The Unseen World - Part 2: A Falsely-Seeded Imagination

This is the second of a multi-part series. Click here for the first entry.

“Do we walk in legends or on the green earth in the daylight?' A man may do both,' said Aragorn. 'For not we but those who come after will make the legends of our time. The green earth, say you? That is a mighty matter of legend, though you tread it under the light of day!” - J.R.R.Tolkien (from The Two Towers)

1. The Reality of the Unseen World

You live in a world which includes the supernatural. Watching a sunrise in the mountains, or dressing up for a wedding, or playing games on your cellphone while you wait to get a flu shot, there is an unseen component to your surroundings, another aspect to reality which eludes your observation. We have trouble visualizing this, precisely because it is unseen. Each of the scenarios above (sunrise, party, flu shot) can be clearly pictured in your mind, perhaps you even imagined them as you read that sentence. Take a moment and do it now if you haven't. The unseen world, by contrast, cannot be imagined with any realistic help to the mind's eye, as you (99% of you, at least) have no realistic points of reference for it, and your attempts to do so will probably only render it less credible by all being based on fictional/fanciful depictions.

Yet I chose those three scenarios above for a reason: all three are considered liminal occasions in many cultures. The term "liminal" comes from the Latin for "threshold," and refers to a sort of boundary phase, where you are passing from one place or state to another. You are probably more familiar with a related word, subliminal. Subliminal describes something which does not reach the threshold of sensory awareness, like the old idea of subliminal messaging, with images flashed onto the screen during a film too fast for you to notice, but perhaps unconsciously persuading you that you wanted to drink a coke or buy more popcorn. (Which seemingly doesn't work; the original claimed success of increased sales is a hoax, though still floating around the internet)

A great example of liminality in story-telling would be in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Prior to Lucy actually going into the wardrobe (a liminal object which is the threshold between Narnia and our world), there are a whole series of liminal moments. First the long trip into the countryside, leaving behind London and arriving at a mysterious old house. Then the adventure to explore the old house itself, and all the various rooms and series of passages that draw them deeper into the house, past various symbolic objects (suits of armor, harps, huge old books) that take us, with the children, away from the normal world outside and deep into some other kind of realm, the realm which, while still in our world, can have something like a magical wardrobe in it.

A door between worlds.

While we must turn back from that pleasant analogy (I haven't read Narnia in too long, Christmas is the perfect time to start the series again... in order of writing, of course, as is the only proper way, beginning with LWW), hopefully it serves to illustrate the point. There is an invisible passage, a liminal boundary, and once you cross it, things are different on the other side.

Sunrises, weddings, and the administration of medicine are all occasions where an invisible boundary is being crossed; in the case of sunrise, night is turning to day, in the case of a wedding, a mysterious and sacred bond between a man and a woman is being pronounced, and for the case of medical care, in traditional or folk cultures the healing arts are very often considered to cross over the boundary of the purely natural world into the supernatural.

That is our focus for this post and more or less for this whole series of posts: Most people throughout history have always believed in this supernatural threshold which can be crossed in manifold situations. The Bible does not teach us that that other side of reality does not exist (it assumes it, rather), but that God above invaded this corrupted world by not only entering it but crossing the threshold of the supernatural and actually being born in the flesh as a historical person.

Jesus literally crosses the threshold, pun respectfully intended, by his own death on the cross. He is the Door. (Aslan is the Wardrobe!) He is the reverse siege tower from heaven down to earth that mercifully allows travel back up and out from the walls of our exile. Condemned by the visible authorities of His day in order to triumph over the invisible ones, He was the God no one has seen, seen by many witnesses; the perfect completion of love and suffering to reconcile the irreconcilable perpendiculars of immaculate justice and endless mercy.

Even centuries after He returned past the liminal threshold to prepare for our arrival and the final Divine invasion which will overthrow the kingdom of darkness forever, we see and remember Him in the sacrament of holy communion, and observe that the Christian faith has been a topic of conversation between the world's most powerful leaders, from Ancient Rome* to 2017 Russia**.

(*- An interesting letter exchange between Pliny the Younger and Emperor Trajan regarding what to do with Christians, who refused to worship Caesar's image) (**- An investigation of Putin's friendly but nuanced relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church). 

In the Christian faith there is a continual play of seen/unseen going on, then, a dance with an invisible partner, a tension of evidence and faith, impressively answered and distressingly unanswered prayers, which reflects the seen/unseen nature of all reality. So we will understand our faith better, and the Bible will seem more urgent and relevant to us as it should, when we recognize that the world we live in does include this supernatural aspect, whether we see much evidence of it in our daily life or not. You can in Taiwan, if you live here long term or spend much time in certain locales, and Aragorn's answer to Eomer in the opening quote can be a sort of answer to us as well. We do live in a scientific world, but that does not preclude the fact of there being more going on than merely that.

This is because scientific inquiry, an extremely valuable and useful tool when pursued correctly (such an effective one that it's being discarded as a means of antagonizing Christianity because in the end all the evidence is turning out to be on our side), does not describe the entirety of what lies below heaven, merely the material bits.

To be sure, one prevalent modern belief system, what we might call scientism, insists that anything that science cannot explain yet is merely something it will figure out later. This is what I call the science-of-the-gaps defense, the exact analogy of the argument mistakenly used by many Christians in the past and some still today, claiming that the inexplicable is evidence for God. But we do not find our evidence for God hiding in the inexplicable, but clearly seen from what has been made, because we haven't based our observations on the premise that there is no God.

In folk cultural worldviews, on the other hand, we have the opposite problem, where most areas of life are considered to be affected by the supernatural but traditions regarding this are rarely if ever examined critically. (Indeed, people don't even bother artificially reconciling mutually exclusive superstitions with each other).

As I mentioned in Part 1 of this series, Europe was the same way before Christianity and modernity combined forces to condemn the unseen world as spiritually opposed to God, and to disbelieve in it entirely, replacing it with a solely material universe to be measured, explained, and mastered by science. That stance became the default worldview of anyone growing up in the West, and various Western-influenced subcultures around the world, so that now even sincere Christians in Western countries may need a lot of faith to believe in things like angels or demons, or even the miracles of Jesus, because their worldview has no place for what the Bible describes in a relatively straightforward manner.

2. When Art is Unreliable

(Note: as I begin this section I am proud to say that I have multiple Christian friends who use their gifting in art to serve God, and I have been blessed, intrigued, and edified by many of their works. So when I speak of unreliable Christian or Bible-referencing art, I know there are exceptions. Lord willing, there will be many more exceptions in the years to come, and Christian art will rise to glorify its Creator, like "living hymns of stone and light," and not be primarily mass-produced to meet a large niche industry demand)

If you grew up in that kind of rationalist-influenced culture which still describes most of the postmodern West, the moment you try to envision life being lived in the context of a supernatural world unsupervised by science, immediately your imagination may begin to supply imagery of the supernatural from sources with which we have been inundated since childhood. That is often more harmful than helpful for Christians, since such imagery is nearly always misleading.

Much Christian imagery reveals no attempt at scriptural accuracy, relying more on Renaissance-era art or other influences than on what brief depictions we have in the Bible of the world beyond our ken. So whenever you see images of Satan lounging arrogantly on the throne of hell, or cute little chubby baby angels (putti), you can thank whomever it was that began misapplying the work of Milton or Raphael, since the Bible describes Satan as cast from heaven to earth and roaming around the planet, and heaven's angels as intimidating enough that their first words are typically "do not fear." And those are just the ambassador angels with roughly humanish form, not the four-fold keruvim (cherubim, but people confuse the putti with cherubs now, "keruvim" is more like the Hebrew pronunciation), or the mighty six winged seraphim, "the burning ones".

