| Q. I notice that in your book The Beauty Behind the Mask you reference The Modern Reader’s Bible, edited by Richard Moulton, and you offer some criticism of his choice of book order and book titles. I own a copy of that book, as well as Moulton’s book The Literary Study of the Bible, both of which I purchased years ago at a used book store. He has other books about the Bible and literature that can now be found online. Moulton aimed to lay out the text of the Bible according to the literary structure—perhaps a forerunner of The Books of the Bible edition. Although I do not regularly read from The Modern Reader’s Bible, I do refer to it to notice how it lays out the poetic structure, and I notice that Moulton in his notes has an overarching system of the literary forms of the Bible, from simple to complex. My question is how valid and useful are his views, his literary theory of the Bible, and his Bible edition, all more than 100 years old, considered today? Did he have insight that is still valuable and been forgotten, or has modern scholarship rendered it obsolete? The short answer to your question is that Moulton’s analysis, in my opinion, is still very valuable. While, as you noted, I differ with him about some details, overall he is asking the same questions and pursuing the same goals as we did in producing The Books of the Bible. Now here is the long answer to your question. God gave us his word in the Bible by using not only existing human languages—Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek—but also by using existing human literary forms: psalms (songs), epistles (letters), parables, proverbs, stories, visions (dreams), and so forth. If we really want to understand what God is saying to us through the Bible, we need to appreciate the Bible for what it is: a collection of literary compositions. That is what the Bible is made of. Unfortunately, most people who engage the Bible treat it as if it were made of something else. One common way to engage the Bible is as if it were made up of “verses.” These are taken to be short doctrinal propositions or “precious promises” or “thoughts to live by.” Since Bible verses each seem to have their own indexing (e.g. John 3:16), and since published versions of the Bible number them right in the text (some editions even print each verse as a separate paragraph), they seem to be intentional divisions of the text—the basic building blocks of the Bible. But as I point out in The Beauty Behind the Mask, chapters were only added to the Bible around the year 1200 and verses were only added around 1550. They are late, artificial divisions introduced for convenience of reference, most often for the sake of reference in the course of discussions and debates. It is not a coincidence that verses were added to the Bible around the time of the many theological debates of the Reformation. A friend of mine calls the chapter-and-verse Bible a “debater’s Bible.” But that visual presentation suggests that the Bible is something that it is not. Suppose that all you had of Shakespeare was a collection of “famous quotations.” For example: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” Hamlet, Act 2, scene 2. “What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, scene 2. “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them,” Twelfth Night, Act 2, scene 5. These are certainly interesting and valuable thoughts to consider and apply to life. But what Shakespeare wrote was drama for the theater. If you haven’t seen his plays acted on stage, you haven’t engaged his writings for what they are. Similarly, if you only reference “Bible verses,” you haven’t engaged the biblical writings for what they are. Another way people engage the Bible is as if it consisted of short articles on various topics, like an encyclopedia. Printed editions of the Bible foster this understanding by separating the text into sections that each have their own headings. People tend to read section by section, and preachers often preach on one section at a time, so this is another answer people have implicitly in their heads to the question of what the Bible is made of. Just by looking at most Bibles published today, they can only conclude that it is made of “sections.” But these sections do not do justice to the literary character of the compositions in the Bible. Translation committees and publishers create and label them not with a view toward literary structure but simply with a view towards subject matter or topic. These titled sections encourage “dipping in” rather than experiencing the biblical compositions as a whole. They also suggest an objective, distanced approach to the topics that are apparently taken up, as in an encyclopedia, rather than that the writers are immersed in the situations they are writing about, sometimes literally in a life-and-death struggle. So engaging the Bible through “sections” is also not engaging its writings for what they are. Yet another way that people engage the Bible is as the subject of an academic discipline. This is what you were asking about specifically in terms of an assessment of Moulton’s analysis. It’s important to realize that when we engage the Bible, there is a “world behind the text,” a “world of the text,” and a “world in front of the text.” The