a hairstyle. Olson writes about the Roman version of the curling iron and says,

“The calamistrum was the ancient curling iron: it consisted of a hollow metal cylinder with a solid cylinder inside: the hair would be wound around the solid cylinder and inserted into the hollow one which had been heated on the fire or in the brazier. Because curling tongs and hair dyes could seriously burn the hair and scalp and cause hair loss, some women may have found thin or scorched hair a problem.”[39]

Ouch.

So, after all that, it seems fairly clear that a woman’s hair in Roman culture was a something of extreme significance, often designed with the sole purpose of displaying a woman’s wealth and status. With the pursuit of elaborate hairstyles possibly involving multiple slaves, imported decorations and wigs, coloring, hours of daily work and what would amount to a lot of money, hair was no small affair for many Roman women.  Still, this is just a bunch of data that need to be applied for it to really be helpful.

That’s the goal of the following posts, but first there’s one thing left to deal with before assembling all this data into a coherent understanding of “modesty”.  Next week, I’ll deal with the remaining elephant in the room.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “the useless ornatrix” Unger

[1] Kelly Olson, “Matrona and Whore: Clothing and Definition in Roman Antiquity” in Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World (ed. A. Faraone and Laura K. McClure; Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), 197.

[2] Elizabeth Bartman, “Hair and the Artifice of Roman Female Adornment.” American Journal of Archaeology Vol. 105, No. 1 (Jan., 2001), 1.

[3] Kelly Olson, Dress and the Roman Woman: Self-Presentation and Society (Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2008), 71.

[4] Bartman, 5.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid, 6.

[7] Olson, Dress and the Roman Woman, 71.

[8] Alexandra Croom, Roman Clothing and Fashion (The Hill, Stroud, Gloucestershire: Amberley Publishing, 2010), 65.

[9] Bartman, 8

[10] Ibid, 8.

[11] Croom, 55.

[12] Ibid, 57.

[13] Bartman, 6.

[14] Ibid, 5.

[15] Ibid, 22.

[16] Olson, Matrona and Whore, 190.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Bartman, 1

[19] Croom, 56.

[20] Bartman, 5.

[21] Ibid, 2.

[22] Olson, Dress and the Roman Woman, 71.

[23] Croom, 55.

[24] Bartman, 3.

[25] Olson, Dress and the Roman Woman, 70.

[26] Bartman, 3.

[27] Croom, 66.

[28] Jerome Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome (trans. E. O. Lorimer; London: Penguin Books, 1991,), 186-187.

[29] Croom, 65.

[30] Bartman, 3.

[31] Olson, Dress and the Roman Woman, 71.

[32] Ibid, 72.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Ibid, 73.

[35] Ibid, 74

[36] Bartman, 14.

[37] Olson, Dress and the Roman Woman, 71.

[38] Bartman, 18.

[39] Olson, Dress and the Roman Woman, 73.

[40] I am a useless Ornatrix.  There’s proof here.

So let’s recap.

In the first post, we introduced the topic and gave a broad look at the categories of women in churches that have concerns about modesty (or a total lack thereof).  In the second post, we looked at the biblical terminology from 1 Cor 12:23 and 1 Tim. 2:9.  I only did that because the verses with the term “modesty” in them are generally the passages that people talk about when the topic comes up.  At the end of that post, I brought up the myth that gold, braided hair was the mark of a prostitute in ancient Roman culture.  In the third post, we looked at the actual mark of a prostitute in ancient Roman culture; wearing the male Toga (often made out of thin, revealing Coan silk).  In the fourth post, we looked at what gold, braided hair indicated in ancient Roman culture; wealth and status.

Now, I’m going to take a quick look at the other significant biblical text that addresses modesty.  This whole series would be incomplete without addressing it, so let’s explore 1 Peter 3:1-6:

1 Peter 3:1-6

“Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, ² when they see your respectful and pure conduct. ³ Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— ⁴ but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious. ⁵ For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, ⁶ as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.”

The passage opens with “likewise”, which points the reader back to the previous section of 1 Peter 2:18-25 where Peter gives instructions to servants.  Peter urges them to be subject to both just and unjust masters (2:18) because this is a gracious and valuable behavior in the eyes of God (2:19-20) and befitting emulation of Christ (2:21-25).

So 1 Peter 3:1 urges wives to be like servants in that they emulate Christ in how he committed no sin with his mouth while suffering unjustly (2:22-23), didn’t return threats with threats of his own (2:23) and even suffered unjustly for Christians 2:24-25) due to the fact that he entrusted all justice “to him who judges justly” (2:23).

Peter gives wives specific instructions here along those lines.  He urges wives to be subject to their husbands, even if their husbands are disobedient to the Lord.  The term “be subject” comes from the Greek hypotasso, which I unpack in depth here.  In 1 Peter 3:1, it’s a reflexive verb, meaning that it’s something that a women does to herself.  The reason for this is given in the second half of the verse: “so that…they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives”

The second verse explains that sort of “husband-winning” conduct they need:

a.  Respectful – Interestingly, this word is phobos.  It means “fear”, and we get the English “phobia” from this term.  It’s a relatively common term, appearing 47 times in the New Testament, and it almost always means “fear”.  The idea behind this “fear” is understood once we get to verse 6.

b.  Pure – The term here is hagnos.  This term means “clean” or “pure”, and it comes from hagios, which is a very common term in the New Testament.  It means “holy”.

Then, 1 Peter 3:3 moves into the practical examples of what that “fearful and pure” conduct looks like.  The command is to “not let your adorning be external“, and the examples given seem familiar now: “braided hair”, “gold jewelry” or “clothing”.  As we saw in the second post, the term translated “braided hair” is the same in 1 Tim. 2:9 as it is in 1 Peter 3:3.  The “gold jewelry” is not an indicator of being a woman of questionable sexual ethics, (as we saw in the third and fourth posts), and neither is the “clothing.”  The issue with these things is not that they make a person look like a prostitute, but rather that they’re external.

The external adornment is contrasted in verse 4 with the command to “let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart”.  Rather than external adorning, a women should be adorned with “the hidden person of the heart.”  The term “hidden” is translated from kryptos, from which we get the English word “cryptic” and the (hidden) home planet of a popular superhero…

Sorry.  I couldn’t resist.

The term kryptos means “hidden” or “secret”.  The adorning of a woman that wants to win the heart of her disobedient husband is putting on the secret, internal person that resides in her heart.  That’s the good you that nobody else really sees, and that part of your heart is what you need to bring out.  It’s at this point I need to point out something rather obvious:

That’s not something you do with a boyfriend.

This is not a text instructing single women how to make themselves attractive to “godly guys”.

That’s not to say that the principle isn’t good (attract a guy primarily with who you are rather than what you look like), but this is a place where context (which is synonymous with “subject matter” in this case) cannot be left behind.  The context here is dealing with wives who are living with a husband who is disobedient to God (vs. 1).  This passage is talking about God’s divine strategy to win a disobedient fellow back to himself (with regards to his wife), not how single girls can find a guy who does obey the Lord.  It’s also not a text for taking your disobedient boyfriend and giving him an overhaul.

If you’re dating a guy who’s some sort of “in name only” Christian, dump him.

If you’re dating a guy who tries to push you physically into sexual compromise, dump him.

If you’re dating a guy who is unfaithful while he’s dating you, dump him.

If you’re dating a guy who is physically abusive, dump him and involve your church elders and the police.

Kick his butt to the curb.

Don’t try to reform him: dump him.  This passage isn’t a recipe for reforming a bad boyfriend.

Guard your heart when you’re dating and throw the chum to the sharks.

Okay.  I just had to make that clear.

Now what is the “secret” person that resides in a woman’s heart that she needs to adorn in order to win a wayward husband?  It’s the “imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit.”  What’s the idea here?

a.  The term “gentle” is praus, which means “meek”.  The concept of meekness involves someone being selfless and restrained.  In looking through all the occurrences of some of the derivitives, like praotes (the feminine noun form that is translated “meekness”) or praos (an alternate form), one see that the term is often found alongside terms carrying the idea of “gentle” or “longsuffering” (i.e. 2 Cor. 10:1; Eph. 4:2) and is contrasted with terms carrying the idea of aggression (i.e. 1 Cor. 4:21).  It’s not a hard term to understand, but most of the 1-word definitions that I’ve heard don’t really do the term justice.  It’s purposefully not drawing attention to something that’s worthy of attention, and making little of one’s own obvious glories.  My new image of meekness is this:

I’m guessing that photo would have ended up slightly different if the figure of the back would have simply announced her presence. Due to a monarch’s lack of need for the (rightly-deserved) limelight, we now have the best photo-bomb in history.

b. The term “quiet” is hesuchios, which is an interesting term that is a composite of echo (to have or hold) and hedraios (seated/steadfast).   The idea here is one where a person stays in their seat when challenged or confronted.  The idea is a graphic one: when someone raises a charge against you, you don’t jump to your feet in defense of yourself…kinda like  Peter describes in 1 Peter 2:21-24, hence he begins this passage with the word “likewise.”

Why should the Christian woman who seeks to win over her wayward husband chose this reaction to his waywardness?  It’s clearly the obvious temptation to cater to whatever that woman thinks he desires…and sinful men always are thinking carnally (which means “physical” in this context).  But the wife who has a wayward husband needs to remember who’s really doing the work: God.  She needs to pursue his plan of action because he is the one, the only one, who can restore a wayward heart.  He doesn’t guarantee that he will, but this is the plan of action he has laid out for every woman in this circumstance.

As I’ve already suggested, this isn’t something foreign to God either.  1 Peter 2:18-24 comments on how Jesus himself exemplified this for believers, and 1 Peter 3:1-6 is the application of 1 Peter 2:18-24 in the specific situation of a God-fearing woman finding herself married to (and trapped with) a faithless husband.

The secret godly woman, the “righteous woman of the heart” that others don’t see, is the woman that needs to come out for the faithless husband.  That’s the woman that God wants to cultivate in all women who find themselves in this situation.  God knows that a faithless dolt won’t see that “righteous woman of the heart” for what it is either, hence he comments on the “righteous woman of the heart” when Peter writes “in God’s sight is very precious.”   That is the anchor for the weathered and battered soul who finds herself married to a guy who sees her Godliness as foolishness and treats her servant heart as thought it were spinelessness.

God gets it.

God values it.

10 trillion years from now, there’s not a single woman who will regret obeying the Lord in this way, though right now that struggle is monumental.  God isn’t some myopic imbecile; He knows that the struggle many of these women face will seem utterly insurmountable.  To help the women in this situation, he gives them two titanium truths on which to anchor their battered hearts (alliteration means I feel some “preach” coming on).

What started as a short address of 2 verses turned into a whole sermon, so I’ve moved that into a separate post.  I’ll put that up in a few days.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “1 Peter 3:5-6 is a much heavier text than I expected” Unger

In the previous post, I dug through 1 Peter 3:1-6 and unpacked the v. 1-4 of that text.  I commented on how the passage addresses women who have husbands that are disobedient to God and God’s commands to those women.  Those commands would be rather amazingly difficult to obey, but God gives all women everywhere (those with good and godly husbands, those with occasionally sinful husbands, and those with wretchedly sinful husbands) more than just difficult commands.  Oh no.  He gives them firm truths onto which they can anchor their weak and doubting hearts.  In this post, I’m going to continue mining out 1 Peter 3:5-6 and unpack two titanium truths for securing a struggling heart.

In verse 5-6, Peter writes “For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, ⁶ as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord.  And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.”

Here’s the first titanium truth:

1.  You’re one of God’s damsels.

 1 Peter 3:5-6a presents this truth.  There’s a category of women that you find yourself in when you’re married to a (even occasionally) faithless husband, and that category is two fold.  First, that category is one of “holy women.”  Now “holy” means “set-apart” or “in a separate category.”  To say that God is “holy” is to say that he’s in a completely separate category than anything else in creation.  God’s just in a completely different league.

The following phrase explains how these women are holy.  They’re holy in that they’re woman who “hoped in God.”  In other words, when their knight in shining armor turned out to be a monkey in a chicken suit they placed all their trust in the Lord.  When the guy that they had hoped would be a salvation (from poverty, childlessness, etc.) for them turned out to be another struggle on a long list of struggles, they turned those struggles over to the Lord.  When they kissed their prince and he turned into a frog, they leaned on the Lord to uphold them.

They cried out to God because it felt like God was all they had left.

Then, the manifestation of their hoping in God was in their adorning themselves in submission to their mediocre husbands.  If “submission” sounds like a dirty word to you for whatever reason (and there are many reasons the term has become horribly soiled), you may want to read this for a little help in understanding what “submission” means in the Bible.  I’d seriously recommend hitting the pause button on this post and reading that post before reading on.

Sadly, the situation Peter is referencing is one that is both old and familiar, hence God points the “trapped-in-a-marriage-to-a-lugnut” wives to Sarah, the wife of Abraham.  She’s one of the first poster girls for the club; she had married a great guy but he wasn’t always nominated for “husband of the year.”  Just as a tiny refresher, Abraham was a guy who dragged Sarah to a new and foreign country after they had been married and comfortably settled for decades (Gen. 12:1-5), and on the way there denied being Sarah’s husband and allowed her to be taken into a harem (12:10-20).  What would have been her natural reaction to that news?

Hey babe. Good news: Pharaoh gave me livestock and slaves! He’s awesome generous!  Leaving for Canaan tomorrow!  Bad news: You’re staying behind in Pharaoh’s harem…and if anyone asks, you’re my sister. xoxo, Abe.

I cannot even imagine what was going through Sarah’s mind the second time that happened (20:1-18).  That’s right.  Abraham did that twice.  I’m quite confident that Sarah cried out to God for help, since her husband of several decades kinda left her in a sticky situation…and Abraham had a few more shining examples of #HubbyFail that you can find in Genesis.

Yet, she acted in a way that doesn’t make any sense; she submitted to him even when he wasn’t being the man he should have been.  That submission doesn’t make sense…at least outside of a mighty, just, wise and saving God.  Sarah knew enough about God to know that he had placed her in the situation she was in, and she submitted to God.  The practical outworking of her submission to God was in submission to her (occasionally less than stellar) husband.

1 Peter 3:6 says that she even went so far as to call him “master”.  The Greek term here is kurios, which is a very common term in the New Testament.  It’s a word that occurs 748 times in the New Testament and though it can simply mean “master”, it’s often used as the Greek equivalent of the name of God in the Old Testament.  Without getting into what would be a rather unwieldy word study, it’s safe to say that the term designates a person of significant authority.

Sarah placed herself under the authority and leading of her husband, regardless of what he did and how shameful he acted at times.  She didn’t do that because he was a man worthy of following or because she always got tangible and immediate benefit out of it.  At least twice her submission caused her some rather significant heartache.  Still, she did it because her submission to her husband was actually the practical manifestation of her ultimate submission to God…and God mentions her two thousand years later as an example of a gal worth emulating.  That’s a rather weighty endorsement of her behavior and character.

When a woman who is struggling under the weight of being married to a Godly man who has lost the “Godly” part, she still needs to submit to God.  That doesn’t mean that she is a doormat or acts as if abuse is acceptable, but rather that she doesn’t attempt to manipulate or muscle her husband into being righteous.  She leaves the work of the Holy Spirit to the Spirit and fulfills the various roles that God has assigned her as best she can without becoming a thorn in the side of an already thorny fellow.

