Why do you speak to the people in parables?

There's a side of Jesus that I think a lot of people either forget or miss entirely. It's weird.

Ask a Christian what the purpose of Jesus's parables was, and they'll probably tell you something like, they're little allegories to illustrate spiritual truths for people to understand. But Jesus actually specifically explained in Scripture the purpose of parables, and it's nothing like that:

Matthew 13:10-17 New International Version (NIV)
10 The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”

11 He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. 12 Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 13 This is why I speak to them in parables:

“Though seeing, they do not see;
    though hearing, they do not hear or understand.

14 In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:

“‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
    you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
15 For this people’s heart has become calloused;
    they hardly hear with their ears,
    and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
    hear with their ears,
    understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.’

16 But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. 17 For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

What do my Christian friends make of this?

The book of joshua

Sometimes, no make that all the time, I think we're bound to be surprised by what God has in store for us. Just when you think God is finished with His work, it may turn out that God was only just beginning.

My friend and associate in crimes against orthodoxy, Marauder, has recently been posting links to me, and I was considering it might be kind to post links back, but I was in the middle of this series, you know? Still, I suppose he's theoretically boosting my traffic, and I sort of owed him one or two links, especially after a butt-kissing post such as this, so I gotta send a shout-out back and return the favor. (We'll see how he likes being linked to me when I do an upcoming post I've been working on in the back of my mind on the subject of pedophilia.)

How does this all relate to God and new beginnings? Bear with me, it comes together eventually. Marauder talks about the nature of Satan as modern Christendom sees him/it, and muses as to whether it's really an accurate reflection of the spiritual reality. The view has definitely spilled over into mainstream society, where we live with an understanding of Satan as this powerful being who opposes God and all forms of goodness. You know the guy: wears a red suit, carries a pitchfork, has a fondness for heavy metal music? Of course, that image is all crap, but various parts of it are widely accepted as true in various degrees, and that's not even the parts cribbed from Milton's Paradise Lost.

Actually, there are Biblical bases for a lot of these ideas, although they're few and far between. The fact is that orthodox Jews, modern Christians, and mainstream society each have their own understandings as to the nature of Satan, and it may very well be that all of them are off the mark. The Bible says so little about Satan and his nature that it's really an educated guess on our part, whatever we may think of this being. What is true however is that Satan was still created by God, and therefore, one may assume He has a purpose in mind for him. The Bible actually teaches that Satan is to be treated with respect, and that's in the New Testament!

Jude 8-9 says, "In the very same way, these dreamers pollute their own bodies, reject authority and slander celestial beings. But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not dare to bring a slanderous accusation against him, but said, 'The Lord rebuke you!' " This is a weird verse for various reasons, most of which I won't go into now, but one of which I was specifically wanting to address, as it directly relates to my previous essay on spiritual/Biblical authority.

"The body of Moses"? What is this about? Assuming this story is an actual event, one might assume it took place right after the end of the book of Deuteronomy. Just as you thought Moses' story was over, it turns out there's another chapter to be told. Moses drops dead in Moab, and instead of simply returning to dust as the way of all men, apparently conflict ensues, and spiritual powers are fighting for control of whatever it is he's left behind. This may be symbolic and literal on many levels.

Have you ever thought about the transition from Moses to Joshua? I have considered the fact many times that Moses (if he indeed wrote the Torah, but we'll not go back to that question) was the first person to write a book that was meant to be the Holy Word of the God of Israel. Pretty much from day one--and we can go back to Deuteronomy 6 for this--this was writing that was considered deeply important from the moment it was written. Here's the Law of God; keep it and revere it!

Then comes Joshua, who is also writing Scripture (supposedly the author of the book bearing his name, although doubted for many of the same reasons people doubt the authorship of Deuteronomy), but does he think of it that way? He's got to fill the sandals of Moses. Do you think he thought his writings were deserving of being put in the same volume as the great prophet Moses? There were probably moments, especially during the early days of his leadership, that he might have thought that Moses was the be-all and end-all of God's involvement with Israel.

So on a certain level, and as a certain person once suggested to me concerning the passage in Jude, there was a possibility, even in the very day its writing was completed, of a "disputing... about the body of Moses", that is, not just his physical body, but his life's work. With Moses gone, what happens to the nation he created, and the books that he had written? Every time God wraps up a chapter in history, surely there must be a temptation to think that it's all done. God's finished giving the Law, the Israelites must have thought, so we've got all we need. Indeed, there have been those, including the "Saducees" in the New Testament, that have felt that the Torah is God's Word, complete and final. And they disputed with Jesus about it.

Now as Christians, we have the blessing of hindsight to even a greater degree than they did, knowing that not only was there more to come after the Law, but more to come after the Writings and the Prophets. Scripture was about to be opened again in their very day, and was to be written about events that unfolded in their presence. Why? Because God had sent another Joshua, whose name in Greek is of course rendered "Jesus".

Who was Jesus? It's a fascinating thing to me that the very person who opened up the idea to me that the "body of Moses" might refer to the Torah made another implication far more startling, and one that many mainstream Christians would consider blasphemous: that the "archangel Michael" was Jesus Himself. You may or may not be aware that this is a belief held dearly by Jehovah's Witnesses, among other out-of-the-mainstream Christian groups: that Jesus was not an incarnation of God, but rather an incarnation of the Archangel Michael.

It fascinates me because I wonder if indeed this is technically heresy. After all, what is an "archangel"? It's not a term that the Bible uses too often. (In fact, it's only used in one other verse, at which time it is more closely and clearly associated with Jesus than in Jude.) An "angel" is, once again contrary to popular culture, simply a "messenger". That's what the word in both the original Hebrew and Greek means. It follows that an "archangel" (literally "ruling messenger") would be a high-level messenger, and indeed, who is a more important messenger in history than Jesus Himself, at least as far as the Christian mindset is concerned? And the name Michael? It's understood to be Hebrew for "Who is like unto God?" I think any Christian would have a ready and obvious answer to that question. (Or is it possibly wrong that it's rendered as a question in the first place?)

