Philadelphia on the night of May 31, 2020, reminded me of Los Angeles in 1992 after the beating of Rodney King—a Black motorist violently assaulted by white police officers after resisting arrest. The LA riots that followed left 58 people dead, resulted in 17,000 arrests, and caused an estimated $785 million in property damage (LA Times). What happened in 2020 was similar, though on a much smaller scale.

I mention this only to highlight the stark contrast in how the children of Korean merchants responded to these two moments. In 1992, many took up arms to defend their parents’ stores. In 2020, some defended the rioters who destroyed their parents’ stores—even as they tried raising money on GoFundMe. I remember thinking: What am I seeing here? Not justice warriors, but confused Asian Americans—socially elevated, culturally anxious, and unsure how to reconcile their lived experience with their desire to stand with the marginalized.

Of course, this tension over their ethnicity is nothing new. Even Asian Americans born here are often treated as perpetual foreigners. While white Americans are never praised for ‘speaking good English,’ Asian Americans often are. As one college senior once put it: “I’m an American, though I’ve spent my life proving it. My parents are Korean, but I was born here. Yet if you’re not chocolate or vanilla, people question you. I’ve been praised for my English and asked how long I’ve lived in the States. This second‑class treatment makes many Asian and Latino Americans ashamed of their heritage. My little brother can’t pronounce his Korean name—and he’s proud of that.”

Experiences like these take a toll. Among Asian Americans, three unhealthy responses often surface:

• Dissociating from one’s ethnicity: distancing oneself from cultural heritage, gravitating almost exclusively toward white peers, and interpreting discrimination as the failure of minorities to assimilate properly.
• Retreating into an ethnic enclave: withdrawing into the comfort of one’s subculture, avoiding engagement with mainstream society, and resigning oneself to discrimination as an unchangeable reality.
• Adopting an identity of the “oppressed”: claiming a status that does not reflect their lived reality, and then uncritically endorsing whatever actions identity‑based movements (racial, sexual, gender, etc.) take.

None of these responses leads to wholeness. So is there a better model? Yes—and it is found in the life of Daniel. What Asian Americans lack is not cultural strategy but spiritual identity. And that is why Daniel matters.

Daniel was taken from Judah as a teenager, separated from his family, given a new name (“Bel, protect his life”), and reeducated in Babylonian language, literature, and customs. Yet he rose to extraordinary prominence, serving as a top official under at least three emperors—Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, and Cyrus—across two world empires. Despite his success, Daniel never severed himself from his spiritual heritage, which for the Jews was inseparable from ethnic identity. He continued to pray toward Jerusalem three times a day, even when doing so meant facing a lion’s den.

Was Daniel a blind patriot—a zealous nationalist—who ignored the sins of his people? Hardly. His prayer in Daniel 9 is so honest and repentant (“we have sinned and done wrong”) that any Jew reading it would bow in shame. Daniel neither idolized his ethnicity nor rejected it. He neither assimilated uncritically nor withdrew in fear. He entered the mainstream not as a Babylonian, nor as a Judean nationalist, but as a servant of God. That is why he had the courage to tell his boss, King Nebuchadnezzar—whom he served faithfully—“Renounce your sins by doing what is right, and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed” (Dan. 4:27a).

His life shows that identity in God frees us from spineless assimilation, fearful isolation, or performative pseudo‑oppression. This is the model for minority Christians in America. When we enter the mainstream, we do so not as “white wannabes,” nor as members of a pseudo‑oppressed class, nor as people who stay out of the public square for fear of being marginalized. We enter as followers of Christ whose identity is rooted in God’s valuation of us. John 1:12 declares: “To all who received Him… He gave the right to become children of God.” If God calls us His children, why should we feel shame because of what people—infinitely less significant than God—think of us? We need not perform to please some nor hide in fear from others. In God’s economy, there are only two categories: sinners and the forgiven. Therefore, instead of being intimidated by whites or any other group, we should boldly bear witness to Christ and His way among all peoples. As 2 Timothy 1:7 reminds us: “God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but of power, love, and self‑discipline.”

In closing, the same confusion we saw in 1992 and 2020 becomes an opportunity for gospel clarity. Perhaps Asian American Christians—situated uniquely between whites and Blacks, Republicans and Democrats—are especially equipped to speak with sobriety and objectivity into America’s wounds. We can help the hurting on all sides and, most importantly, point everyone toward reconciliation with God through His Son, Jesus Christ.

AMI first posted its daily quiet time on January 1, 2013, and ever since—without skipping a beat—a daily quiet time consisting of a morning devotional, lunchtime Bible study, and evening reflection has been posted every day. For the first seven years of this ministry, original writings were posted. But around mid‑2019, previously posted devotionals began to be reposted alongside new ones; later that year, however, no new devotionals were added.

The other day, as I was preparing to recycle an old devotional of mine, I noticed that this one—originally posted on January 14, 2013—had already been recycled almost seven years later, on October 28, 2019, but with an important addition because of something that had happened two weeks earlier. And considering what my wife is going through at the moment and how it is affecting me, I couldn’t help but notice the irony of this devotional’s title: “Experiencing God in Our Desperateness.” So what did I write in January 2013, in response to Psalm 6:4, 6, which reads, “Turn, O LORD, and deliver me; save me because of your unfailing love ... I am worn out from groaning; all night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears.” This is what I wrote back then, when my life was probably full of sunshine:

“I suppose some of us may feel distant from this Psalm because we are not presently walking through life’s travails. But it rains on everyone, eventually. No one is immune from moments that leave us vulnerable, helpless, and fearful. Often, we come to God with an expectant list of problems we want solved. Yet if what we truly seek is to experience His presence and to know Him more deeply, then we must remember that such encounters often occur in the very moments when our cries to the Lord are most desperate.”

Fast‑forward about seven years. When I reposted that devotional on October 28, 2019, it was two weeks after a young father—a leader in an AMI church in New York City—suddenly lost his 10‑month‑old son. It was especially shocking to me because I had said goodbye to this man earlier that evening before leaving the church building to catch my bus back to Philadelphia. Two hours later, as our bus reached my city, I received a text informing me of the tragedy. So I added the following to my original devotional:

“Recently, a man in his 30s—someone with whom I had spent the entire afternoon in a church-related meeting—lost his young son that very evening due to a sudden illness. We were all shocked and utterly heartbroken for the parents. And it led us to cry out desperately to the Lord on behalf of this grieving family. But ultimately, we have hope. In death, we are reminded that while David had to contend with many foes, we have already gained victory over our ultimate foe—death itself. For the apostle Paul writes that in Christ, ‘the last enemy to be destroyed is death’ (1 Cor. 15:26). So today, instead of bringing God a list of requests, pour out your heart before Him. Cry out to the Lord. Cry out for this grieving family—in hope.”

And now, 13 years after I wrote the original, what was merely a speculation back then has become an unavoidable reality: I literally “flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears.” In the most recent iteration of this devotional, posted a few days ago, I wrote:

“My family and I are now living in that very space of utter desperation because of the catastrophic illness my wife is enduring. Faith in God feels and smells different now—stripped down, raw, and honest. In many ways, I find myself returning to the basics: crying out to the LORD for my wife.”

Ironically, amid this season of agonizing and protracted prayers, I have found something disturbing about myself: a narcissistic self on the one hand and an ulterior motive for serving the Lord on the other—both well hidden behind a seeming dedication to Him. It is as if my wife’s illness is “saving” her husband from himself so that he truly means what he recently told his AMI colleagues in response to their overwhelming support:
“Thank you to all. It means a lot to us. Learning, in real time, to thank God in all circumstances … because, among other reasons, He didn’t spare His own Son to do for us what we could never do for ourselves—to save us from eternal separation from Him …”

Please pray for my wife, Elsie, that God will perform a great miracle on her behalf. I am praying in faith that He will, because my wife and I believe that she still hasn’t finished “serv[ing] God’s purpose in [her] own generation” (Acts 13:36).

Pastor Eddie Kim, recently diagnosed with advanced cancer, is a beloved figure in the AMI community; no doubt, many AMI-affiliated people, including me, are praying for his healing. Nevertheless, as I "remind" the Lord all the reasons why He should heal Eddie, I will not say, “Lord, don’t take Pastor Eddie now because he has so much left to do to advance Your kingdom.” No, not after seeing Dr. Johann Kim, another beloved AMI pastor, literally die before my eyes in Athens, Greece in April of 2019.  

Having retired early from his day job—teaching physics as a tenured professor at the University of Cincinnati for 30 years—Dr. Johann had gone to Athens to explore the possibility of serving the refugees pouring in from Iran and Afghanistan. Having turned 64 and in relatively good health, Johann was looking forward to starting house churches for the refugees. Then, suddenly, he died from a stroke less than a month after arriving in Greece. But Dr. Johann had so much left to do; why did God take him?

Even more puzzling is the inexplicable death—from a spiritual perspective—of Nabeel Qureshi, a devout Muslim born in America who details in his book, “Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus” (2014), how he, after encountering the truth of the Christian faith, renounced Islam to embrace Christ as his Lord and savior. As smart as Dr. Johann, Nabeel held a MD and three master’s degrees, including two from Duke and Oxford, which he pursued to prepare for Christian ministry (in apologetics). Quickly becoming the worst nightmare for the defenders of Islam, it was, therefore, absolutely absurd that Nabeel died of cancer at the tender age of 34 in 2017. Why Lord? Nabeel was just getting started.  
 
But the inexplicableness of these men’s death pales in comparison to the death of James, one of the top three disciples of Jesus that included John his brother and Peter. Jesus spent extra hours with these three men, separate from the rest, giving them additional teachings and training (Mk. 8:51, 9:2). For causal readers, James who appears in Galatians 2:9, which reads, “James, Peter and John, those reputed to be pillars,” is the same James mentioned next to Peter and John in the Gospels. That, however, is not true because James the brother of John suffered the violent death of martyrdom at the hands of Herod in Acts 12:2; he probably was around Nabeel’s age.
 
So, what major contributions did James make toward the advancements of the kingdom before his untimely death? We know what Peter and John did, like producing books that became part of the New Testament canon, but what about James? Not much, or at least we don’t know because the only time the Bible talks about him outside of the Gospels is when he was martyred.  

Then, who is this other James appearing in Galatians 2:9? That’s a half-brother of Jesus—not even a believer while Jesus was on earth (Jn. 7:5)—who seemingly took the place of James the brother of John as one of the three leaders of the church in Jerusalem. Such an irony! James the disciple may have wondered, as he was facing death, “What was all that for, the extra teachings and training I got from the Lord?”  

Of course, there is no good answer this side of heaven to the question of why the death of these men looks so untimely. But one thing is certain: No matter how absurd the deaths of some saints look to us, God took them because they had completed the purpose for which they were created. In speaking of King David’s death, Acts 13:36 says, “For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid with his fathers . . .” It’s just that we rarely recognize when God is done with us.
 
In view of that, if you ask me whether I think God is done with Pastor Eddie, I will say, “No, because the church he planted just before the pandemic began seems ready to explode with growth. There is still much left for Pastor Eddie to complete.” Therefore, I pray, “Lord, IF You are not done with Eddie, that is, IF Eddie still hasn’t finished serving the purpose of God for which he was created to do, then, I thank You in advance for healing him.” But if God is done with using us, then, we go. After all, who wants to stick around this world getting madder by the second when we can "be with Christ, which is better by far" (Phil. 1:23).

Ultimately, we pray as Jesus did the night before his death by crucifixion: “Not as I will, but . . . may your will be done” (Matt. 26:39, 42). And, as far as I am concerned, no one knows more about that tension than my sister who, in 2005, was fiercely battling God over her cancer-stricken husband. I will leave you with her words: “I begged God to cure my husband of this horrible disease and bring him home . . . Then God spoke to me that night telling me that all this time, I’ve been praying for my husband to get well according to my will. God told me to change my will to God’s will. Whatever happens, trust God. This was a pivotal moment for me because I accepted God’s will, regardless of whether his will was to cure my husband or to take him to heaven; it was God’s will and his will is perfect, righteous, and good. When I took God’s will over mine at that moment, he lifted up my unbearable heavy load and gave me a lighter load to carry. So the anger I thought I would have if God took my husband from me was no longer there because God filled my heart with this incredible peace that passes beyond any understanding . . .”

With that in mind, let’s keep on praying for Pastor Eddie.

Did you know that many advocates of theological liberalism do not believe that the Gospels are reliable and dependable sources of Jesus?  So then, how would you respond to one of them who said:

“According to what I understand, most biblical scholars agree that the Gospels, having been written near the end of the 1st century (thus, several decades after Jesus' supposed crucifixion) were unlikely to have been written by eyewitnesses. Neither are there known contemporaneous writings during the time Jesus was alive. One of the earliest is mentioned in Antiquities of Josephus' writings; however, there is some debate as to whether the paragraph mentioning Jesus is entirely authentic.  Also, Josephus was born after Jesus' career was presumed to have ended. The other Roman historians that I know of (Tacitus and Suetonius) were all written later than Josephus and were unlikely to have been eyewitnesses.”

My response:

No doubt, to anyone who says, “Jesus’ supposed crucifixion,” the resurrection must be a pious legend fabricated by later Christians. He would certainly agree with British royal historian Teabing in "The Da Vinci Code" who declared: “Until that moment in History [i.e., council of Nicaea in 325 A.D.], Jesus was viewed by his followers as a mortal prophet . . . a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless . . . [The early Christians] embellished those gospels that made him godlike.”

That being said, the assertation that since biblical writers are not eyewitnesses, therefore, their writings are not credible is not a sustainable point. If that were so, we would need to get rid history as an academic discipline. For instance, in 2005 David McCullough, a renowned historian, published a book—entitled, "On the Man Behind the Miracles of 1776"—about the first President of the United States. Many hailed it as a book revealing the real George Washington. However, should McCullough’s work be rejected because, after all, it was written more than 200 years after Washington died?  Of course not, since the credibility of historical works does not depend on when they were composed, but the soundness of the research method used to obtain reliable and relevant data.    

Now, consider Cornelius Tacitus (55-120), called the “greatest historian” of ancient Rome, who wrote several volumes for a series called "Annals" that covers the history of Roman Empire from Tiberius to Nero. Since there are a number of events in this work that the author didn’t witness personally, should his work be discredited on that account alone?  Certainly not!  One of those is an event that two other Roman writers, both contemporaries of Tacitus, alluded in their writings.  

Of this event, Tacitus wrote: “Christus, from whom their name is derived, was executed at the hands of the procurator Pontius Pilate . . . Checked for the moment, this pernicious superstition again broke out, not only in Judaea, the source of the evil, but even in Rome, . . .”  Historian Suetonius (75-160) said, “. . . Christians, a set of men adhering to a novel and mischievous superstition.” Pliny (62-113), governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor, in his letter to the emperor regarding Christians said, “I found nothing but a depraved and extravagant superstition.”        “Pernicious,” “mischievous,” and “extravagant superstition” all refer to Christ’s resurrection, which obviously wasn’t a later embellishment since no less than three first century writers alluded to it.  

