Proof That You Need to Read the Bible More Carefully

Then two men will be in the field; one will be taken and one left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one left. Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.  –Matthew 24:40-42 ESV

What is this famous section of Scripture about?  The rapture right?  This describes the end times when God will remove the Christians from the world and bring them to heaven.  I’ve heard this taught many times.  No doubt you have too.  What I am about to say may shock you, because it certainly shocked me when I heard it.  This verse is absolutely NOT about the rapture.

Greg Koukl, the founder of the Stand to Reason apologetics ministry has a rule that I think we should all follow: “Never read a Bible verse.”  What he means is that unless you read a section of verses in context you run the risk of seriously misinterpreting a passage.  That is what is going on here.  Lets read the larger context.  Here are the verses right before the section I quoted above.

For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. –Matthew 24:37-39 ESV

So who is taken and swept away?  The wicked right?  That doesn’t sound like the rapture I know about.

Check this out, another parable of Jesus from Matthew. 

He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also.  And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn –Matthew 13:24-30 ESV

This parable is about the end times.  (Not my interpretation, Jesus says that it is)  What is gathered first?  The weeds.  What are the weeds?  Jesus explains later in the chapter that the weeds are the “sons of the evil one”.  That sure doesn’t sound like the rapture of the church to me.

Let me make it clear that I absolutely believe in the rapture.  But the verse I quoted in the beginning of this post has nothing to do with it.  So why did I used to think it did?  Why have we so often heard this verse preached, like it did?  There's a good chance that this realization bothers you, because I know for a fact it bothered me.  Why did I not notice this before?  It is right there, perfectly clear.

I am not trying to cause you to be suspicious of your pastor.  I am trying to cause you to recognize the need to study the Word of God for yourself.  When I was shown all this a few weeks back, it really convicted me.  How much about what I know of the Bible is something I just believe because I was told?  Lets all commit to study the Bible for ourselves.  If we do not, how will we know true teaching versus false teaching?  Lets not be spiritually lazy anymore.  It is not only your pastor’s job to make sure you know the truth about God.  It’s also your job.  Lets be like the Bereans who didn’t even take Paul’s word for it.  Is your pastor more trustworthy than Paul?

Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. –Acts 17:11 NIV

Answering Atheist Arguments: Interpretation = Excuses

“If it were God’s word it can, and should be taken literally right?  Interpretation = Excuses”

I’ve seen this statement uttered a number of times recently, by a variety of characters.  I’ve seen atheists use this when trying to promote their interpretation of a seemingly embarrassing section of scripture.  I’ve also seen self-identified believers say this to promote faulty theology using the so-called, “plain meaning” of a text.   Is it really true that everything in the Bible should be taken literally, as the atheist claims?

I actually would like to answer this question by sympathizing with the atheist skepticism here.  There are a great deal of difficult passages in the Bible that Christians are far too quick to dismiss as not being literal.  This can lead to suspicion on the part of the skeptic.   If the Bible can’t be taken literally, then can’t it literally mean whatever you want it to mean?  If so, then it is literally meaningless.

I think the correct view to take here is in agreement with the atheist.  The Bible should be taken literally in what it teaches.  However, this does not mean that we must ignore obvious figurative language that is contained in the scriptures.  Not every word in the Bible is meant to be taken literally, but every teaching is.  The Bible is written in various types of a literary styles and this effects what a “literal teaching” of the Bible means.  Here are some examples:

In Psalms 94:1, the psalmist writes of God that, “under his wings you will find refuge.” Taken literally this implies that God has “wings” and we will find refuge under them.  But clearly the Psalms are poems.  Poems by definition are full of figurative language.  God does not have wings.  Yet there is absolutely a literal truth here.  There is something about God and our relationship with him, that is like a bird who covers her chicks with her wings for protection.  Our job is to interpret what literal truth this figurative language tries to convey. 

How about something a little more difficult?  In Matthew 3:11, John the Baptist speaking of Jesus says,

“I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

I have heard people teach that the “fire” John says Jesus will baptize with is figurative for some kind of cleansing power that his baptism will have, and it may be so.  But do we have good reason to believe this?

As it happens, the word “fire” is used in both the preceding and following verses, both times referring to literal fire as part of a larger figure of speech.

10“Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

11 “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

It seems to me that the “fire” in verse 11 is possibly a figure.  But the idea that it represents some kind of “cleansing power” of the baptism is foreign to the text, and I think is an inappropriate attempt to soften what John is saying.  The “fire” in both verse 10 and 12 is referring to a destruction of something undesirable; fruitless trees in verse 10, and chaff in verse 12.  We have every reason to believe that the “fire” that Jesus will baptize with according to verse 11 is a similar kind of destruction of something undesirable.   Verse 11 talks about Jesus coming to the world to baptize.  Some will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.  (Believers) Others will be baptized with fire that may very well be literal. (Un-believers)

As you can see, coming to this conclusion did require a degree of interpretation.  This is called hermeneutics.  But does this process of interpretation mean that you do not assume a literal meaning?  No.  We should assume a literal meaning unless there is good reason not to.  As someone who reads the Bible, whether a believer or skeptic, you should have a hermeneutical approach that is careful not to read into a text that which is not there.  This may mean that you will have think carefully about how things are worded.  This is part of what it is to read an ancient text.  It takes a certain amount of work, but if literal meaning is to be ascertained, it is necessary.

Atheists tend to read all kinds of meaning into the Bible that really isn’t there.  Especially when it comes to the Old Testament.  The best approach to take when encountering this objection, is to just agree: 

Yes the Bible should be taken literally in what it teaches.  But we have to interpret what it teaches through careful examination.  This interpretation cannot be arbitrary and often times take work.  Interpretation is not “excuses”.   It is just an honest approach to understanding.  Sound interpretation is a critical element of any kind of real knowledge be it scientific, historical or spiritual.