world behind the text is the historical and cultural context in which the Bible was written. Much of academic study of the Bible deals with that. The world in front of the text is the reactions and responses to the text by all the people who are receiving it in various ways. In academic circles, this would be all of the scholars in the field of biblical studies and their various publications. Much of the remaining part of academic study of the Bible has to do with addressing what various other scholars have said about the Bible. Engaging the biblical works as literary compositions is often regarded as outside the scope of biblical studies, as something that falls within the realm of literary studies instead. (And indeed, courses on the Bible are a required part of many college literature majors, since the Bible is such a foundational influence on the literature of many languages and cultures.) The structures of biblical books sometimes are discussed within the field of biblical studies, but my personal feeling is that this is not done in a progressive or cumulative way. In other words, I do not feel that we have come to understand these structures better and better as biblical studies has progressed over the years, so that anything Moulton might have written over a century ago must of course be obsolete by now. Rather—and again, this is a personal feeling—as biblical studies takes up various suggestions about structure in the course of its own conversation, different views come in and out of vogue as the conversation progresses. So for myself, to assess Moulton’s contributions, I would instead ask how the people who, over time, have engaged the biblical books as literary compositions have seen them to be put together on their own terms. This question of literary structure is one (along with the questions of circumstances of composition, literary genre, and thematic development) that Mortimer Adler and Charles van Doren encourage readers to address in their classic work How to Read a Book. It is also a question that various approaches to inductive Bible study encourage readers to pursue first, in light of an overall reading of a book: what are its major and minor divisions? Those are to be determined independently of chapters and verses and of any divisions that publishers have introduced. When we approach the Bible this way, we find, as I show in The Beauty Behind the Mask, pp. 139–143, that the various people who, down through the years, have sought to offer literary-structural presentations of the biblical books have ended up identifying essentially the same outlines, even though these may differ in some smaller details. Richard Moulton is one of these people, and I would say that his overall approach is still one that we can learn much from today. We certainly saw him as someone who helped blaze the trail for The Books of the Bible. Indeed, we knew we were standing on his shoulders as we did our work, and we were and are grateful for his contributions. Let me conclude, therefore, by quoting from his preface to The Modern Reader’s Bible: “The revelation which is the basis of our modern religion has been made in the form of literature: grasp of its literary structure is the true starting-point for spiritual interpretation.” |
Do the blank lines of varying widths in The Books of the Bible signify book sections of varying sizes?
Q, I have a question about The Books of the Bible. I notice that there are blank lines between text, and that sometimes there is one blank line, sometimes two, and sometimes three. Do these correspond with the structure used in Inductive Bible Study? So do three blank lines separate the divisions, two blank lines the sections, and one blank line the segments? I am looking at the Gospel of Matthew. I notice that there is sometimes a blank line separating what I would call paragraphs, and not segments. Thanks.
You are correct. The blank lines identify literary units of varying sizes. In the Gospel of Matthew, three blank lines (and a large capital letter) mark off the largest units. These units are described in the introduction to Matthew: “five thematic sections consisting of story plus teaching,” with a genealogy preceding and a narrative of Jesus’ sufferings, death, and resurrection following. I think you would call these largest units “divisions.”
Two blank lines mark off the next-largest units. Each thematic division begins with a story sequence, followed by a speech sequence (discourse) that elaborates on the theme of those stories. So two blank lines separate story from discourse within thematic units. I think you would call the story and discourse units “sections.”
Three blank lines mark off the smallest units, which are the episodes in the stories or the rhetorical passages in the discourses. For example, there are single blank lines between the episodes of Jesus’ birth, the preaching of John the Baptist, the baptism of Jesus, and the temptation of Jesus. In the Sermon on the Mount, there are single blank lines between Jesus’ discussions of fulfilling the law, the practice of piety (alms, prayer, fasting), and money. I think you would call these units “segments.”
In some cases an episode is brief, only one paragraph long, so in that case a single paragraph also constitutes a “segment.”
