Jonah & Nahum

The other day, I was volunteering at the Salvation Army Kroc Center, asking people to sign thank you cards for service members overseas. During a slow part, I decided to see if I could write all 66 books of the bible. I remembered all of them but four - James (I really don't know how I forgot that one), Jonah, Nahum, and Habukkuk. I finished my reading through Luke that night, and the next morning, I figured I should read through the minor prophets, since those were the ones that escaped my memory.

So, I read through Jonah. What a crazy story! Well, the part with the whale is a fairly common story, but it's mainly the last chapter that is so intriguing to me.

The first three chapters tell the popular story: God tells Jonah to go to Ninevah, he refuses, running off and getting on a ship. There's a great storm, and the men are forced to throw Jonah overboard. He ends up in the belly of a fish for three days, but when God releases him, Jonah goes to Nineveh and preaches for repentance. Nineveh listens to his message and repents.

The last chapter, however, Jonah is angry that God turns his anger from Nineveh.

"But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord, 'Isn't this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? This is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.' But the Lord replied, 'Is it right for you to be angry?'" (Jonah 4:1-4)

Wow, how often do we have the same attitude? We pass judgment and we like to think we know who is righteous and who isn't. We would gladly choose who received punishment or blessings from God. But we are mere men, and God is - well, he's God.

Then Jonah goes to place outside of the city and wait to see if anything will happen to them. It's hot, so God gives him a gourd for some shade. But when a worm comes and eats the gourd, Jonah gets angry again and says he's so angry he wants to die.

"But the Lord said, 'You have been concerned about this gourd, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hands from their left - and also many animals?'" (Jonah 4:10-11)

And that's the end of the book. We don't know how Jonah responded, if he ever got over himself, or if was just miserable because God spared the Ninevites.

But again, how often does this happen? We care about worthless things and turn away from our fellow human beings. We get angry over things we can't control. We cry out to God for ourselves while we ourselves our cruel to our neighbor. I don't know what happened to Jonah or his attitude, but I hope we can accept God's will, even if we don't agree with it. I hope we can approach life with a dose of humility, realizing he's in charge and we're not. I hope we can choose to have the same compassion and love that God has.

I read Nahum this morning, and it's also about Nineveh. Nahum's prophecy is against Nineveh, predicting its destruction. Out of curiosity, I looked up the dates that Jonah and Nahum are thought to be written. Jonah is placed somewhere from 786-746 BCE, and Nahum 615-612 BCE. So while Nineveh repents in Jonah, they have done evil again to bring about the prophecies in Nahum.

This echoes the story of Israel - there were many times God warned them, and Israel did repent. But it only lasted for a short while, they soon fell away again, turning to false gods and cruelty. It appears God did this with Nineveh - he delayed destruction when they repented, but Nahum places some serious charges on them (1:14 speaks of idolatry, 3:1-4 of violence and prostitution, 3:19 of "endless cruelty"). While some individuals may have changed when Jonah came, the society as a whole didn't. God is merciful, but he did have to carry out judgment on them.

Proverbs 26:11 says, "As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly." May we have the strength to stay away after the first time.

Using the Internet for Good

The internet can be a source of good! This is a post of awesome websites that support charities, literacy, and other good causes. Use them as much as you can! And comment if you know of a good one I left out.

Better World Books is an online book seller. Their mission:
Better World Books collects and sells books online to fund literacy initiatives worldwide. With more than six million new and used titles in stock, we’re a self-sustaining, triple-bottom-line company that creates social, economic and environmental value for all our stakeholders.
I've found that they are usually the same price, if not cheaper than, Amazon, mainly because they offer free shipping within the US. It can take a little longer for the books to arrive (app. 11 days), but for only 99 cents, your item will arrive in 2-6 business days.

Free Rice is a trivia website, and for each right answer you get, the website donates 10 grains of rice to help end world hunger.