Then there is Flavius Josephus (37-100) who was a Jewish historian.  His "Antiquities of the Jews" contains, according to TIME magazine, “the most-cited piece of non-Christian testimony to the life and works of Jesus.” A paragraph in Josephus’ book under scrutiny is this: “He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross.” But there is a discrepancy in what follows. One version says that “those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold.” Impressed? Well, wait because another version of Josephus’ work says that “his disciples did not abandon their discipleship.  They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion, and that he was alive.”  

Which is correct? To me the first version doesn’t seem authentic because, accordingly, Josephus personally believed that the resurrected Jesus appeared to his men. No historian who wants to be taken seriously would do that. The second version seems more authentic since Josephus             merely reported what the disciples personally believed.  Regardless, both versions indicate that the resurrection of Christ (the strongest proof for his divinity) was upheld by his followers from the first century—another proof that resurrection was not a later embellishment.  

Finally, know that the gospels were written a lot earlier than many believe. Furthermore, we shouldn’t assume that there was nothing written before the actual gospels were produced. For instance, it is very plausible that the Gospel of Luke was written in late 50s or early 60s. How so?  Luke produced two volumes: the gospel bearing his name and Acts, as a compendium.  Throughout these books, he mentions or implies historical figures who lived in the first half of the first century, such as Caesar August (Lk. 2:1), Tiberius Caesar, Herod Antipas (Lk. 3:1),
Nero (Acts 26:25), and Claudius (Acts 18:2). Acts ends with Paul in Rome waiting for his trial before Nero, who would commit suicide in 68.

In addition, Luke says at the beginning of his gospel, “Many have undertaken to draw up an
account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us
by those who from the first were eyewitnesses.” So what are these “many” works that were
previously produced?  One certainly is the Gospel of Mark, which, according to many scholars, was the first gospel written. Another may be Q, standing for the German word quelle which means source.  Many scholars, both liberal and conservatives, agree that one or more written sources based on eyewitness accounts, such as Q, existed before the penning of those books that were later recognized as authoritative. Don’t squirm over this because the Old Testament also used uninspired sources, such as the Book of Wars (Num. 21:14) and the Book of Jashar (Jos. 10:13).

Conclusion

I don’t believe the teachings of the NT in spite of their implausibility and improbability; I believe because they are reasonable. I believe that Jesus historically died and resurrected to forgive my sins and to gift me with eternal life.  That fuels my motivation to live for his glory by loving Him as well as my neighbors (Matt. 22:37-8).

Shortly after the recent Supreme Court verdict that enables each state to make its own decision on abortion, an actress named Kimberly Elise twitted, “Millions of babies will be saved from death by abortion due to the overturning of Roe. V. Wade. Hallelujah! #allglorybetoGod.”  The article reporting her tweet added, “Elise became the target of vicious and seemingly relentless criticism by many on Twitter.”  I am guessing that she had counted the cost before making that statement (Lk. 14:28) since it is unlikely that anyone will be calling Elise’s agent any time soon.

A few days before her tweet, an email was sent to me by someone who has long served faithfully in one of the churches belonging to my organization. This person wrote, “While I personally applaud the [court’s] decision, I fear the division this will cause, even with opinions in the church. Is this something the church should address with its congregation? Curious to hear your thoughts.”

I replied: “The outcome will be what you are fearing, more so in churches where this sort of stuff has never been addressed, beginning with a basic introduction to culture and faith. Since most pastors have not gone there, largely in order to avoid controversy (that is, the fear of angering half the church), I am not sure how they are going to frame this: ‘We praise God that abortion is now in the hands of each state, likely drastically reducing its frequency.’ Or ‘we lament that women won't have access to clean and legal abortion in America from here and out.’  If we say nothing on this after the passing of this landmark verdict, then, what does this say about the church, that we only focus on the issues of personal piety and redemption? While that certainly is what the church needs to do continuously, this culture/faith stuff is now at our doorstep, knocking on the door pretty hard and demanding that we respond.”

The questioner responded: “I agree with you that the church should and needs to discuss and teach on these matters. Otherwise church members are only hearing secular voices on these topics!”  Yes, this is all the more so since we are not living in an ordinary time. This feels really different. Consider abortion: It was not that long ago social liberals agreed with Hillary Clinton who, during her 2008 presidential campaign, said that “abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.” That is the classic pro-choice stance that caters to the wishes of women (but not the unborn) but within reason. But that ship has long sailed, for what we are seeing right now—a vitriolic reaction against the court’s decision—is pro-abortion. How is that different from pro-choice? Bearing in mind the way many abortion advocates frame this procedure, it seems like getting an abortion has now become, one, a rite of passage for the modern woman without which she cannot emerge as self-autonomous (“My body, my choice”), and two, a political statement.

None expresses this outlook clearer than actress Lena Dunham who, in 2016, lamented, “I still haven’t had an abortion, but I wish I had.” Topping that pathetic comment is what comedian Laurie Martin recently said as to what she would do if a man impregnated her who was later found to be a Republican: “I will joyfully abort our fetus.” Many of us were so eager to talk about social justice—racial justice in particular. Well, where is justice for the unborn? (But consider yourself excused from that question if you deem the unborn as no more than a blob of tissues and abortion as no different than removing unneeded organs, like tonsils. I will talk to you some other time.)  

Yes, this feels different, or what one colleague pastor put it in his sermon given in the week of the verdict, “This nation, collectively, has values so distorted … Christians, wake up and understand … how serious it is for the future of this nation … as a human race.”  In such a time as this, if spiritual leaders remain silent as if everything is as business as usual, maybe the Lord will remind his church, “If they keep quiet, the stones will cry out” (Luke 19:40).

Whether to speak up, of course with “gentleness and respect” (1 Pet. 3:15), really depends on who we think are sitting in our pews. And this is where I disagreed with my colleague pastor who said in the same sermon: "Parents, you are worried about your kids going to good schools. Going to good schools and coming out with wrong values, they will be enemy to you. Whatever you believe they will laugh at your face. And they are going to do things that offend God with all of their education and with all the money they receive from work."  In “disagreement” I wrote to him, “A grown up version of the kids you described in the sermon, a good number of them (perhaps more than we care to admit) attend our churches.”

So what should we do? First, we should really pray for this nation. I am praying that President Biden has the fear of God. Second, before talking about individual issues like abortion, we must educate our people about the intricate relationship between faith and culture (e.g., Christ against culture, Christ of culture, Christ above culture, etc.). Third, overcome the fear of getting what Kimberly Elise is receiving for “speaking the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15): vicious and relentless criticism. How? One, be secure in Christ! Two, consider that as the cost of following Christ. Three, passionately believe that God’s truth in Scripture triumphs over any human outlooks or opinions (Jn. 8:32). Four, take steps to helping women in crisis. Five, operate out of love (1 Jn. 4:18).

A while back, someone struggling with apparent contradictions in the Bible asked: “How should I deal with inconsistencies in the Bible? For instance, while, according to Luke, the robber to the right of Jesus repented (Lk. 23:42), Matthew said that both mocked Jesus (Mt. 27:53). Also, the account of the death of Judas Iscariot in the gospels and Acts 1:18 seems to differ. Most of the time I am forced to admit that I just don’t know, but sometimes it does affect my reading of the Bible.”

Well, these are not difficult problems to resolve once the inspiration of Scripture is understood correctly (2 Tim. 3:16). While no one knows the exact nature of inspiration, it was neither mechanical (e.g., typewriter) nor dictational (i.e., for the most part). If it were so, then, two or more biblical authors writing about same events should have produced exactly the same accounts, word-for-word. However, the inspired writers were fully in control of their own faculties, as evidenced by Luke’s admission in the prologue of his gospel: “Since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus” regarding the life and teachings of Christ (Lk. 1:3 NIV). This is to say, the composition of the Gospel of Luke was guided by the author’s distinct purpose, research method and target audience (likely a Roman official).

That necessarily means that Luke’s gospel is not going to exactly resemble, for instance, the Gospel of Matthew whose purpose is to show the Jews that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah because he fulfilled the messianic prophecies in the Old Testament. In addition, the fact that Matthew is a Jew and Luke a gentile, which points to their differing cultural orientations, likely contributed to further distinctions between the two gospels. That may be why Luke mentions three situations involving Samarians (i.e., gentiles) while Matthew cites none of them (Lk. 9:51 f., 10:25 f., 17:11f.)  It bears repeating that these and other factors contributed towards distinctive writing and editing styles among biblical writers; thus, what may appear discrepant is not so in reality.
 
For instance, consider two accounts of the invasion of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. While, according to Daniel, it occurred in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah (Dan. 1:1), Jeremiah reports that it happened “in the fourth year of Jehoiakim” (Jer. 25:9). This appears contradictory since the invasion must have taken place either in the third or the fourth year. But when a cultural factor is considered, this difference is easily explained. Whereas the Babylonians counted the ascension year (the actual year the king was enthroned) as the “year 0,” the Jews considered that as the year 1. So, the fourth year according to Jeremiah living in Israel is equal to the third year according to Daniel living in Babylonia. Both accounts, therefore, are true.

If our understanding of inspiration does not allow cultural and individual idiosyncrasies, then we are forced to either question the infallibility of Scripture or come up with an explanation that creates more problems. Once, a renowned theologian, noting the numeric discrepancy between Mark’s and Luke’s account of Peter’s denial of Jesus, said that the apostle denied Jesus six times. What troubled this theologian is Mark’s reporting that the rooster crowed twice upon Peter’s denial (Mk. 14:72) while Matthew and Luke imply that it crowed only once (Matt. 26:75; Lk. 22:60). Instead of recognizing that no two people tell the same story exactly the same way for a reason, the mechanical view of inspiration held by this theologian prompted him to react unreasonably. It can be argued then that Peter, being the main source for Mark’s gospel (1 Pet. 5:13), vividly recalls the details of what was a personally devastating event, while Matthew and Luke simply note the most important aspect of the event: Peter’s denial of Jesus.
 
All that being said, the two alleged discrepancies that troubled the questioner can be explained in the same way. Given that the objective of Matthew is to testify to the messiahship of Jesus by way of showing how he fulfilled the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament, it would seem that Matthew is more interested in showing how Jesus’ dying between the two robbers fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah 53:12 (“And was numbered with the transgressors”) than showing how one of them turned to Christ. Luke, on the other hand, includes this brief conversation in his gospel since its purpose is to present an orderly account of everything that happened. Evidently, this thief had a change of mind after initially joining the other in mocking Jesus. Perhaps, his heart was so moved after hearing Jesus pray, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do” (Lk. 23:34).

As for two conflicting accounts of the manner of Judas’ death, picture a situation in which the driver of a car is killed due to massive internal injuries as a result of crashing the car into a tree. However, during an autopsy, the coroner discovers that a heart attack would have likely killed him, which, then, led to the accident. In a comparable way, Judas died from having hung himself (Matt. 27:5), likely on a tree at the edge of a cliff.  Later, when the branch was no longer able to support the weight of Judas, it broke off, causing the dead body to fall headlong onto the very field (a.k.a., “Field of Blood”) he, in effect, had purchased (Matt. 27:6-7) with the money obtained for betraying Jesus (i.e., blood money).  Luke probably saw poetic justice in all this.
 
Seeing the inspiration of Scripture in this way, one can argue that Scripture is a completely human as well as divine book, much like the humanity and the divinity of Christ. This is to say, biblical writers, as “they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:21), penned exactly what the Lord wanted them to record without compromising their individualities and cultural orientations. Yes, “your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path” (Ps. 119:105).

Of course, not every alleged discrepancy in the Bible is easy to resolve. So, if you are interested in further pursuing this matter, check out my unpublished work entitled, “Inspiration, Translation and Canonicity of the New Testament” @https://www.dropbox.com/s/mybwbu0bqznv59r/AP3 Inspiration^J Translation ^0 Canonicity.pdf?dl=0

The number is truly staggering: over four million Ukrainians fleeing their homeland to escape from Russian forces who invaded their country six weeks ago. The normalcy of life as these Ukrainians had known suddenly came to a halt and having lost everything, many are now refugees living a hand-to-mouth existence.

It is a familiar story my parents told me growing up because they themselves were refugees who fled communist North Korea during the Korean War (1950-3); they and their families, like so many Ukrainians, lost everything during the process. It is a bleak picture of a life with seemingly no hope to get back on track. 

Yet, you would be surprised how resilient people can be, especially those whose God is the Lord. It is not without reason that Proverbs 24:16 says, “For though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again.” And, historically, it is with people facing incredibly challenging times that God carried out the most amazing work of redeeming the lost, like what He did in Antioch 2,000 years ago.

Arguably the most significant church to emerge while the church in Jerusalem “lapsed into . . . complete obscurity by the end of the 2nd century . . . after the city of Jerusalem fell to the Romans” in AD 70 (Kee 1965: 245), was Antioch Church in modern-day Turkey. Not only did this church become the hubcap of vigorous missionary activities (e.g., sending out Paul and Barnabas), but also by the end of the fourth century, “one-half of the about 500,000 inhabitants of Antioch became Christians” (Neill 1987:29).

So then, who were responsible for starting this stunning Christian movement in this gentile city? Acts 11:19-20 records that “those who had been scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen, . . . men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus.”  This is to say, God used nameless refugees to spark an incredibly significant Christian movement at the outset of Christianity. 

Looking at two colleagues of mine who were refugees themselves, what these early believers did in Antioch becomes all too believable. Ramin from Iran became a refugee after escaping from Shiite Muslims in his homeland, who became hostile towards him after he became a believer. More than a decade removed from those difficult days, Ramin is now a pastor and a fearless defender of the Christian faith in America. Then there is “Minh” from Vietnam whose story is all too familiar as tens of thousands of Vietnamese fled their country after it fell to the communists in 1975. Finally coming to America nearly 40 years ago following a lengthy stay at two refugee camps, he worked hard to become a nurse. And, after having become a Christ’s follower, Minh, upon taking an early retirement, returned to Vietnam where he currently serves as a missionary.

Yes, with God, there is always hope even in our worst moments. Need further proof of this? 
Having lived in Mexico for many years, I have many friends there, including two men who were deported from the U.S. after living here for many years as illegal aliens. One is “Javier” who had lived and worked in California long enough to buy a modest house and raise a family. The other is “Carlos,” a pastor who was held at a detention facility for undocumented aliens for several months before being deported. Just like refugees from Ukraine, Iran and Vietnam, Javier and Carlos lost everything overnight with no place to go—it was a nightmare for them and their families. As their friend, I know how devastating the deportation was for both.