These divisions work bottom-up. If a biblical book has literary units on only two levels, then the edition will use only spaces of one and two lines. For example, in 2 John, there are two-line spaces between the opening, main body, and conclusion of the letter. The conventions of letter-writing in the opening and conclusion (sender’s name, addressee, blessing; travel plans, greetings) are separated by one-line spaces.
In The Books of the Bible, there is a brief introduction to each book, and it discusses, among other things, the literary structure that this edition uses blank lines to mark in that book.
I hope this is helpful. Enjoy your reading!
Is it blasphemy to throw a Bible in anger?
Q. If a person is angry and throws the Bible, would God consider that a form of blasphemy? If He would, then am I to assume this person is going to hell?
God takes extenuating circumstances into account. We know this because Jesus himself said on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Anger is an extenuating circumstance. When people become very angry, they say and do things that they don’t really mean. God would recognize that a person who threw a Bible in anger was not making a definitive choice to reject him or his word. People go to hell for choosing—consciously, deliberately, and definitively—against God. They don’t go to hell for losing their temper.
Jesus also said, “People will be forgiven for every sin and blasphemy, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.” It’s important to understand what Jesus meant by both parts of this statement.
As for “blasphemy against the Spirit,” as I say in this post, that phrase refers to “the act of attributing the work of the Holy Spirit to Satan. The reason this sin ‘can’t be forgiven’ is not because the person has done something so bad that it’s beyond the reach of God’s forgiveness. The Bible stresses that Jesus’ death on the cross is sufficient for the forgiveness of any and all sins that any human being might commit. Rather, if we attribute the work of the Holy Spirit to Satan, then this will make us resist the work of the Holy Spirit, and His gracious influences will not be able to bring us to repentance and salvation. In other words, Jesus isn’t saying that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. He’s saying that it can not be forgiven, because it separates us from the very influence that’s meant to lead us to forgiveness.” I don’t feel that this describes a person who throws a Bible in anger.
The other part of Jesus’ statement, about “speaking a word against the Son of Man,” refers to people, both in his time and in later times, who don’t realize at first who Jesus is and so deny that the is the Savior. Jesus is saying that he will not hold this (or any other word or deed of disrespect) against them. Instead, he will always seek to draw them to himself as the Savior. I think there is a valid analogy here. If blasphemy against the living Word of God, Jesus, can be forgiven, then words or deeds against the written word of God, the Bible, can also be forgiven. So there is not a danger here of an “unpardonable sin” that would inevitably make a person go to hell.
The Bible does say further, however, “Be angry but do not sin.” Anger, in and of itself, is simply an emotion. There are many good reasons to become angry (at injustice, for example), and the powerful emotion of anger can serve as motivation to help us make changes in the world and in our own lives. (People sometimes say, “I got good and mad at myself and finally did something about it.”) So the real issue is what we do with our anger. If we “lose our temper” (that is, we let our anger get out of control) and we say and do things that we don’t really mean and that we regret afterwards, then that is probably the kind of anger that the Bible considers sinful. That is certainly the case if we say or do things that are hurtful or harmful to other people.
But there is a remedy for sin. The Bible promises us, “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” So I would encourage someone who had thrown a Bible in anger to apologize to God and ask forgiveness. That person could be confident of God’s forgiveness based on the promise I just quoted. It would then be good to ask “how did this happen?” and try to establish new patterns in life that would keep anger from getting out of control.
One final observation. As a wise person once told me, when it comes to human expressions of emotions toward God, “God can take it.” God isn’t going to overreact to his own creatures’ blustering. In fact, God wants us to express our emotions to him, across the entire range. The Scriptures themselves provide us with many examples of this, particularly in the Psalms. David says at the start Psalm 13, for example, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” He is certainly expressing frustration and disappointment, and perhaps impatience and even anger. Yet the Bible presents his prayer to us as a model for our own prayers to God. So those should be honest, heart-felt, and yes, emotional. God already knows what we are feeling. So there’s no reason why our prayers shouldn’t reflect and express those feelings.
