Uninvented: David the Unlikely King

Uninvented: David the Unlikely King

Sep 10, 2022 | Uninvented

I wrote in Uninvented how impossible it would be to invent the story of David’s choice to be the future king of Israel. What makes it believable, biblical speaking, is that it’s perfectly consistent with God’s choosing those he will use to establish his kingdom on earth, the most unlikely from a human perspective. If you know your Bible, this is not news. However, for those who think the Bible is merely a human book, I encourage them to consider why this is evidence for the veracity of the Bible’s claim to be a divine book.

If it was human, we would expect it to communicate things from a typically human perspective. For example, consistently using weak and terribly flawed people to make a religious story believable is not a good strategy. But the stories told from beginning to the end upend all cultural expectations of the times in which they were written. And not just upend them marginally, but completely and totally. That is a significant fact for the divine historicity of the stories. David’s choice as Israel’s future king is a good example, but several came before.

In the ancient world, the oldest male in the family got all the perks. In the biblical stories, it’s the youngest or younger who gets God’s blessing. If these stories were made up in the ancient world where does this counter cultural message come from if there is no precedent for it? Good question. Without God writing the story, it’s unexplainable. It just is. That’s not a satisfying explanation. God’s purposes in the history of redemption is a much more plausible explanation. So, before they’re even born, God picks Isaac over Esau, the younger over the older. Of Jacob’s twelve sons who will become the twelve tribes of Israel, it is the youngest, Joseph, who ends up of the hero of the story saving Israel from starvation in Egypt. In the Exodus, it is the first-born male who will pay the price of death for the Pharaoh’s sin, not exactly what you’d expect in a culture and society that exalts the first born male.

In the next significant step in redemptive history, there is David, the runt of the litter. The most unlikely of the sons of Jesse to become king of Israel. Saul, Israel’s first king whom he replaces, the prototypical king who stands literally head and shoulders above all his peers, fails miserably. You have to read the story of how the Lord instructs Samuel to pick David (I Sammuel 16) to appreciate how uninvented it would have been in the ancient world; it can only be explained plausibly in divine terms. Samuel gets to Bethlehem, which will be the birthplace of the future Messiah, and picks Jesse because one of his sons will be the future king of Israel. When Samuel sees the most impressive physical specimen among them, he says what any normal human being would, especially in the ancient world: “Surely the Lord’s anointed stands here before the Lord.” Nope:

 7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

Oh, how guilty we all are of looking on appearance as if that is the true measure of the person. Paul says that since Christ died for us, we no longer regard anyone “according to the flesh,” or in the NIV, “from a worldly point of view.” I gotta work on that!

Jesse then parades all seven of his sons before Samuel, and each one is rejected as not chosen by the Lord. Samuel asks Jesse if these are all the sons he has, and his reply is pure uninvented credible:

“There is still the youngest,” Jesse answered. “He is tending the sheep.”

What? Not only is he the youngest, but he’s a shepherd! A normal career path to king in the ancient world did not go through the sheep pasture. The high school guidance counselor would say that is not a good move. Anyone tending sheep is most certainly not aspiring to be king.

As we know, the Bible is generally sparse in its description of events, partly by necessity. Writing was a laborious and expensive process, so the fewer words to communicate a message the better. What we don’t often see are the psychological and emotional reactions, unless they are necessary to convey something God in his providence felt we need to know. So, I try to imagine the reactions of Jesse and his sons, and their confusion and utter incredulity it wasn’t one of them chosen to be anointed king.

Samuel then tells them to send for David, and I wonder what the time waiting must have been like. This would have been a huge deal, and they all knew it. There was likely jealousy and envy, and more than a little anger, “You mean, that little snot nosed kid over me!” Yep:

12 So he sent for him and had him brought in. He was glowing with health and had a fine appearance and handsome features.

Then the Lord said, “Rise and anoint him; this is the one.”

You imagine dad and the sons thinking, it can’t be! But he’s a shepherd! We can’t know how any of this went down, of course, but given how culturally upside-down and inside-out this was, you just can’t make this stuff up!

 

 

The Powerful Conversion Story of Shia LaBeouf

The Powerful Conversion Story of Shia LaBeouf

Sep 5, 2022 | Explanatory Power, Uncategorized

God has given us another powerful cultural moment for truth in a most unlikely conversion to Christianity. The other moment I’m referring to happened a few years back in the most unlikely conversion to Christianity of Kanye West. In this case actor Shia LaBeouf has become a Christian of the Catholic variety. If you haven’t seen this discussion with Bishop Barron, it’s well worth the time.

A few years back I started listening to testimonies, and it’s been one of the best things I’ve ever done. The creative ways God uses to save his people from their sin is endlessly fascinating to me, and yet more evidence that he is real, and that Christianity is true. Human psychology alone can’t explain it, only God in Christ can.