Now, I understand that what I am about to say would make zero sense, even be offensive, to those who do not adhere to a biblical worldview; but for those who do, realize that deportation was the best thing that could have happened to Javier and Carlos from the standpoint of eternity. How?

Javier came to believe in Jesus Christ at a retreat where I spoke during the aftermath of deportation and amid crumbing marriage. He would eventually enroll in a local Bible institute and become a leader in the church; once, he seriously considered dropping everything to go to China as a missionary. As for Carlos, after initially taking a factory job to support his family, he met a boss who later helped him to join the largest Baptist church in the city that, in time, installed him as the pastor of its daughter church.

The Old Testament is not silent on this matter, for many Israelites in antiquity would readily empathize with the likes of Javier, Carlos and Ukrainian refugees, because they themselves were deported to Babylonia following its crushing invasions of Judah. Most of them would never set foot again on their homeland. One person was Daniel, who was forcibly taken when he was still a teen; he would never see his families again. How devastating this experience must have been for Daniel, but when seen through the lens of spirituality, deportation was God’s way of drawing Daniel near to the LORD, so much so that he would later become a great prophet of God, while serving as a top official in three different administrations.

So, even as we lament over refugees and deportees, we recall the words of Jesus: “In this world you will have trouble” (Jn. 16:32). And often it is through these trials that we learn “not to rely on ourselves but on God” (2 Cor. 1:9). I hope you would agree that being drawn to God is far better than anything material America has to offer.
 
Here is hoping that the horrific ordeal Ukrainians are currently suffering will “lead [them] to Christ that [they] might be justified by faith” (Gal. 3:24b). And that is the experience of many refugees, including my parents who rose from the ashes of a terrible war to lead productive lives, marked by their decision to believe in Jesus. Yes, there is eternal hope for Ukrainian refugees.

What’s a church without being assailed from all sides; after all, that’s how it all began when, in the first century, the Romans accused Christians of committing incest and cannibalism and being atheists.  Not much has changed since then except for new derogatory labels placed on Christians.  One book that captures the postmodern malice against the Christians faith was penned in 2006 by John Shelby Spong, a liberal bishop of Episcopalian Church, who entitled it, "The Sins of Scriptures: Exposing the Bible’s Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love."  This is one of the books that set the stage for what’s going on today: Condemning the Bible-believing Christians as intolerant bigots and haters because they are not in agreement with the progressive agendas advocated by the likes of the BLM and LGBTQ advocates.  

Now, countering arguments justifying progressive measures is a lot harder to do than dealing with typical attacks against the Bible by their modern critics, such as pluralism, agnosticism, and atheism.  The reason is simple: When people on the Left accuse the Bible-affirming Christians of not supporting, for instance, same-sex marriage, there really isn’t much to defend because the accusers are right—Scripture does not support it!  But, when modern critics throw pluralism, agnosticism, and atheism at the believers to denounce their faith, there is much to defend because they are wrong!  Let me offer three brief examples involving Elaine Pagels (Princeton University), Bart Ehrman (University of North Carolina), and Richard Dawkins (Oxford University).

First, as for Pagels, she represents religious pluralism in the sense that, according to her, a competing movement (i.e., Gnosticism) existed in the early church that taught that there was more than one way to salvation.  Pagels’ favorite verse is chapter 70 of the [Gnostic] Gospel of Thomas that says, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you."  Regarding this declaration, she says, “[It] encourages individuals to believe God through their own divine ability instead of through Jesus.” But that's not what the earliest hearers of the gospel heard.  The Gospel of John, which predates Thomas (a point she concedes) as many as 60 years, says this: “Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me’” (Jn. 14:6).  No, there was neither competition nor confusion in the first century church over in whose name one could be saved: it was in Christ alone, and no book produced much later was going to change that doctrinal understanding among the faithful.

Second, as for Ehrman who was once an evangelical but now an avowed “happy agnostic,” he stands for a radical deconstruction of the New Testament (NT).  In the second century, it is true that there were three main groups that had different ideas about God and Christ, even producing their own sacred books.  To the Ebionites, the Messiah Jesus was all human but not divine, while the Jesus of the Gnostics was a disembodied Spirit.  And to the Marcionites, Jesus, sent by the true God, came to oppose the god of the Old Testament who created the evil material world. Ehrman’s agnostic (i.e., nothing can be known) argument is that everything was still up for grabs at the outset, meaning no one really knew which group, including the Orthodox (the evangelicals of that era), had the truth.  The Orthodox group beat out their competition only because they had more money, were better organized, and altered unfavorable passages in the NT to back their views.  

An appropriate response ought to begin with this question: Whose teachings and books were produced first?  The twenty-seven books of the NT were produced between 49-90 (The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 1997), and by the time other groups came on the scene, beginning in A.D. 140, the collective theological consciousness of the Church had long been established.  The Christians in the 2nd century, who were taught the doctrines of the apostles through their disciples (e.g., John->Polycarp->Irenaeus->Hippolytus), knew, for instance, that what the Gnostics taught (i.e., Jesus didn't come in the flesh) was substantively different from what John had taught much earlier.  1 John 4:2b-3a says, “Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.  This is the spirit of the antichrist.”  No, the Bibles does not support agnosticism, for Scripture is a reliable testimony of a living and knowable God through Christ (Jn. 1:18).

Third, as for the Darwinian evolution that fuels the creative (or delusive) mind of the New Atheist Dawkins, the first one to speculate that “human life was originally like that of animals” was Democritus, a 5th century B.C. Greek philosopher.  To him, the world was devoid of purpose or prime mover (of Aristotle), which Dawkins, who entitled his 2006 book, "The God Delusion," would heartily agree.  Even so, Dawkins, who has explanations for everything regarding how a life-giving planet earth was formed out of billions of lifeless planets, doesn’t know how the one thing that clearly distinguishes humans from animals came about: consciousness.   After saying, “Maybe a few later gaps in the evolutionary story also need major infusion of luck,” Dawkins added, “The origin of consciousness might be another major gap whose bridging was of the same order of improbability” (p. 168).  Of course, that’s not the only thing that great luck was needed for evolution to succeed.  A Time magazine article on evolution (June 23, 2003) ends with this downer: “Clearly, being like us physically was not enough by itself to trigger the cultural complexity—innovation, creativity, symbolism and perhaps spoken language—that distinguishes us from all other animals.   So what triggered those changes? . . . Nobody really knows.”  

The Scripture, however, is not silent on this matter: “The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Gn. 2:7).  Humans, not animals, are made in God’s image, and that not only endowed us with intrinsic worth, but it also gave us the ability to speak and be creative (Gn. 2:19-20).  

Following Christ is hard at all levels, including defending the Christian faith in the way prescribed to us by the apostle Peter: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience” (1 Peter 3:15a-16a).  More than ever before, there is a great need for a cogent and gentle defense of our faith.  And it is going to require a lot of serious studying and praying, and “speaking the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15) to accomplish what Peter says in the next verse: “So that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander” (1 Peter 3:16).  That’s the challenge and responsibility.  Take it.

By Pastor Ryun Chang, PhD

“Don’t beat a dead horse,” I said with a smile to a young therapist sitting next to me in a bus heading to New York City sometime in June of 2015.  After being told that I’m a pastor, this therapist, claiming to be nonjudgmental, questioned about my stance on homosexuality to prove his point that Christians are judgmental.  My response wasn’t all that odd considering that the Supreme Court had just legalized same-sex marriage.  

Being a realist, this blog isn't written to convince the world how they got it all wrong on homosexuality.  Perhaps, it may be too late for that.  My objective, instead, is to appeal to those believers who may nod their heads in agreement after reading a Los Angeles Times column under this header: “Bible Doesn’t Say What We Thought It Did.”  The secular world will push for what it wants to believe, but this is one remaining battle over homosexuality that Christians shouldn't cede: What does God's word say about homosexuality?  

One effective way to justify the claim that Bible accepts homosexuality has always been to question whether certain New Testament Greek words related to it are translated correctly. Among the first to challenge the Bible in this manner was John Boswell—a Yale historian who died of AIDS in 1994—who found 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 objectionable.  This passage refers to the apostle Paul declaring, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?  Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate [“malakos”], nor homosexuals [“arsenokoitēs”] . . . will inherit the kingdom of God” (NASB 1995).  In response, Boswell wrote, “There is no good reason to believe that either malakos or arsenokoitēs connoted homosexuality in the time of Paul or for centuries thereafter, and every reason to suppose that, whatever they came to mean, they were not determinative of Christian opinion on the morality of homosexual acts.”  This historian, instead, insisted that malakos (effeminate in NASB) means “‘soft’ or ‘weak’ with the implication of moral softness or moral laxity”; therefore, malakos is not a technical term for homosexual.  As for arsenokoitēs (homosexuals in NASB), its meaning is “males who go bed,” or “male prostitutes” who serve both heterosexual and homosexual clients. Accordingly, what Paul banned was promiscuity and prostitution, not homosexuality.

Okay, that’s what a brilliant historian, not a Greek expert, said.  Thus, we shouldn’t be surprised to find Boswell’s understanding deficient in view of notable lexicons published by reputable academic publishers.  Consider, for instance, A Greek-English Lexicon of New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, published by the University of Chicago Press (1957).  It defines malakos as (1) “soft of things; clothes; (2) “persons: soft, effeminate especially of catamite, men and boys who allow themselves to be misused homosexually.” And according to A Reader’s Greek-English Lexicon on the New Testament (Andrews University Press 1971), malakos means, “soft; effeminate; catamite.”  As for arsenokoitēs, it is a compound Greek word made up of "arsēn," meaning male with a strong emphasis on sex, and "koitē," meaning bed, which was “a coarse word . . .  denot[ing] base or licentious sexual activities (Rom. 13:13)” (Ukleja 1983).  A Greek-English Lexicon of New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature translates it as “male homosexual” or “pederast” (i.e., a man who participates in sexual activity with a boy or adolescence).  A Reader’s Greek-English Lexicon on the New Testament translates it as “male homosexual, sodomite.”

These findings seem to indicate that whereas malakos refers to a man playing the passive homosexual role, arsenokoitēs refers to the one taking more of an active role. It is reasonable, therefore, to conclude that 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 has been correctly translated in the Bible.

Now, a recent challenge to the biblical position on homosexuality on account of an alleged mistranslation of biblical word, comes from Mark Tyler Connoley and Jeff Miner, pastors of pro-gay Metropolitan Community Church.  In their 2002 book, The Children Are Free: Reexamining the Biblical Evidence on Same-Sex Relationships, they argued that the Greek word “pais” the Roman centurion used in reference to his sick servant whom he “valued highly” means “beloved gay lover” (Lk. 7:7).  And since Jesus commanded the centurion for his “great faith,” instead of condemning him for homosexuality, this would indicate that Christ approved it.

Really?

The word pais is used 24 times in the NT to refer to close relationships like one between father and son (Jn. 4:51; Acts 3:13).  And, besides the centurion story, in two other NT passages a master refers to his servant as pais, not “doulos” (the usual term for slave or servant). One of them is found in the parable of the Prodigal Son wherein Luke 15:25-6 says, “When [the older son] came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. And he summoned one of the servants (pais) and began inquiring what these things could be.”  Well, since the servant was referred to as pais, why not say, “The older son called to his side his male lover and began inquiring . . .”  And since Jesus himself narrated this parable, homosexuality must be okay!

Pais is also used (in Acts 20:12) in reference to “a young man named Eutychus” who, while listening to Paul before his departure, “was overcome by sleep and fell down from the third floor and was picked up dead.  But Paul went down and fell upon him ("epipitō": to embrace with affection), and after embracing him, he said, ‘Do not be troubled, for his life is in him’.” (Acts 20:9-12).  If I were a pastor of Metropolitan Community Church, I would say, “Paul's young male lover was sitting by the window, hoping to say a final goodbye.  But as the evening dragged on, he dozed off and fell out of the window. So, Paul hurriedly went down and embraced his lover with affection.”

What’s my point? The saying, “to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” fits what gay rights advocates do with the Bible.  To them, any affection shown between two people of the same sex must mean they are gay lovers.  That is why David and Jonathan (“then they kissed each other and wept together”—1 Sam. 20:41) and Naomi and Ruth (“Ruth clung to her”—Ruth 1:14) have long been paired up as same-sex lovers.  That, of course, is ludicrous. Just because this conscientious Roman centurion was a caring boss doesn’t make him a homosexual.  Besides everything else, would a Roman officer dare to have a male-lover in his household when homosexuality was prosecutable in the Roman law, this, according to Background of Early Christianity (2003).  Also, don’t read too much into any substantial difference between doulos and pais since, for the most part, they were used interchangeably in the NT.  

The Bible is clear about homosexuality and same-sex marriage: neither is part of God’s will for humanity.  Nevertheless, homosexuals, as humans bearing God’s likeness, should neither be harassed nor insulted because "for God so loved the world" (Jn. 3:16a) includes all sinners, whether homosexual or heterosexual.  And when sharing our perspective on homosexuality, as I did that day on the bus, we just need to say politely, “We disagree with your lifestyle because, one, it isn't God’s will (Gn. 2:20-25; Rom. 1:26-7), and two, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 is correctly translated."  

Some time ago, a Jewish rabbi, in a national bestseller written after losing a son to a rare illness, wrote: “I do not believe the same things about [God] that I did . . . when I was a theological student . . . He is limited in what He can do by laws of nature and by the evolution of human nature and human moral freedom . . . I can worship a God who hates suffering but cannot eliminate it.”  So, to this grieving rabbi, it is for the sake of our sanity that we “recognize His limitations” in that while God is still benevolent, He is not all-powerful.  At least the rabbi kept some semblance of his former faith; there are those who deny God's existence itself on account of the problem of evil in the world.
No, I don’t necessarily disagree with the rabbi, but the reason for God’s limitation is not any of the things he pointed out.  So what limits God?  

The great Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) said that “God is bound by reason, and the very nature of God is such that . . . nothing which [He] is or does is out of accord with man’s reason.”  But, in view of countless tragedies that often occur, like the Waukesha Christmas massacre this past November or Sandy hook school shooting in 2012, “if you ask me to believe that this is the work of a benevolent and omnipotent spirit,” says C.S. Lewis, "I reply that . . . either there is no spirit behind the universe, or else a spirit indifferent to good and evil, or else an evil spirit.”  That then takes care of Aquinas’ overconfidence in human reason, which cannot ultimately explain why God would allow a Taliban suicide bomber to leave 75 Christian worshippers dead in Pakistan (2013), or a white supremacist to mow down nine Black Christians gathered for a Wednesday prayer meeting (2015).  Again, in what sense is God limited?  