GoodSearch is an online search engine. Once you choose a charity, each search you conduct will donate to said charity. There are almost a hundred thousand charities participating (http://www.goodsearch.com/charitylist.aspx) and you can install toolbars for your browser or make it your default search on Google Chrome. (Here is a list of more charity search engines.) If people used these search engines as much as they used google, they'd change the world!

The Hunger Site is a place - you click, and a cup of food is donated because of your click. According to this website, there are almost 2 billion people hooked up to the internet. If each person clicked on The Hunger Site daily, that would be 2 billion cups of food! On the website, there are lots more links to similar websites.

That's all I have for now, but I'm going to keep looking to find more awesome places to help others through your internet connection!

The Social Network

I saw The Social Network last night with my husband for his birthday. It's about the founder of facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, and how the creation of the social networking site leads to two lawsuits for Zuckerberg. One is a trio who approached Zuckerberg with a very similar idea and is now suing for intellectual property theft. The other is Zuckerberg's friend and colleague Eduardo Saverin who was tricked out of his shares of the company much later in facebook's development.

When I left this movie, I didn't really know what to think. It's a very well done movie, and I thought the script and acting were spectacular. The cinematography was great, too. I just didn't know what I thought about the arrogant Zuckerberg as he strove to be cool and make facebook something great, not caring much about who got in the way.

I stumbled upon this article: http://www.cnbc.com/id/39501838 It's about how the older generation reacted to the movie compared to the younger generation. Older viewers typically saw Zuckerberg obsessed with ambition, driven by greed, and generally morally frowned upon, while younger views typically admired Zuckerberg for his entrepreneurship and saw his ambition as necessary. This quote from the article sums it up:

“I was asked by older people again and again how I could play a character who is capable of being so mean, as if I were almost condemned by this role,” he [Jesse Eisenberg, who plays Mark Zuckerberg] said in a phone call. “But young people never had that reaction. They kept saying, ‘This guy was a genius. Look what he has created.’ ”

Well, I think I've decided how I feel about Zuckerberg's actions, especially when I think about this verse:

"What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?" ~Matthew 16:26

Zuckerberg did do something amazing. Facebook changed the way we communicated. But he wasn't honest with the people who presented him with the idea in the first place or his best friend. He cast them aside for more numbers, for a greater vision of facebook. Some people may view this as necessary. The movie's poster said it: You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies.

I just read through Ecclesiastes, and the word hebel is used dozens of times. It means vapor or breath. It's been translated as meaningless, futile, pointless, vapor, vanity. Solomon looks at all the things man strives after in his life - money, pleasure, wisdom, power, prestige - and says it's all in vanity. It's like a vapor, it will be here for a moment and gone the next. Facebook may have changed our lives today, but it'll vanish, along with everything else on this material earth.

Zuckerberg may have decided that his company and vision was more important than those relationships, but why? Money doesn't make anyone truly happy. Eduardo said at the end of the movie, "I was your only friend." But after being dishonest and letting his ambition overrule common laws of decency, Zuckerberg had millions of members on his website and no true friends.

And let's not get into the misogyny in this movie. Two female college students that had personalities and two female lawyers. The rest of the females were half-clothed, drunk, clingy, ready to do it in a dirty bathroom stall, getting high, oogled at, dancing on tables, or on the website that Zuckerberg created to compare undergrad females at Harvard based on hotness. Or looking at it in horror.

I can't deny that it was an extremely well done movie, though. I actually recommend it.

Disclaimer: Who knows how far or close this movie is from the actual truth. I know it's based on a nonfiction book, The Accidental Billionaires, but I haven't read it, and anything I've said in this post just deals with the characters and actions in the movie.

What is a Christian?

A facebook friend of mine posted a link to this article and inspired a debate about whether President Obama is a Christian or not. I don't want to get into politics. Maybe I should be more interested, but most of it just aggravates me. But, it did bring up the question what the definition of a Christian is.