I was raised Catholic, but when I was 18 became a “born-again” Christian and rejected my Catholic upbringing. For several years in my ignorant youth, I was virulently anti-Catholic, then over time I began to learn about serious Catholics I respected and my attitude toward Catholicism changed. I led my younger cousin to Christ, who had also been a nominal Catholic, but years later he went back to his Catholicism. He tried to convince me that Rome was the true church, but while open to listening to him, his arguments were never persuasive. However, I know God works through the Catholic church and Christians who embrace it, and this troubled young man is a beautiful example of it.

As I’ve grown older in life and my faith, I’ve realized that God works through people who I may think have the “wrong” theology. In doing this, I don’t think they are any less wrong than I think I’m right, but it just matters less to me than it used to. A passage in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians has become more meaningful to me as I realize how little I really know. In chapter 8 Paul writes:

Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that “We all possess knowledge.” But knowledge puffs up while love builds up. 2 If anyone thinks he knows something he does not yet know as he ought to know. 3 But whoever loves God is known by God.

There is a lot to unpack here, but Paul gives us a perfect perspective on our knowing, in philosophical terms epistemology. This can be a deep and complex conversation and has taken much time and argument in modern philosophy (from Descartes in the 17th century to today), but put simply we can know things. Verse two is not a call to skepticism, that we can’t know, but a call for epistemological humility. True knowledge is possible, but our knowing is always limited because we are finite creatures. And most importantly, our knowing is not the important part of the equation, but God knowing us. We tend to get that very backward.

So, as a convinced Reformed Christian, aka Calvinist, I can still appreciate this discussion between a new Catholic Christian, and a very knowledgeable Catholic Bishop. God’s sovereign power and amazing creativity in bringing his people to himself, i.e., saving them from their sins (redemption applied he accomplished on the cross), never ceases to amaze me. I think Calvin and his followers got it right, that God’s sovereignty applies to his grace as it does to every other part of his character. When you hear Shia LaBeouf’s conversion story I think you’ll agree.

The January 6 Detainees: The American Gulag

The January 6 Detainees: The American Gulag

Sep 4, 2022 | Politics & Government, Uncategorized

In cast you are not familiar with what’s going on in the American in-justice system under the current regime in Washington, DC, you need to be. It is horrific, sad, and mostly infuriating. It’s almost inconceivable such things are happening in the United States of America, almost. In case you are not familiar with the word Gulag: 

[It is a] system of Soviet labor camps and accompanying detention and transit camps and prisons that from the 1920s to the mid-1950s housed the political prisoners and criminals of the Soviet Union. At its height, the Gulag imprisoned millions of people. The name Gulag had been largely unknown in the West until the publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956 (1973), whose title likens the labor camps scattered through the Soviet Union to an island chain.

Right here in the good old US of A, the Biden justice department is persecuting political prisoners; that is not supposed to happen in America. And this is far bigger than Donald Trump, regardless of what you think of the man.

If you only get your news from legacy media, you will not know that the January 6, 2021 “insurrection” was a setup by the FBI, and other government actors to take down Donald Trump and discredit the entire MAGA movement. In case you doubt that incontrovertible fact, I would encourage you to go to Revolver News and read and listen to what the facts in fact show to be truth. The corruption of our most powerful law enforcement agency is stunning, as is the entire supposed justice system that runs it.

In case you doubt me, and even if you don’t, I implore you to listen to an interview by Daniel Horowitz did on August 22 with Joseph McBride, a lawyer representing some of the J-6 defendants. The title says is all: “The Sickening Persecution of January 6 Defendants.” From the description:

After today’s show, there will be no doubt we are indeed living in the Fourth Reich. I show how at a time when violent criminals are getting off with a slap on the wrist, those accused of political crimes are being subjected to torture. We are joined by Joseph McBride, one of the lead attorneys for some prominent January 6 defendants, who offers a riveting but sickening presentation about the torture of J6 defendants at the hands of federal and D.C. officials. This was a setup from day one, and the government used it to weaponize law enforcement, the legal system, and society against anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their pagan fanaticism. Which is why the same people not only excuse but even encourage real violent criminals, anarchy, and the breakdown of societal order.

You will learn why Gulag is an apt analogy. They may be getting away with this in the short run, but God in his mercy and grace is revealing the leftist Democrat thugs perpetrating this evil for what they are, and in due course real justice will be done.

Uninvented: Did Moses Write the Pentateuch? Let’s Consider Deuteronomy 31

Uninvented: Did Moses Write the Pentateuch? Let’s Consider Deuteronomy 31

Sep 3, 2022 | Uninvented

The word Pentateuch comes from Greek and means simply “five books” and includes Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy (called the Torah in Hebrew meaning teaching, instruction, or law). For most of Jewish and Christian history it was believed these books were written by Moses, and this chapter near the end tells us why. Before we get there and take a little uninvented look at the topic, let’s take a brief look at some history in biblical criticism regarding this topic.

