But the LORD said to Moses, “If her father had but spit in her face, should she not be shamed seven days? Let her be shut outside the camp seven days, and after that she may be brought in again.” -Numbers 12:5

I found this odd because I couldn’t find an Old Testament law which discussed spitting.  The only thing that comes close is Deuteronomy 25:9 which says that if a man will not marry his dead brother’s wife to further his brother’s name, his brother’s widow shall spit on his face.  Which means that Ruth spit on ‘no name’s’ face during the story with Boaz.

But it seems that in Numbers 12, God is appealing to culture, or something deeper than culture.  He is saying, you all know that when a father is disgusted with his daughter he might spit on her.  And as a recognition of the shame she spends a week outside the camp.  God is making the comparison between spit and leprosy.  The father covers his daughter with spit in the same way that God had covered Miriam with leprosy. And since you all know that a daughter who has been shamed simply must go outside the camp for a week, which is a minor thing done by humans.  How much more should a person spit on by God be put outside the camp?  And God in his grace limits the duration of his shame of Miriam to the same as an earthly father.  Though he is well within his rights to extend it as long as he wants.

This doesn’t go over well with us today.  If this scene were depicted in a movie, the part of the father would be played by Darth Vader and the daughter would be an innocent and beautiful disney character with large heart-tugging eyes who just wanted to be herself.  We would obviously side with her.  And her fathers clearly abusive behavior would have justified the following scenes, where she lived like the prodigal son until she found her soul mate.  We have the story all wrong.  And it starts with the little things.  Our culture has not only thrown out the explicit commands of Jesus, Old and New Testaments.  We have thrown out the basic building blocks of humanity, all the way down to sex, male and female.

Paul is even known to appeal to the created order or the order of husbands and wives.  Do you not know that it was the woman who was deceived?(I Timothy 2:14)  Is it not obviously shame if a woman has her head shaved?(I Corinthians. 11)  But we just blow past all of this too, even Christians in the Church.  This is not just random culture, this is the way God made reality.  And even the pre-Christian, pagans as bad off as they were, didn’t have the audacity to mess with these things.  But we sit in a world surrounded by post-Christians burning the very fabric of the created order, and we don’t dare to speak up or try and stop them.  Even worse we join in and claim ‘Christian freedom’ or the ‘love of God which covers all sin’.

And like the petulant child of God, Miriam, who dared to disrespect Moses and assert her own authority, we reject the created order and the gender authority roles which God wove into the fabric of this world.  Why is is surprising that the shrill voice of the feminist murdering her own child, is the same voice which rails against the patriarchy?  Because a house divided can not stand  They know their target, it’s not abusive overbearing men, it’s the mans man, Jesus Lord of the Universe.  They hate his creation and his rules, to the point they even hate and demoralize themselves.  The plight of leprosy was like wearing spit, from God.  These people heap shame on themselves and look just as ridiculous.  God doesn’t have to mock them, they do it well themselves, with their pink hats, shrill voices, childless arms and any number of defacements from tattoos to piercings.   And they try to cover the pain with anti-depressants and herding together in group protests.  The worst part is that we put up with any of it.  We Christians are often too slow to figure out what is going on, we can’t read the cultural statements they are making.  We lament the microaggressions we caused and think we possibly did go to far in suggesting that maybe, possibly, the Scriptures did talk about fathers being the head of the wife.  But that couldn’t apply to us.   As we appoint another effeminate hipster to the pastorate, the caricature opposite of anyone who might possibly resemble a father figure with authority.  We have even twisted the definition of ‘meek’ to include this malakoi pastor(sorry scratch that, discussion facilitator) offering himself up to be sodomized buy any fashionable doctrine. Yet a couple of verses earlier in Numbers 11:3 we find “Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all men that were on the face of the earth.”  Got that? Moses who strangled people with his bare hands, who destroyed Pharoah, led armies, judged Israel for 40 years, broke tablets and struck the stone, was the meekest man on earth.