I think when looking at this, we can see just how relative language can be. I don't know where I heard it, but I love the quote: "Words don't have meanings, meanings have words." Language is just a way of labeling the thoughts and ideas in our head. It's just one way of communicating unspoken meanings. And language changes. Words take on different meanings depending on context - who is speaking, how it was said, the time, the place, and so much more. "Christian" is no exception.

Everyone seems to have a different idea about what a Christian is. Someone who believes in God. Someone who believes Jesus is the Son of God. Someone who goes to church. Someone who wants to be like Jesus. And all of these different "Christians" are going to act differently. Someone who believes in God doesn't necessarily go to church, and someone who goes to church doesn't necessarily live like Jesus. When we think about it, Jesus' life is one rarely mimicked by people today: traveling around and forsaking his family, wealth, and comfort to preach about the kingdom of God, reach out to the poor, and eventually die a gruesome death.

The word "Christian" appears in the bible three times:
Acts 11:26: "and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. And it came about that for an entire year they met with the church, and taught considerable numbers; and the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch."
Acts 26:28: "And Agrippa replied to Paul, "In a short time you will persuade me to become a Christian."
1 Peter 4:16: "but if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not feel ashamed, but in that name let him glorify God."

The Greek word used here is Christianos. (here is the Blue Letter Bible page for it.) Literally, it means a "Christ follower." So, if we were going to use the word Christian in that sense, it would be someone who followed Jesus Christ of Nazareth and his teachings. If only it were that easy, right? If every person who said they were a Christian read Jesus' teachings everyday and made consistent actions to follow them, what would happen to this world? It would be a different world, that's for sure.

But, honestly, I think Jesus' words can seem empty without their context. Again, language changes, and what Jesus said in Hebrew or Aramaic that was written down in Greek is going to sound a lot different a couple thousand years later in English.

For instance, in Matthew 6:22 Jesus says, "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!" After some study (here, here and here), we find out the reference to a good eye versus bad eye refers to generosity versus stinginess.

You have to understand Jesus' foundation, as well. You would not believe how many times Jesus quotes the Tanakh (the Old Testament) or the Talmud (a collection of writings and saying by Jewish rabbis). Here is a list of similar phrases, and that's just from Matthew 5-7. To understand Jesus, I think we need to study the Tanakh just as much as we may study Jesus' teachings. After all, God and Jesus are the same person, right? The same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The Talmud can also offer a wealth of wisdom, and it can tell us about some of the leading teachers and ideas in Jesus' time.

I could go on about this. I love the English language, but words have power. Words are loaded, and everyone looks at them with a different point of view. That's why I don't call myself Jewish, and I rarely call myself Christian. I prefer "believer" or sometimes even "God-fearer." It'll always take explanation, of course. These labels are never a sure sign that someone will hold all the same views as you (but if we al had the same views, then life would be too easy). Language is too fluid. I think someone's fruit will speak for itself. But then you get into defining what a Christian's fruit is. . .and then I would say Galatians 5:22-23. . .and someone would ask, "Then why do Christians consider homosexuality a sin?" And on and on it goes! I love it. Some call it midrash.

Circumcision

It's been a while since I posted! But I've been thinking about the commandment of circumcision lately, and how it does or doesn't fit into the life of a believer.

I did some research to find out how the majority of the Christian church responds to circumcision, and I found this. I think this sums mainstream Christianity's view on circumcision pretty well. I also think there are some flaws in this thinking. I'll try to keep this short.

Circumcision in the Tanakh
Circumcision is first mentioned in Genesis 17. God presents circumcision as a sign of the covenant with Abraham. It's interesting to look at the narrative, and Tim Hegg believes it tells us about the purpose for circumcision. Two chapters earlier, in Genesis 15:4-7, God first makes promises to Abram:

"Then the word of the LORD came to him: "This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir." He took him outside and said, "Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your offspring be." Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness."

Genesis 16 tells the story of Abram sleeping with Hagar in an attempt to have a child. Instead of waiting for God's providence, he and Sarai decided to try things their own way.