Not to get too far afield, by the way, but the Hebrew word saraph is transliterated (not translated, but given an English spelling) into Seraph/Seraphim in Isaiah 6 when it's talking about angels in the throne room of God, but refers to a "fiery" flying serpent in other Old Testament passages and period literature. (See the entries here) Translating Isaiah 6:2 consistently, then, you'd get "above Him were fiery serpents, each with six wings..." Since prophets describing their visions did the best they could using the knowledge and language they had, we can't say whether the angelic beings simply reminded Isaiah of whatever were the "fiery," snake-like creatures which God sent into the Israelite camp to punish them in the desert further out from Edom, or looked exactly like them, but it seems clear that neither the "shiny person, except with six cool wings," or the more esoteric "pretty much just six conjoined wings" images are what Isaiah was seeing and describing. (And if Satan is a fallen angel, and some angels look like fiery serpents/dragons, it makes sense that he shows up as a snake in the garden and a dragon in revelation. This suggests the possibility that Satan is a fallen seraph, though we will pause with that interesting thought and not stray from scripture into apocryphal speculation. For now we're sticking with this Hebrew note.) 

Not angels. Possibly deciding on where to eat lunch.

But angels are heavenly servants and depictions of heaven are in fact given to us in scripture, so our imagination has some authorized help in that case, even if people choose not to make use of it. How are we to envision ourselves, on the other hand, living on earth, but in the midst of the supernatural? I don't know if we can do it helpfully. The unseen world is precisely that, "unseen". The more you try to visualize it, the more your mind will conjure up Hollywood special effects or folk tale illustrations,
and that will seem fictional and unlike your daily experience of life, and you will doubt reality on the basis of a false characterization, or believe what is not reality, like those people who fall for every
"child goes to heaven" tale which somehow always manage to stray from anything like a scriptural depiction at some point.

As an example of the power of visual suggestion to compete with written information: I am a devoted fan of the Lord of the Rings series and all things Tolkien (as is obvious to anyone not new to my blog), and so I am quite glad that I read the books before I watched the Peter Jackson films. Because that means Frodo, and Sam, and Aragorn, and Gandalf, and all the others, as envisioned in my imagination, will always have the first spot, and the images of the actors who played them are only overlaid on top of this, influential though they be.

But for people who have only ever seen the films, or saw them first before later reading the books, their mental image of Frodo will be more or less synonymous with that of Elijah Wood and his interpretation of the character in the films. Because most people's imagination of a literary character is at least somewhat limited in detail, the image of an actor fills in all the details first, and their imagination, even supplied with details from a book that may slightly go against the film version, can't compete with all the powerful visual information of a modern film. (Feel free to comment if you are an exception to this, and watched the films first yet envision Frodo and/or other characters as looking different)

It would be nice to know exactly how Tolkien envisioned Frodo in his mind, if only for comparison purposes, but it's not a pressing issue because it's a fictional tale. It does not describe our world as it is, nor is it meant to, though it was surely intended to incline us toward those true and beautiful things in this world. But this same problem exists for believers in a more urgent sense. Our imaginations have been "pre-seeded" with the inaccurate Renaissance Art and Hollywood renditions of Biblical and/or spiritual realities, and that's what sticks in the mind, even when it clashes with scripture.

"Not my Frodo.." (but Wood did a good job, all considering)

So if you find things like heaven and hell and angels and demons a bit difficult to swallow, and believe in their factual existence only because scripture assumes and demands that you do, I want to argue that it's much more of a challenge because the depictions of these things you've seen previously are typically fanciful and frequently unscriptural. It's might not be that your faith is weak, it's that your imagination has been supplied with images that are not accurate depictions of spiritual realities, and there is a cognitive dissonance there that is in fact legitimate.

Again from Lewis:

"The fact that “devils” are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you." (C.S.Lewis, from The Screwtape Letters) 

Lewis was writing in the decades when England was in its modernist rebellion against the faith, something which reportedly began after the horrors of World War I began undermining people's faith in the Church's authority and handle on truth (worth a look in some future post to see if that's really the case or not) and continued in the decades after "winning" World War II at a very high cost, when England spun off influential pop icons on its way down into domestic cultural malaise.

Thus he writes of "devils" (we'd use the term demons now) as being comic figures, and you can perhaps imagine that being the case in an old British comedy, something played for laughs, leaping about in red pajamas, as he mentions. Nowadays, with interest in the supernatural having risen and remained high, and modernism in the rear-view mirror as we head into a new Western era of spiritual darkness (borrowing also from the Eastern spiritual darkness which was never much interrupted by Christendom), they're more of a gothic and sinister or horror/possession film topic. So not so much of a laughing matter, but the principle remains the same: If you ask people to believe in something they saw a version of interpreted in CGI (perhaps poorly), it's going to be easy for their skepticism to creep in, even though what the Bible talks about is not at all like the Hollywood portrayal in the vast majority of cases.

This is true for believers with regards to other matters of faith beyond angels and demons. I have, at times in my life, even caught myself struggling with doubts about the reality of heaven itself, only to realize that I wasn't doubting heaven at all. What I was struggling with was the idea of it being "like" some picture or illustration of it that I'd seen, which seemed nice but very far from an eternal abode with the Creator of all things.

No effort of imagination is sufficient to conceive of that, of course, and Paul references Isaiah 64 in 1 Corinthians 2 in passing as he says that “what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” - it is something the Spirit reveals, yet what is revealed is wisdom of God and spiritual truths, not specifics about the accommodations of infinite life, which must necessarily be of a quality that we cannot imagine in our finite, time-bound consciousness. (One reason I don't worry if I can't entirely conceive of the biblical description either--my earth-bound conceptions could never come close)

3. Delete the Spam in your Spiritual Visual Cache

If the prophets were staggered, then, and struggled to use the most beautiful things they could think of on earth to describe the images God showed them of spiritual realities, then at least we can seed our imagination with what they wrote, and not blatantly unbiblical or confused, apocryphal images from pop culture.

So my first suggestion is to clear your spiritual imagination cache a little. Start erasing.

Erase Saint Peter with a quill pen at a little desk in front of baroque gold gates and boring white clouds. Erase a red-caped Satan with a Poseidon trident enthroned over what looks like an interesting Super Mario lava world. Erase the dark images used by Hollywood to depict the evil and demonic, and the often even darker ones used in Asian horror films. Erase the medieval inn Mary and Joseph did not get turned away from in Bethlehem (There were no Prancing Pony style medieval inns in those days, with an apologetic Barliman sticking his head out to inform them that all the rooms are full, even the Hobbit-styled ones. The story may be compelling, but a realistic and not anachronistic understanding of the story will certainly be more compelling). Erase the chubby little putti (or confine them to their rightful place as a feature of art history), and also erase the idea that we will float around like taskless angels with standard-issue harps. We will not be like angels; we are adopted sons and daughters of God--we will judge them.

Then, having erased all the erroneous and contradictory images you picked up along the way, go read scripture. You may notice an interesting contrast... In popular media, the powers of good in any supernatural sense are often portrayed as less compelling, "good because they're good, not because they're impressive," or get less screen time altogether, while the bad guys are cool and powerful and command everyone's attention.
However the Bible does the opposite: you will find fascinatingly detailed descriptions of angels, with eyes and wings and wheels, but little to nothing about what demons look like; detailed yet tough-to-envision descriptions of the celestial city, with its foundations of precious stones and gates that are not described as "pearly" but in fact as being like huge pearls, and beautifully staggering attempts to describe the throne room of God, but only a little about the lake of fire prepared as an eternal punishment for unrepentant rebels against God's authority, and precious little indeed about the "place of the dead," where the unsaved await the final judgment.

It seems that God wanted scripture filled with images of the most transcendent beauty imaginable, contrasted to the stark, sinful reality of the violent ancient world, with as little space given to the dark spiritual side of fallen earth as possible. (What superstitious/folk religions primarily concern themselves with, with frightening tales and intimidating idols.)

In Closing

In the aesthetic sense of scripture, Good is strong and beautiful and compelling, certainly not boring, and Evil is a corrupted parody of or absence of it. Demons are described not as "dark angels" but as "unclean spirits," and they cause disease, self-harm, and disfigurement. The place of the dead (those not in Christ) is described not as Dante's macabre but interesting Inferno, nor as a sort of burning lava world, but as a dark, watery pit, away from light and life.