But our prayers should be respectful. One “fruit of the Spirit” in the life of believers is self-control. While we should feel what we feel and express what we feel, we should also look to God to build the character of Christ in our lives so that we don’t lose control of our emotions. So I guess I would say to a person who had thrown a Bible in anger that there is both a promise of forgiveness for genuine repentance and an opportunity for spiritual growth that the episode is pointing to.
If humans are made in the image of God, how are they “lower than the angels”?
Q. David says in Psalm 8:5 that God has made humans “a little lower than the angels.” Does this mean that angels higher than humans? If so, in what way are they higher than humans? Are angels, like humans, made in the image of God? If not, wouldn’t that make humans higher than angels? But then, if that is the case, I am not sure how to reconcile the view that humans are higher than angels with Psalm 8:5. I would very much appreciate your help with answering these questions.
I think the reference in Psalm 8 is to the position of humans within creation, rather than to status and dignity of humans as creatures made in the image of God. David does say, “You have made them a little lower than the angels.” But he then says, in parallel, “You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet.” He goes on to specify, in beautiful poetry, that this means “all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.” This is the three-part division that we see in the creation account in Genesis: land, sky, and sea. So David means “over all the rest of creation.”
In other words, “a little lower than the angels,” who inhabit the heavenly realm, actually means “higher than any other creature in the earthly realm.” Once again, this has to do with position, not status and dignity. People are God’s vice-regents on earth. That is, they have the role of ruling the earth as God’s authorized representatives. This is a great privilege, but also a great responsibility. We are to be wise and careful stewards of the earth and its creatures.
As for the specific relationship between people and angels, the book of Hebrews says that angels are “ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation.” In the vision that the apostle John reports in the book of Revelation, at one point he wanted to fall down and worship one of the angels he was seeing. But the angel told him, “Don’t do that! I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers and sisters who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God!”
So it is clear that people are not inferior to angels, not if angels are their fellow servants and even serve them. In addition, Paul wrote to the Corinthians that believers will one day “judge angels.” He did not specify what this meant, and it would probably not be useful to speculate about it. But this also shows that people are not inferior to angels.
(And while the Bible also does not specify in what way angels serve as “ministering spirits” who are sent to help us, and it would also not be useful to speculate about that, we can certainly be grateful for whatever it involves!)
Is it accurate to translate Deuteronomy 32:8 as making reference to the “sons of God”?
Q. In your 3-part posting about the ‘sons of God,’ you reference Deut. 32:8 and quote it as concluding with ‘according to the number of the sons of God,’ as the ESV translates it. While I like that translation, and am intrigued with Dr. Heiser’s thoughts on the divine council, could you help me understand how the ESV translators arrived at that translation? Every resource I have traces those Hebrew words to the word ‘Israel.’ I want to agree with Heiser and the ESV’s translation and view, as it supports the divine council concept, but not being a Hebrew scholar, I don’t know how anyone arrived at ‘the sons of God.’ Thank you for any input you may have, and God bless you!
The difference is because of a textual variation. While the Masoretic Text, the traditional Hebrew text, reads “the sons of Israel,” the reading “the sons of God” is found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Old Testament that predates the Masoretic Text) reads “the angels of God,” which seems to be an interpretive translation of an original reading “the sons of God.”
The ESV is not the only English version that uses the reading from the Dead Sea Scrolls and Septuagint rather than the reading from the Masoretic Text. Here are some other examples.
NET according to the number of the heavenly assembly
NIRV based on the number of the angels in his heavenly court
CEV He assigned a guardian angel to each of them
GNT He assigned to each nation a heavenly being
NABRE after the number of the divine beings
NLT according to the number in his heavenly court
NRSV according to the number of the gods
Dr. Heiser, who sadly passed away last year, addressed the textual issue in detail in an article that Liberty University, the institution where he taught, has kindly made available online. You can read it here:
Heiser, Michael, “Deuteronomy 32:8 and the Sons of God” (2001). LBTS Faculty Publications and Presentations 279.