I find it interesting also that god only struck Miriam, yet her brother Aaron says “do not punish us because of what we have done.”  I think this goes to the glory arguments Paul makesin  I Corinthians 11:7 “woman is the glory of the man.”  God had attacked their glory.   He had humbled them, and they got it.  The repentance structure reestablishes the order which God created.  Miriam submits to Aaron who submits to Moses who submits to God.  Aaron pleads to Moses for Miriam, Moses then pleads to God.  God states his case and she is put outside the camp for 7 days.  And the event had and effect on the entire community, they all had to wait 7 days until she could be brought back into the camp.  Sin is not private and disrespecting those God has placed in authority over you is serious.  It works it’s way through the camp like actual contagious leprosy.  It must be put outside the camp, which is the strong language Paul echoes when he tells the Corinthians to stop taking pride in their harboring of a sexual pervert.  “God will judge those on the outside; but as the Scriptures say, “You must remove the evil person from among you.”  Don’t offer up a place to the feminist pretending to be a Christian, put her outside the camp.  Don’t offer a seat to the effeminate man, put him outside the camp.  For their own good and because God says so.

 

 

 

 

 

I’m tired of people trying to accuse Christians of being un-Christian because they want to maintain our borders.  Then they quote verses like Leviticus 19:3

“When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.

But like everything the world does they are wrong.  The whole point here is the word ‘sojourns’.  This is a person traveling through your land.  It doesn’t say make them a citizen, it is implied in many scriptures that you should make them a Jew, but it’s not about erasing borders or a one world utopia.  The whole point of God’s plan was to set Israel apart to bless the world.  That’s why he put them in the middle of it, on a small land bridge between the Mediterranean Sea and the Arabian Desert which connects Europe, Asia and Africa. There were major trade routes going through this land and God is saying not to take advantage of these people

It is a common theme in literature, especially Dickens, and Hugo, of the shady inn keeper taking advantage of travelers.  I think Sacha Baron Cohen’s portrayal of Thenardier in Les Misérables  is the perfect example.  As we have seen Cohen is more than a little shady and the movie does a great job of portraying Hugo and Dickens’ view of the inn keeper. He takes advantage of everyone, giving them dubious food, over charging them and downright theft.  People on the road are at risk, they are vulnerable, so don’t take advantage of them.  As God points out you Jews were once sojourners so you should know how it feels.

The idea is even present in Greek Mythology.  The myth of Philemon and Baucis, tells the story of a few greek Gods coming down to Tyana to seek lodging.  The community rejected them except for Philemon and Baucis.  So the gods destroyed the town for lack of hospitality.  Which sounds strangely like stories from the Old Testament like the destruction of Sodom.  Some people think the strange story of Lot offering his daughters was about hospitality.  Lot was trying to protect the two angels who were posing as sojourners, when he offered his daughters

If you do some thinking about the Old Testament, and try to see what God is doing, it is far more beautiful and far more complicated than just throwing out verses.

There are a lot of verses limiting what foreigners can do in and among the people of God, gentiles were unclean.  And as far as land went Numbers 36:7 says “The inheritance of the people of Israel shall not be transferred from one tribe to another, for every one of the people of Israel shall hold on to the inheritance of the tribe of his fathers. “   Land could not even leave a tribe much less a nation.   And every 49 years on Jubilee the land returned to the original clan.  Leviticus 25:10 “And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan. “

Also a few verses about moving your neighbors’ property markers. Deuteronomy 19:14: “Do not move your neighbor’s boundary stone set up by your predecessors in the inheritance you receive in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess.” Deuteronomy 27:17: “Cursed is the man who removes his neighbor’s boundary stone”  As far as I can tell, the liberals want to move our property markers, while maintaining their gated communities, keeping out both illegals and Conservatives.

Another issue with verses like this is the presence of these verses.  I think about this a lot with reference to the New Testament. There is a big difference between people hearing the words of Jesus then and the words of Jesus now.  When Jesus spoke his words were new, well for a lot of people.  It was a new way of hearing the Old Testament.  It was a new way of viewing the Pharisees and a new way of living.  But after 2000 years, the evils of the human heart have been working and twisting those words, and in many ways there are a lot of people back to where the Pharisees were.  They have turned the Bible into a system of works they can achieve while missing the entire point.  So even with the Old Testament verses, there is a difference between caring for the traveler in your land and the traveler in your land who knows those verses and the commands of your God and uses those against you.  This is where we are at. Abusing our immigration policy is public policy for many countries in South and Central America.  They know our rules and our compassion and they take advantage of it.  Giving into this system is not compassion it is enabling and destructive to all parties involved.  And then of course when you leave the Word of God and say, start killing millions of babies in the womb, those visitors in your land generally carry swords and want to take the place over.