So don't let your spiritual imagination be populated by unreliable at best (and often outright deceptive, as we'll bring up in the next part of the series) images and conceptions, false lighthouses that guide your ship of faith nearer to the rocks of cognitive dissonance. If the Bible is silent on something, don't fill in the space with human imagination and call that what the Bible asks you to believe. And if the Bible describes unseen realities, let its own words speak louder than the media we are bombarded with in modern life.

If that takes a lot of mental effort... well, most worthwhile things do.

INTP Thoughts: From Sherlock to Lecrae - Post-postmodernism

I have several posts on their way to being finished, but here's what's on my mind these days.

What Sherlock Holmes Missed

"The world is woven from billions of lives, every strand crossing every other. What we call premonition is just movement of the web. If you could attenuate to every strand of quivering data, the future would be entirely calculable... as inevitable as mathematics." - Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock, Season 4 Episode 1)

As an INTP, I am constantly analyzing how everything in the world fits together, in an increasingly complicated model, which means my default state is a deep curiosity about everything, especially areas where I have no experience or knowledge (wikipedia was dangerous for a while until I got used to its existence), since it's all helpful for building the model of how everything works and and is influenced by everything else. Despite not being a dominant intuitive type, for areas of the model where we have a lot of experience/data, INTPs can still sometimes make leaps of intuition like Sherlock Holmes (though obviously not as dramatically and not enough to base a legendary fictional career on) because we've understood something deeply enough that we can make educated guesses according to its nature with some degree of accuracy, what Sherlock was expanding to all of reality in his super-INTP-ness. (Must have access to... ALL the data)

What Sherlock missed, however, at least in the context of the quote above, was inevitable, given that his character in the (deservedly) popular series is written as a dismissive atheist. Without factoring God in, it really all becomes math, because there is no greater Mind and Will behind observable reality. People are ultimately predictable, in this worldview, because in the end everything does come down to clockwork... the big bang was when the unthinkably immense wound-up spring was released (For many physicists who are not believers, their definition of God is "Whoever or whatever wound up that spring the first time"), and everything is simply energy falling downhill from there, and all people who ever lived are merely a curious by-product of radiant energy from our star striking a body in space with the right collocation of elements enough times that it started an extremely complicated and impossibly unlikely (except that we can observe it happened) self-sustaining chemical reaction which somehow got more and more complicated as it went along, unlike the way anything else works in nature.

If all that were true, then yes, we could at some point design a vast quantum supercomputer which would be a (lowercase) god for all practical purposes, which could model enough of the universe to know the future and predict natural phenomenon and human behavior.

What those atheists (including people like Neal Stephenson, author of books like Cryptonomicon and Reamde which I enjoyed a great deal) and the character of Sherlock Holmes in the popular current series have in common, is an almost charming anachronism: they are loyal modernists in a time when we are already leaving postmodernism behind for what comes after.

Post-postmodernism: I identify as a genius

The Legacy of Modernism, and the end of Postmodernism

To oversimplify, Modernism rejected traditional values and authority in favor of a grand forward-looking narrative in which we could throw off convention and become whatever we want. It became increasingly turbulent, however, and as Postmodernist thinking emerged there was doubt and rejection toward various premises previously taken for granted. In postmodernist thinking there could be no uniting narrative, no objective truth, all was constructed by one's context ("you only think that because ____"). In the popular consciousness, it was the age of subjectivity, "truth is relative."

Now that postmodernism has peaked and gone into decline, we are entering the new age of Post-postmodernism (no better term has been agreed on yet, my favorite so far is "metamodernism"). As with previous shifts, we preserve some remnants of previous ages while rejecting the current unifying idea and seeking a new "center" to hold things together. It will be a very interesting time if we don't all kill each other in ideological civil wars first.

In a nutshell: At the change of each thought-age in the West, people have rejected something that kept society at peace (common tradition under an aristocracy, common trajectory under a bureaucracy, common tolerance under a plutocracy) as the sins of each ruling group become too obvious and unjust to ignore. As the times shift, whatever was "the center" that held everyone together begins to give way at the same time as the group in power loses legitimacy, and there is a massive societal shift. Modernism: Reject Unifying Tradition - Find your own path
(What keeps us from fighting - a story that unites us)

Post-modernism: Reject Unifying Narrative - Find your own viewpoint
(What keeps us from fighting - living and letting live)

Post-post modernism: Reject Unifying Tolerance - Find your own identity
(What keeps us from fighting - good fences make good neighbors? the jury is still out)

What Comes Next: Messiness

The advent of post-postmodernism can be seen with the focus on identity recently. First we lost the unifying traditions, then we lost the unifying story, now we're losing any unifying identity labels too. When Lecrae decides that he's been trying to put aside his blackness to be Evangelical and says he doesn't want to do that anymore, he's responding to the shift where a deeper part of his identity he calls his roots (the racial/subcultural identity) calls more compellingly than a shallower one (Evangelicalism emerged in response to certain factors, like Fundamentalism before it, and the Church will remain long after both are merely part of Church history). Leaving evangelicalism because associations or aspects of it start to conflict with another part of one's identity doesn't mean leaving the Church, but it demonstrates when cognitive dissonance gets too strong, we "pull back" to less ambiguous identities.

Ironically the same phenomenon is at work with Southerners resisting attempts to purge Confederate flags and statues from the public eye. "Southerness" for many is an identity deeper than an Evangelicalism that says to keep things comfortable, Lecrae shouldn't be "too Black" and Southerners shouldn't be "too Southern." But the world is tired of playing nicely with others a little too different from us for comfort, and "the center is failing to hold," as in Yeats' famous poem. "We do" is no longer a quick answer to the question "who benefits?" because the "we" is getting really iffy.

In the Church, selfless love is supposed to be the glue that holds us together. When by the Spirit's help we manage it, it does work beautifully. In the world outside however, once tradition was found oppressive, and the narrative deconstructed, a broad-minded tolerance was preached as the new glue that would keep us all together. It has failed.

So How Do We Engage an Age of Post-Postmodernism?

For Christians, every change of thought-age is both troublesome and helpful. Modernism was sure there could be no supernatural, but people went to church because that's what good people did; post-modernism wasn't so sure, but it fractured the basic concept of absolute truth and people began to lose the church habit. Post-postmodernism is thirsty for the divine again, and searching for truth, but it wants to fracture us into identity groups at the same time, and a generation is growing up largely unchurched but ready to embrace causes and identities that don't compromise.

So on the one hand, our marching orders have never changed: Speak the truth in love, make disciples of all nations. Actually do that, don't talk about doing it or hold conferences about doing it. On the other hand, understanding and enduring the next decades will require a lot more wisdom and boldness than the Church has shown in recent decades. Do a little reading on the times; a storm is coming. Some have predicted the nation itself will get fragmented into groups that align based on those deep identity fault lines that have slumbered under a wealthy and tolerant age but never went away. That may never happen, but it's clear we are not entering an age of stability, but of things being pulled apart in seismic shifts. When the center can't hold, to continue with Yeats' poem, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The Church, built on a rock against which the gates of hell may not prevail, has been acting like an eager-to-please kite, blown here and there by popular secular trends. ("We can do feminism too." "We can care about climate change too." "Please acknowledge our relevance in the areas you've developed." "Notice me, Senpai." -- Meanwhile there's a steady trickle of evangelicals to Catholic and Orthodox churches) Now weak-conscienced church leaders are debilitated by every accusation of collective guilt the world throws at them. Commanded to love proactively, we are passively nice. Directionless except for inertia, we have expressed our dismay at the state of society either silently in the voting booth or loudly on social media, but not often made disciples of our neighbors. Even when we've strayed perhaps too far into politics, we've mostly chosen the label "Conservative." (What, exactly, are we trying to conserve at this point? It's a lose-lose proposition, wading into the political arena primarily concerned that we come across as respectable folk who know how to retreat with their honor intact. But I digress.)