I hope this information is helpful.
Can a person with a hardened heart come back to God?
Q. Is it possible for a person whose heart has become hardened, and been hardened even further by God, to come back to God?
I’m not exactly sure what you mean by God hardening someone’s heart even further. We do have a record in the Bible of God hardening Pharaoh’s heart. But that was for a specific purpose. Pharaoh had already set himself up against God, as became clear from his first answer to Moses: “Who is the Lord, that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord and I will not let Israel go.” So this was a matter of God confirming Pharaoh in choices that he had already made, but that was for the purpose of God showing who he was to all the world through what he did to what was then the greatest empire in the world. We know that this made an impression on all the surrounding peoples, because later one of them told the Israelites how they had heard of what God had done to the Egyptians, and as a result, they knew that “the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.”
But I would say that, apart from such extraordinary purposes within God’s historical plan of redemption, God would not harden the heart of an individual so as to make it harder for that individual to repent and return. Sometimes God will confirm us in our choices in the sense of allowing us to experience the consequences of those choices. But God does that specifically so that we will realize that they were the wrong choices and repent.
So my essential answer to your question is yes, a person whose heart has become hardened can indeed return to God. Specifically if you are asking about yourself, the very fact that you are asking shows that your heart has begun to soften. You want to know if there is a way back to God. And there always is, for anyone who desires to return. The door is always open on God’s side. As the Bible says, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them.” God is eager to forgive and to restore us to relationship to him. So if you are asking about yourself, I would encourage you that the way is genuinely open for you to return to God.
And even if you are asking about someone else, the fact that God has put this person on your heart and you are wondering if there is still hope suggests to me that God, through his Holy Spirit, is reaching out to the person through you, wanting you to pray and intercede for that person. So I would encourage you to do that. See your concern for the person as something that God has given you because God is concerned and knows that you will pray and perhaps be someone who is able to encourage and help the person to return.
Only God truly knows what is in a person’s heart. Even if it might appear to us that someone has become so hardened against God that they would never return, we do not know what is going on inside that person. Jesus said he came to seek and save the lost. That is what we do know. If someone seems lost, then he or she is precisely the kind of person whom Jesus came to save.
Do we need Bible studies, or can the church tell us what to believe?
Q, I recently engaged in a discussion with someone I know, though not well. We began exchanging our religious backgrounds and spiritual journeys. This led to some theological themes which, for me, seemed to go around in circles until I realized that his belief, as a Roman Catholic, was that the Roman Catholic church was the one true church of God. His reasoning was that Christ left His church to His followers with Peter as its head and that church is what we call the Roman Catholic Church. For him, having Bible studies simply led to “Christian chaos.” We don’t need them because we can just know what the truth is by what Christ left behind namely, the [Roman Catholic] Church, His church. How do you respond to this?
I can see why you found yourself going around in circles with your friend. Your differences arose from fundamentally different presuppositions that you each held, so there was no way to resolve them through conversation.
These presuppositions had to do with doctrinal authority. I gather from the wording of your question that you consider the Scriptures to be the ultimate authority on matters of faith and practice for Christians. Your friend considers church teaching to be the ultimate authority. These are simply different premises, and so those who hold them will inevitably come to different conclusions. Still, let me make a couple of observations that I hope will be helpful.
First, I think a good case can be made that Scripture itself teaches that Scripture is the ultimate authority for believers. The Roman Catholic church teaches that the books of the New Testament should be accepted as canonical (that is, recognized as inspired) because they were written by Christ’s apostles and their companions. In one place, Luke, a companion of the apostle Paul, wrote that the people who came to believe in Jesus in the city of Berea were “noble” because they “examined the Scriptures every day to see whether what Paul said was true.” In other words, here we have a companion of an apostle calling believers “noble” not because they received apostolic teaching but because they tested it against the Scriptures. This is just one incident, but it is illustrative of the apostles’ approach generally. Everywhere in those New Testament books that the Roman Catholic church considers inspired because they are apostolic, what we see is the apostles appealing to Scripture as the authority for their statements. They do not say, “Now you need to believe this because we are saying it, and we are apostles.”