And trying to have a moral people by enforcing one verse out of thousands is just crazy.  The verses our country needs most are generally found in Leviticus 18 not 19.

 

 

 

 

 

Paul shares his departing thoughts with the elders in Acts 20:20,  “how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable. . .I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. . .I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; . . .I coveted no one’s silver or gold or apparel. You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me.”

Paul did not work for his own profit, but for the profit of the believers.  Real profit, not monetary but spiritual.  He says something similar in Galatians 1:10 “  For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.”  He goes on to point out that his teaching is not motivated by other social pressures such as avoiding persecution.

In I Timothy 6:5 he warns against false teachers who teach“imagining that godliness is a means of gain”.  There is good money in being a false teacher, or even in being a mediocre or semi-false teacher.  Exegesis without application, sells.  Application and exegesis of all but the pertinent passage, sells.  And pure lies also sell.

That seems to be a concept we don’t have much concern for these days.  Paul also says that pastors and anyone who works or serves should be compensated.  But on the other side is the consideration that pastors today are motivated by money or career advancement.  If a pastor wants his church to grow he has to cater his message accordingly.  His livelihood is connected to his message.  Paul was free of these restrictions.  Paul was not afraid to say any truth that needed to be said.  Pastors today fear being fired.  And then what is to become of all that training?  Who will pay those school debts?

Not rocking the boat isn’t necessarily a good thing.  We all get comfortable in our sin.  The whole point of a pastor is to speak truth that we are uncomfortable with.  If we were comfortable we would just do it ourselves, pastors would not be necessary.  But who keeps pastors, too comfortable in their position, accountable?   Firing a pastor for not being judgmental enough sounds like the ultimate in judgmental evil bad, nasty. . . implausible.  I’m offending myself.

 

It is generally thought that the Great Awakening led to the founding of our country. A revival of morals urged men to stand up to the tyranny of England and to live by a higher standard. While it was ultimately the work of God, he used human agents like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. While we shouldn’t fall into sectarianism condemned by the Apostle Paul,their faithfulness is worthy of respect. The results were real and the world has never been the same.

I think about this in terms of Billy Graham, or even other pastors on a local level. What is their fruit? Since Graham became a pastor our nation has gone straight down the tubes in terms of Biblical Morality. Marriage went from sacred to a joke. Children went from a blessing to a curse. Homosexuality went from illegal to a right. And even the basic created order of male and female is under assault. And all this even in the church. So what do you do with these men? Do you say that they changed a lot of lives? That things would have been worse without them? Why did the world not only, not improve, but get worse?

I wonder if it is because their gospel only called for private individual change, and not for world change. I wonder if Evangelical pastors have not minimized the power of the gospel to a ticket to heaven while we watch the world burn. Perhaps this is why the calls for social justice have become common in young silly churches. Because they know something is missing.

The modern dating, hookup, easy divorce culture is a lot like digging ditches and filling them in.  There isn’t much question about the depth of those ditches, they are six feet deep.  There is some question about the breadth.  Each one certainly contains the body of the cast aside love interest.  But we also throw a bunch of ourselves in as well.  There is time and money, memories, gifts given and received, physical affection, shared conversations, that tête-à-tête language which develops between any two people.  So expand that ditch accordingly.  Then of course there are kids and marriage, which happen in that order as often as not.  If you have kids, throw them in as well.  They will be forever impacted for the worse.  All those delicate partially formed emotions, habits, thoughts, abilities, and dreams cut short and stifled, in the whole.  And though we don’t like to admit it, no man is an island.  What we do affects those around us.  Common friendships now broken,  friends of the children taken away, extended family bonds irretrievably awkward.  Throw all of them in the hole.  And in a real sense by rewriting laws to pretend that these things are not an issue, you are throwing all sense of justice or covenant or truth away as well.  In lowering the standard for divorce in church structure you have destroyed marriage as an institution.  What does it mean if it means nothing when you feelings change?  The concept of covenant, promise, commitment have been replaced with your whims in the moment.  All in the ever expanding hole.

And that’s the fundamental idea of digging ditches, you aren’t digging a foundation for something greater, you are just wasting your time.  You try to bury all those things in your past, and real part of you and then you start digging again.  But nothing ever gets built.  Your life bears no fruit, all you have is a mass grave a shrine to yourself..

