Friday, July 31, 2020

The Truth of History, the Truth of Jesus

Picture by Penny Juncker

Listening this morning to Arlo Guthrie and Jim Wilson’s new version of “Hard Times Come Again No More.” I began to understand some of the vitriol, conspiracy mania, and slander heaped upon many public officials and the medical professions. And here I am thinking of people I know, people I am close to, who are not usually inclined to vent so ardently against others. I know there are those who purposely and with evil intent invent outlandish tales of conspiracy against others, but these are not the people that have initiated my concern. I am Reformed after all and “What is the matter with you people” is my byword as long as it includes myself.

But watching the depression photographs in the video I realized so many have no memory of those hard times or of the devastating losses of World War II. And if they are not particularly interested in history they will not have absorbed the pain and sorrow of that time or any other time for that matter. It seems to me, we Americans, at least in the last few decades, insist on everything turning out rosy. We build our hopes on Shangri-La and reach for idealistic dreams. Added to this sense of optimism is a belief that it is possible to know the exact reason why something has happened and the way it has happened and thus to swiftly end any intruding evil.

For instance, some insist that covid-19 occurred because a person or a group or an organization manufactured it as a means of destroying enemy’s lives. Or, so many people have died because politicians, or/and medical groups or/and a particular political party are lying about the cure. Or, it’s a lie that so many people have died, with multiple explanations for the lie.

The real truth gets lost in our rejection of truth—we are suffering—more suffering is ahead of us—we must gather strength and hope from somewhere beyond answers that are materialistic, conspiratorial and slanderous. The truthful answer will not be to dissuade or dispose of enemies who are supposedly seeking our harm. The truthful answer will not be to ignore the mandates of safety for this particular moment in our history. The truthful answer is—we are suffering—God help us!

Recently a friend suggested I watch a movie about Lilias Trotter a 19th century artist and missionary to Algeria. In the movie, “Many Beautiful Things” Trotter’s potential to become a famous artist is sacrificed for the sake of following Christ to North Africa. One of her beautiful statements is:

 Measure thy life by loss not by gain, not by the wine drunk but by the wine poured forth for love’s strength standeth in love’s sacrifices.

The life God calls us to, in the midst of pandemic, brutal riots and police brutality, aims us straight into His love. His intention is to pour, through us, His love out upon the worlds we inhabit. Our time, this day, this year, the years to come, are times to draw near to Jesus, to think on His cross, to rest in his love, to walk in his love.

If we have lost, in these hard times, faith in humanity—good—now we will have a deeper faith in Jesus. We will cling to the brother and sister who in their weakness and humility still holds to Jesus. We will find in Jesus the government, the kingdom, the joy, that this time, this place cannot give.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been destressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ; and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls. (1 Peter 1: 3-9)

Thursday, July 16, 2020

Q and the cross of Jesus


There are circumstances when I feel a great need to bury myself in God’s word and let Christian hymns and praise sweep over me. I feel a need to have truth and goodness wash my mind and soul. Often the reading I do for research has that effect. Sometimes just circumstances, ugly circumstances, place me in that position. For several days I have been listening to some extremely horrible videos. My concern for a few friends on Facebook who seem to be affirming conspiracy theories, even placing information by people who are involved in the Q or QAnon movement on their Facebook pages, initiated my need to understand the religious/social side of this movement; to hopefully emphasize the evil of this strange ideology which in some cases is mixed with a rather heterodox Christianity.

Recently, The Dispatch published an article “The GOP’s Conspiracy Theorist Problem,” which high-lighted several Republican candidates who are involved in conspiracy theories and the QAnon movement. In the article the author, Audrey Fahlberg, devotes a paragraph to the religious side of the QAnon movement writing, “QAnon’s doomsday flair has even captured the attention of fringe churches, including Omega Kingdom Ministry which regularly interprets Q drops through a biblical lens.” Fahlberg also refers to “Home Congregations,” a site Omega Kingdom Ministry is connected to. I explored these two sites and their strange videos.

And yes, there is a faith statement that sounds like orthodox Christianity with a twist. There is this part of their faith statement, “We believe that Christ never intended to start a religion, but that men have built the church as we know it today. We believe that Christ never intended that His Body become a business or an institution, but a family. We believe that Christ has called us out of the crowd to be His Ekklesia, a governmental body, a ruling congregation of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.” This statement eliminates most connections between QAnon believers and orthodox Christianity since the meaning is that only those house churches abiding by the teachings of “Home Congregations” and the predictions of Q are performing God’s 
will.