Every day I make a choice between doing good and bad, like telling a lie or truth, but not so with God, for Hebrews 6:18 says: “It is impossible for God to lie.”  Just for the sake of argument, if God were to choose, His choices would not be between telling a lie or truth, to do good or evil; rather His selection would be exercised over all things that are good.  In fact, God does not choose that which is good or better; instead, what He does is good—even if it may not look that way to us—because of God’s inherent goodness (Mt. 19:17).  Look, it is possible that to a semiconscious patient the man in a whitecoat, with a surgical knife about to amputate his gangrene leg, may well appear to be an evil monster about to do the unthinkable.  Of course, nothing can be further from the truth despite how the dazed patient may feel.

Nevertheless, we may still ask, “Why would a benevolent and all-powerful God allow evil?” Obviously, none of our explanations, especially in the face of pure evil or great natural disaster, is really convincing.  Thus, the “theist admits,” says philosopher Alvin C. Plantinga, “he just doesn’t know why God permits evil, [but he also] believes that God has a reason for permitting evil; he doesn’t know what that reason is.  But why should that mean that his belief is improper or irrational?  The theist’s not knowing why God permits evil does not by itself show that he is irrational in thinking that God does indeed have a reason.”  If we’re honest, we can readily admit that there are many things about our world we don’t understand, and how they work together; but we don’t deny their existence or that they work.  For instance, while there must be some connection between my decision to type this blog and a set of related bodily movements that produce it, I don’t know what that connection is.  Yet, no one would dare deny that I am writing this blog.  

Ultimately, everything comes down to trusting in God’s character, that He is bound by who He is; God never does anything that is not in accord with the core of His Being.  Thus, inasmuch as it is impossible for God to lie, it is also impossible for Him to create a robot who would love Him at the push of a button.  To a God of love (1 Jn. 4:8), creating such an automaton makes as much sense as calling someone a married bachelor: both are inherently not possible.  This is to say, once it was decreed to create the first human, the nature of God necessarily demanded that that creature is endowed with freewill.  This means that human choices, whether good or bad, must be consequential; invalidating them so that all human decisions look and feel the same also goes against God’s character.  Thus, our world in which there is evil, which came into existence when Lucifer divested himself of goodness that God had endowed him (Is. 14:12-15), is necessarily consistent with who God is and His character.  

Now, imagine a world where humans, having been created without freewill, only do what they are programmed for by a benevolent God.  It would be a world without any evil. In such existence, what complaints will these automatons lodge against their creator?  This scenario, of course, is not possible because, first, there won’t be anything to complain about, and second, even if there were any, like everything being so predictable and even boring, no one will be complaining unless they are programmed to do so, which God wouldn’t permit since He is benevolent.  This is to suggest that only we who are endowed with freewill have the luxury to question God—His ability, even His existence—for allowing evil in the world.  

I trust that “God has a reason for permitting evil even if I don’t know what that reason is” now. But I do know why God allowed His Son Jesus to experience the evil of suffering for the sins of others.  The Scripture says, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).  Only those who are perfectly righteous can enter heaven, and the only way we can be righteous before a holy God is when Christ’s perfect righteousness is imputed on us.  That transference takes place when we place our trust in Christ, that his death on the cross perfectly paid for the penalty of our sins.  If you haven’t done so already, do it today. Place your trust in Jesus Christ.  

Once, during my visit to “CERESO” prison in Chihuahua, Mexico (to preach), an inmate boasted that while his Catholic Church is 2,000 years old, my Protestant Church, in comparison, was a child—meaning theologically less mature—since it has been around a mere 500 years.  Some years earlier, a Filipino-American, visiting my Sunday school class, voiced his objection over studying the Nicene Creed.  He quipped, “How can you, as an Asian, still be a Christian in light of the fact that it is a white man’s religion, and its doctrines are so Eurocentric?”  While this remark and the inmate’s comment appear unrelated, they agree on this: the Protestant faith (of evangelicals) proceeds from the Reformation of European whites, such as Luther (Germany), Calvin (France), and Knox (Scotland).  

This is not without reason since evangelical Protestants typically assume that their faith was birthed on October 31, 1517, when Luther nailed his 95 theses against the Catholic Church on the door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg, Germany.  The promoters of this view do so out of their desire to distinguish the Protestant faith from the Catholic Church whose various doctrines became corrupted down through the ages.  Nevertheless, while their intent may be noble, it unwittingly makes evangelical Protestants vulnerable to the charges that their church is theologically immature and Eurocentric in origin.  That said, it is patently false that the faith of evangelical Protestants was born on European soil some 1,500 years after Jesus died, resurrected, and ascended.  

First, in light of that, it is important know when to separate the faith of evangelical Protestants from the Catholic Church: 1517 is way too late.  One key reason is this: Two essential doctrines of the historic Christian faith were officially articulated in the first four ecumenical councils in the 4th and 5th centuries held in Nicaea (325), Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451), respectively.  It is a mistake, therefore, to ignore or mitigate the importance of these early councils, which some fundamentalist Christians do, on account of their historical ties to the Catholic Church.  

For instance, the Nicene Creed (325), affirming the divinity of Christ, states, “Very God from Very God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father.”  The council, rejecting the term "homoiousios," which implies that Jesus was like the Father in divine substance, chose "homoousios" to declare that Jesus was one and same substance with Him.  And the Chalcedonian Definition (451), which Leo I, bishop of Rome, articulated, settles the matter of the dual nature of Christ once and for all: “Christ . . . while he remained in the form of God, was himself made man in the form of a servant.  Each nature preserves its own characteristics without diminution so that the form of a servant does not detract from the form of God.”  Note that these are two of the bedrock doctrines of evangelical Protestants.

These creeds, of course, were not invented out of thin air; instead, the ecumenical councils gave concrete theological expressions to proto-orthodox beliefs held by even earlier church.  For instance, consider a ministry manual called "Didache" (teaching or doctrine), produced at the end of the 1st century, which “is thoroughly orthodox in doctrine, with a high Christology and a clear affirmation of the Trinity” (Varner 2006).  The manual instructs that baptism is to be done “in the name of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit” (7:1-3).  

However, sharing our doctrinal root with the Catholic Church becomes tricky once church history enters the 6th century because of Gregory the Great (540-604), who, despite being a humble, wise, and mission-minded pope, introduced unbiblical ideas that would define the medieval Catholic theology.  “He . . . emphasized the idea of purgatory as a place where souls would be purified prior to their entrance to heaven” while giving “tradition a place of equality with the Bible.”  Furthermore, Gregory emphasized good works to merit God’s grace and the invocation of the saints in order to get their aid (Cairns 1980:184).  For this reason, I wouldn’t tie the faith of evangelical Protestants to the ecumenical councils of the Catholic Church beyond the 5th century until the Reformation.

Second, it is also important to know where these ecumenical councils were held, particularly in light of postmodernism’s tendency to denigrate the merits of anything produced by European whites.  So, to the charge that Christian doctrines, like the Nicene Creed, are Eurocentric, I asked the visitor whether he considered Turkey and Northern Africa as part of the European hegemony (consisting of England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain).  When he said no, I told him, “All the seven ecumenical councils of the early church from the 4th to the 8th century, from which all the major Christian doctrines were officially expressed, occurred in today’s Turkey.”  The dominant majority of the participants came from the East (to the east of Alexandria, Egypt), not the West.  For instance, “of about 300 hundred bishops present only six were from the West” (Walker 1970:108).  I then added, “Two of the greatest theologians in the early church were from North Africa: Augustine’s parents were Berbers, and Athanasius, who articulated the Nicene Creed, was from Alexandria.”  In fact, “Calvin frequently referred to and quoted Augustine in his writings. Augustine undoubtedly exerted an influence on Calvin’s views and arguments” (S. J. Han).  Conclusion?  We may call Christian doctrines "Eastern centric" but certainly not "Eurocentric."

One day, Jesus’ response to his detractors, who were trying to “trap him in what he said,” left them “astonished by his answer [and, as a result,] they became silent” (Lk. 20:26).  I don’t think the visitor was astonished by my response, but he certainly became silent. Taking advantage of the moment, I told him about God’s ultimate love expressed in and through Christ.  This goes to show that a correct understanding of church history can help us to defend our faith against those who seek to undermine it based on false beliefs that the church of evangelical Protestants is theologically immature and Eurocentric.  To the contrary our church stands on the solid ground of God's eternal word.  
 

So why don’t the Jewish people celebrate Christmas?  Well, they believe that Christians celebrate the birth of a wrong Messiah!  To be sure, “the expectation of the Messiah, who will deliver Israel . . .  from all the troubles of this world, has been a part of Jewish faith since biblical times” (Limburg).  Historically, this messianic expectation was borne out of constant suffering the Jewish remnant experienced not long after returning to Israel in the 6th century B.C., following 70 years of exile in Babylonia and Persian.  Now in their own land, they were oppressed by a succession of foreign intruders, namely, the Grecian, Ptolemaic, Seleucid, and Roman empires.  All this pain of shame and disgrace, however, paled in comparison to the suffering the Jews incurred when the Romans, after having destroyed Jerusalem in AD 70, drove them all out of the Holy Land by AD 135.  This painful sequence of events is how the Jews came to yearn not just for any Messiah but a deliverer who will free them oppression and suffering.
 
And it isn't as if the Jews had to wait a long time for the coming of this Messiah; the fact is that they have had many Messiahs to choose from during the Jewish diaspora in Europe wherein their suffering continued (antisemitism, pogroms, etc.).  “The Jewish Almanac”, for instance, lists twenty-four Messiahs appearing in Europe from 400-1816—all rejected, in time.  One reason these would-be Messiahs were declared to be false was because they (often in their death) left the Jews in the same state of “persecution, uncertainty or extreme poverty."  In that sense, Jesus failed just like those who came after him, which meant that he was not the Messiah.  This is to say, “the crucifixion of a Messiah did not say to a first-century Jew that he was the true Messiah and that the kingdom had come. It said exactly the opposite. It said that he was not [the Messiah] and that it had not [come]” (Wright).  Thus, as long as the Jewish Messianic expectation was and continues to be a strongman who could bring the long-awaited political deliverance for the oppressed Jews, Jesus was not then and could never be in the future their Messiah.

So strong and urgent was this felt need that even those Jews who followed Christ in the first century thought similarly to those Jews who didn't.  Note that two disciples said to the resurrected Jesus whose identity was hidden to them, “We had hope that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel” (Lk. 24:21; Acts 1:6)—meaning, deliver them from the oppressive Romans.  At that point, Jesus rebuked them for their failure to understand the OT correctly ("O, fools"—Lk. 24:25 KJV), after which he told them, “Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?”  He then explained to them, "beginning from Moses and all the Prophets, what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself” (Lk. 24:27).  An unmistakable connotation here is this: What is foretold in the Old Testament—the very Scripture upheld by the Jews as sacred—is the coming of a suffering Messiah who will deliver humanity from sin and guilt.  So why suffer "—even death on a cross" (Phi. 2:8)?  It's because that's what it took to pay "for the wages of [our] sin [which] is death" (Rom. 6:23).  No, Jesus didn't fail his messianic mission.  (Neither did he stay dead unlike all the false Messiahs who came after him.)

But truth be told, we aren’t all that different from these Jews who looked for a Messiah other than the one found in Scripture, including the apostle Peter who had a rude awakening when Jesus laid into him with a stunning comment.  One day, to Jesus who said “[I] must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things . . . and . . . must be killed and on the third day be raised to life,” (Matt. 16:21), Peter responded, “Never, Lord . . . This shall never happen to you” (22).  The apostle, no doubt, thought, “What do you mean you are going to die; if you die, how are you going to deliver us from these Romans.”  Then Jesus said to him, “Get behind me, Satan . . .; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men” (23).  Can you imagine the look on Peter's face after hearing that from his Lord?  Yes, Peter, as part of the suffering Jews, had in mind the things of men (i.e., earthy freedom which is good but not the ultimate good), but Jesus had in mind the things of the God of the universe who has concern for the whole world (not just Israel) and how to rescue them from sin and guilt.  

Many of us who confess faith in Jesus also have in mind the things of men, like the love of money, hunger for power and desire for recognition (i.e., earthly prosperity).  In fact, the Jesus many believe is of "a different spirit" (2 Cor. 11:4)—a personal genie who does what we want—he is nothing like the Jesus of the Bible whose suffering has rightfully placed him in a position to demand that we deny ourselves and take up our cross daily and follow him (Lk. 9:24).  That’s the right Messiah and it is his entry into this broken world that we celebrate around this time of the year.  

I came to know this Christ in 1981 that instantaneously altered my eternal destiny and gradually changed the trajectory of my life from a meaningless to meaningful existence.   I hope that during this Christmas, many people without Christ, including those in the Jewish community—a people to whom Christians owe a debt of gratitude (Rom. 15:27)—will place their trust in the Messiah who suffered for our sins so that we don't have to.   Merry Christmas. 

Recently, in a class on soteriology I was teaching for an online university, a spirited debate broke out among students over the age-old theological conflict between Calvinism and Arminianism.  One student wondered whether he was wrong to believe that Jesus died for everyone in the world and not just for the elect?  How would you respond?  

Most Calvinists, I'd hazard a guess, wouldn’t be too troubled by this statement: “That God, by an eternal and unchangeable purpose in Jesus Christ his son, before the foundation of the world were laid, determined to save, out of the human race which had fallen into sin, in Christ, for Christ's sake and through Christ, those who through the grace of the Holy Spirit shall believe on the same his Son . . ."  So who said this?  It was none other than Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609), the Dutch theologian disliked by many Calvinists for his teaching that advocates free will (a.k.a., Arminianism).  

Does that mean Arminius denied predestination and election?  No, not really.  While it is true that he broke away from Calvinism because he felt that predestination (inferring that the unelected be damned to hell) made God the author of sin, Arminius rejected neither predestination nor election.  More specifically, “though he did not deny election he based it not on a divine arbitrary decree, but upon God's foreknowledge of man's merit” (Betterson 1968:269)—that is, his decison.  In Calvinism, however, God’s electing grace is based on his unilateral decree (Eph. 1:11) that prompts a response of faith among the chosen and their turning to God.  

So then, which theology is biblical? If our response is solely based on Acts 2:23, then, the answer would be both.  The apostle Peter, while mulling over how godless men ended up nailing Jesus to a cross, declares that Jesus was “delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God” (NASB). This is to say, Jesus’ crucifixion was the outcome of God’s unilateral decree as well as God having foreseen what men will do.  This idea of divine foreknowledge is clearly laid out 1 Peter 1:2 in which the apostle says, “To God’s elect . . . who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God.”  The word “foreknowledge” derives from a compound Greek word of "pro" (in front of) and "gnosis" (knowledge).  It implies that God, “foreseeing [men’s] potential faith and the fact that they would turn to Him when they heard the gospel,” sealed their response with election (Hammond 1968:88).  

