Catching Fog

Some people will say that the Bible is just a bunch of fables. In fact, there are only two that I can think of, both in the Old Testament, that fit the strict definition of fable:

But Jehoash king of Israel replied to Amaziah king of Judah: “A thistle in Lebanon sent a message to a cedar in Lebanon, ‘Give your daughter to my son in marriage.’ Then a wild beast in Lebanon came along and trampled the thistle underfoot. You have indeed defeated Edom and now you are arrogant. Glory in your victory, but stay at home! Why ask for trouble and cause your own downfall and that of Judah also?” (2 Kings 14:9-10; parallel account 2 Chronicles 25:18-19)

And:

When Jotham was told about this, he climbed up on the top of Mount Gerizim and shouted to them, “Listen to me, citizens of Shechem, so that God may listen to you. One day the trees went out to anoint a king for themselves. They said to the olive tree, ‘Be our king.’

 “But the olive tree answered, ‘Should I give up my oil, by which both gods and humans are honored, to hold sway over the trees?’

“Next, the trees said to the fig tree, ‘Come and be our king.’

 “But the fig tree replied, ‘Should I give up my fruit, so good and sweet, to hold sway over the trees?’

 “Then the trees said to the vine, ‘Come and be our king.’

 “But the vine answered, ‘Should I give up my wine, which cheers both gods and humans, to hold sway over the trees?’

 “Finally all the trees said to the thornbush, ‘Come and be our king.’

 “The thornbush said to the trees, ‘If you really want to anoint me king over you, come and take refuge in my shade; but if not, then let fire come out of the thornbush and consume the cedars of Lebanon!’

 “Have you acted honorably and in good faith by making Abimelek king? Have you been fair to Jerub-Baal and his family? Have you treated him as he deserves?  Remember that my father fought for you and risked his life to rescue you from the hand of Midian.  But today you have revolted against my father’s family. You have murdered his seventy sons on a single stone and have made Abimelek, the son of his female slave, king over the citizens of Shechem because he is related to you.  So have you acted honorably and in good faith toward Jerub-Baal and his family today? If you have, may Abimelek be your joy, and may you be his, too! But if you have not, let fire come out from Abimelek and consume you, the citizens of Shechem and Beth Millo, and let fire come out from you, the citizens of Shechem and Beth Millo, and consume Abimelek!” (Judges 9:7-20)

So what is the strict definition of a fable? It is a short tale designed to teach a moral lesson, often with animals or inanimate objects as characters. The most well-known examples of this would be the fables of Aesop. For instance, the story of the Ant and the Dove:

An Ant went to the bank of a river to quench its thirst, and
being carried away by the rush of the stream, was on the point of
drowning. A Dove sitting on a tree overhanging the water plucked
a leaf and let it fall into the stream close to her. The Ant
climbed onto it and floated in safety to the bank. Shortly
afterwards a birdcatcher came and stood under the tree, and laid
his lime-twigs for the Dove, which sat in the branches. The Ant,
perceiving his design, stung him in the foot. In pain the
birdcatcher threw down the twigs, and the noise made the Dove
take wing.

One good turn deserves another

However, we can’t help but notice that parables take the same basic form as a fable; the primary difference being that parables usually have people as the actors, rather than animals or plants. That said, some of what we call fables in the collection of Aesop are strictly about people, such as The Boasting Traveler:

A Man who had traveled in foreign lands boasted very much, on
returning to his own country, of the many wonderful and heroic
feats he had performed in the different places he had visited.
Among other things, he said that when he was at Rhodes he had
leaped to such a distance that no man of his day could leap
anywhere near him as to that, there were in Rhodes many persons
who saw him do it and whom he could call as witnesses. One of
the bystanders interrupted him, saying: “Now, my good man, if
this be all true there is no need of witnesses. Suppose this
to be Rhodes, and leap for us.”

He who does a thing well does not need to boast

Compare that with one of Jesus’ parables, from Luke 18:1-5:

 Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’ ”

Thus, a case could be made that Jesus’ parables could, at least sometimes, as easily be called fables; they differ from what we normally think of as fables only in this: that the actors in them are people rather than animals or plants that inhabit most, but not all of those stories we call fables.