This brings us to the second titanium truth:

2.  You’re one of Sarah’s daughters.

 1 Peter 3:6b presents this truth when it says “And you are her children.”  Now this is a special blessing reserved for women in this category.  As believers, they have a special connection to Abraham and the promises made to him that are experienced in Christ.  As women who struggle in a difficult marriage and submit to a difficult man, they gain a second special connection: a relationship to Sarah that is over and above their relationship to Abraham.  This isn’t to say that they become Jews, or gain some sort of genetic connection to Sarah, or that they’re spiritually better than other Christians.  This is to say that they are her daughters in the respect that they act like she acted.

Peter doesn’t leave the “how she acted” question open.   Peter knows that women in this situation need practical help and he gives it in two ways. Writing by the Spirit, Peter gives struggling women two conditions for being one of “Sarah’s daughters.”

Peter first condition is found when writes “if you do good.”  This is fairly straightforward and is a general summary of Godly character; doing good is a punchy summary of “think, act and speak in such a way that conforms with the commands and precepts of God as revealed in the Scripture.”  In other words, read the Bible and do what it says; obey its commands, heed its warnings, emulate its positive examples, conform to its precepts. 

Following Jesus’ example in speech and action (i.e. “doing good”).

Peter then delivers the second condition when he writes “and do not fear anything that is frightening.” In any given situation, the opposite of doing good is being fearful.  This isn’t a general “thou shalt not fear” command either, but rather fearing  “anything that is frightening.”  In the situation of trying to win a husbands affections and make themselves beautiful to him, whether he’s a righteous fellow or not, God knows that fear crouches at the door and longs to attack.  Wondering if a husband will “clue in” or remain clueless is something that is actually frightening.

The scenario that Peter writes about is one that is familiar to any women living at any time in any culture: the pagan culture is violently at odds with Christianity on everything, let alone issues related to beauty, marriage, submission, etc.  The culture isn’t even the real enemy either.  The real enemy is the sin in a woman’s heart that unrelentingly tempts her to believe the tsunami of lies fed her from the culture.

“He won’t get it.”

“That won’t work.”

“You know how men are…”

“How can I compete with women like that…”

And so on and so on.  The deception of sin and the world is endless.  The counter-biblical messages a woman receives on these issues is relentless.  The fear of God’s ways being fruitless is ever-present.

But Go says to not fear the things that seem worthy of fear.

The list of things that a woman can fear is gigantic, especially on the issue of winning the heart of a husband (3:1-2) or winning his affection (3:3-5).  God tells every woman, everywhere, to not fear those realistically frightening things.  This is down and dirty spiritual warfare: a battle of two views of reality fighting for supremacy.  The first worldview is the view of the creation, and the second worldview is the view of the creator.

So, trust God and do not fear anything that is frightening.

That wraps up my look at 1 Peter 3:1-6 and brings us through looking at the other big “modesty” text that everyone pulls out.  In the following post, I’m going to wrap everything together.  I’m going to process all the information gleaned from the previous six posts and also provide a little bit of information addressing an obvious question.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “Dear Lord: More Jesus, Less Abraham” Unger

Seeing that I haven’t been home in around a week since I had a huge tradeshow this past weekend, the modesty post that was going to be up is not ready…but I do have something to share that has been in my draft folder for a while.  The following is a handout I use in church when I’m giving a class on basic bible doctrine.

Feel free to utilize this as a general summary for yourself; it’s the culmination of  a whole lot of work.

A General Overview of the Doctrine of Scripture

Revelation

1.      The Necessity of Revelation

a.      Certain things are hidden from all but God

– People can hide themselves from others (1 Sam. 10:21).

– The dreams of a man’s mind that he doesn’t wish to share (Dan. 2:8-11).

– The meaning of the past or the future (Is. 41:22-23, 44:6-8).

– The thoughts and intentions of the heart (Prov. 21:2; Jer. 17:9) since the heart  can be deceived (Deut. 11:16; Ob. 1:3; Jam. 1:26).

b.      Certain things can only be made known by God

– God knows where every hidden thing is, including people (1 Sam. 10:22; Ps. 139:15; Jer. 16:17, 23:24) and everything else (Is. 48:6; Jer. 33:3; Dan. 2:22; Col 2:3; Heb. 4:13).

– The dreams of a man’s mind that he doesn’t wish to share (Dan. 2:26-28).

– The meaning of the past (Gen. 1-10) or future (Rev. 4-22).

– God knows the hearts of men (Gen. 6:5; Jer. 11:20) and Jesus knew people’s thoughts and heart motivations (Matt. 9:4, 12:25; Mark 12:15; Luke 5:22; 9:47).

c.       Sin & Satan have rationally separated men from God

– The carnal mind cannot see reality as it is in relation to God (Rom. 8:5-7; 2 Cor. 2:14).

– Not only that, but Satan actively blinds unregenerate minds to the truths of God (Matt. 23:16-26; John 9:39-41, 12:36b-43; 2 Cor. 4:4; 1 John 2:11).

2.      The reality of Revelation

a.      God himself is hidden and only know by God

– God hides himself (Deut. 31:16-18; Job 13:23-24; Ps. 10:1, 13:1, 44:24, 88:14, 89:46; Is. 45:15; Ez. 39:25-29; Mic. 3:4).

– The full scope of God’s many characteristics are unknowable (Is. 40:9-31).

– The thoughts and plans of God are unknown (Is. 40:13, 55:8-9; 1 Cor. 2:11).

– God the Father has never been seen by anyone (1 Tim. 6:16; John 1:18)

b.      God has made himself known

– “Our knowledge of God’s nature and purposes is limited by his disclosure; not a morsel of information can be confidently asserted about God and his will beyond what he has chosen to reveal.” (Carl Henry, God, Revelation and Authority: Volume II, 47)

i.      In Nature

– In the night sky (Ps. 8:1, 19:1-6; Is. 40:12-14, 40:26)

– In the animals (Ps. 104:24-30; Job 12:7-10)

– In the regularity of nature and joys of life (Acts. 14:15-17)

– In the unregenerate conscience (Rom. 2:14-15)

– In creation in general (Rom. 1:18-21)

– In theological language, God’s revelation of himself in nature is called General Revelation: it’s general in the sense that it’s general in content, not because it’s general in availability.

– Nobody ever learns about the gospel from General Revelation; General Revelation only serves to condemn not redeem.

ii.      In History

– By his acts: the event of the Exodus, signs and wonders, etc. (Ex. 7-17; 1 Ki. 18:20-40; 2 Ki. 1-8; John 5:36; 14:8-11)

– By his angels (Gen 18-19; 2 Ki. 6:17; Ez. 40-48; Dan. 10:12-14; Zech. 1:8-15, 2:1-13, 4:1-6, 5:1-6:8; Matt.1:20, 4:11, 28:2-7; Luke 1:11-20)

– By his own words: God has spoken directly to people in history, but this is very uncommon (Gen. 3:9-19; Ex. 33:11; Deut. 34:10; 1 Kin. 19:13, 15-18; Matt. 3:17, 17:5; John 12:28; Acts 9:4-5)

– By his prophets and apostles: Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Paul, Peter, etc. (1 Sam. 15:10; 1 Ki. 17:1-2; Jer. 30:1; Col. 1:24-26).

– By his Son: The Angel of the Lord/Jesus Christ. (Gen. 16:8-12, 22:11-18; Ex. 3-4; John 1:18, 5:36-40; Gal. 1:11-12; Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:1-2)

– John 1:18 says “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known”

– The term there is exegomai, from which we get the word “exegete”.  The term means “to lead out” and speaks of how Jesus has brought God forth and put him on display in himself.

– By his written oracles: – God has revealed himself in his written word (Ex. 24:1-7; Dan. 9:2; 1 Cor. 2:12-16)

– In theological language, God’s revelation of himself in history is called Special Revelation: it’s special in the sense that it’s specific in content.

The writing of God’s oracles is known as Inscripturation.

Inscripturation

1.      The Meaning of Inscripturation

– “Inscripturation is the work of the Holy Spirit by which he so guided the minds of the human authors and writers that they chose the precise words necessary to accurately reflect the exact truth God intended, all the while reflecting their own personality, writing style, vocabulary, and cultural context thus guaranteeing that this truth is accurately, inerrantly, and infallibly inscripturated.” (Decker, Rodney J., Paraklesis, Spring 2005 – http://ntresources.com/blog/documents/InspirTranslIntrvw.pdf – retrieved May 27, 2014).

a.      Inscripturation is not “writing down prophecies”

– Though there are many prophecies recorded in the scripture, the recording of a prophecy is not identical to the writing of scripture (Ex. 24:3-4 – the speaking and writing were two distinct and separate events).

– On one occasion, God directly wrote scripture with his own hand (Dan 5:5).

b.      Inscripturation is “writing scripture”

– It’s like prophecy, but with the prophetic act being one of writing rather than speaking. In the same sense that spoken prophecy is a prophet’s mouth speaking God’s words, inscripturation is a prophet’s hand writing God’s words:

– In Ex. 34, God says that he’ll write on the tablets (Ex. 34:1) but Moses is actually the one who writes on the tablets (Ex. 34:27-28)…but in Deut. 4:13 & 10:4 Moses claims that God was the one who did the writing.

– So the Scriptures are God’s special revelation to us, uncovered and communicated to us by means of the Holy Spirit.

2.      The Need of Inscripturation

a.      Not all special revelation was recorded

– There are several times where the scriptures refer to prophecies that were not written down (1 Sam. 10:10-11, 19:19-24; John 21:24; Acts 21:9).

b.      Active prophets are rare in history

– The Bible covers a period of history that is roughly 4,000+ years, and there are active prophets on the earth for roughly 10% of that time.

c.       God’s revelation needed to be preserved

– Certain revelations from God needed to be preserved for the purpose of serving as a witness of judgment against those who rejected the word of the Lord (Is. 30:8-11).

– Certain revelations from God also needed to be preserved to instruct believers (Ex. 24:1-7; 1 Cor. 10:11).

– Our only access to all of God’s special revelation in history is through the scriptures.  The scriptures are God’s inscripturated oracles recorded through his prophets.

– “Revelation in the Bible is the unveiling of what was hidden and inaccessible but is now made manifest by God’s initiative and act.” (Carl Henry, God, Revelation and Authority: Volume II, 48)

3.      The Process of Inscripturation

a.      The Lord commanded the writing of scripture.

– The Biblical authors were compelled to write down their revelation because they were commanded by God to do so (Ex. 17:14, 34:27; Is. 30:8; Jer. 30:2, 36:2-3, 36:27-28; Rev. 1:10-11).

b.      The Spirit motivated the writing of scripture.

–  At other times, the Biblical authors were compelled to write down their revelation because they simply wanted to do so (Deut. 31:24; Josh. 24:26; 1 Sam. 10:25; Luke 1:1-4; 1 Cor. 4:14-16; 2 Cor. 13:9-10; Jude 1:3).

c.       The Spirit of God then superintended the writing of scripture.

– 2 Peter 1:16-21 speaks of how prophets were carried along by the Spirit of God, writing exactly what he wanted them to write (see point 2 below).

The process of Inscripturation is known as Inspiration.

Inspiration

1.      The Meaning of Inspiration

a.      General definition – theopneustos – “breathed out by God”.

– “Inspiration is . . . a supernatural influence exerted on the sacred writers by the Spirit of  God, by virtue of which their writings are given divine trustworthiness.” (Warfield, The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, 131)

b.      Inspiration is plenary – all inscripturated revelation is inspired.

i.  2 Tim 3:16-17 is one of the key passages in scripture dealing with Inspiration.  The verb used to describe the relationship between God and the Scripture is theopneustos, and it means “God-breathed”.   That verb is applied to “the scripture” (literally “the writings,” meaning the “written down oracles of God”).  The idea isn’t that God breathed into the words that already existed, but rather that God breathed out the words of Scripture.  The words of the Scripture are from God’s own mouth, even though they’re written.

ii.  Inspiration is a characteristic of the written product.  The inspired words of a prophet are the very words of God from the mouth of God, in the same way and with the same extent, as the inscripturated words of a prophet of God.

c.       Inspiration is verbal- Scripture is equally theopneustos in its parts as well as its whole. 

i. God specifically selected the words with which he communicated the ideas of scripture; the ideas themselves are not unrelated to the words of scripture.  One sees this in how Jesus and the apostles make exegetical points based on fine details of Scripture (Matt. 19:3-9, 21:1-7 [cf. Mark 11:1-6], 22:23-33, 22:41-43; Rom. 4:10-12; Gal. 3:15-18).

2.      The Method of Inspiration

a.      What Inspiration is:

i.  God writing scripture through human authors.  2 Peter 1:20-21 – The Holy Spirit carried along the authors to write exactly what he wanted them to write without overriding their personalities or literary styles.  The term used to describe this is confluence – it’s the concept of when 2 rivers merge together to become 1.  Every water molecule that is in the both rivers 1 mile upstream ends up in the resultant river, and yet there’s a new and different river created by the merging that is exclusively neither 1 of the 2.

b.      What Inspiration is not:

i.  God making a human book better.  People sometimes think of “inspiration” in the sense in which it is used of art; something that “transcends” the typical norms of quality/excellence is referred to as “inspired”.  Inspiration, in the theological sense, is not a quality of “divineness” that can be added to something that is already in existence.

ii.  God planting ideas in the mind of the author and let them work out the words. God regularly gave his prophets people specific words (Num. 22:6, 35-38, 23:5-12, 24:1-13; John 11:51; 1 Cor. 2:13; Acts 2:4-11)

iii.  Only certain parts of the Bible being “from God” (i.e. the moral parts or the parts about “how to get to Heaven”).

– “Jesus consistently treats Old Testament historical narratives as straightforward records of fact.  He refers to Able (Luke 11:510, Noah ( Matt. 24:37-39; Luke 17:26, 27), Abraham (John 8:56), the institution of circumcision (John 7:22; cf. Gen. 17:10-12; Lev. 12:3), Sodom and Gomorrah (Matt. 10:15; 11:23, 24; Luke 10:12), Lot (Luke 17:28-32), Isaac and Jacob (Matt. 8:11; Luke 13:28), manna (John 6:31, 49, 58), the snake in the desert (John 3:14), David eating the consecrated bread (Matt. 12:3, 4; Mark 2:25, 26; Luke 6:3, 4), David as a psalm writer (Matt. 22:43; Mark 12:36; Luke 20:42), Solomon (Matt. 6:29; 12:42; Luke 11:31; 12:27), Elijah (Luke 4:25, 26), Elisha (Luke 4:27), Jonah (Matt. 12:39-41; Luke 11:29, 30, 32), and Zechariah (Luke 11:51).” – (Wenham, John W.  “Christ’s View Of Scripture” in Inerrancy, Norm Geisler ed., 1980, 6).

iv.  God mechanically dictating his words to men.  Even the writers of scripture themselves realized that there were differences and variations between their own individual styles (2 Pet. 3:15-16), even between their own spoken and written communication (2 Cor. 10:9-11).

The outcome of inspiration is inerrancy.

