Is Your Church Open-Minded?

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Recently my wife and I were in Charleston, SC on a weekend getaway. If you’ve never been to Charleston, it is famous for its horse-drawn carriage rides around the historic downtown area of the city. We took one of these carriage rides and had a great time listening to our guide as we meandered through the sights of Charleston.

One thing the guide said to us, though, provoked me. He was commenting on the various churches in the city, and he mentioned that he preferred the more open-minded churches in the city and he recommended a couple of them to us if we wanted to attend a service Sunday morning.

My wife also caught his comments and we started talking later about what he meant. Given our extended conversations with him, it became clear that he was referring to the liberal Episcopal churches in Charleston as more open-minded, and the conservative Baptist churches as, well, not.

What I found interesting is that the guide assumed that a person’s first criterion for choosing a church is that it should be open-minded. That strikes me as so odd. My first criterion for choosing a church is the following: Are they teaching the truth about God? 

G. K. Chesterton once said, “Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” I am far more concerned with knowing what a church has shut its mind on than what it has opened it to.

Churches are supposed to teach us about ultimate reality, about God himself. They are supposed to addressed the most serious questions that human beings face in this life and the next. What churches teach have a tremendous impact on our morality, wisdom, and final destinies.

So why in the world would I want to attend a church that is open-minded about all those things? I want answers. I want the truth because I want my life to conform to the way the world really is. An open-minded church is a church that is failing to serve its congregation.

Is your church open-minded about God, sin, the afterlife, morality, and justice? If so, then get out of there as quick as you can. You have chosen badly.

What Is the Human Species?

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

What is the essence of being human? What makes a human a human? What is the human species?

Philosopher David Oderberg argues that the true essence of being human is captured in two words: rational animal. This is, of course, the classical definition of the human species given to us by Aristotle, but Oderberg thinks it is still the best definition.

There is little disagreement on what an animal is, but what about rationality? Oderberg offers a succinct analysis of what it means to be rational, and therefore what it means to be human:

Being rational, the rational animal has the capacity for such things as: abstract thought, that is, the ability to abstract from particulars to reach general judgments involving concepts; language; knowledge of why it does many of the things it does, what Aristotelians call knowledge of finality; the conscious ordering of ends or objectives; development of and adherence to a life plan; reflection, meditation, puzzlement over, attempts to understand and resolve, matters concerning its own life, the lives of others (be they rational or not), the state of the world, the connections between things and events; and a moral life, with all that is entailed by a grasp of morality as a system of norms for living. We can easily add to the list, of course: humor, irony, aesthetic sensibility, the creation and maintenance of families and political societies . . . we all know the sorts of things we rational animals are capable of.

Oderberg zooms in further to be clear about what rationality entails:

All I claim here is that rationality as the capacity for abstract conceptual thought is explanatorily basic relative to a large number of the sorts of characteristic listed here. Language is the most important case in point.

Abstraction from particulars and ascent to the level of conceptual thought necessarily involves some kind of representational system because it essentially involves the composition and division of concepts: mental elements are put together or divided in order to make judgments, and judgments are put together to make inferences. The elements have to have some kind of meaningful structure, by which I mean a structure involving at least the basic operations of reference, predication, logical operation, and the like, put together in a certain way, such that other ways of combination are excluded. A creature that can do all of this must have language; in fact, language is what I have just described.

And this is what has fascinated every thinking person since the dawn of mankind. Of all the millions of animal species, why is there only one that is rational? Why did human beings win the rationality lottery, going away? Why was there only one winner instead of dozens or even hundreds or thousands? Of course, this question is answered in the first chapter of the first book of the Bible. Check it out if you haven’t read it recently.

What Is the Difference Between LORD and Lord?

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

In Exodus 3, we see God called “I am” and also “LORD.” Both names are derived from the same Hebrew verb. “LORD” is reused more than 5,000 times in the Old Testament (OT), but “I am” is never used again in the OT.

When the word “LORD” (all caps) is used in the OT, it is a translation of the Hebrew word YHWH (“Yahweh”) that means “he who is present” or “he who is.” The word “Jehovah” is another translation into English of “Yahweh.”

Jewish readers substitute the word Adonai (“Lord”) when they come upon the divine name of God. All of these different names are referring to the same God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Did the Israelites Steal from the Egyptians?

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Some Bible critics claim that God commands the Israelites to steal (plunder) from the Egyptians in verse 22 in Exodus 3. How could God command theft?

The context around verse 22, however, makes it clear that the Israelites were to ask the Egyptians for valuable items that they could take with them into the desert. The Egyptians were paying back the Israelites for the mistreatment they endured.