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What is necessary, little or much, for salvation to occur, for a person to become a Christian and enter the kingdom of God? That is, what is the lowest common denominator? The Bible is quite clear that salvation is by faith through grace alone (cf. Eph. 2:8-10). But what does that mean?

It means, that there are no pre- or post-requisites to salvation. Acts 2:21 should be our guide (it is a quotation of Joel 2:32):

And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Salvation is not the consequence of right doctrine, right knowledge, right behavior, right attendance, or any of the thousand and other lists and regulations and expectations set up by human beings to determine the validity of a salvation. Salvation is something God does, and he does it with the least bit of provocation.

To argue that right behavior or right doctrine is necessary or a part of salvation creates contradictions, scripturally. As an example, consider one of the individuals listed in Hebrews 11 as great men of faith: Jephtha. His behavior and understanding of theology was low, even given the level of special revelation available in his time period. Jephtha acknowledged the existence of gods other than Yahweh (cf. Judges 11:23-24) and wound up sacrificing his daughter as a burnt offering (Judges 11:30-31; 35-39). Certainly it would have been to both his advantage and the advantage of his daughter had his theology been straight and his ethics a little more enlightened, but neither of those things have anything to do with his relationship with God or his salvation.

Likewise, Lot, nephew of Abraham, is described by the author of 2 Peter as a “righteous man” (cf. 2 Peter 2:7-8); yet, when we examine the narrative about him in the Old Testament (Gen. 19), we find him reluctant to leave Sodom and having little influence on his family or his society. Then, we find him getting so drunk that he has sex with his own daughters (to say nothing of the questions raised about his parenting that they would have thought of such a thing). By even his own standards, he was morally bankrupt, let alone by modern standards. Yet, since salvation is by grace through faith, and since our righteousness is “in Christ” (cf. 1 Cor 1:30-31; Phil. 3:8-9; Gal. 2:20-21), we are reminded again that though it may be beneficial to be a “good Christian” (both for the sake of those around us, as well as to our own happiness), our behavior isn’t what makes us righteous and it’s not what’s going to get us (or anyone else) into heaven.

God is not trying to keep people from getting into heaven. Rather, he wants as many as possible to get there, and he has done everything in his power to make it easy. He is not standing there, tapping his foot, waiting to see what someone will do, frowning and clucking and looking through the application, nitpicking to find something that will keep the applicant out.

Heaven is not an exclusive club not interested in letting “your kind” in, with St. Peter as a three hundred pound bouncer. God did and does everything he can to get people into heaven (he’s dying to let people into heaven, after all).

What about passages like “narrow is the way”….? Or “it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven”. Doesn’t that imply that getting to heaven is difficult and unlikely? That God in fact IS making it tough, that not just ANYONE can get in?

It would do well to keep in mind a distinction between cause and effect, prescription and description, and human choice versus God’s demands. Confusing such points is what creates the apparent contradiction.

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One day Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath (see Luke 13:10-17). There was a woman in attendance who, for eighteen years, had been bent over and was unable to straighten up. Her deformity, as Jesus will later point out, was something Satan had done to her. Jesus noticed her plight and healed her.

The reaction of the synagogue leader was quick: he condemned the healing. Jesus had violated the prohibitions on working on Saturday, something the Bible was very clear about. In fact, it’s part of the Ten Commandments (see Exodus 20:8-11). There’s even the story from Numbers 15:32-36 of a person being stoned to death at God’s command for even so minor a violation of the Sabbath as gathering wood. The synagogue leader took the Bible seriously and believed it was to be obeyed always. Jesus was without excuse. The synagogue leader knew the Bible was the word of God and he knew what it said. He knew his position was unassailable.

So what would Satan do? Agree with Jesus? Or join the synagogue leader in condemning Jesus for breaking one of the Ten Commandments and ignoring the very word of God?

Satan believes the Bible is the word of God. He agrees with the bumper sticker, “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it for me.”
A popular pursuit in my high school days was hunting through the Bible to find a “life verse.” I never really liked that fad. Shouldn’t one’s life be based on the entire revelation of God rather than one small snippet? I thought limiting myself to a single passage, like a cliché inscribed upon the page of a calendar, was just silly. Likewise, it seemed to me that it would be so easy for such a verse to be pulled out of context.