At the death of Moses, there's a danger. The danger is that with the end of the giving of the Law, we close the book of God's truth, and consequently close our minds. "Here are the rules, now you're on your own. -God." Don't question, don't grow, don't seek deeper understanding and maturity. But God sent Joshua to take them forward into the Promised Land, where Moses could not take them. Likewise, our New Testament Joshua takes us to a place that Moses could not. The old book is closed, but a new book opens. The Law has guided you all the way to the border of the Promised Land, and now Jesus takes your hand and carries you across the Jordan in into the full blessing of God.

I think Christians know this, but they may miss a deeper implication of the history that the Bible presents to us. Once the children of Israel became slaves in Egypt, it wasn't yet over. Once Moses finished his farewell address and died in Moab, it wasn't over. Once they crossed into Canaan, and subsequently crossed into idolatry and paganism, it wasn't over. Once a dynasty was established for King David, it wasn't over. Once they were taken away into exile and lost their land, it wasn't over. Every event in the Old Testament that seemed like a moment when things could have either settled into stability or degraded into utter destruction, it wasn't the end, but just another chapter of God's plan. Do we have the audacity to think that's no longer the way things work?

When Jesus hung on the cross, he famously said, "It is finished." What exactly was finished? Theologically, we understand that it was His payment for our sins that was finished, but the story was not finished. It wasn't the end of the chapter, the chapter was not the end of the book, and after each of the four Gospels come to a close, there are still over 20 books left in the Bible to tell us the story of God and how He is working it out for our benefit. For those of us who believe that the book of Revelation is a description mainly of events that come in the future, we're not even out of the Bible yet in our own lives!

This is the lesson of both the first and last Joshua: that the book is never closed. So many people would be offended by the questions raised in Marauder's short piece on the nature of Satan, but really, is there anything that contradicts what God has told us? Throughout history, times have passed in which people were ostracized or even killed for simply asking questions. But whatever you may think of the nature of Jesus/Joshua and the devil/Satan, the two share something in common that conservative voices don't often like to hear: the purpose of suggesting that there is something more to life and to God than that which we already know. One leads to truth, and the other to deception, but indeed, both of them lead.

The book of exodus

So I got fired. Actually, it was about a week ago, and I considered writing about it. I actually even considered blogging about it fully in a new, separate blog chronicling my experience with unemployment, something I've been lucky enough to go about ten years without having to experience. I'm not sure I really understand the blog concept, though, even after having my own for some time. Really there's no real need that society has to know what goes on in the minutiae of my daily life, despite the fact that that's what technology has allowed us to experience in so many ways lately.

It's funny, although it's not so much a coincidence as an end result of my earlier rantings about Darwin that I ended up buying a copy of Marx & Engels' Communist Manifesto yesterday. (These are the names that one doesn't tend to bring up in church, but I do at times.) See, I was looking for a copy of Origin of Species but couldn't find one (to buy, they probably had one at the library to check out, but I was perusing the bargain books in the bin at the front of the library) and ended up settling for what was probably nearly as embarrassing a book as the other would be, at least were I to be seen reading it by a fellow evangelical fundamentalist. I'd always wanted to read Marx in his own words, so to speak.

I've gotten about halfway through it, and so far the only surprise has been the double-takes at how modern the concepts seem to be. This book was written 160 years ago, but you could pop into the text and make a minor change like substituting "Internet" for "telegraph" and it would read like it was written yesterday. The world hasn't changed so much from the time of Marx after all it seems, even with the rise and fall of Soviet-style Communism. Perhaps he's even still right, as I suspect he's on track in saying that the number-one product created by the bourgeoisie is their own gravediggers.

Getting back to my original point of being fired--which I was planning on writing about anyway long before the Manifesto crossed my path--I was actually quite happy with it, to my slight surprise. I think it may come down to my being in many ways a communist at heart. I'm not likely to be the sort of person to rise up and start a revolution to destroy those who create in me an unhappiness with my lot in life, so it's actually quite nice to have them simply toss me out.

The fact is that there are concepts that have come from Marx and the like that are surprisingly very Christian, albeit the Christian response to the situation is different in so many ways. So often I hear nonbelievers rail on and on about how awful it is that the Bible doesn't come right out and condemn slavery. There's an interesting thing about slavery that so many Christians accept as a fact of life that's not often stated, however. No, I'm not talking about the party line that I also often take that "Biblical slavery [is] very different from our modern understanding of the practice." What I'm talking about is that "slavery" and "employment" are just different words for something that is in many ways the same at its heart.

We are fortunate in this day and age in a way that looks different but is surprisingly similar to the ancient Israelite culture. Slavery in ancient Israel was a matter of personal choice: if you had no way to support yourself independently, you could choose to sell yourself into servitude to your neighbor. Really, this was like taking a job with a six-year contract, as you would be paid, and you would be released in the seventh year. In our society, we really aren't that different, besides the fact that we don't get six-year contracts. (Most of us get something more like a six-month contract, twice a year coming together with your master boss to decide whether you continue to be happy with the arrangement you have.) We get to choose who we're going to be slaves to, and our servitude is not spent bound in chains of iron, but in chains of dollars.

Sure, so few of us would actually willingly sit at our desks doing what we do day in and day out if there was not a paycheck tying us to our employer. There are exceptions, but it seems that 99% of us would drop what we're doing at a moment's notice for a chance at more money, and also we dream of the day when we'll be free of our wage slavery and get to RETIRE! Free at last, free at last!!!!

So anyway, I've escaped from slavery, and come to the promised land of freedom, but I know it's temporary, and I dream daily of finding a new master with larger, stronger chains to bind me to a new desk: it's the American way of life. Higher income doesn't make for more freedom, but less. How many opportunities do I have to potentially walk away from an $8/hour job flipping burgers, vs. say a $50k/year job sitting at a desk processing pointless paperwork? Believe me, I'd rather be flipping burgers or washing dishes; it's tangible and feels meaningful to feed people and protect people from food-borne pathogens than shuffle a pile of papers designed to tell some CEO that their pointless business could profit greatly from joining forces with our pointless business for more efficient pointlessness!