It is certainly lawful for someone to be repaid for crimes committed against them, and this is exactly what happened when the Egyptians willfully gave their possessions to the departing Israelites.  They certainly did not steal from them.

Commentary on Exodus 3 (Moses and the Burning Bush)

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Chapter 3 of Exodus recounts one of the most famous passages in all of Scripture, the story of Moses and the Burning Bush. Moses is tending his father-in-law’s flocks near a mountain called Horeb. Some scholars believe that this mountain is identical with Mount Sinai, where Moses would later receive the Ten Commandments.

At the mountain, Moses sees the angel of the Lord appearing as flames burning in a bush, but the bush is not consumed by the fire. In verses 4-6, God calls out from the bush (“angel of the Lord” and “God” are sometimes used synonymously) and identifies himself as the “God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.”

God gets straight to the point with Moses and tells him, in verses 7-10, that he is to go back to Egypt and bring the Israelites out of captivity, and then take them “into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” This is the land that was promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, by God. After long years in Egypt, the descendants of Abraham would finally receive their inheritance.

Moses, however, had doubts about his own abilities, so he asks God exactly how He will get the people out of Egypt. God then reassures Moses over the next 10 verses by promising that He will be with him.

First, he assures Moses that the Israelites will be brought out of Egypt and travel back to this very mountain, to worship.

Second, God tells Moses to inform the elders of Israel that “I am who I am” is the God who sent Moses to them. This is the same God as the “God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” This name of God (“I am who I am”) can be paraphrased as “It is I who am with you.” Recall that to the ancient Hebrews, names conveyed the essence of who a person was. So God is reminding the Israelites that the one who promised to be with them sent Moses.

God is also called Yahweh, which means “he who is present” or “he who has promised to be present with his people.”

Third, Moses, after having identified God, is to tell the elders of Israel that God has heard their cries and is going to bring them out of Egypt and “into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—a land flowing with milk and honey,” or the Promised Land.

Fourth, God foretells that Moses will ask Pharaoh (king of the Egyptians) permission for the Israelites to go out into the desert and worship for three days, but Pharaoh will refuse. God will then strike the Egyptians with “wonders” and then Pharaoh will let them go.

Finally, God predicts that the Israelites will ask the Egyptians for “articles of silver and gold and for clothing,” and that they will give these things to them as the Israelites leave. Thus the Israelites will be paid back for the suffering they endured under Egyptian rule.

It is important to note that verses 18-22 are all predictions of what will happen in the future. The reader who studies the rest of the book of Exodus will see that all that God promised to Moses in Exodus 3 does come to pass. Again, the message to the reader is that God is in control. Nothing that Pharaoh can do will thwart God’s plans.

Why Are Wells Involved in So Many Old Testament Marriages?

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

The astute Bible reader will notice that Moses is the fourth important character in the Pentateuch to find his wife through an incident at a well. The other three are Isaac, Jacob, and Judah. Does this repetition indicate that these stories are being fabricated? Is it possible that wells were involved in all of these marriages?

Hebrew biblical writers were not just writing history in a dry and disinterested way. They commonly highlighted repeating patterns to emphasize theological points. It is entirely likely that these well stories did actually occur, and that the writer of the Pentateuch wanted to emphasize them.

Theologian John Sailhamer notes that these four men, who are in the central line of God’s promised blessing, “take wives from outside the land and the chosen people. In each case the wife is introduced by means of the scene at the well. ”

Sailhamer continues, “It is possible, then, that the pattern established by means of these well narratives is intended to show that behind the apparent anomaly of an important and prominent patriarch taking a wife from another people there lies the ever-present will of God.” (emphasis added)

In other words, the people chosen by God are birthed through God-ordained marriages. Once again, we see that he is in control, not the human patriarchs.

Commentary on Exodus 2 (Birth of Moses)

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

After Pharaoh’s previous failures, he tries yet another approach to break the will of the Hebrews. In verse 22 of chapter 1, he decrees that every male child of the Hebrews must be thrown into the Nile River.

One boy, however, is not immediately thrown into the Nile, but is hidden by his parents. We know that these Hebrew parents are descended from Levi, one of Jacob’s twelve sons. Once the boy is old enough so that he can no longer be hidden (3 months), his mother places him in a papyrus basket and sets him among some reeds along the edge of the Nile. The boy’s older sister (we learn her name is Miriam from Ex 15:20) is told to watch what happens to him.

None other than Pharaoh’s own daughter spots the basket and discovers that it contains a Hebrew infant. The baby’s sister, having watched this play out, then offers assistance to the Pharaoh’s daughter. The baby’s own mother is paid by Pharaoh’s daughter to nurse the child! After he is done nursing (somewhere between 2 and 5 years later), the boy is returned to the Pharaoh’s daughter, and she names the child Moses.