Okay, fine, but a burning question is whether the unelected can be saved?  How did the apostle Paul deal with this issue?  At the outset of Romans 9, a distraught Paul makes a stunning admission that he is willing to be cut off from Christ for the sake of his “own race” (9:2-4), for his “heart’s desire . . . is that they (Israelites) may be saved” (10:1). And then, after momentarily wondering whether God kept His promise made to Israel (9:4-6), Paul quickly realizes that God's word had not failed because not all who are descended from Israel are Israel, meaning some Jews are elected while some are not (9:9-12).  That would explain why many Israelites didn’t believe at that time, assumedly because they were unelected.

This realization, then, should have ended this discussion—the unelected cannot be saved.  But no!  The apostle Paul throws a monkey wrench when he responds “incorrectly” to his own question, “Again I ask: Did they (i.e., unelected Jews) stumble so as to fall beyond recovery (i.e., the possibility of being saved)?”  Paul should have answered “NO,” but instead he says, “Not at all!” (Romans 11:11).  What?  In the ensuing argument, the apostle insinuates that being unelected won’t prevent any Jews from believing, saying, “If they do not persist in unbelief . . . God is able to graft them again” (11:23).  Keep in mind that the Jews persisting in unbelief in this context are the unelected.  With that in mind, Paul hopes that his ministry to the Gentiles will “somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them” (11:13). If election means that the unelected cannot be saved, then, what Paul asserts here makes no sense!  Note that Paul is not just thinking about the Jews turning to Christ in the future (11:25-6); he also has in mind the unelected Jews turning to God in his days and beyond.  How could this be?  While our systematic theology may say that’s not possible, Scripture declares, “God is able” (11:23).

Be that as it may, unconditional election still stands (9:11-16), for God has His reasons, but that doesn’t prevent anyone from believing. Ultimately, election understood by Arminius implies that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (9:13).  And a person can confirm his election by laying aside his unbelief and believe in the person and the work of Christ.

That, then, affects the doctrine of Limited Atonement (i.e., Jesus died only for the elect).  A while back, I received an email from a former Reformed seminary professor with whom I used to have intense theological discussions while he, then a seminarian, attended my church in the 1990s. He wrote, “I want to be clear that I no longer hold to limited atonement.”  Perhaps, he finally read 1 John 2:2 without the prism of Calvinism: “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only ours but also for the sins of the whole world.”  I am sure the professor would agree with the following interpretation of 1 John 2:2: “. . . Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, died for all men and every man so that he has obtained for all, by his death on the cross, reconciliation and remission of sin; yet so that no one is partaker of this remission except the believers.” Again, Arminius said that!  

I am in no way an Arminian (eternal security gets in the way) but his thought must be a side dish with the main dish being Calvinism so that the latter does not become a rigid ideology. The same goes for those whose main dish is Arminianism; it needs a side dish of Calvinism so that it does not turn into humanism or Pelagianism (rationalistic view of human nature).

*The view expressed here does not necessarily represent the respective views held by other AMI pastors.

 A Korean missionary to Croatia once told me about the umbrage many Croatians felt upon seeing that an Asian was trying to tell them about the God of the Bible.  It was as if the Croatians felt, “How many years have you Koreans had the gospel in your country?  We have had it for more than a thousand years.”  Recently, a pastor friend in Korea, Ted Kim, published a book entitled, “Save Europe: Reintroducing Christianity to Post-Christian Europe,” as a prelude to moving there as a missionary.  (To do so, Pastor Ted took an early retirement from his large church he founded over 20 years ago.)  I am certain that Ted, once in Europe, is going to get his share of “Hey, what are you doing here?

So, is Pastor Ted’s contention true, that Europe is spiritually lost?  He is certainly not alone in that regard, for many concerned observers have long noted a state of unprecedented spiritual lethargy plaguing this continent.  This is to say, Europe is a post-Christian continent, teeming with nominal Christians who are, no doubt, the most secularized people in the world (i.e., children of this age who have no great yearning for anything beyond this world).

Europe has long rejected its Christian mooring for several reasons.  First, historically, the marked past of Roman Catholic Church responsible for cruelty against Muslims, Jews, Protestant and Orthodox Christians (mainly through the Inquisition and Crusades), on the one hand, and several religious wars (like the bloody Thirty Years’ War: 1618-48), on the other, have caused Europeans to develop allergic reactions to religion itself.  Second, philosophically, the triumph of the Enlightenment humanism in the 18th century (reason over faith), German rationalism in the 19th century ("God is dead"), and scientism in the 20th century (science over religions), has culminated in theological liberalism that has long reduced the Bible as a book of pious legends and fables.  Third, economically, Europe’s lack of need for God has certainly been compounded by its economic affluence.

Now, after the fall of the Eastern Europe in 1989-90, evangelical churches were excited because the door had finally opened for missionaries to enter this previously closed region to evangelize.  In the middle of 2000, a good friend who had previously taught theology at a seminary in Czech Republic (and at the time was teaching in Belgium) informed me that “just in ten years after the door opened for the gospel in Czech Republic as well as in other Eastern Europe nations, liberal theology from the Western Europe has deeply penetrated into both churches and protestant seminaries.”  In this respect, a door for effective evangelization may be almost closed over in Eastern Europe, as it already has in Western Europe.

Having said that, we should also note that pockets of revival have broken out in different parts of Europe over the years, like in England and France, but not enough to significantly increase the evangelical population in Western Europe. Some years back, the percentage of evangelicals (i.e., those who believe that salvation is through faith in Jesus, the Bible as the Word of God, etc.) in England hovered around 3-4%; in France it was less than 1%; in Germany only about 4% of the Protestants attended church weekly; Eastern European country like Croatia, the percentage of evangelical was around 0.2%.  Those numbers, I am sure, have not improved over the years.

In particular, what has happened to England is quite stunning, since this is the country that produced great missionaries such as William Carey (India), Hudson Taylor (Inland China), and David Livingstone (Inland Africa).  However, two generations removed from these men, England has become a mission field.  As early as the 1980s, studies indicated some disturbing signs about this country.  It was found that 50% of the Londoners never read the Bible; the national rate was 33%.  Even more shocking was that 96% of the Londoners never attended church.  A supply of trained pastors was so short in some denominations, such as The United Free Church of Scotland (which had sent out Livingstone), that they had to recruit pastors from Africa.

However, the biggest concern for this continent is the ubiquitous presence of Muslims, for Islam is the fastest-growing religion in Europe.  In England, empty churches are being bought by the Muslims, who then turn them into mosques.  In the early 2000s, it was estimated that close to 40 million Muslims lived in Europe and Russia. That number has surely risen since then due to immigration and high birthrates.  The very low and untenable birthrate of the Europeans necessitates the presence of Muslims who fill their labor gap, and once there, they procreate at an amazing rate.  “The Islamic community throughout the world is out-reproducing Christians and Jews almost seven to one” (Gabriel 2006:23).  Therefore, the tripling of the Muslim population in Europe in the last forty years should not be a surprise.  And that's how Lebanon, once the only majority Christian nation in the Middle East (in fact, in all Asia) became a Muslim dominated nation.  This sobering reality, no doubt, adds a whole new dimension—that of apologetics and comparative religion—to the task of re-evangelizing Europe, making it that much more challenging and difficult.

So, here is hoping that many faithful and able believers, following in the footsteps of Pastor Ted Kim, will “reintroduc[e] Christianity to Post-Christian Europe” through a clear articulation of the gospel and biblical worldview in the power of the Holy Spirit.

A while back, Australian-American billionaire Rupert Murdoch said that all Muslims need to be held responsible for jihadist attacks against the West.  This comment quickly prompted J. K. Rowling, who claims to a Christian by virtue of her birth in England, to offer this sarcastic apology: “The Spanish Inquisition was my fault.”  

Oh yes, the Spanish Inquisition! Many years ago, a graduate student visiting my church—while attending Church History class—asked, “During the Spanish Inquisition, did not the church force its beliefs on the Jews and Muslims, and if they did not believe, were they not killed?"  Okay, consider this blog as a primer for those who think they know Spanish Inquisition but really don’t. 

First, know that the Inquisition was a special court established by the papacy in 1229 to try people accused of heresy, i.e., teaching that went against Catholic belief and doctrine.  

The following is the gist of what I said to the visitor and would say to Rowling:

I, as a Protestant (i.e., spiritual offspring of the Reformation—1517), am just as appalled by the Inquisition in Spain as any descendants of the Jews or Muslims who were harmed by it.  
After the staunchly Catholic Isabella and Ferdinand launched the Spanish Inquisition in 1492 against the Jews and Islamic Moors, many of whom had superficially converted to the Catholic faith to avoid being persecuted, the attention was turned to persons suspected of Protestantism.  

Called the “Counter-Reformation,” the Catholics throughout Europe were eager to overthrow Protestantism.  While the Spanish Inquisition refers to what occurred in Spain, an untold number of inquisitions happened in other parts of Europe in which Protestants were questioned about their beliefs often under torture and threats.  And those who would not conform to the requirements of the Pope and Catholic Church were treated unmercifully.  Some perished at the stake; others were buried alive while still others were strangled.  

So then, who suffered the most at the hands of the Catholics?  Regarding the fatalities suffered by the Jews and Muslims in Spain,  the eminent Yale historian Kenneth Latourette writes, “The majority of the condemned were not burned but were heavily fined and were subjected to humiliating penance” (1975:658).  This pales in comparison to the level of cruelty suffered by Protestants throughout Europe by the inquisitors tied to Spain.  For instance, it is believed that during the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, also the king of Spain and the grandson of Isabella and Ferdinand, “more than 5,000 suffered death on a charge of heresy” (Houghton 1980:140).   Phillip II, after succeeding his father Charles V to the throne, in his attempt to align the Netherlands to the pope by rooting out the Protestants, brought in Spaniard Inquisitor Duke of Alva to “inaugurate[] a reign of terror.  Between 1567 and 1573 he executed about ten thousand people” (Cairns 1980:350).  Another notable terror against the Protestants (a.k.a., Huguenots) occurred in France in what is known as the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1572) in which, under the Catholic Queen Catherine de’ Medici, between 10,000-15,000 Huguenots were killed.   No wonder that “in time the phrase [Inquisition] became a byword, particularly in Protestant areas, for cruelty and obscurantism'" (Encarta 1994).

After recounting all this, I said to the visitor:  “I concur with your indignation at the Spanish Inquisition that was totally inexcusable.  However, it is historically inaccurate and unfair that the Protestants are accused of using the Inquisition in general and the Spanish Inquisition in particular to harm the Jews and Muslims of that era when they were the main victims.  Having said all this, I, as a spiritual descendant of the Protestants who suffered at the hands of the Catholics, forgive them because I have been forgiven by Christ.”

I would also say to Rowling, “Ma’am, as part of the Anglican faith who parted from the Catholic faith under Henry VIII (1491-1547), you do not need to bear the guilt of the Spanish Inquisition.  

Also, no one is born as a Christian; instead, we are all born as people separated from God because of sin, a concept that has long been forgotten by cultural elite such as yourself.  Whether we recognize sin or not, its consequence remains the same: separation, death, and finally, hell.  But, ‘God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might’ (2 Cor. 5:21) have ‘eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Rom. 6:23).”

Romans 16:1

I commend unto you Phebe our sister, which is a servant [diakonos in Greek from which the English word “deacon/deaconess” is derived] of the church which is at Cenchrea.

I have a very famous cousin who grew up attending church but has long left the faith. When asked why, he said it was due to the poor treatment of women taught in Scripture and practiced by the church. That response reminded me of a pamphlet I got from The United Atheists of America that says, “The harm done to women by the Christian religion began with the Bible giving the stamp of God’s approval to the oppression of women. Christian men used the Bible to keep women silent, submissive and uneducated for centuries.” No doubt, today’s passage—one that tells the women to be silent in the church—would rank high in the cynics’ laundry list against the church. Sure, that and few other passages in the Bible look awful in the modern era where women can not only vote, which became a law only about 100 years ago, but run for political offices— including the POTUS.

But, before condemning the church as the enemy of women, please recognize this simple fact: In antiquity women were treated badly across the board; that is to say, no men living in antiquity—regardless of whether they were today’s equivalent of conservatives, liberals or left, religious or irreligious—could be deemed pro-women in light of today’s enlightened standard. So, to fairly judge the early church’s treatment of women, the merits of the church should be compared to the standard of that era.  

When that’s done, you would agree with what Rodney Stark (a sociologist at the University of Washington) writes in The Rise of Christianity (1996), described by Newsweek as brilliant. To the charge that “the Bible . . . ke[pt] women silent, submissive and uneducated,” Stark declares, “They’re all wrong.” How? According to this leading sociologist, “Christianity ‘promoted liberty, social relations between the sexes and within the family’ . . ., giving women more status than they enjoyed in Rome society, where they remained the property of men.’” Furthermore, “women also benefitted from the church’s sanctification of marriage and opposition to divorce” since divorced women were deemed “damaged goods”; some even “ma[de] a place in the community as a prostitute” (Willards 1997:71).

One irony is this: Many critics often claim that the New Testament writers borrowed ideas from Mithraism—a mystery religion from Persia—and other ancient religions like it.  For instance, Dan Brown says in The Da Vinci Code that Jesus can be identified with “the pre-Christian God Mithras—[who was] called the Son of God and the Light of the World” (p. 232). While making that unwarranted claim (Reinventing Jesus 2006), Brown never mentions that Mithraism’s “membership was restricted to men” (Latourette 1975:25). On the contrary, as Stark notes, “most Christians in the Roman Empire were women,” some of whom became deaconesses (Rom. 16:1), a mid-level leadership in the church. That may mean nothing to you and me, but the elevation of women to such a leadership position was unheard of among the many mystery religions at that time (Cybele, Isis, Ishtar, a.k.a., Venus, etc.). Truth be told, a key role of women in these religions was serving as temple prostitutes.  In The Da Vinci Code, the detective Sophie, when she was young, had rejected her beloved grandfather after witnessing him in orgies with the members of a secret society. When told of this, Harvard symbologist Langdon explained: “What you saw was not about sex, it was about spirituality.  The . . . ritual is not a perversion.  It’s a deeply sacrosanct ceremony . . . For the early church, mankind’s use of sex to communicate directly with God posed a serious threat to the Catholic power base” (p. 309). Oh really?  I have one question for Langdon: “If these mystery religions were so wonderful to women and the church was such an anti-women institution, why were the women so drawn to the church?