However, even this would not convince a person for whom church teaching was the ultimate authority that Scripture should be the ultimate authority. That person would just respond, “But the church has interpreted all those texts, using its authority, and from its interpretation, the church has declared that it is the ultimate authority.” Nevertheless, a person for whom Scripture is the ultimate authority may recognize that commitment to be consistent with Scripture itself.
The other point I’d like to make is that I sympathize with your friend’s concern about “Christian chaos” in Bible studies. That’s what happens when we read a portion of Scripture out loud and then go around the room and have everybody say what they think it means—or how it makes them feel. Our understanding of the Bible does need to be grounded in and guided by the church’s teaching. But personally I would see that teaching embodied in people whom God has gifted, called, and trained to be teachers and in the wonderful treasury of biblical and theological references and resources that have been created over the centuries within the church. We need to use those resources in our Bible studies, and we need to have good teachers.
In other words, church teaching is a necessary authority that guides and informs our understanding. A Bible study is not supposed to be the blind leading the blind. Nevertheless, church teaching is still a secondary authority. Scripture is primary.
What does the Bible say about decision-making?
Q. What does the Bible say about decision-making?
One of the most significant things the Bible says about this is that when we have an important decision to make, we should seek the counsel and advice of wise friends. “In a multitude of counselors there is safety.” The Bible teaches us that all of us, as individual people, are limited in our knowledge, experience, and perspective. We need others to help us see things from further perspectives; to consider things we would not have considered otherwise; and to learn from the experiences, both good and bad, that others have had as a result of the decisions they have made in comparable situations.
I think that if we went to people and said, “I have an important decision to make and I’d like to ask your advice about it,” the kind of people whose counsel would be valuable would be very happy to listen and help. So think about who those people are in your life.
But those whose counsel we are to consider include not only those who are alive with us today but also those who have gone before us. “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.”
“Ask the former generation
and find out what their ancestors learned,
for we were born only yesterday and know nothing,
and our days on earth are but a shadow.
Will they not instruct you and tell you?
Will they not bring forth words from their understanding?”
The Bible itself is a repository of the ancient wisdom of godly people, and so reading and studying it regularly puts this type of counsel at our disposal.
It is important to stress that our counselors and advisors must be godly people. “Leave the presence of a fool, for there you do not meet words of knowledge.” Here and in many similar contexts, the Bible uses the word “fool” to mean not someone who lacks intelligence or education, but someone who lives without regard for God. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” The word “fear,” for its part, refers not to being afraid of God, but to not daring to do anything that we know God would disapprove of. “Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding.” “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding.”
This all points to a second significant thing that the Bible teaches us about decision-making. Often we face a decision between two courses of action; one of which seems like a shortcut or expedient, but involves some sense of moral compromise, while the other seems longer and more difficult, but also has a clean, honest feel to it. In such cases, we should always choose the latter option. I recall a conversation in which a friend brought up a decision that she needed to make. One person there suggested that she could expedite the process in view by saying a certain thing that didn’t happen to be true. “But that would be lying,” I observed. “Well,” this person responded, “if you’re not prepared to help yourself out like that, then I guess you’ll have to take the long way around.” This friend did take “the long way around,” and she was much better off for doing so.
Sometimes “making a decision” is actually a matter of seeking and receiving guidance from God. We come to a crossroads, and there is a specific road that God wants us to take forward. In such situations, understanding God’s guidance is, as I say in this post, typically the result of a convergence of factors: “the teaching of Scripture, the advice of trusted counselors, the inner witness of the Holy Spirit, what the circumstances permit, the God-given desires of our hearts, etc.” (We might also mention other factors such as whether we have peace about a possible path and whether pursuing it would require faith.)