But we all end up this way, don't we? And the Christian belief is this: we're all slaves, some of us just have more obvious chains. The question is, all of us have a certain amount of control over who we choose to be our master. I assure you that while I have worked for many companies that do things I consider meaningful on different levels, and I always strive for a job that will make me feel that I'm making a difference in the world, the only way to consistently find meaning is to not let my job be master over me, not let the almighty dollar be my god and my chains of oppression.

Communists suggest the way to be free is to cast off the chains that bind you from the outside, and there's wisdom to that to some degree. For the Christian however, (and we are not the only idealists to feel this way--it's part of why I always say I admire Buddhism that they take this concept even farther) the solution is to cast off the chains from within. Whether I truly may be a slave with literal chains on my body or a symbolic slave with monetary chains lashing me to my desk in an office, in my heart, I know who I really serve as master. Yes, I look for financial prosperity, but I don't seek money for money's sake, nor even for my sake. Yes, even though I have a wife and kids, and financial responsibility to them that society and God smiles upon when I fulfill that responsibility, I don't even serve that master at heart. No, as a Christian, my master is, and must always be, Christ Himself. I choose freely to subjugate myself to the "easy yoke" of a Master who I believe will protect me and love me in a way that no other master will, or even possibly can.

As a Christian, that's the closest to complete freedom (a mythological concept) that one can ever get, and I am content in that alone.

And the LORD saith: Be thou my Valentine!

By the way, don't forget Valentine's Day!

Remembering the king of Kings

It's interesting to me that here in the United States of America, a land that is built on a foundation of religious freedom, we have a national holiday to commemorate the birth of a great religious leader. I mean, have no doubt, he was a great man, and although he was not understood by so many in his own lifetime. He was martyred while he was still young, but in the short time he walked this earth, he shook up society in a way that will probably never be forgotten. While I am a proponent of freedom of religion, and I realize that sometimes means keeping religion out of government, I wholly support the official status of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday.

While I am glad we commemorate this great man who may be one of the greatest Americans of all time, there is something about him that strikes me as interesting in the way it contrasts with that other great religious figure whose birthday we celebrate tomorrow. If a person were to do anything more with King's birthday than simply take a day off from work, they might take some time to review his great "I Have a Dream" speech, study his work in civil rights activism, take time to mentally devote yourself to King's teachings of non-violent political activism or some such thing. I am not aware of anybody who takes the time on King's birthday to sit down and look at King's baby pictures.

To tell you the truth, I've never seen a baby picture of Dr. King; who knows if any are in existence? But seeing as it's his birthday, it's really the commemoration of his birth; do people paint pictures of his mother and father bringing him home from the hospital? Do people make pilgrimages to Atlanta to see his birthplace (Maybe they do, I don't know)? We commemorate the day of his birth because we revere him for all the great things he did long after he was born.

Even on your own birthday I bet nobody pulls out the album and shows of pictures of your mother cradling you in her arms. The day of your birth is the day that we use to commemorate you, but not really to commemorate your infancy, because it was a far more important and memorable day to your mother than it will ever really be to you.

So what's the deal with Christmas, then? Why do we take a man who did so much in the late part of his life, and on his birthday, unlike anybody else in history, we actually take time to remember his actual birth? We buy big plastic glowing models of the manger scene and erect them in our yards, we buy small pewter ones and put them on our mantels, we buy tiny ones made of glass and hang them on branches of trees that we inexplicably have brought into our house. (Imagine telling your family in May that you want to go cut down a tree and put it in your living room! But that's another story...) We get together and reenact the story, making some teenage girl stuff a pillow in her dress and sit sidesaddle on a rented donkey while people parade by and ooh and ahh and say how wonderful it is for an unmarried teenage girl to be pregnant. Everything is about an infant that lived a couple thousand years ago, and in the midst of celebrating the birth, we do all sorts of crazy things that we would simply never do any other time of year for any other historical figure.

Why? It's funny, but there is actually a good reason.

When you look at King, the fact is, as I hinted at before, that the fact of his birth is not particularly important to his life. Who remembers the details other than his parents, who are both long-dead? All of his accomplishments, and those of pretty much everyone else, occurred much later in life, when we and they were adults. That's what makes them great, and why we remember them, the fact we use birthdays to honor people is just an arbitrary cultural way to devote a specific day to them.

Jesus, however, is different. Because of who he was, and what his life meant, because he is both God and the Son of God, because for him, being born was actually a volitional choice, the day of his birth is in many ways the most important day of Jesus' life, and the beginning of his life's work. In order for Jesus to die for us, he first had to be born in a human body for us.

So many of us, in searching for miracles, forget that miracles happen every day when new lives start. It's an amazing thing for a single-celled zygote to grow and mature within the womb and become a living human being. Life itself is a miracle, and to think that the creator of life himself would take on the mantle of life and live through it himself? For the being who is so great that the universe cannot contain him to force himself to be contained by the womb of a peasant girl?

For Jesus, birth itself was one of his greatest accomplishments and one of his greatest blessings to us, and as odd as it may be, it is right, very right for us to celebrate not just the man Jesus, but his very act of being born into this world so that we could have Emmanuel, "God with us."

Merry Christmas.

Fireproof

A couple months ago, my boss was having me research info on fire safes. As with a number of businesses, we back up the information on our servers to a tape drive, and put the tapes in a small safe to protect them from fire and/or theft. If you're not familiar (which I'm guessing most people are not), fire safes are typically given ratings of one-hour, two-hour or three-hour, which is more or less considered the amount of time a given safe can sit in a typical building fire without the contents being damaged. My boss wasn't happy when I gave him the particulars of what these ratings mean on a more technical level, expressing that he wanted a safe that would offer complete protection and be truly fire-proof. I explained to him as it says on this website:

Remember, provided there is enough heat, NOTHING IS ACTUALLY FIREPROOF and everything WILL BURN.

As you likely have heard in the news, a large portion of Southern California is burning this week. Over thirty fires have consumed half a million acres of land (about half the size of Rhode Island), taken the lives of at least six people, injured over fifty firefighters, destroyed over 1,500 homes, and are still going at this time.

Like pretty much everything that happens around me, the fires caused some introspection and reflection. Even in areas like the one where I live that are not actually on fire, ashes fall continually, and the sky has been a brownish-orange for six days and probably will continue to be for some time even if the fires are extinguished soon. Everywhere is being effected.