The choice to be passive, tolerant, and easily swayed, damaging to the church in the best of times, will not even be a choice in the days to come. Belief is coming back into fashion to an almost alarming degree, and institutions with weak and yielding faith will simply not endure. Houses built on the sand will not survive the storm, but the Church as a whole is antifragile. She has survived every tumult of history, for Christ sustains her. The Kingdom will advance, but it may advance without you.

So: Be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, not just the belt and shoes that can be coordinated with your Sunday outfit. In the post-postmodern age, believe unapologetically and they will come, and see whether we truly do have life abundantly and the words of eternal life. If we truly believe Christ is the only hope for a sin-struck world sinking into chaos and clinging to dreams of the latest reincarnation of Babel, now is the time to start acting like it.

Overlooked Parts of the Christmas Story

Merry Christmas from Taiwan!

As I teach the Christmas story repeatedly over these weeks, some bits of the story that are often overlooked or misinterpreted based on popular art and tradition rise to the surface. Here are some of them which you may find interesting. Most of this can be found in other articles being circulated, but I thought it would be nice to have it all together in one post.

1. Why was there no room for Mary and Joseph?

It wasn't just a busy night in Bethlehem and Barliman ben Butterbur happened to be all full up at the Prancing Pony--Mary and Joseph weren't the only ones who had to go back to their hometown for the census. The place was packed with travelers, and there would have been other members of Joseph's extended family traveling back to Bethlehem too, since that was their ancestral hometown as well. 

There's no indication from Luke that Mary was in labor as they arrived and Joseph was running around in desperation knocking on doors; it simply says that while they were there (i.e. had already arrived) the time came for Jesus to be born. (Luke 2:6) So the scenario described is less suitable for a dramatic scene in a film, but much more true to life, with the young couple arriving in town with Mary pregnant, yet finding it so crowded due to the large influx of census-takers that they couldn't have their own room and had to make do with a secondary space.

"No room" means no room of their own, then, and not "no units available for rent," since 1) that's based on a medieval idea of inns and is probably the wrong translation of the Greek for such inns as existed at the time:

2. Not an Inn, nor an isolated Stable in a Cave

As is becoming more common knowledge, the famous "no room at the inn" line is not the best translation, and the Greek word used probably refers instead to the guestroom of a family home. 

Some evidence in support of this would be 1) Mary and Joseph didn't have the money for something like an inn for traveling merchants (as evidenced by the fact that they had to use a pair of birds for the dedication sacrifice for Jesus instead of a lamb, only allowed when one is very poor), and 2), given the circumstances and the culture of the time (and lack of phones or internet or effective postal system to let someone know you are coming, it must be remembered), it's much more likely they have first gone to find and try to stay with Joseph's family in Bethlehem. (Some have suggested at that time it was more or less a cultural obligation for them to do so)

With the place packed out with incoming family, however (who would likely have gotten there first before Joseph and very pregnant Mary coming in from up north), there was no room in the house's little guest room for Mary to have a baby, so they moved to the front area of the main room, where the ladies could help Mary. In the cramped and intimate quarters of a 1st century Jewish home, animals often sheltered inside the house in an area by the door, and a stone manger with soft straw would be a secure place to lay a baby to keep him out from under the rest of the family packed into a small house.

A good chart which shows how things might have looked,
obtained from this article which has a good quick rundown
on the reasons why Jesus wasn't born in a roadside inn
or a stable full of animals away from other people.

For more information, see this really good article, which brings up both the Greek translation issues and also the humorous reminder that, at very least, had a bunch of Jewish shepherds found Mary and Joseph in a stable by themselves with a newborn infant, they would have been horrified and insisted the three come back with them so their wives could care for Mary and the baby.

The manger situation was probably about like this.
A secure stone trough in a nook by the front entrance.

3. A Lengthy Stay in Bethlehem?

Mary and Joseph didn't go back up to Nazareth until Mary was ceremonially clean again after 40 days, and they had done the dedication offering for Jesus at the Jerusalem temple, and Luke 2 mentions that only after visiting the temple do they head back north to Nazareth in Galilee. So they must have stayed around Bethlehem for at least 6 weeks.*

This is yet another piece of evidence that they stayed with family, as either being stuck in a stable with a newborn for several weeks or trying to pay for a room in an inn for that long (plus food, etc.) would be highly problematic for the poor young couple.

*- On the other hand, based on the account of the Magi visit in Matthew 2, it can be argued that the flight to Egypt may have occurred very soon after Jesus' birth. That would mean that the time in between Jesus' birth and settling back in Nazareth again after the temple visit would largely have been spent in Egypt instead. (We'll look into this below)

4. Simeon and Anna

Why does the Bible especially mention how old Simeon and Anna were? The two aged prophets at the temple, who rejoiced to see the birth of the Messiah, were old enough to have lived in Pre-Roman Israel. After the Maccabean revolt, Israel was its own nation again for a few generations, until Rome finished defeating/absorbing the old Seleucid Empire (previous rulers of Israel, whose desecration of the Jewish temple led to the revolt and subsequent cleansing of the Jerusalem temple which Hanukkah celebrates).

Thus, for over 100 years between kicking out the Hellenistic Seleucids and being brought into the Roman Empire, Israel was autonomous and ruled by an Israelite king. Both Simeon and Anna grew up in the last days of this temporarily restored Kingdom of Israel, so the idea of their waiting for the consolation of Israel (Simeon)/redemption of Jerusalem (Anna), and God's promise to Simeon that he would not die until he saw the Messiah, the true King who would reign on David's throne, is especially meaningful. They had seen a glimpse of Israel restored, only to be subjugated yet again by a foreign power. They longed for the coming of the Messiah who would bring political and spiritual restoration.

Aslan has come, winter will soon be over.

5. Magi/Wise Men/Three Kings: Not there with the Shepherds, But also not 2 years later?

It's clear that the Wise Men or Magi are not identified by Matthew as kings, but the Greek term used refers to something more like royal alchemists/astrologers. Matthew never says there were three, and they certainly didn't set off across the desert by themselves on camels, but would have been at least a small caravan, probably a rather large one. They must have been at last somewhat impressive because they got to speak directly to King Herod, who was willing to enlist the help of scribes and priests to answer their question.

One theory of their arrival time suggests that they were probably not there on the night Jesus was born, nativity scenes notwithstanding, but became aware of it due to "his star at its rising" and made a long trip to Israel to come pay their respects, arriving when Jesus was around or less than 2 years old, basing this off of Matt 2:16.

One major problem with this view when investigated carefully is that the Magi do indeed find Jesus in Bethlehem, but we know from Luke that his family returned to Nazareth after Mary was ceremonially clean again, about 6 weeks after Jesus' birth. However, the text of Matthew 2 is not written in such a way to suggest that the Magi went to Bethlehem, then the star led them up north to Nazareth instead.

Note that scripture doesn't directly say how old Christ was; it's possible the star/sign appeared early, and part or nearly all of the journey was made before He was born. Matthew does specifically mention that Herod specifies children 2 years old to be eliminated, and does this based on the time he had ascertained from the Magi. So what we know is that Herod believes the Magi to be searching for a very young child or baby in a village with a few hundred people. (WF Albright estimated around 300 people, I don't know if he allowed for an influx due to the census) In this context it's unlikely that 2 years was a precise estimate, but was based on the Magi's inability to be sure of the age of the child they would find, only their knowledge of how long they'd been aware of the star.

One objection to the baby Jesus - Magi view is that Matthew says He was already in a house, not an inn or stable. However as we have seen above, the strongest evidence is that Jesus was born in the house of some relatives of Joseph, in the side area were animals were kept, because there was no place for them in the room for guests. So this is not actually a problem but perfectly in line with what the evidence suggests.

There is also the Flight to Egypt to consider. When did it occur in the context of these other events?