There is great irony in this narrative because Moses’s mother places Moses in the Nile River, just as Pharaoh decreed, and Moses is rescued from the Nile by Pharaoh’s own daughter. No matter what Pharaoh plans, he is always thwarted by God. God is in control of events, not Pharaoh.

Starting in verse 11, the remainder of Exodus 2 records several significant events in Moses’ life.  Acts 7:22 claims that “Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in his words and deeds,” but his peaceful and privileged upbringing would soon come to a tumultuous end.

In verses 11-14, we learn that Moses killed an Egyptian who was beating a fellow Hebrew. According to Acts 7:23, this happened when Moses was approaching 40 years old. There is definite foreshadowing here, as Moses will deliver Israel from oppression just as he delivered the Hebrew from being beaten. Moses subsequently learns that his crime has been discovered and Pharaoh attempts to kill him for it.

In order to save his life, Moses flees Egypt to a place called Midian. He comes to the aid of some women at a well, and the father of these women invites Moses to marry into his family, taking his daughter Zipporah as a wife. Moses and Zipporah have a son and name him Gershom, which means “I have become an alien in a foreign land.”

According to John Hannah in The Bible Knowledge Commentary, “For 40 years (Acts 7:30) Moses undertook the toilsome life of a sheepherder in the Sinai area, thus gaining valuable knowledge of the topography of the Sinai Peninsula which later was helpful as he led the Israelites in that wilderness land.”

Verses 23-25 remind the reader that many years pass and the Pharaoh who tried to kill Moses dies. More significantly, “God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob.” God will not forget his promises to the Patriarchs.

Did God Reward the Midwives for Lying?

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Shiphrah and Puah did indeed lie to Pharaoh about the Hebrew women giving birth quicker than the Egyptian women. Doesn’t the Bible expressly condemn lying? Yes, it does in several places. So what are we to make of these verses in Exodus 1? How is it that God rewarded the midwives for lying to Pharaoh?

One approach is to say that God rewarded the midwives for not killing the Hebrew boys, but that he did not approve of their lying to Pharaoh about it. In this way, God did not reward them for a lie and there is no longer a problem.

This solution, however, does not seem to take the text seriously. The lie to Pharaoh appears to be integral to the saving of the boys’ lives. There would be no reason for the author to include the lie if it wasn’t necessary to save those newborns. Nowhere in the following verses does God disapprove of the lie. In fact, the text clearly states that the midwives were rewarded by God.

The conclusion seems to be that God rewarded the midwives for disobeying Pharaoh and lying to Pharaoh. But, the disobedience and lying were only approved because they were saving innocent human lives. That is the key. Lying is wrong in most circumstances, but when innocent human lives were at stake, the midwives chose the higher good and God approved. God always wants us to choose the higher good when moral commands conflict.

Commentary on Exodus 1 (The Israelites Oppressed)

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Verses 1-5 remind the reader that 70 people came down to settle in Goshen, which is a district of Egypt situated in the northeast corner of the nation. The twelve sons of Jacob (Israel) are listed and grouped according to their birth mothers. The numbering of 70 is a reference back to Gen 46:27 where all of the descendants of Jacob who entered Egypt are named.

In verses 6-7, we learn that after Joseph and all his brothers died, the Israelites experienced tremendous population growth. Note the similarity between Gen 1:28 and Ex 1:7. God had commanded Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, and that is exactly what the Israelites have done.

Goshen was a land of great natural resources that allowed the Israelites to settle down and practice agriculture instead of being primarily nomadic, as their ancestors were. The stable food supply undoubtedly contributed greatly to their prosperity. Things were going so well for the Israelites, they had forgotten that they were strangers in a strange land. Their home was to be in Canaan, not Egypt.

Although the Israelites had lived in Goshen for hundreds of years, their life in Egypt was about to be massively disrupted.  Egypt, like any other nation, experienced political turmoil and changes in governance. The writer of Exodus announces that a new king (Pharaoh) came to power, and this king, evidently, either knew nothing or cared nothing about Joseph’s role in Egyptian history.

Some historians have speculated that the new king knew about Joseph, but because the king was bringing a new regime into power that was very different ethnically (non-Semitic) from the previous regimes, he no longer trusted the Hebrews (who were Semitic) to align themselves with his regime’s interests. Since Goshen bordered Canaan, where Egypt’s enemies were located, the Israelites could easily ally themselves with Canaanite nations who wanted an easy path into the heart of Egypt.