But it did get a bit personal on Monday morning when I drove to work and found the street my office is on blocked off by police. I was a block away from work, and though I couldn't see the fire itself, I could tell from the smoke that it was just a block away again on the far side of my office. I was allowed through the roadblock and arrived at work where my boss informed me that we were not yet told to evacuate, but we knew there was a high likelihood of it as indeed, the fire was just a block away. He himself had gone to the roof of our building and taken pictures of the flames rising through the trees on a neighboring ridge earlier that morning.

I sat at my desk and took some time to survey the junk that usually litters it. Once the call came to evacuate, which was pretty much a sure thing, I wouldn't have time to grab more than one or two things off of my desk, so I decided to be preemptive and grab everything that was irreplaceable, put it in a bag, and take it to my car that moment. It stuck me as I was gathering up my belongings that there were some things that I brought to work with me because I thought they would be safer sitting in a drawer in my work desk than sitting in a drawer in a desk in my home. "What if something happened to my house?" I'd often thought in the past. "Better to bring this to work for safekeeping." Nothing of monetary value, just personal sentimental value. Now I had come to realize that work was not a safe place after all. About an hour later, in fact, my boss would be having me load office equipment into my car to take home for safekeeping, ironically including our fire safe.

I started to think about it all. I already knew that home was not safe. I don't have a safe, so important documents are kept in a cardboard box. Put the box on the floor, and it will be destroyed in a flood. Put the box on a high shelf and it will be destroyed in a fire. Put the box in my car and it will be destroyed in a car crash. Put it anywhere at all and it could be stolen.

Is buying a safe the answer, though? Testing safes for effectiveness is a very lengthy process, and few safes that are not priced at hundreds of dollars make it. They put them in furnaces to simulate fire conditions; then while still hot, they drop them from a certain height to simulate a collapsing building; then they submerge them in water to see if they keep watertight because no doubt the firefighters will dump hundreds of gallons of water into your office building to stop the burning. If you didn't choose a safe that was good enough for the sort of fire that hit your building (which of course, you can't predict), then your stored materials will be melted, charred, smashed and soaked.

But how much is enough to spend on a safe? As the quote above indicates, despite the fact that you can be very dedicated to finding a way to protect yourself from fire, there is a chance that some sort of catastrophe will come that will burn not just your documents, but the safe itself! Sure, it's not likely, but it is possible.

The point of all of this is that in the midst of worrying throughout the rest of the day about the thousands of dollars of office equipment and confidential information of clients that were loaded into my car, I realized I could guarantee no safety. Everything that I own, and everything that my employer had put me in charge of, all of it had potential to be lost, damaged, stolen or destroyed. What's a person to do?

There is a principle that Jesus taught, and I think it's one of a handful of principles that have practical application for all people, not just those who believe in Christ's deity. Yet it is not such an obvious one like, "Love thy neighbor as thyself," or "Thou shalt not kill." In Matthew 6, Jesus said,

"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

I think most people think of this as a spiritual thing, and if you are a Christian, you definitely should, but there is a completely mundane and practical application to this. Buy yourself some fancy clothes, and eventually, they will rot away and go out of style. Buy yourself a cool car, and eventually it will break down and become a pile of scrap metal. Put your money in the bank and the bank will go under due to bad business decisions or embezzlement, the bottom will fall out of the value of the dollar, the stock market crashes and the real estate bubble bursts. Every worldly possession you have can, and eventually will go away.

But if you invest in educating children? If you invest in saving the environment? If you invest in peace, love, understanding, and all sorts of other hippy-dippy stuff like that? The return on that sort of investment is worth more than any amount of money.

A friend of mine remarked that when he watches the news these days, and sees people evacuated from fire areas, repeatedly they so often seem to cry out that they have lost "everything." He wondered to me, "Don't they still have their lives? Don't they still have their families? Don't most of them have insurance that will allow them to rebuild most if not just about all of what they did lose?" It would be a tragedy if I were to lose all those material possessions, no doubt. But so long as I have my wife, my children, and my God, I have all that I truly need. And even if I did lose my family, I would have the fond memories of the joy we shared. No fire can take that away from me.

What's so "Good" about Friday?

Although I think I noted in the past that there's almost something clichéd about a Christmas post, I don't think that it may be so for an Easter post. Perhaps I'm wrong, I don't know. The thing is, though, while I wanted to make a post for the Easter season, I was having a hard time figuring out what it was exactly that I wanted to say about the holiday. Then it hit me: in a way, I'd partially already said it.

In my previous post about Elizabeth Edwards, I noted that while there is sometimes a faith that moves mountains, I think more often there is a faith that says, "You know, that mountain is probably there for a good reason." I wondered if such a message would be accepted by many, and I suspected that there are more than a few Christians who would scoff at the idea of a passive, "let it be" faith. (Of course, since nobody seems to be reading, it's hard to tell what people think. It's okay, I don't write for fame, but merely as a creative outlet.)

Then it occurred to me that the best way to make an argument for the value of something to a Christian is to show it modeled in the life of Christ. So today, we come to Good Friday.

The evening before Jesus was crucified, a couple of things happened in short succession, the Gospel of Luke outlining the events best in Luke 22:39-51. Jesus goes off a short distance from his disciples to pray by himself, and this is what he says in that passage:

"Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done." (Luke 22:42)

Jesus knew that he had less than 24 hours left to live, and he wasn't looking forward to the painful death coming to him, but he didn't want a miraculous escape if it meant that his purpose in coming to earth and dying would be defeated. He knew that this was his fate, not only that night, but for all of his life. Many times he had taught his disciples that it was coming. In Matthew 16:21, Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to be arrested, tortured, and put to death, and later in that same discourse, he gives the famous line about

"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." (Matt. 16:24)

He means that in a figurative way for many, but for more than a few with him that day, it was meant literally. The Apostle Peter in particular is known to have been crucified. Jesus knew that difficult times were coming for him and for his followers, but he did not suggest running away, but facing it with bravery instead.