One view I saw reconciled the timeline by having the Magi arrive very soon after Jesus is born, then Joseph being warned in the dream and the family fleeing to Egypt after leave. They are in Egypt for a month before Herod dies (as others have suggested, the gifts of the Magi arrive just in time to finance this excursion), and go to Jerusalem to present Jesus at the temple after returning from Egypt. Luke, with a different focus, in 2:39 simply tells us that they return to Nazareth after this, while Matthew 2:22-23 explains more about Joseph's motivation for doing so.

Another possibility which allows for the young Jesus - Magi view would be that after Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the family stayed until it was time to visit the temple and after that went to Nazareth. Back in Bethlehem a couple years later for whatever reason, perhaps visiting the same relatives, the Magi are led to them, and they then flee to Egypt until Herod dies, returning back to Nazareth much later than planned with a very interesting story of why they were gone so long. This requires positing a subsequent visit from Nazareth to Bethlehem which coincides exactly with the Magi visit, something Matthew doesn't seem to indicate, but it would explain why Luke doesn't bother including the Magi-Egypt story between the birth and temple visit, as the entire incident happened later and Luke is focused on the future important temple visit when Jesus is 12 instead.

 (For more on the Magi, here is an article about the history of the Magi as a religious/political order, and how it may have been Daniel's prominence in Babylon that brought Hebrew prophecy to their attention. Some of it is just speculation, but the background information is interesting)

It's likely the Magi were from Parthia. A rowdy bunch.
When not perfecting their horse archery, their Magi were
inventing primitive DC batteries to achieve gold electroplating,
giving rise to the legends of alchemy and gold transmutation
which their European counterparts later tried to re-achieve

6. The Star: A long-term, non-obvious, and highly specific astronomical phenomenon

What exactly was the star that the Magi saw has been the subject of much speculation, but it must have been an astronomical phenomenon that the Eastern star-gazers noticed and saw significance in, yet not so locally obvious that hordes of people descended upon Bethlehem to see what was going on. It was clearly nothing like artistic depictions of a massive "Christmas star," since if a natural phenomenon it would be a supernova of unprecedented magnitude, frying the earth dead with gamma rays, and if supernatural and that obvious, Herod wouldn't have needed to resort to ruthless measures to find the child Messiah, as half of Jerusalem would have turned up wondering why a glowing orb was illuminating that specific house.

Matthew does say that the star that they had seen when it rose (at the beginning of their journey, Matt 2:1-2) later went before them to the house where Jesus was, once they were already in Israel (Matt 2:7-11). It is difficult to imagine what kind of astronomical phenomenon can be described as a star that rises, yet can also come to rest over a specific house, to their great joy and rejoicing. 

The imagination can provide all sorts of images without any way of verifying them scripturally. The trouble with these kinds of images is that they substitute a non-scriptural picture for one that simply doesn't exist, since we lack the information to do anything but speculate:

A group of foreign magi and their retinue, bearing scrolls with the writings of Daniel, one of their honored predecessors, arrive in a splendid caravan coming down the mountain from Jerusalem, after Herod's response from the chief priests and scribes indicates Bethlehem is the right place. They turn west off the main road, as people gawk at their passing. It is evening, and the sun has begun to set. Very familiar with the movements of stars in the night sky, they can see the star they have followed from the East for so many nights, as it drops from higher in the sky, barely visible, toward the dimly illuminated and rapidly darkening horizon. They follow it into the village, and the star becomes increasingly visible as it drops in the sky, nearing the roofs of the low houses clustered together. Feeling they are near the culmination of their quest, one magus dismounts, the others joining him, and they leave the bulk of their caravan behind them, going down the narrow, dirty street on foot. The star is directly ahead of them now, and does not move to either side as they continue on, but remains twinkling steadily over one house at the end of the lane. From the darkness within the small dwelling, the light of a solitary lamp escapes from the doorway. As they draw so near that from their point of view the star seems to descend and touch the roof, among murmuring voices inside they suddenly hear the cry of a baby...

This could be a bit like what happened, or totally off, but at least, let's know to what extent the pictures and popular traditions we have inherited through many ages of artistic license adhere to the truth of God's word. A careful investigation of the birth of Christ is a great way to honor Him in this season when we celebrate His birth, the Divine invasion, the beginning of the final defeat of evil and the restoration of our relationship to God.

By His Grace, and until His Coming, Merry Christmas!

Do you have any more interesting observations or information on the account of Jesus' birth? Did I leave anything out in comparing the Baby Jesus vs. Young Jesus Magi visit theories? Leave me a comment below and let me know!

Get Moving I - Holding the Line vs. Advancing the Kingdom

"Hold the Line" or "Advance the Kingdom"?

How do we in the Church balance a responsibility to "hold the line"--for doctrinal purity within churches, for resisting the decay in the culture outside of them, etc.-- with the responsibility of following the Great Commission? The first implies a defensive, static position, while the second is outwardly focused and concerned with advancing the spiritual kingdom of God on earth.

It would seem the two are in conflict, and while the idea of "missional"churches, and the ramifications of it, solves some of the problems, in this post I want to suggest a lot could be improved by simply changing the way Christians think about the problem, with a little help from an analysis of tactics strategy then offer a few steps to getting back into the battle where it's actually being fought.
First, a look at some the related issues:

1. Conservatism

The first issue I want to address is Conservatism. Most people identify this with political conservatism, but the cultural phenomenon of conservatism in America is broader than politics. I strongly believe one problem in the American evangelical church (and perhaps others) is that of conservatism, again not politically but as an approach to life and ministry and "being the Church."

A reckless and overly aggressive attitude Church-wide would of course be a problem, but as per Screwtape and the people wielding fire extinguishers in a flood, it does not seem to be the special problem of our time to be primarily guarded against. On the contrary, there seems to be a default tendency to avoid action because of uncertainty, lack of clear direction, and the desire to avoid potentially costly failures. This kind of reflexive conservatism, a fear of moving lest we move wrong, actually hinders the Church's work a great deal. If "don't rock the boat," "be careful," "don't make people uncomfortable," "don't go overboard," "we'll think about it (please go away)," is the default attitude in those churches which most revere and promote careful attention to scriptural truth, it's no wonder that around the world it is not conservative and evangelical but charismatic churches which are seeing most of the rapid growth.

In the US, in this new era which began roughly with 9/11, the cultural situation looks different for millennials. They are not fighting to conserve, but either to carve out stable lives in an increasingly unstable culture, if they're self-motivated, or simply remain in their current situation, if they're not. The system of comparative stability inherited by previous generations has finally begun to break down, and so conservatism is less appropriate than building anew, something which is more suited to weather the dark times that seem to be coming and the instability that is already becoming normal.

So my contention with regard to conservatism and the Church is that we may have found ourselves in the position of making great efforts to keep alive a beloved, mighty oak whose roots are all but dead, but which is still covered in acorns each year. I believe we should be less concerned with keeping the old tree going another year than with planting those acorns as fast as we can. Take pride, if you must, not in the grand old oak, but in fields of new saplings. Some won't grow into strong, healthy trees, but many will.
Now is not exactly the time to be conservative, then; we need to be active, intentional, and busily preparing for the future more than regretting what we've lost or fearing change we can't stop anyway.

2. Zeal vs. Fear

That brings us to the second issue. Continuing the oak tree analogy, despite the need for a new forest, there are those who for various reasons are very ambivalent about the work of planting new trees to begin with. In the parable of the wheat and the tares, instead of accepting the regretful loss of a few healthy wheat sprouts as an acceptable exchange for getting rid of those invasive weeds, his landowner commands that they be allowed to grow up together. The point is not a flawless field, the point is the wheat. I believe we may be in a situation where in many conservative evangelical churches today people are perplexed with a small and shrinking harvest but nevertheless point with pride to our immaculate church fields, where all our time and effort has gone into making sure all the weeds are eradicated before any new seed is put out. (On the other hand, many churches avoid even mentioning what happens to weeds at the harvest, for fear any of them might take offense)

Planting more churches, spreading the gospel actively (while none of these things are illegal yet)... all these things engage us in the harvest work we are called to as a Church. It may even be that we should be giving thanks for this season; not as a fearful time of corrosion of the Church's cultural influence, but as a time when overgrown fields everywhere are waiting to be planted and harvested, and we can simply rise up and do so. (That especially while we can see to the East, smoke rising off burning fields.)