The differences between the house churches connected to QAnon and orthodox Christianity, including Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox, are vast. It is the eschatology of the QAnon churches that shapes their theological differences with true Christianity. Always they are informed by the conspiracy theories of QAnon. Yes, they believe in the return of Christ but their focus is on political events deeply colored by the unknown person or persons they call Q.

In one particular video a leader, Russ Wagner, explains what he believes is the difference between “Church,” and “ekklesia”. He states, “ekklesia was a governmental word ‘called out assembly.’ Tracing what he sees as the history of the words, Wagner adds, “The body of Christ on earth today is his [Christ’s] governmental ruling council. Wagner goes on to emphasize that, “We have been given authority to rule what is lawful and what is unlawful in our city and in our region.”  Additionally he opines, “We have been given the authority to take legal and militant action against the destructive forces of hell in our city.”

Since Wagner is a charismatic most of his view of taking authority is demands made to demonic spirits, however his concepts belittle the cross of Jesus. In a different video he quotes Jesus’ words, “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. (1 John 3:8 NKJV),” then Wagner says, “You see, the Kingdom of Heaven coming down to earth destroys all the work of the enemy if the ekklesia of Christ is functioning in any given city.” In other words it is Jesus’ manifestation plus the ekklesia functioning that destroys the works of the devil. There are two big problems here:

First because Wagner has made a difference between the Church and what he calls the ekklesia he places the Church outside of the purposes and the work of Christ. But the bigger problem is Wagner’s lack of acknowledgement of the completed work of Jesus Christ on the cross. The beautiful hymn in the first chapter of Colossians details this:

For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also the head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the first born from the dead, so He Himself will come to have first place in everything. For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross, through him I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven. (Colossians 1: 13-20)

Adding to Wagner’s views about the Church and the authority of what he calls the ekklesia is the problem of placing the conspiracies of QAnon alongside his and other’s teaching. Their web sites are full of videos and the messages in the videos are not only extreme conspiracies, they are theologically unbiblical. There is also the potential for anti-Semitism in several of their wild tales. The basic conspiracies are the usual; there is a group of families, the Rothschild’s are considered first, who are controlling the world, own all the banks and the Federal Reserve and most businesses and institutions. They intend to destroy all that is good. But in the QAnon tales there is an additional concern. What is called, the deep state, a group consisting of most presidents, many celebrities and wealthy individuals like Bill Gates and of course Soros are involved in a worldwide ring of pedophiles.

This is where President Trump supposedly comes into the story. There is a plan, the Q plan, in which Trump is involved with some military leaders to arrest all of the offenders of sex trafficking and move the world toward a golden age. This plan involves the arrest and imprisonment of such people as the Bushes, the Clintons, Bill Gates and Soros.  And supposedly peace will come to earth because the conspirators had been controlling such people as North Korea’s Kim Jung-un and China’s Xi Jinping who will now make peace. As an aside, one video suggests that Trump in the end won’t be the leader but instead John Kennedy Jr. who didn’t really die in a plane crash!  

All of that weirdness is itself unbiblical, because it is untruthful and horribly slanderous, but here are the theological problems. One particular video insists that all of the conflicts and hatred happening in the world aren’t caused by common humanity because it isn’t the nature of humanity to commit crimes or cause conflict. We are good and those committing such atrocities are the enemy. But what does Scripture say about the goodness of humanity? “…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).” And Psalms 53 is very clear:

The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God,’ they are corrupt, and have committed abominable injustice; there is no one who does good. God looked down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there is anyone who understands, who seeks after God. Every one of them has turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one. (1-3)

If even a part of humanity were good, born without sin, there would be no reason for the Incarnation and the death of Jesus on the cross so once again the cross is belittled. Instead some of humanity is lifted up as those who in their goodness will help to bring about utopia. And although there is here and there a commitment to Jesus and his salvation, in many of the videos Trump is seen as the ultimate liberator, the one who will deliver the world from the cabal of pedophiles, the deep state. Jesus’ uniqueness, sacrifice and triumph is simply treated as nothing when one commentator states that Q’s plan will, “be regarded as the greatest story ever told.” Another speaker, a professor, Douglas Belmore, who professes to be a Christian, insists that his listeners should not worry because “Q owns the most powerful military intelligence the world has ever known.