This is the sad state we are in without the Gospel.  The Gospel changes everything and says bury yourself, and God will raise you up to new life.  This is the picture of baptism.  This is the order of creation, seeds go into the earth and every fruit trees, bushes of the field and herbs of the garden are brought forth.   The first charge/blessing to man is to be fruitful. Even sex is portrayed as planting seed.  One my favorite images from Narnia is of the planting of the lamppost.  The soil is so rich that even a bar of iron thrown in anger brings forth the fruit of a lamppost, guiding light.  And that is a wise picture of the relationship between this earth and the heavenly realm.  What we plant here will bear fruit in the new earth.  What we sew is what we reap here on earth in a literal sense.  But we will also reap in the new earth in a more literal sense.  Some will be made rulers of great plantations others will barely get in as if through fire.  There is some risk involved always, I think of the famished sailers deciding whether or not to risk their small piece of fish for a larger catch.  But there are always choices between burying yourself and burying others.  The building of the Church happens when we bury ourselves for the hope of future reaping.   Stone by stone that great edifice rises from the earth.  It calls to the broken world.

For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.  According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.   –I Corinthians 3

It is hard to minimize the importance of story to the health and sanity of the human soul.  God speaks to his people in stories I Cor 10:11.  And even our own stories are given to us to refine our character.  But we must read them properly.  The fundamental problem with idolatry or any other sin is reading the story incorrectly.  We attribute positive events to ourselves or to false gods which are really the work of God.  Or we blame other people for evils which are really our own fault.   One of the ten commandments says “Thou shalt not bear false witness”.  Which I think is a lot like, don’t tell the story the wrong way when it could hurt someone.

This is the time of year when a lot of people evaluate their story and try to make some sense of it, or perhaps make it better for the next trip around the sun.  And there are real temptations to make ourselves the hero and everyone else into our supporting cast.   But it takes courage to see things as they really are.  There are a million conversations going by, but there are some on a world, national, local and even church or family scale which many of us share.  A lot of what I post is an attempt to read those stories as they go by and correct the inaccuracies, to call things by their proper name.

For example; a lot of times when I hear the phrase “I’m a Christian” it makes a lot more sense to correct it to: “I’m a selfish coward.”  I know it might sound a little harsh but here we are again with telling the truth.  Of course we all look forward to that day when God will judge, but part of remaking this entire Earth as it is in Heaven is to judge rightly.  As in Matthew 18, or as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6.

Often I see the phrase “I love you.” or something similar and it makes more sense to change it to “being selfish around you makes me feel nice”.

When people do horrible things they will often say “that’s not who I am”  which needs to be edited to “I don’t want to accept responsibility for my actions”

“You make me so mad” is really “I have no self control and I’m going to blame you for that too.”

One of my personal favorites is “I am rejecting what you say, not because you are wrong but because of the way you say it.”  Which is really “rather than change my behavior I am just going to blame your demeanor and speech patterns”

“That’s not nice.” is really “I don’t like to be held to any standard outside of myself.”

There is a whole class of “yeah but look what you did” which I still find very interesting.  That somehow finding unrelated fault in someone else vindicates yourself.  There are whole novels written on this principle.  And in fact they must be written.  For when we encounter goodness better than ourselves we must change or destroy the good.  There just aren’t any other options.  That is why Jesus had to be crucified and why the story of every one of his true disciples is very similar.  We will face persecution, bullying, mockery and even death.  Because when your false story meets the true story you simply must deal with it.  There is no room for two heroes, if you don’t push yourself aside and put Jesus the Christ in the position of the hero, you are simply doomed to share the story of the fallen angel of light.

 

 

 

Let’s think about taking a knee for the national anthem.  So you have a song which helps you honor your flag.  A flag flying over the building of your government and many businesses and homes.  A flag is the colors of your nation, your people.  A sign that this is their territory.  You took some ground at some battle and took down the enemies flag and planted your own flag.

Apparently for those programmed(I almost said brainwashed but that would indicated a coherent thought that had been dislodged and replaced with another thought, this is programming from infancy as oppose to free thinking) by the Post-Christian version of history, our flag is a symbol of oppression.  This is just wrong, we have done the most to remove oppression from our shores and the rest of the world than any on entity ever. And I don’t think that people really believe this anyway.