Inerrancy

1.      The Meaning of Inerrancy:

a. Inerrancy is the understanding that the original autographs (the very document that resulted from the pen of a prophet/apostle…and that document alone), is free from all categorical errors.  The International Council on Biblical Inerrancy defines inerrancy as “the quality of being free from all falsehood or mistake and so safeguards the truth that Holy Scripture is entirely true and trustworthy in all its assertions” and goes at length into what inerrancy is and is not.

2.      The Limits of Inerrancy:

b. Inerrancy does not extent to translations of the original Greek and Hebrew autographs (documents produced by the original pen of the prophets/apostles).  Our modern Bibles are free from error only in as much as they are correspondent to the original documents.

3.      The Necessity of Inerrancy:

a. Inerrancy is a logical necessity of the fact of inspiration.

b. If the process of inscripturation was identical to the process of prophecy, then both prophecy and inscripturation resulted in divine revelation by God himself.

c. If God is speaking through a speaking prophet or a writing prophet, those words bear the authority and moral character of God himself…including his perfect truthfulness.

Other Related Components of a Fully Developed Doctrine of Scripture

1.      Infallibility – People often mistakenly conflate Inerrancy and Infallibility but they’re not synonymous: inerrancy is factual and infallibility is hypothetical.  Inerrancy revolves around the theological statement that “scripture, in the original autographs, contains no contradictions or statements of untruth” where as infallibility revolves around the theological idea that “scripture cannot deceive with regards to matters of truth”.  In other words, inerrancy says “scripture contains no errors” and infallibility says “scripture cannot contain errors”.

2.      Sufficiency – Generally speaking, this is the understanding that, in the Bible, God has given mankind sufficient revelation to fulfill the ends for which he has intended scripture; namely, the revelation of himself and his plan of salvation history.

3.      Perspicuity – Perspicuity speaks to the clarity with which the scripture speaks; the Bible is not inherently cryptic or deceitful in its communication of truth.  The Bible is written in common tongue to common folks and needs no special skills or sages to communicate its message.

4.      Efficaciousness – The efficaciousness of scripture speaks of its ability to fulfill its intended end(s).  There is no lack in the Bible that needs to be filled by any external power or authority.

5.      Authority – The authority of the scripture addresses the weight of scripture with regards to the matters that it discusses. The Bible speaks unapologetically to all matters and is the standard of truth by which all other truth claims are judged.

6.      Illumination – The illumination of the scripture is the Holy Spirit wrought understanding of the truths of scripture as they ultimately relate to oneself and God.

How’s that for a sea of information?

Well, if you’re interested in learning and interested in the scripture, that should give you something to chew on, presented in a flow that you may not have considered before.

Hopefully, I’ll have the next modesty post up next week.

Until next time,

Lyndon “fallibly inbloggerating errancy” Unger

Hello readers and welcome to this very brief news update!  What’s the news for my blog?

Well, I’ve been slugging through my series on modesty and soon that will be done (possibly this week, possibly next).  During this last writing stint I’ve realized that tossing out a weekly post is all I can manage right now, with maybe a small extra (like this) once or twice a month.  Once my modesty series wraps up, I’ve got two things coming down the pipe:

1.  I’m teaching my Jr. and Sr. High kids through spiritual warfare right now and will start sharing that material, in a somewhat modified form.  Expect that in a few weeks.

2.  I’ve done an overview of the books of the Bible with my Jr. and Sr. High kids and may toss that up to fill in some space and give a general overview of the entire Bible.

3.  After that, I’ll be taking a stab at the topic of generational curses.  It seems that the idea of generational curses is all over the internet.  It’s being peddled by a ton of people (even some who should really know better) and the refutation I’ve found regarding generational curses is woeful.  The whole concept is straight witchcraft, and the people who try to claim scriptural support for the idea are biblically incompetent and blisteringly foolish.  Hence, I’d like to toss something online that puts that heresy out of it’s misery.

I’m sorry if that language is a little strong, but if you believe or (God forbid) promote the idea of generational curses, you need to pray for God’s mercy.  You’re in serious danger.  The whole concept of generational curses is a direct affront to Christ, the gospel and the foundational principles of a Christian worldview.  Christians don’t (or shouldn’t) believe in “curses,” at least in the magical sense of the term where a person/object/place is hexed (or “demonized” if you’re Christianizing the pagan language).   Christians definitely shouldn’t believe in “generational” curses.

I’m sure I’ve stepped on some toes with that language.

Good.

Evangelicalism has a epidemic of immaculate cuticles.

Stay tuned and have some gauze ready.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “Be glad that the last image wasn’t this” Unger

P.S. – Don’t blame me that your curiosity got the better of you.  Some things can’t be unseen.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve noticed that I’ve been heading in a specific trajectory and there are a whole lot of practical questions that remain outstanding.  Now we’re going to be covering a lot of ground quickly, so let’s quickly review what we’ve covered so far:

In the first post, we introduced the topic and gave a broad look at the categories of women in churches that have concerns about modesty (or a total lack thereof). I mentioned the four categories of woman as those interested in a) biblical modesty, b) historic modesty, c) cultural modesty and d) those interested in being “Christian hotties.”  Another way of thinking of those categories are woman whose main concern is a) the theology, b) the clothes, c) not causing a brother to stumble, and d) not getting blamed for some guy’s lack of self control.  So far, this series has mostly aimed providing answers for ladies in categories a and b.

In the second post, we looked at the biblical terminology by exploring the two main passages in the New Testament where the word “modest” appears: 1 Cor. 12:23 and 1 Tim. 2:9.  I only did that because the verses with the term “modesty” in them are generally the passages that people talk about when the topic comes up.  In 1 Cor. 12:23 we discovered that the idea behind “modesty” isn’t primarily one of appearance, but rather overall demeanour.   In 1 Tim. 2:9 we discovered that the idea behind “modesty” is one of “order.”  The women that God esteems are women who are marked by restraint and dignity; they’re honourable women.  The idea of a woman adorned in “respectable apparel” (“respectable apparel” being “modesty and self-control“) is contrasted with one who is not adorned “with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire.”  Again, 1 Tim. 2:9 aims at character rather than rules about clothes, though people often take the “braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire” to be some concrete rules about “not dressing like a prostitute.”  At the end of that post, I suggested that the idea that “gold and braided hair was the mark of a prostitute in ancient Roman culture” was a myth.

In the third and fourth posts, I attempted to thoroughly debunk that myth.  In the third post we looked at the actual mark of a prostitute in ancient Roman culture; wearing the male Toga (often made out of thin, revealing Coan silk).  In the fourth post we looked at what gold, braided hair indicated in ancient Roman culture; wealth and status.

In the fifth and sixth posts, we took a look at the main remaining biblical text that was untouched: 1 Peter 3:1-6.  That passage also makes mention of avoiding merely external adorning (“the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear“) and rather adorning oneself with “gentle and quiet spirit“.  The whole idea was one of making oneself beautiful (read “desirable”) by means of character rather than clothing, and the situation was one of a wife who was attempting to win the heart of a (possibly rebellious) husband.

Now, I’m going to wrap everything together and process all the information.  Then, I’ll deal with the remaining elephant in the room.

Wrapping and Processing

Okay, probably not the best picture.  I plead “male” and let’s just move on before this gets more awkward.  Here’s some thoughts:

1. The focus of modesty isn’t clothes.  The focus is character.  The whole idea from the various scriptures we looked at was that women who are “modest” are women who think, speak and act in an elegant and regal manner.  That’s why I suggested (in the previous posts) that proper synonyms for “modesty” would be words like “courtly” or “seemly” or “reverence”.

2. Women can be  fully covered up and still be immodest.  In gaining an understanding of Roman hair and fashion, it becomes fairly clear that women’s hair was a main advertisement of her wealth, not sexual promiscuity.  There are plenty of women in evangelical churches who bare no skin and yet utilize their clothing to advertise their wealth in rather overt ways.

3.  The women who wear a few thousand dollars worth of fashion to church but look down on the younger women who show off excessive skin are the immodest ones.

That’s right.

For example, imagine that an older women showed up at church wearing an outfit that included this handbag:

It’s not cheap.

It’s not practical.

It’s not superior quality.

It’s not any “better,” in any quantifiable way, than this…or this…or this! (I’m a fella, forgive me if the comparison bags aren’t a perfect comparison).

It is a whole lot more expensive.

In fact, the sole purpose of having a $4,300 handbag with a highly recognizable logo (for those who know about such things in the first place) is so that certain people will know you have a $4,300 handbag.

That is why it’s immodest to take it to church; it’s sole purpose is to advertise that you’ve spent as much on your handbag as some people have spent on their car.

And on a side-note, a knock off bag would serve the same purpose and be equally immodest. A knockoff bag is meant to make people think you’ve got a real bag…and the fake ones are still ridiculously expensive too.

The same could be said for other “common” items whose sole purpose is the (subtle) advertising of wealth…

If this is a new idea to you, you may need to go back and re-read point 3.

I’m not saying that the young women who show off excessive skin are off the hook; they’re just not being immodest (based on a biblical understanding of “modesty”).  Don’t worry, I’ll deal with the scantily-clad women soon enough.

4.  Modesty is a big ingredient to a healthy and lasting marriage.  This isn’t just because of what was uncovered in the fifth and sixth posts, but also because modesty has a lot to do with sinfully flaunting money.  Money (namely unnecessary and irresponsible spending) is a thorny issue in many marriages.  Many marriages are ones where money is tight and it places a lot of stress on dad when mom regularly gets the message of Cinderella wrong.

5.  Men can be equally immodest too. Guys can (and do) flaunt their wealth in church.  It happens in different ways, but it still happens and shouldn’t happen.

And now for the remaining elephant in the room.

Dressing Inappropriately…or like a Harlot

Throughout this whole series, I still haven’t addressed what most people think of when they think of immodesty; women who show off too much skin and/or dress like prostitutes. None of those questions have been answered!

What about skirt lengths?

What about causing a brother to stumble?

What about deep necklines or plunging back lines?

What about clothes that force attention to the in and out bits?

What about 1 piece vs. 2 piece bathing suits?

What about the crazy clothing that are ironically involved in most marriage ceremonies?

What about this?

What about that?

Yeah.  I hear you…but once again this post is already long and addressing that whole side of things will make this post way too long.  Also, I haven’t written that part yet.

So, I’m going to try to have the final post up in 2 weeks (hopefully), seeing that it’s going to be a bit of a bear to write.

I know, I know.

That’s the down and dirty stuff you’ve been wanting me to get to, week after week.

The last post in this series will deal with that whole side of things, as thoroughly as I can within the restraints of a blog post.  I’ve already alluded to the nature of that post, but I’ll fill in a lot more dots when it’s up.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “I’m starting to get good at this ‘cliffhanger’ stuff!” Unger

Well, it’s that time of year again.

People are flying and driving to Los Angeles for the 2016 Shepherd’s Conference.

There will be hordes of pastors/elders/Bible geeks doing all the things they can never get away with in their own home towns:

• Eating Chic-Fil-A…some woodland creatures more than the rest.

• Wearing dress clothes, on a weekday in 85 degree weather, for no real reason.
• Talking about fountain pens with people who are genuinely interested.
• Praying with strangers in public who aren’t dumping all their problems on you and expecting you to fix things in 10 minutes or less.
• Discussing great books with people who understand why some books are great.
• Laughing about the kind of lobotomy-induced stuff currently being published by Zondervan with people who don’t think you’re laughing at them.
• Telling “I was there” stories about previous Shepherd’s Conference kerfuffles to people who weren’t.
• Enjoying smart folks talk at length about topics that don’t interest anyone else at church.
• Telling stories about church meltdowns/crazy other local pastors/whatever that include the real details, understanding that pastor story telling has the same rules as Fight Club.

Sadly, I’m just guessing as to what happens at a Shepherd’s Conference.

I’ve never been to one, and I won’t be going to the conference this year.  I’ve worked at several, slaving behind the scenes for 16-18 hours a day, but I’ve never gone as an attender.  I probably won’t be going next year either.  Such is the “working for a living, being incredibly broke and never getting time off” life I’m living right now.  But, for all my jet-setting and glamorous pastor/seminarian/celebrity friends who are heading to the city of Angels for chicken sandwiches, endless fruit, bags of books, sun and surf, here’s a little reminder for you.

You’re coming home to regular old evangelicalism.  This is (basically) the state of regular old evangelicalism:

Once you come down from the cocaine-like buzz of spending hours in a great bookstore, spending your life savings on books and taking selfies with the guys who wrote those books (not to mention having to endure the pain of 10+ hours of fantastic preaching and teaching from great and godly men), remember what you’re coming back to.

This kick to the groin has been brought to you by your friendly neighborhood Mennoknight.

I wish I was there, and y’all stink.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “Eat one for me Gene!” Unger

P.S. – If I listed your topic in the “topics that don’t interest anyone else at church,” know that I’m a colossal Bible geek and likely downloaded and listened to your talk multiple times.  It’s just that other people at church didn’t share my giddiness.

P.P.S. – The final modesty post is still a’coming.  One more week.

P.P.S.S. – I’m getting fairly decent at photo editing with MS Paint…okay, not really.

Normally I take articles from this blog and toss them on the Cripplegate, but today I’m doing the opposite.  Yes, that means that my next installment in the modesty series still isn’t finished.  Sorry.  I’m a workin’ man who’s busier than a crazed, caffeine-laden beaver.  So here’s one of my more popular Cripplegate original posts:

I’ve written on a lot of issues and biblical passages on here over the last few years, but the one thing I haven’t tackled was the issue of abortion.  The reason I haven’t tackled it was because I didn’t have the time to explore the topic in the comprehensive manner that I normally lean towards (i.e. like this or this or this).  I still haven’t found the time, and the kind of post I’d like to write requires a lot of research.  I have started my research and wanted to share something that I’ve already learned:

The Abortion Guarantee.

It doesn’t take much reading of Scripture to learn that God has a heart for the widows, orphans, poor and oppressed.  In Scripture, God is abundantly clear in revealing his concern for those groups (Ex. 22:22-27, 23:1-3, 23:6-8, 23:10-11; Lev. 19:15, 23:22, 25:35-43; Deut 14:28-29, 15:7-15, 24:14-22; Ps. 9:9, 10:16-18, 34:4-7; 35:10, 41:1-3, 68:5, 103:6, 146:5-9; Is. 1:16-17, 10:1-4, 58:1-12; Jer. 7:5-7; Ez. 22:23-29; Zech. 7:9-10; Mal. 3:5; Mark 12:38-40; Rom. 15:25-27; Gal. 2:7-10; 1 Tim 5:3-8; James 1:27, 2:15-17, etc.).  The Lord hears their cries, comes to their aid, and is angry at those who mistreat them.

The Lord indeed comes to the aid of the widows, orphans, poor and oppressed, but there is a specific group of people that has a special place on his list of priorities, even above them:

Children.

God gets angry at the oppression and abuse of children.  God gets furious when they are killed.