So, please consider what is presented here and not be misled into thinking that the church and the Bible are against women.  The reality is that the powerful truth in Scripture set the social forces in motion to liberate women from societal restrictions placed on them, in time.  Too slow of a process? Yes, but that’s the fault of many males, who, being sinners and ignorant of Scripture, treated women badly, some more than others. Nevertheless, that’s not God’s fault because He gave us His Word and Spirit to turn our world into a safer place for women (“Your kingdom come”), but like everything else, we’ve failed God—who created and loves women. And for them Jesus died.

1 Kings 21:5-7, 15-16 (ESV)

But Jezebel his wife came to him and said to him, “Why is your spirit so vexed that you eat no food?” 6 And he said to her, “Because I spoke to Naboth the Jezreelite and said to him, ‘Give me your vineyard for money, or else, if it please you, I will give you another vineyard for it.’ And he answered, ‘I will not give you my vineyard.’” 7 And Jezebel his wife said to him, “Do you now govern Israel? Arise and eat bread and let your heart be cheerful; I will give you the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite” . . . 15 As soon as Jezebel heard that Naboth had been stoned and was dead, Jezebel said to Ahab, “Arise, take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, which he refused to give you for money, for Naboth is not alive, but dead.” 16 And as soon as Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, Ahab arose to go down to the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, to take possession of it.

Ephesians 5:23a (ESV)

“For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church . . .”

For some married couples their roles have reversed: the wife works and the husband stays at home with the kids. (A situation where both need to work just so they can pay the bills and put food on the table is a worthy topic for another time.)  This arrangement is made so that children can have one parent at home while the other, the wife in this case who likely has the higher paying job, becomes the breadwinner.  This economic role-reversal in the home cannot be an easy transition for most couples.  For the man who had been the main breadwinner, his self-esteem will be tested, now that he is economically dependent on his wife. For the working wife, her frustration will rise when and if she still must do the brunt of housework. Even in the best of situations, this role reversal can affect how couples fundamentally see each other in such a manner that it can easily morphed into female headship in the home. Some women will take umbrage at this (“I don’t see anything wrong with it”), but it is to no one’s advantage if the husband becomes, in effect, a passive follower.

Consider the relationship between King Ahab and his wife Jezebel from Sidon who worshiped Baal and Asherah. Being an ambitious person, Jezebel sought to replace the religion of Israel with hers. Not only did she convince Ahab to worship her idols, she “was killing off the LORD’s prophets” (1 Ki. 18:4) while allowing 850 false prophets to “eat at Jezebel’s table” (18:29).  But all these prophets—after Elijah spectacularly defeated them on Mount Carmel (40)—were killed by the onlookers right before Ahab’s eyes.  Subsequently, the king “rode and went to” (45) find his wife and then “told Jezebel all that Elijah had done” (19:1). Subsequently, Jezebel, not Ahad, decided to kill Elijah, saying, “by this time tomorrow” he will die (2). Fully convinced that she wasn’t joking, “Elijah was afraid and ran for his life” (3).  While this was going on, Ahab remained passive, seemingly watching from the sidelines.

We can see the same pattern in today’s text.  Jezebel, seeing that her husband was “vexed and sullen” (and not eating), saw another opportunity to lead her husband. Upon realizing the problem (Naboth not selling his vineyard to Ahab), Jezebel, without any input from Ahab, devised a brilliantly evil plan to fulfill her husband’s wish. Ahab, again, remained passive, for he was unaware of what was going on. Only when Jezebel informed him of the successful execution of her plan did Ahab “arise [to] take possession of the vineyard of Naboth” (21:15).

What happened? Ahab switched roles with Jezebel, making her the head of their relationship by letting his capable wife to initiate, develop and implement plans with little or no input from him. Over time, Jezebel became the great enabler of her husband’s passivity. Some men don’t seem to mind this; Ahab certainly didn't. Why? A new vineyard (golf and video games) waited for him. Understandably, most women will complain at this juncture—even Jezebel chided her pouting husband, saying, “Is this how you act as the king over Israel?” (7). Still, Jezebel wouldn’t relinquish the leadership, perhaps because she continued to feel the need to show everyone how capable she was without any help from a man. So, Jezebel, as a mirror image of a modern feminist, went to work after putting her man-child husband in the crib.

A matter of who stays at home for the kids is a family decision. It’s a blessing that a family can sustain its lifestyle (a little lower perhaps) with just one income. But for this arrangement to result in a happy home, the couple needs to share their feelings (slights and frustrations) openly and respectfully, constantly adjust, and be mindful of their goal (doing what’s best for the kids). But one change that shouldn’t happen is for the wife—regardless of whether she works or not—to lead while the husband passively follows her.  In such a situation, most wives will find it difficult to “respect [their] husband” (Eph. 5:33). As for men, those who work full time “outside the home” should still share the housework with their stay-home wives.  (I understand that COVID has blurred the line.)  If you are a house dad, be competent in housework and childrearing so that your working wife doesn’t have to worry or redo your work done sloppily. And don’t fail to lead amid many dialogues with your wife.  

Here is a suggestive prayer, one for wives, the other for husbands:

[Women] Lord, please help the man in my life to be the leader he is called to be.  Give me wisdom and courage to give him prudent inputs and to know when to entrust him to you.  [Men] Lord, please help me to be the leader that I am called to be.  Give me wisdom and humility to lead with love and respect for my wife and through mutual submission.  [Together] God, help us. Amen.  

Ephesians 5:22-23 (ESV)

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior . . . let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Robert G. Ingersoll, “The Great Agnostic” of the 19th century, once quipped, “As long as women regard the Bible as the charter of their rights, they will be the slaves of man.” So, should we blame the Bible for this necktie ad from the 1950s that shows a kneeling wife serving her husband breakfast?  This Van Heusen ad presents the wife as a household servant whose purpose in life is to satisfy her husband’s every whim.  No doubt, Ingersoll must have read the above passage and others like it (1 Pet. 3:1, 1 Cor. 11:3) that have the wives submit to their husbands.

So how should submission look like in the 21st century?  Consider the following three biblical couples and ask, “What should the wives have done in accordance to Scripture, whether then or now?”

First Couple:

In Acts 5 (ESV), we meet “a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, [who] sold a piece of property, and with his wife's knowledge he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it and laid it at the apostles' feet” (vv.1-2).  Evidently, Ananias had told the church he was going to give the entire proceeds and then changed his mind; his wife went along with it.  Sadly, because of lying to God, both Ananias and Sapphira died that day (vv.5, 10).

Considering that, answer this question: In cases where a husband asks his wife to be complicit in something sinful and/or illegal, what should she do?  If the wife is a believer, she would sense the Holy Spirit reminding her Ephesians 5:11a that says, “Hav[e] nothing to do with the fruitful deeds of darkness.” Subsequently, the wife would not submit to her husband; instead, she would say something along the lines of what Deborah told a wavering Barak: “Because of the way you are going about this, [God] will not be [with you]” (Judg. 4:9).

Second Couple:

In 1 Samuel 25 (ESV), we meet an odd couple, a husband named Nabal, a “surly and mean” person (3 NIV), and his wife Abigail, described as “discerning” (v.3). One day, she found out to her horror that an armed group of untold men was headed toward her home to kill everyone (vv. 13, 21). It was David’s impulsive payback for the insult Nabal heaped on his men who sought some provisions for a favor rendered to Nabal’s shepherds (vv.15-16).  This situation would be equivalent to a husband’s bad decision putting the whole household at great risk. What should the wife do?  As for Abigail, she “acted quickly” to make a mound of food (“two hundred loaves of bread . . . a hundred cakes of raisins and two hundred cakes of pressed figs”) and took them to David; “but she did not tell her husband Nabal” (vv.18-19).  David, upon seeing the food, relented.

Now, does this look like a wife submitting blindly to her husband?  No, but isn’t that against the biblical teaching?  No, her action that went against her husband’s ill-advised decision, which kept a needless bloodshed from occurring and saved her husband’s life, was praised by David as “a good judgment” (v.33).

Third couple:

But the most common problem that couples face is financial.  In Ruth 1, we meet a couple living in Judah, Elimelech and his wife Naomi, who have fallen on hard times because of a famine. With two additional mouths to feed and hardly any food in the pantry, the husband suggests a move to Moab in search of better economic opportunities. But the move to Moab was not out of faith but of sight, since Moab had been Israel’s mortal enemy. It was the Moabite women who whored with the Israelites that resulted in God’s punishment, which left 24,000 dead (Num. 25:1); it was the Moabite King Balak who tried to “put a curse on [Israelites]” (Num. 22:9-11); and most recently, Moab had subjected Israel to “oppression for eighteen years” (Judg. 3:14).
So what should Naomi have done? Instead of blindly submitting to her husband, she should have said, “We live by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7) and persuaded him to stay in the Promised Land.  And had Elimelech been wise, he would have “listen[ed] to advice” (Prov. 12:15).  

Convinced?

Ultimately, I am bound to offend people who are chauvinistic about the male headship at home and those at the other end of spectrum who find the male headship archaic and insulting to women. Thus, I will end with how it works at my home.  I trust my wife’s judgment a whole lot more than mine—mainly because she is a God-fearing woman—so I consult with her and then with the Lord before making any decision.  And in my 34+ years of marriage, I have almost always ended up deciding what my wife advises me—but she always lets me have the final say.  One thing she won’t do: be complicit to my sin, like when I talk badly about people who upset me. Thank the Lord for that.

1 Timothy 2:11-12 (ESV)

“Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.”

1 Corinthians 11:3 (NASB)

“But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ.”

Among the hundreds of pastors in Mexico whom the Lord allowed me to teach the Bible for 10 years, several were female pastors—mainly from the Assemblies of God and United Methodist denominations. This posed a problem for me—not because I didn’t believe women could teach men the Bible—but because male headship in the church and in the home, I think, is biblical. The issue, then, was whether I ought to train and teach ordained female pastors who headed their own congregations that included men.

Obviously, this isn’t a dilemma to the complementarians, since they believe that male headship and women teaching men in the church are mutually exclusive, since Paul says, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man.” But I respectively differ on two accounts: First, the conjunction “or” (used here to link alternatives) implies that teaching men and having authority over men is not the same thing.  Paul certainly prohibits both here, but while male headship is consistently upheld elsewhere in Scripture (Eph. 5:22-23; 1 Cor. 11:3; 1 Pet. 3:1-5), we do see women speaking God’s Word to men in the Bible. Note that prophetess Huldah spoke to king’s men, no less, “concerning the words of [Torah]” (2 Chron. 34:21-28); Priscilla, along with her husband, taught Apollos (Acts 18:26); and the Corinthian women prophesied over a congregation (or, according to John MacArthur, "speaking to people about God") that included men (1 Cor. 11:5). Nevertheless, I still need to consider what Paul tells the women in the Ephesian church (pastored by Timothy): “Remain quiet.”

The Greek for “quiet” in 1 Timothy 2:12 is hēsuchia—meaning, stillness, ceasing from bustle—which is also used in 1 Timothy 2:1-2, where Paul exhorts the Ephesians to pray for kings so that they “may live peaceful and quiet lives.” Evidently, this word refers to “a person’s inner being characterized by tranquility that causes no disturbance to others” (Vine 1985:503).  Thus, “she must be silent” (NIV) likely means that the Ephesian women ought to refrain from an activity—teaching in this case—that was disturbing the church. As alluded in my last blog, if Paul meant complete silence, as in “mouth sealed with tape,” he could’ve used phimoō, which means to “muzzle,” like an ox while it is treading out the grain (1 Cor. 9:9).  

In view of this, there are two possible interpretations of what Paul might have meant by using hēsuchia instead of phimoō in 1 Timothy 2:11: One, women everywhere should never open their mouth to teach men in the church; or two, those women teaching in the Ephesian church should no longer do that because what or how they taught caused disturbance to others. No one can be sure the nature of this disturbance, but it’s possible that because these women were new converts and uneducated, they didn’t yet have the necessary experience or knowledge to teach others (Life Application Bible 1993: 2218). This is to say, if they were mature and competent, Paul would have allowed them to teach under Pastor Timothy’s leadership.

Then, how did I resolve the dilemma I faced in Mexico? Because the Assemblies of God and United Methodist (still conservative in northern Mexico) denominations had male superintendent and bishop, respectively, I accepted that as satisfying the male headship requirement in the church.  It helped that I knew these two leaders personally—men of deep biblical conviction who simply recognized a call to pastoral ministry that certain women received from the Lord.  Put differently, it had nothing to do with promoting the feminist agendas, some of which are biblical (e.g., equal pay for equal work) but not all (e.g., no essential, biological differences between male and female).  So, while these women pastors certainly had spiritual jurisdiction over their own churches, they were under the authority of their superintendent and bishop—meaning, the women pastors, along with their male counterparts, were answerable to the latter.  

I’m sure complementarians (and some egalitarians as well) disagree with my understanding of Scripture on this issue.  Thus, we must continue to dialogue, but let’s also “make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3).

And of the five teachers whom I selected out of many as the official instructors for my courses in Mexico, one is a woman—Señora Hortensia—who has been teaching my Missiology course at her denomination’s Bible institute for several years now.  Hortensia recently sent me a picture of a female instructor whom she trained, who now teaches the same course at a Bible institute in another state (2 Tim. 2:2).  Since Hortensia has turned out to be a very effective teacher, I wish I had trained more women to teach God’s Word during my tenure in Mexico. Perhaps, that’s why I always invite several women in my organization to teach at our 2-week long AMI Institute held annually.  May the trend continue!  

PS: Are you feeling uncomfortable from reading the morning devotional?  I do agree that male headship can be difficult to accept by many Christian women. (I will talk further on this matter in the next week’s blog.) But the way God expects male headship to play out in the homes is not what you think.  Ultimately, the husband and the wife are to “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph. 4:21); more importantly, both spouses are called to submit to the Lord. Take a moment to examine your heart—How has your submission to the Lord been? Are you loving your wife as you are told to do so by God (Eph. 5:25)? Are you respecting your husband as you are told to do so by God (Eph. 5:33)?  

Disclaimer: The view expressed here does not represent the views of all AMI pastors some of whom are complementarians.

1 Corinthians 14:34-35 (NIV)

“Women should remain silent [sigaō] in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. 35 If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.”

1 Timothy 2:11a (ESV)

“I do not permit a woman to teach . . . over a man.”

The only time I ever apologized to my instructor occurred at Fuller Theological Seminary in 1990. That day, I waited until everyone left the classroom to apologize to the teaching assistant, a middle-aged Caucasian woman who had served in Korea as a missionary. During the class discussion, I showed “attitude” towards her when she was lecturing about a country (Korea) that I thought I knew better—and perhaps the fact that a woman taught the Bible added to my irritation. In truth, my inacceptable behavior had more to do with my immaturity than how I understood 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, in which Paul tells women not to speak in the church.