Think about a ship being taken over by an enemy. Think of your favorite war movie when the US flag is taken down and replaced by whatever flag.  Now think of your local post office or stadium.  What if the flag were to be taken down and replaced by the flag of Mexico?  Something less likely to happen as the result of war than by the active procreating ability of illegal immigrants.  But seriously think about it.  It should send a chill through your spine.  Do you want this to be Mexico?  Or think about the Stars and Stripes being replaced by the Red flag of China or the Black flag of ISIS.  Are these entities all just the same as the Multiculturalist tells us?  Or as some say, that this would really be a change for the better?  Do you want this to be China or the Middle East?  I think most people would have to admit that they don’t, especially the women.  The proof is the simple fact that changing your flag has never been easier, just move.

Some people say that they just want America to be all it can be, that their complaints are to better America.  It seems to me a lot like wanting to take down the US flag and replace it with the flag of Neverland or the flag of some utopia dreamed up by men like Karl Marx or Bernie Sanders.  Because their suggested solutions bear no resemblance to the hard work that went in to getting the world to where it is today. And every time their solutions are implemented millions of people die.  Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, Communist Russia, Banana South America.

But we do seem to be supplanting our flag for some other flags.  Like the rainbow flag.  Again do we really want to live under the anti-family, we-define-ourselve-by-the-unnatural-use-of-sex flag?  By definition that movement bears no fruit. It is a celebration of perversion.  Every statistic in the world shows the destruction to society for those brave enough to see it.  From the unspeakable violent crimes it foments to the confused adopted children.  And of course there is the pedophilia, which no one wants to talk about.

Or from flags of anti-family to the flag of antifa.  A group of spoiled little brats being paid by George Soros to destroy things.  These people who were called Occupy Wall Street yesterday, can’t even maintain basic sanitation in a public park yet they want to rule the world.  Talk about a hate group.  You would sooner flock to the Jolly Roger. Dear snowflake, where is your sustainable Valhalla, that we may all go and thrive?  And the hipster tattoos on your behinds do not count as war wounds.  They would laugh you out of that Odin’s feast, microaggression put to good use

Yes we have our problems but I’ll stick with the Stars and Stripes.  And if anything our goal needs to be to shake the dust off, and restore it’s former glory.  A glory of a nation of abundant Christianity, unparalleled literacy, rampant kindness, staunch self-government, wild ingenuity, and quiet family security, like that which Alexis d’Toqueville described.

 

 

I am reminded of a quote by G. K. Chesterton, “It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.” And so it was often directed towards the Muhammadan, and his culture without jokes or music.   Like all paganisms, there is no humor, life is deadly serious servitude to some pagan deity.  And so with our worship of the victim.

The other side of the problem is the hyper individualized post modern.   Everyone has become a minority of one.  “How dare you judge me unless you walk a mile in my shoes.” It’s the easiest way to win an argument  when you don’t know anything and the only way to relate to other people when you have destroyed any objective standards outside yourself.

It is also a reaction to the hyper collective aspect of modernism.  You it’s Star Trek, and we all have the same outfits and live in the same cubicle.  In contrast today, everyone works a little to hard to be themselves.  And so we see the modern trying to save the world with the one-size-fits-all solution of communism and the post modern trying to save the world by smoking pot and trying to find a unique way to not do things his ancestors have always done.

The problem is that both are inhuman lies.  God is both one and three, false gods are one or the other.  He is diverse and unified.  You can’t have just one side, only diversity or only unity.  It’s not true and it’s not funny.

Chesterton in his parenthesis, which is the source of the above quote, goes on to address these other problems.

“Whatever is cosmic is comic.”  But the problem with our culture is that we don’t allow anything to be cosmic.

“If nobody has any right to judge of Spiritualism except a man who has been to a séance, the results, logically speaking, are rather serious:  it would almost seem as if nobody had any right to judge of Christianity who had not been to the first meeting at Pentecost. Which would be dreadful.”  Minorities of one, ruin everything.

The collective will not save you, even the collective fueled by ‘science’.  But you also can’t be your own messiah.    You need Jesus the Christ.

 

But you really should just read the entire essay. Or listen.  And then ready everything else he ever wrote.