The Story of Rahab - a Gentile 'Passover'?

I was reading the story of Rahab to my daughter last night and was struck by it in a way that I have not been previously. Everyone knows the story but just to recap - Joshua sends two spies into the promised land to scope it out and specifically tells them report on Jericho. The two spies enter Jericho and meet Rahab - the king of Jericho finds out that they are there and Rahab covers for them, saying she saw them leave the city. She then hides them on her roof. She professes an amazing statement of faith to these two spies saying,

"I know that the LORD has given you the land, and that the terror of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land have despaired because of you. For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. When we heard these reports, our hearts melted and no courage remained in anyone any longer because of you; for the LORD your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth below." (Joshua 2:9-10)

She then makes the two spies promise that the LORD God will spare her and her family and they make that promise to her. They tell her to tie a scarlet cord (rope) and set it outside of her window, then to gather her entire family in her house and then the LORD will spare them. They leave, she does as instructed and her and her entire family are spared, despite the utter destruction of the rest of Jericho (Joshua 6:22-23).

Is the Church Worshipping a Different God?

I was in the car today, listening to the local Christian radio station and the gentleman who was teaching was talking about how the pivotal moment in the book of Acts is the stoning of Stephen. I wish I could quote him, but unfortunately I don't have perfect auditory memory. The crux of his argument is that God was formerly doing something with the nation of Israel and then, God sets them aside to start something new with the Church. Stephen's remarks before he dies, in the mind of this teacher, were the finishing of God's work with Israel and then with Paul's vision of Jesus, that was beginning of God doing something new with the Gentiles. I immediately turned it off and started crying out to God in prayer.

This argument, that God is now doing something new has such a fundamental flaw in it that it makes me wonder, at the end of the day, is the Gentile church worshipping some other God than the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? This issue is that serious.

Worldview

Another day, another Gospel Coalition article that I can’t help but comment on. Today’s issue is with an article entitled, “How To Go Deep into Bible Study without Getting Lost”. The author, Ryan Martin, presents 3 main ideas, 1) Words are flexible and contextual, 2) Details can distract from the flow of a text and 3) An individual text doesn’t need to carry the whole weight of Christian theology. By the first one, he means, words can mean different things in different contexts and its important to understand the context of a word or passage before we can figure out what the meaning of the word might be. He uses the example of the English word ‘trouble’ and how that word can be used to mean very different things, depending on the context. By the second, he means, “don’t lose the forest through the trees”. We can have a tendency to zoom in to break down specific words or small phrases, and miss the main message of a book or epistle. The third is a little bit of a stretch, but it seems like a variation on “don’t lose the forest through the trees” – he is exhorting his readers to appreciate the nuance and diversity of voices and perspectives within Scripture and not try to oversimplify things. Overall, not a bad directive – especially his comments about trying to make a single verse or passage carry the entire story of theology.

I would like to add one more to his list, and I would make it the first bullet point – before all of the recommendations about words, context and exegesis. The bullet point would look something like this:

Render Unto Caesar...

"Then they [the leaders of the people] sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Him in order to trap Him in a statement. They came and said to Him, "Teacher, we know that You are truthful and defer to no one; for You are not partial to any, but teach the way of God in truth. Is is lawful to pay a poll-tax to Caesar, or not? Shall we pay or shall we not pay?" But He, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, "Why are you testing me? Bring Me a denarius to look at." They brought one. And He said to them, "Whose likeness and inscription is this?" And they said to Him, "Caesar's." And Jesus said to them, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." And they were amazed at Him." (Mark 12:13-17, NASB)

That last line stands out to me. "And they were amazed at Him".