So we should plant with zeal while we can, advancing into new fields and not spending all our energy in "holding the line" against the influence of weeds from the next field over. Maybe one field even gets slightly overrun and in need of serious attention, but in the mean time we have planted four new ones, and can now return and attend to it. If Paul had spent his whole life in Antioch to make sure that church stayed perfect, we wouldn't have a global Church today; our times are more like Acts than we know.

3. There are Two Lines

It's clear, then, that we can neither be apathetic about holding the line of truth with regards to what is taught and preached in our churches, nor lax in our efforts to advance the kingdom by planting more churches and taking the gospel into our communities. Both things must be attended to, and how can we do that, with churches full of "attendees" plus a small core of already over-worked volunteers?
It may be that in this decade, we need to overthrow the 80-20 (or even 90-10) rule; if the church is to survive, thrive and do the work it's called to do, it cannot be primarily composed of Christians who consider showing up regularly on Sunday mornings to be the majority of their Christian duty.
Even a shift to a third of church-goers deciding they weren't content to simply sit and listen, but demanded to be involved in taking what they learned and putting it into practice, and teaching others to do the same, would mean a massive increase in manpower and what the Church was capable of.

This dance of holding the line and advancing the kingdom is not a zero-sum game, however. More of one does not automatically mean less of the other. That is because, in reality, they are of course two different lines.

Think of a war: there is a line of battle, perhaps several, and a line further back which denotes secured territory. The line that protects doctrinal purity, that ensures our foundation remains biblical truth--that line must be held. But the line that expands out into a fallen world in need of light--that line must advance.

To win battles, both things must be happening at the same time. You must take ground, hold it, and keep it secure. You cannot take new ground by holding the line, and you cannot keep it secure by moving your troops away somewhere else.

Aha, you may say, but then they do detract from each other, because you need troops to do either the one or the other. In a physical battle that's true. In a church, it is to be hoped that some of the same people capable of recognizing and defending against false teaching are also capable of taking the gospel out into new territory. In fact, being good in one area hopefully implies one is skilled in the other as well. In a healthy church, there will be priority given to having these experienced warriors training others to walk in the same way.

Hold here or advance?

4. "The Line" vs. "Maneuver Warfare"

I think there's a better picture we can use, however, for this ongoing battle. While within the church there is absolutely a doctrinal line which cannot be compromised, perhaps in terms of engaging our culture, advancing the kingdom into our communities, the appropriate image should not be "a line" at all.

In World War I, the infamous "trenches" were lines held against the enemy, with a no man's land in between into which few could venture and return alive. Early artillery pounded, machine guns rattled, and soldiers fought to hold positions and keep from being overrun, with such horrific casualties and suffering that it shook Europe to its philosophical core.

When we talk about "culture wars," we could extend the analogy to these front lines. (I believe I've actually heard the phrase "on the front lines of the culture wars" used more than once) A lot of American Christians seem to have internalized this idea. If you understand this, it makes more sense why seemingly innocuous things like coffee cups and chicken sandwiches can become massively controversial: small things in and of themselves, they represent a feint or real thrust across the (constantly narrowing) no man's land of cultural neutrality. If not rebuffed, perhaps ground will be lost, and lost ground means a new foothold for the enemy.

A "holding the line" mentality means Christians have 1) blurred the kingdom of God and the cultural footprint of the Church (not the same thing), and 2) tacitly admitted than cultural conditions are too scary, and they are not really thinking of making progress anymore. Enemy trenches in what was, until fairly recently, neutral territory (things like "the Arts," and "the Sciences") and historically constructed largely by the Church itself, are ground so long not occupied that they have become unfamiliar anyway, and possibly dubious. (Maybe that's not ground we even want to hold. We can build our own little versions of them, over here on our side.)

But let's fast-forward to World War II now. The Germans have developed a new theory of tactics, called maneuver warfare. While the initially powerful French army, still thinking in terms of "lines," has spent vast amounts of resources and effort constructing the impressive Maginot Line, the Germans have decided that lines need not be overrun by force, when they can simply be evaded and attacked from an angle of their choosing. You may remember the history: the Germans simply used their tanks to drive around the Maginot Line and through Belgium. France fell within two months.

I have often seen the technological aspect emphasized here (the innovation of armored tanks changing warfare) but in this case the much more important thing is the core idea: "Your lines will not determine where the battle happens; we will determine that."

A Tiger Tank in occupied France.

There is a two-fold lesson here for the Church:

1. Culturally, there is no "line" to hold.
There may once have been; no longer. Forget it. Regardless of what you believe about America being founded as a Christian nation or as a secular nation with Christian influence, right now in 2015, America is "The World" (As in, "The Devil, the Flesh, and...") and we need to stop talking about "taking 'our' culture back."
Like Germany vs. France, the Enemy has not countered the influence of Christianity in the culture by drawing up an entrenched line of battle against it, he's simply driven all over the place and taken over. He owns the battleground, and already does in this world by default, until Christ's spiritual victory is made terrestrially manifest.
(That is what the Church in Europe attempted to do prematurely, by flawed, time-and-culture-bound human effort, therefore creating a "Christendom" at once as glorious as cathedrals and as miserable as serfs. God's eternal version improves on the cathedrals yet elevates His serfs above the angels. Wait for it. Trust me, you don't want a theocracy before the actual Second Coming)

Think of the times recently when the church finds itself in conflict with mainstream culture over an issue, doesn't it usually seem to be behind the times, caught off guard and trying to catch up? That's not because Christians are stupid and backward (of course some people are, inside and outside the Church, but that's always been true), and not because the gospel is irrelevant to today's culture, but because the enemy has been picking the battles, having them occur at the time and place of his choosing. It may also be due to the fact that as the culture increasingly rejected Christian values, the church increasingly retreated from culture as well, losing a sense of what the big issues are outside its protective cloister walls while we argued about worship music styles within.

2. If we sit behind a line of our own imagining, we do so merely to the Church's detriment.
Since the enemy has not confined himself to any sort of line, if we are still thinking in those terms, we are merely restricting our own actions to a failing and outdated conceptualization. Meanwhile, as mentioned above, there are acres and acres of fields, formerly full of wheat, now lying overgrown and dormant, on the other side of that line. We can either languish behind a shrinking area of cultural influence, observing which denominations and cultural institutions seem to still fall on our side, and which have "gone over" to the enemy's side, or we can discard that outdated concept and start thinking of all spirit-filled, scripture-honoring churches as individual outposts in the midst of a dark and darkening culture. The light there, if it is there, will shine more and more brightly as the storm gathers. Our goal is not to control, but illuminate; therefore it should be getting easier, not harder. As the culture increasingly teaches people we are wrong and dangerous, if we are following Christ, we will appear increasingly right and whole. People will be drawn to the Truth even having been taught to shun it.

5. A Path Out of the Trenches

So then, if we want to break out of the trenches in this so-called culture war, both because the important battles are being fought elsewhere now, and also because that's not really the battle the Church is called to fight, what do we do?

Reading this, ideas may already be occurring to you. Not radical ways to reinvent the Church, which seldom take hold widely. But simple things every Christian can begin changing in the way they look at the world, that will help them begin impacting people for Christ in their own context.

Here, I will just list a few steps to get you going.
(Points if you already recognize the reference...)

Step 1. Observe
As I have explained, some churches are still sitting behind the line of a battle which has moved elsewhere. If you're still down there, you need to get out of the trenches and find out where people are right now. Some Christians have non-churched friends and know how they think differently about life and what they do with their time, and are evangelizing over the long term by bringing scriptural truth into their lives and being good witnesses. A lot of Christians spend all their extra time on Church activities and with other Christians, however, and don't have a clear idea about what goes on in the wider culture. They've grown up in an alternate, parallel culture behind the lines. They may not know what unchurched people do, or how they think, and their attempts to reach them may be based on godly intentions but also a fair amount of ignorance.
While I never unspecifically recommend giving up ministry obligations, I can state without equivocation that if you actually don't have any friends outside of church, you are not being obedient to God in this area and need to fix that. God did not give you His love and truth for you to keep them to yourself and among those who already know Him; the Great Commission is quite clear that He intends us to let the entire world know about His offer of reconciliation, love, and life.