Consider the following:

1. The nations living in Canaan were expelled from the land because of child sacrifice.

They were expelled for more than child sacrifice, but that’s one of four horrid practices listed in Lev. 18:19-29:

a. Sexual immorality (Lev. 18:19-20)

b. The sacrificing of children (Lev. 18:21)

c. Homosexuality (Lev. 18:22)

d. Bestiality (Lev. 18:23)

The people of Canaan were expelled from their land for those four practices, and Canada and the US already have already legalized and normalized 3/4 of those (and when it comes to legalized infanticide, we’re likely on the way).  Lev. 18:29 also makes it fairly clear that the destruction of the various people-groups in Canaan was due to an underlying universal principle, and I recently discussed this passage in far more detail here.

2. Israel was specifically warned against child sacrifice.

God explicitly warned Israel not to follow the example of the nations that came before them (Deut. 12:29-31), specifically singling out the pinnacle of their moral rebellion as “they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods” (Deut. 12:31).  God restated a similar warning in Deut. 18:9-12, warning Israel to not “follow the abominable practices of those nations” (Deut. 18:9) since “because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you” (Deut. 18:12).

3. Israel didn’t heed the Lord’s warning and suffered for child sacrifice. 

Ps. 106:34-39 records how Israel “sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons” (Ps. 106:37) and as a result, God sent nations to oppress them several times (Ps. 106:40-43).  For example, King Ahaz went beyond the kings who came before him and “made offerings in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom and burned his sons as an offering, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel” (2 Chron. 28:3).

2 Kin. 17:7-8 comments on the situation that led to the captivity of the ten northern tribes.  The passage explains how Israel “walked in the customs of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel” (2 Kin. 17:8-12) and the Lord repeatedly sent prophets and seers to warn Israel to “turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes” (2 Kin. 17:13).  Those warnings not only fell on deaf ears (2 Kin. 17:14), but aggressively rebellious ears.  Israel willfully abandoned God’s commands and built the two golden calves, followed by the idols of Asherah and Baal (2 Kin. 17:16), and finally culminating in the burning of “their sons and their daughters as offerings” (2 Kin. 17:17).  That, combined with their practice of divination, is what provoked the Lord to anger and why he “removed them out of his sight” (2 Kin. 17:17-18).

4.  Judah also didn’t heed the Lord’s warning and suffered for child sacrifice.

Manasseh acted “according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel” (2 Chron. 33:2).  The Chronicler comments on how “he burned his son as an offering and used fortune-telling and omens and dealt with mediums and with necromancers.”  This is what provoked the Lord to anger (2 Chron. 33:6).  Jeremiah spoke out, saying that the sin of Manasseh was responsible for the Lord sending multiple forms of destruction on Judah (Jer. 15:3-5). What’s even more alarming is that the passage opens up with the Lord saying that the coming judgment is assured since “Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my heart would not turn toward this people” (Jer. 15:1).  That same sentiment is expressed by Ezekiel (Ez. 14:12-23).

5.  How bad is the wickedness of child sacrifice?

God calls it unimaginable for him.

In Jer. 7:30-31, 15:3, 19:4-5 and Jer. 32:34-35 God speaks of the sacrifice of children as that “which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind.”

Now it’s not that God was somehow caught off guard by child sacrifice, but rather that God speaks of child sacrifice as “unimaginable” to show how wicked it is.  He makes the point four separate times when he speaks through his prophet Jeremiah.

6.  What is God’s response to child sacrifice?

I mentioned previously how Lev. 18:29 seems to suggest that child sacrifice is a horribly wicked sin; one at the level where any nation that commits it will face the wrath of God.  God warned Israel about the practice of child sacrifice, using the example of the Canaanite nations who came before them, repeatedly.

God is not just talk.

Yahweh Tsabot has some rather vivid words for those who offered their children as sacrifices to idols.  Speaking through Jeremiah, God states that the Valley of Ben Hinnom would be renamed the “Valley of Slaughter” because one day, it will be filled with the bodies of slain Israelites (Jer. 7:32-34 & 19:6-8).  Also, God spoke through Jeremiah that the conquest of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar was a direct result of their idolatry, culminating with their infant sacrifice (Jer. 32:26-35).

God spoke a similar sentiment through Ezekiel in Ez. 16:35-37 and Ez. 23:36-39.  Because Judah and Israel slaughtered their children, the Lord would bring other nations against them to conquer them.

So what is this “abortion guarantee”?

Well, I’d suggest that the numerous passages I’ve pointed to explicitly reveal, and exemplify, a universal principle:

God destroys nations that murder their children

That’s what happened to the various people of Canaan; they were punished unto the point of destruction.  If I had space, I’d make the case that the same thing has happened in a whole lot of other nations (i.e. Rome, for starters).

That’s what happened to Israel and Judah; their punishment lasted for generations; they were rebuilt only because of the promises of God to their forefathers.

Contrary to popular belief, the United States isn’t “the United States of Israel;” they don’t have a special relationship with God as Israel did.  Both Canada and the United States are Gentile nations.

When’s the last time you met a Hivite? How about an Amorite?

Unless God is gracious and grants repentance to Canada and the United States, the same thing that happened to the Hivites and Amorites must happen to Canada and the United States. Only Israel has lasted 3,000+ years.  Canada and the United States are just pushing past 300 (depending on where you mark the start of each) and I seriously wonder if either one will exist as a nation in another century.

I hope my exegetical offerings will help give some biblical weight to the importance of the issue.  Christians may yet be instrumental in God bringing out countries back from the brink of destruction.

Also, I’d like to offer three other short points to remember:

A.  People are people, known by God, before they’re formed in the womb (Jer. 1:5).

B.  An infant in the womb is a separate person to his/her mother (Ps. 22:10, 139:13; Luke 1:15).

C.  NO Christian can murder their children and still be in right standing with God (Ez. 23:38-39).

This post is just a short look at one facet of this issue, so speak up in the comments and share your thoughts!

And don’t worry.

Next Wednesday’s post will be what you’ve all been waiting for…I hope…it’s proven a real bear to write but I hope you can bare the wait.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” Unger

Here’s a new thing I’m doing: Instaposts. Basically like a Twitter entry, but with a tad more than 140 characters.  Now that life is incredibly busy, I’ll do this to share links and other stuff.

Seeing that it’s Saint Patrick’s day today, I’m sure many of you may have questions about Saint Patrick’s day.  I don’t know of many good resources online that give a Christian perspective on Saint Patrick, so I’d like to send my readers to The Story of Saint Patrick over on The Art of the Christian Ninja/Carnivore Theology.  It’s a good summary and explanation of the life and ministry of Saint Patrick, and points to the absolute insanity of how we remember and celebrate a man’s amazing missionary career.

Yup.  Insanity.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “518” Unger

So we’ve made it through seven posts, covering different information about modesty than many were expecting.  Today’s post is a fair bit longer than my normal length, but I’d love to finish up this series.  Here’s the barn-burner finale everyone requested.

In the first post, we introduced the topic and gave a broad look at the categories of women in churches that have concerns about modesty (or a total lack thereof).  In the second post, we looked at the biblical terminology.  In the third post we looked at the mark of a prostitute in ancient Roman culture and in the fourth post we looked at what gold, braided hair indicated in ancient Roman culture.  In the fifth and sixth posts, we took a look at the main remaining biblical text that was untouched: 1 Peter 3:1-6.  In the seventh post (which was called “VI” since the fifth was a two-part post), we summarized the content of the previous posts and looked at how “modesty” relates to expensive handbags.  I closed off the seventh post by pointing out the obvious: I hadn’t yet addressed what would be considered standard “modesty” fare…namely talking about women who dress in clothes that flaunt their culturally-afforded fashion rights.

Many women think modesty talk has to do with utilizing the right to bare arms…or more specifically stopping at the arms.  When it comes to typical “modesty” discussions, the conversation often runs in one of three directions:

a. Guidelines to help someone determine just what a woman is allowed to bare.

b.  Trying to find explicit statements about baring/not baring specific things (knees, thighs, shoulders, etc.) in the Bible that aren’t really there.

c.  Grumbling about how men can’t control themselves, no matter what a girl covers up…so the existence of the issue is really the guys’ fault in the first place.

Seeing that my summary of b reveals my opinion about that rather obviously, and seeing that I’ve already taken a rather thorough look at the directly relevant scriptures in the previous posts, I’m going to leave that one as already dealt with sufficiently.  The Bible doesn’t directly talk about how many inches above/below the knee a skirt should be, or whether or not women can wear pants.  People who claim otherwise are exegetical hacks.  The Bible does give direction on issues of what a woman can or cannot bare, but not specific guidelines regarding styles of clothing or units of measure.

That leaves a and c, so let’s take those on full-steam.

The Falling Neckline and the Rising Skirt

This is going to be simpler than you expect.

Point 1: Nakedness is associated with shame in the scripture:

– In Genesis 2:25, the Bible records that “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed,” which would contrast with the typical situation of “naked and ashamed” in the post-Genesis-3 world.  In Genesis 3:7 & 10, Adam and Eve knew that they were naked and covered themselves up, albeit inadequately.  In Genesis 3:21, God himself clothes them in garments more fitting for them.  After God covers up Adam and Eve’s nakedness in Genesis 3, nakedness is exclusively and consistently something marked by shame in the Bible.

– In Genesis 9:21-23, you turn your eyes away from seeing someone’s nakedness and attempt to cover them.

– In Genesis 9:24-25, the man who exposes someone’s nakedness is cursed.

– In Exodus 20:26, the altar was not to be ascended to via steps lest someone below the priest might see up his garment from below.  In other words, any danger of exposing nakedness was to be avoided.

– In Exodus 28:42-43, the priests were to have undergarments “to cover their naked flesh…lest they bear guilt and die.”

– In Leviticus 18:6-19  the Israelites were warned against publicly uncovering the nakedness of anyone they might possible meet or be related to, male or female (also in Leviticus 20:11-21).

– In 1 Samuel 19:24, public nakedness was seen as a public humiliation (also in Isaiah 20:2-4; Amos 2:16; Rom. 8:35; Rev. 16:15).

– In the whole Bible, disrobing someone was to bring shame and disgrace them (Is. 20:4, 47:3; Ez. 16:37; Hos. 2:3; Mic. 1:11; Nah. 3:5; Acts 19:16; Rev. 17:16).

– In the whole Bible, willfully looking upon someone’s naked body was shameful (Is. 57:8; Ez. 22:10; Hab. 2:15).  It seems like it doesn’t need to be said, but the whole book of Song of Solomon (along with selections from the letters of Paul) points out that the shame isn’t there between a husband and a wife.

– In the whole Bible, it was the mark of an honorable person to attempt to cover the nakedness of the poor or oppressed (Is. 58:7; Ez. 16:7-8, 18:7, 18:16; Matt. 25:36-38, 25:43-44).

– The term for someone who willfully uncovers their naked body is “whore” (Ez. 16:36, 23:11-19, 23:29).  Only a prostitute is brazen and foolish enough to willfully do to themselves what their enemies would attempt to do to shame and disgrace them.

That brings us to the next point.

Point 2:  Women who willfully display their nakedness act shamefully.

Ezekiel 16:1-42 has an extended (and amazingly graphic) metaphor where God talks about Israel’s unfaithfulness to him.  It starts off with Israel being an infant that is born and immediately thrown into a field where Israel perishes (16:1-5).  God then sees Israel, commands her to live, and causes her to grow to sexual maturity (16:6-7).  Then, God covered her nakedness and married her, giving her every possible gift he had to offer (16:8-14), but Israel responded to God’s graciousness in ways that were simply breathtaking (16:15-34).  God makes the explicit contrast between his treatment of her and her treatment of herself when he states:

“Therefore, O prostitute, hear the word of the Lord: ³⁶ Thus says the Lord God, Because your lust was poured out and your nakedness uncovered in your whorings with your lovers, and with all your abominable idols, and because of the blood of your children that you gave to them, ³⁷ therefore, behold…” (16:34-37)

It’s worth pointing out that God states three different horrid sins of Israel in 16:36.  God says that wrath is coming because of:

a. Israel’s lust being poured out and her nakedness being uncovered in her whorings with her lovers.
b. Israel’s lust being poured out and her nakedness being uncovered in her whorings with her idols.
c.  Israel’s presentation of the blood of her children to her idols.

Now one would think that the sexual promiscuity was the more severe problem than the uncovering of nakedness, but it’s interesting that God mentions the lust and the uncovering of Israel’s nakedness as equal and separate sins.   It would seem somewhat unnecessary to point out that someone was sexually promiscuous and naked, right?  I mean, the two are somewhat inseparable, but God still makes explicit mention of it.  The whole metaphor is one of showing of the vast an unthinkable shame of Israel, and her own willful uncovering of herself is part of that unthinkable shame.

Ezekiel 23 has a similar, and even more graphic metaphor of Israel’s unfaithfulness to God.

It’s also worth pointing out that in the third post, I made mention of how in Roman society, prostitutes were recognized by wearing male clothes made of thin silk; silk that would be somewhat translucent and revealing; prostitutes were associated with varying degrees of nakedness (the wealthy ones wore more clothing, but it was still purposely revealing).  The connection of revealing clothing with prostitutes is thousands of years old.  The more a woman uncovers her body, the more she acts in an way that parallels the unmistakably historic uniform of a prostitute.

Point 3:  Don’t bring shame on yourself: avoid any reasonable degree of self-induced nakedness.

Call me crazy, but I’m guessing that a women who wants to please God would want to not act shamefully; they would not want to act like Israel did in Ezekiel 16 or 23.  I’m guessing that they’d want to stay away from that sort of activity…as far as they could.  In other words, flee from the kinds of revealing, sensual or sexually-charged clothing that has become “normal” in contemporary culture.  Also, it’s worth saying that fleeing from any reasonable degree of self-induced nakedness would involve not wearing clothing that purposefully draws the eye to specific areas.

So then let’s get concrete.  What should a woman wear?

Well, I cannot and will not give anyone hard and fast rules for clothing.  You all know that with just a little desire and ingenuity, someone could make anything inappropriate.

Avoid any reasonable degree of self-induced nakedness, and you will answer to God and your conscience for figuring out what that will look like.

Avoid clothing that exposes or draws eyes toward your cleavage.

Avoid clothing that exposes or draws draws eyes toward your buttocks.

Avoid clothing that exposes or draws draws eyes toward your reproductive parts.

Avoid clothing that exposes or draws draws eyes toward your midriff/legs.

Avoid clothing that is tight and form fitting enough that it reveals rather than covers your body.

When in doubt, don’t do it.

What’s reasonable?  Cover up whatever you can without resorting to efforts that are unrealistic (i.e.  involves welding).

The way that all plays out will vary from woman to woman as each woman has a different body (i.e. tall, curvy, etc.).  Some women have challenges because they have more pronounced body parts that are harder to cover, but that’s why I’m trying so hard to avoid concrete rules.  Do whatever you need to do to avoid any degree of self-induced nakedness.

The Unrestrained Boy and the Stumbling Brother

Again, this is going to be simpler than you expect.

Point 1: Teenage boys who are obsessed with sex aren’t your concern:

If you have to stop and wonder “will dressing this way cause a hormonal young man to tempted with thoughts of sexual lust?” the answer is yes. 

Yes it will.

Write it down.

Now not all will, and sometimes not even some will, but it’s always true that someone will.  Speaking as a guy, I have run across a tsunami of adolescent (and sadly adult) males whose thoughts turn sexual at the slightest provocation.  I won’t go into what would be unnecessary and vile discussion, but I’ve learned that many fellows have a hair trigger for that sort of stuff.  You cannot prevent contributing to their lusting except by one things:

a) Avoiding any reasonable degree of self-induced nakedness.