The new Pharaoh’s first plan to deal with the Israelites was to enslave them. They would be forced to build the store cities of Pithom and Rameses. However, contrary to his plans, the Israelites continued to increase in number. The clear message here is that the Gentile king of Egypt cannot thwart God’s plans for his people. The Pharaoh’s plans simply backfire on him.

Starting in verse 15, Pharaoh tries plan B to stop the multiplication of the Israelites. He calls two of the Hebrew midwives to him (they were probably leaders or representatives of a much larger number of midwives), and commands them to kill the boy babies when they are born. The midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, however, decline to obey Pharaoh, and let the boys live.

The reason given for the midwives disobeying Pharaoh is that they “feared God.” The message to the reader is that when a person in authority over us gives us a direct command that contradicts God’s unmistakable will, we are to disobey.

The midwives, when questioned by Pharaoh, tell him that Hebrew women give birth more quickly than Egyptian women, and so the midwives arrive too late to kill the baby boys. In the context of the narrative, the midwives are obviously lying to Pharaoh, but they are lying to save lives.

It is reasonable to assume that Pharaoh is counting on the midwives to surreptitiously kill the newborns without the mothers realizing what is going on. The plan counts on the skills and obedience of the midwives to carry it out. If the Hebrew mothers catch on, they will simply avoid using the midwives.

If Shiphrah and Puah refused to go along, it is reasonable to assume that Pharaoh would find other midwives to kill the Hebrew boys. By convincing Pharaoh that the plan simply won’t work because of how quickly Hebrew women gave birth, Pharoah abandoned the plan altogether instead of drafting more midwives.

Pharaoh’s plan B, to control the Israelites, backfires on him, just as his first plan did. The Israelites “became even more numerous” and because the midwives feared God and saved the lives of the baby boys, the midwives were also rewarded with families of their own.

Why Do We Need a Sunday School Reformation? Part 3

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

In part 2, we looked at how we might teach the contents of the Bible in a systematic way by looking at how colleges and universities teach their students. But there are specialized schools that teach the Bible, seminaries.

How do seminaries teach the Bible to their students? When I was attending Southern Evangelical Seminary, we took four classes that covered the entire Bible: two Old Testament classes and two New Testament classes.

These classes moved systematically through each book of the Bible, covering authorship, theological themes, major actors, major events, dating of the events, and literary structure. Now, the books in the Bible, as they are currently arranged, are not all in chronological order, but my seminary professors made sure we understood how all of the books chronologically fit together.

Do any of the Sunday school curricula that are commonly offered in churches use this concept of moving chronologically through the historical narratives of the Bible? None that I’ve ever seen. Instead, what is most often used is a topical curriculum.

A topical curriculum is structured around singular doctrines or applications of the contents of the Bible. For example, there may be a series of lessons on how to apply the Bible’s teachings to the issue of human sexuality. The curriculum will jump around the Bible, picking verses here and there that talk about sexuality.

Or maybe there will be a series on a single doctrine, such as atonement for sins. In this case, the curriculum will, again, jump around the entire Bible, highlighting verses that talk about the atonement.

These topical curricula are not systematic. They are not chronological. They leave the SSG members without a grounding in the overarching historical narrative of the Bible.

Imagine studying the events of World War II. Instead of moving chronologically through the events of WWII, what if the curriculum started with a series of lessons on the bravery of the men who attacked the Axis powers around the world? And then moved to a series on the resistance movements that formed in all the different countries occupied by Japan and Germany. And then moved to a series on how to apply the efficiency of American artillery factories to your own factory or business. And so forth and so forth.

Would each of these lessons be interesting, in and of themselves? Sure. We could learn something from each of these lesson series. But here is the key question: after these lessons, how well would we understand why WWII started in the first place, who the major players were during the war, how events unfolded once the war started, what the major battles were during the war, and how the war was brought to an end?

We might know bits and pieces about the overarching history of WWII, but we certainly would not be experts on WWII. We couldn’t teach others about WWII. We couldn’t explain the reasons WWII happened. We couldn’t explain the major players in the war. We would have a bunch of disjointed facts about the war, and that’s all. In no way would any college, university, or school agree that we had been taught WWII adequately. We would flunk any exam we were given on the facts of WWII.

Now let me be clear. Are topical curricula necessarily bad? No. If your SSG members are well grounded in the historical narrative of the entire Bible, then topical curricula can be wonderful, because now you’re building on a firm foundation of biblical knowledge. But before that foundation is there, the topical curriculum is ineffective.

But this is where we are with SSG members. They know disjointed bits and pieces about the Bible, but most of them (youth and adults) have no idea how it all connects. They don’t know the major components of the overarching biblical narrative. They don’t know the Word of God. We need a reformation because our students are flunking their exams.