Forced by my youth group to pick something, in my teenage rebelliousness, I wound up picking Ecclesiastes 10:19:

A feast is made for laughter,
wine makes life merry,
and money is the answer for everything

It seemed perfect for my purposes: ludicrous , devoid of context, and funny. People were appalled, but had difficulty criticizing my choice since it was, after all, from the Bible. And how can one criticize the Bible?

Satan has read and studied the Bible. He can quote it. Satan’s use of scripture in some ways may be similar to what I did with that passage.

In the story of Satan’s temptation of Jesus, we find Satan easily quoting a passage from the Bible at Jesus. What does his use of Scripture—and Jesus’ responses, using the Bible in retaliation—tell us about Satan’s beliefs about the word of God—and his understanding of it?

The story of the Devil tempting Jesus appears in Matthew 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13 and Luke 4:1-13. The author of Hebrews comments about Jesus’ temptation in Hebrews 2:18 and 4:15, but without specifying when or which temptation may be in view. Luke 4:13 comments that “When the Devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time” while John states at the end of his gospel that “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” (John 21:25) Combined, these passages suggest the possibility that Jesus faced other times of temptation beyond what is recorded by the New Testament authors.

The lone quotation that Satan makes from the Bible is recorded in both Matthew and Luke:

Then the Devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:

“ ‘He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” (Matthew 4:5-6; Luke 4:9-11)

Satan quotes from Psalm 91:11-12. He does so based on his understanding of it as part of a messianic psalm. That is, like most scholars of Jesus’ day, Satan understands it as a promise given to God’s son in his incarnation as the Messiah. That’s why Satan begins the temptation as a challenge, “if you are the son of God,” before telling him to toss himself off the temple and demonstrate that fact.

But Satan is not a perfect biblical scholar. Paul writes, “None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8). Satan is understood, generally, as being the ruler of this age. Paul seems to so reference him in 2 Corinthians 4:4, where he also informs us that Satan blinds unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the Gospel.
Using the Bible like the Pharisees

According to the Gospel of John (John 8:42-44), Jesus describes the Pharisees as being the children of Satan in their beliefs and practices.

So how did the Pharisees interpret the Bible? Consider their conclusions about the Messiah: who he would be, where he would come from, and how he would act. They had created a well-developed character study. Like an author preparing to create a novel or screenplay, they’d made a list of things that the Messiah character must do and ways that he must behave. For example, he would be a stickler for the Law. He would condemn sinners. He would rail against the Roman government.

By their estimation, Jesus failed to live up to what they had decided they knew was necessary for someone to be the genuine savior of Israel. He was loose about keeping the Sabbath. He spent time with disreputable people. He was not overtly political.

Based on their list, Jesus did not match their most important character requirements and so they concluded what was only reasonable and obvious: that he could not possibly be the Messiah. Since Jesus could not be the promised savior, they had to find alternative explanations for those things in his performance that otherwise would seem to confirm his identity. Miracles were explained away as the works of Satan. What else could they be, since Jesus’ actions contradicted vital parts of their list? They could not imagine the possibility that their criteria was off in any way. They never entertained the thought that they might have misunderstood something. They were certain that what they had decided about the Bible’s meaning was identical to what the Bible actually meant.

When Jesus preached, “you have heard it said, but I say to you” they did not hear Jesus correcting their misreading of Scripture. Rather, they heard Jesus contradicting Scripture. In their minds, they knew what the Bible said and what Jesus was saying was different from what they knew it said. Therefore, he had to be evil, since there were no other possible interpretations of the Bible but those that they had already decided upon. Their interpretations were obviously, unassailably correct. No other reading was even imaginable, unless one wanted to twist the Bible like a pretzel—and that’s precisely what Jesus was doing as far as they were concerned.

Pharisees took the Bible seriously. They were committed to the Bible. The Bible was the word of God and must be obeyed without fail.

Satan takes the Bible just as seriously. He believed when he quoted the Bible to Jesus that he was making a powerful argument. If Jesus really were the son of God, then he would not be able to resist the Bible—the very word of God—and would be forced to obey it.