It's the second event that happened that night that illustrates something about Jesus' attitude, faith, and power. Shortly after praying the prayer above, the soldiers came to arrest him. Peter, knowing by that time what was going on, but still not completely accepting of the idea of Jesus going to the cross, jumps up and cuts off the ear of one of the men with a sword. Jesus rebukes him, saying,

"Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me? Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?" (John 18:11, Matt. 26:53)

Jesus points out that he is accepting his fate despite the fact that he has at his disposal the supernatural power to avoid it, and with that, he heals the man's ear. That act of healing is the last miracle of Jesus recorded in the Gospels, and he performs it for a man who is coming to take him away to his death!

How could any Christian say that anyone has greater faith than Jesus had himself? Being God in the flesh, he knew more than any other the power and the purpose of God. He knew that in any situation, he had either the power to provide for himself anything he wanted, or to simply ask his Father for provision and it would be given. But throughout the Gospels, even to the moment of his death on the cross, Jesus never performed a miracle for his own personal needs.

Maybe in your hour of need, God will save you. Maybe he will rescue you from your trouble or heal your pain, or make you rich. Maybe. But consider this: Jesus never did any of those things for himself.

Consider the things that you wish you had. Feel free to pray for them; it's not a sin. But think also of the things that God has given you, and realize that any favor you have been shown by God is more generosity than He showed for His Son. Jesus, the Lord and Creator of the universe, gave us everything, and today is the day that we remember that all he took for himself was death, the punishment for our sins. Good Friday wasn't such a good day for Jesus, but he made it a very good day for the rest of us.

Have a blessed Easter.

Blessed art thou, Valentine!

So last night, I was looking at the cheesy little Valentine's Day cards my kids got for their class. You know the ones, probably, little cartoon characters giving cheesy holiday greetings in a pack of twelve? They're goofy, not really deep in the sentiment they express, and every kid loves them.

They come in Strawberry Shortcake, Spongebob Squarepants, Pokemon, He-Man, Lord of the Rings, you name it, and if it's a pop-culture phenomenon, they probably exist somewhere. So I was thinking...what about all those popculture phenomena that don't get put on Valentine's Day cards because they're not the regular mainstream sort of thing that usually goes there? Of course, being a Christian blogger with an odd sense of humor, I thought, "Hey, what about Jesus Valentines?"

So, I did it. Yes, they're cheesy, and they're meant to be. I tried to make them inoffensive, but then the whole concept is perhaps a bit sacreligious, so if anyone's going to be offended, it's probably conservative Christians. Oh well, I had fun doing them.

Gloria in Excelsis Santa?

I briefly considered titling this one "He doesn't look a thing like Jesus, but he talks like a gentleman, like you imagined when you were young", but I decided it would be a bit too long. Santa Claus is a fascinating subject to examine in relation to Christmas, mostly because of the cultural impact of this mythic figure on Western culture. While Jesus is supposedly the reason for Christmas (after all, the word actually contains "Christ" in it), everybody knows that culturally, Jesus takes a backseat to the jolly man in the red suit. Heck, when I was a kid, I didn't even know that Christmas was Jesus' (supposed) birthday, but I sure did know that the big red sock I left by the fireplace on Christmas Eve would be filled with goodies come morning.

Many Christians are not real happy about Santa's overshadowing of Jesus at Christmastime, and really, it's understandable. As a Christian, you probably wouldn't want anybody overshadowing Jesus at any time, much less on his birthday. Some can take it a little too harshly, a la that old Saturday Night Live classic skit in which Dana Carvey's "Church Lady" points out the similarities between Santa and Satan (red suit, beard, etc.), finally highlighting that the two names are anagrams of each other. While I think that's over the top, I also think that every Christian who is raising a child should take some time to really think about the implications of mixing reverence of Santa in with worship of Jesus Christ, and be smart about it.

Years back, before I had kids, I heard a pastor on the radio take a hard line stance against Santa. His reason for doing so was actually very well-reasoned logically, and I took some time around my kids' first Christmas to discuss it with my wife. Look, this pastor said, you raise your kid with Christmas being a big focal point of every year, it's just the way things are. Every year, you teach your kids about Jesus, and how he comes into your heart with grace and love, and also about Santa, and how he comes to your house with presents and the spirit of giving. When your kids get older, and they find out all about Santa, and how you may have not been entirely truthful about him, and it will very likely call into question the now-related concept of Jesus. Surely you don't want that, right?

There's something profound about this to me. I've heard atheists point out, in a manner that I'm fairly sure is meant to be disparaging of Christianity, that Santa Claus is like God for kids. Kids can't really grasp the concept of God as well as adults sometimes can, so the story is given of a kind old man with a long white beard who lives far away in a magical land where everything is white and shiny, and you can't go there, but you can send requests to the man to use his magical powers to send you gifts of all kinds. If you're good, he will answer your requests, and if you're not, then he will punish you; and don't be mistaken in thinking you can fool him, because part of his magic is that he can see you wherever you are and whatever you do. I suppose one could draw a parallel between angels and elves if one desired as well, but the point is clear: Santa is God with the training wheels on.

Whether this suggestion truly is meant to be disparaging towards Christianity or simply a clever observation of a cultural phenomenon, I think it would be foolish to dismiss it outright. There's a truth there. Whether people are having their view of God formed by their early views of Santa, or people are imposing God-like characteristics on Santa subconsciously, that mixing of two separate but related phenomena is an issue that people of all faiths need to consider. Do atheists that celebrate Christmas include Santa Claus as part of the celebration, and if so, are they inadvertently teaching a sort of religion to their children? I would think that most atheists likely feel somewhat strongly against teaching religion at all, much less a pseudo-religion that no adult takes seriously. Do Christians want to risk the potential of confusing their kids by mixing orthodoxy with the oddities of a modern tradition? Does it really patch up the rift between the two concepts by mashing them together in some unlikely fashion?

Of course, while having Santa visit the crèche may be silly, the idea of an overtly Christian Santa Claus is not a completely new concept. In fact, as most people know, he has his roots in Saint Nicholas, a fourth-century church leader who was known for his generosity to the poor. In an apocryphal story, he once reached through the window of an impoverished local family with three daughters and put some gold coins in their stockings hanging to dry by the fire so that they could have dowries. Later he was canonized as the patron saint of children. The values that Nicholas stands for are values that Christians can get behind, and probably many non-Christians as well. Does that kindness and generosity form a part of what Christmas is about? Is that what we think of when we think of Santa?