Then comes Genesis 17, which contains the commandment of circumcision.

"Then God said to Abraham, "As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner—those who are not your offspring. Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant." ~Genesis 17:9-14

The circumcision is now a sign of the covenant. Circumcision involves cutting away of the flesh, and I think this is symbolic of the fact that we cannot rely on our own flesh, as Abram and Sarai tried to. They cut away a part of themselves and waited for God's work, not their own. This can also point to our Messiah - he wasn't born from human methods, but born to a virgin. Only God's power brought him into human form.

We see a lot of circumcision in the Tanakh (Old Testament). There are commands that refer to men and slaves in the community being circumcised, there are periods of history when the Jewish people stop the ritual of circumcision.

There is also a spiritual kind of circumcision spoken of in Leviticus 26:40-42, Deuteronomy 10:16, 30:6, Jeremiah 4:4.

"Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, circumcise your hearts, you men of Judah and people of Jerusalem, or my wrath will break out and burn like fire because of the evil you have done-- burn with no one to quench it." ~Jer. 4:4

I think God makes it clear throughout the Tanakh that he desires one's heart and dedication, not meaningless rituals. (Deuteronomy 4:9, 6:4-5, 11:13; 1 Samuel 16:7; Psalm 51:16-17; Micah 6:8; Hosea 6:6) Often, however, dedication is shown by obedience. Circumcision was one of these commands, and dedication to God could be shown through carrying out this command. We too are heirs of Abraham, as it says in Galatians 3:29.

The Apostolic Scriptures
This is where stuff gets sticky. Many Christians claim Paul preached against circumcision. I believe the majority of the time Paul uses the phrase "circumcision" and "uncircumcision" he is referring to "Jews" and "non-Jews", and many times the ritual of circumcision is actually a ritual of conversion.

'Some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers: "Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved."' ~Acts 15:1

This is what sets off the Jerusalem council. I believe the "circumcision" refers to the ritual of conversion.

"Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear?" ~Acts 15:10

Is Paul referring to the Paul of Moses? If so, he's saying God gave the Israelites a burden, a yoke that no one could handle. Pretty cruel. Yet contrast this with Deuteronomy 30:10-14:

“For this command which I am giving you today is not too hard for you, it is not beyond your reach. It isn’t in the sky, so that you need to ask, ‘Who will go up into the sky for us, bring it to us and make us hear it, so that we can obey it?’ Likewise, it isn’t beyond the sea, so that you need to ask, ‘Who will cross the sea for us, bring it to us and make us hear it, so that we can obey it?’ On the contrary, the word is very close to you - in your mouth, even in your heart; therefore, you can do it!”

From the mouth of God.

Instead, I think Paul (and Jesus in Luke 11:46) is talking about the oral law that had come up around the Torah. Instead of merely God's commands, rabbis and sages had added on extra manmade laws to make sure no one broke a Torah command. Why would Paul and Jesus call the law a burden or a yoke when the writers of Psalms 19 and 119 loved the law and wanted to bury it in their hearts?

You can also see that in the very next chapter, Paul has Timothy circumcised. This is a bold move for someone who says in Galatians 5:2, "Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all."

Why would a simple command make Christ useless to us? No, it was the fact that these men wanted to be officially recognized as Jews. They were doing this for men, not God.

This theory is supported by 1 Corinthians 7:18-19:

"Was a man already circumcised when he was called? He should not become uncircumcised. Was a man uncircumcised when he was called? He should not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God's commands is what counts."

If Paul was talking merely about the cutting away of the foreskin, then how could a man who was circumcised become uncircumcised? In this verse, and arguably in many others, he is talking about the ritual of conversion, which was called circumcision. I guess you could call it slang of the day.

I believe Paul still considered the Tanakh and all of its commands as valid (Romans 3:31, 7:12), which would lead him to believe that circumcision was still a command.

Fortunately, God realizes we are humans, we still sin, and he offers grace and salvation through his Son. Praise Him!