Let's talk first about what the Pharisees and Herodians are trying to do here. Why would this question be a 'trap'? Don't miss the "is it lawful" part of the question. In asking it that way - the Pharisees are appealing to Torah law, not Roman law. So, ultimately, they are asking a question of morality. "Are we morally obligated, according to Torah, to pay the tax?" I read a fascinating commentary (seriously, check it out - what I am speaking of here is barely scratching the surface compared to the depth of this commentary) of this verse which suggested that by asking "is it lawful", the Pharisees and Herodians were forcing Jesus to answer the question because shortly before this, the people had hailed Jesus as "King" when he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. If he doesn't answer the question, he isn't a rabbi, and also isn't King. That is part of the trap. It seems also that they are trying to get Jesus to identify, or align himself in some way, if even seemingly, with the Romans, against the Jews, or with the Jewish people as a revolutionary against the Roman state. If they could get Jesus to simply say, "yes, you should pay your tax", then they could incite the people against him as a Roman-sympathizer (the equivalent of a tax collector). If they could get him to simply say, "no, you should not pay your tax", then they could make the claim he was an anti-Roman revolutionary and could hand him over to be treated as such.

How Safe is Safe Enough?

I've been following the on-going battle between the Chicago Teacher's Union and the City of Chicago over when to resume in-person school. The scientific evidence seems clear at this point that children are neither vulnerable to COVID-19 nor are they very effective carriers/transmitters of COVID-19 and yet the Teacher's Union is digging its heels in, saying that the teachers are being put at risk by returning to the classroom. It has now gotten to the point that Chicago is refusing to pay teachers who don't show up.

This all begs the question though - 'how safe is safe enough'? I can certainly sympathize with teachers who are over 60 and who fall into a higher-risk category as it relates to COVID-19. Not only are some of them likely to be fearful of catching COVID, but they could potentially lose their lives. I understand that. On the other hand, however, schools and children are notorious for being petri dishes for all kinds of disease. As a father of 3 young kids, it is a regular occurrence to get correspondence from either the school or the church indicating that something is going around, be it strep throat, influenza, hand foot & mouth (HFM) disease, noroviruses, lice, etc. Being around kids necessarily means that you are more exposed than the rest of the population to any number of illnesses and ailments. Bottom-line, if you sign up to be a teacher, you shouldn't be under any illusions that sickness/illness aren't part of the territory. And to be fair, COVID isn't the only thing that goes around that could kill someone in their 60s.

So, at what point would the Chicago Teacher's Union deem that all of their teachers are "safe enough"? Students are falling further and further behind in school and the detrimental effects of at-home school on the mental health of students is starting to become very clear. Even cursory Google searches about mental health and COVID bring back results like these. This isn't even to speak of the burden on parents who were never prepared and who are mostly ill-equipped to handle at-home school long-term. As parents start returning to out-of-the-home work, what are they to do if their children are not also back in school?

As I have said from the beginning of this pandemic, as a society we have to come to terms with the fact that illnesses and even death are unavoidable outcomes. I'm not suggesting that we do nothing - we have some tools at our disposal including masks and social-distancing - but we can't pretend like we will ever reach a point where we are truly "safe". Every year you read about those freak occurrences where someone catches a brain-eating amoeba while swimming in a pond somewhere. Nobody ever sees car accidents, or cancer, coming down the road (no pun intended). Right now, rather than worrying about the illusion of safety, we need to be considering how to limit the potential damage we are doing to our younger generation by keeping them out of school. That may involve some hard choices for some people. If you're a teacher and you are over 60, you have to make a decision about the risk vs the reward. That's a tough choice...but as for public policy, we need to make decisions regarding the group, not the individual. As for re-opening schools, the focus needs to be one what is necessary for the students, and then teachers need to make choices for themselves. Its never going to be 'safe enough'.

What's Happening in Genesis 9?

I read an article on The Gospel Coalition website today regarding 'The Curse of Ham' from Genesis 9:20-27. The article was a worthy examination of the consequences of bad exegesis - but the author himself presents something that is a bit puzzling. His argument, which I would say is the classical treatment of this passage, is that Ham saw his drunk father naked, told his brothers about it, and in seeing his father naked, somehow sinned against him and invited a curse upon his son Canaan. When you think about that explanation though, it doesn't make much sense. If anyone has children of their own, they know it is certainly not uncommon for children to see their parents naked (up to a certain age, of course) and in the circumstances of living very close to one another, as Noah and his sons undoubtedly did on the Ark, its tough to imagine them never seeing each other naked, if even accidentally. Regardless - even if this was true, it seems like an awfully harsh punishment for such an offense.