The other day, my family was all together in the car, and the song "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" came on the radio. My wife leaned over to me and asked, "Promise me we'll never use Santa Claus to threaten our children?" I knew what she meant, and agreed. The Bible says in Romans 5:8, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." That's the generosity and selflessness of Jesus, "Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death--even death on a cross!" (Philippians 2:6-8) Are we going to use the holiday to teach about the unconditional love and selflessness of Jesus, and at the same time mix in the image of Santa Claus as a man who clearly has the resources to bring gifts to every child in at least North America, but might decide not to bring anything to your child because she had the bad judgment to pull the cat's tail one week before the Big Day? Is this holiday icon meant to embody the values of Christian charity and the spirit of giving, or is he a capricious and judgmental bastard that extorts good behavior out of children in Skinnerian fashion?

No wonder so many people grow up to have a warped sense of God as the above-implied white-bearded judge on a distant throne who demands strict controls on your behavior! So many parents are unknowingly (or maybe even knowingly in some cases?) teaching their children the moral laws "Be on your best behavior in order to receive rewards. Give to others so that they will want to give to you." and the worst of all, "There are certain times during which you need to be on your best behavior more than others so that you can earn the right to be loved." Doing the morally right thing is a value in itself, and one that is not meant for special occasions. And love, true love, is not conditional.

Santa will be visiting our house this Christmas, but not as a judge, not as a means of payback for good behavior. Santa will hopefully be an iconic representation to our children of what it looks like to love unconditionally, give unselfishly, and honor the spirit of celebration of the birth of our Lord and Savior by bringing a merry Christmas to all. And to all, a good night.

The Da Vinci Code: a royal pain

Okay, this excellent comic has reminded me that once again this may be a time for me to make a topical post.

I know what thousands of people have been thinking in the midst of all the controversy. Yep. "What does Brucker think about this whole 'Da Vinci Code' thing?" Well, wonder no more, my fellow netizens! I am about to expound far beyond the limit of any reasonableness, that limit actually having passed probably two sentences ago. So long as I'm being pretty stupid already, let's have some fun and let me mock-interview myself as the leading authority on complete crap.

Running from Elevators: Well, let's get down to business. What did you think of the movie?

Brucker: I haven't seen it. I might eventually, but I'll probably wait for it to come out on video.

RfE: Well did you read the book, then?

B: Oh, I considered it, but I haven't had time for much reading lately. I've been spending what little time I have for reading books that freak out conservative Christians, like the Harry Potter books. Man, those are good. I've got some interesting thoughts on the ending of "[Harry Potter and the] Half-Blood Prince" that I'd love to share.

RFE: I don't think that's necessary. Surely, though, you have formed some sort of opinion on the book and movie just from hearsay, right?

B: Oh, yeah. Like probably 60% of the target audience, I know what the book is about; I even know the twist ending that probably not nearly so many people are aware of.

RFE: Yes, let's not spoil that, but let's talk about the main theme of the book. Do you think it's a dangerous one?

B: Well, yes and no. First of all, whatever danger there may be to Christianity, um, well, some of it may be overplayed. Like the joke in yesterday's PvP comic that you linked to above, there are some people in Christianity who don't want to believe Jesus was really much like a human at all. The concept that He definitely went to the bathroom, probably cried as an infant, may have had acne as a teenager, and so forth, is oddly offensive to some people.

RFE: Despite the fact that the Bible emphasizes His humanity.

B: Right. I mean, most people probably don't like to think of Jesus ever looking other than a tall, light-skinned, shiny-clean man in bright-white robes. But of course, He wasn't tall, probably had much darker skin than people of European ancestry, and the Bible even says that He took baths, so He must have gotten dirty. Probably, he got very dirty, seeing as He spent so much of His time wandering around from place to place on foot in an age where they didn't have concrete and asphalt pavement.

I would like to note as an aside that I've heard people complain about Jesus being portrayed by tall actors in films, and I don't think that's something that should be an issue. While Jesus almost certainly wasn't tall by modern standards, He may well have been tall for His own time and culture. If you're going to insist Jesus be played by someone short, you'd have to have a whole cast full of short people to match him.

RFE: So is the important issue of the "Code" the fact of Jesus' humanity?

B: Yes, but not entirely in the way one might think. I have heard that the premise is that Jesus was human, and the Church has been trying to cover up that fact by suppressing "Gnostic Gospels". The fact is, as far as I know, the Gnostics were far more inclined to deny the human aspect of Jesus' person than the mainstream church. Gnostics believed in mysticism and spirituality on a level where they didn't like the idea of Jesus being a flesh-and-blood individual. The Gnostics were also rather anti-feminist, which is also the reverse of how I understand they are portrayed in the story.

RFE: Which leads to the big point.

B: Yes, not the twist at the end, but the big secret that just about everyone knows--

RFE: Spoiler alert!

B: Right, heh. The big secret is that rather than the Apostle John being the most important figure in the early church movement, it was actually Mary Magdalene, who was Jesus' wife. Supposedly, while the Bible never says that Jesus married, the reason is not that He actually wasn't but rather that those details have been edited out and repeatedly suppressed by the Catholic Church, natch.

RFE: So the real meat of the story is there. What do you think about this idea?

B: Well, I have mixed feelings. As a "Bible-believing Christian" I would support the official stance of the mainstream churches that Jesus did not marry. On the other hand, as [PvP creator] Scott Kurtz says in his blog, "Good fiction makes you think. And thinking is never bad. There's nothing to be afraid of, even if you're a religious person. And what good is your faith if it can't stand up to being challenged from time to time? It's safe for Christians to read the book. It's just a story."

"The Da Vinci Code" is hardly the first or the only entity to speculate on the subject of Jesus being married. Some have pointed out that even in the Bible as we know it, edited or not, Jesus spends an awful lot of time with Mary for the both of them being single. It's something that's not really even socially acceptable in many modern societies. Also, the fact that they were both single at such an age in a culture where singleness was uncommon suggests to some that married or not, Mary was probably intended to be married to Jesus via an arranged marriage.

RFE: Is there any positive evidence in the Canonical Scriptures for such a marriage?