So try going to popular places and seeing how the majority of people in your neighborhood, community, or city spend their time. Have conversations with strangers. Do a little research about your area's demographics and neighborhoods. Equip yourself with some knowledge of what things are like in the environment in which God has placed you.

Step 2. Orient
Not a reference to the Far East where I live, but of orienting yourself. In this step, taking what you found in step 1, you combine your observations with what you already know. Pray thoughtfully about how God would have you, and if appropriate, your family too, engage the people around you for His kingdom. What are your talents and your background? Is God giving you a burden for a need that exists in your community? You don't have to strike off on your own with no experience (I don't actually recommend that), so what ministries may already exist that you can join to get more experience in that area?

Step 3. Decide
Make a decision. You may want to ask wise and experienced people you know for advice, ask friends and family to pray for you, etc. What is God leading you to do? Are you already involved in ministry and have no more time? Maybe you are called to stay there. Maybe God is calling you to ask about starting something new at your church, or maybe there's something another church is doing that's in line with what you feel drawn towards, and it's a change for you to introduce a link of cooperation between two churches. You may decide to get more training in a certain area. You may even decide to do nothing for now, and repeat steps 1 and 2.

Step 4. Act
Now the decision has been made, and it's time to get moving. You may be starting something new and need to begin gathering resources and volunteers, or be joining something already in progress. It may be a slow gradual beginning, or you may be off to a running start in a ministry with which you're already familiar. What you do is up to you and God, but I will say this: If it's successful, watch out. Progress in ministry and advancing God's kingdom puts a target on your back. Don't let fear slow you down, but be alert and pray. Old temptations may return, or new ones may arise. People who previously seemed friendly may suddenly seem like they are putting obstacles in your way, or even jealous of your progress. On the other hand, other people will almost certainly appear as unexpected help and blessings.
When something great happens, write it down. (I'm guilty of not doing this enough) When difficult times come later, you can remind yourself of what God has done.

"Going over the top"... out of the trenches and into combat

That's all I've got for now. I'm tired of the nit-picking debates on who exactly said what appropriately and non-offensively, tired of the gloom-and-doom talk of our declining culture; it's time we stopped focusing on what we can't change and begin focusing on what we definitely can, in whatever context God has placed us.

A New Testament World in 2015: To Eat, or Not to Eat

A Bit of Context: Skip if you Hate History

 

Roots in history...

The Old Testament became clearer to me once I had lived in Taiwan. I don't mean that I was enlightened as to the theological significance of certain passages (although that's happened naturally along the way too), but that you simply look at the Old Testament differently when you've lived in a culture that was around in one form or another while it was being written.

For example, around the time Moses was ruling as the Prince of Egypt, the Shang dynasty was succeeding the mysterious Xia dynasty as the precursors to the ancient Chinese empire. Chinese culture had barely begun to develop then, of course, but the important thing is that it's considered the same culture in a sometimes jumpy but unbroken line since then. That line was frayed and all but severed in China by the devastating and culturally suicidal Cultural Revolution, an intentional attempt to break from the past, but in the end China is still China. (Taiwan never experienced the Cultural Revolution, and Chinese visitors are sometimes shocked to see how traditionally Chinese it feels, like an alternate future in which China was never Communist)

In cultures this old, regardless of the great changes experienced along the way, certain ancient things get passed down, even a lot of things of which people inside the culture are unaware, and including some things we see in the cultural setting of both the Old and New Testaments. A lot of the context of Biblical culture applies more easily.

So it is for reasons of history and not of cultural compatibility that America and Christianity have been so closely identified. Historically speaking, America was settled largely by Christians from Europe when Europe was still Christian, and therefore from its earliest days, the faith and ideals associated with it were present.

Culturally, however, it's one of the current existing cultures least like those in the background of scripture. Most Americans today are descendents of those who left the Old World and together created a new one, quite unlike the place they left behind. Even back at America's founding, the post-enlightenment West was teetering at the brink of the Industrial Revolution, and already entering Classical Modernity. The West had been Christian for a while, at least in the official sense. The dark, old fear and ritual appeasement of the spirit world of the pre-Christian West was confined to the remotest areas where the church was least strong, or else carried on in folk traditions. Those kinds of traditions are usually tied closely to the land, and only in the countryside of the earliest-settled parts of the US do you see these kinds of folk traditions having any kind of strength. Mostly they endure in individual family customs, things done because grandparents did them, though the grandparents themselves might not have fully understood why, only that it's nice to keep family traditions alive.

So ironically in the foremost country of the New World, one that had (at the beginning) an appreciation for but the least possible ties to global Antiquity, the ancient books of the Bible were more known, revered, and followed than in most of the Old World where the very cultural legacy of those events could be seen and felt all around. Americans believed the Bible even while they could only guess at what life was like back then, whereas in much of the world life continued much as it had at that time.

Taiwan and the world of the Bible

Traditional worshipers offer incense to a goddess idol

Here in Taiwan it is nearly the opposite. The legacy of those ancient days in which the Bible was written can be seen around one. People perform spirit-channeling or exorcism rituals and occasionally still cut themselves bloody in front of idols to evoke a response. Food is offered to idols before being eaten. Divine lots are cast. Whole pigs are sacrificed to ancestral spirits. The "spreading trees" the Old Testament talks about in connection with idolatry are here and there, called "divine wood" and often marked with red ribbon. Birds and insects are placed alive in the back of some newly-made idols as sacrifices in order to bind their associated spirits to them. The lunar calendar is closely followed, and all religious and traditional events are based on it. (like in Jewish culture)

One can walk through noisy and bustling markets filled with the smell of internal organs, fresh produce, and incense wafting from the central temple (around which most traditional markets are based). Beggars and monks beg, stall owners call out to for you buy their wares, idol processions pass with blaring trumpets and pounding drums, navigating streets which are not always straight; a maze known to locals but confusing to outsiders.

The difference in 2015 is that those monks sometimes have smart phones, and you can get to those temples by taking the subway. But technology is merely a feature of life, and in the East (outside of Japan, perhaps, but to some extent even there) it rests much more lightly on the shoulders of culture.

In terms of Biblical culture, America is like having moved far away from the old family farm to a new house in the city, and your descendents having to look at pictures of old farmhouses and tractors and imagine what it was like for their family to have once lived there. Taiwan is like still living in a family farm, generations later. The old farmhouse has electricity now, and your tractor has GPS, but it's still an old farmhouse and tractor. You "get" that life, because you still live in that context, and the advances of technology are a comparatively minor difference compared to that major point in common.

For a more vivid example, imagine the difference between someone saying "there is a rabid dog loose in the next building," and "there is a rabid dog loose at the end of this hallway." In the former case you recognize the threat, but also that there is an effective separation between you and it. In the latter, you feel the force of the threat directly because there is nothing between you and it but an expanse of empty space. Taiwan feels like that; ancient times are only separated from you by the passing of generations here, and you feel their force.

So while those dwelling in the lands of suburbia or coffeeshopolis can only imagine what it might be like to live in the cultures of the Bible, in Taiwan one has the sense of what it would be like if those cultures were merely updated to the present, without any real breaks from the past. Give Paul a cellphone, Demetrius a megaphone to incite the protestors in Ephesus, stick King Agrippa in a motorcade, and maybe get the lecture hall of Tyrannus some whiteboards and a projector, and you get the idea.

Food Sacrificed to Idols: A Personal Example

If you have spent more than a couple years in church, you are probably familiar with the writings of Paul. One of the things Paul talks about, in one of his brilliant passages about Christian freedom/responsibility, is the question of eating food, in this case meat, which has been sacrificed to idols.