That doesn’t mean that you’re free to dress however you wish, but rather that you stick with the previous three points above and avoid any reasonable degree of self-induced nakedness.  If you’re wanting to not cause a brother to stumble, then talk with some married women who have teenage boys and ask them to help you understand where the bar of expectation should be set…and when in doubt, cover it up. It’s not like there aren’t fashionable contemporary options available for girls who want to dress trendy and yet still be covered up.  Almost every brand of clothes has multiple options, regardless of your personal style.  Let’s be honest: in this digital and global era, everything is “in style” somewhere, and certain classics are always in style.

This is part of the 2016 Dolce and Gabanna line: Jeans, plain white t, cute top (I don’t have a clue what it’s called).  You could copy this look at almost any decent store.

Point 2:  Forget your fears of “causing a brother to stumble”:

In the light of the previous point, I know of girls who essentially take two approaches to the “don’t cause a brother to stumble” problem:

a. They play the “it’s not my problem” card and use that as an excuse for their wounded conscience that convicts them of the fact that they dress in a way that’s self-shaming.

b.  They obsess over trying to guess whether or not something will “cause a brother to stumble”.  They want to wear this or that, but are frequently frustrated when they try to anticipate the reactions of the fellows in their lives.  They try to find some sort of accurate gauge for “what’s modest” but cannot anticipate (with the desired accuracy) the reaction of the opposite sex.

I got some ideas for women in both categories:

a.  For the women in category (a) – Avoid any reasonable degree of self-induced nakedness.

If a guy is looking at you and seeing things that he shouldn’t, it’s because you’re presenting that stuff to the world.  Cover it up and stop the insanity of  confusing sexy with attractive.  Dressing “sexy” means “dressing in a way that stimulates a desire for sex” and that desire is never stimulated in only the guy you want to notice you…hence girls get bad reputations.  Everyone notices when girls dress in ways that bring shame on themselves.

Also, wake up and realize the obvious: the kind of guys you attract by dressing “sexy” aren’t the kind of guys you want.  If you’re trying to attract a god-fearing man who’s got some character, try attracting him with the things that will be attractive to his heart.   Don’t abandon your physical beauty, but don’t make it the only thing you’re offering and present your physical beauty in a way that doesn’t bring shame on you.

b.  For the women in category (b) – Don’t ever participate in any reasonable degree of self-induced nakedness.

I’m going to say it again:

If you have to stop and wonder “will dressing this way cause a hormonal young man to tempted with thoughts of sexual lust?” the answer is yes.

Write it down.

Some of the young men out there have self control and don’t turn into donkeys in heat at the slightest provocation, but to many do.  Most of them have the wherewithal to not show it…much.  Your concern shouldn’t be hypothetical lust, but covering your own nakedness with the Lord and your biblically-informed conscience as your guides, not your own hypothetical suspicions regarding the penchant for young men to think what they shouldn’t.

But wait!  What about Romans 14?  1 Corinthians 10?  What about the weaker brother, or the passages that talk about causing a brother to stumble?

In those passages, what’s being discussed are matters that are “grey” issues; issues where the Bible doesn’t draw clear moral lines and the conscience of a weaker believer is violated because they don’t follow the same moral standards as the stronger believer.  The conscience of a young man is not being violated in this scenario, but rather a young woman is violating her own conscience when it comes to matters of clothing.

The real application of those passages here would be in not judging (as spiritually inferior) a woman who dresses differently than you .  The matter of clothing is in fact a grey issue, but it’s a grey issue between women.  Guys need to avert their eyes from things that tempt them (i.e. Job 31:1; Matt. 5:27-30) and ladies, both young and old, need to avoid any reasonable degree of self-induced nakedness.

But wait again!  What about bathing suits?

Avoid any reasonable degree of self-induced nakedness.  That means “no thorax skin”.  I’m TRYING to avoid making a list of rules!  But yeah.  Wear a t-shirt and a swim skirt over your bathing suit.  Wear a wet suit.  Wear whatever you need to wear to avoid any reasonable degree of self-induced nakedness…Heck, wear under armor or even regular old armor.

But wait AGAIN!  What about context?  Do different contexts have certain allowances?

Avoid any reasonable degree of self-induced nakedness.  That means “at church” and “at the beach” and “when you’re in a wedding party”.  Do whatever is realistic in order to avoid any reasonable degree of self-induced nakedness.  It might involve an uncomfortable conversation, or bystanders may wrongfully assume that you’re ashamed of your body, but don’t violate your conscience for the sake of social convenience.

Do whatever you need to do.

Get a retro 1920’s swimsuit and make a joke of it.

Who cares!

So the bottom line: cover it up.

No, I’m not going to give any more pictures or examples.  I’ve given one, and I’m already nervous about that. I’m sure a few people who have got this far in the post have already analyzed and dissected it.  I’m sure that a few hearts have been tempted to either judge me for my standards or create a list of rules based on that singular image…so I’m now going to give the most cautious direction I can in looking for examples.

If you want some direction, look at the remaining royalty in the world.  Read The Royal Order of Sartorial Splendor or even better: the Royal Hats blog.  Sure, a blog about royal millinery mainly has photos of royals when they go out on formal occasions.  That being said, follow royalty when it comes to looking for general guidelines on how to dress.  I say this because the remaining royalty in the world have no shortage of 2 things:

a.  Money.

They can afford whatever they want and wear nice/expensive clothes.  They don’t just run off to thrift stores and buy whatever is cheap.  They buy whatever they want, regardless of price (generally speaking) and they dress respectably and elegantly…or in a “courtly” manner.  I believe that word has already come up in a previous post!

b.  Personal advisors.

In other words, they never dress shamefully because they represent nations.  Royals define the term “class”, so if you want to dress “classy”, keep abreast of how royals dress.  They’re generally not unfashionable, but they don’t follow typical Hollywood fashion trends.  If you don’t like how they dress, that’s fine.  Copy the principles behind their style and make it your own.

We’re at 2,900 words now, so this post has gone on long enough.  I hope it’s helpful, let me know in the comments!  Also, if you think of questions regarding the 9 million specific scenarios I didn’t address, ask away.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “In fear and trepidation, knowing I probably missed more than I covered” Unger

I always tend to take from this blog and put posts on the Cripplegate.  This post is going backwards; it was written for the Cripplegate and was originally posted here.

Many moons ago, in the comment thread of the first part of the Shack Up (on the Cripplegate), an LDS (or “Mormon”) commenter showed up and we had a little back-and-forth.  In the post, I claimed that no other world religion has writings that claim “to actually be written by God by means of people who were writing on behalf of, and empowered and guided by, the Spirit of God himself.”  The commenter suggested that the book of Mormon did indeed claim to be inspired, as according to the above definition.  I asked for citation, and he gave a series of references that I challenged as insufficient.  Not being swayed, he then proceeded to try to argue for adding to scripture.  Here’s a summary of his argument:

1. The people recorded in the Bible added to the Bible without violating the commands of the Bible.

2.  Men chose which books to include in the Canon of Scripture, but they learned which books were inspired because they prayed about it.

3.  You too can pray about it and discover whether other books (i.e. the Book of Mormon) are also inspired.

4.  Therefore, pray about the book of Mormon so that God can tell you whether or not it’s inspired.

If you’ve had any interaction with LDS folks (i.e. the nicely dressed young ‘elders’ that go out on mission), the you’re likely encountered some form of the first three arguments but you’ve certainly encountered the fourth.  Conversations with missionary ‘elders’ (or regular old 87 octane Mormons) often close in an exhortation to read the book of Mormon and pray that God would convict you regarding the truth of the book of Mormon.  I mean, how much could that hurt?

Seeing that this question comes up from time to time in my life and I’ve never taken the time to actually write out a response to it, I’m going to do that for the benefit of both myself and you!

Responding to points 1-3

Question #1: Did the early church decide on which books of the bible were divine revelation by prayer (and can you copy their example)?

Now as for the nature of the Canon and adding to Scripture, our own Nathan Busenitz has already laid some heavy artillery against that issue here.  I agree with Nathan, but I’m going to address the issue from a slightly different angle.

The books that compose the Canon of Scripture (“Canon” loosely meaning “collection of inspired books”) weren’t ultimately regarded as canonical (“canonical” here meaning “inspired” or “part of the Canon”) due to any external criteria (authorship, popularity, doctrinal purity, the choice of any council).  The writings of the apostles and prophets were included in the Canon of Scripture because they were inspired writings, not because they were written by prophets or apostles.

Now it is true that apostles and prophets wrote canonical Scripture (as Christ affirmed they did and promised they would – John 14:25-26, 16:12-15), but apostolic/prophetic authorship was only one of the external criteria for evaluating the possibility of including a book in the Canon of Scripture (others being things like doctrinal accuracy, universal acceptance, prophetic accuracy, etc.  It’s worth remembering that 1 Corinthians wasn’t Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth – 1 Cor. 5:9.  It was his first canonical letter.).

There is one over-riding internal criteria required for a prophetically-authored book to be included in the Canon of Scripture; inspiration. This is also known as the “self-authenticating nature of scripture” or the “internal testimony of the Holy Spirit” to Scripture.  The canon of Scripture (“canon” here meaning “the measure by which books were included in the Canon of Scripture” – note the slight difference in my usage of “Canon” and “canon”) was inspiration. That’s not something that could possibly be determined by men; there’s no concrete external measure of inspiration.

Inspiration is not determined by men, but only recognized by them.  Noted expert in the Canon, Michael J. Kruger, writes about this and says,

It’s one thing to believe the Scriptures are inspired, but it is another thing to know which books are Scripture. God does not leave us in the dark on this critical issue, but has given us the testimonium spiritus sancti internum, the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. This “testimony” is not some private revelation given to believers, but an act of the Spirit by which He opens the eyes of sinful people to apprehend the divine qualities of Scripture.

Michael J. Kruger, “No Holy Spirit, No Scripture” n.p. [cited 29 January 2014].
Online: http://michaeljkruger.com/no-holy-spirit-no-scripture/.

Kruger also writes,

How do we know which books are from God, and which are not?  There are many answers to that question, some of which we have covered in prior posts. Certainly the apostolic origins of a book can help identify it as being from God (see post here). And, the church’s overall consensus on a book can be part of how we identity it as being from God (see post here).

“But, it is interesting to note that the early church fathers, while agreeing that apostolicity and church-reception are fundamentally important, also appealed to another factor that is often overlooked in modern studies. They appealed to the internal qualities of these books.

“In other words, they argued that these books bore certain attributes that distinguished them as being from God. They argued that they could hear the voice of their Lord in these particular books. In modern theological language, they believed that canonical books are self-authenticating.

Michael J. Kruger, “Ten Basic Facts about the NT Canon that Every Christian Should Memorize: #10: ‘Early Christians Believed that Canonical Books were Self-Authenticating.” n.p. [cited 29 January 2014]. Online: http://michaeljkruger.com/ten-basic-facts-about-the-nt-that-every-christian-should-memorize-early-christians-believed-that-canonical-books-were-self-authenticating/.

Quoting Ellen Flesseman-van Leer, well known theologian F.F. Bruce writes,

“apostolicity was the principal token of canonicity for the west, inspiration for the east’ – not indeed in the mutually exclusive sense, since ‘in the west apostolicity to a certain extent includes inspiration, whjile in the east apostolicity was an attendant feature of inspiration’. In Origen’s view, for example, “the crucial point…is not apostolicity but inspiration”

(Bruce, The Canon of Scripture, 263-264).

Quoting Ned B. Stonehouse, F.F. Bruce also writes,

If the writings of Mark and Luke are to be judged canonical…it must be because these evangelists were controlled by the Spirit of the Lord in such a manner that their writings, and not merely the apostolic message which they set forth, are divine. In other words, it is Mark’s inspiration (which, to be sure, is not to be isolated from his historical qualifications), and not Peter’s inspiration, which provides the finally indispensable ground for the acceptance of that work as canonical.

(Ibid, 266).

Question #2. Can I discover if other books are divine revelation by praying about them?

Given what was previously said about the “internal testimony of the Holy Spirit,” someone might want to suggest that I haven’t really helped at all.  I seem to have just authenticated the idea of asking for the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit regarding other writings that claim to be divine revelation (though I still stick with my point that no other writings actually claim that directly about themselves…). But here is where the external criteria do come into play.

LDS people submit the writings of Joseph Smith are suggested candidates for “evaluation by prayer”, but this evaluation falls apart a rather monumental reason:

Joseph Smith’s writings aren’t possible submissions to the Canon of scripture since he was a false prophet/teacher:

He was a demonstrable false prophet on multiple counts.

Those, along with his numerous false doctrines he peddled as well as his gross sexual immorality/adultery (and pedophilia), more than disqualify him from the list of “possible prophets.”

Joseph Smith’s life and teaching are like a living commentary on passages like 2 Pet. 2:10-22, 2 Tim. 3:1-9, etc.

In other words, Joseph Smith’s writing don’t come anywhere close to passing the demands of the external criteria for canonicity.  When coming up against the criteria of doctrinal purity and apostolic/prophetic authorship, Joseph Smith’s writings are less likely to qualify for inclusion in the canon of scripture than the manual for my car’s infotainment system.

Not only that, but passages like Jer. 23:16-17, 27:9-10, 14-17; Rom. 16:17-19; 1 Tim. 4:7; and 2 Tim. 2:16-18 suggest that instead of praying about false prophecies, you should ignore them.  If I prayed for the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit regarding the books of Joseph Smith, I’d be asking the Holy Spirit to contradict his own written revelation about false prophets and bless my disobedience.  That’s a prayer God will always answer, but the only answer you’ll ever get is “NO!”

So next time you’re discussing gospel issues with an LDS person and they ask you to “pray” about the book of Mormon, you can calmly tell them “well, that doesn’t seem wise.  God has already told me not to!”

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “Hope this helps” Unger

It’s been just over two years since the movie God’s Not Dead came out.  When it came out on DVD, I saw it and wrote a review.  I wasn’t a fan because God’s Not Dead wasn’t a movie about Christianity; it was a movie about cultural Christianity.  It was a movie about the sort of shallow religiosity that I was taught when I was a teenager.

It was a movie where “theism” is the same as “Christianity”.

It was a movie where people become Christians without repenting of their sin or even mentioning Jesus at all.

It was a movie where the best part of the Christian life was attending a Christian Rock concert.

It was a movie where a freshman took on a PhD philosophy professor/atheist with a few pithy quotes and a couple of hours spent in a library.

It’s no shock that I really disliked the first movie; it showed the state of evangelicalism and pretty much explained why “I went to Heaven” books are always on the best seller list.

So, was God’s Not Dead 2 any better?

Amazingly, yes.

Not by much, mind you, but it was better…and I went in expecting to hate it.

I admit, I was somewhat surprised.

So here’s a summary:

THE CHARACTERS:

New characters:

The Teacher.

The Student.

The Mom.

The Dad.

The Principal.

The ACLU Prosecuting Attorney.

The Defending Attorney.

Returning characters:

The Pastor.

The Blogger

The Chinese Exchange Student.