So why not just leave it at that?  It’s because “all of the relevant material on a given subject [must] be collected together so that that the pattern of divine revelation concerning that subject would be apparent” (Ramm 1970:56).  This means that while 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 certainly needs to be heeded, other relevant Scriptures that address the same matter must be considered as well. We shouldn’t, therefore, ignore the fact that women indeed spoke in the church of Corinth.  Paul, while addressing the need for women to wear head coverings in the church, begins 1 Corinthians 11:5 (NIV) with, “But every woman who prays or prophesies . . ..” Evidently, the sharing of prophetic words was part of the worship service at Corinth, for Paul says, “When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation . . . Two or three prophets should speak . . . (1 Cor. 14:26a, 29a). This means that the prohibition stipulated in 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 should be interpreted in the context of women being allowed to speak in one situation but disallowed in another in the Corinthian church.   

How do, then, complementarians handle 1 Corinthians 11:5 that says women prayed and prophesized?  John MacArthur, an ardent complementarian, does concede that this refers to women “speaking to people about God.”  But he immediately qualifies it by saying, “In the course of life, as believers, there will be times when women pray and speak to people about God. Obviously, they are not doing it in the order of church, in the service of a church—this is crystal clear everywhere in Scripture—but in the fellowship of saints in homes and social gatherings” (extracted from MacArthur’s sermon on November 3rd, 2019).  

But MacArthur’s assertion that 1 Corinthians 11:5 alludes to women praying and prophesying in their homes is simply wrong considering 1 Corinthians 11:16. There, Paul makes it clear that women were “speaking to people about God” (MacArthur’s words) in the church, not homes or social gatherings.  It states, “If anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practice, nor do the churches of God” (referring women having to wear coverings for their heads while praying or prophesying in the church). MacArthur is wrong here, no ifs and buts about it. 

Now, let’s deal with 1 Corinthians 14:34.  First, note that the Greek for “keep silent” in 1 Corinthians 14:34 is not phimoō (as in muzzling the mouth) but is sigaō, which, in Luke 20:26, is translated “hold peace” (KJ). Does that seem like women should never open their mouth in the church? No, it’s more like when a mom, needing some respite from her screaming kids, would say, “hush” or “keep quiet.” And since women did pray and prophesy in Corinth, Paul was likely addressing a particular situation in which the way many women were talking in the church benefitted no one; therefore, the apostle prohibited that type of talking. 

Second, according to 1 Corinthians 14:5, Paul apparently had issues with the way some wives were “inquir[ing] about something” from their husbands in the church. At that time, women— most of whom were illiterate and uneducated—and men were likely seated in separate sections. So, whenever the wives had questions about the sermon, they would’ve raised their voices to ask their husbands sitting across from them—multiple occurrences of this then began to distract the service.

This disturbing practice likely raised another concern for Paul. The city of Corinth was the 
center of Dionysian (the Greek god of wine) worship as late as the 2nd century BC.  Having begun as a predominately woman’s movement, one feature of Dionysus worship was frequent shouting (“ecstasy of joy”) by women during their decadent services in which much wine was consumed as part of Dionysian rituals. What often occurred in the Corinthian church—including some people becoming intoxicated at the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:20-21)—therefore, began to resemble typical Dionysian services. To distinguish the Christians from the Dionysian followers for the public perception, Paul likely told the Corinthian women to stop disrupting worship services by asking their questions at home.    

That’s how I would explain 1 Corinthians 14:34-35. (1 Timothy 2:11-12 will be discussed in the next blog).  Suffice it to say, we should heed whatever words the Lord places on the lips of His people, whether men or women—a lesson I learned a long time ago.  Let’s not reject the message from God just because we don’t like the messenger, for whatever reasons.  Since Barak, a warrior, Josiah, a king, and Apollos, an erudite—men living in a patriarchal society—offered no resistance in accepting the words of the Lord from women, how much more should the men of 21st century be willing to learn from women who are equipped with God’s Word and filled with the Spirit.  

Disclaimer: The view expressed here does not represent the views of all AMI pastors some of whom are complementarians. 

1 Timothy 2:11 (NIV)

“A woman should learn in quietness and full submission.  I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over man; she must be silent.”

1 Corinthians 14:34-35 (NIV)

“Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. 35 If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.”

Women’s role in the church? Those on the opposite end of the theological spectrum may wonder, “Why is that even an issue?” For liberal denominations—characterized by seeing Scripture as less than authoritative (some are even hostile to it as evidenced by Episcopal bishop John Spong who entitled his book, The Sins of Scripture)—this has long been a settled matter.  To them, the above two passages written by Paul show that he was a child of its time and it is through these patriarchal Scriptures that “powerful men in the early church ‘conned’ the world by propagating lies that devalued the female and tipped the scales in favor of the masculine” (The Da Vinci Code).  Thus, in liberal churches, not only are women ordained to teach and preach, they can even become the head—like in case of the Episcopal Church where Katharine Jefferts Schori served as the first female Presiding Bishop from 2006-15. 

As for conservative Christians to whom Scripture is authoritative for faith and practice, there are two camps whose views differ on the role of women in ministry: First, complementarians, interpreting 1 Timothy 2:11 and 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 as a one-off divine mandate that always binds over all churches, limit ordination to just men—yet they absolutely uphold women as equal to men—from teaching or preaching over men.  For complementarians, who value the Bible highly as God’s Word, their position is the result of simply believing what it literally states. 

Egalitarians, on the other hand, who highly value Scripture as well, take a different position, because they see in Scripture several women in public ministry—in a patriarchal world no less.  Among them are Miriam (Ex. 15:20), Deborah (Judges 4:4-8), Huldah (2 Chr. 34:22), Isaiah’s wife (Is. 8:3), and Priscilla (Acts 18:26-28). This biblical reality then opens three possibilities:  First, it leaves the door open for exceptions in the future since there have been exceptions in the past.  Second, the fact that God used women at all in a patriarchal society, however sporadic, foreshadows the expansion of the same pattern as civilization moves away from patriarchy. Third, biblical teachings that value woman (Matt. 5:31; Jn. 4:7-26) set in motion the social forces toward progressive elevation of women’s role in the church. This is like the teachings against slavery (1 Tim. 1:10; 1 Cor. 7:21) setting in motion the sociopolitical forces toward the eventual outlawing of slave trade, which, in the British Empire, occurred in 1807 (led by Christian parliamentarian William Wilberforce). 

Nevertheless, egalitarians still need to deal with 1 Timothy 2:11 and 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, which I plan do in the next two blogs. For now, I need to point out something more important than the rightness of our position on the matter of women’s role in the church. 

I belong to Acts Ministries International in which some pastors are complementarians and some egalitarians. We have had women missionaries who have planted churches abroad; and this past December one of our churches ordained two women as elders. It sure looks like a perfect recipe for heated arguments and dissension.  Yes, we’ve had our lively discussions, and we continue to dialogue to explore the best way to serve together without allowing this or other non-essential matters to divide us. Why? We value unity because it’s valued by Jesus, who prayed “that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me” (Jn. 17:22a-23).  Reflecting on Christ’s call for unity, one complementarian AMI pastor writes: “I don’t personally affirm or believe in women's ordination, but for the sake of fellowship and unity, I choose not to make it a primary issue . . . I can be the strongest supporter and proponent of AMI while disagreeing on this.”  Amen.  

The matter of women’s role in the church is neither petty nor light—it deserves serious considerations.  But this issue becomes trivial if we allow it to break our unity in Christ, which is a weightier matter. We Christians are known for infighting.  Let’s stop that so that when we bear testimony on behalf of Christ, our gospel presentation will be that much attractive and appealing to this broken world in desperate need of hope. 

The next blog will deal whether women are forbidden to speak in the church forever.

Joshua 20:1-3 (ESV)

Then the Lord said to Joshua, 2 “Say to the people of Israel, ‘Appoint the cities of refuge, of which I spoke to you through Moses, 3 that the manslayer who strikes any person without intent or unknowingly may flee there. They shall be for you a refuge from the avenger of blood.”

The Yali people, pygmy cannibals in Papua, Indonesia, had an interesting custom.  Once a man fleeing from his enemies enters a plot of land called Osuwa, he is immediately granted protection and safety; no one could touch him, much less hurt him as long as he stays there.  The cities of refuge in ancient Israel served a similar purpose: God told the elders of those cities to admit anyone who kill[ed] a person accidently and unintentionally “into the city and give him a place to live with them.  If the avenger . . . pursues him, they must not surrender the one accused” (Joshua 20:5).

Perhaps, to the advocates of illegal aliens (a.k.a., undocumented immigrants), the closest thing to cities of refuge in America may be “sanctuary city”—a safe harbor to illegal aliens, since special municipal provisions allow people to “avoid cooperating with federal immigrant law enforcement authorities.”  So, what will you do if border patrol agents are knocking on your door after being tipped off that you are harboring an illegal immigrant?

Henri Nouwen, in The Wounded Healer, tells a story of a young fugitive kept hidden by people of a small village.  When the soldiers threatened to kill them for not handing him over, they turned to their minister who, upon reading the verse, “It is better that one man dies than that the whole people be lost” (Jn. 18:14), advised the people to do just that.  That evening, the minister, still saddened by his decision, was visited by an angel, who said, “Don’t you know that you have handed over the Messiah?” When the minister asked, “How could I know,” the angel said, “If, instead of reading your Bible, you had visited this young man just once and looked into his eyes, you would have known.”  Does this powerful story make my question any easier to respond?  No, not really.  What if the young fugitive was a “Barabbas,” a murderer, who feigned innocent eyes?  

The dilemma to the Bible affirming believers is this: On the one hand, being mindful of God’s command to “not mistreat alien[s]” (Lev. 19:33) and “to love those who are aliens” (Deut. 10:19), we are tasked with helping the needy (which many illegal immigrants are).  After all, before God they are humans, not illegals, who bear His image.  On the other hand, as believers who are told by Scripture to “submit to the authorities”—a “God’s servant . . . to bring punishment on the wrongdoer” (Rom. 13:1-5)—it is our civic duty to affirm the law, which would include reporting crimes to authorities.  Note that inasmuch as the establishment of cities of refuge was a merciful measure taken to protect the guilty without malice, its protection did not extend to the guilty with malice (i.e., those who killed premeditatively).

A few years ago, I experienced firsthand what this dilemma may feel like from the standpoint of illegal immigrants. In February of 2016, just before my greyhound bus left for Bakersfield from Los Angeles, I was told that my connection bus in central California, which would have taken me to a smaller city where I was scheduled to preach the next day, was cancelled. I quickly called the host pastor, who was returning from a leadership conference in Nevada, to see if he could pick me up.  Fortunately, I only waited an hour in Bakersfield before the pastor, along with his congregant (“Hugo”), arrived to pick me up.  Later, we dropped off Hugo at his weather-beaten, single-story house; he seemed eager to get home, mostly because his wife just had their second child.

I first met Hugo in my previous visit during which time I was surprised to find out that he, who speaks English well and does not appear Hispanic, was originally from Mexico.  What I learned after Hugo was dropped off was that he and his wife are illegal aliens who have lived in the States for nearly 20 years.  Constantly living in fear of deportation, the only jobs Hugo can find consist of backbreaking farm work that pay just enough to fund a small mortgage and put food on the table. I also learned that many in this community are in the same predicament: always anxious, suspicious of new people, and stuck in a dead-end job.  I’m not exactly a bleeding-heart liberal, but my heart went out for them all.

So, what do you, as a theological conservative who does not support illegal immigration, say to them from the pulpit?  I didn’t tell them to go home because this is, in effect, their home.  There are border patrol agents whose job is to enforce immigration laws.  I will neither go out of my way to help their search nor interfere with it.  However, my call as a minister of the gospel is wholly different.  Whenever I get to share God’s Word before Hispanic congregations in America, I remind them of this: “We have all have made mistakes, but God forgives us in Christ.  If God has so convicted you, you can return home and share the gospel with your families and friends, many of whom are steeped in syncretistic Catholicism.  And whenever you feel fearful, ‘Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus’” (Phil. 4:7-8).  To those who see the world in black and white, this isn’t an adequate answer, but that’s where I reside, in tension.

Now, there is one scriptural teaching that Hugo needs no reminder of; in fact, he may be way ahead of us: “He made his home . . . like a stranger in a foreign country. . .. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Heb. 11:10).  But, for us, because life in America is so comfortable, we live as if this is our destination.  May we, like Hugo, “admit[] that [we] are aliens and strangers on earth” (v. 13).  Let us then live and serve the Lord accordingly all the while “longing for a better country—a heavenly one” (v. 16).

Hugo was always attentive whenever I taught.  His pastor was counting on him to step up to leadership and he seemed excited about the opportunity.  So, I prayed for him, calling upon the Lord to prepare Hugo for fruitful labor that would bring true hope in Christ to those who live with fear in his community.  

Fadel Alkilani, a Washington University student, must have spent several hours removing and then trashing nearly 3,000 American flags displayed on the campus to commemorate 9.11.  His reason: “the 9.11 memorial display was ‘incomplete’ because it did nothing to call attention to the victims of Islamophobia in the U.S., or the civilian casualties in the Middle East as a result of American military involvement. "

Do you agree with him?  If not, would Alkilani consider you an Islamophobe because of your view?  Well, you probably haven’t given much thought to it, being inundated with COVID/BLM and all.  While school officials deal with Alkilani’s antics in a duly manner, let me guide your response to the presence of many Muslim living in the States (getting a boost from a sizable addition of Muslims from Afghanistan).  I want to zero in on two particular matters so that we may adhere to a correct sociohistorical understanding respect to conflicts between Islam and "Christian" West: first, whether all Muslims should be looked upon with suspicion; second, whether Christian West has always tried to victimize Muslims (e.g., Crusade)?

In December 2015, on the heels of a deadly mass shooting in Southern California by a radicalized Muslim couple, the then candidate Donald Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States, until country's representatives can figure out what is going on."  What really concerned the Muslims living in the U.S. was Trump’s suggestion to create a database of them, so as to better track suspicious Muslims and detain the radicalized ones before they strike.  Now, most of us would agree that the threat of violence by radicalized Muslims in America, regardless of their number, is real—unless one is an ideologue who even refuses to use the term “Radical Islam.” The question is, then, whether restraining Muslim immigration and keeping a registry of Muslims in the states is a useful and just measure.

While there isn’t any comparable situation in Scriptures, Esther 3:8-11 can shed some light on the matter.  Haman, a highly ranked official in Persian Empire, who belonged to the Amalekites (1 Sam. 15:1-9)—an archenemy of Israel (Deut. 25:17-9)—plotted to single out the Jews and then exterminate them.   While no sane person would dare to equate this situation with ours, one similarity needs to be noted: singling out one group from the larger society because of one’s ethnicity or religion.  Historically, that sort of distinction—such as Hitler singling out the Jews in Germany and Franklin Roosevelt singling out the Japanese in America—has not ended well.  Be that as it may, since American citizens have consented to relinquishing some of their freedom and submitting to the governing authority in exchange for protection, they are within their rights to expect the government to stop playing with words and do something substantial to reduce the possibility of terror.  