The possibility of anti-Semitism comes in a series of videos that attempt to explain communism by linking it to the occult and what is called the Illuminati. Two men, Benjamin Chasteen and Rob Counts, are the producers of this series. In their video, “The Illuminati End Game: The Secret Societies behind Communism,” they use Nesta Webster, the author of World Revolution the plot against civilization as their main reference. They explain that in the academic world she is known as a Nazi sympathizer but they attempt to explain that away. They state that in her “findings Nesta made a grave oversight; she found that people who called themselves Jews were behind several subversive movements because of that she confused these people who called themselves Jews as actual Jews.” And “she ended up joining societies who considered themselves Fascist before those societies are considered what they are today

But Bob and Rob show their own anti-Semitism when they attempt to excuse Webster’s. Because her information is mostly made up and partly based on the fake Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion it is Webster who named them Jews. She was not confused; she not only joined several British Fascist societies but also wrote for an anti-Semitic journal, The Jewish Peril.[1] In a third video, “Deep State Funded Lenin,” Bob and Rob state that a Rothschild and several other Jewish bankers funded the early communist revolution, adding that J.P. Morgan also funded them. The creators of these videos keep bringing up Jewish bankers without admitting to their own anti-Semitism. They suggest that Hitler was a Rothschild and was raised by Ashkenazi Jews and then make fun of the four letters at the end of the word.

The leaders and members of these two religious organizations and the many other Q followers insist that there is a personal great evil above the deep state which will be brought to an end by political, martial and judicial ends. There is a personal great evil, but one that has already been defeated on a bloody cross. We live in the already/not yet of that defeat. And if we are Christians we live beneath the cross, not under the manipulative hands of slanderous mythical tales. Our times are in the hands of Jesus, our fellowship is with the Church, His body. Do not forsake the one who bought you.

When I began this blog posting I was letting the word of God and this Christian song sweep over me:


Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Not Plato’s Forms but the Unchanging, Personal God


For a daily devotional I use The St. James Daily Devotional Guide. This morning I was pleased with some commentary about the difference between truth (the eternal forms) which are true by necessity and the truth which is Jesus Christ whose truth is displayed in freedom.

I believe it was in my junior year of college at the University of California, Sacramento, when I won the philosophy contest for that year. In my essay, “Plato’s Four Concepts of Soul in the Phaedo,” I attempted to prove “a great deal of the confusion of the concepts with one another is caused by Plato’s idea of personal souls and their likeness to impersonal forms.” I have thought about this often, we Christians cling to a personal God, unchanging yes, but that unchanging includes compassion, mercy and forgiveness. And in that unchanging merciful God is freedom.

The author of the commentary, Patrick Henry Reardon, is relating this to Mark 4:35-41, the story of Jesus calming the winds and the waves. Reardon writes:

…in today’s Gospel story, the truth he revealed to those disciples threatened by the storm on the lake—fearful for their lives—was utterly free, backed up by no explanatory or metaphysical necessity. He overwhelmed the apostles—along with the waves and the wind—by the redemptive assertion of his presence. Christ’s debarim—the things he did and said—formed an absolutely free gift, conveyed in the experience of grace and election.
…Always, the truth revealed in Christ is pure grace—truth freely and generously given, truth freely and humbly received.

Here I think it can be pointed out that not only was this grace and truth freely given it was so very personal. The Hebrew Bible clearly tells us that God controls the seas and storms, “He caused the storm to be still, so that the waves of the sea were hushed (Psalm 107: 29).” But in Jesus the disciples see the personal, the face of God as the storm is stilled. And there is more.

In Mark’s account of this story there are other boats. Mark writes, “Leaving the crowd, they took Him along with them in the boat, just as he was; and other boats were with him (4:36).” R. Alan Cole in the Tyndale Commentary suggests that this may be like the closing words of Jonah, “and also much cattle (Joh. 4:11), with its undertone of the infinite mercy of God.” This personal God, very God of very God, as the creed states, was not just training Apostles he was caring for the crowds of people as he did when feeding the five thousand and the four thousand.

Here we are living in the midst of a pandemic, living in the midst of unholy racism, living in the midst of unholy riots, perhaps fearful of what is coming in the future—and yet here stands our Redeemer who created the universe and controls the universe. This personal God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, knows us personally and has us in his tight grip. Fear not.