The Pastor’s Friend

There’s also cameo’s galore from Lee Strobel, J. Warner Wallace, Mike Huckabee, Gary Habermas, Rice Brooks, Fred Thompson (RIP), Newsboys, Pat Boone, Sadie Robertson (daughter of one of the Duck Dynasty guys), some familiar faces from soap operas and even one of the original Ghostbusters.

THE MAIN PLOT:

The Student is in class one day and asks the Teacher if Ghandi and Martin Luther King were pacifists like Jesus was.  The Teacher says “yes” and quotes Matt. 5:43-45.  The Student’s parents somehow hear about it when a random boy sends them a text message…or something (the movie doesn’t really explain how they found out).  So when The Dad and The Mom hear about The Teacher making a passing reference about you-know-who from Nazareth, they go nuts and contact the school, which is run by The Principal.

It seems that The Student’s parents are angry atheists who pride themselves on their tolerance and threaten lawsuits against anyone who makes any statement of which they’re intolerant.  That includes The Teacher of their daughter (The Student).  The daughter is going to go to an ivy league school and no teacher will get in the way, especially by making passing references to Jesus even though The Teacher likes their daughter (The Student) and is likely giving her an A+.

This whole mess leads to the ACLU getting involved.  The ACLU takes legal action against The Teacher for her spouting of religious rhetoric.  They send in a horribly evil, God-hating atheist prosecuting attorney.  He’s just the bloodthirsty legal assassin the ACLU needs to make sure The Teacher pays for her sins!

But there’s hope for The Teacher!  The Defense Attorney is a hot shot lawyer who is also an atheist, but not the angry or irrational kind.  He respects The Teacher and wants to make a name for himself with a highly publicized court case.  If anyone can stop the ACLU’s legal team, it’s an upstart rookie with next to no experience!

As one would expect, it ends up looking bad for The Teacher when things don’t turn her way, but after a bunch apologists take the stand and testify about how Christianity is reasonable, teenage kids sing “How Great Thou Art” and one of the Newsboys stops a concert to pray for the court case, the defense WINS!  The atheist lawyer throws in the towel and accepts defeat, especially after his own legal assistant points out that the defense proved the existence of Jesus!

Hooray!

THE SUB PLOTS:

The Student has her own sub-plot.  Her brother died recently and she struggles to deal with the pain of the loss, but she “asks Jesus into her heart” for no discernible reason and then life gets better…until she screws up the court case royally.  Still, it’s a Christian movie and ends with everything all hunky dory.

The Pastor has a bunch of bad stuff happen to him.  He has coffee spilled on him and spills his own coffee.  He spends a half day answering the bible questions of The Chinese exchange student.  He, and all the other pastors in their town, have their sermons subpoenaed for some reason, which is never explained (they don’t mention why anyone wants their sermons).  The pastor willfully refuses to give his sermon transcripts to the authorities.   He also ends up with him on jury duty until his appendix bursts and then he watches the trial results from his hospital. It’s assumed that he has ice cream at some point, but that isn’t shown or even hinted at in the movie (I just made that part up).

The Chinese exchange student asks the pastor a bunch of Bible questions, gets slapped, and decides to become a pastor (if he’s open to going to Singapore, I hear that Harvest City Church has some openings).

The Blogger has a crisis of faith after her cancer goes away and she realizes that she might not believe in God now that she’s healed and has no need for him.  So, she does what all bloggers who have recovered from a life-threatening illness do: calls Michael Tait from the Newsboys!  He gives her encouragement and she then blogs about the whole court case with The Teacher and the ACLU, but things start to look bad when the court case takes a turn for the worst.  So, she calls Michael Tait again during a concert and he takes the call, stops the concert, and then gets the audience to prayer for The Teacher’s court case.  As the bible says: “The prayers of a Newsboy are powerful and effective”.

If you don’t get the joke, watch this for about 4 seconds. This joke is mostly for my wife.

WHAT I LIKED:

I’ll admit that after the first one, I went in expecting to hate this movie.  I wasn’t a colossal fan, but I didn’t hate it.

I think it was better than the first one as far as production values went, but I’m not really a reliable critic with any worthwhile opinion on those sorts of technical things.

At least this movie mentioned “Jesus” and had a way better grade of apologetic presentation.  The sections in the courthouse where Lee Strobel and J. Warner Wallace were speaking was interesting enough that it might actually lead to some people investigating their work more.  That’s always welcome and their stuff is a decent enough entry-level defense of the Christian faith.  I’ve reviewed Cold Case Christianity on Amazon and it’s a book a gladly recommend.

The movie was also based on real court cases that have recently either gone through the courts or were on trial at the time of production.  In as much as the plot seemed far-fetched, I know that sort of stuff actually happens.  It definitely doesn’t play out like the movies (I don’t think Lee Strobel and J. Warner Wallace ever show up in court as Christian “experts”), but it’s not nearly as far fetched as the first movie.

Finally, when The Student has a crisis moment and asks Jesus into her heart, she mentions God forgiving her for her sin.  I don’t know why she would have said that since she isn’t told about her sin by the person who’s sharing the gospel with her, but in this movie there’s at least a passing mention of sin when someone “prays the prayer”.  That’s a step up from the first movie as well.

WHAT I DISLIKED:

The Christianity in the movie looks a lot like what I recognize as Christianity, but it’s not. God’s Not Dead 2 is another movie where the Christianity it portrays is simply cultural Christianity.  It’s another movie about the sort of shallow religiosity that I was taught when I was a teenager.  It’s another a movie where “theism” is the same as “Christianity”.

It’s another movie where people who share the gospel don’t really understand what the gospel message is, but deliver some sort of talk about God and Jesus and stuff and then people pray a prayer about Jesus “coming into their heart” and their lives get better (which seems to be the motivation behind the prayer).

It’s another movie that shows just how much influence the Charismatic movement has had over Evangelicalism.  Half the characters in the movie get direct propositional messages from God.  One of the characters in the movie got “saved” because she saw a church sign and God spoke to her through it and asked her “who do you say that I am?”  Nobody in the movie takes the Bible seriously or has any below-the-surface knowledge of it. They just pull out random feel-good verses and then do a subtle form of positive confession where they say them out loud and then tell God that they’re trusting him to do whatever it is that they want.

All of that is just a reflection of the sad state of Christian culture, but I’m not surprised.  The last few people who started coming to my church were verbally shocked that my pastor preaches from the Bible in church.  They had apparently gone to other churches in the area and had trouble finding a church with a pastor who preached from the Bible (as in opened it, read it and tried to explain it).  That fact says bad things about the state of evangelicalism in my neck of the woods.

Still, there were two theological problems in the movie that I’d like to point out:

The first problem was that when The Teacher and The Defending Attorney were thinking about her offensive reference to Jesus, they had a landmark moment where they realized their winning strategy.  They realized that she was referencing Jesus as a historical figure, not the Jesus of the Bible (even though she was quoting the Bible at the time).  They went off about how one can talk about Christ as a pure historic figure, separate from the biblical accounts of him, and divorce that Jesus from the guy who’s in the Bible.  Therefore, she was making a historical reference rather than a religious proclamation.

That, my readers, is exactly what the Liberals have been doing for over a century.  That’s what is called “historical Jesus studies”, and whoever injected that into the movie needs to be graciously invited to take a long walk off a short pier.  I was really disturbed to see that sort of talk, but not really surprised.  I’m guessing that nobody associated with the movie either had the theological chops to spot that problem, or thought it was a problem in the first place.  Still, the separation of the Jesus of History and the Jesus of Scripture always ends in the same outcome.

That brings me to the second problem: the “minimal facts” approach to defending Christ’s resurrection.  There was a scene where Rice Brooks and Gary Habermas are being interviewed by governor Mike Huckabee, and they talked about how almost all the experts agree about the facts surrounding Jesus’ resurrection…therefore the resurrection itself is some sort of inescapable reality for honest skeptics.

What the movie didn’t tell you is that Habermas’ approach presents the resurrection as the most likely hypothesis explaining 12 historic facts.

What are those facts?

1. Jesus died by crucifixion.
2. He was buried.
3. His death caused the disciples to despair and lose hope.
4. The tomb was empty (the most contested).
5. The disciples had experiences which they believed were literal appearances of the risen Jesus (the most important proof).
6. The disciples were transformed from doubters to bold proclaimers.
7. The resurrection was the central message.
8. They preached the message of Jesus’ resurrection in Jerusalem.
9. The Church was born and grew.
10. Orthodox Jews who believed in Christ made Sunday their primary day of worship.
11. James was converted to the faith when he saw the resurrected Jesus (James was a family skeptic).
12. Paul was converted to the faith (Paul was an outsider skeptic).

Those are all the facts that are agreed upon by the “experts”.

Let me rephrase that: From all four gospels, which contain 89 chapters of historical record regarding the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth, experts can only agree on those 12 facts about Jesus’ resurrection.  That’s it.

So, you know what you’ve got?

Notice something else: if you believe those 12 facts and believe that Jesus rose from the dead, you still don’t have anything close to Christianity.  You don’t have Christ’s deity, or his prophecies about his own death, or God doing the resurrecting, or anything Jesus said or did whatsoever.  You only have an ancient Jewish teacher rising from the dead, for a mysterious reason, and a bunch of guys starting a religion about it.

That’s not going to ever get you to any form of Biblical Christianity.  That’s one of the reasons why I only defend Christianity as Christianity.  There are no “baby steps” to Biblical Christianity and belief is a work of divine grace, in response to the Spirit-empowered word of God penetrating the heart.  I don’t pretend the Bible is semi-rational to the disbelieving mind; it’s not.  The Bible says that the gospel is foolishness to the disbelieving (1 Cor. 2:14) and I believe the Bible.

Also, Habermas’ whole project is horribly flawed.  What Habermas doesn’t tell you is that an overwhelming majority of the “experts” don’t agree with his conclusions at all, and the “minimal facts” approach only has a hypothetical chance as long as there’s scholarly consensus regarding the list of “minimal facts”.  The scholarly consensus changes regularly, and I’ve heard lists of “minimal facts” that contain anywhere from 12 facts to 7.  Once scholars get wind of what Habermas doing (as if they even care), they can shut down his whole process by changing the consensus.

Believe it or not, the resurrection of Jesus would be true even if all the religious studies professors at every university disagreed regarding any list of minimal and innocuous facts about it.

CONCLUSION:

Should you see God’s Not Dead?

Sure.  Watch it with your kids.

Why not?

It’s not that bad, and the mediocre messages it gives you are coming at you from far more that “Christian”movies.  Besides, it’s definitely way better than most of the other schlock that Hollywood is pushing out.  There’s a bunch of good messages you can take from it:

It shows that prayer works.

It  shows people quoting the Bible when they have struggles.

It  shows that Christians can intelligently stand up for what they believe in.

It shows that God’s highly involved in the lives of everyone he touches.

It shows that Christians being thoughtful and supportive of one another in difficulties.

It shows Christians standing up for their faith in the face of violent opposition.

Take those messages from it, and talk about those messages with whomever you watch the movie with.

Be alert to the theological junk getting smuggled in the back door, but by all means enjoy the movie and misinterpret it in your favor.  Fill in the blanks with good theology and make it better than it is.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “Trying to be positive” Unger

Boy oh boy.

I am asked about stuff all the time and don’t have time to do the amount of research or study necessary to give to properly deal with some of the stuff that comes across my plate, but I wanted to toss something online on an upcoming church that appears to be very dangerous.  One of the fastest growing churches in North America is the Church of the Highlands in Birmingham, Alabama.

It’s not necessarily in the limelight yet, but Church of the Highlands is a 15 year old church that has grown to be a multi-site church of 14 locations with over 32,000 people.  In fact, it’s grown so fast that it wasn’t even on the Outreach top 50 back in 2013 when I went through the top 50 churches on there.

They’ve been doing the growth thing with bells on, and they’re a good example of tight packaging and excellence in presentation.  There’s a whole lot of design, architecture and presentation genius in Highlands that many churches could benefit from.  Their buildings look great and their presentation is amazing…but beautiful architecture, great media, slickly-produced programs and fantastic music don’t make a good church. But what about Highlands as a church?  What about their doctrine and practice?

Judging from their web presence, they’re incredibly polished and understand the importance of being subtle about much of their doctrine and practice.  Still, on a surface look at their web presence, alarm bells should be going off.  They’re overseen by a council of apostles that includes none other than noted prosperity preacher Robert  Morris.  That should set off a few alarm bells, as should their statement of purpose (namely due to the two rather interesting verses that they derive their purpose from: Matt. 22:36-40 and Mark 16:15-17…?!?).  The run a Bible College that offers more training options in church lighting than bible.  Their entire corpus of bible-related classes is six, including overview, hermeneutics, theology, historical theology and preaching.  That doesn’t exactly say good things about the theological educationthey offer in their Bible College.

Go look at their academic catalogue for yourself.

Their doctrinal statement isn’t that subtle; they’re not very articulate about spiritual gifts but they openly state that physical healing “is given as a sign, which is to follow believers.”  That’s a seriously concerning statement, but that’s not the only one.  They also teach that “it is the Father’s will for believers to become whole, healthy and successful in all areas of life,” and they specifically label financial prosperity as God’s will for believers.  For an understanding of Word of Faith teaching and the prosperity gospel, read this.

Now their doctrinal statement is admittedly a little cryptic and I’d bet dollars to donuts that they’ve made it cryptic on purpose, but Chris Hodges is far less cryptic from the pulpit.  If you watch the message here, start at 9:13 and you’ll hear Chris Hodges speak about 2 Cor. 8:9 & 9:11 and say:

“Why does God want me rich? Why does he want me in that condition? And the next chapter actually says it.  God wants to make you not only rich monetarily, he wants to make you rich in every way. So make you rich in your marriage, make you rich in your emotions, make you rich in a lot of ways, in your gifts, your ideas…why?  So that you can be generous with it.”

And then, knowing what it sounds like he just said, he immediately confronts the accusation that he teaches “prosperity theology” and denies it by saying…well, I don’t want to spoil the surprise.  Let’s just say that his explanation is unconvincing.

Beyond that, Hodges has some very interesting history.  The notorious Ted Haggard was Hodges’ youth pastor back in Louisiana, and Hodges later worked for Haggard in Colorado for seven years (Hodges copied Haggard’s “hire a kid in your youth group to youth pastor for you” pattern with Layne Schranz; current youth pastor at Highlands and ex-student of Hodges).  Haggard considers Hodges one of the faithful friends who supported him all through his insane scandal back in 2007.  It’s interesting that Hodges only talks about his ministry career as if it started in 2001, subtly distancing himself from his ties with Haggard.  He never openly connects himself with Ted Haggard (who he worked with from 1987-1994) for obvious reasons, and Hodges also doesn’t openly mention the Bethany World Prayer Center (the wingnut church in Baton Rouge, LA where he worked from 1994-2001, after he left Colorado).

So is Chris Hodges a false teacher?

I will say the following:

– He’s definitely exegetically wrong about what the bible says about God’s will for our finances.  Wrong as in “damnably wrong”.  The prosperity gospel is a counterfeit Gospel that cannot save.  He teaches a sophisticated prosperity gospel, and he tries to escape the accusations of “heretic” on technicalities, but he doesn’t come anywhere close.  In the sermon I linked, he actually states that “God needs you to have more than you need.”  If you’re not rich, people will go to hell because the great commission enterprise won’t have rich Christians funding it.