It's a fascinating passage and it merits a serious look to figure out what is going on here. Here's the passage:

"Now the sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem and Ham and Japheth; and Ham was the father of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the whole earth was populated. Then Noah began farming and planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk, and uncovered himself inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his brother outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it up on both their shoulders and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were turned away, so that they did not see their father's nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine, he knew what his youngest son had done to him. So he said, "Cursed be Canaan; A servant of servants He shall be to his brothers."" (Genesis 9:18-25, NASB)

I started a couple of verses before the main passage because it struck me as odd that the writer, covering nearly 2,000 years of history from Genesis 1-11, would go out of their way to blurt out that Ham was the father of Canaan, in a place where it seemingly doesn't have much of a connection to anything else. The writer doesn't mention any sons or descendants of Shem of Japheth, or the other descendants of Ham - just Canaan - and then Ham shows up in the very next story, and Canaan is cursed. It seems plausible that the writer is connecting Canaan with whatever happened between Noah and Ham. More on that later.

We Are Not In Charge - God Is

“Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever; wisdom and power are his. He changes times and seasons; he deposes kings and raises up others. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what lies in darkness, and light dwells with him.” - Daniel 2:20-22

God raises up the leaders of men and also removes them from office. Let us not be confused about who is in charge.

Some Thoughts on Our Nation

If you are the type of person who thinks its OK to insult, denigrate, or otherwise demean another person because of their political beliefs (or, really, any belief) – if you are OK with wishing ill on another group of people that is different than you, or thinks differently than you – if you are so lazy in your thinking as to ascribe evil to an entire group that has a different political persuasion than you, then I’m here to tell you, you are part of the problem. Perhaps worse, you have unwittingly fallen into the trap set for you by the people who run this country. When they have us fighting one another, when they have us arguing with one another and myopically focusing on our differences, when they have us hating each other, we are easily controlled. All they need to do is continue feeding us the very things that keep us fighting, arguing and hating. Hate and anger are powerful emotions – they tend to dominate when we feel them. They tend to cloud better judgement. They tend to make us blind to other things going on. Hate and anger tear down, they destroy, they wreck.

It doesn’t really matter whether you feel you are justified in your thinking – its wrong. Within the breadth and depth of human experience, there is so much nuance as to make it nearly impossible to paint a group of people with a single brush. There are nuts on both sides of the aisle, there are extremists on both side of the aisle, there are ‘the loud’ on both sides of the aisle. We need to stop giving them the stage. The nuts, the extremists and the loud don’t want to talk and discuss and they don’t want to actually change anything because no amount of change would ever satisfy them. It is because ‘them’ isn’t really ‘them’ – each person within those groups on the fringe has a different idea of what would be satisfying. You see – even within the fringe, there is nuance. The only thing that unifies them is that they believe they are justified in achieving their objectives by ‘any means necessary’…which is as empty as it is destructive. 

So let’s stop giving these people our attention. Let’s stop buying the lies we’re being fed that there are ‘two Americas’. We are all people living in one country and we don’t all think the same way and that’s ok. Most, MOST of us are reasonable, rational, somewhat compassionate, good-natured, respectful people. We want good things for our neighbors and for ourselves. We want to provide for our families and take care of those we love. We care about the suffering of those less fortunate and actually take real concrete steps to alleviate the poverty and hardship we see around us. We aren't fooled into thinking that mere virtue signaling helps anyone.

I’m sad about the state of our nation – this polarization isn’t helping and it is making the reasonable and rational seem like a lonely island…except on that Island is most of us…and quite honestly, most of us feel like we aren’t being heard. The nuts, extremists and the loud are drowning everything else out. Its time to stop giving them the stage and to start discussing, talking, finding common ground, and moving forward. If we don’t, eventually we will forget that America was founded on the freedom to think and believe differently. One side will simply beat the other into submission.

It starts with an accurate view of one’s sphere of influence. Social media has deluded us into thinking that our sphere is bigger than it is. No, you don’t have 500 or 1000 friends. You have about 5-10 actual friends. You live in a specific community and spend the vast majority of your time in that community. Start there. Find ways to serve the people in your community. Invest your time with the people who are actually your friends. Stop watching the news all day. Unplug.

Start small – it’s that simple.