When he told Jesus to jump off the temple, he had every reason to expect that Jesus would have no choice but to do just that. He was doubtless surprised when Jesus said no, creating cognitive dissonance in the Devil’s mind. He forced Satan to consider an entirely different way of understanding the verses. Jesus opened an interpretation of Satan’s quotation that had never crossed his mind before. Satan had taken the passage in Psalms as a given, as a promise, as even a command. He hadn’t considered the possibility that it could not, in fact, be used as a blank check against God’s account.

To repeat: Satan is not infallible as a biblical scholar. His own biases get in his way as much as they did for the Pharisees—or, if we’re honest, with us. But Satan, like most Christians and like the Pharisees before them, believes the Bible and accepts it as the Word of God. He views it as authoritative. He is certain that if he can demonstrate something biblically, he has proven something, and that it cannot be argued against. This belief is also clear from the fact that Jesus, in responding to each of Satan’s temptations, quotes the Bible at Satan, because Jesus knows that Satan believes the Bible and accepts it as valid, truthful, and an authority that must be accepted.

When the serpent speaks to Eve in Genesis 3, the serpent does not deny the words of God that were given to her. Rather, he asks her a question about them—he suggests by his question, not that God didn’t say what he said. Rather he asks her if she has really understood what he said. Do God’s words mean what she thinks they mean?

In and of itself, such a question is not wrong. In fact, we will later find Jesus asking the Pharisees, his disciples, and others who are around him, just that sort of question.

So we can be confident that Satan believes the Bible and studies it. He wants to figure out just what it says.

However, Satan approaches it counter to something Paul says about the spirit of the law verses the letter of the law (see 2 Corinthians 3:6, Romans 2:29, 7:6). The Pharisees—along with those who think like them today—approach the Bible much as a lawyer might approach a deposition or the statements of a witness. They want the list that will tell them what to do in all eventualities; they want the rules laid out so they know what they can’t do, and so they can figure out what they can do without violating any of the other rules. Satan thinks like a lawyer–or an engineer—or the child who notices if you don’t play the game exactly right, or if you don’t read the familiar bedtime story exactly the same way you read it last night.

The essence of this sort of approach to the Bible, with its focus on discovering the rules, is that such readers get locked into thinking about those rules rather than on what’s right. They miss the whole point; they miss the stories; they miss the revelation of God. They forget that Jesus and Paul argue that the law—all laws—can be summed up by “love your neighbor as yourself” (see Matthew 22:34-40, Mark 12:28-31, Romans 13:9, Galatians 5:14). If one focuses on what’s best for others, remarkably one doesn’t have any inclination to harm them. Love fulfills all rules automatically, with not much thought needed. The details take care of themselves.

But of course Satan doesn’t see that, can’t imagine it matters, and thus misses the whole point of the Bible in his obsession with rules and regulations.

Want to learn more about how the Devil thinks? Buy my book, What Would Satan Do? The Devil’s Theology:

What Would Satan Do? The Devil’s Theology

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Apocalypse is another name for the last book in the New Testament, the book of Revelation.

The word “apocalypse” is taken from Greek, where it simply meant “revelation.” It is the first word in Greek in the first verse of the first chapter of the book of Revelation: “The revelation of Jesus Christ…” The word “apocalypse” is also used for any of a class of Jewish and Christian writings that appeared between about 200 BC and AD 350 describing a cataclysm in which the forces of good and evil battled, with good finally triumphing over evil. This apocalyptic literature was produced by communities that were suffering persecution or felt oppressed and marginalized. The New Testament book of Revelation is the only book of the Bible that can be identified as a part of this sort of literature, though books like it were quite common in that period.

There are no modern works that are equivalent to ancient apocalypse, and as a consequence, the book of Revelation is often confusing to modern readers. However, once the conventions of that literary form are understood—along with its very common images and metaphors employed—the book becomes quite easy to make sense of.

The closest modern analogies to apocalypse are the old Negro spirituals that were produced before the American Civil War. Rather than being religious in nature, they were actually subversive. They were filled with code language designed to be understood one way by the slave owners and in an entirely different way by the slaves who had produced them. For instance, the “river Jordan” was used as a stand-in for the Ohio River. Once a slave had made it past the Ohio River, he or she would be free. In the song “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” the “sweet chariot” refers to the Underground Railroad that could rescue slaves and move them to freedom.