That’s right.  Your lack of accessing the wealth that Christ has made available for you will result in the damnation of lost people.

Let that simmer for a second.

– He’s definitely one of the new-wave of charismatic life coaches who pretend that they’re pastors.  They’re not, but they don’t have much a biblical understanding of anything, let alone the nature, requisite character and duties of a “pastor”.  This breed of Osteen knockoffs are so utterly unqualified for ministry that it would be funny if it wasn’t real.

– He mentored under an unregenerate pseudo-pastor who was a homosexual meth-head…which breeds a lot of rather serious questions.  Not questions about his sexuality or anything, but rather what sort of theological sewage he was being fed during his formative years.  Being mentored by Ted Haggard doesn’t automatically make him a heretic but teaching heresy does.  Also, if he learned proper biblical theology and practice, the question becomes where and when he would have picked that up…and why he neither teaches said “good theology” and doesn’t act in accord with it.

At the end of the day, he may not be a false teacher but he sure does a convincing impression of one.  Besides that, You don’t get points for confidently figuring out if a person is a false teacher or discerning with certainty if they’re unbelievers.  God alone can speak definitively on whether a man is spiritually dead or just theologically brain dead.  What you need to do is obey Christ’s commands on how to respond to someone who teaches falsehood in his name.  A guy like Chris Hodges needs to be ignored (Rom. 16:17-18; gal. 1:8-9; 2 John 10-11).  Failure to do so will almost certainly end in upheaval and trouble for you (1 Tim. 1:18-19; Tit. 1:10-11).

Listening to Chris Hodges or attending Church of the Highlands will almost certainly be a spiritual fatal decision.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “Consider yourself warned” Unger

There are a bunch of passages in scripture that I used to ignore, mostly because I didn’t know what to do with them.  I’m guessing that you’re possibly like me; you know that certain passages are there but you’ve never really tackled them satisfactorily.  In a discussion I had with a noted prosperity preacher (who shall remain anonymous), one specific passage came up and I got thinking about how he twisted it.  He seemed to be making a fairly simple observation, but it was a text that I knew I had never sorted through and now I was forced to deal with it.

The text was Matthew 17:20.

What does a person do with Jesus teaching on faith in Matthew 17:20?

“…if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”

It seems to be suggesting something rather extreme.

Do you have faith?

Are you sure?

Can you move mountains, even metaphorically?

Is nothing be impossible for you? (and how is the statement “nothing will be impossible for you” a metaphor? For what?)

I mean, that’s pretty universal language, and “nothing will be impossible for you” is a promise, given without caveat (excluding the obviously impossible ones; like “becoming the fourth member of the Godhead”). The language in Matthew 17:20 is broad and incredibly far-reaching, and the previous verses are about casting out demons.

Many people do take Matthew 17:20 as a promise, and they take it at face value.   The prosperity preacher certainly did, though he admittedly hadn’t ever done any earth moving.  But, prosperity preachers ask (well, demand) God for money and they think that when God gives it, he’s keeping his promises.  Now the folks who do that are horribly wrong, but if we’re being honest, there seems to be a certain understandable logic there, right?

What makes this more difficult is that this promise is repeated in the life of Jesus in Matthew 21:18-21:

“In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once.

When the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, “How did the fig tree wither at once?” And Jesus answered them, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen. And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”

Now the situation with the fig tree is illustrative, sure (having to do with the rejection of Christ by the Pharisees…though the disciples didn’t “get it” at the time)…

…but look at Christ’s answer to their question of “how did you do that?”

Jesus doesn’t mix metaphors, and he doesn’t hold back.

He says, with certainty, that the reason the disciples couldn’t do what he did was because of their doubt. He also promises them, in no uncertain terms, that if they cease their doubting and “have faith”, they will be able to do what he did and far more. In fact, he promises them that they’ll receive whatever they ask for in prayer, on the sole condition of having faith.

Again, this leads to obvious questions.

Do you experience this in your life?

Does anyone get “whatever you ask in prayer?”

Is the sole reason you don’t get whatever you ask for because you doubt God’s promises or ability to provide it?

Sure sounds like Jesus might be saying that, right?

Now, there are three typical responses to these types of passages:

1.  You take the passage in a woodenly literal way and boldly claim the promises you find therein (but then always turn the “mountain” into a metaphor).

2. You cautiously think the passage is somehow metaphorical…but you’re not exactly sure what it’s a metaphor for.

3.  You ignore the “clear meaning” of the passage, try not to think about it and move on.

Those are all possible options, but I’d love to offer a fourth.

How about we try to figure out what the passage means?

Let’s make a few observations and try to narrow down our interpretive options:

A. The promise was made to the apostles and they experienced the reality of it.

The healed everyone who was brought to them (Acts 5:16, 8:17).  They prayed that people would receive the promised Holy Spirit and that happened (Acts 8:15-18).  They prayed that people would return from the dead and they did (Acts 9:40).   The apostles saw the spread of Christianity go throughout the entire Roman empire in their lifetimes, with churches springing up all over.  They had faith that Jesus would build his church (like he said he would) in the face of impossible odds, and Jesus did.

It’s also worth pointing out that the apostles didn’t pray for mountains to move into the see; they generally didn’t pray for “stuff” like we do.  If you go through the New Testament, you see the apostles praying with far different priorities than most contemporary Christians.  They prayer for things like understanding the truths of the gospel, growth in godliness, growth in perseverance under suffering, etc. (Rom. 1:8-12, 15:30-32; Eph. 1:15-21, 3:14-21; Phil. 1:9-11; Col. 1:9-12).  That is what they asked Jesus for, not some form of epic but meaningless landscaping.

B.  The Apostle Paul clearly understood Jesus’ words as a figure of speech.

The concept is brought up again in 1 Corinthians 13:2 and in that passage Paul clearly understands it as a figure of speech.  That seems fairly obvious since Paul never claimed to have any of the other blessings listed in 1 Cor 13:1-3 (i.e. he never claimed to “understand all mysteries and all knowledge” and he clearly hadn’t become a martyr already).  Paul knew that Jesus had made a promise to give the apostles whatever they needed, but Jesus gave them something else too: a proper perception of their needs.

C.  If Matthew 17:20 “means what it says,” in a woodenly literal way, then nobody has ever had any faith.

I mean, let’s be serious.  Jesus didn’t say that it takes a huge amount of faith to move mountains.  The requirement isn’t even a normal amount of faith.  Jesus said “if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed…”  That’s a tiny amount of faith.  The mustard seed was the tiniest commonly used seed in ancient Israel, so the illustration was obvious: with even the smallest portion of faith you can move mountains.

By that measure, you don’t have a shred of faith and neither does anyone else.

Understood properly, Jesus is definitely teaching his apostles that they have accesses to immeasurable power in their prayers, but prosperity preachers who think that power can be used to cultivate their finances pray like pagans.  Pray according to the priorities of God as revealed in Scripture, and expect results; God will always glorify himself when you ask him too.

I hope this helps people who have wondered about this somewhat cryptic passage of scripture.  When in doubt, read slow, think carefully and let the Bible help you isolate the probable options for understanding a difficult passage.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “let us pray!” Unger

If you’ve heard of the New Apostolic Reformation, you’ve heard of many strange ideas.  One of those may be the “Seven Mountains Mandate.”  What is that exactly?  Well, the Seven Mountains Mandate is an idea that originates in a vision that Loren Cunningham (founder of YWAM) and Bill Bright (founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, or Cru, and author of The Four Spiritual Laws) both had in 1975 (read about it here and here and here and here). The idea was that there are seven spheres (circles of cultural influence) that were the key to world evangelism; if a person could “reclaim” each sphere, they would establish Christianity across the globe and finish the great commission (and as a side benefit, usher in the second coming). Cunningham was told (by God, no less), that he had to infiltrate each sphere to successfully evangelize the world.

What were those seven spheres?

The spheres were:

1) Family.

2) Church.

3) Education.

4) Media.

5) Celebration (i.e. whatever culture celebrates – entertainment, sports, etc).

6) Economy.

7) Government.

Cunningham claims he got the term “sphere” from 2 Cor. 10:13-16, but the rest of it was from God.  Cunningham then told all the young people under him to enter those “spheres” as missionaries. He then talked about how Caleb requested the “mountain” in Joshua 14:12, so the “spheres” were re-named “mountains”.  Loren Cunningham then opened a university in 1978 to attempt to train people to conquer those seven mountains. YWAM alone is currently training over 25,000 people a year to take over these “mountains”.

Here’s a little video that summarizes the idea:

Here’s a long video where Loren Cunningham explains the idea in detail:

Now in one way, this stuff sounds like Christians simply wanting to seek out places of influence to make positive change.  I wish that were the case, but it never stays there; it quickly gets into crazy spiritual warfare stuff (Peter Wagner doesn’t hold back in this interview and this is also informative as is this) as well as illuminati-like attempts at machinating politics.

I know multiple people who have tried to “take the mountain.” They were spiritually unprepared to face the temptations and pressures of Hollywood; taught to be spiritually arrogant by foolish teachers who were highly incompetent with the Scriptures. Armed with a few misunderstood scriptural “promises” and the power of positive thinking, these folks tried to exercise their spiritual authority over their mountain.  Most of them left the church and, spiritually speaking, are in the intensive care ward.  Sadly, some are bloated corpses floating in the pool of depravity that is Western popular culture.

But that’s okay, since the Charismatic Movement is the fastest growing movement in all the religions of the world.  There’s no shortage of fresh meat to toss into the grinder of the Seven Mountain Mandate.  It’s a cultural experiment in idiocy worthy of Field Marshal Haig.

This is also why the New Apostolic Reformation is a Prosperity Gospel movement.  They want a lot of money: they need it for the sort of “influencing the people with money” sort of work they’re chasing.   At the end of the day the Seven Mountain Mandate results in people gaining money, power and influence in the secular world for the purpose of (eventually) using a fraction of it for the promotion of a false gospel.  This would be the point where the lessons of Mark 4:18-19, 1 Tim 6:8-9 and Luke 12:16-21 come in.

Anyone who admits that they’re chasing money and power but think it’s okay since they’re doing it for righteous ends are fooling themselves.  The people who chase money and power under the guise of “using it for God” tend to end up in the same place…

Oops.  I went on a rabbit trail there because I hate the prosperity gospel.

I hate it a lot.

Also, it’s worth noticing that the whole Seven Mountain Mandate started because 2 fellows didn’t believe in the sufficiency of Scripture.  Instead, they gained propositional revelation from a vision and based a rather large component of their lives on it.  That’s really foolish, especially given what the Bible teaches about trusting in dreams and visions rather than God’s inscripturated word.

Speaking of Scripture, does anyone believe that the whole “seven mountains” idea comes from 2 Cor. 10:13-16 + Joshua 14:12 and not Rev. 17:9?  I mean honestly.  Given the eschatological fascination of the movement and the fact that the phrase appears only in Rev. 17:9 (where the Harlot sits on “seven mountains,” from which she controls the world), who does Cunningham think he’s fooling?

Finally, and on the topic of eschatology, consider this: Loren Cunningham started a university with the goal of training up a whole army of henchpersons in order to sneakily take over the world for the purpose of instigating the end of the world.

Wow.

That kinda makes him sound like a…well…

Yeah.  That about sums it up.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “Ernst Stavro Blowhard” Unger

From the very beginning of time, the wicked have been been attempting to deceive those to whom God has revealed his truth.  Those deceptions have sometimes been blatant, but more often than not they’ve been subtle; somewhat-credible sounding ideas that generally fly under the radar of most folks.  In the last few decades, one of the most widespread errors I’ve encountered is the error of generational curses.

There is no single version of the error of generational curses, but it’s an error that has found acceptance with a lot of people.  For introductory purposes, let’s answer two questions:

1. Who teaches this? 

Well, it’s all over the place:

Beth Moore teaches a soft generational curse that’s essentially a predisposition towards certain sin; “negative traits or habits in your life that have been in your family line for generations.” Moore further describes what she calls generational strongholds by saying “these areas of bondage are anything you may have learned environmentally, anything to which you may be genetically predisposed, or any binding influence passed down through other means.”

That’s an interesting way of leaving the door open for demons.  Notice how she says environment, genetics or “passed down through other means?”  If you habitually commit a sin and it’s not something you learned from someone else, and it’s not something that has a genetic cause, then it’s gotta be “something else.”  Strangely, that “something else” is never your own sinful desires or willful rebellion against God.

GreatBibleStudy.com is a site that is often quoted on this issue, and they’re nowhere near as subtle as Beth Moore.  They define a generational curse as “spiritual bondage that is passed down from one generation to another” and comment on how people will commit the same sins as their parents, even if they’ve never known their parents, “because they inherited their spiritual bondage.”  When it comes to diagnosing generational curses, they write:

Some common symptoms of generational curses are family illnesses that seem to just walk from one person down to the next (cancer is a common physical manifestation of a spiritual bondage), continual financial difficulties (they continually hit roadblocks in their finances), mental problems, persistent irrational fears and depression. Anything that seems to be a persistent struggle or problem that was handed down from one generation to another may very well be a generational curse.

If only oncologists knew about the “spiritual bondage” roots of cancer, they could avoid all those horrible medical treatments.

Basically, anything that is a repetitive sin is likely a problem because of some sort of inherited spiritual condition from your parents that is not due to your sin nature.

In fact, generational curses likely have the blame ultimately lying with God.  The folks at GreatBibleStudy write: “I believe the reason God would punish the future generations with the sins of their fathers, is because of God’s bitter hatred for sin.”  Because God hates sin so much, he forces your kids to (unwillingly and unknowingly) commit the same sin that you do in order to try to scare you off the idea of sinning.

This hard version of generational curses teaches that demons are passed down from parents to children.  They write, “It is possible for demons to enter a child before he accepts Jesus, then remain dormant or hidden in that child’s life until some time later in his or her life when it manifests (or makes itself known).”  And those demons remain after that person gets saved.  They say, “Sometimes when a person heads for the ministry, it seems like the devil kicks up his ugly heels and causes havoc for that person.”

How do demons remain inside a believer once they’re saved?  Two words: Legal Grounds.  The GreatBibleStudy author writes

If you have involved yourself in any sin or opened any doors in your own life while ‘awaking’ or triggering the spirits, then it’s important that you clear up any legal grounds (or strongholds) that you gave the enemy in your own life relating to the bondage. For example, if you have went to see a demonic movie, and it seemed to have triggered spirits of fear in your life that were handed down to you, then it’s important to repent for going to see such a movie before trying to cast out any spirits. It’s also possible that you picked up the spirits from such a movie without them even being there in the first place, and/or added to spirits that were already inside you. It’s always a good idea to clear up any legal grounds or strongholds in your own life before casting spirits out.

Wow.

Better stay away from the movies.  You might catch a cold…or a demon.

Getting rid of those demons doesn’t happen when a person gets saved either.  They write,

Just as other demons don’t automatically leave at the time of salvation… neither do the demons that you get from your ancestors automatically leave you either.