B: Eh, slight. Some have suggested the wedding feast at Cana was actually Jesus' wedding feast. Why was Jesus, as a mere guest, put in charge of the refreshments? Why do we never find out whose wedding it was? Why are Jesus' disciples there? If indeed this is Jesus' wedding, then the answer to all of these is fairly obvious.

RFE: But you still think Jesus was unmarried?

B: Yeah. And for a reason that may bother some conservative Christians almost as much as suggesting the possibility in the first place. Well, except Catholics. Church tradition. We sometimes tend to treat the idea of "tradition" as a bad word among evangelicals, as it conjures up images of men in robes and funny pointed hats chanting in Latin before a crowd of people genuflecting in unison. I don't think we really appreciate how much of our faith is built on tradition, though. Sure, the Bible is our foundation, but tradition is the framework of the house that was built on it.

RFE: But as an evangelical, you do reject much of that sort of tradition that you talk of amongst Catholics, right?

B: "Reject" is a strong word. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, but some people can get distracted by all the liturgy and miss the faith that should fill the inside of all that ritual. I reject it for myself, but wouldn't question the faith of someone who was in a more liturgical church just because they're that way. Most of those things come down to personal preference of worship style rather than a deep doctrinal issue.

RFE: So is Jesus' marital status a doctrinal issue?

B: Whew, that's a tough question. In some sense, everything about Jesus as a person is a doctrinal issue. When you deal with other people in the Bible, and their own personal lives, it's different. For instance, was Peter married? The Bible mentions him having a mother-in-law, but never talks about his wife. If Peter was the first Pope, and Popes are not to be married, this may be important on some level, but the marital status of the Pope is more like Church "policy" than doctrine. It may surprise some people to know that there are Catholic priests that are married. It has something to do with certain sub-sects of the Catholic Church which I don't fully understand.

But getting back to Jesus, the fine details of His life are far more prone to scrutiny. As I was essentially saying before, some people would hang precariously on the issue of whether Jesus ever picked His nose, but getting married is certainly something a bit more vital. I just don't know. It's potentially important, yes, but I don't personally see any reason it would bother me to suggest that Jesus was married, other than the fact that it's just not mentioned.

RFE: But what about the issue of children, and a royal bloodline?

B: See now, there is that, and one might wonder about the implications of a flesh and blood descendant of Jesus. The fact is, descendants of a person may not have much in common with that ancestor. If Jesus hypothetically did have a child or two, I don't see any reason they would be particularly special. In fact, if "The Da Vinci Code" is trying to simultaneously argue that Jesus was nobody special and yet that His descendant(s) are very special, well, I don't get it. Maybe I'll get it when I eventually get around to reading the book or watching the movie. There is no monarchy in Israel today, nor do I expect there ever will be one again, short of divine intervention, so being of the royal bloodline is, well, nothing. England is a country that still has a monarchy and they seem to just barely matter.

RFE: So you just don't see why we should care?

B: Exactly. The fact that there might be a living descendent of Jesus is about as interesting as knowing there might be a living descendant of George Washington. A bit of a curiosity, celebrity by association, but that's about all. My grandfather was very much into genealogy later in his life, and he discovered on tracing back his family tree that our family comes from French and English Royalty back in the 13th century. Interesting, but essentially meaningless in respects to who I am as a person.

RFE: So would you recommend going to see the movie?

B: I'd wait to hear what the reviews say and act accordingly. So far, I've heard a lot of bad press, and not much good. The general consensus on imdb.com so far is that it's pretty mediocre, and sometimes I go by that rather than reviews, but either way, it's not looking too promising.

Of course, there's the fact that somebody came up with a drive to have every Christian go and see "Over the Hedge" as a protest against "Da Vinci", which is an interesting idea. I'm wondering if it might work, especially with the movie being panned by critics. Oh, and it looks better-reviewed on imdb.

See whatever movie you want to see, I don't really care too much. Let me know what you think if you see either of those movies, I'm giving them both consideration.

RFE: We'll be sure to do that.

B: "We"? Can "we" stop typing yet?

'Tis the season to be complaining

It wasn't the subject of this weekend's sermon at church, but it was mentioned. What the heck is the deal with the fact that sales associates in stores will not wish you a "Merry Christmas", but insist on "Happy Holidays"? I've been hearing a lot about it this year in particular, and it does seem to be rampant this year for unknown reasons, although maybe it's just that my attention has been drawn to it.

Still, Saturday morning I was sitting with my kids watching "Blue's Clues", their favorite show (and really an excellent one), and it was a holiday episode. It was definitely not a Christmas episode, repeatedly Joe wished the viewers "Happy Holidays", they exchanged "Holiday presents" and in the mail, Joe got a "Holiday card". The card was also an oddity, in that it featured four kids (for those not familiar with this children's program, the "mail" is pretty much always a video segment) who were each celebrating the holidays in their own way. One was celebrating Chanukkah, one celebrating Kwanzaa, one celebrating Ramadan, and one actually celebrating Christmas. I like the idea of not only featuring all of these holidays but making it clear that they are not different versions of the same holiday. (I was always irked as a Jewish child when teachers in school would tell students that Chanukkah was the "Jewish Christmas", a ridiculous concept.) Oddly enough, though, each kid had their own segment of the video to explain their holiday and its meaning but the kid celebrating Christmas. Not even a "secular" Christmas explanation.

You know "secular" Christmas. It's what I always celebrated with my mother at her house as a child. My Jewish father didn't like the idea of his son celebrating Christmas, and while it's understandable, I had no idea that Christmas was supposed to have anything to do with Christ; I had no idea who Christ was, actually. Christmas for my family and for many others means a tree with little glass globes hanging on it, lots of candy, maybe a wreath on the door, and then on the actual day, we get lots of toys. What does any of that have to do with Christ?