So then, what does that mean?  First, it implies that the citizens have the right to expect the government to improve the vetting process to keep the radicalized Muslims from entering the American soil, but without restraining Muslim immigration itself.  Any extra measures taken to ensure this outcome may slow down the immigration process in general, but that is par for the course.  

Second, while preventing every act of terrorism by radicalized Muslims—a real concern considering that Afghanistan has now reverted back to pre-9/11 era—is an impossible task, perhaps, what travelers are told to do in airports can be extended to the society at large: “If you see something, say something.”  Perhaps a hotline can be established to make it easier to report those who make terroristic threats in the name of Allah, after which, the allegations can be vigorously and fairly pursued by the respective agencies.  

Now, with respect to whether Christian West has always tried to victimize (e.g., conquer, imperialize) the Muslim world, one statement found on the Web surely leans toward that direction.  It states,  “Christians have invaded and colonized a dozen Muslim countries in the past 100 years.”  My response to that is why start the discussion from such an arbitrary point; why not begin from the very outset of their clash at the geopolitical level?  Those who want to lay all the blame on Christian West may not want to go there, because it will not fit their revisionist and selective history.  

The first clash between these two groups occurred in the 8th century, when the Moors from North Africa, who had been conquered and converted to Islam by the Saracen Empire (from Middle East), successfully attacked Spain.  They then penetrated as far as central France (Tours) to subject the entire Europe to Islam.  Fortunately for "Christian" Europe, the Islamic empire's advance was thwarted by the Franks, led by Charles Martel, in 732.  Spain, however, would remain under Muslim control for more than 700 years.  The next major clash was the infamous Crusades, beginning from 1095, for which the Roman Catholic Church owes a major apology to the Muslims, Jews and believers of the Eastern Church, since they all fell victims to these misguided and radicalized Christians from Europe.   If you are keeping scores, it is 1:1.

Regarding the third clash between the two, this is how I discovered it:  In 1992, after Bosnia—as part of former Yugoslavia—declared its independence, the Serbs began the campaign to “cleanse” much of the Bosnian territory contiguous with Serbia.  Subsequently, as many as 2 million Bosnians (about 44% being Muslims) were displaced out of Bosnia.  While reading about this, I began wondering how these Eastern Europeans became Muslims in the first place.  I soon learned that after the Ottoman Turks conquered the Serbs (including Bosnia in 1463), they forced the conversions of the Bosnian nobility, which one author described as “unusually harsh.”  Over the years, while one group of Serbs became Muslims, the rest continued to be part of the Orthodox Church.  The fourth round of their conflict occurred when European countries such as England and France occupied Iraq and Syria, respectively, at the behest of the League of Nations after World War I.  This event and the Crusades, then, are selectively cited by the critics of the church to present Christianity in its worst light.  Presently, the fifth round of their ongoing conflict (including the 9/11 and the military response thereafter by America) is played out on the soils of Europe and America through terrorism carried out by radicalized Muslims.  

So, are you keeping scores?  No, let's not do that.  Instead, since we follow Christ who taught us to “love your enemies,” let us love Muslims, most of whom are our neighbors, not enemies. That's what I observed during my multiple trips to several Islamic countries over the years.  I can assure you that no one needs to have irrational fear of Muslims because they, like those in the West, are concerned primarily with the mundane things of life, such as being able to put food on the table everyday.  Nonetheless, radicalized Muslims do exist and a tiny percentage of them amid 1.8 billion Muslims around the globe translates to millions who seek to inflict harm on the West.  Being concerned about that threat and wanting the government to take reasonable measures in response, is not being Islamophobic.  Meanwhile, we pray for a safer America for all law-abiding citizens—which certainly include Muslims (except for radicalized ones) whom God of the Bible cares for (Acts 14:17) and loves (Jn. 3:16).

Acts 4:12 (NASB)

Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.

A Christian apologist writes, “Christianity is the only true faith, all other religions are of the Devil . . .” Undoubtedly, he will hate what Dwight Eisenhower, the 34th President of the United States (1953-61), once said about religion: “Our government makes no sense unless it is founded on a deeply held religious belief—and I don't care what it is.”  This statement appears to align well with the popular slogan, “All religions lead to the same God.”  

At first, I wasn’t too enamored with Eisenhower’s assertion; now, however, I agree with what was meant: Since the proper functioning of democracy (with fewer and less coercive laws) is contingent upon conscientious people, moral values advocated by any religion serves that purpose, since they are similar to one another.  I came to see this after encountering the functional view of religion—first advanced by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim—that sees “religion as a vast symbolic system which made social life possible by expressing and maintaining the sentiments or values of the society.”  This is to say, if the only goal of religion is to maintain public order and security, then, Islam or Buddhism is as good as Christianity.  For instance, the Koran discourages stealing: “As to the thief, male or female, cut off his or her hands: a punishment by way of example, from Allah . . .” (5:38).  Of course, Moses discouraged stealing as well, saying, “If a man steals an ox or a sheep . . ., he must pay back 5 head of cattle for the ox (Ex. 22:1).  As for Buddhism, its followers are told to avoid “killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct, lying, divisive speech, hurtful speech, idle chatter, covetousness, malice . . .”  On this account, we break with the aforementioned apologist.

What’s substantially different among them is their afterlife strategy: Buddhism exhorts its followers to do good on earth to achieve a better reincarnation, while Islam demands that its adherents obey the Five Pillars of Faith (the confession, daily prayers, almsgiving, fast, pilgrimage to Mecca).  In short, these are man’s effort to save himself.  On the contrary, the Christian faith declares that since man cannot save himself because of sin, God saves him through the atoning death of His Son Jesus.  In short, this is God’s effort to save man.  On this account, we break with Eisenhower: Our salvation makes no sense unless it is founded on the belief in Jesus Christ.

We don’t need to trash religions of the world: Give them credit for making valuable contributions toward building a safer and orderly society; but we should respectfully disagree when it comes to salvation, “for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved”— except Jesus.

Objection from a Reader

Religion exists because of two things. The first reason is that we are created by God to worship. It is a yearning and part of the fiber of our very being, we are made with an inbuilt need to worship. The second reason is that Lucifer (Satan, the Devil) hates God and everything God has made and desires to destroy it. Religions have been crafted mainly by Lucifer and the other fallen angels which were hurled to earth when they lost their place in heaven when they rebelled against God -vainly trying to usurp His throne. To be sure, some humans have crafted religions as well, albeit under the guiding hand of their spiritual father (Lucifer). It is a dangerous and foolish attitude to take that some religions should be given “credit for making valuable contributions toward building a safer and orderly society.” Those things have absolutely NOTHING to do with religion. Religion is Lucifer’s counterfeit substitution to the Truth that he feeds to those who are Lost yet still have a built-in need/desire to worship. We were made to worship our Creator, but our sinfulness separates us from having that proper relationship with Him. Lucifer understands this and does everything in his power to lead man away from God, away from the Truth that will set them free. He knows that the road to hell is broad and many are they that walk it, much to his delight and glee. As God’s redeemed children, we must always stand firm to clearly and unequivocally call what is evil evil. Religions are evil. Saying they should be commended for what little ‘good’ things they contain is like commending chocolate coated poison for being covered in chocolate.

My Reply

Dear reader, my blog was presented under the rubric of God's common grace, which does not include salvation, that has been given to all, not just the elect or believers (Mt. 5:45; Lk. 6:35).  God's love for the pagans is clearly shown in what the apostle Paul says to the Zeus and Hermes worshiping Lycaonians. Paul writes, "[God] has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy" (Acts 14:17).  This shows that God doesn't take any pleasure when pagans suffer, whether it be due to hunger or social chaos that often bring death and destruction.  Isn't that why God instituted some of form of civil authority in all societies so that it will "hold . . . terror . . . for those who do wrong" (Rom. 13:3).  Isn’t that why we are told to pray for kings—beginning with the terrible Emperor Nero—so “that we may live peaceful and quite lives” (1 Tim. 2:2b).  In this respect, and only in this respect, world religion can serve a useful purpose in providing a basis for conventional morality, which is necessary but not sufficient for a stable society.  
Dear reader, regarding your comment about the devil, I wouldn't want to give him too much credit.  Even though he is a liar and accuser God's general revelation (Rom. 1:18-20) and God's law written in human hearts (Rom. 2:14-5) are still powerful enough to reach us, albeit weakened by “darkness” comprised of Satan, that is, “the god of this age” (2 Cor. 4:4), fallen world, and sinful nature.  To that end, John 1:5 is an interesting verse because of the presence of the Greek verb katalambano, which means "overtake" or "apprehend" (Metzger).  On the one hand, most English bibles prefer "apprehend" (understand), thus rendering John 1:5 as (NIV 1984), "The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it."  On the other hand, most Spanish bibles prefer "overtake" (prevalecer), thus rendering it as, "The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it" (This is also found in the footnote of most English bibles.)  The premise of my blog is based on the latter: the power of God’s general revelation and law written in human hearts is such that darkness cannot completely obfuscate it.  This is how Buddhists can come up with moral codes similar (but not exact) to biblical moral codes, and how Hammurabi, the famous Babylonian king whose moral codes antedate the Mosaic moral codes by 3 centuries, could come up with laws against stealing and disobedient acts against parents.  

What does this reveal? That human nature is good?  That the devil has some good in him after all?

No, nothing can be further from the truth.  Rather, it shows how great and powerful God's love is for all creatures under heaven—regardless of whether they believe Him.  He is a God who longs to "fill [the hearts of pagans and heathens] with joy" (Acts 14:17).  Is that enough for salvation?  If it were, God would have never sent the apostle Paul to Lystra, but He did.  Why?  Because it is only through believing in Jesus Christ, the one who paid for the penalty of our sins, that we can be saved from eternal damnation.  And that was the message that Paul brought to the Lycaonians.

Dear reader, I know where you are coming from—and I can appreciate it since too many evangelicals today, having long lost their chest, secretly crave for the approval of the world.  While you don't appear to be one, you seem to think that I am.  While I have no desire to change your perception of me, do consider what I have presented here because it is based on the very Scripture you seek to honor.  World religions don't save but they can be useful on this side of heaven, however tangential, only because God can always penetrate through the enemy's thick layer of darkness to do accomplish His will.  

We need to present to the angry world (against our faith) a God who truly loves atheists and Muslims alike only because it is true, for, "He is kind to the ungrateful and wicked" (Lk. 6:35) and cares that pagans have plenty to eat and that they are reasonably content.   Give it a thought.

“The Most High . . . is kind to the ungrateful and wicked” (Lk. 6:35)

Whenever I teach missiology, I tell the following story to distinguish between churches that do missions out of missio Dei (mission of God: His tender heart for the nations) and those that do them as annual programs.  While 52 Americans were held hostage in the U.S. Embassy in Iran for 15 months from 1979-1981, many churches were praying for their release.   One Sunday, the pastor of a church known for its missionary work asked the congregants to raise their hands if they were praying for the Americans; almost everyone did.  When asked whether they were praying for the Iranian captors, hardly anyone raised their hands.  The pastor then quipped, “I thought this was a mission-minded church; I guess not.”

In 2009, while I was teaching somewhere in Mexico, the Taliban kidnapped more than twenty Koreans who were in Afghanistan on a short-term mission trip.   They were later released, except for the two who were killed.  So in the class, I mentioned how missio Dei reaches out even to these terrorists.  But as I was at home praying for the quick release of those kidnapped, I found myself refusing to pray for the Taliban—I deeply resented them for their actions against those who came to help.  It was so much easier teaching about Missio Dei than to live it: but finally, in tears, I prayed for the Taliban.  

Nevertheless, twelve years after that spiritual breakthrough, I find myself struggling, yet again, whether to pray for the Taliban in view of the reports of horrible things they are doing to Afghan people after American troops withdrew, seemingly haphazardly, from Afghanistan.  
Many years ago I read in a book by Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese woman who, after surviving Islamic terror, became an international journalist, a vivid display of Missio Dei.   Her mother, after being badly injured during a shelling, was somehow taken to a hospital in Israel, which was more than an hour away from home.  Gabriel was moved at the sight of the Israeli doctors, the very people whom she was taught to hate, tending her mother assiduously; but she was shocked to see the same doctors “providing lifesaving medical services to Palestinian and Muslim gunmen who had been injured in the process of trying to kill Israelis.”  She writes, “For the first time in my life . . . I experienced the values of the Israelis, who were able to love their enemy in their most trying moments”—that’s Missio Dei.

So, what must go through the mind of a doctor who treats the enemy combatant?  A while back, I met a young doctor, a committed believer, who actually lived through all this.   Dr. Peter, an Air Force physician, was plucked out of his young family and was placed right in the middle of a war zone in Afghanistan in 2010.  It was going to be six months of non-stop work in the trauma hospital, tending wounded soldiers, some of whom had lost all their limbs.  It was gruesome, exhausting and a lonesome time in Peter’s life, but what made his job excruciatingly difficult was having to treat the very Taliban who had, just hours before, maimed and killed our troops.   These were people, if they could, who wouldn’t have hesitated in killing the tending doctor instantly.    

Peter was all too human.  He writes, “I looked at them with disdain.  I was face to face with the Bible mandate to ‘love your enemies.’ It was a struggle between what I knew was the right thing to do and my heart that harbored hatred for them.  If it were left up to me I wouldn’t have administered any life saving medications. . . . I begrudgingly did my duty, but my heart was elsewhere.”   And soon Peter fell into the deep abyss, feeling “like such a failure.”  He says, “I thought I was a good Christian [because] I kept a lot of the ‘rules’ of Christianity in my life; however, God showed me the deception in my heart.”  It was at that moment Peter recognized something else: “I was no different than the enemy I hated.  I was an enemy of God once,” like what the Taliban are to the American soldiers.  The only difference: While Peter knew and believed that “the precious blood of Christ saved [him] . . . to be a child of God,” the Taliban perhaps haven’t heard this good news.  Slowly, this powerful reminder began to change his attitude towards the Taliban patients because, as he puts it, “Only when I saw the love of God in my own life and the sacrifice He made that I could see them differently.”

While Peter was sharing this with me, I knew that his story has to be told because it so forcefully captures God’s heart, for he concludes, “It was unfathomable that his heart breaks for those whom I hated.”  Yes, “For God so loved the Taliban that he gave his one and only Son.” In that light, let’s be more forgiving and merciful towards those who may not be very lovable right now.