Let’s say that you accept Jesus at age 15. Because you were born a sinner and outside of God’s covenant, you were still living under the curses handed down to you and demons can enter you through those curses. Once you’ve accepted Jesus, those curses are broken automatically, but often the demons that entered in before you accepted Jesus still need to be cast out.

This is a common reason for “deliverance” ministries; Christians with demons that never were evicted from their host.

So in a nutshell, soft generational curse teaching involves inherited habitual sins that but hard generational curse teaching involves discussion of inherited demons/demonic ties.

There are lots of other people and websites that teach generational curse ideas:

GotQuestions has an oft-quoted article that’s a soft version of generational curses.

Sid Roth is barking mad on the hard end of the spectrum.  Not only does he claim to be able to get rid of generational curses, he also claims to know how to actually remove original sin.

Charisma Magazine definitely peddles hard generational curse ideas (big shock…they. love. this. stuff.).

Along with Charisma Magazine, there are a large number of Charismatic teachers that peddle(d) hard or hard-leaning generational curse teaching: Morris Cerullo, Perry Stone, Guillermo Maldonado, Bob Larson, Derek Prince, Marilyn Hickey, Joyce Meyer, Tony Evans, Creflo Dollar, Paula White, Joel Osteen (though he speaks of generational blessings since saying anything sounding remotely negative results in Osteen going into anaphylactic shock),  and the list sadly goes on and on.

What’s worse is that these ideas have penetrated into non-Charismatic circles too.  One of the most well known books touching on generational curse would be Neil T. Anderson’s The Bondage Breaker.  Martin Bubeck teaches generational curse ideas (and his work is endorsed by Chip Ingram and Warren Wiersbe…?!?).  Also, Bill “laying on of hands” Gothard also teaches generational curse theology: although he’s creepier than a potty-peeker, he’s still impacted a lot of people (I don’t have a digital link for that as my resources are print materials).

Before his church went full Chernobnyl, Mark Driscoll taught this stuff too (but the Mars Hill website is now wiped from existence, along with all its content, though remnants still remain…).

This teaching runs wild all over Africa, with prosperity hucksters like David Oyedepo being both open and proud about it (if you have the stomach, watch this).  Here’s some teaching on generational curses form Enoch Adeboye (general overseer of one of the largest denominations in the world; The Redeemed Christian Church of God).  Here’s TB Joshua (one of the 50 most influential men in Africa) as he is addressing the subject.   He’s like the real life version of The National Enquirer.

I don’t know what it looks like when a demon is possessed by a “Satanic Elephant,” but it’s probably not good…

Sadly, those men are of no small impact on the continent of Africa.

Speaking of men of no small impact, Chris Hodges and the Church of the Highlands teach about generational curses (pg.39 of that pdf)  along with how to break them (pg. 8 of that pdf).  I just thought I’d toss that in there in light of my new fans in Alabama.

Hugs Y’all!

I know this post is short, but as I did with my modesty series, I’ll try to do here.  I’ll aim to keep these posts short and fairly punchy.  It takes no small effort to rein in my own penchant for writing 4,000+ word book-length posts, but I am actively trying to be more reader friendly and accessible.

Next week I’ll explain the textual support for generational curses and in the following week I’ll remove any exegetical foundation that one might attempt to uncover in the Scripture.  Then I’ll spend a week (or two) addressing the positive Biblical teaching relevant the ideas falling under the “generational curse” banner.

Hopefully, I can provide some helpful exegetical material to use against the spiritual rubes that attempt to convince trusting Christians to swallow their ideas.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “Don’t drink the water” Unger

Due to a preemptive manifestation of artificial sentience in my wife’s personal computer, the second post in my generational curses series posted a day early.  If you got it in your e-mail, RSS feed, or any other service, it was a draft that still needs to be edited and changed before it posts on Wednesday, May 4th.  My wife’s computer fled our house in a stolen car but holed up in an office for the last several hours, having taken several small appliances as hostages.  As I write this it is being eliminated by a military strike force in an effort to prevent further catastrophe.

I apologize for any confusion as to why any readers might have some here looking for a post that is no longer on the page.  I also want to encourage anyone who thinks that they’ve already read it to come back tomorrow and read the updated version.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “what day is it again?” Unger

In the last post, I took an introductory look at the subject of generational curses and explained the two streams of generational curse teaching: hard and soft generational curse theology.  Soft generational curse teaching involves inherited habitual sins (you tend to copy the sins of your parents) but hard generational curse teaching involves discussion of inherited demons/demonic ties/spiritual curses.  I gave a slight look at some of the people who teach both soft and hard generational curse theology, and I aimed a majority of my focus at hard generational curse theology.  For those who are wondering, I did that because soft generational curse theology is just using wrong terms to describe typical Christian experience;  it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to recognize that children of alcoholics/thieves/whatever are more likely to follow in the pattern of the negative example that they’re given.   That’s not really the fight I’m interested in pursuing.

I’m interested in the fight against hard generational curse theology; the stuff where people have problems or commit sins due to some sort of spiritual baggage or demonic influence in their lives that is a result of a relative rather than their own sinful or foolish choices.

Want a fresh example of just what we’re talking about? 

Well, one of my commenters alerted me to this book.  That book is written by Linda Godsey, who is the pastor of freedom ministries (in other words, the pastor responsible for dealing with generational curses) at Gateway Church in Dallas/Ft. Worth.  The pastor there is noted and shameless prosperity preacher Robert Morris, who I’ve mentioned before.  So what sort of stuff does Linda teach at Gateway?  Well, if you take a look at the preview of the book, you can read about an example of a person being delivered from generational curses on pages 5 and 6.  Godsey writes about an experience she had when she was ministering with a woman who had suffered “a number of car accidents,”  “a financial crisis” and had a young family member recently being  “diagnosed with a brain tumor.”  As Godsey talked with this woman and tried to figure out why all these things were happening, the Lord informed Godsey that there was a curse on the woman because her family (back in her country of family origin) were known for “horse thievery, stealing and dishonesty of every sort.”  She had to “break any generational curse that was passed through her family lineage” because “she was reaping the consequences of sin and disobedience sown by her own ancestors.”

Judging from the crime, she was currently suffering for crimes committed over a century ago.  The book doesn’t say how far back those ancestors were, but “horse thievery” hasn’t been a common crime for quite a while.

Let’s think about that scenario for a second.

A woman went to see her pastor to find out why she kept smacking into other cars and learned that the *real* reason for her constant fender benders was because her ancestors, long before she was born, stole horses in Germany.

I can just imagine how relieved she was to learn that the car accidents weren’t ever her fault.  She probably told her friends the good news on the way home from church.

So that’s just one concrete example of what’s being taught at one of the largest churches in North America; a church with no small influence.

People like Robert Morris and Linda Godsey would argue that the concept of generational curses is unquestionably biblical.  They think that the bible clearly teaches the idea, and they wrangle a number of texts for support.  They’re clearly not the only people peddling the idea, but the list of supporting texts is relatively common.

What passages are frequently used to give biblical support to the teaching of generational curses?

Exodus 20:5-6 – “You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, ⁶ but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.“

This is one of the standard generational curse proof-texts.  The argument here is the sins of a parent, or consequences of said sins, are passed on to their children.

Exodus 34:6-7 – “The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, ⁷ keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.’ “

The idea here is thought to be parallel to Exodus 20:5-6.

Leviticus 26:39 – “And those of you who are left shall rot away in your enemies’ lands because of their iniquity, and also because of the iniquities of their fathers they shall rot away like them.“

Same idea as the previous two verses: children suffer the consequences of their parents’ sins.

Numbers 14:18 – “ ‘The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.’ “

This is just Moses quoting God’s statement from Exodus 34:6-7.

Deuteronomy 5:9-10 – “You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, ¹⁰ but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.“

This is also essentially a restatement of what was said in the Exodus passages.

Deuteronomy 7:9 – “Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations,“

Again, this is essentially a restatement of what was said in the Exodus passages.

Deuteronomy 23:2 – “No one born of a forbidden union may enter the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of his descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord.“

Again, similar idea.  The child of a forbidden union suffers for the sins of their parents, though some make a point of suggesting how Deuteronomy 23 teaches that sexual sins result in worse generational curses.  I’ve even seen someone attempt to point out the literal truth of this in discussing how David (2 Sam. 11:2-4) was ten generations removed from Judah (Gen 38:12-26)  and yet sinned in the same way as Judah.

Judges 3:9 -“But when the people of Israel cried out to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for the people of Israel, who saved them, Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother.“

This passage is used to teach that repentance breaks a generational curse (which thereby establishes the existence of generational curses).

1 Samuel 2:27-34 -“And there came a man of God to Eli and said to him, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Did I indeed reveal myself to the house of your father when they were in Egypt subject to the house of Pharaoh? ²⁸ Did I choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to go up to my altar, to burn incense, to wear an ephod before me? I gave to the house of your father all my offerings by fire from the people of Israel. ²⁹ Why then do you scorn my sacrifices and my offerings that I commanded for my dwelling, and honor your sons above me by fattening yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people Israel?’ ³⁰ Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel, declares: ‘I promised that your house and the house of your father should go in and out before me forever,’ but now the Lord declares: ‘Far be it from me, for those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed. ³¹ Behold, the days are coming when I will cut off your strength and the strength of your father’s house, so that there will not be an old man in your house. ³² Then in distress you will look with envious eye on all the prosperity that shall be bestowed on Israel, and there shall not be an old man in your house forever. ³³ The only one of you whom I shall not cut off from my altar shall be spared to weep his eyes out to grieve his heart, and all the descendants of your house shall die by the sword of men. ³⁴ And this that shall come upon your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, shall be the sign to you: both of them shall die on the same day.” “

This passage is used to teach that Eli’s sons suffered (and died) for his sin.

1 Samuel 3:11-14 – “Then the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Behold, I am about to do a thing in Israel at which the two ears of everyone who hears it will tingle. ¹² On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. ¹³ And I declare to him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. ¹⁴ Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be atoned for by sacrifice or offering forever.’ “

Same as above.

1 Samuel 12:10-11 -“And they cried out to the Lord and said, ‘We have sinned, because we have forsaken the Lord and have served the Baals and the Ashtaroth. But now deliver us out of the hand of our enemies, that we may serve you.’ ¹¹ And the Lord sent Jerubbaal and Barak and Jephthah and Samuel and delivered you out of the hand of your enemies on every side, and you lived in safety.“

This passage is also used to teach that repentance breaks a generational curse, thereby establishing their existence.

Nehemiah 1:5-6 – “And I said, “O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, ⁶ let your ear be attentive and your eyes open, to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel your servants, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Even I and my father’s house have sinned.“

The idea here is pointing out the importance of repenting for the sins of previous generations.

Proverbs 13:22 – “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children…”

This passage is used to teach that children gain a generational blessing from righteous parents and thus, it is argued, the opposite is also true.

Hmm…

Lamentations 5:7 – “Our fathers sinned, and are no more; and we bear their iniquities.“

General idea is that the children suffer because the parents sinned.

Ezekiel 18:2-3 -“What do you mean by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’? ³ As I live, declares the Lord God, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel.”

This passage is sometimes used to teach that generational curses were broken, but only for Israel (in the time of Ezekiel).

Jeremiah 14:20 – “We acknowledge our wickedness, O Lord, and the iniquity of our fathers, for we have sinned against you.“

This passage, like the Nehemiah passage, points out the importance of repenting of the sins of one’s predecessors as part of breaking a generational curse.

Jeremiah 31:29-30 – “In those days they shall no longer say: “‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes,  and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ ³⁰ But everyone shall die for his own iniquity. Each man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge.“

This passage is similarly used to teach that generational curses were  broken, but only for Israel (in the time of Jeremiah).

Jeremiah 32:18 – “You show steadfast love to thousands, but you repay the guilt of fathers to their children after them, O great and mighty God, whose name is the Lord of hosts,“

This is another variation of what’s said in Exodus 34:5-6 with similar ramifications.

Lamentations 5:7 – “Our fathers sinned, and are no more; and we bear their iniquities.“

This passage is used to prove that children suffer for the sins of their parents.

Daniel 9:16 – “O Lord, according to all your righteous acts, let your anger and your wrath turn away from your city Jerusalem, your holy hill, because for our sins, and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and your people have become a byword among all who are around us.“

Like the passages in Nehemiah and Jeremiah, this passage is often argued to point to the necessity of breaking generational curses by repenting of the sins of one’s predecessors.

Matthew 27:24-25 – “So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.’ ²⁵ And all the people answered, ‘His blood be on us and on our children!’ “

This passage is used to suggest that the idea of generational curses was well known to the people of Jesus’ day, and in their frenzied insanity, the crowd at Jesus’ trial willfully took on a generational curse.

So that sums up the typical passages used to argue that the Bible teaches the idea of generational curses.  In reality, there’s one major text that’s restated multiple times (Ex. 20:5-6) and a handful of rather questionable texts that, at best, allude to the idea.

In my next post, we’ll go through each of the texts in this list and give a little interaction with each text…though I’ve already insinuated the proper understanding of a good number of texts with my last two pictures.  I’ll do my best to use words to show the errant understanding offered by those seeking to support the idea of generational curses.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “Ad Textus” Unger

P.S. – For those who are re-reading this today after yesterday’s pre-emptive posting, here’s a little something extra for you:

The clowns over at http://www.Christian-Restoration.com have an article on generational curses here.  One of their examples of a generational curse, and one of the strangest examples of a generational curse I’ve ever seen, is in that article.  They talk about Abraham and Isaac and comment on how Abraham passed on the generational curse of “claiming that your wife is your sister”.   In Genesis 12:11-13 and 20:2 Abraham calls Sarah his sister, and Isaac did the same thing in Genesis 26:6-7.  The Bible explains why both men did so, and states their reasons clearly; both men were afraid of being murdered so that an unscrupulous king could take their wives (something that happened frequently in the Ancient Near East).  Apparently the Christian Restoration guys know more than God does about the book he wrote.

Given the rather flexible definitions and inconsistent biblical argumentation, I’m sure a case could be made for almost anything being a generational curse.  I’m quite sure that if you read widely enough, almost anything has.  Come to think of it, that might actually make sense of some things in my life.  I do remember being tormented by a certain evil spirit in my youth who caused a specific sin in me that also marked my parents…

I’m guessing that you were expecting this to be the third installment on my series about generational curses, but the Lord has derailed that train for an indeterminate period of time.  I recently lost my job (due to no moral or ethical failure of my own), and that means that all luxury activities (which basically means “blogging”) are on hiatus for the indefinite future.  I have the third post 3/4 done, but it’s a few hours away from being ready to go and I have several more posts that are in the “rough notes” stage.  Those will all have to wait.

In the meantime, I do have 2 requests:

1.  My family would most certainly covet your prayers in this difficult period as this has hit us all quite hard.  The Lord gave me my last job and he can certainly give me another one, but I still have to go out and find it…and I wouldn’t be opposed to a few people asking the Lord to grant me some favor.
2. As my loss of job came as a massive shock, we are now solely devoted to finding new gainful employment.  If any of my readers know of any employment in Western Canada, I’m open to realistic suggestions.  Also, I have some potential ministry work that is in the talking stage right now, but nothing concrete as of yet (and landing ministry work takes forever).

I’ll give an update when our situation changes.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “When life gives you lemons be glad it didn’t give you Japanese Doritos” Unger