It wasn’t until the mid-1600s, and a Jewish Philosopher named Spinoza that anyone thought to question whether Moses actually wrote these books. This shocked his Jewish community, and along with his philosophy, did not make him popular; he was excommunicated. But once the genie was out of the bottle, it never went back in. The primary motivation causing Spinoza to deny Mosaic authorship goes back to his very convoluted philosophy which wouldn’t allow for things like God’s creation of the universe ex-nihilo (out of nothing), or seas parting, or God revealing and making himself a people by his supernatural divine power. The industry of biblical criticism learned well what Spinoza practiced: a question-begging anti-supernatural bias. Having been influenced by the growing skeptical philosophy of his day, he assumed miracles couldn’t happen. His strange notion of whatever God was wouldn’t allow it. In effect, he rejected the God of the Bible before he ever got to the Bible because philosophy was his Bible, i.e., his ultimate authority.

Having become a Christian as a freshman in college at Arizona State University (44 years ago!), I decided to take a class having something to do with the Bible. I was excited to learn about this Bible I was recently introduced to, and taking a class seemed like a good way to learn more about it. Little did I know I would get my introduction to biblical criticism, and how scholars treated the Bible as just another human book. I’m very stubborn, so it didn’t cause me to doubt the divine inspiration of Scripture. Rather it ticked me off. As green and ignorant as I was as an 18- or 19-year-old, it was apparent to me these critics were completely arbitrary. Knowing nothing about the logical fallacy of question begging, it was clear to me even then that their God-less assumptions made their “biblical criticism” unpersuasive, to say the least. I learned from that class, and much more in seminary, how non-Christian biblical scholars treated the Pentateuch.

Since they “know” Moses didn’t write it, scholars came up with creative and speculative explanations for who might have. The two dominant ways are the documentary hypotheses, and the JEDP theory. These cholars assume the Bible is merely a human document because their worldview demands it. They can’t prove that, nor do they even try, or does it even occur to them they should. To them it’s obvious what those fundamentalist Christians and Catholics believe is crazy, and intellectually unworthy of true scholars. That’s faith; they believe they’re doing “science.” All the while they’re blindly begging the question, majorly!

Most non-Christian biblical critical scholars, and most are not Christian, believe there are some historical events in the first five books of the Bible, but what has come down to us is mostly oral tradition written down during or after the Babylonian exile of the Jews in the 500s BC. It’s comparable to Homer’s Iliad, an epic poem about the Trojan War written in the late 8th or early 7th century BC. There was likely a war between the Greeks and the Trojans, but Homer, if he wrote it, added a religious subtext of the fictitious gods to some possible historical events. Likewise, non-Christian scholars will say there may have been something to do with Egypt and the Hebrews, but we’re not sure exactly what, and whatever came down to the Jews in Babylon, they in effect took what little history was there, and invented the rest. Or something like that.

That’s quite a claim, but is it true? If it is, the Bible is not what it claims to be, and it’s basically a farce. If we look at Deuteronomy 31 with uninvented eyes, I believe we’ll come to a different conclusion. Moses as the author of the first five books of the Bible is far more plausible than speculative theories based on anti-supernatural bias.

As in the rest of the books of the Pentateuch, the chapter is written in the third person, so we read: “Then Moses went out and spoke these words to all Israel . . .” Or, “Then Moses summoned Joshua and said to him in the presence of all Israel . . .” This implies someone else wrote it, and those of us who believe Moses was the author of the Pentateuch don’t think it was he alone who wrote every word, but that he was the primary author. The real author is God, of course, but the man Moses was its physical author. We read:

9 So Moses wrote down this law and gave it to the Levitical priests, who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the elders of Israel.

The Lord then said:

19 “Now write down this song and teach it to the Israelites and have them sing it, so that it may be a witness for me against them.

And

22 So Moses wrote down this song that day and taught it to the Israelites.

And finally:

24 After Moses finished writing in a book the words of this law from beginning to end, 25 he gave this command to the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord:

We are confronted with two choices. Either Moses wrote “in a book the words of this law from beginning to end,” or he didn’t. If he didn’t, everything written in the first five books of the Bible, which all Jews considered “the law,” are myths, fairy tales, or outright lies. They are not history, and thus we can’t trust them as truth. If the non-Christian critical scholars are right, then who cares what these books say. I’m not interested. I have better things to do than waste my time on what are essentially lies. If we trust Jesus and the Apostles, however, then Moses indeed “wrote down this law,” and as Jesus tells us quoting from Deuteronomy 8:

“It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

“It is written” means God said it, that settles it! I think I’ll pass on the biblical critic’s question begging and go with Jesus on this.

Saints & Sinners Unplugged Uninvented Interview

Saints & Sinners Unplugged Uninvented Interview

Sep 1, 2022 | Uninvented

I got my big showbiz break on the Saints & Sinners Unplugged podcast hosted by my friend, pastor Ken Jones of Glendale Baptist Church in Miami. This was my first podcast interview to discuss my new international best seller, Uninvented, and I trust there are many more to come. For six years Ken and three other Miami area pastors have engaged in “Gospel conversations for a modern church desperately in need of returning to the basic message of grace through Jesus Christ.” I knew of Ken from his many years as a staple on The White Horse Inn, and when my best friend moved to Miami and started to go to his church, I got to know Ken and learn of the podcast. They had me on to discuss my first book, The Persuasive Christian Parent, and decided they could take a chance on me for a second time, for which I am grateful.