Likewise, in apocalyptic literature in general, “Babylon” was code for the city of Rome. Just as the Babylonians had oppressed Israel, killed the people of God, corrupted the world, destroyed Jerusalem, and burned the Temple, so too had the Romans. The “whore of Babylon” described in Revelation 17 is a reference to the city of Rome, as is made obvious when the reader is told “The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits” (Revelation 17: 9) and “The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth.” (Revelation 17:18). Rome was noted for being built upon seven hills, and it ruled over the known world. Likewise, when Peter writes in 1 Peter 5:13 that the church in “Babylon” sends greetings, the original readers of his letter understood that he was writing from Rome.

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Angels are a class of spiritual beings who serve as God’s messengers.

It is important to note that the Bible gives us very limited information about angels. Therefore, we must be careful in the conclusions we draw. We have insufficient information to say much of anything about these beings and most of what people believe about angels is derived from popular stories, legends, hearsay, movies and television, rather than from what the Bible relates. Some concepts, such as that of the guardian angel, are actually derived from other religions, such as Zoroastrianism.

The Hebrew word for angel is mala’ak. In meaning it is equivalent to the Greek word, angelos from which the English word is obviously derived. However, in both Hebrew and Greek, the term simply means “messenger” and was used for both God’s messengers as well as the messengers of a king or other ruler on Earth.

Three other terms are found in the Old Testament for angel. Seraphim (singular Seraph) simply means “flame.” It only shows up twice, both times in Isaiah, and both times in one chapter: Isaiah 6:2 and 6:6.

The second term is considerably more common, and is transliterated into English as “Cherub.” It is these angels that are described as particularly unusual to look at. Ezekiel 1:4-28 contains the most detailed description we have of them. Whether this is their normal appearance, it’s hard to say. They reappear in Revelation in virtually the same form. They appear most frequently, though, as a decorative images used in the temple.

The third term that is generally thought to refer to angels is found in only a handful of places. It is usually—though not always—translated as “the sons of God”. How to understand the term is a topic of great controversy, especially in Genesis 6:1-4, where the reader is told that the sons of God had sex with the daughters of men.

What do we know about angels? Not a lot. We know that in the Bible they are predominantly male (there are a couple of references in Zechariah that appear to be feminine: see Zech. 5:5-10 and 6:4-5). In fact, if the incident in Genesis 6 refers to angels, then they are masculine to the point of being able to mate with human women. However, the paucity of feminine angels in the Bible is not sufficient evidence to conclude that angels are never feminine. After all, arguments from silence are not particularly convincing, especially when so little is said to begin with.

We know that angels are sometimes frightening. Ezekiel gives us a description of the Cherubs in Ezekiel 1:4-28. A reading of that passage gives us the following characteristics: their basic form is that of a human biped (1:5), but they have four faces (1:6) and four wings (1:6). Their feet look something like those of a calf (cloven hooves?) and are shiny, as if they are made of burnished bronze (1:7). The four wings are spread out, one on each of their four sides. Under each wing is what looks like a human hand (1:8). Their heads have four faces, one on each of the four sides (1:10). One face looked human, one resembled an ox, one a lion, and one an eagle (1:10). As a result of having a face on each side of their bodies, they didn’t have to turn to change direction; no matter which way they decided to go, they were already facing that way (1:9, 12). The sound their wings made was quite loud (1:24). When an angel appears to someone, often one of the first things he has to say is “do not be afraid.” After Ezekiel’s description, we should not be surprised.

Yet—despite the description in Ezekiel—Genesis 18 and Joshua 5:13-15, plus most New Testament references show angels mostly in human form and indistinguishable from ordinary men. But in any case, 2 Kings 6:16-17 and Numbers 22:21-35 make clear the point that angels are not usually visible to human beings at all.

They serve as God’s messengers, to bring information to his servants (Daniel 10:12-14). They fight for God’s people (Joshua 5:13-15; 2 Kings 6:16-17), and they protect and help God’s people (Psalm 92:11-12).

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