But at other times, “making a decision” means determining what a wise course of action would be in a situation where God is not necessarily guiding us forward in one direction or another. We just need to make a wise choice about our present circumstances. In such cases, what I have said about cultivating godly wisdom and seeking godly advice would certainly apply.
And there is a third possibility: In many circumstances, we may simply be free to make a choice. I believe that God loves to see his creatures develop into their fullness. Parents, by analogy, don’t want to have to keep telling their children what to do; they want them to develop into mature individuals who can make good choices for themselves. At a certain point, for example, parents stop dressing their children and instead have them decide what to wear each day.
I think it’s the same thing with God. Suppose you are going to host some friends for dinner. I’m not sure that God would ordinarily send you divine guidance from heaven about what to serve. I think God would be delighted to see you plan a great meal and pull it off. I do think that in such circumstances, we could ask God to help us have good ideas. But in the end, we will probably feel, with gratitude to God, that that was just what happened: We had a good idea.
How can I have a closer relationship with God as a Christian?
Q. How can I have a closer relationship with God as a Christian?
I think the principles that apply generally to having good relationships with people also apply to having a good relationship with God. You describe yourself as a Christian and so I take it that you are already aware of having a relationship with God through Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. But you have asked about having a closer relationship, so let me share some thoughts about that.
First, I would say that it is important to spend time with God. Time spent together is the oxygen that relationships need to breathe. Without it, they suffocate. That is why, when spouses, friends, parents and children, etc. are separated temporarily, they make it a priority to speak regularly on the phone or by video chat, to stay in touch by email or text message, etc. People who are in close relationships and who want those relationships to remain close know that they need to invest time in them.
So, think about how you spend time with God. Put another way, when do you feel that you are in God’s presence, or that you are experiencing God? For some people, this happens during times of prayer, meditation, silence, solitude, and simplicity. By quieting all other voices, they hear the voice of God. Something similar happens for other people when they read Scripture or valuable books. For still other people, spending time with God happens when they are out in nature. They experience God in and through his creation. For others, this comes during times of service. Jesus, speaking of helping people in need, caring for the sick, showing hospitality, and visiting people who are lonely, said, “As you have done it for the least of these, you have done it for me.” In such experiences, some people say, “God, I can’t do this for you personally, but I’m going to do it for this other person as if it were you.” And in those circumstances, they feel, experientially, that they are doing something loving directly for God.
Each person’s experience will be different. There may be as many different ways of “spending time with God” as there are people. The key is to recognize what your way is and to be diligent in investing in it. It has been well said that time together with people who are important to us doesn’t happen by accident. We need to be intentional about making it happen.
A second way to invest in having a good relationship with a person is to do what that person likes, not what the person does not like. A simple illustration is this: If you are the person who prepares the meals in your house and you know what meals the others in the house like and do not like, you show your courtesy and appreciation for them by making meals that they do like. By being attentive to their tastes and preferences, you demonstrate that you value them as people. This also shows that, to the extent that it depends on you, you want them to be happy and enjoying life. This is all a very good “ante” for a good relationship with a person.
A specific and important component of this consideration is that if we want to have a good relationship with a person, we will not intentionally do anything that is harmful, hurtful, or demeaning to that person. That actually sends the message that we do not value them and that the quality of our relationship with them is not important to us.
So what are the things that God likes and does not like? We cannot answer this question in terms of favorite meals or pastimes. But we can recall what God said through the prophet Micah: “O people, the Lord has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” If we do what we know is right, if we show generosity and compassion, if we cultivate humility, then we are investing in our relationship with God by doing what God likes. There is a wonderful promise in Psalm 25: “The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him.” In this context, “fear” refers to not daring to do anything that we know would be displeasing to God. We can see that investing in a relationship with God in this way leads to the “friendship” that we desire.