²⁵ Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience. ²⁶ For “the earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof.” ²⁷ If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. ²⁸ But if someone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience— ²⁹ I do not mean your conscience, but his. For why should my liberty be determined by someone else's conscience? ³⁰ If I partake with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of that for which I give thanks? ³¹ So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. (1 Corinthians 10:23-31, ESV)

I. Application in America:

This and passages like in it Paul's letters are sometimes invoked when one is considering issues like drinking alcohol for Christians. The Bible condemns drunkenness and a drunken lifestyle, but does not call alcoholic consumption itself a sin, yet there are Christians with such a strong tradition of abstinence from all alcohol that their conscience does not permit them to drink at all. In their case, then, abstaining is right and proper, and violating their conscience to drink would be sin. (Though a careful study of scripture might lead them to see that there is nothing inherently sinful about it, and if they changed their mind based not on pressure from other believers but on the testimony of scripture, then drinking would no longer be sinful for them) 

Paul both condemns their placing that rule on others (many pastors seem to totally ignore this passage), and also condemns attempting to persuade someone to violate their conscience. In other words, the one who does not drink alcohol cannot condemn the one who does (though he can exhort him to avoid drunkenness if that danger exists), but the one who drinks can't try to persuade the one who doesn't drink to have a drink with him, in violation of his conscience, and might best avoid drinking in front of him altogether. Paul is happy to give up a freedom out of concern for someone, yet strong in his condemnation of those who would take away the freedom altogether.

Now in America we would less frequently cite 1 Cor 8, and more commonly go to Romans 14 (which mentions both eating and drinking, and drinking wine). This is because the question of things having been sacrificed to idols is not really a pertinent one to us. Those passages can even make the Bible feel further away and less applicable to us today. (As I keep reminding people, that is not because the Bible is weird, but because we are weird, in terms of how all people throughout history and around the world have lived/live now.)

Gotquestions has a good article on the topic of meat/food sacrificed to idols, which in some ways underlines my point:

"One of the struggles in the early church concerned meat which had been sacrificed to idols. Debates over what to eat might seem strange to most of us in modern society, but to the first-century believers, it was a subject of great consequence. As the apostles dealt with the issue, they gave instructions on several broader topics with application for today..."

Americans often feel they have to get pretty abstract when looking for applications of scriptural teaching, because the culture in America is so different. It's hard to imagine a direct application of the passage about meat sacrificed to idols, and any attempt to cleverly figure out a cultural parallel is probably going to be a stretch at best. We can see the general lesson Paul is getting at, however, and that's good enough for us.

In Taiwan today, however, the passage can be applied a little more directly...

II. Application in Taiwan:

Table of food and spirit money laid out for ancestral spirits in my neighborhood a few days ago

In Taiwan, in AD2015 just as much as AD15, there is a direct and immediate application.

Idols are still worshipped, not abstract ones like wealth or popularity, but actual statues and figurines. Part of this worship involves placing food before them, often fruit and bowls of rice, but sometimes chickens, pigs, whole prepared meals and other things as well. (rituals differ in different sects, traditions, and places)

Similar tables, set out last week in front of a nearby Starbucks and bank

An additional form of idolatry is the worship/appeasement of ancestral spirits. Especially right now during Ghost Month in Taiwan, one can see tables loaded with snacks, incense, and spirit money (which gets burned later, in a ritual meant to send it into the spirit world so ancestors will have better status there too), laid out as an offering to spirits, to ask them not to bother the store, business performance, employees, or owners.

No one wants to waste all the snacks, so usually they all get divided up among the employees later, who take them home to their families and eat them.

Now imagine my surprise one day upon returning home to my apartment to find a couple little bags of what look like trash sitting in the hallway outside my door. A closer investigation revealed they were not trash, but actually snacks and a couple of drinks (tea and soda).

Some really Taiwanese snacks, plus Heysong Sarsaparilla and tea

Within a few seconds I guessed what had happened. It is not only businesses, but apartment buildings as well that will put out offering tables. I had in fact noticed a poster several days earlier on our bulletin board downstairs which notified residents that the offering would happen at a certain day and time, for anyone who wanted to attend the ceremony. (Because of the layout of our building and the road downstairs, they can't just leave the tables out all day) Seeing the snacks, I realized that it was in fact the day the bulletin had mentioned, and so it seemed one of my neighbors had thought of me and brought me back some of the snacks from the offering.

My initial reaction was to feel good that they had remembered me. (I moved in recently and have only recently met my neighbors and had one or two elevator conversations with them) Then, I pondered whether to eat the snacks or not.

It was sort of a funny surprise to realize that I had encountered a problem for which I could apply Paul's writings not only conceptually but very literally. Because I now live in a culture that stretches back to biblical times, the examples drawn from that cultural background suddenly were directly relevant to me.

So I looked up what Paul had said about eating offerings to idols, and again felt impressed when I realized I was now living in the world he was talking about. It was like stepping back in time, except I had really just left the West and entered the wider world, where many places haven't broken with the past on their way to the present.


III. To Eat, or Not to Eat?

Now I had to figure out whether I was going to eat the snacks or throw them away. Like the question about eating blood*, it's not something I take lightly or ignore as merely an issue for those times. Because while we may not see it in America, we still live in the world described in the Bible. God's rules don't simply vanish into the aether over the centuries, either He specifically released us from following them or we still have to.

(*- It's a common ingredient in food here, and I do eat it along with my Taiwanese friends, but only after deciding that it was not wrong as a Gentile Christian for me to do so, after a careful study of scripture and conversations/debates with a couple of Messianic Jewish friends) 

But it seems in this case, I had stumbled on a problem that first-century believers also faced, and therefore I had direct guidelines from Paul on how to deal with this:

1. (1 Cor 8:4-6) Paul clearly says that an idol is nothing of itself. While it's easy to see that idolatry is a short road to entanglement in evil spiritual influence (in Taiwan you can literally observe this), the idol itself is not a real god, and believers recognize that it is not a true god, nor participate in idolatry simply because the food has at one point been physically been located in front of it. (or in my case, on a table on display)

2. (Romans 14) Paul says that despite having freedom, we should not harm the spiritual life of fellow believers by causing them to violate their conscience. In this case no Taiwanese believers were present. If they had been, depending on who it was, it would probably be right to refrain from eating, knowing that it was a deep cultural issue for them, because of their former ways. (1 Cor 8:7) On the other hand, they might explain they too had cast off idolatry, demonstrated their allegiance to Christ through baptism, and regarded the food as nothing special, in which case this wouldn't specifically be a reason not to eat it, but an occasion to rejoice in our freedom in Christ and eat with thanks.

3. (1 Cor 10:27-29) Paul says that we can simply eat food that might have been sacrificed to idols without questions of conscience, but if someone informs us it was offered to idols, we should refrain from eating, not for our own sake but for theirs. In this case, it was exactly like verse 27. The food was simply left outside my door, without even a note saying where it came from or who had left it there. They also have no idea what I did with it, merely that it was gone if they ever came back and checked, since one can't leave bags of snacks sitting out in the hallway. On the other hand, had they knocked on my door while I was home and informed me that it had been offered in the "bai bai" (word in Taiwan for traditional rituals), and asked if, since they knew I was a Christian, I was able to eat it, a strong case can be made based on those verses that I would need to politely decline.

4. (1 Cor 10:30-31) Finally, Paul says that if our conscience is not bothered, we can eat (or drink), with thanks and giving glory to God. This is what I decided to do. Finding that, based on the other passages, I was not forbidden to eat in general, did not have the religious/cultural background that made it a matter of conscience for me, and would not be offending the conscience of anyone else, whether believers or nonbelievers, I ate the snacks with thanks, and appreciative that my neighbors had thought about me. My prayer is that one day they will know the true God, and rather than snacks from offering tables eaten separately, we might eat and drink Christ's Communion together and rejoice in the knowledge of the Lord who alone is worthy to receive the praise they had formerly been offering to idols and spirits.