Atheism: Irrational, Unknowable and Futile

I recently had an interesting exchange online and I thought I would share.

I was talking to a very active and intelligent Twitter atheist, and he went on a long rant about all the neuroscience that he says proves God is a delusion.  I listened to his complex arguments for a few minutes and when he was done I asked a very simple question:

“What kind of evidence or criteria would you accept to show that God was not a delusion?”

He said, “Easy….I want Jesus to show up at the UN and tell mankind something they couldn’t possibly know.  See I say the UN, because I know enough science to know that I can't trust my own brain, if I saw Jesus and talked to him it wouldn’t convince me.”

First, notice that he is asking for a straight up miracle.  He is not asking for historical evidence or anything like that.  He is asking for a personalized miracle.  There is literally nothing that I can say or show him evidentially that will convince this guy.  Only a blind miracle preformed by Jesus himself, specifically for him, will do.  All his prior requests for evidence or rational arguments have been disingenuous.  At this point, my work as a Christian is to simply pray for this man.  As irrational as I think he is being, I cannot personally do anything for him.  All I can do is pray that Jesus do a miracle in his life.  God may have mercy on him.  Or he might not.  That is not my call.

But notice something else about what he has just said.  Without knowing it, he has just conceded the entire case to me.  In one short statement he has reminded us why atheism/naturalism is ultimately futile.  “I know enough science to know that I cant trust my own brain, if I saw Jesus and talked to him it wouldn’t convince me.”  If he cannot trust his own brain on something as straight forward and simple as being able to know what he plainly observes, why in the world does he trust it to evaluate complex neuroscience claims properly?    Why should I trust his conclusion if he cannot even trust it?

Atheism is self-defeating.  This man’s argument destroys itself.  Ultimately, if you don’t have any way to ground the legitimacy of reason, or logic, or science – and atheists don’t – you have no way to know anything at all.  For all the atheist chatter about how much we know from science, we actually have no way of even knowing whether or not the scientific method is even legitimate.  Think about it.  How do we know that science and reason works?  Now, I believe they do work and that we can ground rationality/science in God’s existence.  But as an atheist you can’t possibly know whether or not these things are real.  You’ll end up like my friend here, admitting that as an atheist he can’t really “know” even that which he plainly sees.  

But we can “know” things for sure.  I know this, you know this, and the atheist knows this.  The only way we can legitimately “know” things, is if we can somehow ground what we know in a standard that exists outside of ourselves.  The theist has a solution to this problem.  The atheist does not.  The fact that we can “know” things and that rationality is legitimate, is actually a strong piece of evidence that points to the existence of God.

Check out this book on the subject.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.”  -Proverbs 1:7

Book Review Chapter 1: Science, once again, confirms ancient biblical teaching.

Book Review: “Why we believe in god(s)” by J. Anderson Thompson Jr.

I was prompted to read this book by a Twitter atheist with a large following.  His avatar is a picture of the Bible with the word “False!” in big letters across the front, so there is no question as far as where he stands about Christianity.  This book, in his opinion, would be a good introduction for me into the science of why most people believe in God, even though he does not exist.

One of this guy’s main points when he shouts down a Christian is that we wouldn’t be a Christian unless we, 1) were born with an inferior, “god prone” mind, and 2) were born to Christian parents or in a Christian area.  He likes to tell me that if I was born in Saudi Arabia, chances are I would be a Muslim, therefore my Christianity cannot be rational.  This is a common error atheists often make, known as the “genetic fallacy”.  It is a fallacy because citing where the belief comes from does nothing to show if the belief itself is true or false.  He is probably right, if I were born in Saudi Arabia, I’d likely be a Muslim.  So would my Atheist friend if he were born there!  Clearly that fact has nothing to do whether Atheism is true or not.  In fact, if I were to argue the way my friend argued (which I won’t because its such an obviously fallacious line of thinking) I could say, “the only reason you are an atheist is because you were born in western culture!” or, “your parents are atheists, so your own atheism cannot be rational.”  Both of these ideas are obviously fallacious.

In any case, here are my thoughts on this book, chapter by chapter.

Chapter 1

The first chapter is about the scientific evidence that human beings, as a species, have a propensity to believe in gods.  There is something about the way our minds work that throughout history, whether its ancient Egypt, Aztecs, Greeks, etc., have made all cultures revolve around the belief in a god or many gods.  In the beginning of the chapter he says,

“if an all-powerful, all-seeing god does exist, he designed into the creation and evolution of man something powerful: the propensity to believe in a god.”  (Thompson, 27)

With my mind’s eye I could see my atheist friend folding his hands in satisfaction as I read that line, thinking, “Gotcha.”, as if this insight was so profound as to prove my God a fraud.

The only problem is that this idea is not profound at all.  It was taught 2000 years ago.  It was taught in the Bible by Paul.  Now Paul didn’t know the science behind it of course, but Paul knew that human beings were created with a propensity to believe in gods, even if they lacked the knowledge to know the God who is actually there.  The following is from the book of Acts, written by Luke, describing Paul as he addresses the city of Athens:

 So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious.  For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us,  - Acts 17: 22-27

As it so often happens, 2000 years ago the Bible taught something that modern science affirms for us today.  Yes, God has created us with a desire to seek him.  Some use this desire and follow falsely, religious systems set up by men.  Some use this desire and find God.

The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. -Acts 17:30-31

So the book is off to a weak start.  I will follow up with more thoughts on this in future posts.