I would like to mention a third thing as well. It is actually inspired by a line from the movie Chariots of Fire, although I believe there is also a biblical basis for it. In that movie, the character of Eric Liddell is explaining why, though he ultimately intends to become a missionary to China, he has been spending time training for the Olympics. He says, “God made me for China, but he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure.” While the Bible describes our relationship with God in many ways, including child to parent and (as we have just seen) friend to friend, the Bible initially describes the relationship as creature to Creator. And we must recognize how much joy it gives a person who creates something to see it becoming all that it was created to be. A limited analogy might be that of an inventor whose invention finally works, or of a programmer who finally gets some software up and running and discovers that it works better than could have been imagined.
So, my last observation about how to cultivate a good relationship with God would be this: Be yourself. In other words, do all that you can to discern why God put you on this planet, and then fulfill that destiny. I think that when you do that (necessarily starting with an initial understanding and accomplishment, but then to an ever-increasing extent), you will feel God’s pleasure. And that is another sure sign of a good relationship.
What kinds of miracles did Jesus do, and what do they indicate about him?
Q. What were some of the miracles Jesus did, and how should we categorize them (e.g. nature miracles, healing miracles, etc.)? Also, what do these miracles indicate about Jesus? Do they help prove that Jesus is God?
The largest number of miracles that Jesus did were miracles of healing. He enabled people who were blind to see; he enabled people who could not hear to hear and speak. It is recorded that he cured people of fevers, of leprosy, of bleeding disorders, and of diseases that caused muscle weakness or paralysis. Jesus empowered his disciples to do similar miracles of healing, and he told them that when they did, they should declare that the kingdom of God was coming near. So these miracles of healing indicate that Jesus was bringing the kingdom of God, and that in God’s kingdom (that is, when and where things are done as God wishes), there is restoration and health. In other words, these miracles showed that God wants those things for people. We are not there yet, but the kingdom is coming (even as it has already arrived in a sense), and as we work to promote these same things, we declare our faith in what God wants people to experience, and we do our part toward that end now.
Jesus also delivered many people from demon oppression. The gospels clearly distinguish between demon oppression and illness. They do not reflect a belief that all illness comes from evil spirits. Through these miracles, Jesus demonstrated that he had come to bring liberty to those who were held captive, as he said about himself in a sermon in the synagogue in Nazareth at the start of his ministry. I think that we today could extend this principle to include other types of “captivity,” such as addiction, depression, abuse, human trafficking, etc. Jesus showed us that God wants people to be free from all such oppression, and the miracles he did invite us to join in his work of bringing freedom.
Jesus, as you noted, also did “nature miracles.” In what we might call a “negative” sense, he calmed a raging storm at sea, made a fig tree wither, passed unnoticed through a crowd, and appeared inside a locked room. “Positively,” he fed thousands of people from small quantities of food, turned water into wine, enabled the disciples to make huge catches of fish, and even directed Peter to find a coin in a fish’s mouth that would pay the taxes for the two of them. These miracles show that God wants people to be safe and well provided for, and once again they invite us to join in working for the same things.
Jesus even raised people from the dead, and he rose from the dead himself. These might be considered miracles of healing, or nature miracles, or miracles in a class of their own. But they show us that death is not final, and so even though we grieve when we lose loved ones, “we do not grieve as those who have no hope,” as the Bible tells us elsewhere. These resurrection miracles also show that God’s power is even greater than the ultimate enemy that we humans must all ultimately face and that we can never conquer on our own: death itself.
So do these miracles, and especially the resurrection miracles, prove that Jesus is God? I would say that that is actually something that cannot be “proved.” It is something that we must recognize and believe by faith. Moreover, as I say in this post, Jesus was actually able to do miracles on earth not because he was God and therefore all-powerful, but because he was completely yielded to his heavenly Father and so was a perfect conduit of divine power. (As that post discusses, Jesus gave up certain divine attributes, including omnipotence, when he “emptied himself” and became human.) So the miracles that Jesus did do not prove that he is God. However, they should certainly make us ask, as people did in Jesus’ own time, for example, “Who is this, that even the wind and the waves obey him?” That question can lead us, by faith, to recognize and believe that Jesus truly is God.
Good Question 