As a Christian now, what I often hear around this time of year is that we've forgotten the "true meaning of Christmas". Those are meant to be ironic quotes, in case you couldn't tell. That phrase gets tossed around a lot, and there's no consensus on what the "true meaning" actually is. Watch five Christmas movies and see five different definitions of what it is:

• Being with family
• Helping the poor
• Believing in Santa Claus
• Giving, not receiving
• Peace on Earth

Everyone seems so sure that their idea of what Christmas is about is the "true meaning", and a lot of Christians seem to grind their teeth and grumble, "Sheesh, I thought it was about Jesus..." The fact is, all of the above things are fine and dandy (even believing in Santa Claus, for various reasons), and there's little or no reason to complain about them per se. Still, I suppose as a Christian one might wish that Christ could get more attention, especially on the holiday that is named after Him and is designed to be the commemoration of His birth. but still, what's the point in complaining?

Aside from the fact that Jesus almost certainly wasn't born on December 25th (a fact that ought to come as a surprise to very few people) and so it's really an artificial holiday that the Catholic Church stole from the Pagans sometime in the 4th century more or less, there is a question that lingers in the back of my mind year after year and came to full surface this year. At the risk of piling another level of complaint on top of what's already there: what gives?

Maybe I'm missing something by being in a church short on liturgy, or maybe not, but even as a person who believes in the truth of the Bible and wishes to use the date of December 25th to commemorate the events of Luke chapter 2, what the heck is the "true meaning of Christmas"? Peek in the window of my house, and you'd see the tree with the lights and little glass balls, and stockings hung on the bookshelf (no fireplace available), and wrapped presents for the children. Frankly, it doesn't look much different from what most non-Christian houses are probably looking like.

I enjoy getting into the "spirit" of Christmas with my wife; shopping for the tree, putting up lights, making cookie treats and the like. But all the time I was going through that string of tree lights looking for the burned-out bulbs so that the tree could look picture-perfect, I was thinking, "I'm spending hours this month doing stuff of no clear significance, when I can barely seem to find time to sit quietly and read the Bible. Is this right?"

Maybe the "true meaning of Christmas" is not to be found in chapter two, but in chapter 10;

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!"

"Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."

Is honoring Christ all about busying yourself to make everything fancy and nice, or is it taking the time to sit at His feet, listening to what He has to say to you? Yeah, as so many people point out about the story above, somebody had to make the meal, right? Thank God for the Marthas out there who are always working to be gracious hostesses. But in the midst of all the craziness of shopping for presents and making holiday meals, I hope everyone will have a time to stop complaining about how they seem to be the only person around who cares about making Christmas what it should be, and takes time to just sit down, relax, and hear what God has to say.

And that goes for people of any religion. Happy Holidays.

Membership hath its privileges

There's an interesting facet of Christianity that I find sometimes hard to swallow on an intellectual level, despite the fact that I take it on faith. People that are not Christians, mostly agnostics and atheists, complain that it's unfair for Christianity to make the claim that it has exclusive access to Truth-with-a-capital-T. If Jesus is going to say "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6) then isn't he being rather intolerant? Well aside from the fact that I don't think that this technically fits the actual definition of intolerant, and that Jesus, being God, pretty much has the right to set the rules however He wants, the thing I think this objection misses very often is the fact that Christianity is not the only religion by far that makes claims of exclusivity. Lots and lots of religions claim to be the only "true" religion, and really, it's a whole topic in itself as to why I think that's not only acceptable, but desirable in a religious practice. But this topic of exclusivity is not the "facet" that I really wanted to talk about, although it's somewhat related, I suppose.

The thing about Christianity that I was pondering yesterday evening was part of the whole, "Don't say you'll believe it when you see it, but believe and then you'll see!" phenomenon. While I believe that there is a great deal of Christianity and its doctrines that can be intellectually understood without having to be a Christian, I think all (well, perhaps most) Christians realize that there is an element of faith that only true believers have a grasp on. We evangelicals have what we like to call "a personal relationship with God." What is that, exactly? I don't think I can describe it to someone who hasn't experienced it for themself, which is too bad, since it's what's really at the heart of Christianity when you strip everything else away.

Interestingly enough, and one of the reasons it's related to the topic in the first paragraph, I found myself pondering this in the midst of reading about Zen Buddhism. I realized that exclusivity is not the only thing by far about Christianity that's hard for an outsider to accept, yet is common to many religions. What is at the center of Zen Buddhism? The experience of zen. What is zen? Well, although philosophers of various religious beliefs can talk about it at length and discuss things about zen, zen itself is not something that can be put into words, even by those who have experienced it. In fact, the inability to describe zen is an inherent property of it, the word "zen" meaning essentially "wordlessness".

Such a concept is found in the Bible in a number of ways. Paul wrote about a vision in which "He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell." (2Cor. 12:4) But aside from that special incident, he writes more generally and practically that "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." (1Cor. 2:14) There is a concept in many religions that there is just a certain level of spiritual enlightenment that only the true believers will ever experience.

Interestingly enough, I'd say that it's a belief that even some atheists harbor in an odd way. I've been told by atheists that if only I would cease to believe in God for a moment, I'd see how ridiculous the Bible and Christianity as a whole are. Perhaps they're right, but if so, aren't they essentially suggesting that there is such a thing as special atheistic enlightenment that only true atheists can experience? What a concept! (It's hardly a common view among atheists in general, though. If atheists were a religious classification as Christianity is, there would probably be as many "sects" of atheism as there are atheists.)

I'm wondering if the only point of this blog is to toss out thoughts on unanswerable questions that I'm not really asking, nor looking for feedback on. I'm not sure what my point is here in general, and it sounds like yesterday's post, with a lot of "well maybe, or maybe not". Are these facets of Christianity logically unacceptable? Yet they're used by so many. I remember the irony of once having a discussion on the value of various "ex-gay" ministries. There was a lesbian who claimed that if any of these sorts of ministries ever had any successes, it wasn't that they were turning homosexuals into non-homosexuals, but that they were turning bisexuals into operative heterosexuals. How could she be so sure? Because if they were able to be attracted to women ever, then they were simply not homosexuals, nor had they ever been. I thought this was a very familiar concept, and realized it was from 1John 2:19: "They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us." See, there's no such thing as an ex-Christian; if a person leaves Christianity, it means they were never really a part of it in the first place.

Christianity has its particulars that are strange and hard to understand, but they don't set it apart as particularly wrong so much as just one among many belief systems. Sure, Christianity is special, but not for any of the above reasons.